The Bananaverse

Maybe it’s because I grew up in the desert, but even now when it rains I still want to go jump in the puddles. There’s a chance that today it’s because I wore pigtails and my overalls today, but I can’t be sure…

Roofers are here. We’re getting a new roof, yay and all that, but did it have to start promptly at 8am? Here’s me: sleeping, sleeping, sleeping, BANG! Freaked the hell outta me and my jammies, and it’s just gone downhill from there. As I type this there is a lot of pounding coming from the roof and a few things are starting to shake, like my little Tinkerbell dangler on Enid here. This sucks.

This is almost as bad a start to the morning as last weekend when I got up and landed on my sock wrong (hardwood floors) and more or less fell out of bed. Scooter keeps saying to think of the neighbors but at 8am on a SATURDAY I can’t really think of much….

My head is starting to pound, just on one side. This sucks. At least I get to go home soon. I put lotsa spiderwebby stuff on things around the office today. That was fun.

In other news, we get a new roof for our house this week. That makes me happy. I don’t like the waiting for it to be done, I don’t like the tarp on the roof over the leaky area, and I don’t like leaving my closet door open (the leak in the roof leaks into my closet). I’m glad to have it all done. Plus it’ll be a new color and style so it’ll be a cool new roof. We’ll be SO hip. I can’t wait. Our house needs all the help it can get. (:

I recently found out that a number of people really dig my lj. That’s sorta cool, but most of them are friends of mine that I told to go see it. (: I’d really like to get a comment from some random person who says they stumbled across my lj in a random search and they really enjoy it. Or something.

Right now all I want is to go home and take a nice hot bath and go to sleep. And eat some sort of dinner. We’ll have to see.

HEY! I’m looking to buy a new cordless phone. If you have a strong opinion one way or the other about one in particular, let me know. Thanks. (:

Check out Moby’s online diary at www.moby-online.com even if you aren’t into his music. He stood on the roof of his apt. building and saw the Towers fall. He’s thoughtful and sort of silly and I like reading his updates. So should you! (:

my tummy hurts. it’s been hurting for a couple of days now. I think it’s because the only thing of any real amount I’ve put into my tummy over the last three days has been soda of various types. I’m going to try some actual food in actual amounts and see if that remedies things. I sure hope so. It’s pretty effin hard to be cheerful when most of what’s going through your mind is “my tummy hurts”. blah.

Scooter was super snuggly this morning. that helped some. but then I got up and I walked down the hall to the bathroom and got sorta cold and my tummy went “HEY! REMEMBER ME??? I HURT!!” and that sucked. So my morning started nicely but not nicely enough to counteract my tummy. grr. We’ll see.

I’ve been giving some thought to the holidays and just what the hell is going to happen with them this year. yay. Anyway, due to the magic of iTunes and the joy that is the shuffle button, it played this song I haven’t heard in awhile and it reminded me of this:

I headed back to visit my family with my cousin for Christmas, and caught a ride with my cousin. Her and I drove down and I played DJ, putting in a few of my CDs and a few of hers and just generally sort of exposing each other to our very favorite songs and pretty much enjoying the fact that there are no radio stations of note for about 150 miles of this trip. It went well. Then, on the return trip we brought my brother back with us. He begged us to play this CD of his, it was only 4 songs, blah blah blah. Since I am well aware of his threats and persistence (based on the enforced backseat imprisonment of previous “family vacations”) I told my cousin we might as well do it. So in goes the cd, and out comes one of the more unfortunate sonic arrangements of guitars and drums that I’ve heard in some time. Immediately revenge was considered. After this miserable assault on our ears ended, he was excited about what we thought of it, etc. There was like one song that didn’t fully suck, but the rest is only music in the loosest possible application of the word. So we put in the flavor of the month, Ricky Martin, and sang along while he sat in the backseat pretty much having the same experience with Ricky that we had with whatever the hell he foisted off on us in the name of ‘new music’.

One of the songs on the way down was this Pet Shop Boys song that was just playing which is why I remembered it. So there you go.

You know things aren’t looking all that good when you are brushing your teeth before bed and you brush your tongue a little too far back and activate Ye Olde Gag Reflex and you consider that perhaps bazooka barfing is a possibility and then you realize that bazooka barfing would only improve your day.

Thank you. That is all.

My head hurts and I’m not happy about it. Plus after lunch my tummy was less than pleased with the contents of lunch, apparently. I think I’m gonna stay home tomorrow or something. I don’t know what. Three nights of grinding my teeth surely aren’t helping though. Stupid brother! He’s here visiting and of course can’t be bothered to stay with me except tonight, probably because the skank bitch he was staying with (who landed him in jail, btw-long story) is out of food or something so now I get to feed him. Yippee. He really aggravates me and it’s like I’m expected to be all grown up and ok with him treating me like crap but I’m done, I hope…he’s allegedly joining the coast guard so he’ll be off to boot camp soon or whatever. My hunch is no, but it isn’t up to me to say anything, since I’ve only done it for like EVER and nobody cared then, so they won’t now either. bah. He’ll be gone tomorrow and maybe then I can get some sleep. urgh.

I went out skating with my friend Josh last night. We had fun. Mostly because skating sucked so to make sure the evening wasn’t a complete waste we went to La Carreta afterwards and had drinks. As we were getting to skating, Josh (who gets far more pleasure out of flirting with Scooter than he has any right to) was saying that he was going to “drop you off at home and I’m going to come in and sexually….irritate Scooter.” I got the giggles and just couldn’t stop because for some reason the concept of sexual irritation was really funny. He replied “no, that’s not what I meant! Harassment! I meant harassment! yeah! I just couldn’t think of the word!” but it was too late. So the theme of the evening was Sexual Irritation. Which is far funnier than it should be, even still. Then we had casuelas and giggled and went back to my house and bothered Scooter and eventually went to sleep. (You’ll notice I tastefully left out the part where after Josh left me and Scooter got it *on*)

My dad is here my dad is here!!! I’m very excited on a number of levels, including the fact that he’s here so that we can install a new garage door and also because I get to spend time with him and also because I really miss my dad and this was a perfect weekend to get to see him. All things considered (scope some previous entries) I don’t think we could have tried to pick a better weekend. I love my dad.

Apparently my mom does too! She’s been nicer and nicer to him lately, and the other day she even referred to him by his first name! (They split up when I was six. To say that it was significantly other than amicable is like saying that amputating your leg with a rusty hacksaw is significantly other than painless.) He asked my brother to look up some storage areas for his boat and he called to see what he’d found out and got my mom (my brother was out) and she got her phonebook on and whipped out all kinds of numbers for him! It’s sort of freaking me out, since I don’t really remember them ever getting along, so it kind of feels like a weird parallel universe at times.

What am I doing posting to my lj! I have a dad to go hug now. Latar!

For those of you who aren’t girls (and by that I mean standard issue girls, not just a big gay friend of mine) this might prove to be a bit icky/uncomfortable/weird/(insert adjective here) so know this and be warned.

Here’s a hunk of my conversation with isteph earlier today:

(Verso) why do they advertise exciting new features on pads?
(isteph) hahaha i don’t know
(Verso) like “now quilted!”
(isteph) like that makes it better or something
(Verso) what, am I going to be excited about it now?
(isteph) haha
(isteph) just maybe
(isteph) its not like they are designed to lure in young people to their product line
(isteph) all the advertising is aimed at older people
(isteph) who use it cause they always have
(isteph) advertising probably isn’t even necessary
(Verso) yeah!
(Verso) that’s part of my point.
(isteph) of course, i also dislike tampon commercials
(isteph) like the one where the tampons are dancing
(isteph) like synchronized swimmers
(isteph) (Verso) Like I’m going to go down that aisle on a glorious happy day (you’re never there unless you need them)
(isteph) like that makes them cute
(isteph) its like eating one of those talking m&m’s
(Verso) and go “wow! You know, I was a (brand) user for 30 years, but now that these are quilted…I think I’ll switch! oh, happy day!”
(isteph) i don’t want to stick something cute and alive in there
(isteph) hahahaha
(Verso) yeah!!! argh.
(Verso) the dancing tampons scare me on several levels.
(isteph) quilted rocks! “finally, a product that meets my needs”
(isteph) hehe
(isteph) all those commercials do
(isteph) is make girls look stupid
(isteph) like we need more of that in the world
(Verso) I know!
* isteph thinks of the movie “species” and shudders
(isteph) nico is always laughing
(Verso) they’d acheive the same thing with that first talking Barbie…30 secs of “math is hard!” and shit like that and then the o.b. logo at the end.
(isteph) hahaha
(isteph) yes
(isteph) nico is always laughing cause i am always pointing out
(isteph) the things that perpetuate the stereotype that girls are:
(isteph) a. stupid
(isteph) b. stupid
(isteph) c. should be tall and skinny
(isteph) d. stupid
(Verso) AMEN!
(isteph) e. helpless
(isteph) f. should be wearing pink
(isteph) g. did i mention stupid
(isteph) instead of an anti-terrorism campaign
(isteph) we need and anti-tampon campaign campaign
(Verso) AMEN!
—

I mean, really! Am I going to look forward to using them because now they say “quilted!” or “now with wings!”??? please. Is it supposed to make me excited about them or something? whatever. It just sort of pisses me off, I’m not exactly excited about their product anyway, you know? It’s just sort of a necessity and I don’t like it. So to try to cheer me up it’s now in a different package or it’s “now with wings” or some other sort of happycrappy? grrr.

Entertaining phone call from the other day:

Liplash called me the other night as I was at the computer store and he said “that doesn’t sound like your house, where are you?” I said I was at the computer store and he said “Oh my God! I called you in the middle of church! How inconsiderate of me! I’m SO sorry. I’ll talk to you later.” and we hung up.

That is the depth of my slobbering Mac-based fandom. So there you go. (:

I’m on the train, on my Palm.

On the floor of the seat across from me is a condom wrapper. This disturbs me on several levels…where is the condom? Did somebody knock one out on MAX? Sorta cool, sorta ew. And if not, what? Let’s get it on at the Park & Ride? That’s ALL ew.

In other news, the driver of the bus this morning was interesting…not girly enough to be all man, but not man enough to be all girly either. A bit much for me before I was appropriately caffeinated to face the day.

EEK! This girl is fully checking me out! She’s a bit odd and probably made an incorret assumption based on the fact that I’m listening to Ani DiFranco on my Nomad.

(This will be short. I’m on my Palm.)

I’m listening to the Rent soundtrack and if you haven’t, you should. At the end of the first act, during a song called “La Vie Boheme” they say “the opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s CREATION!!!”

That really makes me think.

…all the rest of them to go. You know, in some ways it feels like it’s been about a thousand years since it happened, and in other ways it feels like it was yesterday. Maybe I’m just a bit cranky for other reasons, maybe I need more sleep, I don’t know. It just sort of seems like even though I have laughed and enjoyed myself at times during the last month, I will never look at anything the same way. I try to explain this to Scooter but he doesn’t really seem to get it. I’m not sure why, it really bothered him when all of this went down, but he still doesn’t mind if he doesn’t get to say goodbye to me in the morning when I leave for work…

I don’t know how I’m supposed to be reacting to this, even now. I feel sad still, I feel sort of confused though, too. Like when something really bad happened to you when you were small and you tried to understand but there was a lot of stuff you had to know to put things in context and you really didn’t understand, even though you tried and tried. And nobody wanted to take the time to explain so you just sort of stumbled through it. And people always say that children do so much better in times of crisis, blah blah blah. It’s because they are kids, they haven’t had enough bad stuff happen to them yet so they don’t fully understand. Not enough mean people, not enough cruel peers, not enough CNN, not enough Current Affair, not enough adults telling them not to do this, or stop doing that. That’s sort of how I feel, I just can’t wrap my head around any of this yet, I have no way of putting it into context or anything.

To get off on a tangent, it really aggravates me that people do that to little kids. They’re kids! let them make mud pies and stomp in rain puddles and stuff. I was a reasonably well behaved child, but I still got to go make a mess and run around and play in the dirt and all that kind of stuff. It’s fun! And being forced off the couch into the backyard is good for everybody. Somehow I managed not to listen to any of the people who tried to tell me that this wasn’t right or not to do that anymore and I think I enjoy myself a lot more than I probably would have. I like Star Wars and bobby heads and wind up toys and stuffed animals, but I like a nice steak dinner and a neat computer and beautiful artwork, too. I try to be balanced. It doesn’t always work, but I try. You only get to do this once, you know. That’s what made me realize that I didn’t give a flying fuck what any of these people thought, this is a tiny little town I’m getting out of as fast as I can, so why should I care what they think? Most of them can’t even form an independent opinion anyway, so big deal if they don’t like my clothes/hair/shoes/makeup/ideas! That made things a lot better. It also took a lot of pressure off, and I just sort of carried that with me. So what? I’m enjoying myself and I’m not impacting you in any way by enjoying myself, nor am I telling you I am better than you for doing it. Those are my basic guidelines. Live and let live. I’m busy enough with myself, how am I going to find time to interfere in your life too? please.

Anyway. It doesn’t seem like things are really any better than they were…I still sort of feel numb, but not numb enough to watch the news all the time. Scooter wants to go to sleep to the sound of it and turn it on as soon as he wakes up. That’s a little much for me. I usually suggest something else, like Nick At Nite or some other equally intellectual distraction. Usually it works, but I can’t always escape it. Then I just get sad.

The point at which I came completely apart was the friday after it happened. I was riding the bus home and this woman said she needed off at the same street I was headed for. The bus doesn’t stop precisely there, so I explained to her that the easiest way to get there was to go this way and get off at the same stop as me. She smiled at me, a genuine smile, and said thank you very much for the help, she doesn’t usually ride the bus in this direction so she was a little disoriented (it goes down one way streets, it’s pretty easy to get confused). We got to the stop, and when we got off she stopped and thanked me again. The sun was still sort of out, it was a nice day, and I was thinking that it was cool that people really seemed to be cutting each other some slack this week. wow. As I thought this I was standing on the sidewalk waiting for my chance to cross a relatively busy street. I found a gap in the traffic and started to cross the two lanes of traffic. As I did so, this woman in a blazer pulled into the street, turning onto the street I was trying to cross. She nearly hit me, and not being far from me, it wasn’t like I was invisible. I stopped to see what she would do, and what she wanted was to be driving in the lane I was in! Her window was down so she kindly took the time to yell at me for crossing the street. I turned around and was surprised she was hollering at me, so I shouted back that she coulda waited another second and a half and I woulda been out of the way. She yelled that she coulda fuckin sped up and I woulda been in her fuckin grill instead of in her fuckin face. After graciously exchanging middle fingers with her, she squealed her tires and drove off, almost causing an accident by cutting off a very large truck as I made it to the other side of the street. I came apart the rest of the way home. I tried not to talk about it, Scooter knew something was up when I got home. He finally made me tell him what was wrong and I completely lost it when I told him what had happened with this horrible woman, and it wasn’t so much that as it was that this woman had been so nice to me and I was so cheered up by her and then to be treated miserably by this woman who couldn’t be bothered to wait five steps (that’s how long it takes me to get across a lane of traffic, five steps). It was a nice up and a terrible down, which was the end of a long week and just turned out to be more than I could take. That sucked. I was really screwed up for a few days after that, it was really hard to try to find an equilibrium.

I wish I had some sort of witty insight for you here (like I always do, ha ha) but I just don’t. It’s hard to watch Dan Rather get choked up about something and see the same footage over and over again and watch dark green screens flicker with bright lights here and there and try to go think about what to have for dinner. So many times you hear about people who had someone vanish somehow, and they are probably dead but the body isn’t found, and the family always says that they just want some closure so they can start to heal. Well, we’re bombing them now, and it’s bound to kill some innocent people, which doesn’t make things right either. If we don’t get him he’ll come after us even more, and if we do get him, there’s certainly a few willing to take his place. Are we really solving anything? I’m not so sure we are. And if we don’t, this will not end, and with no ending, there can be no healing. That scares me a lot.

I’ll try to think of something entertaining I can write about later.

Just hit Ye Olde Recent Entries page to make sure that my last post took. It did. I also realized that this morning was going pretty well, what with finding out I’m most like R2D2 and that I was still excited about getting my wedding ring back on Saturday. Now that all sounds sort of dumb. Kind of like anything I could say on 9/11 sort of sounded dumb. So I guess I’ll just focus on the fact that all the pictures from our trip come back tomorrow, including a couple of rolls of mystery film, so that should be fun to go through, as long as Scooter’s mom doesn’t pick it up for us…

Scooter sent his mom (more importantly than mom, she possesses that rarest and most elusive of devices, a Card Of Costco) to pick up film for us without my knowledge. I had been on film detail, responsible for corralling it all in one place, herding it to Costco, and finally leading it to the bin in an appropriately filled out envelope. He had no idea. So he said not only that she picked it up but that she would probably look at it too. What he didn’t realize (or just plain tried to block from his memory) is that some of the film was of Christmas with Liplash and Bambi. Scooter’s birthday is two days from Christmas, and not getting him any remarkable gifts the year before, it was decided that 2000 would be the Christmas Of Scooter. He received a veritable plethora of naughty gifts and assorted paraphernalia, including but not limited to naughty films and saucy underpants. A good portion of this was on said film that his mother was allegedly rifling through at her convenience. Needless to say I was a little disturbed when he mentioned she’d be flipping through them. Aside from thinking it was inexcusably rude to go through someone else’s film (whoever they are) before they get to look at it (please tell me I’m not high, someone back me up on this), I was also horrified at what she was going to find. Having tried my best to calmly relate this to Scooter, I believe he rescued said film from his mom before she needed to go to therapy, go directly to therapy, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Anyway. It’s moments like that when I wonder if I’m not REALLY living in a sitcom where this stuff happens strictly for the entertainment of others. At least from here it seems like a pretty hip sitcom, since I don’t have that stupid laugh track…

I was just watching Cheers (God Bless Nick At Nite, btw) and Woody said that (the subject) and it made me cry. I finally realized what it was about all of this that was breaking my heart, and it was that I up and moved so far from my family. And the thing that sucks is that it isn’t even really far, it’s like 3 hours from my mom and 5 from my dad. I miss my dad a whole lot right now, and I’m not sure what to do about it. I’ll probably lay in bed not sleeping some more (it’s been an hour and a half already, maybe I can set some personal record) and figure out how I can make it better. I realized that it didn’t have to be Aunt Reba, it could be my dad or my patti or my mom or any number of other people that I’m not ready to say The Big Goodbye to yet. That scares the hell out of me. In fact, on Nick at Nite, they showed the episode of All In The Family where Edith died. Archie, near tears, says something like “now why did you have to go and leave me here before I could tell you one more time that I love you?” and that’s sort of how I’m feeling right now. My dad is supposed to be here this weekend, otherwise I’d be online booking some sort of transportation there right now. Which isn’t a bad idea, actually, might as well get the info…yeah! what a good idea! I went and looked it up. $82 round trip on the bus, and about $250 by plane. wheee. That’s really fuckin comforting. And everybody wonders why it is that “everybody seems to think they need a car”…cuz it’s highway freakin robbery if you don’t! Jeezy Creezy.

Anyway. Maybe that’s what I need to do, I need to visit my parents once a month. Mom gets odd numbered months, Dad gets even ones. I don’t know, but it sure seems like I’m not as far away as I think (unless you ask these retards who set fares for buses and planes). Or maybe I just don’t want to think that I’m as far away as I think. Perhaps that’s what’s really going on. Part of it has to do with Scooter’s parents, we see them all the time. What if he couldn’t see them every weekend and twice during the week or whatever it is? I think it would freak the hell out of him. It doesn’t bother me so much, I suppose. It sure does on days like 9/11, or when I get a call that someone passed away. That’s when I wonder if maybe living back that way wouldn’t be so bad. But when I go and visit, it just reminds me how happy I am that I live in Portland now, and that civilization is really kinda nice. But when I’m here, sometimes I don’t feel all that much at home, either. It’s like I’m too small town for Portland, and too Portland for a small town, but I don’t quite make it in either place. Roll your eyes if you want, but it’s like that Neil Diamond song, “I Am I Said” that goes “But now days I’m lost between two shores/LA’s Fine but it ain’t home/New York’s home but it ain’t mine no more” And that is just exactly how I feel right now. heh…”except for the names and a few other changes/if you talk about me/the story’s the same one” (same song). I’m not NY and LA (I’ve been to LA and frankly I’m disturbed by anyplace that is nothing but pavement all the way to where you see the curvature of the earth) exactly, but it’s close.

And in clenching my teeth over not sleeping and stress and sadness, I found one that hurts. Yay.

I think I’m really going to try to sleep now, as it’s nearing midnight and that’s about all the good news I can take for one day.

yeah.

PS-You know who you are, and I just want to say thank you for talking to me this afternoon. It made me feel a lot better than you know, and it felt really good to know that somebody cared enough about how I was doing to check on me after reading my lj. It meant a lot. Thanks.

My dad just called me. My great aunt passed away earlier today. She was my grandmother’s sister, but she lived up the hill from my dad for a long long time, and so I saw her a lot more than my grandma. She is smart and funny and always very kind to me. She is quick with a comment and while she can be the nicest person ever, if you cross her you’ll wish she just came up and killed you, because that would be nicer than whatever she has planned. It’s so weird, the only “kids” on my side were me and my brother, so we hung out with all her grandkids. They all called her gramma so much that I did too. I spent a lot more time with her than my own grandma, who lived far away for a lot of my life. She died about ten years ago…it was so much fun at Aunt Reba’s house at Christmas! She had a christmas party every year at her house, and she had all kinds of goodies to eat, and all kinds of liquor, and I remember having sort of a surreal moment when I went back for christmas and she asked me what I wanted to drink and instead of listing pop said “martini, jack & coke, vodka & 7…” and listed other stuff that I don’t remember. It was really weird for her to say it to me instead of to my dad or someone else who wasn’t me. I wasn’t really sure how to react. And then on Christmas Eve we all went up and opened presents. I never had a whole lot of them, not technically being a grandchild or anything, but it was always fun to go and see everybody (and when I got older have a drink) and see what other people got. We had a really nice time every single time. I think it is going to really tear my dad up, he used to go have coffee with her all the time, and he really watched out for her and stuff. His cousin (her daughter) moved back from Seattle to live with her and they were always fun together. She’s a real kick too, you don’t have to look very hard to see that they are closely related. I don’t know what else to put here, I’m just sort of unloading the things in my head. I went with her to get her eyes operated on, and I used to go see her all the time when I lived there, it was nice. She liked Scooter, and she made him feel welcome. Now I’m glad that I was able to get him to go with me for Christmas last year. This Christmas, between Aunt Reba and the wtc, I think I’ll take notes or something so that I remember it all. I don’t know what else to say so I think I’ll stop now, maybe then I can quit dabbing tears out of my eyes…

I took it in, and they said it’d be a week. I got a call on Saturday that they were all done with it! I went in and picked it up, it’s beautiful now, just the way it should be. The guy at the jewelers said that he saw the look on my face when he said it’d be a week so he tried to get it done as soon as he could. What a nice person! I really like them. I know I don’t have any deep jewelry needs, but if I ever do I know JUST where to go. Yay!

commence fucking off at your earliest convenience.

as if it wasn’t enough that I’m a slobbering Star Wars fan, I hit iSteph’s journal and followed the robot test link. WOO!