June 30, 2003 at 1:33 pm
(life)
All three-and-a-half of you readers may or may not know that I signed up with Adopt-A-Platoon to send care packages and letters to an HQ platoon of Army Engineers over in Baghdad. One of the things the guys have written to me about was that they hear few positives from the media about their role over there - that most of what they get as news paints them as the brutal oppressors, just as some Iraqi factions would have the world believe. That doesn’t seem to be how the majority of the folks back here really feel, but it makes the kids over there (and most of them are still kids, or at least young’uns) feel like shit.
The Grand Poobah and I just shipped the second batch of care packages to the guys, and were pleasantly surprised when the clerk at the post office where we mailed the boxes chipped in $20 of her own money to help out, muttering and bitching the whole time about how ungrateful the Iraqis are and how we’re over there dying to give them a taste of freedom. Her name is Anh and she’s from Vietnam.
Discuss.
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June 29, 2003 at 10:18 pm
(random)
So a good friend sends me this link from the best of Craig’s List… says it reminds him of me. I’m not sure if I should be flattered or just sit here and pick fleas out of my armpits and roast them with a nice Chianti. On another note, the fuzzy gloriousness that is the Grand Poobah helped me plant fleurs in my backyard today, to the sweaty satisfaction of us both.
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June 25, 2003 at 4:16 pm
(gah, life)
In the meanwhile, I retreat from the pain. I vacillate, I fluctuate, I dive in a sine-wave down the submerged hallways in the back of my brain and finally when I think I’ve used up all my breath and can’t continue and will surely remain there in the darkness forever, I re-emerge from that cold pool of memory, oldness floating oil-slick on top and coating my body as I step back out into life.
That oldness will rub off or be washed off by newness as I keep moving, keep breathing, stay awake and rediscover now-elusive balance.
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June 24, 2003 at 3:59 pm
(writing)
By my newest writerly faboo obsession - an old column (where was I with my head up my ass that I didn’t know about Michael Ventura earlier?) on poems read in the dark).
There will be more from him here, much more. I’m quite taken with his work, as I’ve always wanted to write beautiful essays but just can’t quite seem to manage.
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June 23, 2003 at 1:49 pm
(argh)
Well, I feel much better now that I have all the details of the Nuclear War Fallout Shelter Survival Info for California (with FEMA Target Maps).
Guess that puts it all in perspective, eh?
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June 20, 2003 at 10:39 am
(gah, life)
Okay, so the one area I’ve been steadily resisting dealing with in getting the house ready for sale has been the yard. I planted a whole bunch of flowers, etc., a few months back with a good friend and her daughter, and promptly neglected to water same sufficiently… yeah, I’m a mass-flora-murderer. I need to spend next weekend polishing up the house and tossing the rest of my extra shit that I’m not putting in storage so as to lend the illusion of uncluttered turnkey wonderfulness, as well as plant new pretties all over the front and back yards, and am just so not looking forward to that at all, lemme tell ya. It’s not that I mind nurturing stuff and stuff like that (when it’s convenient and doesn’t interfere with writing or reading), it’s that my ex-hubby paid more attention to the yard than he did to me, and that the backyard was where we were supposed to teach the children we’ll never have how to walk… I had insisted on getting a house before becoming with child, as I wanted my kids to learn to walk on their own grass instead of in an apartment where I’d have to worry about them falling up or down stairs like I did when I was little. Thank the gods we did things in that particular order, given how all of it has turned out. But the issue remains at this point of what I need to do to make the house purtier and perfecter than it already is. I need to plant brightly-colored stuff in the front and back and water it all every day and clean out the fountain in the backyard so it can burble charmingly when prospective buyers come by to view and critique all our hard work. And not resist handling it out of some passive-aggressive bullshit or residual mourning for what I’d never really wanted in the first place.
I think IronMonkey has the right idea about what would spark my interest in gardening… Gardening-Mon: “Gardening would be more fun if it were more like Pokemon. You’d grow some plants, your friends would grow some plants, then you’d have the plants fight each other in exciting tournament battles” Yup - I could charge admission and put up some tiki torches for ambience. Ook!!!
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June 18, 2003 at 7:07 am
(life)
Like the title says…
House getting prepped for sale is progressing, training is progressing (more like “oh gack I am wormshit”), have finished reading the super secret squirrel advance copy of his latest book, Nosferatu that Bob Mayer sent me (in lieu of actually finishing his new website, mind you - gotta get cracking on that one tonight and polish it up so he can be purty online, but it was a really good read and I had to finish the book first), and have had a house full of neat people the last few days (y’all know who you are). Lots of folks around besides me are going through major relationship drauma right now - that’s dramatic trauma for those three of you readers who might have forgotten - and I know we’ll all get through this, even if it means judicious imbibing of Irish car bombs and sour apple martinis. We can handle it, we can suck it up and keep moving. The bartender at McCabe’s likes me.
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June 12, 2003 at 3:47 pm
(random)
…what, if anything, this will do to the projected rate of old goat-on-goat violence for the coming fiscal year? (Somewhere in the bowels of a government office somewhere, somebody cares.)
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June 12, 2003 at 2:56 pm
(meme)
Am running hot getting the house ready to put on the market, am finishing up a website for a friend, am reading not enough books and writing not enough deathless prose, and am getting skinnier as a practicing member of the Biggest Losers in the Blogosphere.
Thanks to LeeAnn for the below navel-gazing exercise (which is prolly gonna fall into the category of too much information, but what the hell, it beats being all angstypoof and metaphorical and shit):
Ten Layers Of Me
LAYER ONE
– Name: Kari
– Birth date: May 26
– Birthplace: California
– Current Location: Los Angeles, California
– Eye Color: green
– Hair Color: dirty blonde
– Height: 5′3″
– Righty or Lefty: righty
– Zodiac Sign: Gemini
LAYER TWO:
– Your heritage: Irish, with a splash of accursed Sassenach English and German. Yup - stubborn with a bad temper ;-P
– The shoes you wore today: black leather platform ankle boots
– Your weakness: marshmallow anything, caramel, and footrubs
– Your fears: the sudden stop at the end of a long fall, being parapalegic or stroking out and becoming a head vegetable, not being able to help if someone I love needs me
– Your perfect pizza: deep dish with tomatoes and pineapple
– Goal(s) you’d like to achieve: too many to list here, but includes becoming debt free, winning a Pulitzer (okay, publishing my first, second and third novel to great critical acclaim and increasingly huge advances so I can live somewhere purty with few people and write all day when I’m not having my toenails painted and feet rubbed), being able to do a week-long backpacking trip without needing morphine for my knees
LAYER THREE:
– Your most overused phrase on IM: hee…
– Your thoughts first waking up: “ouch! goddamned knee! just cut the fucking leg off!” usually followed by “wonder how long I can hold it?”
– Your best physical feature: eyes (including eyelashes)
– Your most missed memory: I gotta echo LeeAnn’s comment on this one - “If it’s a memory, then that means I remember it, right? So if I miss it, that means it’s gone so I don’t remember it, so it can’t be a memory…. Do not fuck me around with this Catch-22 bullshit.”
LAYER FOUR:
– Pepsi or Coke: Pepsi unless I’m in the mood for Coke
– McDonald’s or Burger King: McDonald’s only and ever - if you’re gonna eat nasty fast-food, eat the stuff that’s the most horrible for you (might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb)
– Single or group dates: either
– Adidas or Nike: Nike
– Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea: Lipton
– Chocolate or vanilla: again with LeeAnn and her bad self - “vanilla, because you can tart it up with chocolate or caramel sauce” - YES, but it has to be real vanilla, not just some white frozen sugar milk with a vanilla bean waved over it from a distance of twelve miles
– Cappuccino or coffee: whichever is closest to my mouth
LAYER FIVE:
– Smoke: gah ick stinky
– Cuss: way the hell too goddamned mother-fucking cocksucking much (you say that like it’s a bad thing)
– Sing: often at high volume, sometimes even off-key (which hurts me more than it hurts you)
– Take a shower everyday: absolutely
– Do you think you’ve been in love: being in love and thinking don’t usually go together, but oh yeah, I’ve been in head-over-heels-foolish-in-love
– Want to go to college: erm, go back and either finish my BA in Linguistics or switch to somewhere else and get a degree in something useful like Herbaceous Psychology
– Like(d) high school: some parts, like dressing up as a ninja and jumping out of trees in the middle of the night to beat the crap out of the guys in my dojo - but the whole cliquish thing just pissed me right off
– Want to get married: been there, done that, got the bullet holes in the t-shirt
– Believe in yourself: usually and mostly, out of sheer cussedness if not actual credulity
– Get motion sickness: flying level and straight in small planes, or riding in the backseats of small cars
– Think you’re attractive: depends on the makeup and the lighting and how much I’ve had to drink
– Think you’re a health freak: um, no
– Get along with your parent(s): the ones who are alive are great, in their own addled and demented ways
– Like thunderstorms: adore them almost more than anything (except footrubs)
– Play an instrument: at one point, played piano, guitar, clarinet and tuba. no, not all at the same time. I’m talented and can multitask with the best of them, but that’s just silly
LAYER SIX:
In the past month…
– Drank alcohol: different flavors, even
– Smoked: not even second-hand
– Done a drug: does Advil count?
– Made Out: yay!
– Gone on a date: kinda, sorta, technically if you want to call it that
– Gone to the mall?: yes
– Eaten an entire box of Oreos?: nope, much to my shock and dismay
– Eaten sushi: yup, and gonna do it again tonight
– Been on stage: several times - don’t ask
– Been dumped: if you count my soon-to-be-ex-husband asking for a divorce then yes, I guess I have
– Gone skating: ice and roller
– Made homemade cookies: and in the approved fashion, ate half the dough raw… hee
– Gone skinny dipping: whenever I get the chance - life is too short to wear clothes all the damned time!
– Dyed your hair: I look great as a redhead (sassy!) or a platinum blonde (ice queen)
– Stolen anything: Post-Its from work… um, not the current job, mind you
– You sound boring: you’ve been smoking dogshit again, haven’t you?
LAYER SEVEN
Ever…
– Played a game that required removal of clothing: mais oui
– If so, was it mixed company: always - I love to make the boys blush
– Been trashed or extremely intoxicated: about once for every ten years of life, except for that last time which I have decided to regard as advance planning and/or stocking up for my next decade
– Been caught “doing something”: by my mother, the third time EVER!
– Been called a tease: often, but they just didn’t know me well enough to know that I always deliver
– Gotten beaten up: if they lost more blood then I did, does that count?
– Shoplifted: nail polish in 6th grade
– Changed who you were to fit in: yes, back in 5-6th grade I stopped saying please, thank you and pardon me because all the other kids made fun of me
LAYER EIGHT:–
–Age you hope to be married: 23 - that was then, but I’m better now
– Numbers and Names of Children: got a cockatiel I’ve recently rechristened Reverend Jim (hey, it was that or Murdoch and only one critter in the house needs to be fascinated with explosives and trash bags at any given time and I already called it)
– Describe your Dream Wedding: one that leaves me single on a beach in Tahiti with a couple of hotties rubbing various parts of my body and bringing me fruity alcoholic drinks (you know, the healthy kind with vitamins and fiber)
– How do you want to die: no thank you, I really want to know what comes next - y’all do some fascinating shit with each other and the planet
– Where you want to go to college: Columbia J-School, or maybe somewhere with a beach so as to facilitate the above-mentioned eye candy
– What do you want to be when you grow up: a best-selling, Pulitzer-prize winning author
– What country would you most like to visit: all of them, but at the moment Thailand is looking neato, as is Iraq.
LAYER NINE -
–Opposite sex (or the same?) sure, make me an offer I can’t refuse
– Best eye color? turquoise blue is the most unique I’ve ever seen on a man, but warm brown eyes are incredible
– Best hair color? dark to black
– Short or long hair: short enough to look neat, long enough to grab onto when appropriate
– Best Height? medium to tall
– Best weight: for me 120 lbs., for a man whatever works and he’s comfortable at
– Best articles of clothing: jeans and velvet or silk anything
– Best first date location: museum - I can tell a lot about a person by what moves him or her
– Best first kiss location: the beach on a stormy day
LAYER TEN:
– Number of drugs taken illegally: so?
– Number of people I could trust with my life: 6 offhand, including my parents, and a couple of others who I’d trust but can rarely get ahold of
– Number of CDs that I own: 60-70? maybe? somewhere?
– Number of piercings: five (all in my ears - I’m much more of a sadist than a masochist)
– Number of tattoos: none yet, one planned.
– Number of times my name has appeared in the newspaper?: 5 or 6, between my wedding announcement and a coupl’a various civic/volunteer banquet/award things and/or the child prodigy thing from way back when
– Number of scars on my body: way too many, but I have the Chinese character for “no” carved on my lower belly from various surgeries over the last 12 years - not on purpose, it just happened that way
– Number of things in my past that I regret: oh crapola, lots and not too many, considering how many times I’ve been incredibly stupid and/or thoughtless to people who actually cared enough about me that I could hurt them
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June 3, 2003 at 4:07 pm
(gah, life)
As the divorce suckage progresses, I’ve finally figured out what the stage that I’m at feels like. It’s like getting my appendix out.
Eight months ago was being admitted into the hospital through the ER with lower-right quadrant pain and a high white blood-cell count. That’s when things started falling apart in earnest.
Six months ago was being prepped for surgery, publicly shaved and wincing as they started the IV a little too roughly for my taste and excellent veins. That’s when we gave up - he asked for a divorce, I agreed.
Four months ago was being told that I’d feel a little cold in my arm as the anesthetic passed into my IV line, to count backwards from ten so I could wake up in the recovery room six months later when everything would be fine. That’s when we sat down with the lawyer to divide our property and file the paperwork.
About a week-and-a-half ago was when I woke up in the middle of the operation. My appendix had already been severed and removed, that vestigial nubbin lying cold in a plastic dish, ready to be burned as hazardous waste, the stump sutured and cauterized as needed. My entire lower intestine had been pulled out of my abdominal cavity - much like the magician’s never-ending scarf trick - and piled on the OR table next to me so the doctor could rootle through it and check for lumps, adhesions, blockages and the like before stuffing the damp length of gut back up inside me willy-nilly. That was when I started selling off the furniture, selling off all the things we’d chosen together to decorate and accessorize our life together in our pretty little house together.
I’m still awake.
They’ve already given me so much anesthetic that I can’t take any more or I might die - re-numbing and staying unconscious just isn’t going to get me through this. I have to stay awake for the restuffing of my innards and the closing of the wound, the rearranging of my inner being and the remembering of my identity as I-no-longer-we, the painful process of putting myself back together after tearing myself wide apart to become healthy.
It hurts like hell. I’m wary of the slightest movements near my vulnerable bits, which in this condition is every bit of me. I’m feeling every exposed nerve as it’s scorched by the very air, and am almost unable to bear the gentlest touch for fear of falling completely apart. I feel bound in that rawness, blanketed in painfully fresh scars that I prod and caress in the hope that I will find I have finally stopped hurting.
There are random moments of peace, more a cessation of sensation too fleeting and faint for relief, and sometimes a passing bit of laughter breaks through to remind me to walk softly and that where I am going is needful, or a moment of clarity graces my shoulders when a poem or passage from a book reminds me why I’m still breathing. Then I also remember that it is not only my connection with the pain that is holding me together. It is the next breath and the breath after that, because the world keeps turning and it is wondrous and strange and I want to see all of it, hear all of it, smell all of it, taste all of it, feel all of it on my skin and in my mind like silk and raindrops and the fire in a lover’s fingertips, burning just for me. It’s all worth staying awake for, just to see what happens next.
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