Time for a couple of days off

Not sure what the deal is, but I'm getting nausea-inducing headaches first thing in the morning and just around the end of the work day this week. I used to get the morning headaches quite when I worked for "Ill Will" many moons ago, but I think those were caused by stress when I worked for the insane woman who chewed her thumbs until they bled, and then drew little symbols in her blood on office memos.

Go figure.

I think the morning headaches right now are a result of not being able to get a physical therapy appointment for a week. I must sleep like a pretzel, and that can't be good for all those healing bones.

As for the end of the day headaches? I think it's just too much time staring at the computer screen and not being able to take walks throughout the day right now to get my eyeballs off the monitor.

Things will improve with time.

But I think I'll cut myself a long weekend of slack here at the Church of the Big Sky. I'm taking what the Russians would call a "malen'kiy pereryv" - a short break. See if a couple of evenings away from the keyboard will stave off the head thumpers.

Next week is nutty with work events, too, so things will be spotty for a bit. I'll Twitter here and there, but look for something the following weekend.

Yeah, while the rest of America is bbq'ing, I'll be blogging.

I'm nothing if not a bit off-kilter...

Inappropriate Laughter

I annoyed the crap out of the upstairs neighbor tonight. He's back after a couple of weeks of being away from Chez Merde. His absence brought blissful, blissful silence. But now, the pounding, swearing, and door-slamming have all returned in full force. Ugh. I did not miss him.

I called my sister the social worker tonight and we got each other laughing like idiots about all sorts of incredibly crude stuff, like "Jackass 2". We watched that a couple of Christmases ago - eating carry-out steak from some place in Iowa in front of the boob tube at her house. We laughed so hard that night, I couldn't breathe and she thought she was going to toss her cookies.

Guilty pleasures. What can I say?

Her Internet access is spotty at home, so I read her some entries from this great LiveJournal post the Sasquatch sent to me a few days ago. I laughed so hard, I wheezed as I read the insane "Engrish" to her. And Angry Indian Doctor stomped on his floor, rattling my ceiling and windows. Of course, it wasn't even 9:30 at night then. He usually waits until 11:30 or so, himself, to start swearing up a storm or fighting with his wife. Recently, he and the missus developed a new habit: loud, carpet-burn-inducing makeup sex on the living room floor. It's quite the accompaniment to my evening television viewing. Somehow, "Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe" seem even more dirty when people are grunting, squealing and thumping around just above your head.

Rug burns. {{shudder}}

But even when the cranky man upstairs is pounding around (you may read "pounding" any way you want, kids!) there is something healing in a good belly laugh, and I had a few of those tonight. Who cares if the peeps upstairs have to hear me for once!

And, remarkably, my spine isn't screaming at me.

Good enough for a Monday, I reckon.

Three-fer (or is that tree-fer?)

I heard that increasingly familiar BOOM this morning - the sound of a tree coming down on my street. Literally, the third time in one month. There must be some disease affecting them. And 24 hours of steady rain surely weakened an already dying thing. This time, the tree missed buildings and cars (for the most part - I have a tiny bullet-type ding in my windshield) but has me temporarily trapped. E-mailed my boss. I'll be late this morning. And, since I woke up with a nasty sore throat courtesy of gunk coming up through the air conditioning vents and the cold damp weather, I'm not going out to take photos in the rain this time.

When the chainsaws stop, I'll go out and see if I can leave.

I really do know better...

...than to ever stop at the Hellmouth 7-11. Home to so many strange episodes in my already strange life, the convenience store of Satan continues to confound me.

Yesterday, after a fruitful run to Big Lots (where, as usual, I was the only native speaker of English seeking bargains among the crap), I decided to run in and grab a gallon of milk and an early Sunday paper at 7-11. What could possibly go wrong, eh?

(Sucker!)

I grabbed a gallon of 1%, which was only slightly more expensive than gas in Montgomery County, a Sunday WaPo, and, for good measure (and potassium), a banana. The Indian clerk at the check-out counter was a woman roughly my age. She started to ring me up and said, "So, you are going out to dinner now?"

I looked down at my newspaper, banana, and milk. Strange stuff to take along to a restaurant, especially at 3:30 in the afternoon. "Uhhhh... no. I'm going home. Think I'll take a little nap, and then do some housecleaning."

The clerk offered a sad smile. "Ah... your children are not taking you out to dinner?"

I was still confused. "Umm... I have no children."

Again she said, "Ahhh, I see. Then your husband will be taking you out to dinner?"

Ah-ha. I got it. Mother's Day. "Uhhh... I'm not married."

The clerk stopped ringing up my stuff. "Then you will be taking your mother out to dinner?"

This was getting a little obnoxious. "Unfortunately, my mother died in 2001." (More than she needed to know, but I was vexed.)

Putting my paper and banana in a bag, she responded, very sadly. "So, then, you are like me. No one to love and no one loves you."

My jaw just about hit the floor. I wanted to say "Speak for yourself, sister!" but instead I just said, "I hope your weekend improves."

Yeesh.

Since Mom passed away, I don't put much mind to Mother's Day. All of my sisters are mothers, as are the vast majority of my female friends. But I'm not a member of that club. It actually offends me when friends tell me that I will never really know love until I have a child. So, because I'm childless, I'm incapable of Real Love? WTF?

I fear I would have made a pretty crappy mother; I can't keep a plant alive. Some of my friends have even said that to me (about children, not plants, that is.) And, while I never necessarily saw myself with children, it still hurts - stings really badly - to have people I love and respect tell me I wouldn't be good at a pretty damn common, central, human, womanly task.

I would love to say that I am a woman without regrets, but that would not be true. In many respects, I feel that have been a failure at the basics of being what 90% of this planet considers a woman. I've never been good enough, beautiful enough, thin enough, educated enough (mostly thin enough, I know) for any of the men I've loved in my life to want to even consider me as a partner. I will never know that apparently transformative experience of being a mother. The truth is, except when there are deadlines at work, no one actually needs me.

I recognize my personal failings -they are legion. And despite them - and the belief that the average American feels it's cool to mock the shit out of me - I don't look for sympathy. I don't want it. I shun it, as a matter of fact. I find it embarrassing.

That said, as my last single friends move forward to marriages and partnerships, though, I do ponder this: as space and time and obligations and commitments put distance between us, will I reach a point where I feel as absolutely empty as that clerk in the 7-11?

I pray not.

About a dozen years ago, I was in a rural market in Uzbekistan - somewhere on the road between Tashkent and Samarkand. The market was filled with old men and women of indeterminate age - their sun-leathered skin and gold teeth masking whatever youth remained. As I left, one of the withered women took my hands in hers. She bowed her head, wrapped in a bright green and pink scarf, and studied my palms. After a minute or two, she lifted her head and spoke to me in Russian. "When you die," she said, her eyes locked on mine, "Many men will mourn you, but no women will."

I found that funny and puzzling, especially considering my innate inability to build an intimate relationship with any man in my more than half a lifetime. And yet, once I was accused of breaking up a relationship because my platonic friendship with the male half of the equation was too solid. (It was a massive cop-out excuse from a woman who had PLANS and a fairly rigid timetable for marriage that her boyfriend didn't care to meet.) After the break-up, she informed me that she had discussed it with her boss - her boss who'd never met me - and they'd determined I was responsible for everything falling apart. Riiiiiight. So sorry, sistah. Not my fault, and I won't apologize for any friendship. Some of my closest friends are men. I can't attract them, can't make them fall in love with me, can't make them want me, but I can talk to them.

Helps to be a geek.

*sigh*

Well, that took a tangent I hadn't expected.

But doesn't every trip to the Hellmouth end up on a very strange path?

Happy Sunday, y'all.

Instant Karma, or I Like My T-Bone Well Done!

This morning, after viewing The Tree That Tried To Eat the Apartment Building, I headed off to work, as is my wont. I've never been fond of traffic circles, but just about any way I approach the office, I have to go through at least one. This morning's route took me off 16th Street, through Scott Circle, onto Mass Ave for a whole block, down 15th to my garage on M. Got all that? Good.

There's an exit off 16th Street to enter Scott Circle. Two lanes feed into the circle at a stop light. After the stop light, on the actual circle, there are three lanes of traffic; two go straight only, and the innermost lane goes straight or around the circle, with another stop light before you actually make that move. I use that innermost lane to go around to Mass Ave. (I know, this sounds like a story problem, no?)

At the first light today, I was three cars back from the front. Patiently waiting, I heard someone laying on the horn like his life depended on it. I looked in my rear view mirror to see a young dude in a little import sedan behind me waving his hands for me to move forward. I had, maybe four feet between me and the car ahead of me. Now, call me old-fashioned, but I come from the school of driving that says, "if you can't see the license plate of the car ahead of you, yer too darn close." Also, I operate within the laws of physics that decree my car can't occupy the same space as the stopped car ahead of me.

The light was red. There was nowhere for us to go. I raised my hands in the great shrug to the anxious driver, to say, "Dude, ain't no place for me to move!"

This was not, apparently, well-received. Dude responded to me with an aggressively shaken middle finger salute. Whatever.

The light turned green, and I followed the other two cars ahead of me into that innermost lane, and again waited for the next light to go green. Aggressive dude pulled up into the straightaway lane next to me, rolled down his window and started to scream at me: "FAT COW! DON'T YOU CARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE BEHIND YOU, FAT COW?!? I HAVE SOMEPLACE I GOTTA GO!"

Nice. I just ignored him. If he doesn't understand basic physics or the rules of the road, nothing I could say to him was going to help.

Then, the light turned green.

And Mr. Hurry Hurry made a serious error in judgment. Let's just say, he failed basic physics. From the straightaway lane, he decided to turn left.

Directly into the side of a very large SUV that was making the left turn around the circle.

Yep, he t-boned that sucker. Big time. And, you see, when you're in a little Japanese sedan and you gun it into the side of an SUV... you lose, babycakes! The SUV may sustain some minor body damage, but your car will look like a vehicular accordion. (Ha -the Honda Accord-ion!) A cab stopped (perhaps as a witness, perhaps sensing an impending fare) and I continued on to work. Usually I stop for accidents I see, but this time, the cabbie could handle witness duties. And I wasn't entirely heartless - before leaving, I took a look over at the poster child for anger management and saw him cursing from his crumpled car. Yes, he had survived to be a jackass another day.

Karma, dude. It's a biyotch. I may be a fat cow, but at least I understand how traffic circles work. And today - for once - karma kicked the correct ass.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Thunderboomers are getting closer - time to shut down for the night!

A Good Argument for Renter's Insurance

Sometimes, Mutha Nature doesn't just bring down swift arboreal justice on the cars on the street where I live.

Sometimes, she puts the smackdown on the *place* where I live, with window/floor/ceiling-rattling force.

My building, this morning:



What you can't see in the morning haze off the cell phone camera are the branches on the roof. However, you can see just how far this tree reached in the photo below, with the tree bits on the balcony and lawn on the other side:



Strangely, just after the tree fell onto the cars last month, I was wondering when one of the diseased tree husks was going to slam into the building. Fortunately, the crab apple tree right in front of my balcony is healthy and still blooming away.

Just a quick post over my morning coffee. BTW, Olivia Newton-John's intimate concert here at work was good last night. (No, I didn't have $500 for a ticket -- through the kindess of the foundation, I was able to snag a couple of gratis seats for myself and the Sasquatch!) Not many of her old classics of my childhood (just "Magic" and "I Honestly Love You"), but the songs she sang clearly came from her heart and from someone who has triumphed over a great deal of adversity in her life. ONJ has a lot of love for this fragile planet and gratitude for what she has been granted in her life. It may not have been a trip down my memory lane, but it was cool. She's nearly 60, just came off three weeks walking the Great Wall of China in April to raise money for cancer research and treatment, and last night she had more energy and life than I've had in ages! Good on ya, Olivia!

Happy Birthday, Air Jordan!

Today is my brother's 60th birthday. Hard to believe it. Impossible almost.

He is an ocean away and I can't sing happy birthday to him in person. Instead, I'll be sending him a variety of utterly tasteless birthday cards from someecards.com. Recently, I tried in vain to find a single card there that wouldn't be taken the wrong way, be completely misunderstood, and/or cause endless tears and a lot of bad phone calls from another sibling on her birthday. It wasn't possible. My brother, Air Jordan, on the other hand, will thrive on these. And, when we get a chance to speak on over the weekend, my congratulatory birthday phone call will - as all my calls to my brother do - rapidly devolve into humor that I would kindly call Not Safe For Work.


My brother and his husband are among the finest humans I will ever know. Kind, generous, funny, and simply wonderful men. I'm so sorry I missed their wedding last year, and I'm sorry I'm missing this important birthday, too.

Here's hoping the next milestone I can celebrate with you in person, dear brother. And we can be lewd, crude, and amazingly rude in person.

Until then, you'd better pray I don't find that manila envelope full of blackmail photos the Sasquatch and I culled from Mom's albums. Heh heh heh heh heh...

Cheers!

A Thing Well Made

I mentioned Don McGlashan, his solo work and his former band, The Mutton Birds, in my last post. I got a comment from Spence, who has a website full of Mutton Birds gems and a YouTube channel with a bunch of cool videos. Of course, the Sasquatch headed over there immediately and found this:



That's Don McGlashan singing and playing his euphonium. Dang good stuff. Dang good song. Thanks to Spence for this!!

Here's a cut from Don's new solo CD, Warm Hand. This one's called "Harbour Bridge":



Next paycheck, I'm going to procure this CD. I hope he comes back to DC. Good stuff, kids!