500 Words, Day 19 -- Dumbshows and Noise

Facebook is the closest I will ever come to scrapbooking

Is there a way to download four years’ worth of FB posts?  I don’t care about the photos I found and the links I shared.  Status updates though --- some of them are hilarious if I do say so myself.  And some of them are painful, pithy, and poignant, not to mention cheesily alliterative.*

(Spellcheck let me have “cheesily” which was generous I must say  Curiously, it did not let me have “spellcheck.”   Built-in irony ftw).

For a while I was keeping tabs on those posts by copying them to a notepad on my desktop with the date.   But then my hard drive crashed and I didn’t save them elsewhere and so now they’re gone.  I keep saying I’m going to go through them from the beginning (July 27, 2011 -- save the date for the 4th birthday jam) and copy and paste.   But Facebook is an asshole (surprise) and doesn’t always show you everything from the past.  You have to keep telling it “show all posts” because the default is “highlights” and even then it’s pretty hit and miss.  (Hey, is it “hit  OR miss” or “hit AND miss?” Hang on, let me google it.  Huh.  Turns out either is correct.  Fantastic.  I need that kind of uncertainty in my life.)

One reason I want to be able to pull up some oldies but goodies is that I can use them for prompts when I’m out of ideas.  After all, that’s why I post them in the first place, so I won’t forget.  

Random hilarity around my house lately --
“Don’t let him hit ya where the good lord split ya.”  -- First time the Gamer had ever heard that expression and now he is rolling on the floor in non-ironic convulsive laughter.

Random hilarity from Summer 2011 --

“My kids drive me to drink.  The good news is they always come back to pick me up at closing time.”

Random mildly amusing observation from Fall 2012 --
“Filling up a shopping cart at Trader Joe's to take up to college when you visit your daughter: 75 dollars.

Laughing at yourself because your daughter lives closer to a Trader Joe's than you do: Priceless.”

Oh hey btw there was a bitter and angry (and heartbroken) paragraph up there also, but I put it down here in a footnote so it wouldn’t interrupt the bright and breezy flow of this fluffy post.    

You’re welcome.

*Some of the posts help mark the events of the past four years, when the chronology gets a little vague, like, when did Troubled and Juvie try make money selling poppy seed tea that they made in water bottles in the cul-de-sac?  When did Mr. K. said it was romantic that they were running an extension cord out to the truck so they could watch movies on the laptop when they spent the night in the truck in the driveway after I banished them from the house?  When did Mr. K. write me that deluded drunken denial-filled email describing a conversation he and Troubled had where they came to the conclusion that I had done a shitty job of mothering and wife-ing? I do try to let shit like this go because I'm never going to be happy reliving it all the damn time, but when I do, when I beat it back for a little while, Guilt and Blame and Shame come to call and those assholes will NOT take the hint.  Then the next thing you know, there's that shiny imaginary revolver to suck on or the phantom Volvo station wagon to drive off a cliff. So, no, not letting it go. Anger is keeping me alive. Next.

500 Words, Day 18 -- Round and Round and Round We Spin

She scrubs the inside of the microwave.  Someone had heated a plate of spaghetti without covering it and now there is a corona of splattered sauce around the platen.  Her sponge goes round and round inside the microwave.  Her thoughts go round and round the inside of the problems she is trying to solve.  They chase their tails like the puppy that her daughter brought home, unbidden, without permission, far too young to leave its mother.  She has come to love that puppy, effortlessly and without rancor.  Of course she would fall in love with it, another dervish in the chaos that her household has become.

She looks around what used to be her beautiful house.  She has returned for the few days that her husband is traveling for work.  Someone needs to be here for her son.  Someone adult, a responsible party.  Who will take charge of things.  Who will call the police and tell them that there is a man living in a rusted-out Cadillac in her cul-de-sac, who has been forbidden to enter the house, but who comes in anyway, bidden by the daughter, to lie around doing bong hits all day when the rest of them are at work, at school.  "Call us when you are home and you know that he is actually there," the dispatcher tells her when she calls from work.  "We can't do anything unless he is there when you are.  Even then it would be a stretch."  But he is living in a car, she screams inside her head.  He is living in a car in the nice cul-de-sac where she clings to the shreds of the middle-class lifestyle that she used to make fun of but now desperately defends.

She's a light sleeper, really light.  At the moment she is trending toward the manic side of of the bipolar spectrum.   Now it helps her stay vigilant for the squeaky door, the stealthy tread.  One night, she woke to hear her daughter just a few feet away, rummaging in her desk, searching for a hidden set of forbidden car keys.  A shouting match ensued, a scuffle.  She ended up hurling herself to the floor with her back to the bedroom door, preventing egress.  Her husband slept through it until the very end when he got up and drove her daughter where she had been stealing the keys to go.

That was the time she left for real.  She had left twice before but had always come back by dark, like a child, her tail between her legs, mortified, penitent.  She left three times and the third time she stayed gone.  Friends had finally convinced her that her instincts were right.  That despite all the condescension and head games, the gaslighting, the bewildering denial, despite all of that, she was really right and had been all along.

The situation was intolerable and bizarre beyond measure.   It should have ended months ago.  If he had listened to her, given her credence, if he hadn't dismissed her.  If he hadn't taunted her with suggestions to visit her shrink and consider changing her meds, because "that's always something to try when you get like this."   Now, the cold comfort of "I told you so" is too weak to describe the way she feels.  She wanted to grab him by the ears and shake him. What. The. Fuck. Is. Wrong. With. You.  Why aren't you outraged by what is happening?  Your daughter is bringing her feral, drug-dealing boyfriend home to sleep with him in your house.  Do something!   She mentally pounded him with her fists.

And he would tell her to do something herself, if she felt so strongly about it.    

So she did. She left.

She left him to clean up the filthy mess she had allowed him to make.  And came back to clean it up when she saw that he would not.

The zipper of a suitcase being opened sounds different than when it is being shut.    

500 Words, Day 17 - In Which I Start to Bore Myself

That feeling when you want to go to bed but you know your kid is gonna need a ride home.  He’s being a little inconsiderate, but I’m going to give him a pass because he turned in his final paper today, last day of sophomore year, huzzah!  But the little shit is really vague about it, saying  “call ya later mom.”  So I have to stay awake until he calls to let me know at what point “later” becomes “now.”

That feeling when you toy with the idea of asking his dad to be on call for the call, so to speak.  But you realize that (a) he’s probably already halfway in the bag and (2) that would be asking a favor, which you won’t allow yourself to do because martyr.  And excuse me, but isn’t it the weekend and time for him to be the weekend dad he always was even when we were still married?  And while we’re at it, why *isn’t* he taking The Gamer for weekends like he insisted he was going to?   But I’m not about to facilitate that or even ask about it because again, I’m playing the superior card, and I’m simply refusing to comment on this very odd reluctance on his part to have time with his son.  

I’m starting to bore myself with my agonizing over my ex.  I need to let that shit go but I’m still mourning the loss of the family life we once had.   It’s true that I exhausted myself trying to spread a cloak of normalcy around it even though in retrospect it was massively fucked up.  It really is time begin to make a new life and all the other optimistic things I talk about when I have the energy.  The truth be told, I’m a loner these days, having isolated myself from almost everyone I know.  It’s too painful to have to stop and explain everything.  It’s embarrassing to confess that I left my husband to flail about in the whirlpool of his own making, that I cut ties with my oldest because she hurt me beyond my ability to heal, at least for now.

I’m lonely, I guess, but being with people is exhausting.   I mostly just hole up at home because the calm and quiet environment is surcease from decades of being on for other people, with a partner who gave zero fucks about what I needed to thrive and grow as a person and a mother and a wife.  It wasn’t malicious, although at times I think it was purposeful since I always stood in the way of what he wanted to do.   

I’m gonna wrap this up kind of abruptly right now.  Eyes are closing. No photo, even. If you’re counting words, it’s slightly less than 500.  Sue me.   

.

500 Words, Day 16 Already? Ugh

Crap!  500 Words due in 1:22.  Time for some self-referential nonsense.  Oh my 500 words are due oh okay let me try to use up a bunch talking about how I’m going to use up a bunch talking about    . . . .

Ugh.  My kingdom for a prompt.  

I was just saying less than 24 hours ago how much I was enjoying the structure of the daily deadline.  I woke up looking forward to writing.   I think I would look a lot more forward to it if I didn't have to do all these other nonsensical things with my time.  For example, I spent a very frustrating 2.5 hours this afternoon trying to get from point A to point B and back again in my car.  There are a lot of people where I live who don’t want to be where they are and are trying to change that at all at once at 5 pm.  It wasn’t a SigAlert or anything but damn.  I know LA has bad traffic but I think the Bay Area is catching up in that regard.  I suspect that my boss sent me on this errand at that particular time on purpose so that from now on I will appreciate staying at work later until the traffic subsides.  Keep my butt in the chair an extra hour, yanno?  He’s a sly fox, that one.  

Casting about for a topic.  

How about my ex who is causing me no end of consternation at the moment.   There are all these divorce details to take care of, most of which involve figuring out how much money to give me (hint: lots) so I get why he wouldn’t be returning those emails and I’m trying to tread lightly because you catch more blood from a stone with honey or whatever, if you see what I mean.  In addition to being annoying, it’s expensive, because every time I have to contact him, it has to go through about three attorneys who all need two-tenths of an hour each just to turn on their damn computers apparently so it ends up costing a couple hundred bucks just to ask him, “So how’s about coughing up those documents I asked you for about nine other times buddy whaddya say?”  

Another reason it’s troublesome is that he might really be struggling.  I know he’s drinking at least some.  It’s none of my business and not my problem except for the sticky wicket of The Gamer spending time at his place (or not spending time there which is what it’s looking like for now).  Also and no melodrama for reals he might die so there goes my support which goes to show you what a heartless bitch I am.  Ultimately what’s wrong with everything is basically me and how I make everyone miserable which is actually not that easy to refute at 11:25 pm when I’m sitting here in bed blinking back tears because I’m the girl that cries all the time, remember that one?  

So anyway, this one didn’t turn out all that great, but tomorrow is another day, Scarlett, and that’s a good thing.   

Namaste, bitches.  We out.

500 Words, Day 15 - In Soviet Russia . . .

In the course of doing this project,  I have noticed a change in the way I think about writing. Now that I have this structure, this daily deadline, I’m taking my blog more seriously.   I’m not just dropping in when I feel particularly creative, or when an event prompts some scribbling, or some dialogue takes place that is too good to pass up.   Each day brings a deadline, and with the deadline comes adrenaline.   Each day demands another 500 words.  And each day I look around all the corners in search of some that will sound good if I string them together.  

It’s like the old joke -- in Soviet Russia, words write YOU.  Six characters in search of an author.  500 words in search of a blog post.  

When I was in seventh grade, we had to put together an insect collection for science class.  Each student was supposed to get out there and catch a lot of bugs, stick them onto cardboard with pins, and turn that mess in for a grade.   I don’t know why I couldn’t get it together on this one.  It’s not that I was that grossed-out by bugs, or that I revered life especially, or anything.   I just couldn’t make it happen.    

Anyway, the day it was due, I got up super early and headed out to the edge of the development where they had stopped work on the houses when the money ran out.  (I swear my childhood was a series of movie cliches).  There were undeveloped lots of milkweed and goldenrod, where the collectible insect population was said to be particularly dense.   I don’t know what I was thinking would happen, but I knew I had to get out there so that I wouldn’t be lying when I got to class and said that I had tried.  I ended up with exactly five of the required 25 insects.  When I got back to the house, my mother was waiting for me with a panicked fury that subsided somewhat when she saw that I was safe.  I went to school, and when it was time to turn in the science projects, I went up to the teacher and confessed that I hadn’t done the collection because I couldn’t find any bugs.  

And then I burst into tears.    The teacher, who was pretty cool about the whole thing, told me that I could write a five-page paper about insects instead.   Wait, what?   No bugs and I get to write?   Beautiful.  

I’ve been thinking about that day off and on for years, just a little vignette, just a little sumpin sumpin.   I got a million of em.  The point is that I wouldn’t have thought to write about it if I hadn’t been sitting here struggling to come up with something to write about.  That’s the point.  That writing when you’re inspired is awesome.  But writing when you’re not inspired may end up being more awesome.    Practicing starting fires instead of waiting for a bolt of lightning.   A controlled burn versus a wildfire.   

500 Words, Day 14 - Award Night BBQ

She pulls into the high school parking lot and texts her son, “Hi, I’m here.”  There’s no response, as is often the case.   They laugh about it sometimes. “Sorry I missed this," the reply arrives often days after it was needed.  But it’s not funny right now.  She dreads getting out of the car, making her way through an unfamiliar venue.  Shielding her gaze from people she recognizes, but doesn’t know, and people she knows, but doesn’t recognize.  She grasps her phone firmly, tries texting again.  “Where are you?”  Nothing.   Feigning competence, she gets in line for the buffet of grilled food she has no intention of eating.  Although she arrived late, she unwraps the veggie tray she bought from Safeway and puts it on the table, consolidating food from other plates to make room.   She studies the presentation at the front of the courtyard, nodding approvingly and chuckling at the jokes the students are telling as they hand out the awards.  Most Likely to Walk in Late to Class with a Starbucks Cup in Hand makes her smile, but then there are serious ones, too. Most Likely to Win a Webby, a Grammy, Most Improved Artist, Best Designer.   Her son is in this art/music/video/design program; he will begin in the fall.  She peers into the different rooms, one is a recording studio complete with a great mixer, how many tracks is that?  The English classroom is full of books she knows she should be reading.  She surreptitiously takes photos of each shelf to remind herself later.

It’s difficult to be here, and she congratulates herself.  It’s important, and she made it, and so far she has stifled the urge to run back to the car and read until it’s time to go home.  She takes perverse pride in showing up to these things.   She didn’t mention it to her ex.  If he can’t be bothered to subscribe to the e-newsletter that announces such things, that’s not her problem.  Figure it out like everybody else.    

It was his day to drive to school but he forgot.   She had forgotten as well, and she and her son made their way to school and work as they always did.  He texted her around ten o’clock to ask if The Gamer had gotten to school.  “I know it’s my day to take him . . .” and the ellipsis trails off, as vague as his resolve to make good on his promises.   “Yes, I took him,” she texted back.  “Sorry if you came by and we weren’t there.”   His name in her phone is "Straight to Voicemail."

She scowls to herself, but her irritation quickly passes.  She’s really rocking this single mom gig, but let’s face it, even when she was married, she was a single parent, managing schedules, writing checks, making brownies.  Taking care of business all by herself.   Showing up to school events despite crippling social anxiety.   Being there for her son, whom she finally locates on the floor of the Web Audio classroom, playing Cards Against Humanity with a half dozen of his friends.   

“Here you are,” she says, grinning.  “I could have used you earlier.”

“Yeah, I know,”  he says, with a matching grin.  “Sorry I didn’t text you back.”

500 Words, Day 13. The Prompt

For Day 13 of the #500WordsADay experiment via @KaleandCigarettes, we received a prompt:   

What would someone see if they looked through your window for 24 hours?  

I love this prompt because clearly I need encouragement to be more introspective and self-absorbed.  (lol winkie)   It reinforces the conspicuous feeling I have a lot of the time.   Surveying my space, watching myself, wondering how I’m coming across.  The phantom audience that is with me ALL THE FREAKING TIME.  So, yeah, resonance achieved.    

In the midnight hour

At midnight, you’d see me getting a burst of inspiration to create something despite the hour, sitting up in bed, tapping away on Chromebook.  In an hour or so, you’d see me succumb to sleep with the Chromebook still open and the lights still on.  (How that device has survived being rolled on while still open umpteen times would make a good commercial.)

Of course I must sleep at some point, but I don’t know what this would look like, although a private fear is that I’m a really weird sleeper and do all kinds of bizarre shenanigans like sit up and sing the national anthem with my hand over my heart or something in the night.

At five or so, you’d see me wake briefly to close the device and turn off the light.  You’d see me rummaging, panicked, under the covers or maybe under the pillow, for my phone, blinking blindly at the brightness of the screen, despite the fact that the room light was on until about three minutes ago.  You’d see me swipe “snooze” for the first of many, many times.

At six, you’d see me stumble to kitchen.  Pour coffee, drink coffee.  I don’t know whether waves of gratitude would be visible through a window, but there would be a moment for coffee pots with auto-brew, and another for the memory to set it up the night before.   You’d see breakfast and showers and morning routines.   A relaxed, pleasant energy between my son and me.    No, really!

At seven, you’d see me shut the door to my beautiful airy spacious neat apartment, my quiet peaceful space that creates harmony and fosters calm.  Another gratitude moment.  You’d see me open the garage door.   Marvel at having a garage.  With a car in it, even.   A myriad of miracles before 7:30 a.m. in the got-damned morning.

Then there would be very little to observe for over ten hours.

Back home at six, what’s for dinner let’s get burritos how was your day okay is there homework yes did you do it yes did you really yes mom god.    You’d see me standing lost in thought in the kitchen.   You’d see me clear the dishes and open up the Chromebook and put my hands on the keys, weaving contentment and gratitude and relief with regret and sorrow and grief, the rhythm varying in speed and urgency, until it’s time to climb into my bed and start the whole process again.

500 Words, Day 12: Did That Really Just Happen?

Why no, unctuous hostess seating people for the breakfast buffet, as a matter of fact I would NOT like you to “double check” whether I’m entitled for the senior discount.  Ugh.  That was a sock in the gut that was still making it difficult to swallow my coffee when it arrived a few minutes later.

What is wrong with people?  I try to remember that she is a career hostess for a breakfast buffet in a moderately swanky (but let’s face it, mostly tacky) casino in Reno, Nevada.   I try to remember that she is young, and from another country, and maybe English isn’t her first language.   I can acquit her of malice, but the jury’s still out on thoughtlessness.  I know she meant nothing more than to possibly save me a few dollars, which would free them up for tips (tip big!), or a blackjack bet (double down!) or a pack of the cigarettes everyone smokes around here (inside!  kill me now!) without cease.   

Coming as it did on the heels of yesterday’s massive crippling wave of insecurity triggered by ALL THE BATHROOM MIRRORS and ALL THE FLUORESCENT LIGHTS, it was a blow, not gonna lie.

I’m 52 and, now that my ex has finally loosened the death-grip of his denial, I am a single woman.  <cue angel choir>  The good news outweighs the bad in this situation by a factor of ten.  I’m finally in charge of myself, I’m not responsible for another adult, I don’t owe money, I even have some in the bank.  The din is diminishing, the chaos is beginning to subside.  I can stretch out in the middle of my new queen bed.  I don’t have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I turn into my driveway, I don’t dread coming home, wondering what I will be walking into.  I don’t sit in the car, gathering my mental strength to go inside, rehearsing what I will say, and what I will not (be allowed to) say.   

I’m alone and loving it.   It is an indescribable relief.   I am overwhelmed with gratitude.

But but but I’m 52 years old.   Ain’t that bitch?    1, 3, 5, 7, because I can’t even with the aging right now.   Apparently you don’t have to pay as much for things after you reach a certain age, and you can’t eat as much food, so your portions are smaller on purpose, and you need to eat it sooner in the day, because obviously you need to be in bed by 8:00 in order to get up the next day and take six hundred naps.

WTAF is going on here, anyway?  52, you say?   That’s nothing.  It’s the new forty.  Fantastic.  But I’m nineteen.  Twenty-seven.  Thirty-five, tops.   How can this bimbo (there I said it) possibly mistake me for someone older than that?   So I didn’t wear makeup to breakfast.  I wonder what she looks like without those eyebrows.      

Shenanigans have been called.  As far as the cataracts can see.   With my early bird senior discount.   And stay off my lawn.

500 Words: Day 11 - A Whole Lot of Nope

500 words about waiting for it to be time for my date with OkCupid Dude from where I'm currently traveling. The classic convention hook-up which is just so wrong and horrible and ugh. I wrote them but I wasn’t going to post them because it was way TMI  even for me but then everyone on that group page was like tapping their toes going, "We're WAIT-ing" so I said "All right then, if it's that important to you, you sadistic voyeurs." But I took out the stuff about sex.  I’ma start an anonymous tumblr and park all the NSFW nonsense over there and y’all can subscribe.   (Spoiler: I didn't sleep with him) 

No, this 500 words is all about insecurity, body image issues, false bravado and a lot of nope.  

Nope nope nope.  Nope nope.  Nope nope nope nope.   Like the Morse code of nope.  Ugh.  Why did I agree to meet this guy?  My life is a series of things that seemed like a good idea at the time.  I was so close to texting to say something came up, but that’s chickenshit, and the couple of times that someone did that to me were really discouraging.  Assholes do that and I’m not an asshole.  Well, maybe I am sometimes, but not about breaking dates at the last minute.  So instead of FINALLY getting some ALONE TIME (which I crave and without which I will shrivel up and die), sitting cross-legged on the bed and drinking beer and flipping channels and writing 500 words, and taking a really long shower because we’re not in California any more, Dorothy, I’m looking at my naked self in the three-way mirror (dear god the humanity) and trying to figure out what to wear (from the three outfits I brought and have already worn).  Damnit!  He called my bluff.  I get on that damn website and type away hahaha so funny so droll, but then they call my bluff.  I hate it when my bluff gets called.  Because I totally DID NOT have a full house.  Well, actually, I did, kinda.  I had three diamonds and two clubs.   Tell her what she’s won, Johnny.    Lol.  

No one needs this many mirrors.  I'm just saying.

Those body issues though.   Ugh.  There are too many goddamn mirrors in my hotel bathroom.  Who needs to watch themselves taking a shit?  No one, that’s who.   Ugh again.   Fuck, is that what my ass looks like?  Where did all this cellulite come from?   I always laughed that I would never get divorced because then I would have to date and then I would have to hold my stomach in.    My ex used to say, I love your body, it bore my children, nourished them.  The things that bother you make me love you even more.   But New Dude isn’t going to have any sentimental reasons to love my ugly belly and cellulite and sagging jiggling ugh.  It would just be ugly for nothing.   No good reason.   That’s a lot of nope right there.  

Oh my god I just figured out why hotel designers put fluorescent lights in bathrooms full of way too many mirrors:  They want those cute dudes from CSI to come investigate the suicides.  Jerks.

Here’s the thing: basically I want to curl up in bed in my shmattas  and watch a movie and eat popcorn and throw my head back and laugh with someone I like who doesn't smell like bourbon (blech) and doesn't stumble around on Ambien. Cute with a PhD, maybe. And a LOT OF BOOKS that he isn't a pompous windbag about it when we discuss them. Someone who gets it Who gets ME. Hell, I would shoot for a masters and settle for a college degree in something useless but awesome like creative writing as long as they weren't better than me.   But no, I am going to die alone.  Which is totally okay.  At least I won’t have to hold my stomach in.

500 Words, Day 10 - Make the Deadline

OMG you guys I’ve been sidelined on writing today because I just couldn’t shake off the obligations and carve out some alone time.  The forty minutes between the end of the session and the meeting time for dinner was a shower and a power nap.  I was going to try to write then, but the nap whined at me insistently and I ended up rewarding that with a candybar in the checkout.  

I’m intent on not missing a day so I’m just going to type until 11:55 because it always takes me a few minutes to get the posting figured out.  So.  OMG  I love blackjack!   I won a hundred dollars.  That’s on top of the sixty I started with.  Well, I started with forty and lost all that so I pulled out another twenty because despite (or maybe because of) my rule bound, I’m-gonna-get-caught worldview I have these moments of poor impulse control but in this case luck was a lady and I ended up walking away with two watered down (free) vodka tonics in my belly and $160 in my purse.  Awesome.  Ya hit or ya sit.

Okay, if I can write four more paragraphs like that rambling run-on in the next ten minutes I’ll be good to go.  I write run-on sentences without punctuation or editing in an ironic way because it’s the way I think.  It’s stream of consciousness and if it’s good enough for James Joyce it’s good enough for me.  Not that I would ever consider myself on par with James Joyce but to throw in a literary allusion because college although I read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in high school Senior Honors English and you know what I was pretty good at reading and writing and writing about reading and for a long time I wanted to major in Literary Criticism.  Then I realized that I was fascinated by language and what it does and how it happens so I changed my major to linguistics although there really weren’t enough classes to qualify that as a major but they had this cool thing where you could design your own major so I nailed a bunch of ideas together like I do and called it Language and Culture, English and Anthropology and Philosophy all thrown in together so there’s another example of how it’s all happening at once for me, and to quiet that din in my head takes a lot of discipline and solitude and quiet and let’s face it there’s been precious little of that in my life in the last oh I don’t know, two decades or so.

So that’s 442 and I’m gonna wrap this up so I can make the deadline.  #500WordsADay @Kale&Cigarettes

500 Words, Day 9 -- The Sign Says "Yield," Not "Surrender"

I drove too fast on the freeway yesterday.   

It's merely a suggestion, anyway.

I feel like I need to confess that.  I had the best of intentions.  I do every time I get behind the wheel.  “Okay.  This time I’m going to stay calm.  I’m going to maintain a safe speed with a safe distance between my car and that of the idiot fellow human being whose spirit I honor and respect ahead of me.”   

Namaste.

And every time, I abandon that plan within the first fifteen minutes behind the wheel.  

It all starts when I have to take evasive action.  There are some horrible drivers out there.  People do not know how to merge.  Just so we’re clear, it’s like a zipper.  You drive in your lane as long as possible, then it’s one car from each merging lane.  One from Column A, one from Column B, until we’ve zipped that zipper all the way TF up.    People who merge too soon and are just as bad as people who merge too late and they all need to be taken out back and shot.   

Kidding.  Road rage is a real thing and you have to be careful.   Don't be out there trying to teach lessons in ethics with two tons of deadly metal. That's not your job.

But in this particular case, the trigger for my need for speed was an incompetent merger.  He got anxious and jumped the gun and darted in front of me instead of rolling forward to his proper place with one car from Column A in between him and his Column B compatriot.  

I always like to have an escape plan, an exit strategy, if you will.   I’m always looking around, always aware of the open spaces around me in case I need to take that evasive action.  I need to know when and where I can move my car if I need it to be, you know, NOT WHERE IT IS.   In yesterday’s case, I needed to bolt because the incompetent merger had created that exact situation.  Time to go.  I had been watching behind me and saw a space open up where I could shift left and get past this guy before his mistake turned into a trainwreck.   I stepped on the gas and blew by all the unfortunate potential victims.   

Namaste, bitches.  We out.   

So it was necessary to speed to evade that potentially dangerous situation.  But once the needle was up around 80, it was very difficult to willingly bring it back down.   My resolution to behave myself went up in the exhaust from my tailpipe.  As it were.  I headed for the left lane.   And stopped counting seconds between me and the spirit in the car in front of me.  Slowpoke.  Cue Ludacris.   You know that song, right?

I drove my car too fast on the freeway yesterday.    For about four consecutive hours. I’m making the return trip on Sunday.  I know I’ll do better this time.    

Namaste. Again. Pinky swear.

500 Words, Day 8 -- OkCupid: Shenanigans All Day

Pink and blue for the babies you're going to have together?

One thing I find particularly awesome about this #500WordsADay nonsense is that when I’m out of ideas, I go back and find something I started that wasn’t quite ready to go up at the time.  This piece is from last spring when I had just joined this online dating website that rhymes with “oh hey stupid.”  I was pretty obsessed with it at the time although now I’m kind of over it except for the galvanizing effect it has had on my comedy writing.  Blog fodder plain and simple.  I did meet some nice guys though, and I drank a lot of awkward Starbucks lattes.  I realized I’m not really ready to date when I found myself on first dates talking incessantly about my ex and The Nightmare Years™   Nothing says “check please” like a middle-aged divorcee with tears streaming into her tiramisu.  Okay, it wasn’t that bad but damn, that’s a funny line, 

OKCupid.  Or as I sometimes think of it, "An Excruciating Trip Down Memory Lane.”  I log in to my profile aaaaand I'm instantly transported to the middle of my sophomore year in high school.   All the same types, guys and girls alike here.  Let's start with the type of guy I call the Triple A Special:   Amazing,  Arrogant, and Aloof.   These guys remind me of cats.  And I don't like cats.  I can feel shitty about myself without their help.     These guys would clearly never be interested in me so of course I throw myself at them because who can resist that kind of self-esteem greenhouse?  I am drawn to them like a bad writing to a cliche.   Judging by the pickings on my side (yes I do visit the ladies’ profiles too -- it’s for the blog, remember?), maybe I stand out because let's face it, I'm amazing too.  Right?

Except for maybe not.  

I'm thinking of starting a new profile to watch over my real profile:  eleanorrigby will be her name and she'll keep her face in a jar by the door.  Ah, look at all the lonely people.   She's the one I can use to peruse the Triple A Specials without revealing my true fake identity.   OKCupid is free, but there's this premium service called "The A-List" that you have to pay for.   Then you can visit profiles without them seeing you were there.  It's not stalking per se but I love what you've done with the baby's room.  Also, people rate you by giving you stars (ugh trauma again) and four or five stars means you like the person.   If you like them and they like you, it’s time to head to the tree in which you'll be doing some K-I-S-S-I-N-G.    In other words, "It's a match!"  Uh-oh.  Awkward Starbucks Latte No. 147.

According to the "Staff Robot,"  the faceless benevolent machine driving this Hellbound Express, over 200 people like me, but I don't get to see who they are unless I pay for this "A-List" shenanigans.    But honestly.  Um, no.  I refuse to open my wallet to an online pimp who is cockblocking me and holding me hostage (Can a woman say it's cockblocking or do we have to get junk-specific?) Anyway. Fuck you, OKCupid.  You and the algorithm you rode in on.  I bet you couldn't get a date in high school and this is your revenge on the rest of us.  

Jerk.

500 Words, Day 7 -- Dubs or Subs

The Gamer is setting up the PS4 to play Netflix on our, well, it’s not a TV exactly, although it’s meant to be one.  We don’t pay for access to cable channels, and broadcast TV basically doesn’t happen anymore, so essentially what we have is a very large monitor.   When we moved to the new place back in January, The Gamer, who will be 16 in a few weeks, said to me, “Mom, I don’t care about cable.  Everything I want to watch, I stream or YouTube.  If we could just have some stupid fast internet that won’t cut out on me, that would be great.”  

So I took the monthly cable bill down from $165 when I tried to manage The Spendthrift Family, to the low low price of $55.67.  Guess what I’m doing with the other 100+ bucks?  Don’t know?  ME NEITHER.  I haven’t decided yet.  Maybe join a wine club.   Those Santa Barbara Pinots.    Come to Mama.

The Gamer has decided that I am good company when it comes to watching his favorite genre, anime.   I am over the moon about this, because I don’t really know what the cool kids are into these days.  Or the nerdy ones either, for that matter.   I do know that I need to tread lightly, because if I suggest movies or music that I think he would like, that’s the kiss of death.  Kids have to discover this stuff for themselves.   So I nudge little tidbits towards him with my toe very subtly, when I think of a movie or some music he should know about if he wants to be as cool as me.  And I’m bowled over when he plays stuff for me that he figured out was awesome all by himself.  #toolforexample  #alsomemento

So now he’s looking at me with the controller in his hand, and he says, “So Mom, what’ll it be?  Dubs or subs.”  For a long moment I’m silent, while I try to think of this could mean.   Suddenly I realize he’s asking me to choose between dubbed voices or subtitles for the Japanese show we’re about to watch.  For regular foreign films I prefer subtitles because I can often look past them if I semi-know that language (español por ejemplo, or français peut-être).  But with Japanese I have no fucking clue.  And the screen with the subtitles over animation looks just cray so, no.

“I don’t know, dude,” I say.  “Honestly, it doesn’t matter to me.  What do you prefer?”

He looks at me out of the corner of his eye.   “Well, I like the subtitles because the dubbed voices are lame, and listening to the dialogue with the English running along the bottom of the screen is really helping with my Japanese.  So we could just watch Attack on Titan episodes all day, and it would be like studying.”

“Seems legit.  How about some popcorn?”  And I walk into the kitchen to fire up the microwave.

That kid.   The one who doesn’t need cable, and wants to watch the movie with subtitles so he can improve his Japanese.    Did I say “wine club” with the cable money?  I lied.   There’s a school trip to Japan next spring.  I’ll sip Two-Buck Chuck while he tells me all about it when he gets back.   

Streaming.  With subtitles.  

500 Hundred Words, Day 5, 6, and the Bulk of 7 -- In Which I Drain My Car Battery Charging My Cellphone

When I get a spare couple of hours, I like to hike.   I call it hiking but let's face it, it's really more like walking.  There are hills involved though, and the footpath is not paved. I have learned to take some ibuprofen before I start which is just humiliating even to admit but fuck it I’m 52 and life’s too short to be proud about such things.    So let's just call it strenuous walking and tell hyperbole to take a hike.  Haha.   

Memorial Day, May 26, 2014.   It’s a day to honor our war dead, never forget, and I do honor and I don’t forget.  I've always said that I may not agree with our reasons for going to war, but I have massive respect and admiration for people who make the decision to put themselves in harm’s way for a cause they believe in.  And supreme sympathy for those whose government wrestled away their right to make that decision for themselves.  

Now, imagine the (station) wagons circling

I figured the best way I can honor these patriotic men and women of principle is to spend the day in Nature.  Thousands of my affluent suburban homies (the former two terms being redundant and the latter two oxymoronic) appeared to have had the same idea.  The parking lots at the Nature Preserve (five of them, because overkill and unintentional irony are the hallmarks of affluent suburbs everywhere) were full to capacity, and when I arrived, the second or maybe even third wave of the day's cars are circling, watching, waiting to pounce on the elusive parking spot.   I spied mine open up and secured it by recklessly shooting into the lot through the exit, something I would never ordinarily do because, and you may not know this about me, I’m incapacitatingly rule-bound.

You would think, having jostled and maneuvered and finagled my way one step (haha again) closer to my objective, I’d have jumped out of the car and laced up my walking slash hiking shoes (they’re called “trail-runners” actually, to further confuse the nature of this activity), eager to be on my way through the unpaved but well-worn trails of the Open Space.  

What the flip would you call these, then, eh?

But you'd be wrong.  

Social media addiction is a killer disease.   “Oh look a notification, let me just take a quick sec to see what’s doing in my online world.”   I began to scroll, smirking at Facebook, giggle-shuddering at OkCupid (MrCunnilingus4U omg are you serious right now?), scowling at email from my not-even-close-to-being-my-ex-yet.  

Oblivious to the other would-be hikers who must have been peering, then glaring at me through the windows of their minivans and SUVs.

(hey lady why are you sitting there in your car when you’re supposed to be hiking or maybe walking hey lady are you leaving or waiting for your ibu to kick in or what)

Engrossed in my phone and how it transports me to a world where people think I’m hilarious and inspiring and to whom I relate better than virtually (haha) anyone I know IRL.  

Aware that the battery was low when I left home, I had hooked up the car charger for the perhaps twelve-minute drive to the Open Space, figuring that some’s better than none, which is a guiding principle for life if ever there was one.   However, I had failed to notice that I had only partially executed that task, and that the key was now merely pointing to the place on the starter marked “Access” which means “Hey. Dummy. That’s not all the way off.”

But a phone charger won’t drain the battery in and of itself, you may be protesting.  True, but let us not forget that in addition to being compulsively rule-bound, I also am a slave to routine.   Which in this case included turning on my headlights even in the daytime because (more irony) the trip from my house to Nature involves six minutes on the freeway, and I like to be safe.   

Add to this incipient clusterfuck the fact that when engaged by something that particularly interests me, I can hold the breath of my attention and swim under the water of absorption for upwards of an hour without noticing.   In this case, the car battery gave out before my metaphorical lungs did.

I heard that funny noise my phone makes when it begins recharging, and somewhat more important, when for whatever reason, say oh I don’t know, like THE CAR BATTERY HAS GONE COMPLETELY DEAD, it stops.   The phone battery was full to capacity, but the car battery was the collateral damage.  Once again, Irony, never far from my heart, was on the spot with a rueful grin:  I had a ton of charge available to call Triple-A (for a jump in an Open Space Nature Preserve on a Federal Holiday), to call my son to let him know I would be late picking him up (from the tutoring session that I had forced him go to on a Federal Holiday), and to call my ex (gulp) to confess what happened (gulp) and ask the favor (gulp) of picking up our son in my place (gulpitty gulp gulp gulp).

In what can only be described as cinematographic timing, the couple who had parked their car in the spot next to mine returned seconds before the arrival of the Triple A guy.  This to the consternation of the family in the waiting minivan who had had their signal on and everything (dear god please let them not be the same people from an hour ago how did they seriously not either find

Don't forget to ground yourself from all that negativity

a place to park or give up and go home).  The Triple A guy, a BAMF and a mensch, as those dudes tend to be, jumped my car with a sympathetic smile, and gave me the obligatory spiel about driving around for at least 20 minutes to perk up my electrical system and nurse it back to health.  

I called my ex back to give him an update, it was a good thing I did.  It turned out he had lent his car to our daughter, Troubled, although I had forbidden her to drive as a consequence of a some pivotal events of The Nightmare Years™, the story of which involves drug trafficking and pathological parental irresponsibility, and can be found elsewhere in these pages.  The 50-Teen Formerly Known as Mr. K. had only remembered after he went out to the driveway to discover, with what I imagine was much head-scratching and consternation, that the vehicle in question simply wasn’t there.   

With a stab of resentful glee, I un-gulpitty-gulp-gulp-gulped.  Yes!  Vindication was mine.  Every single time I have ever needed that man-boy-person ever in the history of evereverever, he has let me down.  Once again, the bad news was that my son would be inconvenienced, once again, the good news was I could be the hero(ine) who saved the situation I had unwittingly created in the first place.  

I pulled into the parking lot of the tutoring center (noting with a rueful grin the enormous selection of spaces) and, leaving the motor running (good remembering!), texted my son that I was here to pick him up after all.  He came out to the car and I explained what happened.  He didn't ask why I was there instead of dad, and I didn't volunteer because I’m nothing if not magnanimous.  I dropped him at home, told him to enjoy the rest of his Federal Holiday, and headed for the freeway where, with my headlights on in the daytime, I spent the rest of both the afternoon and a tank of gas breathing life into my old tired battery, and regretting, but only for a fleeting moment, the waste of a perfectly good dose of pre-ambulatory ibuprofen.