Cap'N Crunch

We're running late, I've fixed hair, found socks for everybody, and laced shoes, I'm signing things and looking for homework...Don't forget you have to pay for the yearbook today, she tells me, so I dig for money. On the way out the door, I stop at the coffee maker. Coffee, Toffee nut creamer, a dash of Reddiwhip. The little munchkin opens and like clockwork, the end of the reddiwhip goes into her mouth. I aim it in there, then point to Naomi. She passes.
"We're running late! Are you addicted to coffee?" Hmmm. I do believe that some people are addicted to coffee. My husband is one, knocking out a heaping 6 cups a day- and those are double strength at that. And I know the stories about people having to have the caffeine, yadda, yadda. I'm not addicted to coffee.
I'm addicted to making my bed in the mornings, the same everytime. I'm addicted to buying used furniture on Craigslist, and if it's in some town I've never heard of, even better. (I love old furniture. Love. Not necesarily antique furniture...just quirky used stuff.) I hate matching colors, "berry blue colored walls, orange tile = good. yellow walls orange tile = bad!" but love symmetry. I'm addicted to Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm- I adore him...if you haven't seen this show, buy the box set and watch from the beginning. He's magically delicious.

I can get lost watching the turtles in the pond, mainly because you barely see a turtle. You literally have to stand there completely silent unmoving for 5 minutes before one will pop his head up, then it goes back down. Because of the overflow of turtles, this new turtle watching thing could also become addictive.
But no, I'm not addicted to coffee. Nope. It's that Coffee is a laxative and I'm addicted to an easy shit.
(Yikes! I'm getting a little free with my typing. I should probably censor myself better! The other day Steven was reading my blog- you know, the one where I spoke of his, um, package- and he says, "I can't believe you wrote this!" & I tell him it's my private blog, no one reads it.
"It's on the internet, anyone can read it!" but they don't. I feel I'm pretty okay to purge my thoughts. They really aren't that interesting. And if people start from the beginning, my really suckie poetry would have made them click me gone anyhow)
Isn't a blog just a diary? I should be painting instead.
The amish guy is supposed to be here today to finish the tile. How much of a people pleaser am I? So much so, when I hear the amish guy pull up in the drive, I turn the tv off. Makes me look more...amish? How ridiculous is that? ha.
I'm almost out of Cap'N Crunch Berries. This morning I was eating my CrunchBerries, and I knew I wanted to write about it. There's something very cool about abbreviating Captain to Cap'n. I'm rambling. I'd better go do something constructive with my day.
Much love, yours truly :)

A little romance for ya...

So Steven came home for lunch. Well really, he had to adjust prices in his new catalogue, but it was lunch time. It was unusually cold today, and I was hugging him from behind with my hands warming under his shirts. To warm them further, I stick them in his pants, and I'm standing there with his package in my hands. He's letting me get away with it while he's standing there reading over his work stuff, until I say,
"Wouldn't it be wild if you didn't have any arms and everytime you had to go to the restroom, I had to go with you? And then we'd stand in the stalls like this, next to folks, with my hands helping out? And then, when you were done, I'd get to give it a little shake? Hee, hee!" Shaking it, to help him see my vision, you know.
Then he ended my handwarming, unapreciative of my romantic humour.
"Wait! You're ruining the romance!" I say. He tells me he has to get to work, but I want to chase him in circles and smell him because he smells fantastic.
"You're not very romantic," I say.
"How bout I cut both my arms off, because that would be romantic." No sense of humour.

He'd better watch it, I may have to piss & flush 3 times next time he showers...
Oh!
But this Sunday is our wedding anniversary-
Happy 12 years to us! And happy spring to you. Have a sweet sweet day :)

Morning!

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.-- Victor Hugo

Stuff I'm thinking about

I'm thinking about painting a new painting. Something where two officers are looking at an accident with a car in flames, and one says to the other,
"My God! What happened here?"
and the other one says, "I hear she was trying to unwrap a twizzlers when it happened." and then hang a little skeletal arm out the window with a red licorice.
I'm thinking about the French film I watched this morning, L'Auberge Espanole?
I'm thinking about that boy on American Idol, the little one that darts his tongue out like a little lizard and makes me laugh. But I like him, but also I giggle a little and wait for it, then more giggling.
I'm thinking about stupid stuff today. Like Steven throwing the coffee maker out, the one that was a gift from my sister. The water leaked down the counter from it every time it brewed, and it created a coffee full of floaters. Blech, they were reminiscent of when you get flour out and try to make something, then look down and realize the flour had those little flour insects in it and you weren't paying attention.
I'm thinking of how our bathroom still doesn't have a door on it, and how we're ready for the tile downstairs now, we just don't have the funds for it.
I'm thinking about the dog barking and how it's making me crazy. I'm thinking about how I already thawed chicken for supper, but now I don't really want to cook? Perhaps I should throw it to the dog and I could solve two problems at once, hee hee.
I'm thinking how awesome a day it is. Much love, Kat

cat & rats & animals, but no unicorns.

"Is that the right time? It couldn't be," she said, staring at the jeep time.
"No, you have to subtract six hours,"
"And add twenty minutes," my nine year old chimed in...
"Technically, you add 23 minutes, but we just round the number to the closest ten." I said.

My mother looked at me, one of those 'Where did you come from?' looks. She came by this past weekend.
"I brought you a book on sewing!" I thumbed through the book, hundreds of pages of diagrams and black & white photos, women in aprons they made, classic 50's or 60's. Smocking photos.
"Look! It even shows you how to do the smocking," she says. I study the pages. Algebra. Geometry. Some foreign language for sure.
"I can't read it," I tell her. I marvel that anyone can. That sort of brain is to be envied for sure, when in comparison I fumble. Are you one of those people?
Lap it up like a kitten at a milk puddle, lap it up then sweat it out your pores? Lap it up and sweat it out; like a song that resonates, but for some folks complex processes as well.

I may make no sense this morning. I know, I just wrote a couple days ago. What's up??? I ran three miles yesterday, maybe I took a sudden surge of oxygen to the brain. Maybe I just have all my hens in a row. Or is it chicks in a row. Ducks in a row? A row of something, for sure.
I am all of hen and chicks, kittens and milk this morning. Too sweet. I should've just summarized my wee blog into a poem. I think it might have had kittens and chickens, or lapping milk and smocking silk, or, um, it would just been really really bad. So let's move on.
I saw that someone smashed D's mailbox while driving this morning. Internally I laughed. (Nobody can be kind all the time.) D is my husband's friend, although he hasn't come round to see him lately; Steven didn't pee in a condom for the drug test he was taking. And that's what real friends do, of course. Ha, ha, D, I know about you & your buddy, picking up "crack whores" (his term, not mine) videotaping strung out women, desperate ones doing deperate things, laughing. I know and you don't know I know. I guess you'll have to fix that box or get your porn at mommy's house again. Whoo! I'm terrible. So much for the kittens. Let's move on again.
"We have a hawk," It flies, circling over our yard daily.
"What? Where?" Steven looks around.
"There!" I point up and Steven studies the bird.
"Turkey Vulture," he tells me.
A week later, I point to the hawk again.
"Look!"
"Turkey vulture." Turkey vulture doesn't sound quite as exciting as hawk, though.

No company yet. I guess I'm going to go eat some cereal, run on the treadmill, do some laundry. Thanks for being so cool! Here's to finding inspiration in the little nonsense things of daily life. yt, Kat

company

I got up from the table today, finally able to put my book down, finally, because I'd finished it. The last two pages had me crying- crying fat tears, and then I realized that I wasn't home alone. the girls are out of school for MLK day, so I wiped away my tears and decided I'd better tend to them before they ransack the fridge, emptying a new jar of pickles, pack of yogurts, or trying to pour juice into cups, leaving a sticky orange trail as they have before when I was previously a hostage of a good book.
The book was Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Two thumbs and all the other finger and toes up. I stumbled through in the beginning, not used to dark of it, but you know how it is when you get so involved, you just want to get to the outcome...
I'm to have company this week. My father called to wish me happy birthday (two weeks early) he's coming down, he said. What day? I don't know, he said. (LOL, can you tell I've been reading CMcC?) There's the part of me that is anxious about it- I haven't seen him in a couple years, and back then I played host to the large male equivalent of Debbie Downer,
Get me some Ice Water! You call this ice water? I stood peeling mangoes, biting my tongue. I could peel a mango twice as fast, he shouts, and there'd be twice as much mango left!
My mind says, "Then why don't you" but my mouth says nothing.
I know I'm coming across ungrateful, maybe ruthless. I'm venting. There was a time my mother sat in the hospital with me, just born, pleading that my father sign my birth certificate.
He told her it didn't matter, I was a girl, I'd get married anyway. I never lived with this man, and my mother, too afraid too ask for child support, raised me off of Denney's tips. And we were happy, life was good, it was enough.
How could you have such bad judgement? I asked her this week. This guy is coming over, claiming he's my father. I have to cater to him, to be kind. Why did you choose him to be my father?
My mother, in her New Age Reincarnation fashion, says what I knew was coming.
"Why did you choose him to be your father? Because you chose him long before I did."
And my response, easy, same as always,
"I didn't choose him to be my father. I chose you. You to be both my mother and father." because it was enough.

Yikes. Am I getting too deep here?

So I'll be catering to my father one day this week, who knows which one. Not Steve Bell, my imaginary father, but the real deal. The love and lightness in the air will turn stagnant and abrasive, abrasive like cracked heels on satin, and I'll lie awake thinking what I can do better, what I can do that won't be picked apart.

I filled the bird feeders with sunflower seeds, it was all I had, then a little titmouse flew up on the balcony, his beak black like the sunflower shell, making him look like he had a tiny duck bill.
He cocked his little head, as to say, What are you doing in there? Flew away again to a nearby tree, scraping the shell on the bark to crack it open. A redheaded woodpecker on the feeder, doing the same.
I read a thing about the writer's strike, but I haven't noticed it yet. Mostly I only watch the Sundance channel, and everything off of the TiVo list. Better, because a one hour show becomes 35 minutes when you fastforward the commercials. The only downside is that you never know what new movies are coming out.
The writers want more money I guess. They are getting canned because the season won't open in time? Is writing what they love? How does that feel, to do something you love and get paid insane amounts of money for it? I've a feeling for that money, anyone could write a pilot. (Come over. Give me a page length & a week. Hee hee.)
The writers are lucky, they are folks like me and you, in the right place, at the right time. They maybe ordered a sandwich next to someone who knew someone else. Sometimes I watch tv and think the well's run dry. (Not you, Larry David, you're well runneth over!)
I'm not in the right place, at the right time- for that. I'm in the right place for me. And I hear my girls laughing, the little one's face covered with lilac lip gloss. Funny. I mailed out another manuscript.
I showered. I spit in the shower. Is that disgusting? And then, after I spit, I thought about my nephew once saying that if you pee in the shower it will cure athlete's foot. His friend told him that.
I did not pee. But I did wonder if you tell someone that, does it mean you've done it? Did his saying that mean he pees in the shower? But it can't, because that would mean that I, too, am a shower pee-er for writing it down, and I'm not. Because I'd tell ya. :)
I'm going to go put the clothes in the dryer, maybe eat a piece of cheese. The dogs are barking. I hope there's no one here. Deep breath.
I've been missing you all. Love, love, love, love love, kat

can't sleep

hello again. & sorry I haven't stopped in lately. Christmas time, you know? That's the time when you blow hours looking, driving for that damned butterscotch pony (not worth it); the time you try to figure out where you're going on which days, what am i suppose to bring, and did you say my house? and well, you know we can't have 15 people at my house, we have no freaking bathroom door. i guess we can have them, but let's make it early so everybody will be gone by six, but then they don't even get here til six, and the macaroni is clumped up into one giant orange sculpture thing, if you will.

it's the time when the little crosses with names of folks who died in traffic accidents get santa hats. the time when you're kids shout "christmas lights!" and you remember before you had kids, how you used to have christmas lights, and you think maybe next year you'll get em out.

it's the time to try & come up with those obligatory gifts, and everybody else is doing the same, then you have a bunch of people standing around looking at their candles and canned nuts, jogging suits and glass dust collectors, and I guess jesus may not approve- but sometimes you envy all those jews that take the christmas break somewhere in the tropics.

There's definitely that part of me that longs to tell both sides of our family that we're going to others, then hang at the house and have a private shrimp boil, play a little jimmy buffett christmas island.

anyway, thank you for having me. I walked past an old helium balloon, thought it was somebodys head, then going up the stairs, i hear,"i'm sleepy" in that eerie robot doll voice, and all the lights are out. I look back at the thing, cause I'm too freaked by it, and it goes off three more times while I'm trying to figure out how to turn it off.

my manuscript hasn't sold, it's really about time to bury all of them and write something new for the new year. Perhaps I'll improvise a couple pages a day, i don't know. but I'm here at the moment.

I thought about a project I started writing, and how I'd written these few brilliant pages and the computer ate them like they were never meant to be. How could I recreate that kind of magic?

how can anyone recreate magic?
and then i think, where does it come from and where does it go?



remember the rocky horror picture show
looking stupid singing those songs
but strangely everybody belonged.
and you got away with going.
far as any girl could go

but then you grow some sense, right?
you see it for what it is
frivolous kids
don't know much and it shows.
those kids get on my nerves now.
can't go where the wind blows.

and frivoly is like a toothless fairy
not too bright, full of dust
but you get a little higher
if you have wings that you can trust
those wings are gonna crumble
so child do what you must.
do what you must

innocent bystander watching the world go by
i don't recognise her
got bigger fish to fry.
and I don't remember where my pan is
who's full of dust now?

frivoly's a toothless fairy
maybe one day i'll be wary
of having so much common sense.
i'll grow real old & dye my hair blue
just because i want to.
maybe partly for a laugh.



then you get drunk and tell stories to your grown grandchildren
like your mother used to do...ha ha. good night.

come back soon.

holy crap, i just have to add that i was just sitting here writing this, then when i went to hit publish post, it lost the page, i hit the back button and it had been cleared. somehow i got it back. jeez.