All My Eggs in One Well-Concealed Basket

When I was a freshman in college, I didn't get my period for six months. When I finally did again, I got it BAD. So the following summer I was in for a flight of tests and doctor visits. One trip was to get a sonogram of my babymakin' parts. Unfortunately this required having a very full bladder, which had me in tears at one point, till the dixie cup.

The techs who were doing the ultrasound were baffled by my Period of No Period. "Are you SURE you weren't pregnant?" they repeated, as if it were upsetting them. As if a virgin had never walked into their room o' TVs and shiny gadgets before and they couldn't understand the concept. Good gods, ladies, HOW SURE DO YOU WANT ME TO BE? I can guarantee you the second coming ain't coming through me.

Then they couldn't find my ovaries.

(I HID them!)

(The end result of all this? The cause was attributed to "the stress of going to college." Even though I wasn't actually stressed. See, bodies don't like change sometimes, even the good kind. Learn from my example, boys and girls. When you go to college, give your reproductive bits some extra-special attention. Buy them treats.)

I swear I saw a young MacGyver in the stairway this morning

What, you think MacGyver can't time-travel?

You'll want to bathe all day (and you, YOU probably need to)

I have to rave about this for a minute. It's like cookie dough for your body. But it's not sticky and it won't give you salmonella if you eat it raw. Though it might kill you in other ways.

LIKE WITH ITS AWESOMENESS

Maybe 1989?

Alas, she cried, at
break of day, where
shall we go from here?
Her companion glanced
at horizon gleaming;
she, picked up crossbow
and moved out of forest.
He followed, eyes
attached to her form.
Look, there's her mount,
her chestnut steed;
she leapt up and
rode away.
Hair streaming with eyes,
those eyes, such eyes,
oh eyes unrivalled,
he turned to his own
horse and moved to
lake, how to
save the prince?

May the Force Be With Your Monkey

You will not be surprised to learn that my parents (maybe just my Mom) would not let me ride most carnival rides, despite the Erie County Fair having the country’s second largest midway.

I could ride basic kiddie rides and the Tilt-A-Whirl and that was really it. At carnivals and the fair, that is. Rides that were permanently bolted down were OK. Except for Devil’s Hole at Fantasy Island. I don’t know what her deal was with that. Oh no, wait, more and more verboten rides are coming back to me now, Fantasy Island-style. But by the time I got to go to Crystal Beach and Darien Lake, I had complete ride control.

But back to the fair. The fair, the grand and wonderful fair, home of the best crappy food this side of someplace in Asia with great crappy food (or Texas), plus livestock, random country stars, 4-H-ers, and the magical possibility of a guy with no teeth giving you a stuffed panda bear for shooting water into a clown’s mouth. I’m betting that’s where JK Rowling got her idea for Dumbledore. Carnies*.

One year, however, there was – cue the seraphim choir -- a STAR WARS RIDE. We stumbled upon it, my parents and I. I am guessing it was after Empire came out, though it might have been as late in the game as Jedi. I dunno, it doesn’t feel like I was 14.

Either way, it won’t take me long to tell you about the ride, because it was the majorest piece of crap in all the history and lore of crappy craptastic crappiness. They had taken some other haunted house-type ride and thrown in, basically, Chewbacca, complete with flashing red eyes. I remember darkness, a few jerky twists of the car on its steel track (steel? Aluminum? Plutonium? Adamantium?), and some furry toothy beast leering at us [ibid], the lone travelers on this journey through the one place in the universe absolutely and completely bereft of the Force.

When it ended, I was stunned. I had never encountered anything in the Star Wars universe so very very very bad as this.

I’m pretty sure now that it was the inspiration for Revenge of the Sith.

*I am so kidding about Dumbledore and carnies. I luvs the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. Come on, look! I KNOW THE WORD WIZENGAMOT!

A Kiss to Build a Dream On

6/21/06

written beneath a solstice darkening sky
under the fading light, with fireflies

My favorite episode of Super Friends was when Superman walked into the Hall of Justice with a giant orange (bigger than him; must’ve been a fruit-engianting bad-guy day) and answered something Wonder Woman had just said with: “Your wish is my command!”

(Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that was my “most hopeful Super Friends moment.” Really, there must’ve been better epsiodes.)

That was as close as they ever came to what I waited and waited and wished for: the hook-up – nay, the romance, the surface-nudging love that had to blossom between those two Saturday morning super-heroes.

Then there was Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm. Yes, the teenagers, but also the crawling babies. Later came Batman and Batgirl; Aquagirl and Aquaman (or maybe it was Tadpole); the Professor and Mary Ann; everyone in Archie comics (at least there I got some small satisfaction); Ned Nickerson and Nancy Drew, girl detective -- you name a show or story with lithe young males and females, and I was there, waiting and hoping. As young as age 3, I swear I yearned for romance more than anything, and it only got stronger as I grew.

The gods have a real sense of humor, let me tell you. Or maybe it’s irony.

So I searched and watched and waited and sifted through the trappings of a child’s daily media. I remember the first actual boy in my real life whom I liked and who kissed me, both: Michael Mahoney. He had brown eyes and brown hair in a bowl cut and very red lips. He kissed me on the cheek one day in kindergarten, surprising me since I knew he liked someone else (my good friend Nancy Coppola? Shut up, I was not a hussy; remember, he surprised me).

Unless Kevin Kelly kissed me first. He lived across the street. I know he gave me an engagement ring when I was 3. Saved up all his preschool money.

Sounds promising, no?

HA HA HA HA HAAA

Somewhere up there, they’re laughing their divine asses off.

And sometime around then, Brenda and Basil appeared.

I know the timing because I was in our old house, lying on the braided carpet in the family room reading the comics. 69 Candy Lane. How’s THAT for an address that’s not a themed whorehouse in lower Amsterdam?

(Is there a lower Amsterdam? It sounds good, don’t it? For the purposes of this treatise, let’s agree that there is.)

Oh yes, I remember that first panel of kissing I ever saw. I think it was even in the Courier-Express. I could swear it was a Saturday night. I stared at it, drank it in, couldn’t take my eyes off it. I was rapt. I swear I can still see it. I think I felt like I was getting this magical stolen moment. Somehow my parents did a good job of making me feel like it was wrong for me to see physical affection. I know I never wanted them to see how much my dolls made out.

This might be because whenever people were kissing on TV, my Dad acted like he thought it was awful, rolling his head around and squeezing his eyes shut and saying things like “Ew! Yuck! Ugh! Is it over yet?!”

Real funny, Dad. Ever notice that your wee daughter was the most impressionable waif ever to walk the earth? Couldn’t you hear the crushing, crippling shyness ticking away inside her little heart?

Imagine how things went after my Mom overheard, from the other end of the phone, my friend Julie and me discussing the correct name for breasts. I think it was breasts. I can’t recall saying, or hearing Julie say, anything like “vagina” or whatever might have passed for little kids’ words for it. Oh, HA HA HA, I called it a tinkly back then! HA HA HA HA HAAA

(I’d forgotten that. And of course it wasn’t the vajayjay I called a tinkly, but we all know that.)

Yes, anyway. That was fun, wasn’t it? I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody that, at least not in about 15 years. So we were in Julie’s mom’s bedroom, and Mrs. Bement was on the phone with my Mom. Julie and I were talking about what you call whatever female body part. She was two years younger than me, so I must’ve been what, 7? Cos a 4-year-old wouldn’t be talking about that stuff, would she? Julie was saying that Tara, another neighbor friend, had said It’s called this, and I was vehemently saying No it’s called that.

Later my Mom told me she’d heard the conversation and that “We don’t talk about things like that.”

Well, there you go. There’s about 6 months’ worth of therapy right there.

I have never since used a euphemism to talk about women’s body parts. (Men’s, sure; who cares? Apparently my Mom didn’t!)

Boy, where I go with these things is never where I intend.

So back to the kissing. (Did you realize that’s where we were?) My Barbie dolls were made for nothing else, IMYO. I had a couple of Kens, but better still, down the road, were Shaun Cassidy/Joe Hardy (complete with code-reading electric guitar!) and--da-da-daaa!—my 12-inch Luke Skywalker (insert lightsabre joke of your choice here, gutterbrains). Wherever Luke is now (and that’s still in the house somewhere), he’s got pink kisses all over his face (the marker had always wiped off Ken, dammit), the telltale signs of a failed secretarial seduction.

He was hot. He was irresitible to lesser dolls. But he was always faithful to Barbie.

Luke was the best because (a) he was Luke Skywalker, (b) he was Luke Skywalker, (c) his arms were very bendy and could therefore really hold her Barbitude, and (d) he was Luke Skywalker.

They kissed a LOT.

I didn’t know how sex worked then (hell, do I now?), despite having learned about, er, seeing stars at about age 2 or 3, so there was none of that. Just lots and lots and lots of kissing, and groping, and then some more kissing, and then there was also all the kissing.

[But they were in love. For life. OH, I just remembered a whole big long Tarzan-type thing I had going for them. And the tinfoil dresses I made for Barbie. Wow, I tell ya. My imagination has been so wasted.]

Like I said, one hell of a sense of humor.

Listen, this is important.

For now it has been 6 years since I was even kissed. I can barely remember what it feels like. Seriously. I don’t even get to dream about real kissing, much less anything more – if I dream about it, I’m dreaming about imagining it. I don’t even get the good dream.

Again. With the humor. Funny, guys.

Except until, oddly enough, last night. It was a guy my brain invented. I thought him not the sort of look I liked. But something that made his face not particularly attractive to me also somehow made him a good kisser.

So here I sit on the solstice night, six long years dry, desperately needing to be kissed, no idea in hell how I ever will be again. (Also wondering a little why I put it that way: be kissed, not just KISS. What are Cree’s obvious issues with meeting men? Discuss.)

Not even sure how to want it, at the same time. Pretty sure my life has rewritten itself so that I never was kissed. Never gave one. Certainly no kisses were ever exchanged.

Would someone maybe just lend me her husband for a few minutes, at least, so I might just remember? Tested and approved and guaranteed not to rust? You wouldn’t mind, would you, Del? I bet Julia would hand Billy over quicker than you can say “stomach acid.” Oooo, how about Mick; he’s Irish!

Sigh.

Oh well.

At least I’m in New York on the solstice, and at least I get fireflies.

HI SCOTT AND DELMA

*waving*

It starts with ice cream

This is the perfect night to go out for ice cream.

And really, there's not much that's needed for that equation. It's warm and it was sunny all day and the world has continued spinning. It's summer in New York, and that's all that matters.

I'm lactose intolerant and ice cream gives me headaches, but I still want to go out for it. Soft serve somewhere out in the country. A chocolate/vanilla twist with chocolate jimmies. You get it, and I'll just come along for the ride.

When I was in high school there was an ice cream place right in the village where I lived. My friends and I would ride our bikes or walk down there often in the summertime. I had 3 friends in town, none of whom lived in my neighborhood. Pam and Amy would ride from their houses to mine. Ellen would have to get a ride. One time -- just one time -- we saw this super cute boy on a skateboard, with another girl and guy. Just the one time. We dubbed him Andrew Phineas, a combination of names we really liked and thought would suit our ideal cute boy. I'd still like to know where he came from and where he went.

I so miss the promise of those times. The promise of a life of love and fulfillment. When even everyone who was so different from each other was the same in this respect: We all had our whole lives ahead of us, marriage and jobs and ways that become set so so so far off, all of us part of this same pool of individuals to meet and choose from. Which I never realized at the time, of course, because you never do. You never realize that one day it will be gone, and you'll be looking around saying, Hey, wait, what happened?? Where did everybody go?

What would you tell your 16-year-old self right now if you could? What would you tell him or her to do differently, to savor now, to always remember? "Spend more time with Grandma"? "When you see Derek coming, run far and screaming in the other direction"? "Wait till you're 20"?

"Don't wait for anything!"?

End-of-Week Tribute

Raccoon, fork, coin spin
cookie jar, browns blanket, chair
(my chair, butt imprint!)

Chapter 23!
Ed rolls out the candy corn:
How to catch a cat

Leading through the night
All who seek his gentle lore
We heart you, Big C.

Were you aware

It's better with pie.

Where "it" = "everything."

Also, monkeys. For the dancing and the squealing. Additionally, monkeys like pie. They will eat your leftovers. If you are so crazy as to have leftovers.

Dos Mas

(Is that even correct Spanish?)

Two more birthday haiku:

1. For Jenny, of June 13

What? All-Staff Day? Now?
THAT'S my birthday fun this year?
Mushroom has weird parts.

2. For Erica, of June 14

Free at last! And now

I get cake in a new place

It's far, but so good.

My (Belated) Review of X-Men: The Last Stand

WHY IS IT

DARK OUT?

Happy Monkey Day, Monkey!

A birthday in time
right laid out for monkey rhyme
have some rhizome pie.

Bottoms up, Raj! And I do mean YOUR bottom.

Ah, Texas

A big shout-out to Matthew McConaughey for the lovely dream appearance last night. The invisibility was a nice touch, as was your roughing up of the leering concierge. A bientot!

The twentieth of nevah

Well this sure has been a day or two. (Oh, there's some philosophical thinking. Yes, you may borrow it; people will be so impressed. "Did you get that from 'The Daily Show'?" they'll ask as they touch you gently, hesitantly, and sigh just a little.) Humidity makes me fell like dung. Not crap, poop or the s-word; dung. My muscles ache and tense up and it's just a lot of ick. It's one of the things that made me so miserable in Florida. Here, it's been around 60 and humid as all get-out the past few days, so by last night I was just a physical wreck.

But my hair looked great!

I volunteered at this Cornell event, a glee club/chorus concert. The concert was cool, but by the end I just felt -- icky. And I guess it made me feel alone, seeing all those people together, families, old and lifelong friends, generations of Cornellians, people who had spent their lives together after meeting at Cornell. I left feeling like physical, emotional and mental offal.

(Maybe I can work "effluvium" in here somewhere.)

I went to bed almost right away, after doing as few of my general nightly things as I thought I could get away with.

This morning, still bleh. I cleaned the litter boxes, and Fathom was apparently peeing lots and in wee bits again. Otter had peed on the floor in the entryway. Add this to the dungness and having felt crappy the whole rest of the night, and I thought I might completely lose it. "I CAN'T DO THIS ALONE ANYMORE!!" I hollered to the gods, who I knew were listening, just ... smirking? Blake said it would be March. I don't know that I can make it to March. "They are just cards, after all," she pointed out. But my gut says It Will Be a While. I headed off to Collegetown Bagels and the Statler pretty unhappy, but resigned.

During my second Cornell volunteering stint, I decided I would take myself to lunch; even though I had planned to spend the rest of the day writing this big thing I have due this week, I couldn't face it. I needed to get away from Cornell, from work, from Plantations, for a bit.

It was a little after 2 when I left the Statler, and -- my stars, it was beautiful out. The humidity was GONE, washed away by cool winds, released by clearing skies into the stratosphere; there was actually blue to be seen. "You can relax. You can feel better now," I told my body, and by the time I got to my car, it did.

I went to the Boatyard Grill, had the Chilean sea bass, and went to Taughannock. I even had a wee bit of a headache starting, a needle in my skull, but I knew the only thing for it was cool wind and walking and falling water.

Is it just the weather, then? I never used to think it affected me, but damn, lately, I tell ya. I'm all right now. I'm good again. Haven't stumbled across the love of my life yet, but ... it's almost OK again.

... almost.

I don't have a guardian angel

I have a dragonfly

OH MY GOD WHAT'S BEHIND YOU???

*Psyche*

This Is What You Get With ...

13 pounds of PUT ME DOWN!!

... but it has not even remotely

affected my ability to rock out!!!

The Story of My Life

Once, when I was 8, I think, I was sitting at the dinner table with my parents. I'm an adopted only child, you need to know before we go on. And was very overprotected. Anyway, I'd had trouble sleeping the night before, maybe the previous several nights. So, this being 1977-'78 and such things being all over the mass media, my innocent little self, following up a statement on the sleep thing, said, "Maybe I need a tranquilizer."

OH MY GOD.

That's right, it was the day they had feared since bringing me home at 5 days old: APPARENTLY SOMEONE AT SCHOOL HAD OFFERED ME DRUGS.

Offered me, the most obedient little 8-year-old CATHOLIC-SCHOOL-GOING GIRL ever, drugs.

They stopped eating and looked at each other; I can hear forks clattering to their plates, but that might just be reconstruction on my part. "Where did you hear that??"

I looked down, embarrassed and guilty and confused. "I don't know," I mumbled. The rest of dinner is a blur.

Later, I was helping put dishes in the dishwasher. "Gilligan's Island," I said.

"What?" My Mom asked.

"I heard about it on Gilligan's Island."

The Professor adds more bamboo
to his meth lab

And that's the truth. Of course that's where I had heard about it. I'm sure they were expecting schoolmate Sally, corrupter of all things good and innocent, but nope; instead of a student at Our Lady of Mercy, the most nun-run school in existence and IN THE BASEMENT OF A CONVENT, it was syndicated afternoon TV.

I truly love that story. Take that, People Who Ruled My Life in Fear! WHERE ARE YOUR GRANDCHILDREN NOW, HUH?

My Milkshake

my milkshake brings all the boys to the -- oh wait, no it doesn't.

Return of the Native

I am so pumped to be back in New York state, after 7 years in Florida and 1 1/2 in California (reverse order). People must be getting sick of hearing me say it, but I can't help it. I'm dancy with joy. Ebullient is the perfect word. And surely it must be nice to hear me sing praises after so many years of unhappiness.

I've had my first winter and spring back; now comes my first summer (I am, after all, taking them in order). In Florida, my evenings were often just spent waiting for it to be time to go to bed. Depressing, yes. Now, I'm all sad when it's 10 p.m. and I have to wind things down so I can get enough sleep to be awake all day tomorrow. The light is so cool, and the sun is up much earlier and later than Down South. I totally flash back to my college summers, when I would be up till 3 or 4 easily, writing and reading and dancing to Guns 'n' Roses videos. I knew every sweet Axl move.

Those were magical nights (days too), full of daydreams and stories and wishes for the future. Granted, they were also very alone days and nights, and given the choice, I would add some real people into the mix. But there's nothing I can do about my 20-year-old self now. What I can do is read through my journals from those days and be hugely impressed by my writing then. I had so much inspiration going on somehow, sitting in the back yard out by the pond or by my open window with the night air breathing gently in on me.

One of my planned projects for this summer is to post a lot of that here. I only just realized the confluence of these times as I wrote that sentence. This time around, at least, I will be living outside my spinning mind as much as in it. If I have anything to say about it.