sister mary pugnacious of the painful ruler

I have a friend, a fine southern gentleman (even if he does drink white wine) who lives far away. We chat regularly with an instant message service. We do this because I do not like the phone. Let me be clear. I hate the fucking telephone. Which, while not the same as hating to talk to my friends, generally interferes with my doing so anyway.

And though he wants to speak with me on the phone, I have been refusing, because it means he goes out into his garage to smoke cigarettes. Now my faithful readers are well aware that I am the supreme enabler, but not about smoking, ever. This comes with being one of those obnoxious ex-smokers, a badge I wear proudly.

He decided to quit smoking. I'm all for it. I even offered to talk with him on the telephone if he went for three days without a smoke. (I know, I know, it's a huge sacrifice. But I'm willing to do this for my friends.)

Anyway, today hobbitt and I began planting the shrubbery that has been sitting for more than a week out front. (I say we, but all I did was point.) I came inside to pick up the laptop to do some research on sun/water needs, and saw that the chat window was open. It was my friend. I sat on the front steps and had this brief exchange with him.

A fine southern gentleman: I'm going nuts.
me: ...Waddup?
A fine southern gentleman: Serious nicotine withdrawls here; I may not make it until tomorrow.
me: Whelp. I guess you do not want to hear my melodious voice.
A fine southern gentleman: Oh yes, I do.
A fine southern gentleman: Maybe cold turkey isn't the way to go this time.
me: Uh oh. Here's with the rationalizations.
me: Get a patch.
A fine southern gentleman: I have the shakes - literally, right now.
me: Get a patch.
A fine southern gentleman: I feel like ants are crawling on me.
me: Did you hear me?
A fine southern gentleman: I heard you.
me: Get in the car now and go to the pharmacy.
A fine southern gentleman: Okay.
me: Get some nicotine in you.
me: Do not smoke it.
A fine southern gentleman: I need a script for that?
me: Don't think so.
A fine southern gentleman: I'm going.
me: At least give it a try.
A fine southern gentleman: Go back to planting - we'll chat later.
me: Check back in. I have my phone in my pocket.
A fine southern gentleman: And you'll answer it?
me: I will. Later. When you're wearing a patch.

He got nicotine gum. It was right next to the smokes at the store. My hat is off to him. He's a strong fellow.

He'd better be.

the fish is in the mail

UPS, more precisely.

My friend, you are and have always been one of the most generous people I have ever known. You've given freely so many things: food, company, affection, drink, time, shoes. Okay, the Nine West shoes were cruel, but I love you for it anyway.

My favorite part will always be when you told me that my first husband reminded you of your first husband.

We've known each other for twenty years, and for the past 17 have seen little of each other. How does this work?

Anyway, enjoy. The package arrives Tuesday.

tom sawyer style

As I lay in bed this morning trying to convince myself that I've finally caught up on my sleep (as Trudy and I were up until the wee hours the night before last), I was idly patting the puppy who was on her back nearby. And I had a brilliant idea.

Scratching her belly for a few hours while finding the leg-thumping-reflex spot would save a lot of wear and tear on my knees in the future.

bluefish inventory, for those interested

You know who you are.

1) dusky purple tool jumper with multiple block-printed strange and randomly various pockets.

2) burnt pumpkin tool jumper with multiple block-printed strange and randomly various pockets.

3) simple black vest, block-printed, with three funky buttons and a back tie

4) "long", or maybe 3/4 sleeve black, block-printed lattice jacket, with side and back ties, longer in back (hobbitt wore this once with purple crushed velvet tights, to a "formal" Wildwood Kite Festival dinner. This is a very secure man, and he looked awesome.)

In the fast mail by the end of the week, scout's honor.

how not to make a main-dish dinner salad

Combine:

Green leaf lettuce.
Red leaf lettuce.
Mesclun mix.
Dried cranberries.
Roquefort cheese.
Croutons.
Newman's Own raspberry vinaigrette.

Toss well. Then toss good sense out the window into the night.

Add:

Candied pecans.
Leftover grilled onion slices.
Garlic marinated olives.
Artichoke hearts.
Pepperoncini.

I ate it all. Which dispensed with one of the issues regarding my self-diagnosed gout vis-a-vis dinner options: red meat.

But really. A bit over the top.

jersey girl's joyous rant

I had a little joy today. It was simple. Really, really simple.

See, I've been feeling rather, uh, hmmm, angry lately. To say I have a lot of anger and tears bottled up inside me is rather an understatement. Most of the time I can let it out, talk it out, journal it out, walk it out. But lately, well, crap has been pounding me from all sides, it seems. Dunno why. I'm sure it's me, and my perception of things.

I'm being asked, at this late date in my life, to shed my non-confrontational self and step into my truth. Follow me so far? Cool. That's the easy part. The hard part is speaking that truth to people around me. While it may be better to allow some to believe whatever fallacy they want to believe in, it's decidedly not okay to lionize and beatify the perpetrator of the fallacy. My friends experienced geniune pain. I'm from New Jersey, dammit. We're gonna take it outside. Get it? Okay, it's stupid, sophomoric loyalty, but what can I say? This is how I feel. This is my truth.

Another situation involves people nearby, and a long string of lies regarding substance abuse. How one can miss the eye-watering sting of gin on one's spouse's breath, I have no idea, or the clue about getting stinking drunk after one glass of wine. My thought has always been that there's a stash in the garage. And then there's the surreptitious visit to the labs to try to cadge narcotics, prescribed to me for post-surgical pain. Wonder why I won't go boating with you? I don't know if you're drunk or high, so I'm not getting in that boat. I'm familiar with the notion of "killing the messenger" and though this is a problem, it's not my problem, right? Except it is. The person who'd have to hear my message is my dear, dear friend. So it all came out into the open when I wasn't around, thank god, but I had to 'fess up to my friend what I knew and hadn't told her. She wants me to tell her. I will honor her wishes as best I can from now on.

But dammit. I didn't sign up to be the truth police. And this is what is pissing me off. I let this anger build and build until I took it out on another dear friend who is in a confusing situation, and could be on the verge of serious trouble or serious joy, depending. He didn't deserve that.

So here's the deal. You are making your own bed. It's not my bed. If I see the bed, and the sheets are all crapped up, I'm gonna say it out loud.

No, that's not chocolate ice cream, for godsakes, that's crap. Your crap. In your bed. You have a control problem. You don't think so? You're stupid.

Capice? Don't ask me to tell you a lie because that's what you want to hear. I don't have the time or the energy for it. And if I catch you at something, your ass is grass. Not my problem, not gonna carry it. This is me, a bitch, in my truth. Your mileage may vary.

So this evening I was heading out to my last physical therapy appointment. I didn't know that hobbitt had put Entrain into the CD player, disc 4. Rise Up, Live, Vol. 1. Have you heard Mo Drums? No? Go here and listen. Tell me if you can keep your ass in the plush leather seat. Tell me if you can keep your hands from pounding the steering wheel. Tell me if you can - geez, let's face it. I shouldn't have been driving the car. At all. I wouldn't have known if I was driving on all four rims with this in the player. And 11 speakers can really do some damage. I could feel it in my heart. I don't care to imagine what this overweight, middle-aged housewife looked like thrashing about in a gray Volvo wagon that was positively pulsating. Bees attacking, I was thinking, because even grand mal seizures aren't this spastic.

My ears stopped ringing enough to do my last session with Sally A. Mostly I have to work on coming down steps. Everything else is a go. Must keep up with the exercises, because walking won't be enough. Good. Good. Felt good.

And one the way home, Dancin' in the Light, cranked all the way to 13:

I must be doing something right!
Just keep it moving, 'cause I’m dancing in the light.
I must be doing something right, right, right,
Out of the darkness 'cause I’m dancing in the light!

I don't care what I look like dancing. I've always been told that the proper word for it is "spazz." Whatever. At this size, control isn't all that feasible. But my body wanted to move, it wanted to jerk and slam and kick and jump and my voice shouted the chorus louder even than the 11 speakers could muster. It was pure joy. Never mind the grimace on my face. I was trying not to weep too much from the sheer pleasure that was coursing through my veins.

I was pounding the dashboard and screaming this chorus, the last part while parked in the garage. When I walked inside, hobbitt just grinned at me, and didn't say a word. The ringing has just about stopped in my ears and the pounding headache hasn't started yet. But I'm gonna keep it moving, I'm going to do it again (with the windows closed and probably when hobbitt's not home), I'm not gonna carry lies, and I'm gonna be dancing in the light.

And you had better watch out for yourself. That's what I'm talking about.

5 things

That durned Canuckian tagged me!

And I've done it before but of course, inventories change. Nyah.


In my fridge: (imagine a meal from these ingredients)

• aloe juice
• fish oil
• slightly mouldering cabbage
• hypodermic needles
• anti-allergy serum which I inject into the dog

In my closet: (imagine the fashion show this would produce)

• backjacks
• camping gear
• boxes of jewelry which I do not wear
• BlueFish clothing which I do not wear
• dress shoes which I do not wear

In my wallet (or purse for women): (imagine the wonderful shopping spree!)

• receipts and notes
• no cash whatsover
• discount card for Bonita's Four-Legged Friends
• fortune cookie fortunes
• business card for my oncologist in Illinois

In my car/truck: (imagine, well, don't bother)

• six water bottles with various amounts of filtered water
• hobbitt's straw beach hat
• a chamois to clean the scudge off the inside of the windows
• approximately 45 cubic yards of tracked-in sand
• custom rubber mats everywhere (thanks, bro!)

And I would like to add, for the record, that the ayahuasca is still in the fridge. I also think that there's another (5th) category that got lost somewhere along the way, and which I did not do the first time around, either. That would be 5 albums I cannot live without or something like that. There's nothing that I would put on that list. Songs? Yes. Albums? Nah.

I'm gonna tag Barney, Pee Wee, Alfalfa, Dame Edna and my dog, who seems to be allergic to everything.

no better way

One of my dearest friends visited us this weekend, ever so briefly. She's not my oldest friend either in age or duration, but her presence in my life is deep and strong. I don't know anyone who is more involved and clear about her own stuff, whose energy is more serene, and whose jokes are as wicked as I'd like to think mine are.

Our birthdays are a mere twelve years and one day apart. We shared a cosmic moment in 1995, when I called her on what I thought was her birthday and mine, only to be disabused, alarmed, transported, and confused at the conversation that ensued. Seems I had mistaken the day of her 25th birthday party as the actual date of her birthday. The following year, I called her to wish her a happy day. It was my 38th birthday. I was sitting in my cube farm on the 10th floor of the Advantis building.

"Carlene! Happy birthday!"

"bhd, today's not my birthday."

365 days of belief was shattered. It wasn't a horrible moment, but it was a surreal one. For a brief moment, I wasn't quite sure of the nature of reality. This sounds like a small thing, but something I had held in concrete certainty had been shattered. I had to actually hold my head in my hands. So did she, as confused as she was when I insisted that it was, indeed, her birthday.

We laugh about it now. She can never remember if mine is the day before or the day after. It doesn't matter. We are always either too busy or too telephone shy to call each other. That's the kind of friendship we have. Years pass, and our love for one another is constant.

I've missed the last four years of her children's lives. I've missed the past four years of her husband's life. And yet the four of them are imprinted on my heart in a way I never thought imaginable about people to whom I am not related.

So she visited. I picked her up at the ferry landing in Port Angeles. I didn't think she'd have had time for dinner, so I packed strawberries and cheese and pretzels. But right at the ferry landing was an Indian restaurant, and we share of love of that cuisine, so I bought her some pakoras and a mango lassi. She was charmed. I think she'll love me forever for that one.

The next morning we all laughed about the amazing amount of gas the pakoras caused, but no matter. We didn't hear her and she didn't hear me. It's all good, and it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Together we could laugh and cry and walk and eat and just be with one another. Girlfriend time. There's nothing like it. She charges my batteries. I let her paddle the kayak, in spite of the serious chop and brisk winds. She gathered something like 45 lbs. of stones and shells and crab carcasses from the beach, and I'm going to ship them to her tomorrow, cleaned and bleached and dry.

At the airport on Sunday, as I hugged her, all I could say was "I love that it seems like no time has passed." Well, I also told her there's no crying in baseball, but that's by way of admitting that tears will flow, time will pass, and love will endure. I believe she understood.

cabin cruisers, submarines and toilet seats

Today is an odd day.

First, just when the whole "I-must-have-big-boat" thing starts to fade, I got a truly lovely and thoughtful reply to an email from, I don't know, like last year, from Islander, with a wealth of extremely useful information about boats, including the notion that I should name mine "Grace" after my dear aunt, who it seems has remembered me in her will.

Damn you Islander! The notion was actually starting to fade.

But I was thinking more "Grace & Johnnie," though, in honor also of the uncle I never met. hobbitt and I had vanity plates on our New Joy Sea cars with my mother's and father's initials on them. So, what the heck. Why name a boat druid labs afloat or Three Hour Tour when one can honor someone else entirely! And I am serious. Though Three Hour Tour is still my favorite even though I'm sure it's been done to death.

Forget everything I just wrote. I'll name any boat I might get Damn You Islander.

So on the way to the store, to get a damned Bemis Alesio toilet seat, I was stopped for about a half hour waiting to go over the Hood Canal Bridge as it was open for marine traffic. I was about 3/4 mile away from the bridge, high on the hill, and I could see the waterway. Now I've been stopped like this several times, while heading in each direction, and I've never actually seen any marine traffic. But that's okay because as I was sitting there, less than an hour away from being yelled at by a Home Depot clerk, I saw a submarine heading out to the Sound.

A SUBMARINE!

Lucky for me I've been keeping the field glasses in the passenger door pocket, so I whipped them out and got a real good look at this sleek behemoth. I'm not exactly a hick but I have never, ever before seen an actual, real-live, active sub under way. It was the coolest thing. Plus, it made me think of a blogger friend with whom I share a wicked sense of humor and a love of all things food. Bo! Wow. You were on one of those amazing contraptions. That had to be a major blast, as well as all those other things you write about that time of your life, like hard work and extreme danger.

Okay. The toilet seat. We somehow broke a bumper off a cheap toilet seat this weekend, so yesterday I went to Home Depot to replace it. They had the same model we have in the master bath and that one is quite nice, so I brought it home. Turns out I bought the round one and not the elongated one that we actually need. So today I went back (and mind you, this is a 25-mile drive to get to the nearest Home Depot) and as it turns out, they have none of the elongated seats. So I asked the very attractive and quite helpful older gal who was helping me if I could purchase the display model. She took it off the shelf for me only to realize that the plastic flange that goes between the chrome hardware and the porcelain of the toilet, was missing. As she went off to get a "mark down" approval from a manager for me, I allowed as how the toilet seat was useless to me without the flange. The custom, non-standard flange.

"You're kidding me. I just disassembled the display for you!" she hissed at me, through clenched teeth.

"Yes, and I do appreciate it, but you must understand that this seat is of no use to me if I don't have all the parts."

She stomped off in a huff and though I stood around for about 20 minutes waiting for her to return, she never did. Hey! This was a discontinued model. I was going to offer to pay full price if she could get me the hardware components from one of the round models. I stood in line for another ten minutes or so to speak to the manager to a) complain about the verbal abuse and b) ask about the hardware. I think the manager was flossing his brain or perhaps taking an extended newspaper break while sitting on a Bemis Alesio toilet seat, so I dropped the seat on a shelf and left the store.

Okay, it's four hours after I left the house, in search of a toilet seat. I just found it on-line and ordered it. Maybe I'll get lucky.

And I feel like I need a drink.

one step at a time

I believe I might have just a touch of obsessive compulsive disorder.

I have this new kick, or jag, or whatever you want to call it. I believe it's driving hobbitt just a little nuts. I'm sure it'll go away by autumn.

We were guests, you see, on the boat of some friends from Edmonds the other night. They are really fun folks, and wonderful hosts. It was a real treat for me to be on the water, even though we didn't leave the marina. It was cocktail hour...

The gentle rocking brought me back to many, many childhood memories of playing in, around, on, and beneath boats. I even had the extreme pleasure (for a 13-year-old) of piloting a neighbor's boat into the Shark River bay, beneath the Ocean Avenue bridge in Avon-by-the-Sea, New Joy Sea. It's not a thing a kid forgets.

So first I'd like to say, "Damn you Islander!" Then I'd like to say, thanks for a truly lovely evening. We had a great time. I also appreciated the way you and the lovely Mrs. Islander spoke about the way you see clear to enjoying yourselves in this way. It made me think quite a bit about recreation and my need for it, and how important it is for us to enjoy the here and now, since that's all we have anyway.

I've been spending pretty much all my free time since virtually shopping for boats, checking out moorage and maintenance costs, and driving hobbitt nuts, as previously stated. Oh, I will have a boat someday. (Okay, I have the kayak. But I'm talking something with a motor.) I'm sure I'll have a boat. It will happen.

Or not. I'm not attached. I'm just obsessed.

But first things first. Once the check I mailed today clears, this baby is finally all mine. Thirteen months early.