Toenails should have their own blog

....must belong to mature, educated individuals. .... accept dogs,cags, fish, dry creek beds, occasional fungae, delayed resposnses from brain, major muscle groups, sexual organs, etc. Spinach quesadillas and meat/spinach lasagna are favorites among this group...

Things That Make Me Think I Might Die

Thing #1....finishing long drawn out projects is a big one. LIke, finally getting the curtains hung in the room that was always supposed to be Erin's. Now that she's all grown up and gone for good, in one day it all finally comes together: the curtains, her paintings, her favorite color scheme. Ten years in this house and though this was never HER house...it was my fantasy, not hers - that it would be HER room. My daughter and I have always been close, much more so than most....but we've also always rubbed each other the wrong way sometimes....now that the pain of the divorce and the sheer agony of the real estate issues are over - all of it's final and done and over and out of our lives, we are free. I am free. Our relationship is free. The best time we ever had together was just a few weeks ago and I'm finally finshing her room. But she's gone. And as I drape the last bit of sheer navy, set her best pastel just so on the wall....I wonder if I will die from sheer....SOMEthingness.

Words I've made up since meeting thewordcarver

Auto-forget- what Word 2004 for Mac does occasionally, usually when I’m in the middle of a big editing job

dreamWORKing – when you’re dreaming and you KNOW that you’re dreaming and you have this whole conversation with yourself about it (while you’re dreaming the dream), which can take many forms but with me it’s usually something like Look, Deep Subconscious, this has GOT to be a dream, so try to remember it when you wake up because it probably holds some significant meaning. And you toss and turn and wake up and go pee muddily thinking, DAMN what the hell does that mean I’m gonna have to write this all down in the morning and then you go back to sleep and re-enter the same dream!

PamemaginationCentral – my overdramatic internal script provider.

brunchyshrimpy – midmorning fish, duhhhh.

e-occasion – anything that happens interactively on a computer. EM, IM, billpay, eBay auction, blogging, porn session, you know, pretty much anything.

One Box At A Time – a slogan for Movers Anonymous (a 12-step group I think ought to exist) designed to relieve stress over unpacked or un-unpacked boxes.

discombobulator – a person who is actively living in discombobulation

iBoob - my iBook’s name, because it feels like a third appendage to the front of me.

serendiprosynchronistic - when two people meet totally unexpectedly and out of the blue and in the strangest way and get along so well and have such odd and interesting things in common but don’t really know what the future will bring and are slightly afraid to deal with it so just try to be very, very careful.

metabopause – what happens at menopause, or at least mine did. My metabo paused, along with my waist line and several other external physical acoutrements (the internal remains the same......5 year old levels of desire, wonder, awe).... I wonder, if the menos and metabos paused, will they start up again later?

splointy: the sound raindrops make when they hit my bought-used-10 years ago-looks-awful, weighs a buttzillion (whoops there I go again) pounds, but runs just fine circa 1974 Frederichs window unit

twelvety: a lot more when you add it to a thousand nuts and bolts

ominosity: the state of ominousness an email from your agent can incite, even if it turns out okay.

imaginaryation: just what it sounds like, kin to:

refrigerydator: a word my kids made up

voicerator – a man who can write, and talk too, convincingly. Charming, disarming, pullclarming (see? I just can’t stop).

territoreventuality – the inevitability of animals who become relationships. Farmboy-furry centerpiece on the clean red tablecloth, Sissy on the floor, nose peeking out from under the curtains, Tasha finally climbs up on the couch and turns around three times before collapsing NOT on her bed but on the four pillows deliberately set at odd angles so she won’t be tempted to sleep on that side of the couch. Doggie snores. Sparkle sits staring at the fire in the metal Dearborn stove and I can’t find my cell phone to take a picture of this delicate image. When you walk around a house at 3:00 AM all you notice is how peaceful the other mammals seem to be. I’m a mammal, aren’t I? Why am I not peaceful?

Sunday Shed Head

Okay now it's just tedious. Parts are starting to go missing. I can't upload one of the cellphone camera images (why?) It took an hour to assemble Door A, (insert image here if I can make it work)

but only 10 minutes to assemble Door B (oh hell I'll insert it tomorrow, it looks exactly the same). I read the directions over and over and over again, out loud, trying out various accents because I just can't make my eye follow that little dashed line that takes a jump OVER the piece in order to indicate where the screw (or is it a bolt?_ really really goes. And then realized I'd bolted four pieces on upside down.

The 12 page directions booklet flew on to the roof of my next door neighbor's garage and while I was locating a ladder, they blew back down and then the sun set.

I only have 6 left brain cells, and generally try to save them for taxes.

Willie drew it perfectly. Plan life? Ha.

Shed Saga: Notes from Day Two

Steak knives are just as good as exacto knives.

I thought I was being cute about the twelvety thousand pieces. No, there really ARE sacks and sacks of nuts and screws and bolts and washers and then there's the extra sack. Which would make sense cause I keep dropping them in the gravel.

Cuts that bled: two.

Comfortable positions to hold aluminum pieces together to simultaneously tighten with Phillips head from one side while holding the bolt with pliers from the other: zero.

Aluminum doors that sound like community theatre thunder when shaken. ohhhh, what a great noise.

reality sets in

WOMAN WITH SKIL-SAW SEEKS

bloggers who'll watch, laugh at the cell phone pictures, encourage, try not to criticize as she assembles:

the shed. It arrives any minute on a big red truck. Bought online, I now realize the reason it was so cheap is its twelvety thousand pieces, many of which I will lose. I realize the reason the online picture is so funny looking is because some hapless fool like me made the same mistake.

And I can't find my drill charger. YES, I CAN operate a Makita drill, I just don't look like the girl in the poster.

Space is cleared. The brick and sand platformish step down that became meaningless when I put the fence there instead of a gate....is gone. It had become just another horizontal space to acquire crap anyway.

I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.

Aieeeeee, he'll be here any minute. THe guy in the delivery truck who said, oh I see it, yeah, I see your street on the Mapsco. I said, yeah but can you see the bridge and the creek?

Silence.

uh-oh, phone's ringing, he's lost.

Stay tuned.

SUNGLASSES

Driving down the street on a Wednesday
I'm thinking of last night's State of the anti-Union address
Conflicted about free-lancing for the people who think for him
Worried about my perfect other free lance gig and its lack of stability
Glad I got a callback to a play that pays 1/4 of the first one but the work I love the most
Concerned that I've overcommitted myself
Again
Wondering if I'll ever have sex
Again
My friend Don at work was having pain and numbness in his left arm.
Is he okay?
I promised both kids I'd put money in their college cash card accounts.
But I forgot.
Suddenly I'm at the Preston/Forest intersection, staring at the Whole Foods and Jack in the Box signs.
What am I doing here?
Where is the epiphany?
So I do what everybody else is does: studiously avoid eye contact with the homeless woman on the corner.
You know?
You try to evade her by looking down, or look busy with something in the other seat,
But then maybe she thinks you're getting money out of your purse and she comes closer
so you either stare somewhere else or just look straight ahead and pretend her out of existence,
Or maybe,
Hardest of all, you just look straight at her and shake your head no.

It's easier, isn't it, when you're wearing sunglasses?

And some of us feel guilty and some of us think "get a real job"
And some of us hand her a dollar not knowing whether she'll use it to buy baby food or beer .......
And all of us have done, and all of us have thought, ALL of those things.

Thank God I'm wearing sunglasses.
Otherwise, what if people could see me thinking these things?
What if all our thoughts were random thought bubbles flying in and out of cars?

Substance for another post.