Outta Control

I usually blog at work, unless I feel really motivated late at night and post at home for the next day. So I sit hunched over my desk, cramming blog posts in, clicking over to a ‘work’ screen when I hear the boss approaching, hoping to jeebus no one walks by my cube as I’m typing a witty awe-inspiring comment (more like crazy creepy innuendo-filled spurt of words) on someone’s blog.

I just had a feeling of ‘ahhhh’ because I was getting caught up reading blog posts from y’all over the last few days, and then I realized…

I hadn’t posted today.

And I had nothing to say that didn’t have to do with how I’m loathing work, or the amount of caffeine-free diet coke I drink in a day, or how gassy I feel because of all the damn veggies I’m eating, or how much I want to roll the members of ‘Eagles of Death Metal’ into a ball and have crazy drunken sex with them, and boy isn’t it hot out today and when will I write the Great American Whatever so I can have summers off to lounge by a pool and eat crazy melon balls soaked in vodka.

Ever have one of those days?

Go Get ‘Em, Tigers

(Our power has gone out twice today, and I’ve rebooted my computer half a dozen times. If I can’t post this thing before the next outage, it’s vodka time.)

Sergei took the kids and me to a Detroit Tigers game this past weekend. We’ve been watching them this season pretty regularly, and they’ve surprised us by actually WINNING more than they’ve lost. We had high hopes for our game, it was a nice day, no rain, and what happened? We LOST 9-0. Sheah…nice. Here are 10 Thoughts About That Day:

1) Detroit needs more sprucing up downtown. Sure, they’ve torn down some of the burned-out buildings, put Comerica Park and Ford Field there, Greektown isn’t far, Hockeytown Café is charming, but it’s still a motley collection of crumbling brick, broken windows, and confusing streets. But I will say this, though…the homeless beggers were the nicest and most polite that I’ve ever encountered.

2) Comerica Park is a far cry from the Tiger Stadium I remember as a kid. Tiger Stadium had the basics…baseball, beer, hot dogs, bathrooms. (I’m sure there were other things, but that’s all I remember, and really all you need.) Tiger Stadium was a white behemoth, and sat squarely at an intersection in a no-frills kind of way. Comerica Park, on the other hand, is an open brick and steel structure with a carousel and a ferris wheel housed in it, sushi for sale, yards of daquiris, and larger-than-life tigers and baseball bat statues gracing the entrances. It’s plush, it’s lush, it’s glitzy. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice, and we all had a good time, but it’s not what I remember baseball being. No one watched the game. They were too busy standing in line for five-dollar beers and Styrofoam sombreros full of nachos to notice the action. Sigh.

3) There’s always one Drunk Naked Guy who berates the people around him for not doing ‘The Wave’. Ours went home with a hellova good sunburn.

4) On days when the temperature is 80 degrees and higher, cold bottles of water should be free. ‘S’all I’m sayin’.

5) We blew several hundred dollars on tickets, parking, food, souvenirs, and the like. The LEAST you can do is give us all a free hat. Running out of hats on Free Hat Day is no excuse. First 10,000? No way. EVERYONE gets a hat or no one does. Plan better next time, Comerica Park.

6) Some women have shoulders that make them look pregnant. They just do. I’m glad I didn’t ask the woman in front of me when she was due, because it was obvious when she stood up that she had no bun in her oven. Sorry, lady.

7) Wearing high-heeled sandles at a baseball game is a very foolish thing to do. So is not putting on sunscreen. So is talking to your friend in the next section over on your cell phone for most of the game.

8) Hot dog and peanut and beer vendors that roam the stadium deserve a raise, especially when they deal with your drunk ass by smiling and nodding politely.

9) Ordonez only looks like Eddie Vedder on television. Up close? Not so much.

10) We LOST. WTF? What, am I your bad luck charm now? And then the Tigers lost Monday night to the Yankees. Pfffffft… Please, don't be like every other Detroit sports team...the Red Wings didn't make it past the first playoff series, the Lions...well, don't get me started. The Pistons are one game down and damned if I can watch the rest of it. C'mon Tigers, get your collective asses in gear and your cojones cupped up and win one for the Mona. Sorry, that was harsh. Pretty please. With a cherry on top.

Poetry Friday: The Word is "CAVE"

Unending thanks to the handsome and talented (or is that talented and handsome?) Jeremiah for today's Group Masturbation Blogging/Poetry Friday "Word". That little word set off such a firestorm in my brain this morning, woo-wee!, it was hard to keep the thing from running away with me.

Please feel free to pepper your blog posts today with your creative take on the word 'cave'. If you have a picture of a cave, post it. If you've visited a cave, tell us about it. If you wrote a story or a limerick, or a sexy little num-bah, post it!

I have three offerings today...a story (a surprisingly long one, WTF?), a small-write, and a wee poem that started out in my head dirtier than it ended up. (Yeah, sorry.)

Have a nice LOOONG Memorial Day weekend, y'all!


Jeux Sans Frontiers

Living at Station Q2 was like living in a cave.

It was dark. It was cold. It was soaked in the kind of lonely that leads one to wonder if there’s life outside the walls, and would you go crazy insane waiting to find out.

We’d covered the walls of the Inner Dome with remembrances…photos of loved ones, candy wrappers, pictures torn from magazines and the 1972 World Book Encyclopedia collection from the Research Lab. Between checking the wind gauges, extracting core samples, monitoring the ComStat equipment and expeditions to the penguin roost, life at the South Pole was like living in the college dorms…minus the rampant nakedness.

But not all the rampant nakedness.

Francois hogged the covers, and I often found myself bare-ass naked in the pitch. Which I didn’t mind so much, but the dark, the unending, suffocating dark, made the cold seem colder, and I’d have to roll Francois over to extract what little snip of blanket I could pull out from under him. He’d usually wake up mumbling ‘Mon dieu…wot ees eet?’, and I’d cover up quickly as he turned over, then rub his naked shoulder and whisper “Shhhh…c’est bon.” I liked the fact that he shaved every week. Most of the guys didn’t. Not that I didn’t like beards, but there was something about Francois’ face that demanded hairless attention.

Y’know those movies, those chick flick movies, where the American girl meets the French man in Paris and they fall in love and then “trouble ensues” and they have to fight to save their relationship despite her ex-boyfriend coming into town, his snooty parents, and the culture clash that sends them worlds apart? I never understood those movies. I’m not much of a girly-girl, and it always seemed to me that those movies were exactly what we didn’t need to see. It’s hard enough to maintain a relationship, the last thing anyone needs is Hollywood proof that there’s always a ‘happy ending’. Because there usually isn’t.

I came here with Jean-Luc. My husband. My partner. My lover. We thought it would be exciting, in that post-collegiate rush of ‘what-to-do’, to sign on for the 12-month South Pole Expedition. Professor Goddard had enticed us with promises of exciting experiments, a location where the dean was never breathing down our necks, where cargo loads of beef and wine were dropped off regularly (for free!). We didn’t consult each other, we simply signed up on our own and then talked about it one night over dinner. Two garage sales and one Bon Voyage Party later, here we were.

Jean-Luc would still be alive if it hadn’t been for those cargo loads of wine.

That’s not entirely true. It was the wine and Patrick.

Well...that's not entirely true either.

I hadn’t suspected a thing, the schedules here being what they are…up 20 hours, down 20, sometimes 14, sometimes 36 hours if satellite maintenance was on the docket. You never know week to week when you’ll sleep, when you’ll have to work. It was dumb luck, simple dumb luck, that I crashed in on them in Bunk C when I made a wrong turn at the Hydro-Garden. I always thought Jean-Luc’s fantastic love-making skills were partly due to me, and the fact that I was his first American girlfriend. When I realized that he’d had more than his share of American boyfriends, well, that stabbed my gut so hard I almost tore a hole in the Outer Dome trying to escape the scene.

Later, at Francois’ birthday party, Jean-Luc didn’t even talk to me. He just looked at me from across the cafeteria, with that wistful puppy-expression of his, all pouty and stupid. I flirted with Francois, partly to make Jean-Luc jealous (as if), partly because it was Francois’ birthday, and partly because the week before, Francois and I had had a long session of dry-humping in the air lock.

Yeah. My bad. But not really.

Francois and I had made an instant connection, starting with the plane ride to the Station. We ‘clicked’. We knew there was something primal and sensual between us, sipping thermoses of Starbucks on the long flight, touching each other ‘accidentally’ during our animated conversations, making eye contact far too long. There was bound to be sex.

After we sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ to Francois (the latter in French, which I mostly mouthed as my French isn’t really that good), I decided to get drunk. Jean-Luc was being a total prick, and Francois was so cute, so sexy. We attacked two pallets of wine that night, several dozen of us grabbing sultry bottles of the fine French vino, uncorking them with flamboyant flourishes. I saw Jean-Luc with several bottles of his own, and I hoped he’d choke on them.

My ability to flirt is only bested by my ability to hold my wine. In both cases, the longer I go on, the sexier I become. Francois was easy. Luckily, so was I.

I didn’t notice when Jean-Luc left. I didn’t hear the air lock release or the sound of two bodies venturing out into the frozen block of ice we called home. I didn’t suspect a thing until the next morning, when I finally stumbled to my bed from the warmth of Francois’ bed, to find Jean-Luc missing.

He wasn’t hard to find.

He and Patrick had made it to the Rover. They were found naked. Embracing. One bullet hole each. I didn’t even know Jean-Luc knew how to shoot, he always was such a sissy about such things.

No one blamed me for turning to Francois for comfort. Francois made the first move, the second move, and by that time I was so tired that I collapsed into Francois, where several re-ups later, we’re receiving cargo loads of beef and wine on a regular basis, screwing in the air locks, tacking Flake wrappers to the cafeteria walls, and walking around in fur-lined slippers.

We joke that we’re like bears in a cave, rooting and eating and shitting, doing the work that has to be done so we can fuck and sleep.

Little does Francois know that I have a special shipment coming for him, something French and sweet and heady.

I wonder if I can teach him how to shoot?



I Guess, Maybe, Hazel

If it weren’t for the colour of his eyes….
Or the way he could recite entire chapters of Hemingway in our leased post-coital bed….
Or the way his French toast tasted….
He knew I’d cave.

Ever since Stephen introduced us at the Gallery opening, I tried to avoid him. I knew it would end this way. With us fucking, leaving, finding, fucking some more.

I’d push him away, and he’d come back like a Slinky recoil, pushing me back, til I rippled and expanded and pushed him against the wall or the bed, until my body won.

Never winning the game.

All it took was that look, that sideways glance and smile, those eyes that were sometimes greenish-blue, sometimes brown, sometimes like the sky after a storm. All it took was that look.

I’d cave.

I’d ripple and expand and push him again and again and again against the wall, the bed, until my body won.



Wonder
Give me your hand.
You see?
That’s the difference.
The warmth.
Do you feel it?
Do you like that?
I like that.
Fingers at the entrance.
The dark like all darkness.
Moist.
Flushed.
Rush.
Deeper.
Exploration.
You see?
You call it
my cave.
But it's
More.

Tomorrow’s Poetry Friday “Word”…63.4 million…and McSweeney’s Rawks My Wurl

1) The handsome and talented (or is that talented and handsome?) Jeremiah has chosen The Word for tomorrow’s Poetry Friday. GO SEE IT NOW. I read it and got all tingly down my back, my hands started sweating, and felt Twilight-Zoned. There’s another meaning in that also. Tomorrow, feel free to include The Word in your blog post, however you wish…poetry, video, haiku, sculpture, tattoo, whatever floats your boat. Or paints your boat. Something like that.

2) Confession time: I don’t watch American Idol. Yeah, I know, I’m the last bastion of those heel-diggers who refuse to conform. I catch recaps on the interweb, and after they voted Chris off, I figured McPhee would win...she of the curves and hair and decent voice. Well, I was totally wrong. Grey-haired Taylor won the pot. I'm fine with that. BUT if he tries to make a career of sounding vaguely like Dave Matthews, like half the recording acts out there nowadays, well, Taylor? I’m gonna knock on your door and knock you out (mama said). Anyway, it’s reported that this week’s American Idol contestants received 63.4 million votes…more votes than in any Presidential election. Now understand, American Idol lets you vote more than once, and the Presidential election, well, hopefully you got to vote at all. But what does that say about us, I mean rilly? That we care more about ‘bread and circuses’ than how our country is run? Fer cryin’. If you don’t vote, if you’ve never voted in an election, from national government to your local school board, you should. Because with the way thing are going, we’ll be lucky if they don’t take away MORE rights and prohibit women, African Americans, and the poor from voting...again. Freedom of the Press is already being given a beating with a billy club, what’s next? (Soap box being shoved under the stairs.) Here endeth the political.

3) I do watch 'Top Chef', and my alternate Fantasy Boyfriend, Harold Dieterle, WON last night! Woo-hoo! So, to honor him, I gave myself a good once-over with him as the fantasy (I was his dessert...yeah.) Oh yeah, that reminds me...uh, guys? Listen, I know most of you are pretty handy, but I just wanted to remind you...if you don't cook, LEARN. 'Cause women love men who can cook...in the kitchen as well as the bedroom. Just sayin'....

4) I squealed six minutes ago. That’s because my order of McSweeney’s #19 arrived. OH MAN. You would dig this. McSweeney’s is a quarterly (or so) periodical, chock full of amazing stories from amazing writers. And there’s always a twist…along with the book might be a DVD of independent film clips, or a package of junk mail, or, like today’s precious cargo, a cigar box with war-time information, random photos, and GWBush’s dental records. Not kidding. I giggled with glee and vinegar when I riffled through the box, and can’t wait to tuck the kids in tonight so I can ‘tuck’ into my box. (That sounded dirty, didn’t it? I can make ANYTHING sound dirty...I can make the Friday Poetry/Group Masturbation Blogging Word sound dirty. And I’m sure you can too.)

Hasta manana!

Drive west on Sunset to the sea….

Why does anyone need a Hummer? WHY? (I’m talking about the vehicle, not the sexual act…I can TOTALLY see why a ‘hummer’ for my lover is important.)

There’s a rash, a gaggle, a host of Hummers in this area, and they scare the pee outta me. NO ONE should have a car that huge, that tall, that menacing. When they’re sitting in those things, they see OVER my car. If they got their iTunes blaring and eatin’ a Krispy Kreme and daydreaming about Jessica Alba, what are the chances that they’ll see my itty-bitty tail-lights flash red and STOP before they run over me?

Drrr.

OTOH, I totally want an RV. Yes. I want to pack up Sergei and the kids, throw some paper plates in the cabinet, put the cat in vet-storage, and head out on !The Open Road! for a summer of adventures. Granted, this is the same daydream where I’m a school teacher and have summers off. But STILL…it’s MY dream, dammit. I wanna bunk down in a campground, sit outside with the stars overhead and a fire going, and then retreat to the comfort of my A/C-chilled double-wide king-sized RV for a night of liquor and Jon Stewart on the telly. Is that so wrong?

A Summer Smoker Underground

1) From After School Snack comes this link. I called the art gallery and they have some of the books left, I think I’m gonna call back and have them sent to me. I love art that assaults my senses. That’s why I love Rene Magritte. And Bruegel. And…and….

2) And speaking of senses, I’m trying to find a ‘hook’ for a ‘book’. Hear me out…Sergei and I watched the movie "Everything is Illuminated" and really enjoyed it. The movie is based on the book by Jonathan Safran Foer. I paged through the free preview pages on Amazon and saw that the ‘hook’ (SPOILER) is that the book is written by a Russian who’s learning English with the help of a thesaurus. So his language is in the ballpark, but comes out sounding, er, slanted sometimes. I just ordered the book (yesh, I’m a sucker for free preview pages) and should get it in a couple days. It reminded me of another favourite book of mine, “Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess. A good friend in college loaned it to me, and I gushed so much about it that he ended up GIVING it to me. (SPOILER) “Clockwork Orange” is written in a sort of bastardized Russian-ish language called Nadsat (and comes complete with dictionary in the back!). I love that. I love that I have to WORK at it. (This doesn’t apply to everything…if reading the local paper took me that much work, I’d head down to their offices with a crowbar and teach them a thing or two about ‘readership’. But I digest.) So now my goal is to write ‘The Great American Paperback’ with a ‘hook’…something that the critics will go “AH! Wunderbar!”, and that will sell millions of copies and that Oprah will beg me to be on her show but which I will politely decline but will do some sort of film-montage of my life that she can show to her audience and they will all go, “AH! Wunderbar!”, before Oprah gives them all copies of my book and new SUVs.

3) Donald Fagen has haunted my dreams, dammit. I went to sleep singing one of his songs and woke up singing a different one of his songs. I’ve got two of his cds and one Steely Dan here at work today, and I plan to ignore the programmers today to concentrate on Don’s fine lyrical stylings.

4) This is how boring my life has become…Target is having a sale! And I’m EXCITED BEYOND BELIEF! And apparently capitalizing (aka shouting) way too much in my blogging.

5) Helpful Hint: If the cat barfs in the basement, and both you and your spouse ignore it long enough, not only will it stop smelling, but it’ll harden to the consistency of sandstone, hence making it easier to throw away.

6) I’m now The Coach’s Wife. Sergei’s heading up both the Boy-child’s and the Girl-child’s baseball teams this summer. Which, actually, makes me pretty randy. (And I will refrain as much as I can from joking about being a 'ball-handler'. Oops, guess there was no refraining, was there?)

7) I really hope Al Gore's documentary makes a huge buzz. A huge splash. I still have a geek-politico crush on him after Al was on the cover of Rolling Stone with what appeared to be a summer sausage in his trousers. Yeah, baby, talk dirty to me, tell me about global warming, stud….

There’s a hole in the bottom of the sea

I’m having
A day
(you know those days)
when you’re not sure

not
sure

if you’ll post something witty
or post something stupid
or post
at
all

I read my post from last Friday, and honestly, it was as if someone else had written it. I don’t remember the actual writing of words, although I remember sitting at the computer keying as quietly as I could, so Boy-child could sleep off his stomach flu/fever ennui.

Does that mean I’m not a ‘conscious’ writer? Am I “unconscious”?

Or simply ‘forgetful’?

Playing catch-up with everyone’s posts today, while fighting the dogs of work with a baseball bat. The project I was working on last Thursday that MUST get done is now (surprise!) shelved for yet ANOTHER ‘most important’ project that involves me clicking on hundreds of internet links to make sure they work.

Click.
Looks okay.
Click.
Looks okay.
Click.
Looks okay,
Click.
Crashes…put on problem report.
Click.
Looks okay.

Are ya bored yet? ‘Cause I sure am, bored frickin’ silly and still nowhere near being done, being done by being bored.

Sergei and I took the kids to an arts and crafts fair this weekend, and now I’m sporting a lovely sunburn on the tops of my breasteses. Who knew the sun would be so strong and the day so lovely? Not me. I’m wearing a wine-coloured shirt, and the sunburn looks even worse today.

I have yellow skin.

In that it doesn’t have a pink tone.

Mine is yellow. Ish. More tan than pink.

Which lends itself quite nicely to tanning. Burning too. But tanning it loves most of all.

I have a constant tan line where my wristwatch band lays.
And where my sandles open.

I apparently have a ‘tan’ spot elsewhere on my body that only Sergei can see when I’m positioned just right.

I can see my sunburn in the small mirror propped against my work pc. It’s the only way I can see if someone’s snuck up behind me, and hopefully I can click on something to hide the blog post I’m working on, or the porn poetry I’m reading, or the dinosaur comics.

Now the mirror’s saying, “Cut the crap Mona, you have nothing to say today and you’re rambling. Get back to work.”

Shit.

It’s right.

I could sure use a nap, tho.

Poetry Friday: the Word is "YELLOW"

I'm home with Boy-child today. He got over the puke-i-ness for the most part, but then spiked a fever (100.4 in one year, 101.3 in the other...I don't think those ear thermometers are entirely reliable). So he got another day off, and is still sleeping. Lucky boy.

The Poetry Friday/Group Blogging Masturbation Word is "Yellow". Feel free to explore this word, to caress it, to lick it, to put it on a pedestal, to cover it up with a blanket. Neatness need not be applied to this word, go ahead and git dirty.

I have just two contributions today, the beginning of a story and a Five-Minute Free-Write, done this morning while waiting for the 'magic time' to call Boy-child's teacher to ask about homework. She said the kids are dropping like flies, about a quarter of her class is sick. Ah springtime, when the germs flourish.

Anyway, on to Poetry Friday, and the word "yellow".


Leaded

It was a yellow meal.

Baked chicken, buttered noodles, corn, buttered biscuit.

Ever since that bullet got lodged in mom’s brain, and she lost her sense of smell, she’d been cooking “Meals With a Theme”. She was into colours lately, monochromatic, rainbow, or in the style of a famous painter (you should have seen the Chagall Dinner, all splashes of beets and mounds of peas and nearly raw beef. Ugh. She knows I hate beets).

Mom grabbed her nightly glass of Piesporter and ka-clomped to the table, dragging her bum leg in that graceful way she’d managed to perfect.

“Guess what’s for dessert? Lemon pie!” Mom giggled at herself and tucked into her plate.

Brian and I giggled with her. The change in our Mom had been unbelievable and quick. Where we used to compare her, silently, in the basement den, to “Mommy Dearest” (even down to the wire coat hangars, I swear to god), now she was this happy, carefree woman who sang when washing dishes and took fifteen minutes out of every evening to brush my hair.

I have to say the hair brushing was my favourite part. I would take the bench from Mom’s makeup table and put it near her bed. She’d sit on the edge of the bed and I’d sit on the bench, my back to her. She’d gotten this soft-bristled brush in France, on her honeymoon with the man I should call Dad but now called Fucktard Criminal #A872938. She’d take my mess of waist-length hair and bunch it in a ponytail, and brush just the ends, until it didn’t pull and the tangles were out. Then she’d loosen the ponytail and brush the back, from my part down, gently. The sides next, carefully over my left ear and even more carefully over what remained of my right ear. She suggested after ‘That Night’ that I part my hair so it fell over that particular deformity, covered it, because high school is cruel enough without having teenagers constantly stare and point at you and whisper viciously to their friends as you walk down the hall to Civics class.

Small towns are hard to grow up in. They’re even harder when you’re known as the daughter of a psycho.


Five-Minute Free-Write

I did this thing as a kid, as did all the kids round here, with dandelions. You’d pick one, stick it under your friend’s chin, and ask, do you like butter? And if the dandelion made a yellow cast on their skin you’d say, ‘Yes, you do!” Growing up I lived in the country on a small plot of land, about 3 acres, most of it trees and lawn. Every spring it would turn yellow with the bobbing heads of dandelions. My dad would take a bucket, grab my siblings and me, and we’d pick the sunny things, pull them off at the stem top, plop into the bucket. It would take us a long time to pick, and at the end, dad would very seriously say, “Now, this handful (taking a good hundred or so in two hands) we’ll fry up and eat. The rest goes into wine.” Mom made the best fried things, and if we were lucky, we’d have fried dandelion tops with fried morels, if we went mushroom hunting that day in the woods across the road, where an abandoned, crumbling house made the perfect soil for finding the spongy pointy-topped beauties. We didn’t know how much of a delicacy those mushrooms were, how


Have a good weekend y'all...be well!

The Sick Bowl, Hippies, and Tomorrow’s Poetry Friday

1) First things first…The Word for tomorrow’s Poetry Friday (aka Group Blogging Masturbation) is: YELLOW. You have no one to blame for this but me. ‘Yellow’ has come up a lot lately, in various forms, and what the hey. Feel free to post poetry, story line, photos, clay sculptures, whatever, in your post tomorrow.

2) The Hippies won Amazing Race 9! I”ve never been happier to see a reality tv result. The Frat Boys gave them a run for their money, but I felt nothing but delighted schadenfreude when the Frat Boys came in number two and mumbled through their droopy mouths how brains won. Yeah, dammit. On another reality tv tangent, I heard The Hobbit was voted out of American Idol last night. Whaddya wanna bet that McPhee chick wins the title?

3) Boy-child woke up at 2:30 a.m. this morning, grabbed the sick bowl, and made it into the bathroom before expelling the contents of his stomach. I was up with him the rest of the night, with occasional naps in my own bed. Sergei is home with him today and I’ll take tomorrow. I HATE when the kids are sick, at the mercy of some unseen gremlin in their belly. But dealing with it is calming for me. Everything else fades in importance when your kids are sick, and I find my ‘calming voice’ and actually succeed in feeling like I’m doing something worthwhile. However, I’m at work and feeling extremely shagged and fagged and fashed. I will hopefully sleep well tonight, oh yes.

We’ve got Nada THREE

Crazy today, so a quick list.

1) Two of my favourite bloggers are calling it quits, at least for now, at least for a while: boredhousewife and my darling husband. I am sad, but know full well I can still contact/seduce both of them. (Together, even.)

2) It finally stopped raining in Michigan, but we’re expecting thunderstorms this afternoon, just in time to rain out the soccer party. That should be illegal. That and getting your period ON your wedding day.

3) I predicted this. I also predicted he’ll lose his shirt. No prenup? Are ya daft?

4) Tonight’s the finale for “Amazing Race 9” AND the first part of the finale for “Top Chef” Who’d-a thunk I’d get into reality tv? There must be something wrong with me.

5) I wore tights and a skirt today (oh yea, and a shirt that shows my cleavage). My legs haven’t felt tights for probably a year. I either wear pants/jeans or go bare-legged in skirts. I feel so…so…grown-up.

6) And now…a little juggling.

Biorhythms

Do you believe in those things? To me, they’re only slightly more reliable than horoscopes, in that horoscopes are the fortune cookies of daily life and biorhythms at least chart by a number of factors, using some sort of voodoo witchcraft juju based on my exact birthday and not the birthdays of everyone in the same 30-day window.

But it’s all prolly bunk.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to believe in it, though.

So I’m down in “intellect”, down “emotionally”, and sliding down now “physically”. Fack.

Try it yerself.

I haven’t been myself the last few days, things are pissing me off in general. Not one big thing, just little things. Like:

1) People cutting me off in traffic and then I see there’s a wee little head in a carseat in the back, and I think, You pulled that shitty lane-change move with your kid in the car?
2) Girl-child has ruined every pair of jeans she owns by crawling around in the rocks on the playground. She looks like the Little Matchgirl in her hole-y pants. I’m tired of patching them and refuse to spend $20 to buy her one new pair that she will, inevitably, ruin the first day.
3) The toilet hates me. Don’t ask.
4) I’m due a salary review and the boss is conveniently either gone or putting it off. Said salary review will produce the minimal increase in salary which will NOT make up for the increased insurance costs we were saddled with starting last month. ($50 more a month for the same coverage…at least we have insurance but DAMN.)
5) The internets is hating me.
6) Boy-child is wrestling with his inner demons, trying to grow balls/spine to confront a bad kid in his class and also his art teacher, who gave bad kid Boy-child’s art project by mistake. I’m wrestling my own demon trying not to run interference with art teacher and ‘make it all better’. Trying to teach self-confidence is hard.
7) It’s been raining every goddamn day for what, 10 days? And expected to rain every day through Sunday at least.
8) Poor body image. Not helped by checking out my naked body in the full length mirror OR finding new gray hairs sproinging from the top of my head.
9) At work, I feel useless. Not much to do, and ideas I have to make more money/save money are gently put aside in a pile by the management czars, to never be looked at again.
10) Summer’s coming and I want all three months off…paid, with benes. HAH.

I need a stupid movie. I need to watch something inane and funny and side-splitting, like “Jackass: The Movie”, or “Dodgeball”, or “Tommy Boy”. Have a pizza and a nap. Then win the lottery and flip off some people who deserve it.

Or I’ll just watch this again. Or even this.

Thwarted

The internets is be hating me today.

Trying to compose or reply to a yahoo email…there’s no box for the message. No. Message. Box. WTF?

Youtube is completely unavailable to me.

Graphics aren’t building on some sites, but are on others.

S-L-O-W.

Sigh.

On the flip side, I had a wonderful weekend and an extraordinary Mother’s Day…breakfast in bed, gifts and cards and kisses and hugs, a book sale at the library with Girl-child, play time with Boy-child, alone-time with Sergei. I volunteered to make prime rib instead of fighting Mother’s Day Restaurant Crowds, and it turned out pretty yummy. I made a trifle for dessert and also tried my hand at making mojitos…two bowls of dessert, two huge classes of hootch. So yeah, all in all, a pretty damn good day!

Hope y’all had a nice weekend!

Poetry Friday – the Word is “KNUCKLE”

Chunk O Funk chose an absolutely fascinating and thought-provoking word for this week’s Poetry Friday/Group Blogging Masturbation exercise.

Knuckle.

My first thought was actually pretty dirty but, lo and behold and ta-da, none of my posts today are particularly dirty...I have no idea why. I have three contributions today: the start of a story, a Free Write, and a recipe. Please, someone do a dirty one...PLEASE!

Feel free to use this word in your blogging today, in any way you choose…poetry, haiku, limerick, photo, audio post, porn, spirograph art, whatever floats yer boat, piques your interest, or gives you that tingly feeling ‘down there’.

Have a good weekend, y'all!


J’aurais Toujours Faim De Toi

I’m always hungry.
Let me rephrase that.
I’m never NOT hungry.

Most folks have a little switch that connects their stomach to their brain, so that when they eat a meal, the stomach gives the brain a high sign and yells, “Hey! I’m full!”

Not me.

I mean, I have one, a switch like that, but it’s permanently stuck in the ‘On’ position, the oh-my-god-I’m-starving position.

I’ve tried drugs. Prescriptions, I mean. They were supposed to tell my gut that I was constantly full. All they did was make me throw up, give me headaches, and cause my leg hair to fall out. Leg hair. Fall. Out. Now if THAT’S not the weirdest side effect ever…just my leg hair, in these weird patches, like flesh crop-circles. My legs are my best feature, at least I think so, and I threw those damn pills in the toilet.

I can’t explain the feeling of constant hunger. It’s like a burning hole in your belly, sucking the joy and life from your arms and legs, spinning your head. It’s like being shackled and constantly pawing the ground for a hacksaw or a razor, and you’d gladly cut your limbs off just so you stop feeling pain. It’s like being attacked by a swarm of bees, jabbing and stinging, and you just want to get away, dammit, get AWAY, and you can’t move from the tar that’s sticking your feet to the ground.

I’ve never known a time when I felt full. Even as a kid, I was constantly pulling open the refrigerator door or raiding a cupboard for more, more, and more. My mom used to make two bottles for me when I was a baby, every time, I’d suck down both and cry for more. She’d do this rocking thing, my belly over her knee, pressing hard, that would tide me over to the next feeding. Why she didn’t give me away or throw me in the river near our house, I’ll never know. I must have been a handful, but she just smiled and pressed her own belly with her knuckles. It wasn’t until I got older that I knew she was holding in her own hunger, pushing the pain back, feeling her backbone from the front, pushing like she was trying to stop a train…doing something…anything…to keep the growling wolf at bay.

I ate the strangest crap.

I ate an entire tub of frozen Cool-Whip standing in front of the big chest freezer.

I took a loaf of bread and made peanut butter and butter sandwiches and used every slice, even the ends. I ate them all in one sitting.

Dumped a box of cornstarch into a bowl, mixed it with milk, and ate it like cereal.

I once took a half-empty can of Crisco, dumped in a bunch of confectioners sugar, some cream, some chocolate chips, a banana, strawberry jam, and three spoons of caramel syrup. I stirred it up with my hands in that tin can, scraping the sides, rolling the oily goodness into something resembling ice cream, and ate it by the handful. This was when Crisco cans had to be opened with a can opener, and it wasn’t until my knuckles started stinging that I realized with every bite, I was digging my flesh into the sharp sides of the can while eating and eating, not aware of the pain at all, just aware of the next lump of sugar, the next smooth mouthful, the next hope that my belly would stop roiling and churning for fulfillment. Mom bandaged my hands and threw away the can, all the while saying, “I know it hurts, baby, I know.”

It wasn’t my hands she was talking about.

Because I watched her as she pressed her knuckles into the fabric of her blouse, pressing, hard, so hard I thought she would cry, but she didn’t. And neither did I.



Five Minute Free Write

Such an underappreciated body part, the knuckle, known more for fighting than for loving. Except when it comes to ring-wearing, and the gold band being carefully maneuvered over knuckles to the resting place at the base. In college I used my knuckles for rapping on doors and doing ‘wonder twin powers…activate!’ with my close friends. And actually for fighting. Karate class. Mr. Ng. One semester. I wore my best friend’s judo uniform. Mr. Ng put us through painful, wonderful hell, and I loved him for it. After the first week, he’d start warm-ups by making us do push-ups on our knuckles. It was uncomfortable at first, but then as the weeks went by, there was a strength and power that came from it. We were paired up with the same person each class, and my partner was this tall, lanky, shy guy with the most incredible dimples I”ve ever seen. We’d do knuckle pushups side-by-side, then Mr. Ng would make us do stretching exercises, our arms and legs, I would stand with my back against my wall with my hands out and lift one leg towards my face, my partner put his hands on my thigh, my calf, and would push the leg up with me, then switch legs, smiling with that look that said, ‘You’re so vulnerable right now, with your girlhood exposed like that, but my momma taught me to be a gentleman and instead of touching you ‘down there’ when you’re spread eagle, I’m just gonna smile like this, the way I know you like it.’ The class



A Recipe
My mom used to eat pigs knuckles. I don’t know how or why she did, but it always grossed me out. I typed “pigs knuckles” into a search engine this morning and found this recipe. I won’t ever make it, but I would definitely try it if YOU ordered it. I do so love pork rinds, and this isn’t too far a stretch.

Deep-Fried Pigs’ Knuckles (Crispy Pata)

1 pig knuckle, about 2 lbs.
4 cups water
1 bay leaf
1 T. salt
oil for frying (enough to cover)
Salt and pepper to taste
½ c. vinegar
3 cloves mashed garlic

Boil pig knuckle in water. Add bay leaf and salt. Cook until tender. Drain and deep fry in hot oil until skin is crispy. Season with salt and pepper. Combine vinegar and garlic to make a sauce and dip pig knuckle in sauce.

Crumbs, and Tomorrow’s Poetry Friday Word

1) The sexy and handsome Chunk O Funk has chosen The Word for tomorrow’s Poetry Friday (aka Group Blogging Masturbation). Go to his place to find it. I’m not gonna tell you, as you must experience the man, the myth, the legend, for yourself. But it’s a killer word. I’m already thinkin’ dirty thoughts…and some clean ones….

2) Wardrobe Malfunction…remember how pleased I was that my new mechanic didn’t stare at my blossoming décolletage? Well, the strappy tank number I put on today (under a sweater, mind you) is poppin’ my breasteses all out like crocuses in April. My sweater ain’t coverin’ it, and as I am hot (both in temperature and, well, hotness), I refuse to button the damn thing all the way up. Looks like the guys get some extra sweetmeats today.

3) Everyone’s talking about Chris Daughtry today. I don’t watch the show, but I do catch internet clips, and he was my hands-down favorite to win. He’ll still get a killer record deal though. And half the female viewership will want to bed him. Not bad, son, not bad.

4) On another reality tv bend, The Hippies are STILL in it! Last night Girl-child asked me which of the two I like best, and I couldn’t answer her, as my perfect Hippie Bed-Mate would be a tasteful mélange of both of them…or possibly a sandwich with Mona in the middle.

5) What is Blogger’s problem lately? First it won’t let me into any blogs, then it won’t let me see comments. Is this some DoS thing like Blue Security pulled off? Daaaaammit.

6) This NSA thing, well, really, what business is it of theirs? What else is the guv’mint doing that we should be aware of? Monitoring my internet habits? Oh wait, they’re already doing that….

7) Kevin Smith rawks. Just wanted to say that.

8) Yeah. No shit.

9) Catholics can’t use in-vitro?

10) Jeremiah’s got a story goin’…check it out.

10 Things About….

Cynical Girl tagged me for a crazy meme, which is good ‘cause I’ve been feeling like I wanted to dish some more personal stuff to youse all.

Here are 10 Weird Facts About Mona

1. Every night before I go to sleep, I lie in bed and feel my hipbones. Over and over. Just to make sure I still have them.

2. Malted milk balls…the one food I can’t stand. However, I’ve come to realize that if I suck on them and let them dissolve in my mouth, I don’t gag so much. Sucking, no gagging…a-ha, that explains that other thing….

3. In college, I sent a nasty letter to the new girlfriend of my ex-boyfriend, detailing some true, honest, and pretty damning events of his life. It was anonymous. She broke up with him. I consider that ‘a job well done’. Don’t cross me.

4. I get all wet and gooshy whenever I hear anyone speaking Russian. Or German. Or French. Hell, any language really, and most regional American dialects. That’s probably why I still live in a college town, that world flavour.

5. When I was young, my parents made my brother and me go to Vacation Bible School down the road every summer. They’d do this ‘bible verse search’ thing, where the leader would shout out “Matthew 29:1!”, and the first person to find it in their bible would stand up and read it, then stand at the front of the church where they’d have a ‘showdown’ with the other first-versers. Even though I sometimes found the verse first, I never stood up. Too much pressure. Twenty years later, I stood in front of a packed audience and yelled to the actresses on stage, “I’ve just tasted my menstrual blood!” That felt much better. (It was Wendy Wasserstein’s “Uncommon Women and Others”, a beauty role, but which unfortunately led me to HATE fluffernutter sammies*.)

6. I have an enormous bladder and can hold pee for hours.

7. As a freshman in college, I hocked my high school boyfriend’s class ring and used the money to buy beer.

8. If I had it to do all over again, I would have been either a librarian or a college professor of humanities.

9. My best body feature is my toes. And my collarbones.

10. I still have the raspberry-coloured bathing suit I wore on my high school senior trip to Florida. No, it doesn’t still fit, silly. But I can’t bear to throw it away just in case I get that skinny (or short) again. (I grew nearly an inch my freshman year of college…which reminds me….)

11. I’m always late…late to be born, late to go to school, late to finish puberty, late to get married, late to have kids, late to be called “Ma’am”. This is the best feature of my life.

Yeah I know, I had 11. I’m a rebel like dat.


I’m tagging these gorgeous folks to do the meme:
1. Jeremiah
2. Gypsy
3. Bored Housewife
4. Orange


(*Fluffernutter sammies are made with marshmallow fluff and creamy peanut butter, sandwiched between graham crackers. Oof, I think I’m gonna hurl….)

The only pretty ring time

Birds sing/hey ding/a-ding a-ding/sweet lovers love/the spring


Something’s happened these last few days. My body has gone through…changes. Nothing so drastic as menopause or puberty, and nothing so stunning as growing a third nipple or learning how to fart talcum powder. Just…yearly changes. Springtime changes. Sexy changes. Finally, after weeks of feeling the doldrums of no sexual fantasies that would satisfy me…WHAM!! (And I don’t mean George Michael and that other dude.)

Every other guy I see, I have a crush on.

Not just a crush, but a ‘fantasize-in-every-possible-sexual position’ fantasy, a shotgun/stolen-car/tequila/desert/farmhouse/clawfoot-bathtub/moon/sweat fantasy.

Harold Dieterle from Top Chef? Uh-huh, bring it on, kitchen dude. Don’t forget the extra-virgin olive oil.

Elijah Wood? Your gap-tooth grin haunts my daydreams.

Henry Rollins? You know I love you, man. I just never imagined you so naked and vulnerable before now, tied up maybe, uh yeah...daaamn.

Dane Cook? Duuuuude. You slay me. Get naked. NOW. (NOTE: Link automatically brings up audio, turn speakers down...or up.)

Anderson Cooper? Fuck yeah. Bring that Prada-covered butt over here….

Chris Garver? Faaaaack. ‘Course. I lurves ya. But don’t be surprised if I ask the rest of the guys to join in too. More/Merrier.


And it just goes on and on and on.


Is this a problem?

Well, kinda, in that I can’t seem to get any work done. And Boy-Child has taekwondo class tonight, so I’m sure I’ll be pickin’ out a couple black belts, imagining them taking off those straight starched white uniforms, tying me up with their belts. Doesn’t help that I’m wearing a skort and bare (shaved) legs, and feel pretty hoochie mama right ‘bout now.

Hoochie.

Rhymes with coochie.

And on that note….

Under My Hood

My car decided to leak coolant on Friday afternoon. This only furthered my theory that a roving band of screwdriver-wielding gnomes is roaming the Midwest, puncturing engines and lifting off fan belts, putting mysterious objects in tailpipes, pulling out electrical wires, and dumping Tab in gas tanks, so we have to spend weekends car-less and/or stranded.

I called my local garage and asked if they were open on Saturday. Amazingly, they would be. “Tony” said he’d work on it. We dropped the car off Friday night. I spoke with “Tony” from Saturday morning’s soccer game (we won, BTW, mercy rule, ‘cause our kids kick ass), and he affirmed that, yes, my nightmare was a new radiator. (It’s a ten-year old car, I was actually expecting it.)

Saturday evening we picked up my car, fixed and beautiful. “Tony” was young. “Tony” was not yet 25. “Tony” had nice eyes and a quiet voice, and looked like a younger version of my usual mechanic, “Bill”. Brothers, I think.

“Tony” gave me my key and my receipt, and led me out back where my old radiator lay. Three areas of cracking, right where the evil roaming gnomes’ screwdrivers had done their bid’ness. “Tony” told me some other things he noticed, things that could wait, but that he could fix. “Tony” looked right into my eyes as he talked, which I found refreshing. No shifty eyes, no looking away and back, just, “Your wiring needs looking at because your hi-beam indicator is on even when you’re lights are off.”

Nice.

As I got into my car, I caught a glimpse of myself in the window reflection. I was wearing a strappy summer shirt, you know the type, spaghetti-straps tank top, low-cut front, with a small lightweight un-zipped zipper-front sweatshirt over it. For some reason, the weather or my posture, the front of the tank had slipped down a bit, revealing quite a bit of cleavage and nearly the top of my bra. Hoochie-mama. Jiggly hooch.

I didn’t know which I appreciated more.

That “Tony” fixed my car on a Saturday and didn’t overcharge me.

Or.

That “Tony” had eye-contact with me with my breasteses waving at him.

I think I have a new mechanic.

Poetry Friday: the word is “PACKAGE”

Of COURSE I’d think dirty! It’s ME! MONA! You can’t slide a word like ‘package’ across my desk and expect me to think of brown paper packages tied up with string, can ya? Unless they’re carried by a naked man, that is. (Thank you, Gypsy, for inspiring such dirty thoughts!)

Today for Poetry Friday, your mission, should you choose to accept it (and NO, I refuse to see Tom “Freak” Cruise in M.I. III), is to be creative with the word ‘package’. Write a poem, post a photo, do an audio blog, interpretive dance, whatever grabs your tingly bits today. Fly! Be free!

I have three submissions today, which may get edited, esp. the last one. The boss is demanding my time. Ah, such is life! Have a good weekend, y'all!


Brown’s Package

What can Brown do for me?
I’m glad you asked.

I need you
(badly)
to park that brown behemoth
outside my house,
I want to hear the brakes squeal as you
rushtomydoor.
Turn off the blinkers, man
You’ll be a while on this delivery.

I need you
(dripping)
to slide out of the driver seat
legs first
your muscular thighs
muscular calves
teasing me, taunting,
butterflied stomach, and ooh, the tingling

I need you
(throbbing)
to hold my delivery
package
wrapped in brown
so easily undone
ring my doorbell
smile and do that one-eyebrow-cocked thing

I need you
(come in)



Five Minute Free Write

That’s how twisted I’ve become, package to me now means something sexual and something I want to handle, to fondle, something with a zipper instead of something in sparkly birthday paper, instead of a box of Christmas now, I remember a package, a certain package, that was the most surprising and most joyful package I ever received. My Aunt Lily lived far away, and for Christmas we’d get a card from her, but one year, one fantastic year, when I was seven or so, Aunt Lily sent my brother and me each a package. Wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, and I’ll always remember the string, because I thouglt we should save it for kites for spring, but mom cut it and said ‘string is cheap’, and threw it away. We tore the brown paper off, and the red-gold holiday paper, and were each left holding a box of wonderful, imported, different and sugary cookies. Cookies! For a present! The rule in the house was, if it’s your present, you get to have it until you’re done, and then you could share. Well, why should cookies be any different?! The lids were cardboard-edged, with the entirety of the top a see-through cellophane, and for a brief moment we oohed and aaahed at the jelly-filled german cookies, the pressed chocolate cookies, the coconut macaroons, the wee powdered sugar cookies studded with nuts. Somewhere in the background we heard our mother talking, but we couldn’t hear exactly what she was saying because our ears were filled with cookies, our mouths, our faces, stuffed with sugary goodness, the best ever present on the best ever day, the only



The Package

Incredibly long.
The line at the post office at holiday time, at Hanukkah and Christmas and Solstice, is always incredibly long.
I cursed myself red and sweaty for lack of foresight, for wanting to please my youngest brother in Colorado, who never sends thank you notes anyway.
Did he even realize how long I had to search for that damn book that not even Amazon carries?
That I hunted eBay for three months?
He’d better damn well appreciate this.

Three windows open. That’s all they had. Three windows. Hey Mister Postman, it’s not like we’re all pissed off or anything, but you might want to get your supervisor up here and make HIM weigh my package, ‘cause talk about going postal? Man, you ain’t seen MY postal, is all I’m sayin’.

“They could at least serve us hors d’oeuvres at this party,” said the guy behind me.

“Yeah, and champagne with a little ‘hurry up’ in it,” my sarcastic mouth agreed. I turned to share a smirk with him, and my face froze, in that stupid awe and amazement you feel when you find yourself eye-locked with Hey Good Lookin’.

He smelled incredible. I recognized the scent, something far-away and college, expensive, a gift from Grandma that now he bought for himself. That cologne always got me hot, that guy Russell I dated always smelled like that, we’d fuck like frantic rabbits whenever he splashed that stuff on, I’d walk around the rest of the day smelling like his cologne and salty wet sex.

He was still smiling. There was something about his eyes, the way they crinkled, the fierceness of the blue, that locked me.

“Couches.”, he offered. “They need couches.”

“A coat-check”, I said, as I unbuttoned my black wool winter coat and fanned myself with the folds.

“Massages?” he grinned.

“Yes, please!”

I was glad he giggled when I did. I hoped we weren’t too loud. Too obviously flirting. I was supposed to meet my boyfriend in half an hour, but he knows I flirt, and anyhow, how often do I get to make chit-chat with an Adonis-god?

“Whole Body up the street does great massage, have you ever been?”, he asked.

“Oh yeah, couple-a times. That one girl, Dianne, is great, she really digs in there. It hurts, but it hurts good, y’know?”

“I know…I used to date her.”

He used to date a masseuse. Great. I have hands like small meatloaves, I can’t even massage my own scalp. Check this guy off my list.

“USED to…broke up. She was a little…uh…rough, y’know, she didn’t mean to, but that and the fact that her hands were on naked men all day, well, that was….”

“NEXT!”

The line shuffled forward but my feet didn’t. The guy and me, we bumped, sort of "tripping with style". He caught me around the waist just as my left leg remembered how to move, and we stumbled to a crazy diagonal pitch. I don’t know how we held onto our packages, I really don’t.

“Whoa!”, he said, as those crazy blue eyes popped. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, oh yeah, I guess I’ve been standing here so long I forgot how to move!”

His hand lay at my waist. I didn’t remove it, and neither did he.

He looked at me with those goddamn blue eyes. His face got, I dunno, younger all of a sudden, and he took a couple breaths and said, “The…uh…that place next door, the bakery, has baklava and really good coffee. Can I, uh, not to be too forward, and I’m not a serial killer or anything, but, y’know, if you have time, we can talk more about massage, or not!, I mean, probably not, but we could sit down and, oh, y’know, relax. It’s a good time to relax. Crazy, crazy time, y’know?”

“I know.”, I smiled. “M’kay.”

My boyfriend knows I flirt.

I just kept telling myself that.

Merry Christmas to me.

I take one, one, one 'cause you left me and two, two, two for my family (ALSO...Poetry Friday WORD)

1) First thing's first...Poetry Friday – The Word for tomorrow is: PACKAGE. The lovely and talented Gypsy is our word-contributor for this week, and I’m fighting my brain to go toward the sexual meaning of this fascinating set of letters. But you know me, there’ll be some porn in there somewhere. Tomorrow, feel free to post poetry, audio, video, recipes, artwork, what-have-you, that come to mind when you think of the word PACKAGE.

2) As Sergei mentioned, I was AWOL yesterday because Girl-child was Exorcist-vomiting all Tuesday night and Wednesday morning (without the head-spin thing, thank the jeebus). I slept on her floor, monitoring her every breath, cleaning up, telling her she was brave, timing when she could have sips of water, rubbing her leg and her sweaty head. She lay on the couch all day Wednesday, and today ate a pretty good breakfast, perked up, and went to school. I have my cell phone glued to my hip ‘just in case’ she relapses. While another day off with her would be great, it only works when we’re both well, healthy, and ready to go spend money at the mall and the local Mexican restaurant.

3) This makes me laugh with evil schadenfreude and then turn right around and feel sorry for her. I ganked the title of this post from a Violent Femmes song…does that make me a plagiarist? No, I guess with a ‘free’ something, the bounty of the internet, I can write whatever I want. But what if I turn this blog post into something I try to sell, does THAT make me a plagiarist? I dunno. I guess, maybe, the schadenfreude is more for the fact that she got her book deal when she was still a teenager, and here I am, NOT getting half-million-dollar book deals offered to me. Bitch. Although I’m sure she’s very sweet and helps old ladies with their laundry, but still…bitch.

4) The hippies, once again, did NOT get sent away. Go hippies! Beat MoJo!

5) We’re STILL interested in the Long Island Lolita? Please, someone put this to rest. Please.

6) PACKAGE. Group Mastubation Poetry Blogging tomorrow. Ready...GO!

Spank the Monkey, Rub the Lily

Let’s talk a bit about masturbation, shall we?

Since the dawn of time (cue the monolith from “2001: A Space Odyssey”, please), humans have masturbated. We do it because it feels good. We do it alone or with others, we do it at home, at work, on subways (er, not the best idea), and hands-free while driving. We do it with eyes closed, or with eyes open staring at ourselves in the bathroom mirror a la Henry Rollins. We fantasize or not. It’s satisfying or not. We feel guilty or not. It’s a basic human discovery.

HOW we masturbate, aye, there’s the rub (pun intended, most indeedy).

I recently read an article (and found backup evidence here) that warned against masturbating while prone, especially if you’re a male. (Boy-child does this, and I’m afraid I’ll have to have a talk with him…that article scares the piss outta me.)

Needless to say, I’ve been pondering my own habits, and my history of rubbing the button.

I can remember masturbating when I was in kindergarten, and prolly did so before that. Always on my back, always in bed. As I got older, my position and location didn’t change much, but my technique was refined and honed. I use the three middle fingers of my dominant hand (right), with the middle finger serving as activities director.

In high school I ‘graduated’ to the shower, one foot in the raised corner of the tub, the other foot on the floor (and it took me way too many near-misses to discover that one should NOT use bath oil BEFORE masturbating in the shower, unless you remember to thoroughly rinse the floor of the tub of any slippery remains…ouch).

Toys came into play in my 20s.

Hands-free masturbation came in my early 30s, while stuck in traffic. Lucky day, that.

Aside from that, I’m not an adventurous masturbator. I’ve never done it prone or in public, but I did do the Henry Rollins mirror thing once.

What’s the most adventurous masturbation thing you’ve ever done? Or want to do? Have you ever been caught?

Leonard Bernstein

Headache and nausea

yesterday and today

I’m blaming it on bad salad Saturday night

But then the hypochondriac Mona thinks, Oh Gawd, I’ve got a tumor! (Or ‘Ah-nold’ style from “Kindergarten Cop”…A TOO-MAH…”Ees nada toomah!”)

Or, daaamn, I must have one-a those belly tumors like on the Health Channel.

Or one of those ‘mystery diseases’ like they cover in Discover magazine.

Or the flu…BIRD flu! From some chicken! Or the feathers in Boy-child’s dreamcatcher.

Or an Alien creature is about to burst out of my belly like it did to John Hurd. “GAAAHKK”, and run across the spaceship floor and outta sight.

I’ve been having feverish dreams that include tornados, me as a debutante (gah), crashing planes, back-stabbing, and Survivorman-skiing up mountains.

Is there flu going around, seriously?

And to think, I had a wonderful sex-like post topic ready to expound upon on Saturday, and that will just have to wait dammit until I can move without muttering ouchfuckdammit.