bits and pieces

This morning when I was driving to work I heard "For the Longest Time" by Billy Joel on the radio and it triggered a major bout of misty nostalgia. I hadn't heard that song, well, for the longest time. It immediately made me feel 4 years old again; it was probably one of the first songs I memorized and sang along to. My dad would listen to Billy Joel all the time, and I remember very clearly sitting shotgun in his green VW station wagon listening to this song while he drove me to school. I've always been weirded out by the brain and how it retains song lyrics forever, because I really felt like I hadn't heard that song since I was 5, but I knew every word. It was awesome. And as I said, misty. I was getting all teary and thinking of my dad and his condition and I'm slowly coming to grips with the fact that I'm losing him. FUN! I know I should be grateful for ever having him at all.

MMKAY!

I am staging an intervention on myself.

I just erased about 9 inches of some depressing fucking shit about my dad my mom her health status my aunt's assertion that since my dad is LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU that it's my job to make sure EVERYTHING GOES RIGHT at the hospital and AAAAAH!! CHRIST!

I just can't do it, the inch upon inch of sadness that I've already hashed out on the phone with several unsuspecting friends. It's boring, melodramatic, self-indulgent...GET A GRIP, GABBY! A FIRM ONE! This is NOT the time to go all PANSY!

I just...well, don't you have moments where it feels like you're in a canoe treading water at the top of a gigantic waterfall, using all your muscles to keep yourself on top, dreading the moment (which is inevitable, you're not superhuman) when your muscles give out?

Yeah.

But then, so much is right in my life right now. Micah? Wonderful, et al. School? Can I just say? I LOVE IT. Ok, so yeah, I'm only in the first week, the easy-like-Sunday-mornin' week. But I honestly believe I have found the perfect learning forum. Since I'm on the internet, oh, 9 hours a day (holy shit, dude, that's too much) I am completely addicted to going into the classroom discussion threads to see if if anyone has responded to my reading response questions. I got good and GIDDY this morning when I saw the professor had responded to my response with another question, so obviously impressed with me, and you know what? When I caught myself realizing I want to be teacher's pet? I embraced it. Teacher's pets get the motherfucking grades, ya know? Okay, I also realized the people in my class can't write worth a damn and that simply having good grammar and a somewhat expanded vocabularly can make you look like a genius if it's right above someone who writes like this:

. Regarding global warnings It think this could be useful the study of combustion chambers used in power plants could stop pollutants . The universial authenication is much needed to protect privacy from all the preditors . I think all the new technologies in place have their pro's and con's I think along the lines of health cloning is wrong and appose that ,I feel a monster would be created .

And for the trillionth time I'm reminded that though the environment wasn't the healthiest for self-esteem, self-expression, or anything else positive for the self, our high school did teach us how to write coherently. There's that.

And when I was reading "Introduction to Web Design" and saw all the HTML stuff? TOTALLY NOT SCARED. In fact, excited. They're teaching me something I desperately want to know, and I'm pretty sure that's never happened before, except maybe that Human Sexuality class I took at the community college.

What was the best/most useful class you ever took?

like this and like that and like this and uhhh

the gall bladder and liver are connected. didn't know that. or maybe i did but forgot. anyway, they cauterized the connection after taking out my mom's gall bladder and it sprung a leak. bile was leaking all over the place inside of her. now she can't do anything but lay there in the hospital alternately in tons of pain or nauseous from the painkiller. yesterday she was much more coherent and we had a lovely chat about the goings on in my life - a fabulous float trip, the theater, and starting school.

she'll be okay. it's just going to take some time to heal. part of me, the Negative Nancy, thinks she might not ever be 100% back to where she was. no doubt she'll prove me wrong. she's like that.
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the second order of business is the lack of commenting on this here blog. i won't pretend it doesn't bother me. i like the comments. seeing that sad little "0 comments" does not make my day. you want to make my day, don't you?

so, at the end of every entry from now on, i'm going to ask you a question. if you still don't comment, may your undies be eternally slipping up your ass cheeks.
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cleaning has never come easy to me. my parents never made me clean anything but my room when i was little. my dorm room was a fucking nightmare when i spent that year in Boston. now, i only seem to clean when the person i am living with can't take it anymore and they start to clean, which makes me feel guilty and i end up cleaning, too. and then? i can't seem to stop.

Micah is a great cleaner. he actually buys bleach. and uses it! it was rainy on Monday, so Micah came home early from work and started cleaning. and fuck, did he clean. the apartment looks magnificent. feeling inspired, i bought new refills for my swiffer wetjet - they have a wetjet liquid for hardwood floors now! brilliant! - and went to motherfucking town on the kitchen floor first, then the rest of the apartment. it looks and smells so nice now!

(also, i bought a computer chair. a nice, cushy, supportive black leather computer chair, because wooden chairs are NOT conducive to spending lots of time at my desk. my legs and ass were always falling asleep. that has nothing to do with cleaning, but i'm too excited about it not to share.)

now it seems Micah and I are in a cleaning competition. because now that the apartment is looking fantastic, we keep finding other places to clean.

unfortunately, we've had a bit of an ant problem in the kitchen. off the kitchen is a balcony, and the door is always open so the cats can chill out there, which they love. but since the door is always open, sometimes pests come in. thank god no squirrel or bird has been dumb enough to cross the threshold, but plenty of bugs have, and the cats kill and eat all of them. except ants. it's probably the equivalent of licking crumbs off the floor to my skilled, blood-thirsty, hunting cats. boring. waste of time. there are spastic june bugs and confused moths to track! and you want us to kill ants? pshaw!

alas, the hunting cats have left it up to me to get rid of the ants. for some reason, the ants make me very angry and anxious and Micah just doesn't feel the urgency i feel in getting rid of them. his answer is always "we just need to keep it cleaner," and he's totally right. but also, maybe we should look into some sort of poison? please?

so, after buying several packs of ant poison...huts, i guess, i went to the trusty internet and tried to find some ant deterrent to keep them from coming in at all. because i am impatient.

turns out ants do not like the following:
-baby powder
-chili pepper powder
-cloves
-a mysterious substance called Tarro
-ground cinnamon
-boric acid (because who doesn't have that in their home? so convenient.)
-citrus

also, and this is key - there are two types of ants: sugar eaters and grease eaters. there is no way to know which kind of ant you have, unless you happen upon ants floating gluttonously in a puddle of grease or lined up noshing on an apple. I had yet to see either. All I knew is that they really liked being near the stove, walking up it, around it, and across the counters. They also like the dry cat food. (which, DUH, has grease.)

so last night Micah decides the stove needs to be cleaned. what he unearthed was fucking disgusting, and the answer to the question about what kind of ants were infiltrating our kitchen, those dirty little bastards.

the grease. oh my dear, the grease.

it was coagulated in orange-ish drippings between the stove and cabinets. it was splattered behind the stove. Micah, bless him, knew how to disassemble the top of the stove so we could see just how much grease was attracting those ant bastards. it was totally fucking repulsive - caked, black, gummy, thick - and i couldn't believe it was lurking there under the burners for all this time. the stove probably hadn't been cleaned since it was purchased, and i'm guessing that was about 15 years ago. thank god we had oven cleaner, because nothing else would have worked.

and can i just tell you how wonderful it feels knowing we discovered all that nastiness and got rid of it? i'm starting to see the light. i even used an empty spray bottle and filled it with bleach and water and lovingly sprayed down the whole shebang after we were finished.

i really, really want to be a cleaner. i first have to get over an innate tendency to not care. if i'm being honest about it, dishes lying about don't bother me. sinkfuls, sure, that's nasty, but even leaving one dish out just paves the way for more. skipping a week of cleaning (or five) will make the cleaning so much harder, especially when you have newfangling items like swiffers (wet AND dry!) that if actually utilized on a regular basis, would keep the place from ever getting nasty.

i'm starting to clue in. be patient with me.

and if those ants come back after the huge, major, will it ever end grease-elimination party we threw last night, i WILL go looking for boric fucking acid.
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your question, lovelies:

- how often do you clean? (and when i say clean i mean more than dishes - sweep/vacuum, dust, windex, etc.) what is your least favorite thing to clean? most favorite?

set it down

ok, so maybe I overreacted a little. but when it comes to your mom, all bets are off. i'm allowed to freak the fuck out for a second.

my mom's going to be fine. why she didn't tell me the full story of the operation, i don't know. she survived breast cancer and her doctor was worried about the possibility of ovarian cancer developing, so when she found out she had major gall stones her doctor suggested they go ahead and take the ovaries out "while [they're] in there."

why didn't she tell me that? kind of major, right?

maybe not. i don't even know.

anyway, there was internal leakage after the surgery. she told my dad to call 911 after experiencing the worst pain of her life. i don't think my mom has ever been in an ambulance, and that's pretty good for being nearly 62.

(has anyone else been in an ambulance? do i assume because i have, everyone has? discuss.)

so yeah, it was really sad to see her in the hospital bed. when i arrived she still hadn't woken from the anesthesia yet. gradually she came to, looking extremely tired, sallow, and like smiling was a near impossibility. my dad told her "everyone's here" and she scanned the room silently until her eyes fell upon my niece, her sugar plum fairy, and she whispered "hi Bridgette."

nearly broke me in two, how much my mom loves that little girl. i imagine she used to look at me the same way, her miracle, the baby girl her body couldn't produce but who was there for her to love all the same. and now that i've learned Bridgette asks about me all the time, i'm totally smitten as well.

inhale! exhale! everything's going to be fine.

you don't, but you did

you don't ever want to see "Dad cell" on your cell phone, because he never calls you. you assume something bad has happened to your mom, because she is The Communicator. When there are plans or questions or issues to be dealt with, you see "Mom Cell."

you don't ever want to answer that call, but you have to. then you have to hear that your mom is back in the hospital after what was promised to be a low-key gall bladder removal.

you don't want to hear the hint of ohgodohgod in your dad's voice when he tells you he's in a waiting room while Mom gets all kinds of tests run, and she won't be back in her room for at least an hour. you don't want to imagine your dad sitting in a hospital waiting room. you don't want to know that he's freaking out as calmly as he can, because Mom most likely will need another surgery and will have to stay in the hospital a few days.

your mom has never stayed in the hospital a few days. you are fucking terrified to see her in a hospital bed, because she's already tiny and you know she'll look even tinier.

you don't want to go tell your boss you'd like the rest of the day off because you're afraid you'll burst into tears when you tell him why. and you know you must tell him why.

you don't want to even put one toenail over the line of doubt that everything will be okay. everything has to be okay. your daddy has alzheimer's and your mom is a hero. your mom keeps everything together. you have a hard enough time believing she'll actually die one day, she's just that lively. you selfishly assume you couldn't possibly handle what she handles, what she has in front of her, because of what's happening inside your dad's brain.

you'll stop and get peach flowers on the way because that's what she loves.

you'll call your brother and request his presence because you can't do this alone, damnit. you suggest he bring his daughter because she will light up the room in ways flowers can't. he says he's already gone to pick her up.

family, you realize, becomes more important with every passing year.

think of me what you will, i'm keeping them

One year ago this week, twin sandwiches were born. They were born peanut butter & jelly on Wonder Bread. I'm pretty sure it was crunchy peanut butter and grape jelly, as those have been my ideal PB&J choices since I was a tot.

My sandwiches, they are one year old.

Meet my sandwiches!

(Sorry about the blurriness. I was having a lighting issue
and this was the best shot of them all.)

The circumstances of these twins staying with me for a year go like this: I was told to bring my own food for a float trip. I had just moved back to St. Louis with Noel, just a handful of days prior to the float trip, and things were askew to say the least. PB&J sounded so manageable. So I made a bunch of PB&Js (yes, sadly, the twins were once sextuplets) and put them in the cooler which floated behind us the whole trip down the river.

Somehow they made it back into my car when we were unpacking the cooler at the end of the trip. Maybe I thought I'd be hungry on the way home. More likely the cooler's mommy didn't want my shit in there anymore. Either way, they ended up in a stash of nasty things, such as wet swimming shorts and sandals. Things you dump in the trunk to deal with later.

I will admit I didn't deal with them later. Well, okay, I did. Six months later. I happened upon a bag in the downstairs closet, the closet behind the door I never open, and in the bag I found pair of moldy sandals - really, really moldy - and the swim shorts, which were stinky and not worth saving for fear of perma-stink. Then I noticed the sandwich bag and thought oh shit, this is going to be naaasty. Imagine my surprise and immediate inclination to keep them, these...well, these wonder sandwiches.

Let us all ponder the wonder of Wonder bread. HOW. Why they aren't shooting Wonder Bread into women's pores is beyond me. These babies look exactly like they did a year ago - not a fleck of mold, just your typical PB&J-got-smushed oily soak-through.

Or is it the Ziplock bag? I thought even Ziplocks were semi-permeable. You can smell through them, so why wouldn't a smite of air get through too? The only noticeable difference is that the twins are very, very hard. (On the edges. The middle? Smooshy! Amazing!)

Anyway, my sandwiches are one year old this week and I'm keeping them. You knew I would. How could I not? It's an experiment at this point. I'm going to make them a soft bed in a shoebox and get them out once a year and see what's sprung up. If there's still a blog, there will be updates.