Lion and Magic Boy

Want to know what I did yesterday?  Of course you do.  You got up this morning thinking, “What did Karen do yesterday?”  All right then!  Stop twisting my arm!  Ow!

This is what I did:

1.  Spent $100 at vet for thick white fluid in small bottles meant to be handily squirted into cat’s mouth twice a day, and also for an entire case of prescription canned cat food that of course looks and smells identical to regular cat food but costs four times as much.

2.  Chased Blood-Dripping Peeing Razor Blades in Inappropriate Places Cat around the house in a vain attempt to deter said cat from leaving bright red spots on the rented carpet whenever he headed purposefully for a corner.

3.  Told landlord, “Sure, bring someone over tomorrow to have a look at buying the place!  What do I care!”

4.  Ran around insanely throwing things into drawers and closets.  Looked at said rented carpet with loathing.  If I issue them green glasses at the door, the green will cancel out any red they see, right?

5.  Met with patchouli-scented petsitter who will happily inject said cat’s mouth with said white cat-fluid twice a day (for a fee) while I am away later this week and next, since I know damn well that 12-year-old boys will not.  At least not the one I know.

6.  Taxes!  Something about taxes!

7.  Regretted not having sent in those estimated self-employment tax payments all last year.

8.  Work.  Because “working from home” means, uh, working.  From home.  However to the unaided eye, “work” can look an awful lot like “doing something on a computer.”  So I’ll clear that up and just say I spent 3 hours at work.

9.  Painfully swallowed more than 4,600,000 times.  Because someone came in the night and filled my throat  full of shards of glass and strep-laden steel wool.

I have so much to tell you!

First, there is the thing about the neighbors. I have mentioned the neighbors before. There are a lot of them.

Dog-Poop-Catapult Recipients left. Oh, that was a major event! Boxes upon boxes of undefinable objects sitting out at the curb for weeks, trips back and forth to their 600 cars. At first I thought only some of them were moving but no, Big Daddy took his SUV and left also. With all three dogs: Big, Medium, and Yappy.

And then there was quiet.

For a day.

Then the pickup trucks arrived, and the New People came.

I was going to give New People a big bag of apples, and then I got to thinking that maybe they don’t eat apples and anyway isn’t apples a weird thing to bring a new neighbor? So I skipped the gift thing.

He is a karate instructor. She is bigger/taller/more muscular than he is (and he looks pretty buff).

Which explains the sounds I hear at night, like someone is using the wall between our places as a kickboxing dummy. Not that there aren’t a lot of various loud sounds coming from my place from time to time, but every night. Like at 10 pm. THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP.

He also spends a fair bit of his time on the phone. On the porch. Which is under my bedroom window. While he smokes. Until 1 am.

However, everything balances out:

Day before yesterday, another moving truck appeared behind the house across from me, the house that’s next door but with a strip of grass between. If you’ve been keeping up, this is the house of Judgy Bus Stop Mom. All day as I was in and out I noticed the three-year-old standing on the truck ramp but never saw anyone actually putting anything in the truck. Were they moving or simply storing a moving truck in their driveway?

J.B.S. Mom said hello to me, first time in months! She didn’t mention the large moving truck not six feet from her, so clearly she hadn’t noticed it yet. I didn’t want to give anything away, so I didn’t either.

At the end of the day they were finished levitating their invisible goods into the truck, and it was now out front with a trailer attached and they were attempting to drive a car onto the trailer. I dragged my free stuff that even Craigslist doesn’t want to the curb. J.B.S. Mom was out there watching Husband try to drive the car onto the trailer. “Once you don’t want something, no one else does either,” she remarked to no one in particular. Still nothing about moving. Perhaps no one had told her? I was prepared for a big emotional scene with her crying and sobbing about how much she’d miss me, but I think the strain was getting to her so I let her off with a have-a-nice-life nod and a semi-smile at her semi-joke.

This week Serena had her Worst Day Ever At School (something about a lost mitten; no pie for her!) followed by One Her Best Days So Far At School (something about a friend and plans to play together the next day). Life should be like that. Passionate and intense.

Eric amused himself in the Indian grocery yesterday by turning in circles in one spot until he fell down on the floor last cleaned in 1982.

I now despise Freecycle as much as Craigslist; could you explain why you are upset at me because I wasn’t home when you came to get my crappy FREE dresser, when you never told me when you were coming? And also? Woman who came to get my daughter’s very nice outgrown clothes? Is there a reason you didn’t tell me your six-year-old was INCREDIBLY FAT AND THEREFORE CAN’T FIT IN THOSE CLOTHES so you’re going to sell them on eBay? I know you are so couldn’t you have just been honest about it? And then I would have given the clothes to the 4000 really nice people who emailed me repeatedly and actually wanted clothes their kids could wear instead of making up that bogus story about your house burning down. I wish I had had the balls to just not let you have the clothes.

And today it is sunny and it is warm and I will go outside. The end.

Dear Craigslist,

I adore you, I really do.  Especially your “best of” posts.

But I have some issues with your people.

Why is it so hard to give away something for free?  I have a metal bed frame and box springs.  They’re in my garage.   I have a moral objection to throwing away something that is perfectly good, but it’s been ten days already and it’s still here.

No, I will not help you get the bed frame and box spring to the Shore.  Which is like 2 hours away.

It’s free.  It’s in my garage.  You need to come and get it.   These are the parameters.  So please don’t email me and tell me to call you in three days.  I won’t remember.  If you want the thing, find a way to contact me.  Don’t ask me to hold it for a week for you while you figure out your transportation difficulties.

Did I mention this is free?  A free item.  Free.

If you tell me you’re going to come and get the item, please don’t keep me waiting all that afternoon and then not show up and not answer emails.  Yes, you’re doing me a favor by helping me free up valuable garage space, but let’s work together here, shall we?

Free.  It’s still free, people.

And Tuesday I’m taking it to the curb.  I give up on you.

Love,

Trying Freecycle Next

Spring is here, sort of, I think. Normally I would start opening windows this time of year and pretend that the air outside is better than the air inside, but this year I can’t, because:

A. The windows are stuck closed.

B. I have sprained both wrists opening jars of martini olives and therefore can type yet not operate window mechanisms.

C. The neighbor has been having a bonfire since January.

You guessed (B), didn’t you?

But no.

In January, the chain saw started. One tiny treelet at a time. All day long. And what do we do with our chainsawed treelet pieces? Why, burn them, of course! In a great smoke-belching fire. All day! Since January.

So apparently the neighbor has decided to do something with the house that was all boarded up since I moved in here. I had no idea there were that many treelets on that property, enough to require the constant use of a chainsaw and keep a fire burning for three months straight.

I mean, I guess they are using the chainsaw to cut down tree-things and then burning them. But I just had a thought about the movie Fargo. Could the boarded-up house have been filled with discarded doll heads or random bodies stashed there?

Good thing there’s a whole 20 feet of sort-of woods in between my driveway and the House of Burning Nutjob. I feel safe now.

It all started in Paris.

It was my second (of three) time(s) there, at about this time of year. Cold, rainy, grey, wet. But still Paris. And there was one unmistakeable thing that stood out, that kept hitting me in the face over and over.

The smell.

Paris has a smell.

It’s a perfume, a sweet delicious scent wafting gently from impeccably-clad Parisian women on the Metro, on the street, a subtle hint here and there. And it was all the same, all the same scent. The scent of Paris.

I wanted to take it home with me, to have to savor in odd moments, to bring me back to the clusters of crunchy baguette sandwiches cheaply available at any patisserie to consume while strolling down the sidewalk while looking at the gorgeous produce displayed in stalls lining the streets of the Latin Quarter. Or to bring me back to the buttery sweet soft-crisp-crunch of the Mardi Gras crepes available for just one day each year in any chocolaterie.

So I went into a department store. Not just any department store, but the Galeries Lafayette. If they didn’t have the scent of Paris, no one would.

I went straight to the perfume counter and set to work smelling every bottle. It had to be there somewhere. Every woman in Paris owned this scent, drifted it across the waiting nostrils of sentimental Americans at every opportunity; surely it would be here.

And it was. I had it wrapped up securely and I brought it home tenderly. The scent of Paris.

And I wore that scent for a couple of years. I sprayed it in my bedroom from time to time, and on the bed. I wanted to sleep in Paris, and breathe it in. Then a subsequent pregnancy caused me to swear off any scent at all lest I lose what little lunch I was consuming. And the scent of Paris lay fallow.

Until this past Saturday, when I glanced at my dresser, fairly bare except for a few unused bottles of scent and other paraphernelia, and remembered Paris.

It was time to have Paris again.

I sprayed one tiny spritz in the room, misting an invisible wearer who would walk through the bare mist, allowing only a modest amount to cling. Then I went downstairs.

A few minutes later I was seized with disgust. Serena was having a shower and must have been using an entire bottle of shampoo! How perfumey! How wasteful! I’d better go up and check.

Upstairs, the scent was stronger making a left turn instead of a right. A right turn was where Serena hadn’t even made it into the shower yet, whereas a left turn was…my bedroom. I walked in and nearly choked. The scent was unbearable. How did I ever think this smelled good?? And ohmygod how did it ever get so strong? How was I going to even sleep in the room?

I opened a window despite the frigid temperatures. I’d rather freeze to death anyway than asphyxiate.

Had to close the window before too long, and it did little good anyway. WHAT WAS I THINKING??

I guess I’m a little more sensitive than I used to be, because no one else noticed a thing.

Paris is going in the trash anyway.

So I’ve been vacationing in Ontario, Canada’s Vast Frozen Vacation Wonderland, for the past few days. Actually, Matthew and I drove up to the Niagara area to see an old friend of his there.

Yes, we saw Niagara Falls. Hey! That’s a lot of water! And it was really really cold! Good thing my camera either froze or melted, I forget which, because after a minute and a half and one photo we went back inside. A lot of water! And not very many tourists! But inside was warmer. And had benches.

Matthew: Hey, I can feel the falls from here! Through my butt! Woo!

Me: Me too! Let’s just stay here!

Oh, and the Niagara region is full of little wineries, and you can drive down the river from the falls and stop at the zillions of wineries along the way. It’s quite beautiful, and feels a lot like France where you can drive and drive and stop at every freaking little winery through a whole region and spend hours doing this. Many of the Niagara wineries sell ice wine, which I really like. But virtually all of the wineries were closed for the season and we had to content ourselves with the enticing little road signs every few feet announcing yet another delectable winery filled with [unattainable] delectable wine.  Fun!

Oh! And we stayed in a very nice restored mansion where they let people sleep and all and throw breakfasts the size of Rhode Island at them in the morning. It was quite nice having people bring us coffee and fruit and croissants. And stuff. The only problem was that apparently the place was built in the Stone Age or something (or 1800’s, maybe), and completely lacked wireless anything.

No. Wireless.

So we had to compete to plug our respective laptops into the one cord-thingy attached inconveniently to an actual wall.

Mostly we thumbwrestled for this honor and I used my power of the Reproachful Glance and once we decided to naked mudwrestle for it but got distracted when the sunken tub was finally full of mud. After all, who cares about the interweb when you’ve got real, actual mud?

Oh, and you know what else they have there in Ontario’s Frozen Winter Wonderland? Bowling! Woo! So we went bowling. Except some pins were missing and the balls were tiny and lacked holes. Weird! And I almost won, and I could have won, but it seemed like a better idea to come in last, so I did that. Here’s how you play:

My Body: Oooo! Exercise!

Me: What do mean, “exercise”? This is “5-pin bowling”!!

My Body: Feels like bending and stretching to me.

Me: So what? It’s not exercise, trust me.

My Body: Ha! You’ll feel this tomorrow! [snickers]

Me: Then the least you could do is stop dropping the damn ball early. Can’t you handle a 5-lb ball? See those pins? The ball is supposed to actually hit them and make them fall!

My Body: I CAN’T HEAR YOUUUUUU! LALALALALA!

Ever-conscious of your delicate sensibilities, I have been sparing you the details of my ongoing search for coffee beans that aren’t burned to a smoking black crisp, rendering them devoid of taste other than of the charred dead remains of what was (presumably) once an actual coffee bean.

Once upon a time, I got my coffee from Whole Foods. This was after a 12-year Coffee-Free-Phase, punctuated by the carefree caffeine-free taint of Several Small Children Inhabiting Parts of My Body for Months At A Time. So after 12 years of this self-denial, I decided to sow a wild oat or two and start drinking coffee again. That’ll teach ‘em! Caffeine denial, PAH! So I went to Whole Foods, got the least-blackened beans they had, went home and ground them and poured hot water over them in my French press, then added sugar and cream and went ahhhh.

Ahhhhh.

That’s the sound of satisfied self-indulgence.

And life was good.

So about a year ago, picking up where I left off but now not as close to Whole Foods, I searched online for Not Burnt Beans and found some. Sumatran! Himalayan! Coffee bliss!

Except, not organic. Not free trade. Not shade-grown. Not guilt-free.

I kept drinking what I had, though, eliminating the sugar and the cream and using rice milk. Still good. Still not burnt.

But the guilt.

So the search.

Undoubtedly you know of at least 11 purveyors of organic free trade shade grown coffees that aren’t burnt to the point of tasting like ass (why is this so hard?), but they are few and far between in my experience.

First place: Yes! We have “light” roast! Give us your money! We are enticing! Look!

Result: ass. Blackened, burnt ass. Liars.

Second place: Yes! Look! Mmm, the aroma, the flavor! “Light”! We can tell you anything as long as we qualify it in quotation marks! Entice! Spend! Give us money!

Result: ass. As a kid, this is what I thought coffee tasted like. Is this what most people drink, this murky bitterness?

Desperate run to the [non-Whole Foods] grocery store: Why? Why do I bother?

Result: A.S.S.

So yesterday I tricked Serena into a Food Procurement Foray, and we stopped at Whole Foods to get chocolate for Nathaniel, organic cream cheese to go with smoked salmon for Matthew, and crackers that are only sold at Whole Foods and why why why do I buy them for Eric.

And at the last minute I remembered that they have coffee there.

This morning, then, this was the sound:

Ahhhhh.

Uh, no, I don’t mean that kind of performance. Sorry.

No, I’m going to whine about writing today. I said before, I’m a writer. Not only is it part of what I do for income, it’s also my main method of self-expression. It’s who I am. Some people tend to express through conversation, but I’ve tended to keep things inside, some emotions actually rendering me practically mute. Yeah, I’m working on it. But expression through the written word has always been a venue for me, has always helped me work through issues or communicate or simply to play.

So writing isn’t the problem.

Nope, it’s time.

I’ve whined about time before, or my perceived lack of it. But in the course of a typical week, I write (usually; I’ve been slacking a bit lately) 20-25 posts at Strollerderby, about 5 here, 2 for Work It, Mom!, and 2-3 for Parentricity. In addition, I have completely slacked in spiritual writing at Springing Light (mainly because thay energy is in large part going toward Matthew and Work It, Mom!, a rather interesting pairing, actually) and haven’t written much at Loving Awareness either (though Matthew writes frequently there, and oh, I won an award for a post there!).

But personal journaling? Ha.

Writing fiction? Nada.

I counsel people all the time about things like finding balance in their lives, yet my own feels strangely askew.

Is this whining?

I mean, isn’t everyone else’s life (everyone but me, of course) easy/effortless/wonderful? And everyone has everything they feel they want/need, right? I’m the ONLY ONE WHO FEELS THIS WAY. I am so alooooooooone!

Right?

Kidding. (sort of)

Anyway, it’s a HUGE drain on creativity to feel you HAVE TO PERFORM. So I am playing with the feeling of unloading some obligations.

But maybe I will put all that on hold just now and go for a walk or something. It’s sunny out.

Friday morning I bent over to pick up Eric. He was sitting on the kitchen floor in silent protest about having a drink/eating breakfast/getting ready for school, and he beseechingly held his arms up to me with those pleading eyes, and I bent over, grasped him around his midsection, and began to straighten up.

It was then I heard a snap.

Not to mention what I felt.

This is what I said:

“Ow!Ow!Ow!Ow!”

This is what I said (silently):

“Fuckfuckfuckfuck!”

And, because I’m like that, I also had thoughts about how ironic it was that I could manifest in such a sudden way my thoughts about burdens and obligations and the identity I’ve assumed all these years blah blah blah.

So I had a visit with my chiropractor, who usually does a nice relaxing Reiki session with yummy-smelling oils made from plants and flowers, and took various pain relievers and did yoga and didn’t feel much better. There was a concern about that snapping sound, and I kept reliving it. I have a whole new understanding about people plagued with back problems; it really does affect EVERYTHING.

So after 5 Tylenol-with-codeines (not all at once), about 3 Motrins, an expensive New York City cocktail I did not pay for, a fair bit of whining and complaining, lots of yoga and a scalding-hot bath, I am better. My brush with death has been averted! Alert the press! Although I have been rendered even more inflexible than before, if possible, so the yoga is going to be with me for awhile.

LESSON: When children reach a weight of 30 lbs and/or can walk, let them.

1. Not working.

2. Sleeping, except for the two phone calls and the doorbell-ring and the cat licking my hair that occurred while said sleeping was scheduled.

3. Sick.

4. I have become a Bravo-ho. It started with Top Chef, and once the habit is there it’s apparently hard to break. So right this minute I am Not Working while Project Runway, muted, flickers at me silently from the other side of the room. The choice of which is ironic because even though I own a kick-ass sewing machine, I can barely sew a seam that’s straight. Plus I wear the same clothing every day.

5. Talking to my dad, who is recovering from having some 200-pound thing fall on him. I think it was a bundle of shingles or something. He’s 72. Not sure why he was roofing, but there you go.

6. Newish post up at Loving Awareness (and have a look at the Quote Rotator!).

7. New gig! Debuts next week! Plus! The Parentricity link works now! And I have some posts up there!