Monday, July 31, 2006

Triple-Half Gainer

It’s Monday and it’s list time!

1) Went to a family reunion yesterday, got sunburned, drank King of Beers, ate-ate-ate, held a baby, gossiped, planned the parents’ demise and division of property, weathered a spectacular thunderstorm and tornado-like-winds, swam, fished with the kids, and got cussed out by my dad for having tattoos. Pretty typical, actually.

2) I made cookies from my childhood and took them to the reunion, and everyone gobbled them up. They look like nipples. I’m not sure it was the flavour of the cookies so much as we’re all stuck in an oral phase.

3) Found a jar of B vitamins in the medicine chest last night and took one. Today, my pee is yellow. Like a daffodil.

4) I’m going out with relatives tonight and eating Mexican food and drinking possible destabilizing margaritas. That loud noise you’ll hear at 3 a.m. will be me farting and not caring.

5) We’re expecting 100 degrees F today and tomorrow, and I’m just happy I got the a/c fixed in my car. And that there are half a dozen ice cream places near my house. And that I sleep nekked.

6) Such schadenfreude with Lohan and Gibson. HAH. Remind me to become rich and not famous.

7) Last night I thought I was having a heart-attack, and then counted the number of caffeine-laced drinks I'd consumed and thumped my forehead with the heel of my hand, 'cause I'm apparently an idiot. NO caffeine, thanks, I'm skittish.

Friday, July 28, 2006

Poetry Friday: The Word is FAIR

It's not fair
that i have no time
to write poetry today

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Banditos

More and more lately, that Refreshments song keeps popping in my head, especially the line….

“Everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people….”

This happens when I’m driving, when I’m shopping, when I watch television. It manifests itself in mutters, swearing, and creative naming alternatives for ‘bitch’, ‘jackoff’, ‘pussy’, and ‘fuckhead’. Because I’m trying to not swear around the kids.

Why is this happening?

The most obvious reason is that I’m getting old and crotchety. Bitch bitch bitch.

The next obvious reason is that the saying is true…I can’t even read the opinion pages of the local paper anymore, so insipid and whiny. I'm finding the relative inability of people to think, comprehend, communicate, and decipher is pissing me off, and life's too short to deal with them.

The last obvious reason is that Local College Radio Station has been playing the song a lot lately.


“But I got the pistol, so I get the pesos
That seems fair.”

(Link to lyrics from Kevin Smith’s message board at viewaskew)

Oh, and the Poetry Friday WORD for tomorrow? FAIR. Take it and run, y'all....

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

List-i-gator

1) Oy, such a headache I have, and drowning it in caffeine is only making my belly hurt. It’s probably a toom-uh.

2) New programmer at work is EXCELLENT, damn him. Now I’m super-busy and have no time to blog. Feh.

3) Uncannily excited to reach in my purse and pull out a coupon for free pantyliners. Why so excited, you ask? “FREE”. Apparently that’s all it takes.

4) No shit she was insane. And her husband (ex) was a dick.

5) Boy-child is in love…LUV, with curvy hearts around it. We had a potential new babysitter over last night, and she was a DOLL, I mean really, and in the best possible way. Twenty-two, long silky brown hair, tan, thin, beautiful smile, soft voice, engaged the children in conversation, good small-talker with the adults, highly recommend, nurse training, infinitely qualified. Like something out of a book of Babysitter Fairytales. Yeah, we hired her. After she left, I asked Boy-child what he thought about the new babysitter, and I could sense his future in his response, which was his ears turning pink, squelching an excited grin, shuffling from one foot to the next, stammering, “S-She was r-reeeeally, really nice, and fun, and…and…” “And pretty!”, I volunteered, which shot Boy-child’s facial colour to Christmas Day Red. Glimpses of puberty I wasn’t quite ready for, but sensing the boy is a sweet lil' playa.

Monday, July 24, 2006

We do routines and chorus scenes with footwork impeccable

1) This is actually quite clever. If I could turn back the clock, I would marry Monty Python en masse and have their 6-headed love children (who say “Ni”).

2) So, come up to the lab, and see what's on the slab, I see you shiver with antici........pation....

3) The kids’ day camp is having an international lunch later this week, and the grownups are supposed to bring in lunch items from the countries of the children’s origins. Being that we’re mongrels, with a mostly English/Irish/German bent, I’m torn. I don’t want to spend too much time cooking or have to buy things I don’t have on hand (clotted cream and pig innards, for example), but I want the kids to ooh and ahh over my donations and think I’m some sort of Giver/Goddess creature. Of course Guinness and whiskey are out, as are penile-looking schnitzel, but I’m leaning towards cold deli corned beef and some layering of cake-fruit-pudding to which I will label ‘Trifle’ and see if it sticks in their bellies. Any suggestions? German? English? Irish? There’s also a bit of French in there (and if you’ve ever kissed me, you’d know that already).

4) Nothing makes me tremble with delight more than receiving the card from my OB’s office reminding me it’s time for my Yearly Saddle-Up Cowgirl appointment. Giddy-yap! Is it so wrong of me to love going to these little soirees? Is it? My only complaint is that it’s over too quickly.

5) Yesterday Sergei let me sleep in, and when I got up and dressed (skipping breakfast), we went to a park and right around noon, my blood sugar CRASHED so hard I couldn’t remember my own name. How can that happen? I mean, it’s not like I’m 90 pounds and have no extra calories packed around my middle to subsist on…how could my brain go into immediate “FUKKITSHUTDOWN” mode? I freaked out. Sergei rushed us to Local Greasy Spoon and fed me omelet and toast until I recovered, the sweetheart.

6) Sergei and I have a wedding anniversary coming up, and I am bereft of ideas. We DID get an Ikea catalog over the weekend, so he may get a case of O-with-a-line-through-it glasses or something…. You have a better idea?

Friday, July 21, 2006

Poetry Friday: The Word is "Doorknob"

Thanks to Mother of Invention for offering up the Poetry Friday Word for today! Please feel free to use the word "doorknob" in your blog post today, in whatever form wipes your soggy brow...poem, story, photo, recipe for chocolate cake, aerobic exercise video.... I had a plethora (a plethora!) of images come to mind, and chose to do one short story and one Free Write. I couldn't find a recipe of any kind that uses a doorknob, but maybe I wasn't looking hard enough.

Have a great weekend, y'all!


Do Not Disturb

On his trip to Europe during senior year of college, he’d stolen the door hanger, one of those plastic “Do Not Disturb” signs with the cartoon lady winking and holding her shushing finger to her lips. The message was repeated in French, German, Japanese, Italian, and Korean. None of which I could read, and all of which he could.

He was always an overachiever.

As much as I tried to resist, or pretended I’d try, I let him seduce me into his bed upon our second date. He hung the shushing lady sign on the doorknob, on the inside, curiously, and led me to his bed whispering sweet French into my ear.

Oh, I fell for that entirely.

At the time, I didn’t know and didn’t care if he dated anyone else, as long as I had my one or two nights a week tumbling in the moistness of his sheets, and he stroked my hair afterwards and called me ‘darling’. All of which he did, and did well. He was my addiction, and every meeting was wasted time until he hung that sign on the doorknob and his eyes narrowed and softened, and his voice licked my neck and sent me shuddering to nakedness. Only later did I find out about his fierce monogamy, and by then, well....

The trip to Mexico changed him.

We talked about it before he left, the unrest there, the silent killings, the need for discretion and self-control. He knew what he was walking into, he was thrilled by it, wanted to chew and swallow it and savor it on his tongue. I couldn’t stop him if I wanted, and didn’t want to stop him anyway…this venture of his, this decision, was part of the deal. Four weeks is a long time to worry, and so I decided not to.

He came back. He came back vacant and haunted, with an addiction greater than lust.

He stopped talking.

Then he stopped sleeping.

When I went to pick up the last of my things from his flat, I noticed he’d stopped breathing.

I knew it was coming, but even still, the sight of him curled like a child on his bed, with the evidence all around him, sent me screaming. Screaming and swearing at his skin, throwing a shoe and a drinking glass for good measure. I sat beside his body for, god, I don’t know how long, before I called the police station. A dead body was nothing for them to rush around for, not in our city, and I knew I had a good half hour to get away unnoticed. I gathered up my spare toothbrush and NYU t-shirt, took one last look at his paleness, and closed the door behind me, adding his shushing lady sign to my armload of possessions, stumbling to the train, rolling the foreign words around my heavy tongue on the way home.


Free Write, "Doorknob"

It was an old house, what they called a 'Centennial House', in the family for generations, full of curious wooden rooms hidden behind the fireplace and the closet, the bannister rubbed smooth from decades of hands on the finish, the window panes wavy, the oriental rugs worn, the attic full of trunks, like in cartoons. My brother and I were left alone to explore, while the grown-ups drank gallons of coffee sweetened with evaporated milk. The 'off-limits' rooms were opened, the creaks in the floorboards found, the secrets dusted off with puffs of breath.

On the second floor, all the doors had shiny brass doorknobs. Thomas and I would press our faces to them and laugh at the distortion of our noses in the reflections. We'd count them in our language, the words we made up while avoiding sweaty sleep in the heat of summer..."Ura...dona...tooree...."

The doorknobs on the third floor were diamonds. We knew this, although the grown-ups swore they were cut glass. We knew better. We used them to cut small mirrors from forgotten dressers in forgotten rooms. We unscrewed them, shoved them in our shorts pockets and pretended to find them on our expeditions, screwed them back on, lost one, found it.

I discovered one in the attic, detached and lonesome, when Thomas was downstairs plying glasses of Kool-Aid lemonade from our mother. I didn't tell him about it. I kept it wrapped in a hankie, peeking at it under the covers, hiding it, through the girl years and teen years and college years.

I still pull it out once in a while to gaze through it and rub the angles, wonder how many other hands have touched it, what secrets it saw, how many diamond rings it would make.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Poetry Friday Word for Tomorrow

Mother of Invention at Spilling Out has graciously offered up the Poetry Friday word for tomorrow…go see the word used under the “3-minute poetry” section!

Not much to report today, the guys at work are thrashing me with chains and whips and demanding my attention. Cheeky buggers. Oh, and the new guy is fitting in fine, showing his snide, cynical side this morning. I love being surrounded by geeky men!

Hasta manana!

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Credit Card Conspiracy

Several years ago, one of my credit card companies (Lets call them XYZ) had a deal whereby I could consolidate other accounts into theirs at a low low rate of 2.99 percent. For LIFE. I said, Hells yeah! Dumped my other accounts into this one, and patted myself on the back.

Get this:
I haven't used XYZ's credit card since
I have paid more than the minimum amount due every month
I have always paid on time
I have resisted their attempts to use those stupid check things to charge more more more

I got my monthly bill yesterday and was humming some little ditty whilst opening the bill, then SCREAMED MY ASS OFF when I saw that they conveniently lost my most recent payment. LOST IT. As in, didn't process it. Which means:
a) My amount due was more than twice what it should be, because
2) They raised my interest rate to 21%...TWENTY. ONE. FUKKIN. PERCENT.

I went off. Like an insane rocket. On trippy acid. I called their CS department and screamed at the poor $10-an-hour-waged chickie who answered. She tried to calm me down. Sort of. She said, "Well, things DO get lost in the mail!" Fuck that. At NO TIME in the history of my bill-paying life has ANYTHING been 'lost in the mail'. What kind of stupid, sorry excuse is that?

Chickie said to make another payment and then when they got it, I should call back and they'd "see what they could do" about lowering my interest rate.

BUT.

She couldn't guarantee it would go back to 2.99%.

So.

I called my bank to inquire about my lost payment to XYZ. No, they hadn't cashed that check.
I called the post office. No, they didn't have anything mangled in their machines or in the dead letter bin remotely resembling my lost payment.

So now I'm angry.

Angry that I have to babysit the Federal Government's postal service.
Angry that my credit card company is treating me like shit even though I'm an exemplery customer.
Angry that I foolishly trusted businesses to care about me, and should have babysat my payment, calling obsessively to make sure they received my payment.

I called XYZ back last night and made a pay-by-phone payment which will be posted some time today.

I will call back tomorrow and wrangle/haggle/bitch/scream/threaten to get my lower percentage rate back.

I will get satisfaction. Or revenge.

My question, dear readers, is this:

Did XYZ credit company scam me?

Did they purposely "lose" my payment so they could sock me with a high interest rate? Because it was at 2.99%, I never used their card or their checks, and was paying the balance off. I was making money for them, but not ENOUGH money.

Yes, I'm suspicious and a conspiracy theorist. But that doesn't mean it couldn't have happened.
Who do I call to inquire about this possibility? The SEC? The FTC? Better Business Bureau?

I think XYZ is trying to con me. I know I will have the last word.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

It’s not the heat, it’s the humanity

Bless me, Flying Spaghetti Monster, for I have sinned. It’s been days since my last real post. I have been a bad blogger (and I just now typed bag blogger, as if I’m trying furiously to key my way out of a brown paper sack). I didn’t participate in my own Poetry Friday last week and on Saturday posted some lame-ass excuse for a Poetry Friday post…on my own donated word. I haven’t been trolling my usual hot-spots. I haven’t been commenting on blogs, not even with inane banter or weak sexual innuendo. I have been avoiding internet linkage of any kind and was forced…FORCED, I tell you…to view a YouTube offering yesterday by a co-worker.

It must be the heat.

My only salvation has been in frequent fantasies of a nekked Colin Firth and gallons of sugar-free lemonade.

I implore you, oh almighty FSM, to forgive my past sins and any I make this week, as I am still recuperating from The Long Weekend Without Children, and am what the kids nowadays call ‘fucked in the head’. I will do my penance by promising to read at least four blogs a day, every day, and commenting at least once. Unless I can turn the boss onto online porn distraction, in which case there will be two comments a day.

In your multi-tentacled name, Ramen.

Now dispensing with the false churchiness, a list approacheth.

1) Wasabi peas. Beware the imitators. Several weeks ago I purchased, at my local Imported Comestibles Shop, a packet of Wasabi Peas. So the Germans would have us believe. For when I got home and ripped open the package, throwing a handful of coated peas in my mouth, I discovered a lie of utter packaging importance…no wasabi. NO WASABI. Then the actual real and live copy on the package caught my eye…”Covered Peas”. Just covered, mind you, with some sort of pixie dust, or asbestos, or chunks of old wallpaper paste. (Yes, yes, I know, it was a wheaty mixture of some caloric insignificance, but the misrepresentation of the proper product irked me so.) During The Long Weekend Without Children, Sergei and I hopped into Fantastic Anime Emporium where, joy of bloody joys, they offered up packages of real honest wasabi peas (“HOT!”), six dollars for a package as big as my knobby head. I have eaten them every day. I am in love with them, and would bear their juicy green offspring given the chance to, well, bear juicy green offspring.

2) “Widdershins” was the random word of the day offered up on M-W today. What a naughty word. What a stupid word. Left-handed = Wrong? What curious planet are YOU from, alien traveler?

3) I have spring hair. Sproingy boing-boing Oingo sausage link hair caused by the terrible humidity and impending threatening clouds of rain and thunderboomers. I can pull down these curly masses so they touch the top of my breasteses, and then release them like Wile E. Coyote spring boots and they whack conveniently and smartly against my noggin. People pay good money to have their hairs permed such as mine, and whine and complain when it rains on their unpermed locks and straightens them out to pre-cooked angel hair consistency. Mine, OTOH, make me look like a picture of Shirley Temple on Silly Putty which has been stretched and widened to resemble a Person of Some Aged Years. I should take a photo.

4) I got a new tattoo. I should take a photo.

5) I am still imagining Colin Firth naked. (Damn you Bridget Jones, you and your sequel.) Colin Firth. And that French soccer goalie. And Mike Doughty for good measure.

6) Note to self…buy new sports bra…’cause…damn…must be jelly ‘cause jam don’t shake like that….

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Poetry Friday: The Word is "Patient"

Uh yesh, it's Saturday. I know, I missed Poetry Friday, but listen, it wasn't my fault...the time-space continuum got ripped once we took the kids to the grandparents for the long weekend, and it was just Sergei and me together with NO kids and NO screaming to play on the computer and NO one saying "Stop it! I'll tell mom!"

My brain isn't used to that kind of calm.

So far I haven't cooked a meal since Wednesday. I can watch whatever I want on television. I can take an uninterrupted nap. I can bonk Sergei in the shower and not have to worry about little hands knocking on the door having to pee 'reeeeeally bad!'

Don't get me wrong, I love my kids, and I do miss them, but....

There's something to be said for delicious alone time with your sig other.

Oh yesh, I'm supposed to be doing Poetry Friday.

Free-write time. True story, names have been changed so as to be untraceable.

Have a lovely naked-ice-cream-party-filled-weekend y'all!


Five Minute Free-Write: "Patient"

Everyone called him "Dr. B", because his last name was so long and difficult for kids to pronounce and adults to spell. He was ancient when my parents were young, and more like a walking statue when I was a kid. He had white hair and a kind face, exceedingly tall, with a voice like chocolate...dark and soothing. The town was his patient. He cared for everyone, even when he was 92 and senile.

His waiting room smelled strongly of antiseptic, moreso than any other doctor's office I've been in since. They must have mopped the floor with the stuff. Stiff-backed chairs lined the room and in the center sat a small table and chairs for the children, loaded with books, puzzles, and a set of blocks.

I hated going there just the same.

When you're little, when you're sick, when your head feels too big for your body and you can't stop throwing up and when your mom has that terrified look on her face because she knows you're really sick, the last thing you want to do is sit in a smelly room with old people looking at you and smiling, and watch the all-white nurse peek her head in the room every 20 minutes and call a name that's not yours, while your younger siblings hog your mom's lap and all you want to do is roll up in a blanket and fall asleep.

Dr. B's solution to most things was a shot.

I hated Dr. B for that.

My arm, my butt, wherever he thought it would do the most good.

I passed out almost every time.

Except for one time.

Right before the shot, my mom told Dr. B she wanted to talk to him afterward, and she got sort of pale. That got me scared. I didn't pass out, and I didn't stay in the curtained room when she asked me to, but followed her to the adjoining room where I heard her ask Dr. B to give her a test, and she cried a little, and I got worried she would die.

She peed in a cup. We left. Mom smiled at me. Dr. B put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it, re-assuring me everything was okay.

I got better, of course, the innoculation in my bottom did the trick.

And 8 months later, I had a new baby sister.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Poetry Friday "WORD" for tomorrow, plus the empty-nest

Girl-child is carrying around her new 2-lb workout weights this morning, putting on her green tank shirt with the sparkly mirror accents, talkinglikeshesonspeed, and this is the fifth time in two minutes I've said, "Please go brush your teeth." She's a bit excited.

A bit.

The kids are going to their grandparents' house today for a long weekend (and a long weekend alone for Sergei and me).

For several weeks now, Girl-child has been congratulating herself out loud with, "I'm being SO patient about going to grandma and grandpa's house, even though I'm so excited!" Confirming with me, "Aren't I being patient, mama?"

I've heard the word 'patient' a hundred times this week.

Therefore, thereso, and thereto, the Poetry Friday word for tomorrow is "Patient".

Now there are several meanings in that. If you don't mind reading magazines and singing along to the Muzak in your doctor's office, you're being a patient patient.

And I'm sure there's other meanings but Girl-child is now jumping up and down two feet from me and I can't think.

Gah.

Must go.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Blogathon, and then Mona rambles

1) The lovely and bloggy Rose from Great Googly Moogly is in a Blogathon! She and several other stamina-filled bloggers will be typing their little hearts out for a great cause. No matter how you feel about the war, no matter where your political affiliations fall, our soldiers are returning from Iraq with serious injuries. Please help The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund and make their recovery easier. Go here now to donate! And see stalebetty for more details and links! Good luck, ladies!




2) You will have to forgive the scattered post…I have the rest of the week off work and am trying to cram several major projects in today, and it looks like I’m on the losing end of it. Feh.

3) On some blog I recently saw that there’s a word, an actual word, for ‘the act of throwing someone out a window’…it’s defenestrate. Isn’t that a wonderful word that sounds nothing like what it means? I also like ‘self-immolation’, which sounds more like giving yourself a manicure. I think it’s just a bit weird and scary that we have actual words for each act of bodily harm. What do you call it when some guy with brass knuckles socks you in the jaw and then kicks you in the nuts? There must be a word….

4) I was getting myself ready this morning, standing in the kitchen taking my meds and contemplating a very large coffee, when the fattest robin I’ve ever seen in my life bounced around in the little tree outside the kitchen window. I mean this thing was HUGE, with its inflated belly, looking like Shrek just blew it up and Fiona was taking it for a run down the path. Then the red-breasted creature started singing, loudly, and I thought, “Ah-HA! You’re the bastard that wakes me up every morning!” And then it occurred to me…it being not quite 7 a.m., and no other birds in site…the early bird truly DOES get the worm…and that worm…and that bug…and no wonder all those other birds are so skinny….

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Justification for stealing candy from a baby

When the kids have sports after school (or day camp in the summer), I pack a blue thermos bag with juice boxes, granola bars, crackers, nuts, and whatever snacks I find at arm-reach, for them to eat on the way. Last night I put the remains of the family-size box of Crunch N Munch into two snack size Ziploc bags and threw them in there too.

I have to bring that blue thermos bag into work with me so the food doesn’t get all gross and melty in my hot car. So it sits on my desk and tempts me.

I just opened the bag and those bags of Crunch N Munch looked way too full, like the sides were bulging out and the Ziploc part was close to exploding! Carmel popcorn! All over the bag and probably my desk! So I relieved those bags of heft and zipped them shut (they looked a lot better) and just finished eating the offensive Crunch N Munch. Now I sit in a growing sugar buzz, knowing I saved my kids from certain choking death and/or facial food explosions from that damned Crunch N Munch.

Plus the Crimson Permanent Assurance is in town and it’s day two (also known as Crime Scene Day), so I’ll eat whatever the hell I want and don’t. Try. To. Stop. Me.

Plus the kids prolly shouldn’t eat that much sugar anyhow, and see how careful and considerate a mom I am?

(I will not look in there again and let the chocolate chip granola bars tempt me with their evil luscious goodness…no…I will not…no…aw…dammit….)

Monday, July 10, 2006

The Day Brendan Shanahan Broke My Heart

Well, it’s official. Brendan Shanahan is no longer a Detroit Red Wing.

Hand me that Kleenex, would ya?

I didn’t get into pro hockey until the mid-90s, right before the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup in ’97. Shanny always stood out as an awesome player, high scorer, scuffler, hot-guy-with-scars. Sergei bought me a hockey sweater one Christmas, an official one, with Shanny’s name and number on it. I loved that thing. It stood for something, it covered my belly during my second pregnancy and was the prompting for many a high-five at work during hockey season. Shanny was Da Man.

Now he’s bailing, and I want to hit him upside the head. And in his jewels.

What bullshit, “I’m part of Detroit’s past but not part of it’s future”. Bull-facking-shit.

Yzerman’s leaving. Shanny’s leaving. The Red Wings are no more. Not the Red Wings I know, not the Red Wings that introduced me to the sport, not the Red Wings that played with such passion that I had to leave the room during playoffs because I couldn’t handle the suspense.

Fuck.

I’ll have to think of what to do with my hockey sweater.

And. There may be an opening on my Boyfriend List.

Hmmm...that French goalie was pretty frickin’ hot yesterday.

Friday, July 07, 2006

Poetry Friday: The Word is "ROCK"

Thanks to the ultra-sexy, talented genius of Lisa the Bored Housewife for contributing this week’s Poetry Friday WORD (aka Group Blogging Masturbation). My head simply spun with the myriad of things ‘rock’ reminded me of. Curiously, most of the images were of actual rocks, and not the music. Funny, that, as I share a deep and fervent love for Eddie Vedder with the gorgeous Lisa, and he’s nuthin’ if not RAWK.

Feel free to use this word today in your blog post, however it makes your ripples spread…poem, story, photo, spaghetti sculpture, video…. If there’s any nekkedness to be found in your contribution, please comment on it so we can ogle and drool. I have only one contribution today, because it's hella long AND because the guys at work are keeping me so busy I can't write dammit.

Have a great weekend, y’all!


Knee High by the 4th of July

Forty feet back, and 20 feet towards the barn, my daddy found a large black rock when he was checking the sweet corn crop. Daddy knew somethin’ was up when the corn had a growth spurt overnight, from dusk to dawn on the 1st of July it went from nearly knee-high to over his head. Tassled out, even. Ears started sprouting. The field smelled like peaches and rain. Daddy called his friend at the university to come check it out, and the friend couldn’t figure it out either. He chalked it up to the fertilizer Daddy was using, even though it was only manure from the horse barn, but it had turned a weird color of yellow before Daddy spread it, and maybe that’s what did it.

Some folks said the rock was slate. Some said shale. Some said it was the devil’s business. But I don’t believe in the devil. I don’t believe in god neither, not since I was five years old and The Sickness took my baby brother and my grammie.

I figured the rock was from aliens.

I was right, too.

His name was Able, he’d come to our farm one humid morning and asked my Daddy if he had any work to do. Lucky ‘cause our old farmhand, Jonas, just moved away to be with his daughter in the cool of the Kentucky hills. Able was a little older than me, maybe 18, with long long arms and legs, and a tan all over his body. He had blonde hair like a beach boy, and sometimes you could see through it to the skin on his head. He didn’t talk much, but he did smile a lot, and I caught him more than once checking out my butt when I walked away from him to pick beans or hang out the wash.

Come to think of it, Able came right before the corn grew out of control.

Momma and Daddy let me sit on the black rock to watch the fireworks on the 4th. The rock was cool and smooth, with enough room for two people to sit and watch the bottle rockets and the Indiana fireworks. Momma would set up the tubes and Daddy would light the fuses, then they’d both run to the corner of the house and cuddle as the rockets lit and zoomed off into the night. I had a thermos of lemonade and a paper sack of popcorn, and no one could hear me over the clapping and hooting of my uncles and aunts and cousins who sat in the backyard on old quilts with their beer and snotty noses.

Daddy set off a humdinger, a white chrysanthemum one that lit up the sky over the chicken coop, when a pale face came through a parting of the corn stalks. Able smiled at me and I smiled back, and scooted over to let him sit next to me.

But he didn’t sit.

He kneeled. In front of me. Like he was gonna pray. But instead of clasping, his hands touched my stretched-out legs. They felt good, really soft for a guy’s hands, large and warm. I couldn’t look anywhere else but his eyes. His hands slid under my dress, touching so softly I thought I couldn’t breathe. My panties got wet, and Able knew it ‘cause he smiled even bigger and his eyes closed. So did mine. My eyes closed and I scooted my butt closer to him, and Able reached up simple-like and pulled my panties down. I could feel the air on my privatey area, and it felt so good, I wonder why no one told me it would feel so good. Able put his head down and kissed me down there, kissed me with lips and his warm wet tongue and all the air went out of me and I felt like I was floating in the lake, floating on a bed of cattails and cotton. I moved my dress up and felt his hair, felt how his head moved around and around with his tongue right in the middle of me, his tongue moving up my belly up to my breasts, his hands pulling my bra up to taste my nipples, Able suddenly without pants and moving on top of me, my hands pushing him into me, pushing and my hips in circles and his face on my face and tasting him and me in his mouth. The fireworks went off around us, the explosions covered the sounds coming out of me, the feel of the smooth rock under me, the steam coming off Able’s body, the tingle in my middle, the wet the wet oh god now I believe in god if he made this feel so good, and Able’s own explosion into me and how my body shook and trembled and how I cried happy and how I didn’t want to stop.

I woke up a while later, when I heard Daddy open the barn door to put the fireworks tubes inside. My underwear was on, my dress was pulled down, and Able was no where to be found.

The rock was gone.

I was laying on the ground, in a circle of bare dirt where the rock should have been. My nethers were still tingly, and my fingers touched the spot through my dress, and I found that rubbing it felt really good, and made the tingle feel like Able was inside me. I stumbled sweaty to the house and snuck up to bed, not knowing if I dreamed the whole thing or what, sleeping and trying to dream it again but all I dreamed was corn moving under me and lifting me to the sky.

Daddy said Able didn’t even leave a note of good-bye, and didn’t ask for his wage neither. He was all gone. The few clothes he had, the strange case he carried with him, the flashlight he couldn’t be without, they were all gone.

Daddy didn’t know what to make of the rock disappearing. Or that all the sweet corn that summer tasted salty.

But I knew. I knew every time I reached down and rubbed my button, I knew when my breathe flew out of my lungs, I knew when I walked to the spot where the rock was. I knew it was Able. I can’t wait for him to come back.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Poetry Friday “Word” for tomorrow, plus Golda Meir, and Orin Scrivello….DDS

1) The sexy, sultry scribbler, Lisa the Bored Housewife, has not only provided this week’s Poetry Friday (Group Blogging Masturbation) “WORD”, but has given us a steamy hot story to go along with it. (I had to splash cold water on my face just now…I mean woo-wee, that stuff is goo-ooood!) Please go to her blog right now, check out the word, the story, and as always, feel free to include the WORD in your blog post tomorrow (Friday), in whatever fashion blows up yer skirt…photo, story, poem, sketch of your squeeze in the buff, YouTube link to your video of YOU in the buff, whatever whatever. Thank you gorgeous Lisa! I owe you a backrub, or a big sloppy wet one, or somethin’ in return….

2) I stopped by the post office this morning and the some little old lady refused to move her body out of the parking space I wanted. Sigh. She finally moved, like a lame snail, and I squealed in. Ran in and deposited my bills in the little slot, ran out, and whaddya know? There’s the little old driver lady at her car door, her door open…again. I climbed in and buckled up, and waited a sec to see if she was getting in or what. She opened her door a bit more, then just stood there, facing me, with a defiant look on her face. She looked like Golda Meir. I waved ‘Shalom’ and drove away. Golda Meir. Huh.

3) After the post office, I went to the dentist. Not by choice. I thought I was doing better at the flossing, I really did, until the dental technician pulled out the big sleeve of sharp pointy metal instruments. She kept digging. And digging. And poking. And making me bleed. Dammit. Then she suggested that in 3 months, if my teeth weren’t any better, I’d have to sign up for 4 sessions of ‘deep scaling’ again, like I did several years ago, which I’m sure shortened my life by half a dozen years. I left with a new kind of toothpaste she swears by, and pamphlets for electric toothbrushes that cost $150. Oh, and a new spool of floss. My gums are throbbing and I want to take a nap. Wah.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Pay to the Order Of:

Behind the furnace are plastic bins where we keep old clothes, memorabilia, and scrap books from my formative years. I pulled out those bins last weekend to sort through the clothes and get rid of them once and for all. One of the bins I pulled out had a surprise…1991 through 1993 taxes, receipts, bank statements, utility bills, and greeting cards. I’m nothing if not a pack rat. I think you only *need* to keep tax things for 7 years, but still…getting rid of three years’ worth seemed like a good idea.

I sorted through them, putting the junk in a plastic bag and the sensitive material in a pile (my bank statement had my social security number, fer jeebus sake). Yesterday I got out the shredder and started chopping up all the stuff I didn’t want dumpster divers to find.

It took a looooong time.

Here are some things I learned from that experience:

1) When shredders say they take up to 5 sheets of paper at a time, they really mean 3, and then only maybe.
2) No matter how many times you say it, your children will still want to put their fingers down the shredder opening where Whirring Blades of Death live.
3) My phone bill is double what I had in the early 90s, and I don’t make any more local or long-distance calls.
4) My cable bill is triple, although I’ve gained the Discovery Channel and the Food Network. Thanks, Camcost.
5) It’s a good thing I paid off the credit cards I did.
6) Before Sergei, before kids, when I was a single gal in a one-bedroom apartment, my handwriting was impeccable…legible, curly, sweet. That’s what Time will get you. Now I’m lucky to write a check that doesn’t look like a sound wave with a dot over it.
7) Finding the check written to my friend Dan, for the fundraiser before he died of AIDS, made me very very sad. I’d written “I love you Dan!” in the memo. And his beautiful signature was on the backside.
8) One person eats a hellova lot less than 4 people and one cat.
9) My insistence on getting my checks returned back to me, for security and safety reasons and because I paid for the damn things dammit, resulted in 36 months worth of paper checks to shred. It filled one entire large kitchen garbage bag.
10) It’s perfectly okay to keep the remains of your student loan payment booklet, the one that says you’re paid in full.
11) Ditto the car payment book.
12) Those birthday cards you kept will never, ever, have surprises of cash in them.
13) But you will find surprises of photos you hoped would have been forgotten.


Now I’m jonesin’ to find years 1994 through 1999. Somewhere in there hasta be a birthday card with a $20 inside it I'd forgotten about....