Wah Waaaah

Always here to tell you 'bout a new disease, a car accident or killer bees!
Happy New Years, dearest Reader. Seriously, if you drink, don't drive & if you drive, don't close your eyes. Stay safe & we'll meet back here tomorrow (I'll cook up some bacon and butter the english muffins for your hangover.)

xoxo,
S

Welcome to My Dollhouse (I Hardly Ever Lock the Door)

Woody Allen once said that 80% of success is showing up.

(When you don’t know how to say something it helps to begin with a quote.)

I am pretty sure Woody Allen made up that figure, that 4 out of 5 doctors don’t necessarily agree and that there was no testing on animals involved. But it’s true, nonetheless, don’t you think?

When you’re little you think that fame is inevitable. Fortune. I was going to be a Runner! No mention made that I never ran anywhere or that running is not really a job for most. But there it was: a Runner! Or a Writer! I was going to be a Millionaire! The Queen/Ruler/Boss of Something! Big! It was a given, the future capitalized like that; why, it said so right there on the rainbow-lettered poster I taped to my bedroom door.

And then you get to junior high and care more about whether or not your period has leaked through the back of your capris. You master the art of changing into your gym clothes without ever once showing skin. You shrink. Shirk. High school: you fall in love and become two. Then one again, which feels like half of what you once were, less. Smaller still. College is fun and then you graduate and get a job but your business card does not make a very impressive poster for your bedroom door and HR refuses to print exclamation points after your title. (Just a fax number which is communal and never works anyway.)

I hate it when bloggers write about blogging. The meta-me-ness of two mirrors facing inward into infinity. Dude. And yet.

Not to be an asshole, but... this usually means someone is about to be a total fucktard asshole, and me stalling here means I am about to write about my writing, i.e. be an asshole, a fuck, you ready? Here we go.

80% of blogging is about self-promotion. And yes, 4 out of 5 doctors tasered lab rats to prove this statement true.

Blog rolls, awards, rankings, nominations, kudos, Kirtsy, Digg, Babble, Stumble, stats, technorati, and twitter. Followers. Fuck. I was the kid who tried very hard not to care, the studied nonchalance of a girl who held out the hem of her shirt so her boobs wouldn’t cast a shadow. I write because I love words, yet I would be lying if I didn’t also admit to loving an audience, all the www a Slam Book in which, god forbid, I do not merit a mention.

My stats have teetered a bit since I stopped posting so often. Which is, well, duh. Days go by now with no comments. Something about a tree falling in the woods, I am sure. It’s silly, this feeling. The addiction to response. Sick, really. If I write for the sake of writing, then why do I care? (And boom goes that tree, yet another victim of scale.)

What do you think of the girl who says it out loud? I want to be popular. The very word makes me cringe. Popular. (She who says it is usually not.) Popular brings me back to wannabe, to the days when we said face to each other coupled by the gesture of scratching down your, um, face. Did you do that? Face? Squirmy-wormy here in my Keds complete with friendship pins I made for myself? (And yes, I know that comparing the blogosphere to school is hackneyed at best, but it's not enough like my daily commute on the bus to find an analogy there, so-)

I suck at self-promotion, preferring, instead, to pretend that I don’t care. Vote for me. Or don’t. Whatever. As long as I don’t care I cannot fail.

There are bloggers who are great at self-promotion. They are big on blog rolls, they have pages dedicated to badges, they rank. Some write well, some not-so. On small days I think they are lame. On days that I feel big I admire them, their confidence. How do they do it—put themselves out there? Market themselves? Treat their writing as something of worth?

Short of showing off my tits (the shadows now longer like the end of a day), how do I comfortably sell myself? Paste a poster on my 37 year old door? Perhaps in black Sharpie for sophistication’s sake? Petunia Face! Blogger! Writer! Me! What do you think of self-promotion? The awards and links and lalalalala of the www? What would you think if I cared? Do you care?

Incidentally, Woody Allen also said in Annie Hall that he wouldn’t join any club that would have him as a member, although I think he stole that line from Groucho Marx.

(When you don’t know how to stop something it also helps to end with a quote.)

xo,
S

Post-Xmas Oh's

I fucked up. Please to let me count the ways.

1. Santa brought Zoey exactly what she wanted. Which is not of the joystick variety per se, but just as creepy in a purple plastic flying pony that is not very pretty way, plus it talks. A lot. When you touch its foot, its belly, its mouth, its ear, seemingly when you think about taking out its batteries and maybe submerging it in cold bathwater while the children are asleep. Apparently its name is Starsong and she has a short curly 'do where her mane should be; in fact, she bears a striking resemblance to El Debarge, just as falsetto bad, and if I close my eyes I can almost smell Drakkar Noir mixed with Oxy 10 and the Drake High Gym. (Goddamn ponies and that fat fuck Santa.)

2. My apologies for the above--it's just that the pony now sleeps with Zoey and Zoey still sleeps with us and my god, if I roll over one more time at 3am only to set off a high-pitched plush la la la la la! I'm sleepy! I swear to god--I don't know. That's how tired I am. Anyone ever seen the flick They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

3. Next Monday I leave for Mexico which is reason enough to roll your eyes and stop reading, but wait--it gets worse. My in-laws are taking us, paying for us--my in-laws who I love and really like. Built in babysitters at a resort and the promise of a slack-jawed nap in the sun. In anticipation I tried on my bathing suit a few weeks ago, which is a big ol' Glamour magazine Don't during the month of December, but there I was nonetheless: white and puffy, veiny, hair where there is no hair on women in porn. Or men, for that matter. But I told myself no problem! With all the optimism of time. Why, I'd just cut out bread! Drink water! Forgetting, of course, about the boulange near work with the warm hazelnut croissants, seasonal eggnog chai, sugar cookies shaped like trees, See's candies (but it's not a bread product!) and panettone, a loaf of which I ate to see if I even like panettone which it turns out I don't. And then last night I racked my knee on the exposed corner of my bed, slicing it just a little but bruising it a lot. By the time I get to Mexico my leg should be the sick yellow color of a turned banana; I will look like a sloppy stripper in my bikini, over-the-hill and just waiting for the DJ down at the pool to play me some Bon Jovi. Livin' on a Prayer, man! Fuck Yeah!

4. I hate women who talk about how they look in a bikini, jeans, naked, diets, ohmygodamifat?, i.e. I suck.

5. And lastly, I just realized Christmas is over and I did not hear my favorite song, not even once. Do They Know It's Christmas? Which kinda' begs the question: Do starving Africans even care if it's Christmas or not? And what kind of sentiment is well tonight thank god it's them, instead of you???

Oh well. It's a great diddy nonetheless. (Band-Aid brings me back to that one Christmas I got a yellow walkman and zebra-striped Guess jeans that zippered down each ankle and I sat in the rocking chair for days afterward listening to this song and feeling lucky because I was. Am.)

Just a little post-Christmas coital, that is all.
Happy Monday.
xo,
S

Peace

And love,
Susannah

Italicized

I thought about not even telling you this lest you think me too strange.But then I remembered that one time I wrote about vaginas on bicycles, the post about how I once swallowed a Weeble Wobble whole, how I have told you all about how very much I love cleaning out Bryan's ears with a Q-tip too deep, how we play doctor in the bathroom and the way I twist the side of his head under the light just so. Oh--I haven't told you about that yet? Well then.

This past Sunday I went to a psychic. And when I say went to a psychic I mean I paid a woman in Florida to read me over the phone for an hour. Oh, I know how it sounds, paying someone to do something to you in italics. All hoo hoo ha ha Sequoia Na Na con carob when of course we all know now that carob is just as bad for you as chocolate and tastes like shit. But here's the thing: I believed it. Her. Everything. In things that hide and then come out again, in the vastness of strings.The psychic came highly recommended, my left brain having struck a deal with the right. Backed by media claims, testimonials, slips of paper somewhere I am sure. I made an appointment for Sunday morning and waited for her call with a list of questions, a pen, photos. Before me I set a bowl of Native American fetishes that had been my paternal grandmother's. I was nervous.

I thought about not even telling you about this because it was personal. But then I remembered that one times a dozen that I wrote about having panic attacks, the post about how my step-father has been dying for years now, how I have told you that I have absolutely no ass to speak of: just two dimples and a crack. The psychic said I was a writer but why wasn't I writing? No, really, she said--why? Apparently my spirit guides are pushing me forward, she said, and then I nibbled on my granola bar, but still, I listened. Writing. She told me about Zoey. She said that I would give birth to baby #2 when Zoey is 5, that he is very intuitive and waiting. She talked about my dad, and then she said my grandmother was there. I reached for my Native American fetish bowl but she said no, this was my mom's mom. My mom's mom left when my mom was 8. She did not know her. I never knew her. She died in August and we just found out in November. But there she was--she has one hand to her chest and she is saying sorry, she is so sorry, tell your mother there was love there and she is so sorry.

It went on, of course, and while I know that more specifics would improve the post I will just say this: it was true. Whatever that means. Because here my thoughts are made of light, of smoke, and I imagine your eyes are absent. Do you believe? Maybe? The possibility of it like a climbing vine? If you'd like information on the psychic please email me and I'll give you her website.

Images from here, here & here.

Oll Raigth

The last time I was a bad girl in the way that Nancy Reagan just says no was maybe six years ago when I ate pot brownies and spent the evening in a corner speaking Prisencolinensinainciusol. It was at a party of a friend of Bryan's, an architecture party where everyone there seemed to speak in straight lines and wore black. When somebody offered me a brownie I scarfed it down, giggled, then grabbed Bryan by the elbow and told him we had to sit on the window ledge overlooking Polk Street. It was raining and I could not turn my head to face the party. Instead I stared out the window and spoke Italian. Spanish. I whispered in French. At some point I remember saying Ich bin zustimmt nicht although in real life I do not speak German, or Italian really. I speak Spanish only enough to ensure I never publicly piss my pants, and French only if the person to whom I'm speaking thinks that R.S.V.P. is short for Really So Very Polite. But that night it flowed, my own pot-fueled pidgeon language of paranoia and circles, and Bryan spoke it right back, one of the best conversations we've ever had. I don't know how we got home.

This video reminds me of that night. And of Serge Gainsbourg. Strangely enough it reminds me of the way I dance, too, all emphatic elbows and knees, except maybe without the panache of a blond Italian woman who sees little reason to button her shirt.

The lyrics here are pure gibberish, of course, intended to sound like American English as heard by a non English-speaker. But to me the song sounds like Hello Monday Morning of a Short Holiday Week with a rousing chorus of Rad. I don't know--it makes me happy--this disco rap goodness from 1972 like a giggle in the back of my throat. *Flashback* If I close my eyes I can still hear the traffic from Polk Street below, the sound of the prostitutes calling to each other in the night.

Happy Monday! (Oll Raigth!)

To: Me, Love: Moi

This post begins disjointed because I want to apologize. Originally I had a pic here of somebody else's family holiday photo that I found funny. Some people found my comments offensive and while I don't mind being offensive at times I never want to be mistaken for mean. I'm sorry. Anyway, here is the rest of the post which probably doesn't make much sense now but also might not have made any sense in the first place...

So in the spirit of Christmas here are a few stragglers of por favor, gimme gimme:

An oral hygiene model. Don't know why really, but I'm fairy certain it's smiling at me. Me! This would look pretty darn frisky in my bathroom, though at $55 I'm hoping it either gets wrapped up and handed to me with a tube of vanilla-mint Crest or is severely marked down post-12/26. Honestly I can't stop staring. I really really want this, don't you?

And this. I have a pretty bitchin' Christmas ornament collection, if I do say so myself. Glass owls and porcelain birds, felt Santas, snowmen, metal elves, beaded snowflakes that twinkle in the slow waft of the wall heater. Still there is something missing, and that something, my friends, is a pornament:
Oh, how I do want this, nay, need this. A tit for my tree. $8.50. Somebody please gift me with this handblown breast and forever after my holidays will be happy, I just know it.

And then this, the most confusing gimme gimme of them all:

Ice-T's wife Coco. And no, I don't want an ass like that or the boobs, not the bleach job or the shoes even if lucite stilettos are a perfectly sensible choice in footwear for lifting dead weights. I just want to know... fuck. I don't know. I'm speechless. I look at Coco and my thoughts form strings of asterisks and ampersands, @@@@!!!*&#*&%^@!(*))##???? Wordless, what and wonderful, wonderful in the sense that I am full of WHY???

'Tis the season, I 'spose. For miracles and vinyl mouths, resin boobie balls and--honestly, you guys--WTF IS UP WITH COCO?
Happy Friday.

xo,
S

See Also: Shape of the Universe

I called my mother's breasts Weeble Wobbles, I don't know why. Except that maybe when she bent down to get a shirt out of the bottom drawer they looked like something both weighted and empty all at the very same time. Now when I bend down I see those same breasts, breasts that have fallen despite the jingle daring differently.

There will be no image to go along with that paragraph.

I have a birth mark on my right thigh like a thumbprint. Over the years it has become dotted with freckles, a smattering is what I guess one is supposed to call something like that. Instead I call it my freckle farm, and each spring when I once again warm my legs in the sun I find that I have missed it, my birth mark.

I used to have beautiful feet.

But this is not about my body, believe it or not. My freckles or face or the faint scar on my stomach shaped like the continent of Africa. No, this is about me in mourning for Zoey's tummy. Her pot belly. Because suddenly it's gone, the round curve of her stomach now flat with time. She has grown, stretched out, and last night as Bryan and I watched her sleep we both whispered it: she's not a toddler anymore. Who knows the exact parameters of what happens when; more important are the long legs thrown from the covers like that, the vector of her tummy a different degree while the curvature of a straight line remains zero. Three and a half.

She is three and a half, three years and eight months if we are to get truly mathematical, equal to the inverse and extrinsic. She has one dark freckle on her back and no scars, eyelashes I imagine on a deer; one of her front teeth is very slightly crooked from when she was learning to walk and did not. The oldest she has ever been and the youngest that she'll ever be and yet I cannot help but try and flatten time. When next I see her tummy curve like that she will be a woman and pregnant maybe, her own baby inside, my grandbaby, the points sharply bent into a circle the only constant.
Neither here nor there, but this: for Christmas I asked my dad for this yellow Measure Me stick so we can keep track of Zoey's growth no matter where we live. I am pretty sure he got it for me seeing as how just the other week he mentioned something about a very large package being delivered to his house...

GAH! Monday.

Aha! I knew it. Behold: the very reason I check behind my shower curtain first thing when I get home at the end of the day...

Honestly I don't know if this is a scam or not, but I do know this: right now there are microscopic mites living in your eyelashes, chomping away at secretions and dead skin debris, one adult capable of laying 25 eggs inside just one hair follicle. IN YOUR MOTHEREFFING EYE. You're thinking about them now, aren't you? Those itty bitty creepers with their fat stump legs and mouths like sharp-needled hoovers. So really? Is it so far-fetched to think someone might be living in my pantry?

Fuck.
Happy Monday,
xo,
S

Life

The alarm went off at 6am. I washed my face, put on some makeup, brushed my hair, checked email, got dressed, picked out Zoey's clothes, made her oatmeal, kissed her, kissed Bryan, drove to the bus stop, waited for the bus, got on the bus, read email on the bus, tried very hard not to puke on the bus, read blogs, got off the bus, walked to work, worked, worked, worked, talked about Tiger Woods, worked, drank vanilla tea, ate a banana, worked, worked, worked, worked, ate some chocolate given to me by my office Secret Santa, worked, worked, worked, worked, walked to the bus, read blogs on the bus, looked out the window and thought about how much I hate the smell of Bath & Body Works, got off the bus, drove to pick up Zoey, stopped at the grocery store, bought tortilla soup and toilet paper, got home, loaded dirty clothes into the wash, gave Zoey a bath, ate tortilla soup, read to Zoey, kissed her goodnight, took a shower, blogged, folded clothes, separated the recycling, fed Nacho, returned a few emails, paid some bills, did something unbloggable with Bryan and turned out the light. 11pm. In bed I thought to myself this is it over and over again like this: thisisitthisisitthisisitthisisitthisisitthisisit until it meant nothing.Which it was, really--nothing--seeing as how prone I am to this sort of thing. For instance today I walked around all day noticing noses, how ugly they are, strange, all of them. Noses on baristas, on the homeless people on Market Street, the mailman's nose, my nose, the nose on Zoey's preschool teacher, noses on the models in the latest issue of Lucky. Nosenosenosenosenose. Look around you, everyone with a fat fleshy thing with holes right in the middle of their face like that.

Happy Friday.
xo,
S

Image.

Tra La La Which is a Fancy Way of Saying Absolutely Nothing But This

If the holiday spirit doesn't move you while watching the following video then I don't think we can be friends.

Which is a total lie because while I love this video and would be disappointed if you did not feel the same I still think we could be friends if you gave me all your People magazines after you were done reading them and the page corners were not smudged with something horribly brown in my no-good imagination, or if you do a spot-on Kim Zolciak impression, or if maybe you also like nutella on toast with butter and then a second slice with slightly more butter and nutella. Yeah. (Things to consider: please order me a chai if you are going to Starbucks before meeting me--I'll pay you back--and you'll need to overlook the fact that I suck at doing accents even though sometimes I feel moved to speak as if I am from some British enclave in the Deep South.)

Screw it. The video is cool and all but being friends with you is the awesomest.

Missed you,
S

Two Things

Thing One: Apparently I am big in Japan (a claim I make only because I am fairly certain it would be difficult to verify). See lately I've been getting an onslaught of comments in Japanese. Like this: 復活、スタービーチ！日本最大の友達探しサイトがついに復活、進化を遂げた新生スタビをやってみません. And then I go to one of those translation sites and it says this: "Recently I am having difficulty lonely. Going along with a remarkable lonely..neighbour to go to bed at night alone I go to bed and is not there the male who it takes the trouble to do? An/the appearance or, especially I do not worry about it. That will warm up with a/the futon together one large welcome ☆ that is gentle and take the trouble to be together." And then I think that maybe I am not such a good writer after all, because that? I think we can all agree that right there is some genius Thomas Pynchon shit.*

Thing One, appendix 1a: Recently it has come to my attention that I have been a bad friend of the blogosphere. And when I say it has been called to my attention I mean pretty much nothing by it, i.e. I am probably the only one who's noticed. Here's the thing: I now commute to the city via bus, a 40 minute ride for which I bought an iphone with the express purpose of doing my blog rounds, personal emails, time suckage/dry humping the www/blah di blah while en route. What I have found, however, is that buses are wont to stop a lot, start, float over lanes, lurch. Buses have the nerve to turn corners, and without fail a few minutes into my commute I feel like this:
On my first day I sat in the front row and asked the driver if maybe he could not ride the brakes so much? Which did not go over well as I have found there are unspoken rules of commuting. Such as no talking. No coffee. No puking. No eye contact. No change for a twenty and no telling the bus driver which route would be best when the bridge is backed up onto Beach Street. And so I have come up with an alternative method which includes me hunched forward over my iphone with my hair falling down over each side of my face creating blinders so I lose some sense of motion at least, and then I cruise the internet. Thing is I have not found a way to comment on your blogs without feeling that forboding cold ring around my lips, without saliva collecting in my mouth like a promise, and so I don't so much. And I am sorry. I miss you. Send scopolomine.

Thing One, appendix 2b: Happy birthday Jenny! Please make loud, slightly dirty love to your husband tonight because he is adorable. Seriously. The backstory here is that Jenny's husband emailed I-don't-know-how-many bloggers and asked us to give his girl a Casey Kasem shout-out on her birthday. In his email he even called her his girl which pretty much made me pee rainbows. If you don't know Jenny from My Favorite and My Best you simply must go visit not only to wish her a happy happy but also because her blog is above and beyond funny. And I totally would've said that even if it wasn't her birthday but it is, so, yeah. Happiest of birthdays to you :)

Thing Two: Here is a dramatic reenactment of what Zoey and I are doing today:

Q: How fucking awesome are we?

A: Pretty fucking awesome.

Today Zoey and I are flying down to LA to visit my brother and his wife and to take Zoey to Disneyland again. Gratis. My brother asked if maybe Zoey would like this as her Christmas present and I made the executive decision of hell-to-the-princess-dress-yes. And so we are off for three days and will try our very bestest to look as groovy as these ladies.

xoxo,
S

*Seriously Japanese Reader, knock that shit off. I suspect you're spam and so I will not be publishing your comments ever. Except here. Where I made fun of you and did not include that web link you attached. Fucker. The end.

Ridiculous (I Mean Really)

I am a fairly agreeable Miss of the masses. That is, I don't really question when the reality show cameras just so happen to be lurking around PCH to catch Justin Bobby ride by low on his hog, the sunset behind him like the ending of a particularly-climactic porn. No, I smile gamely through Tyra, currently disparage Tiger and don't think much of it when my local news station resets their station id with the tagline news you can trust. After all, why shouldn't I? Their hair doesn't move, they look me in the eye and sometimes they even pronounce names as they should be said somewhere. Las Ahnheeleeees. I sit on my couch plucking my eyebrows and think totally.

But there is one thing that has been irking me for quite some time now, me who buys Us Weekly and People magazine every Friday, my own little happy hour complete with (no) think specials. It's this: Sexy Face. The increasingly popular deadened eyes at half-mast, mouth agape, body twisted torqued to thrust out boobs and butt and-- well, that's it really. Variations of Sexy Face include one finger precariously close to mouth, pursed lips and possibly sneezing, or being caught in mid-sneeze. It would seem. I don't know. Here is the latest offender, this pic of J Lo in the back of Us Weekly under the title Unshorn Celebrities! Because god forbid her bangs are too fringe-y but no problem if she is looking at the camera as if caught in mid-shart.

When Zoey saw it (one night after reading Goodnight Moon) she giggled and I asked her why and this is what she did:

Which I loved, of course, even though she needed to open her mouth a bit more but you know, she's young, there's time, lipgloss. Anyhow, it got me thinking: what if we all just start rocking the Sexy Face? At bars, at home, over dinner, standing by the copier at work, all the world experiencing the same hemorrhagic stroke of sexy?
Mid-blink, mid-sneeze, somebody cut the cheese. Imagine the possibilities...

I dare you.

Please report back your findings.

A Portrait of the Girl Who Swallows Everything, Like Time & Fashion & Me

Zoey has learned to dress herself. And when I say "learned to dress herself" what I really mean to say is "suck it Sartorialist."

Here we have her Saturday ensemble for a trip to the zoo accompanied by a certain pose insouciante she adopted when I told her it was too warm for a hat, too cold for a swimsuit, the world too bitter for cherry leg warmers no matter the weather.

Later, when I crept into her room that night this is what I found... All the world a ball to balance on her nose for a time. (My heart styrofoam wet and heavy, & so I kissed the plum of her eyes and let myself be swallowed whole.)

Sweet Dreams,
S