Spring Break 2009

WOOOOHOOOOOO!  Partaaaaaayyyy!!!  Unh-unh-unhh!!  Yeeeaahhhhh!

So there it is.  The full extent of my spring break shenanigans:  two minutes on the blog all hopped up on a heavily-sugared cup of coffee.  Sorry I’m so, just, all disheveled and shit, I just, if I’d known you were coming by, I might have bathed today (she attempts to re-tie her bathrobe and fluff her hair).  Ahem.  What?  No, I didn’t make any bacon today.

ANYHOO.

There’s not much to report except a growing sense of disbelief.  How can we be halfway through spring semester?  How CAN I be almost done with my first year of school?  How, god, HOW???

Note To Self

Dear Doofus,

If you continue to drop your right hand like that when you throw your jab, you will continue to eat left hooks.  You look like you enjoy eating a lot, but we’re just sayin’.  Maybe you could keep that right up there and remember to slip and roll and put some punches together so we don’t end up looking like Mickey Rourke in a dress.

Love and kisses,

Your Face

Whooooaaa, Here She Comes! She’s An ASS-EATAH!

And by she I mean spring semester.  I don’t know why she’s a she, she just is.  I don’t ask why, I just try not to tense up as she sinks her long pointy teeth in my left cheek and twirls me around, my legs flying in circles like a speeding ferris wheel.

But it’s so good.  School is so good.  I am learning things (I think).  About writing (I think) and about life (pretty sure).  For instance, I have learned:

1.  Just because you buy a parking pass for the student lots does not mean that you will actually have parking when you need it.  What?  Parking?  (deprecating laughter like a cascade of golf claps) No, no, no.  Silly girl.  Trix are for kids.  Parking is for faculty and important alumni who give us money.  Not you.
2. That sometimes what I think of my writing and what my teachers think of my writing differs greatly…in a good way.  Whoa.  Didn’t see that coming.
3. The cafe near my building on campus has bacon egg wrap thingies which are YUM.
4. David Mamet has a low forehead.  (more on this later)
5. Once again:  instincts are never wrong and they are never riled up for no reason.  Listen to them.  They know what’s what.

I’m outtie.  Hope all you faithful one or two are doing well out in the big bad world.

OBAMANOS!

Happy Inauguration Day!  Oh, hooray!  

Also, first day of spring semester.  A rather auspicious day for beginning anything, I would think.

HOORAY!  HOORAY!  HOORAY!  Go get some Barack and Michelle!

The Air Out There

Smells funny to me.  When MYH comes in from work, I can smell the outside air on him, and it smells weird.  Hard to describe, kind of like…wet trees.  But trees wet with water from a pond, a sludgy millpond.  Not a whiff of ocean (of course).  Just weird dead moist weeds smell.  

Um.  Can you tell I haven’t been getting out much?  Not yet sure if it’s good or bad, the level of solitude I’ve allowed to extend through this winter break from school.  There always seems to be a point when my alone-ness creeps toward  self-indulgence, and then making the effort to see people, even people I really like, becomes a disturbance.  I have human contact inertia:  if I’m alone, it’s easiest to stay alone.   Is that bad?

Whitman Sampler of MY BRAIN

1.  Do people truly care about what’s on the hot lunch menu at Sidwell Friends?  Really?  HEY!  TEACHAH!  LEAVE THEM KIDS ALONE!

2.  I hate finding a big ol’ ‘NO’ in my email inbox on a Monday,  Monday NOes are like a little stumpy toothless man crouched in the corner, shaking his jowls at me and laughing scornfully.  Pig fucker.  

3.  Halfway through my oatmeal and it hits me:  that play I wrote last fall, and rewrote, and rewrote some more?  That play is a pile of poo with a heart of gold.  That is to say, there’s something there, but it ain’t showing yet because it’s buried about a mile deep in yippy-yappy bullshit.  AGGGHHHH.

4.  Has Chris Matthews gone totally fucknut crazy?  I always thought of him as an irascible uncle, amateur historian, a bit funky-smelling but well-meaning and smart in his way, the kind that would grab you by the shirt collar at Thanksgiving and ask you things like “What did Neville Chamberlain do in 1938?  What did he DO??” – but now.  Whoa.  Just — okay listen, I really don’t want to think about Chuck Todd’s virginity – or lack of, or loss of – in any way at all, no way, no how.  Stop, Uncle Chris.  Stop.  Here – have another Guinness.

5.  I don’t want to dig through the poo.  (see #3)

6.  I wonder if it’s possible that I will ever sit down to work without having to spend at least 45 minutes hypnotizing my brain so that it is not consumed with the thought that a skid mark could write more and better plays than I.  

I will now go and attempt to calm my brain with a loofah and some crunchy organic peanut butter.  Thank you.

Dead Head

In the store, the food store, just cruising through and suddenly got this weird feeling…like someone was watching me, judging the way I handle products then put them back, so I turned, and – YELLO THERE!!!  Pig heads.  Yes.  Whole PIG HEADS, with snout, ears, eyes.  In the frozen meat case, in amongst the tiny game hens and 3-lb. boneless hams.  Yikes!  Welcome to Texas.

I confess I felt a giant EWWW, which is somewhat hypocritical, for I do not scruple to cook me up a pig loin.  But the loins are so much less…expressive. They’re like the Keanu Reeves of meat parts.  And that’s the way it has to be, I do not want my meat trying to emote, or express, or nail the scene.  The scene in which they look at me from their frozen plastic baggie with such horror.  Actually, not horror as much as…surprise and disappointment.  ”Why did you do it?  Why?  Did I not snuffle enough truffles?”

Loose Lips

There’s a slight proportional doubt enveloping my noggin about the whole concept of sharing.  As in, “Thanks for sharing.”  Both sarcastic (“Um, thanks for sharing“) and sincere (“Thanks so much for sharing that with me”).  I guess this also deals with questions about how fast or slow you can authentically get to know someone, how quickly or slowly they can truly know you.

As a younger person, I tended to have the social boundaries of a golden retriever, just ready to play ball with anyone who sort of looked in my direction, and sometimes, when you gallop up to someone who’s not ready, they’ll want to put a boot in your neck.  And then I dated a man who NEVER wanted ANYONE to know ANYTHING about him.  Seriously.  I’ve never met someone who protected his privacy to this degree, and I had to learn to be very careful about what I said if it had anything to do with him.  No talking about him, his life, his projects, his work, NOTHING.  Now, I had already been experimenting with my own boundaries, and I think that keeping a certain amount to yourself can be a really healthy thing, not needing constant approval or validation from others.  So it was good, in a way.  But the intensity of that experience has left me wondering…..when does privacy become disconnect?

Why

…do those trailer park girls go ’round the outside, ’round the outside, ’round the outside?

At Last!

Found a boxing gym!  I think.  Pretty sure.  But hell – I actually don’t care if it’s not the perfect place, it’s good enough for now.  It’s a bit of a drive, but I can make it, I’ll just have to be a bit more organized with my time this semester.  (commence inner derisive cackling)  I can!  I can too be organized with my…uh…yeah, my time, or whatever.  Shutup, Bernie.  Shutup!  (do you guys know Bernie?)  ANYHOO.

Went and did a sample class, and though it is not up to Teacher J’s level of goodness, it’s a damn close second, and will serve quite well to whip my saggy ass into shape.  I was mildly horrified to find out just how far my conditioning had slipped, but here’s the dealio, the true confession, the full disclosure:  I am an ass.  You know why?  Of course you don’t know why.  I’ll tell you why.  Are you ready?  

I’m an ass because during the throes of fall semester, I started smoking again.  I KNOW.  Dumbass, dumbfuck, dumdumdummy.  But I tell you, there is no cure for smoking like jumping rope for ten minutes straight.  Seriously.  The lungs, they do not forget.  Twirl that rope and they come for you like piss-drunk 280-pound MMA superheavyweights and beat. Your. Ass.  Then they sit on your chest, walking their massive ass-cheeks up and down your pulverized trunk, all the while taking hits from a party-size bottle of Jamesons and screaming profanities having to with my mother’s pussy.

So yeah.  No deferred consequences here.  But I’m chipping away at this.  Every day, the lungs scream a little bit less.  And I feel the muscles, stirring around underneath the Christmas cookie fat layer, waking up, “Whuh…?  Hey you kids!  Shut up with those fucking skateboards down there!!”  The whole body is crabby and cranky about the rousting from sweet slumber on our couch, bathed in the warm glow of Fat Tire.   But tough patitties!  I run this show!  You work for me!  My name is….what’s my name?  Huh?  WHAT’S MY NAME, MUTHAHFUCKAH!  

Ow.  That hurt.  And now I will ooze to the bathtub and soak the hungover MMA fighter in the tub, which seems to soothe him, bless his bloodthirsty little heart.