The Weird Kid

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Hobby

When my mother comes to believe a family member likes something, she will buy them different representations of that thing forever and ever. I cannot make her understand that I don't collect Winnie The Pooh anymore.

Besides the point.

My sister-in-law likes frogs. And she is a perfect match for my mother, because she is willing to accept frogs, forever and ever. As a result, many of my own birthday and Christmas gifts are frog-related, perfectly adequate gifts left over when my sister-in-law's stocking is full. Frog blankets and frog window chimes and frog candles and frog soaps and frog metal that twirls in the wind.

Besides the point, too.

My sister-in-law has taken a bathroom in Mom's house and filled it with her frogs. Oh, but you should see it. Frogs suspended on swings from the ceiling. Frogs curled up in the soap dish. Cannibal Frogs fishing off the sink and reclining on the back of the toilet, watching you and smiling so wide. They are all watching.

Honestly, still besides the point.

The point is these frogs inspired me. How unappealing they were in this bathroom...but how neat they'd look outside, scattered out in the woods surrounding my mother's house. How cool it would be for an 8 year old, 25 years from now, to be playing down the hill in the trees and find a ceramic frog hiding in the hollow of a tree.

I could not bring myself to steal my sister in law's frogs. But, I had no problem wandering around my mother's enormous house, a swirling vortex of knick-knack crappity whack, stuffing things in my coat pocket.

I wandered the four acres below the house. I tucked a small vase between a rock outcropping, hung a ceramic mask from as high into an oak as I could reach, and buried a nautical scene carved into a sea lion's tusk in a rotting stump.

The best part is, when I was done, I couldn't remember where I'd left anything.

I intend to keep doing this until I no longer have access to the property. She will never miss anything. I am removing some of the rotting albatross of junk from the house I will eventually have to clean out, while sending joy through time to the future.


Lovely.
posted by Imez at 10:12 PM 9 comments

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

I'm trying.

The more escapism appeals to me as a viable life choice, the more I kept thinking about the movie "Trainspotting." To live a life where all that matters is heroin. There is nothing small or confusing in that life, just a blind drive to get more heroin. There is freedom in those chains.

Probably the first independent movie I ever watched. Helped me understand there was a world where a movie like this could be made, where grime was glory and selfish suffering was poetry. My world was built and waiting for me, I realized.

Anyway.

I keep a bootleg DVD of it, seldom watch it. I did tonight, after I put the baby down.

I swear this is not a depressing post. Though it will be if you click on this link. Don't click. I link it because it exists.

It was the scene that kicked me in my bland heart. It is a dead baby, a baby who spends the first half of the movie crawling, ignored, and sweetly babbling among heroin vials and needles. It will hurt.

I had not seen this movie since giving birth. I watched this scene, and felt the old appreciation, the hot beauty of showing things that shouldn't be shown, flush out of me.

I did something then, that I never ever do, because I am jealous of my time to myself. I opened Smudge's door, a half hour after putting her down. I didn't care if I woke her. Had to see her.

I don't talk about her much. Up lifts this perfect little round head, lush with remarkable hair for an almost 2-yr-old. Big sweet eyes reflected in the hall light. Big smile, like. "Ma! Fancy meetin' you here!"

I scooped her up, cuddled her, whispered to her. I love her and it aches it aches in my stomach so hard. Got her more juice water, tucked her back in. Laid a finger on her nose because that is how I kiss the final goodnight kiss, unable to lean over the height of the crib.

I love my kid. I don't know what it means that the love seems to come out of my body, not my head. Lines of gentle lightening under the skin and small pain and large need in my stomach. The only time my brain is quiet.

Ah me. Sure I can write an uplifting post...but I'm going to need footage of a baby dead in a drug den.

I'm trying!!!
posted by Imez at 9:44 PM 8 comments

Monday, November 24, 2008

Pithy, but peircingly insightful? No?

Things I Ended Up Liking When I Gave Them A Chance

1. Christian Boarding School

2. "Dr. Who" & "30 Rock"

3. Libraries

4. A Couple of Other People

5. California Rolls


Things That Were Still No Good After Trying

1. Christian University

2. "Heroes" & "Rita"

3. Danielle Steele, Nicholas Sparks, John Grisham, Nora Roberts, at the library.

4. A Couple of Other People

5. Sushi
posted by Imez at 7:50 PM 0 comments

Imez's Pledge

Hear ye.

Announcing.

Imez's Pledge.

From today until the New Year.

No depressing posts, no dark posts, no ridiculously personal posts.

Because I want to stretch myself, and spare myself, spell myself. And there is more to me than intricate self-loathing and exhausting self-analysis. Perhaps?

And it is Christmas. And Stuff.

Ho ho ho.
posted by Imez at 9:17 AM 14 comments

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Something scarier than becoming your mother

My sister called to ask me, haltingly, if I'd go out with her on her birthday, for a drink. If I had time, if I wanted to. I know it is mostly because there will be no one else, never is anyone else. And I want to gather her up and dust her off and give her a blanket but instead I keep shouting.

No lectures, she asked, referencing our last meal out, where I began shouting in front of the waitress that Mr. Pibb sits comfortably high on the List of Things Insulin Dependent Diabetics Cannot Have.
"You choke down cheap sugar-free chocolate but drink two glasses of sugar soda??? You don't even have to chew before the sugar goes into your blood! Are you just done with kidneys?"

Now she is sick, with a cold, gone to see Mom's doctor, and I shouted again. My mother's doctor is actually, very actually, 85 years old, and tired, and loves to give out all kinds of pills. But my sister said that her sickness shouldn't prevent us from coming to Mom's for Thanksgiving because she went on antibiotics the day she felt sick.

I shouted, "You're taking antibiotics for a head cold??? You're the reason antibiotic-resistant strains of disease are felling the lower classes!!"

My sister said, "You're a real joy to talk too," and sounded hurt. Our mother took the phone and told me it was heading for her chest. All colds that begin like my sister's head for the chest and end up needing antibiotics.

I said, "I'm sorry Mother, I've forgotten what medical school your degree is from. University of My Talking Makes It True? I haven't taken antibiotics for five years."

And I hung up disgusted.

And now, I write it all down and find out, holy shit. What a snotty bitch.

I'm the difficult relative. I'm the pain. I'm the one they are obligated to love despite the tension I create. And that tension? The tension that makes them stammer their words and sound defeated? That's ME? I made that?

It's how they talked to Dad. And did they think they were free, when he died?

The really bad part is my five year old self is standing with her hands on her hips and saying, "Teach you to push me around. In 25 years it'll just take a phone call from me will make you all feel small and judged. Shoulda been nicer when you had the chance."

Happy Holidays.
posted by Imez at 9:29 PM 2 comments

Thursday, November 20, 2008

For Frequent Referral

The old reasons don't have as much kick anymore.

I can't, just can't, cover the wall around my mirror with dozens of pictures of Drew Barrymore's Guess Jeans campaign and say to myself when, "This. This!" That was 15 years old. 28lbs lost.

Can't keep a box wrapped in blue Victorian wrapping paper full of women and articles I cut from Shape Magazine, bronzed muscles and bikinis, and say, "Oh god, please, this." 18 years old. 80lbs gained.

I can't sit in the computer room at the library sorting through web pages of clothes I could wear, girls I could become, if only, until my tail-bone ached. That was 23 years old. 40 lbs lost.

Can't keep a scrapbook of plus-sized models looking devastingly perfect and pictures of things I could do, positions I could recline in and lengths I could wear, if only. 26 years old. 15 lbs gained.

Head down, eyes and ears covered. 29 years old. 30 lbs gained.

Now I am thirty, and know, or feel, that being not fat won't fix/change/free me. It is a shruggable, resigned knowledge. I won't become a fascinating fiction, I won't become a still captured moment that is perfect. I'm not happy to know it.

Thinness equated every door in the world popping open. Now I know pretty well which doors I'm going through. Mother door. Wife door. All the regular doors.

But still. Still I must.

Now my only picture is the bathroom mirror. The only place in the house I see my face. The only reminder. "Not this. Not this." Don't let this fraud perpetuate. This is not you. You are pretty. Find you out.

30 years old. 3 lbs lost.
posted by Imez at 3:36 PM 15 comments

Monday, November 17, 2008

Free Martha Stewart

Just an aside.

Does anyone know exactly what "insider trading" is?

Cuz, if it is what I think it is, I need someone to explain to me why it is illegal. I'll listen, I really will. I simply must be missing something.

I heard it defined on the radio today as "using information unavailable to the public to avoid losing lots of money."

And I'm thinking. If I were on a train track, and I saw a train bearing down on me....am I allowed to move?

I mean, even if the track is on a bridge, crammed full of people, hundreds, and they don't know the train is coming because holy shit, a train timetable just fluttered out of the wind into my hands, only I know it. Can't I get off the track?

I can't possibly save them all, there is too many. If I started screaming, the ensuing riot would prevent me and my family from a safe escape and in no way assure anyone else's safe escape. Can't I grab my friends and family and get out of the way of the train?

It's not my fault I have that train timetable.

Am I really required to stand there and get hit?

Really?
posted by Imez at 8:18 PM 11 comments

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Stick to the Script

For the most part, I still refuse to admit there isn't a camera on me. I swear to god I can occasionally hear the soundtrack swelling in the background, if I'm experiencing something especially poignant. And, you know I'm a poignant girl.

Life has always been chipping away at my narrative, trying to reassert itself as callously non-fiction. People not laughing at a punchline, people not feeling ashamed when I invite them to. I remember, this applies, when I went to France after my Senior year, to study French (badly, so badly) at a school there.

There was a Spaniard American gentleman there, also in the program. He was in his mid 70's, always dapper in a blazer, with a wig that I was willing to believe in. Because he was tidy and charming I decided he could be in the story.

He sucked at it. Truly. I was struggling that summer,( I simply must always struggle) with my inadequacies. One summer evening I sat with him on a park bench on the side of an Alp and poured my heart out. It wasn't easy because he kept wanting to talk about his ex-wives, but I was determined to have poetry in this moment. "I'm not a good person. I just don't try hard enough," I said. "I'm just so lazy."

He didn't have any wisdom, and no comfort. He spent the rest of the summer grinning conspiratorially at me and saying, "Here comes the lazy girl." "If I say, 'pass me the salt', will you be too lazy to do it?" "I can't invite you to sit with me. You're not a good person."

In the retelling it sounds like harmless teasing, but it pissed me off beyond all measure. The script was quite clear, "grandfather offers comfort," not "old man is inept bully."

Eventually he got lost on a trip to Paris, and the school's bus left him behind. He, not remembering how to contact the school, alerted both the American and Spanish embassies. He found his way back. My last memory is of him smiling and holding his wig down against the wind during the parting ceremony.

Now here the script reads, "Bloggers enjoy post immensely. All clap."
posted by Imez at 9:57 PM 10 comments

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

My blog, it's just not the sort that gets comments, is it?



Ah well. Here.

This will make you feel good. Really good, no matter what.





posted by Imez at 2:14 PM 8 comments

Amanda

Amanda and I both had babies at the apartment complex. But we didn't talk.

One day she walked up to where I sat with a tiny Smudge on a tiny square of grass outside my door. She had a baby slung under her arm. She said, looking at the ground at my feet, "Wassup. Amanda."

I didn't have any friends who use the term "Wassup" non-ironically before Amanda. I didn't have any friends that listened to rap except as a way to understand artistic urban motivations. And no friends that would think of using the word "hump" in place of "fuck" to protect little ears in the room. I needed a friend like that.

And now I'll tell you of a shit storm, and the woman who is surviving it.

I thought her daughter looked different. Her little head seemed asymmetrical. I learned she had tubing inserted in her skull to drain fluid, and she was cross-eyed. She had been born 3 months premature, (not due to any maternal misdoings).

Amanda and her boyfriend of 10 years spent 3 months at Ronald McDonald House in Portland, caring for their baby through an incubator. The baby came home to our dingy little apartments, healthy but for feeding tubes and soon-to-diagnosed Cerebral Palsy.

Amanda was happy, though. Her baby was alive, she would marry her boyfriend in August, he had a good job, her family was close to her but not so close that their bad habits affected her new life. She was done with parties, uninterested in drugs. Her apartment was spotless, her meals were healthy, and her walls covered in sweetly framed portraits and snapshots of her family.

I went with her one day in July, and we found a wedding dress. She seldom smiles, but she kept grinning at her reflection in the 3-way mirrors. She would buy it after she brought her mom to see it.

Her mom never say it. She died the next day. She collapsed in the shower from an epileptic seizure and never woke. She left 5 children, all teens except Amanda.

And Amanda's 2 year old baby sister.

In the misery of the aftermath, her boyfriend said the wrong thing to her, told her it was time to quit grieving and start taking care of him again. She slapped him. He moved out.

She has been asking forgiveness for 6 months. He still pays for half the apartment and takes the baby on weekends, and so I will not condemn him at a immature douche-bag dick. She loves him, only him, since they were 14. She sleeps with stuffed animals pressed into her back, to trick the emptiness.

She doesn't work, as there is no longer any family to leave her baby with. Her family disintegrated with her mother gone. Her father cannot recover, has no job, and walks around the house he may soon lose, like a ghost. He, in this state, is the main caregiver of the now 3 year old. Her teenage siblings have mostly drifted away. Her 16 year old sister remains in the house, angry, rebellious, incapable of helping.

Amanda is unusual because she is in an utter shit swamp, and none of it was her fault, unless you blame her for who she fell in love with. The slap? She shouldn't have. Although I believe forgiveness and empathy, in it's purest form, was created for a situation like that.

And she never complains. She never asks for anything. Doesn't compare herself to other people. She just keeps surviving. With no one to call for support, losing the two people she needed most within two weeks of each other, one to death and the other to weakness of character (his).

I'm no savior. The best I can do is spend time with her, and pay her to watch Smudge. But I'm no mother or sister or husband.

It has not escaped me, that this life of mine, the one I keep thrashing around in and kicking at and screaming, "MORE! Not enough! Not good enough!!" is everything, all, she ever wanted.
posted by Imez at 12:27 PM 7 comments

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Imez has a political opinion

Before the bridesmaid's dinner, or, drunken sex chat in Mexican restaurant, the bride was trying to remind us who Sarah, her only non-olden-days bridesmaid was. "Blond, pretty, lesbian? I mean, not wearing a sign on her chest or anything, but definitely a lesbian."

Sarah showed up last to the dinner, and was the only one not steeped in thick sick sweet Postum of a Seventh-Day-Adventist Idaho childhood. No matter. She was solid and pretty like a girl who loves horses, spoke with that Jodie Foster lilt I find so completely endearing. She sat right down and started in about Hillary verses Obama. I kept trying to talk about sex instead, cuz, come on, girls night. She deterred long enough from a Sarah Palin rant to efficiently list the ages of her virginity loss, to both genders, then returned to addressing her fears of Palin's RNP speech the night before. I really liked her.

Sarah was a table pounder, passionate, definitely belonged there in Washington DC. She works for a hated hated lobbying firm, the American Beverage something-or-other. Their job is to keep Americans drinking, at a low minimum wage, while enjoying lots of fatty foods. I fucking love that that firm exists. This is her talking about Lindsy Lohan on Fox News.

I will speak carefully and say I do not think she would like to stay at the American Beverage Something-or-other forever.

One day she will do something great, because the ability and burn to do so vibrates in every quick moment and solid step she takes.

This is the great thing she is doing now.

She has created this. I have reason to believe the people who read my blog would like to help her.

My husband's best friend at work makes less than him, even though she holds a higher position. It's because she has to pay for her wife's insurance, and Sean does not. They've been together as long as we have. Doesn't seem fair.

Click on the link, if it doesn't seem fair to you, either.
posted by Imez at 9:07 PM 3 comments

Sunday, November 9, 2008

I'm back, for what it is worth.

Back, and rambling.

Stuck a list to my fridge, "Happy Home Checklist," a daily checklist to fight the loathing. The suspicion that my lazy mothering will hurt Smudge. Checklists are silly. But silly trumps immovable. List includes, "Smudge eat a veggie," "cook 1 meal," "Brush."

I had convinced myself I'm too weak to apply to grad school, and that I am a failure because I won't apply. That failure burns inside, make me project painful wicked heat to everyone around me.

But I want a second baby, and the one I have isn't even two. It isn't wrong to stop and raise them. So why do I feel I've failed? This desperation should not hum in me, startling me awake. Why can't I just wait? Wait and NOT be miserable.

In my head, I asked Dr. Horrible Laura, what to do? And she told me to quit whining. Be a mother, like I chose. Be a grad student later. I hate Dr. Laura.

Let it go. Let the burning cool. Stop blowing the embers with fear and comparisons.

I have a list, you know.

A self help book asked me, "What do you want?"
And for years, no real answer besides, "ummm, be thin. And...um...happy?" Funny how deeply I have always hated women who list those weak lame things as their only goals. Mirror mirror.

Now I have a good list. Real. Some parts of it?
1. A house in the woods.
2. To be pretty
3. To be frequently published.

Other stuff, too. Then the self help book says..."what are you doing every day to make these things real?"


Oh, well, shit.


I'm starting Weight Watchers Wednesday, through no small effort of arrangements.


And I'll make lots of lists.
posted by Imez at 8:22 PM 9 comments

Thursday, November 6, 2008

I went into a mental ward when I was 18. Twice, two separate hospitals.

I wish my parents had come to see me, either time.

I recently asked Mom why they never came to see me, not even after I was discharged. After my final discharge a friend, the bride of the wedding I've written about, took me in. Dad sent her mom some money, though. I couldn't stay long. I was...I was too much for them, needed more help than those two kind women could provide.

Mom said, "Your dad had a thing about...mental...people who were...." and then repeated a sloppy version of a story dad used to tell, about trying to repair phone lines in a mental hospital, how claustrophobic and angry it made him to have all those fucking nutjobs staring at him, at his tool belt. I asked why she didn't come alone, then. She shrugged and said she was sorry.

But once, just this one time, when it was really bad and I'd come home cuz I had no where else to go, even though I knew they didn't want me. This one time, Dad hugged me on the balcony while I cried and he'd never ever done that before and never after and he said, very seriously, "Einstein, he had problems, too you know. What you've got is because you're so smart. Genius and crazy are very close together."

But the next day he screamed at me, called me a fucking little shit, because....I can't remember! I can't remember what I'd done!!!


But he held me that one time!!!!! i'm so grateful, fuck it! It's so stupid but I'm so fucking grateful!!!
posted by Imez at 4:02 PM

I'm failing.
posted by Imez at 2:38 PM

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Reason #eleventy-billion I have social problems.

We took Smudge to Sean's library, that big beautiful college castle, to try and show off her Pretty Pirate Princess number, red skulls woven into cheap black lace, at their employee Halloween party. She hated her itchy dress and refused to sparkle for onlookers. She kept up the doleful howling, pulling the black-laced bodice away from her skin. She also refused to carry the battle ax we bought her. All in all she was a sorry excuse for The Teeny Queenie of Blood.

At the door we met Sean's favorite co-worker, who is a woman, but has the decency to be a lesbian so as to avoid any strained feelings. She had canceled their plans to have a beer last weekend. She was sick.

I inquired to her health. She said she was better and kept talking, saying things that were plenty appropriate and convivial. I assume. I don't remember. I just remember registering her feeling better as a good, comforting thing. Sean probably won't come home sick, then.

That is when I looked at the elevator and thought, "There is an elevator. I'm going to want to be on that." And started walking toward it.

She was still talking. Had been, facing me and everything. But I had gotten my answer. I was done. My brain quit of her. And I swear I even like her.

She gave a small startled reflex and turned to keep up with me as I walked away. I caught myself after only two steps, tried to play it off like I was chasing Smudge (who was securely in her father's arms....lord) but what is wrong with me? I often miss huge chunks of what people say to me because I decide it is extraneous. I'm such a selfish little frig!

Sometimes I feel like I'm a mind-reader, all the time I spend analyzing and prying at people. And I predict nothing more of value is going to come from an interaction, so, surely they're done too. Right? That's really assholic.

Anyway. Happy election day. I fucking hate politics. I'm done.
posted by Imez at 3:58 PM 6 comments

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Tales of the Enchanted Ball Pit


I am not in this picture. But please to note the staggering awesomeness of my television. THAT, my friends, is a genuine DVD player sitting beneath it. Don't be embarrassed if you haven't heard of it. It is a relatively new technology. Oh yeah.

Jesus God. Babies. Babies everywhere. The air thick with the breath of babies.

The trick, I have been told, to a successful party, is the guest list. Inviting people who will help their hostess by entertaining each other. This works well with toddlers. They stand face to face and scream laughter. "I see you have a nose. I also have a nose. NOSES!!!"

A ball pit helps, too.

Their parents, that complicates. I only know so many people with babies, and they don't much know each other. Despite mostly similar backgrounds and interests, they didn't talk much. I circulated among the parents, holding 8 loose conversations at once. I don't know if the parents had fun. But I like to believe I get credit for entertaining their babies as lavishly as I could afford (plastic balls in a kiddie pool, goldfish crackers, wine coolers).

I was grateful to my mother, who knows no such thing as social discomfort, projecting her perpetual cheer from my couch. Today, driving my mother toward her home, she was pinching and swirling the air looking for a word. "Your friends are...they're..." she exhaled, then mumbled a word.

I turned to her. "Did you just say, 'high-faluting'? Did you just call the parents at the party, 'high-faluting'?" And I laughed. Really, really hard, because I have never head that word used in earnest.

She didn't mean it insulting, just didn't know a good synonym for "librarians".

Ah but I was flattered. I have worked so hard, so long, to be considered at home in a high faluting crowd. My next goal is to personally achieve high faluting status, for myself.

I think my DVD player is a magnificent first step.
posted by Imez at 9:19 PM 9 comments

net traffic statistics
AllOnlineCoupons.co.uk