mulling over where to put my vaginas

1. In trying not to get too far away from my blog, I present this post.

2. Ogunquit, Maine. Halloween decor:

I call him “Dashing Charlie”

3. Monday is the day I found a dead rabbit in the side yard, a part of our yard where none of us tend to go. I didn’t touch or disturb the body, but it looked large, an adult; and perfect. It seemed too big for the cat to have downed. Hubby moved it yesterday and indeed said it did not have any apparent marks or blood on it.

4. What do you think about the rabbit (multiple choice):

a. natural causes

b. zombie apocalypse coming just in time for Halloween

c. at least twice in the 13 years we’ve lived here, the cats have brought baby bunny tributes to the door. Their fur is always perfect and thick and beautiful.

d. sad, even haunting

e. where should one put such a large, dead animal?

5. Though not completely recovered from recent injuries, I am still here and much better. I am learning that setbacks are part of injury recovery. It’s not all I’M BETTER AND BACK TO NORMAL ACTIVITIES NOW, FULL OF VIBRANT GOOD HEALTH (FOR FUCK’S SAKE). It’s more like CRAP, I TRIED SOMETHING I USED TO BE ABLE TO DO, IT HURTS LIKE HELL, AND CAN’T DO JACK SHIT FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS.

JULY 2013

50th Birthday necklace, vintage

6. I know I talk about it all the time, but I have aged even more quickly due to my recent injuries (more rapid facial aging than from the last couple of years’ bouts with anemia). I offer the above photo as evidence. See the way I am not as present as usual, some part of me is withdrawn? That is the face of a body in chronic pain.

7. UGH

8. CRAP

9a. Though you think you know me well, the next item may overstep any previous TMI boundary.

9. As we were on our way out of Provincetown in late August (our two night, last hurrah of summer mad-dash to the Cape), I visited one of the public restrooms; you know, the one near the huge public parking lot in the town center. After I used the loo,

yes, that loo

I washed my hands and then cupped them to bring some water up to my mouth so I could gently rinse (see, TMI). I did so and spat in the sink. A woman (from New Jersey, mayhaps) standing near me said, barely audibly but definitely disapprovingly enough for my ears, REALLY?

Such a dare as that, how could I resist? So I said, very loudly: YES, REALLY!

New Jersey: That’s disgusting.

Me, Happy Valley: You’re disgusting.

or something like that. Let’s just say neither of us remembered our manners and the insults continued and heightened.

She “reported” me to the attendant and kept making quite the fuss even after I, head held high, exited the restroom.

The interaction was more in depth and lasted longer than what I have presented and I can’t remember much any more. Even immediately afterward, I couldn’t piece together the whole thing because I was shaken and stirred and triumphant and shocked and angry and embarrassed and righteous. L’il ol’ me, twinklysparkles, all of that, all rolled into one.

10. I really wish 40-something, overly-made-up women from New Jersey with big hair and clanky, not-inexpensive jewelry read my blog.

11. TRAGEDY STRIKES!

(some of you may have heard about this last week on Facebook)

All seven letters, perfect, ready for a 50-point bonus, but nowhere to place them on the board.

12. How would you feel if you didn’t have a place to put your vaginas?

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vanity plates*

Never never never never have I ever ever ever wanted vanity plates for my car

Never say never because now that I’m fifty, it’s either a second tattoo or vanity plates. Not really, but it sounds like a good threat, doesn’t it?

Now that I have a sense of what it must’ve been like to be a Dead Head, you know since I feel like I could follow Wilco all over the USA and be happy about it, I think I might consider the following license plate:

TWEEDY

or

QUEENPIN

but QUEENPIN is probably too many letters

maybe TWINKLY so you all know me when I drive by

From the Solid Sound Festival this year, the Friday night all-request show by Wilco. Although they played covers of others’ songs almost exclusively, this one is their own. You have to excuse some of the footage, but the sound is good, real good.

*what’s the asterisk for? It is so you know that I’ll be editing yesterday’s post—making some changes, probably by day’s end. Sometimes my enthusiasm gets the better of me and I forget what is precious and dear and private.

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goddess

Recently spotted in Provincetown:

We drove past this sign in Provincetown last Monday on our Capril trip. We understood that it could not be a real traffic sign. The next street is a one-way and who can drive in a beehive pattern anyway? The next day, we drove past again and snapped some photos. That night I pondered and pondered the image in my mind’s eye. I figured it out. It is a woman; yes, a celebration of the feminine.

On our last day, on the way out of town, a woman outside the adjacent gallery said, yes, it is a woman, the Venus of Willendorf, to be exact.

Although I do have proper feet, I know just how she feels.

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why I can’t sleep

Tweedy

I have only ever had one dog, my baby, Agatha Bean Glatter 1992-2008. She was an 8-week old pup when I got her and I crate-trained, housebroke, and leash-trained her. It wasn’t perfect and she was never great on the leash, but she was good and definitely manageable. We tended to hike exclusively in places where no leash was required and that’s how we rolled; “city” walking wasn’t too important. Also, for her entire life we had a fenced-in yard. Digging was a bit of a problem when she was a pup, but she quickly gave it up.

This one? He is 7 months, a rescue of sorts (he was turned over by his owners from Virginia and shipped north to Massachusetts; not an abandoned or abused dog like many of the “Dixie dogs” that find their way from several Southern (RED) states to our true blue Massachusetts. I am tired of the ignorance that seems to extend from the political climate in the South even into how people care for their pets (or rather don’t care for their pets)—no spaying or neutering, over-breeding of certain types of dogs, abuse.

Anyway, he is getting a bit used to the leash after 4 days. Has been peeing outside fairly successfully. Pooping? Def not an outdoor activity in his mind. Whining in the crate and being let out immediately because the family cannot sleep? Yup. We are instilling a BAD BAD habit.

I don’t know how to get through the feeling that I have an infant again. I hate the feeling of being chained and controlled by HIS needs and schedule. I hate being sleep-deprived. And even though I love him, I need a lot of encouragement to remember that it’s temporary, that sleep does eventually come, that creating a bad, quick-fix habit is no substitute for a few days’ suffering to gain a lifetime of better behavior. Yup, just like babies.

Dog-adoption PPD? I’d say that’s about right.

Who’s a good dog? Not yet. But soon, I hope. Soon.

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O who will come and go with me?

[Tuesday, dusk]

what I have accomplished of late:

that my eyes glaze over at poems I read online

that I perceive myself as impatient

that I baked bread without sufficient kneading

that I preheated the oven too early

that I have begun myriad posts exactly like this one and you will never know them. There was one about snow. One about our lack of snow. One about the snow ending though it never began and how much I miss les neiges d’antan.

The heavy rain. I had a dream that it was thick, wet snowflakes. I still believe that the dream was real. I could almost catch them on my tongue, right while I was lying in bed.

In an hour, I will pull the loaves from the oven, let them cool enough to run a giant knife through one. I will slab butter (unsalted only please!) on the slice and look ahead into my life.

The rain is falling in sheets, back-lit by the pine boughs, the neighbor’s fence out my window. The light is beautiful, the green needles, the red, brown, and black mottled bark. Transport me Lord.

I went outside to photograph what I thought was a white crocus. It was half an eggshell dragged from the compost by some critter. What do you think? a squirrel? a crow?

[NEXT DAY. NOW COMPLETING POST. DIG IT, BABY, DIG IT]

I attended the Western Massachusetts Sacred Harp Convention for a few sunlit and glorious hours on Saturday morning. It does transport me. I’m already feeling pretty silly about my whining.

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gonna make it feel all right

keep your hands off the shade baby, no one gonna care when the moon goes dead

Yes, I’m still talking about being born in the ’60s, 1963 to be exact. Which means my pop music exposure reaches back a decade or two before that time—think Mairzy Doats or Dream a Little Dream—all the way up to now.

I just heard a great set on an indie station here and damn if I hadn’t heard this song in about 25 years.

The Dream Syndicate always sound like sex to me. Loud dark dirty sex. Trying not to be loud dark dirty sex. Sex like you are in your 20s. Sex and dancing and lowdown drunkenness. And more dirty sex. And something not quite wholesome. Drunken sex. Wrong sex. Bad sex. Bad good sex. Good bad sex. Sex because your dad is dead sex. Depression sex. Yes, you get the picture. Their trippy sound, the squanking guitar and steady rhythm. Steve Wynn.

I remember riding the subway in NYC, my first time there, 1982, with one of my best friends and we must have looked pretty ridiculous. Yes, we had our faux-punk clothes, but they really missed the mark in terms of New York and all the grit that went before, the real Punk movement just before our time and across the ocean to boot. Thankfully, we were a beautiful pair. Nobody minds too much if you are young and pretty. She was tall and thin, with long legs, a curvy butt, dark hair and dark-rimmed golden brown eyes. She was and always will be one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever known. I had the boobs, the blond hair and the blue eyes, a bit more on the curvy swaying side. We never lacked for male attention.

We went to a club, god knows where, and rode the subway to the wrong place, drunk, at about 3 am. I think a taxi figured in after that, but who really knows? I know we got back to where we were staying with all of our limbs attached.

It really is a wonder that nothing terribly terrible ever happened to me when I was drunk. Not one car dent (those all happened later, in my mini-van, sober, married), not one incident of being somewhere I didn’t want to be, not one man I couldn’t name. I think I threw up only once in my life from drink. I never passed out unless it was in my own bed. I swear. But don’t think I’m not an alcoholic, because of that there is no doubt. Wouldn’t it be great if all drunks got out as scratch-free as I did?

I don’t mean to say I didn’t suffer, that I didn’t have a lot to learn that others seem to “get” simply by virtue of not being drunks. Like how NOT to burn cigarette holes in the roof of a car, the little things. But I drank, like any good alcoholic, because it spoke to me, like this music does, this dark sound that comes from the place we’re not supposed to look.

And their magnum opus.

The original studio version is not on youtube, but this is a close second. I can’t believe I used to make it through the whole thing. I musta been drinkin’.

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feeling like a million bucks

my trusty Kent black squirrel sticker, one of the best charms a girl pushing 50 can have on her mini-van’s backside

Long ago, after giving a friend of mine a massage, I asked how she felt and she said “Are you kidding? I feel like a million bucks!” This was the way she talked.

Feeling like a million bucks is not a phrase in my vernacular, but today I took my 2000 Toyota mini-van, all 163,000 miles of it, to get its state inspection. You know it failed inspection 2 years in-a-row, right?

the “ass” of my car

My daughter fastened all the seat belts before I dropped her off at school, a good omen.

At 8:15 this morning, the second-to-the-last day of the month, I pulled into the Sunoco station on Route 9, handed over my registration and 29 dollars to the grizzled but friendly mechanic, and parked my ass in the dingy, fume-y, dusty “waiting room,” chatting up a plumber and the woman behind the cash register. With baited breath (at least mentally baited breath), I bided my time. The car passed inspection.

I usually don’t have to leave the house for whole days at a time. I don’t drive my kids to school but once or twice a season. But today, I actually got dressed. I pulled on my skinniest jeans, by which I mean, they are not skinny jeans, but they are the only pair that may make my ass appear with some semblance of youth and dignity, by which I mean, they are snug and tight with just the right amount of stretch to make sure all loose flesh is tautened into a neat package. It’s not like I’m going to turn heads, but I felt like I was turning heads as I slid on the icy lot walking away from the Sunoco waiting room back to my car. I am sure heads were turning because of my faux-skating and not my ass.

These days, the car is missing portions of its hubcaps. It has no handle on the rear passenger side door. One of the sliding doors no longer latches, making it slide closed when parked on a hill. The windows make a slow grinding sound on raising and lowering, in protest of having to work so hard. The inside backseat air vents are missing their louvered covers. Only half of the dashboard lights up. The heating makes a whistling sound when it’s on full blast. But Fucking A. My husband presented me with this car in July, 2000, just weeks before we relocated our entire life to Western Massachusetts.

It’s falling apart, it doesn’t get the best mileage. It’s beaten and banged and bruised. But it’s mine. I drove away from the Sunoco feeling like a million bucks.

my min-van, not a metaphor for my bodily state or anything

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Is it getting hot in here?

The sounds and songs of my childhood weren’t always on CKLW. Sometimes it was what the grown-ups listened to. Cocktails. James Bond. The 4 o’clock Movie on Channel 7 (Detroit).

Side burns, wide lapels, the dry look, Herb Alpert.

Bouffant hair-dos, platinum blond. Mini skirts, fringe, go go boots. String bikinis. Long breezy unkempt hair, parted down the middle. Playboy centerfolds, green, red, and yellow hues, a hazy patina on the pages. Penthouse, much dirtier.

I had no idea Dusty Springfield was English because, you know, people named “Dusty” come out of the Old West and “Springfield” is also decidedly American.

Guys, you want to get lucky tonight? Put on your cotton flannel pajamas, dim the lights, fire up a smoke (Lucky Strike? Winston?), and spin this on the turntable.

Okay, so smoking is no longer sexy. Do you think these are made of flame retardant fabric?

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snow day

My dad used to have a sign taped on the front of one of his tall, metal filing cabinets that said

Due to lack of interest, tomorrow has been cancelled

I guess he thought it was funny. The other sign was this and when I asked my mom about it once she said this is how he truly felt about his life. I don’t quite believe it, but he probably felt this way somewhat and he must have thought it was funny, too.

When my life is over
And my time has come to pass,
I hope they bury me upside-down,
So the world may kiss my ass

My dad was an atheist, but I can tell you that when he was dying of cancer, he told me that God got the aging and dying thing wrong—too much pain. God was something he referred to as a matter of course. It was a concept that we all grew up with, maybe him especially, having been a kid in a kosher household and all. When I’d talk to him about his childhood and religion and whether or not he believed in God, he would say he was an atheist, but he would tear up. I thought that meant he really did believe in God. It was a bit confusing, but also I was in awe. It was like God was right there with us when he talked about Hungary and his bar mitzvah and his mother and father, all his friends running around being bad young boys, his younger brother, his older sisters, the lumber business his father and uncle ran. When he ate pork at the age of 13 because he was curious and he didn’t believe the stuff he was taught anyway. He talked about the dishes and the milk and the meat and why. Having been brought up without religion, I listened with intent. Like if it made enough sense, I would understand something. He had his stories and I had the pictures from them. I loved my dad so much.

♥

Remember, you keepers of the truth, I want a banjo played at my funeral. I know there will be Shape Note singing, so that’s not a thing anyone needs to remember.

I like this song my kid turned me on to last year. The video is goofy and makes no sense. What’s the narrative here exactly? Nonetheless, 13 million hits don’t lie.

the fiddle and the banjo. Like the song Roseville Fair which I used to sing to my kids as a lullaby.

Rock me momma.

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The best stays the best: Lucinda covering Gram

I have posted this song before. It was deeply hidden in the post and so long ago, maybe you missed it. I don’t mean to make it a habit—reposting songs that I’ve put up before. It’s not like we’re gonna run out of good music. It’s just that some of the best music stays the best again and again, you dig?

I am working on all sorts of things, mostly just in my head while I sit around in pajamas; still, it takes my time. Things like the words pajamas and madras which come to us by way of India. Poems. Rejections. Kids. Lunches. Schlepping. Taxes. Being a travel agent. Shopping for food and accoutrements for my new phone. Make that simply learning to operate my new phone….

I’m trying to shake some bad shit I’ve been seeing on the internet—instruments of torture, abusive mothers, rape, idiocy, humanity.

I do so love this, forever and always.

Good music: a balm for the weary soul. Dig it.

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