Spidercamp

also, today i mastered the sewing machine

Noah has requested that anybody inclined to give him a birthday gift just give him ten bucks instead. That way we can all jointly own the tattoo he's going to buy with the cash. So we went by Sacred Heart last night to check it out. It's very clean, the artists are friendly and professional, and it seems like the right place to go, which is what everybody says.

Noah wanted to ask the guy some questions, but he was busy working on someone, a man in dockers and dress shirt, clearly fresh from the office. He was squirming in the chair and scrunching up his face. I imagine it hurt like hell and I know that if I'd been in his place I would have been weeping and squealing, but still it was pretty great to see mister corporate america white guy biting his lip and saying ow, owie.

So we were looking through the books of designs and I was picking out a bunch for Noah. We decided he should get a panda on his hip and a butterfly on the small of his back and a school of dolphins swimming around his leg and a rose on his booby and barbed wire around his bicep. All the stereotypical fratgirl spring break mistakes. Really, of course, the one tat he's got is pretty badass, a dragon of his own design, and the new one will be cool too. Being stupid is just a good way to kill time.

The artist got done with the guy and waved us over to ask our questions and it was then that we saw mister buckhead office manager had gotten himself a school of dolphins swimming around his leg. I couldn't help but be tickled.

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Judge Joe Brown said, So, your friend was intoxicated? and the lady said, Naw, she was drunk!

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I dreamed the tsunami got me. A wall of water I couldn't outrun. I woke up kind of freaked out, but of course I had never been in any danger.

I think it's lovely that tonight the Red Cross website will not load, because the people flooding it are not the people in need of its help but the people trying to give it money. All the links are a little slow, but donations may also be made through amazon, google, and apple.

all i want for christmas is a box of rocks

And then my brother showed up and saved Christmas with a pickup truck full of Christmas tree, puppy, and robot. The robot I wouldn't discover until morning, in a cardboard box scrawled with OKEY DOKEY SMOKEY, SPECIAL NICE FOR YOU. It would fire red lasers from its chest and it would tell me to drop my weapons. And I would.

The puppy wasn't to keep, but it's nice to borrow one. Noah's a puppy broker and makes regular trips to air cargo at Hartsfield to pick them up or ship them off. Sometimes he drives out of state with a Tibetan mastiff's ass wagging in his face the whole way. There's no money involved in these transactions except the cost of transportation. The people simply have to be the right people for the dog; if not, no dog.

This Jack Russell was for a couple whose much-loved terrier recently died. Originally Lulu, she's been renamed Boxy, short for Box of Rocks. She wiggled and quivered and jumped around with the family dog. So sweet and so dumb.

Bringing the tree was pure inspiration and shows what sort of foresight the kid possesses. He went to Home Depot on Christmas Eve and looked through the trees they had left. Someone asked if he needed help finding anything and Noah said yeah, he was looking for the biggest most impressive tree they had, because his parents were old and sick and crabby and hadn't bothered getting a tree, but damned if he was going to have Christmas without a proper one. So the Home Depot guy showed him a big fat fir and said it was sixty dollars, so Noah got out his wallet, BUT, the guy said, seeing as it's Christmas Eve and nobody else is going to buy this thing anyway, it's a penny. Noah showed me the receipt.

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Your priest is an asshole; merry Christmas. I broke with the Catholic church a long time ago but it wasn't because I thought our small-town parish was under the ministry of jerks. Back then, Father Mike was still in charge. Seven feet tall, relentlessly Irish, and super weird, he was what I thought the average priest was. That's when I was a little kid. Now I realize he was one of the best. He used to routinely go home barefoot from the grocery store because he'd run into a homeless guy in the parking lot who needed the shoes more than he did. I suppose there were poor people all over town who wore gigantic brown oxfords half filled with crumpled newspaper.

Father Mike was dismissed for slumming. For giving too much away and for being too intimate with the poor. I'm baffled. Seems like Jesus was pretty keen on that sort of thing, but maybe I'm remembering it wrong. The new guy won't allow a soup kitchen, food pantry, or clothing drives.

For my father, the last straw came when the priest snapped at him to "get that trash out of the meeting hall." The "trash" was a pile of donated clothing my dad had badgered out of the parishoners by way of fliers, phone calls, and grocery-store sneak guilt assaults. It's because there's a new family in town, a family of Hispanic migrant workers who have four kids and not much else. No warm clothing and no heat in their rented trailer.

Dad got to work and within a week had collected full wardrobes for everyone in the family, a space heater (the safe kind that won't burn anything down), gift certificates from stores all over town, weeks' worth of home-cooked meals, and quite a bit of cash. And toys and toys and toys. Just in time for Christmas. And the priest told him to cut it out, it was making a mess.

So my dad told the priest that if he didn't want that "trash" in the church, if he didn't see the purpose of collecting donations to feed and clothe our very needy and appreciative human being neighbors AT CHRISTMAS TIME, that was fine, he'd run the clothing drive out of his own house.

This is why there's a landslide of clothing five feet deep in my parents' living room. Nobody minds.

john wayne is mister christmas

The post office lady said my John Wayne stamps were a good choice. She said people have been buying them by the hundreds for Christmas cards. "John Wayne's Mister Christmas, and he don't even know it."

It wasn't much of a line, maybe eight people, but it was not moving. The guy in front of me was too young to have a cane, but there it was, cherry wood and silver. He shifted his weight and grunted and puffed and finally left his box on the floor, to hold his place in line while he retreated to a bench on the wall.

When the line moved up he hauled himself to his feet and hobbled across the room to nudge his box forward. Well that was stupid, so I told him I'd move the box and save his place, he should sit. He said Oh no, there's no need for you to go to any trouble. I told him to go sit down, and he did. Really if the post office had any mercy they'd issue numbers this time of year and let us all nap on couches while we wait.

So I pushed his box up to the front, and when it was his turn, he came up and told me I'd literally saved his ass because he's got a broken pelvis and everything hurts, with the worst thing being standing still for a long time. He thanked me about six times, like I'd done something more than kicking a box. It was nice.

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how to get schooled at the dmv.

It didn't take as long as I'd thought to get my license reissued. Not only was nobody mean to me, but everyone I spoke with was pleasant, smiley, looked me in the eye, and knew exactly what they were doing. Wowie. This would have impressed me under any circumstances, but this was a fluorescent strip-mall hellhole where the too-loud loudspeakers never stopped saying who was now being served at which window. Plus the noise of a hundred people complaining, plus a pounding/stomping noise coming from the roof - the audio equivalent of a kid kicking the back of your chair. Please stop. Please stop.

So in this awful place it was really stunning to encounter so many friendly workers. The third one, I had to ask. I said, You're very nice. Seriously, how do you keep a smile on your face, with all this noise all the time?

She said, All it takes is a near-death experience to make you appreciate every single thing in your life. It's real hard to get irritated after that.

She smiled at me like an angel and I took my license and thanked her with my tail between my legs.

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It snowed the other day for thirty seconds. Logan had gone down to the car, was going to run to the store for broth and kleenex for me, because I am sick and he is sweet. He called me to tell me it was snowing and then he came all the way upstairs so we could look at it. We did not feel silly.

some stuff I keep thinking, about nice ladies and adorable little girls

Olivia's mom, also Zach's mom, came over to talk to me for no reason. That's always so nice. We talked about how crazy kids get this time of year, and she told me that Olivia is wild for Christmas lights. They'll be driving somewhere at night and she'll see a street all lit up and beg, Please can we drive down that street? Her mom said they have to take it easy because after too much, Olivia just gets so wound up that when they get home she's wild, can't sleep, just nutso for twinkly lights.

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There was a day last week when I was feeling pretty rotten about everything, and then I walkedpast a kid's mom in the lobby and I dug real fucking deep and came up with a small but genuine smile, and I said Hi, your daughter's playing in the gym, and that woman looked at me with her nose in the air and looked away without saying anything. Like she could do better. Like I was the help. This is common and of course it fucking blows.

The next person I saw was Becca's mom and she is so much the opposite, she always smiles and is so consistently friendly that I had no choice but to go over and say, Mary Pat, you know what's the nice thing about you? You're so consistently friendly and you always smile. Don't think we don't notice and don't think we don't talk about you behind your back, all the time. You'd be appalled if you knew how often I'm looked at like I'm dirt and you have no idea how much I appreciate you.

Well she got teary and I got hugged.

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Two summers ago I was a nanny. I wouldn't have done it for any other kid. The parents sucked and the pay sucked but Jeanne and I were buddies and everybody thought she was mine, like, really mine, and neither of us ever told anybody any different. Calmly and eerily smart, at the age of six she already knew her parents "aren't all that great" (when she said that, she was staggering around the driveway on plastic roller skates and grabbing onto me to keep from falling) and she knew I loved her and she could tell me anything.

Jeanne was tiny for six and I had to keep her car seat buckled into the back seat of my car all summer long. I was proud of it. I would pick her up from soccer camp and drive home the long way because we had some of our best conversations in the car (How does electricity get into your house? Is driving hard? What are you afraid of?) and because she was so funny singing along to the radio.

Her favorite song was Trick Daddy's "Dro in the Wind." This was the first rap song the kid ever heard. I was flipping stations and she gasped. What is that music? From then on, it was my job to flip stations until I found the song, which wasn't difficult, that week. I would have just burned a copy on cd, but she loved that game.

The best part of this is that she was convinced it was a song about little kids. Every time she heard the song, she would strain to make out the lyrics, and every time, she figured out more and more. (I got pretty good at automatically coughing at "nigga," which not all the radio stations blanked out.) The most easily discernible lyrics are, Drop the top and let the sunshine in, twinkies, coke, Trick love the kids, Trick love the kids, silence the chit-chat, go-rilla, try my best not to mess up, kinda like the turtle and the rabbit in the race. All kid-friendly phrases, stuff she recognized.

So, I heard that song on the radio today. It never fails. To the finish line, I jump the pair of Reeboks. So bright, so fresh, snow white but no socks.

bunnies is pimps too

1. the delightfully stupid rabbits, as well as everything else in the store, are on sale. 2. after the art sale thing at Youngblood last week, one of the owners asked if they could carry my rabbits in their shop. Being no fool, I said yes. 3. A few days later, I pranced into a local independent clothing/toy/cool stuff store and was all "youngblood is carrying my fine wares. want in?" They did. so my rabbits may be found snuggled in a wooden box on a coffee table at YoYo Boutique on Carroll St. 4. my good friend Pete has been kind enough to start carrying them in his record store as well. 4. life's so weird.

young blood

With regard to what I write in this blog, generally I keep my motivations to myself. That's because the "story behind the story" garbage often makes for a crappy reading experience - who cares about the state of mind that made me want to write about the Czech or Gabby or the stranger on the street? I've taken too many psych classes and writing classes to find joy in anything beyond simply telling the damn story.

With all this said, I will also say that sometimes I tell touching or uplifting anecdotes in an effort to convince myself that there are touching and uplifting things in the world. Because sometimes I am quietly and desperately sad and I have to remind myself of alternatives. Is it dishonest? I don't know. I don't think I care. It's like how I feel about religion: it's mostly not for me, but whatever helps people live a better life and get through the difficult days is a-ok. You do whatever you can do even if it's not a perfect solution.

However. I am happy (like you just don't know.) to say that there are also plenty of times when my little slice-of-life, happy-moments schtick is purely because I feel really damn good and would like to put that feeling in the bank. We write to taste life twice.

So last night, people stood around a table covered in things I made, and asked me questions and smiled and agreed with me that the rabbits are stupid but wonderful. Quite a few of them handed me money. More than one stranger who reads this blog, and likes it, shook my hand and said so. I was recognized from robots.

No surprise, then, that this morning I had the energy (courage?) to do the dishes, do the laundry, exercise, eat a real lunch, and even clean the toilet. I'm not a hippie (I'm NOT) but there is such a thing as positive energy. If the support and friendliness of other people is what will enable me to be better, how could I turn that down?

Thanks. To, you know, everybody.

the opinions of children

I'm hesitant to place too much value on the opinion children hold of my life. Not their opinion of my attitude toward them, or my behavior toward them - that's important. But what they think of my clothes, hair, or life outside the school, I try to disregard, because the opinion of strangers' children should have no effect on how I live my life. And because I've seen a lot of lame adults try to float their egos by being contrivedly hip in the eyes of little kids. And because kids' opinions of my hair, etc. are so often unwittingly rude, it's best to just turn off any power to insult. (I've been asked, "Why are you so ugly today?" by more innocent little voices than I can keep track of.)

This being said, it is totally bitchin when, in the course of a very rambly conversation, it comes out that I have a car, live alone, have a tall boyfriend (no idea why that's impressive), frequently eat cookies for breakfast, stay up as late as I want, report to no one in particular for most of my time, and wear eyeliner, and a little girl leans her head in her hands and stares dreamily up at me and sighs, Cool.

Then I go home and find out that if I can manage to sew a fluffy blue owl, the more retarded the better, my friend Joe will trade me a piece of contraband from the Antarctic.

It's not a bad life.