She's out of her mind, chapter 37

Sister No.1, who shall remain nameless until all the permission slips from the class trip to Crazy come back, calls from the road. She's driving up and down Route 27, spending money wherever her eye lands, and her toddler sells her down the river to dad with a simple, "Mommy, did you try on that dress?" I informed her it was time to teach that little genius that the lowest form of life is a snitch. And speaking of life, it got a little strange last night when Paulie said he's going to Milwaukee all next week. I demanded tribute in the form of cheese curds, because I've been to Milwaukee for the hell of it and you can't get cheese curds in New Jersey. What are they? You can google it and get some technical explanation that won't help even a little. You should think of these little treasures as seeds that didn't become cheese, like eggs that didn't become chickens. Some curds were made to grow into full-fledged cheese form; some were made just to make up to me that my Handsome Prince is spending a week near the Schlitz factory.

What a waste of time and oregano!

Paulie and I are still working out the coding bugs that make a smooth form out of my percussive writing. We'll get there. Sometime before the polar ice caps melt. In the meantime, you're stuck with a pointless story. Last night, Mamie and Trout sushi-napped me and fed me raw fish. For three hours beforehand, I struggled to remain conscious - I'm dull and tired a lot - and didn't think I had the strength to lift dragon rolls to my lips. Surprise! I perked up as soon as our very amused waitress put down the appetizers and retracted her hands to count fingers.

Riptide in the gene pool

Holy smokes, Johnny quit his job:

"It seems too good to be true that I could actually escape. But it looks convincing. If you saw it in a movie, it would look real. I'm wearing a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. Of course, if I had written the movie, I'd have a bulge in the small of my back where the Hawaiian shirt didn't quite hang straight. But all the weapons I need to get out of here are recklessness and balls, which, come to think of it, are the same thing(s). God, I feel good."
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Johnny says our writings "go together like assault and battery."

Barking up the right tree

For the past week and a half, we've awakened to rain. Despite rain's promise to bring abundant, healthy foliage, rain has become drunk with power, a bully. It knows I want to stay in bed and sleep, and should I make it to my desk, I guzzle twice as much coffee as on a sunny day.

I feel awful. I'm mulling over a walk to the bank. From the bank, I could be tremendously lazy and get a cab by the train station, but I need the exercise. That's what's going to make me feel better, right? Lift me out of this achy funk?

Tin cans and a string

The phone at Our Compartment went dead Sunday morning or Saturday night, we don't know which. In any case, when I picked up the thing to call Mamie, the only silence in the whole city was on my phone line. Turns out other tenants in the building had their own personal silences or static-laced dial tones, but the guy's lurking in the basement right now, fixing a few contraptions.

So I have hope that someday I'll be able to use my landline and quit mortgaging my future with cell phone bills.

In other news, Larry is a small black cat bent on stealing your soul. Larry has feline leukemia and it's really important to keep his weight up. Cats don't start out with many pounds of cat-person to begin with, so losing a couple's a big deal. He went into this weight freefall, then we fed him extra, then he stopped eating. We racked our brains, found ways to feed him medication without freaking him out completely and fed him prissy, expensive cat comestibles. So now he's plotting our demises again, and we're sure he's ready to hatch his scheme.

Paulie's teaching eggheads to guard their flanks. He'll be home tonight in time for Iron Chef America, which is great because I enjoy watching men handle knives.

Johnny plays stand up bass around Boston now. He used to tear it up on an Air Force base in Heidelburg, though he's no military man:

"Princess, my dreams are coming true one by one. Thankfully I'm not being chased by a flying playing card. But the one where I'm a swinging musical dude, gigs here, sessions there, coming in at the last minute and playing better than the guy I'm filling in for, and did I mention I'm very swinging, and also a cat? It was amazing last night. I think you've been to TT's. It was an unplugged type singer/songwriter deal they do on Mondays. Nobody brings a doghouse player to these things. Nobody has a doghouse player. Nobody has ever met a doghouse player. L. was gracious enough to mention that she had only just asked me to do the gig on Friday. My Mr. Professional reading shot right off the dial. L. is great, but god DAMN, I was good. Everyone had to compliment me and ask for my card. Now I know how it feels to be the most beautiful girl in the room. Even the most beautiful girl in the room asked for my card. I say god DAMN! Can I get a witness?"

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Yessirree Bob, I need a cup of coffee. Despite my propensity for small, local evil I click ten times on this website first thing every morning: http://www.thehungersite.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/CTDSites. Either that, or I've found the voodoo section of Field & Stream and I'm blearily sticking pins in Dick Cheney.

Blogging for beginners, Step 1: Type not, dulcet darling, before thy first cup of coffee. Fatigue is hazardous to one's verb forms.

Eons ago, a little blurb I wrote in a Paxil haze ended up in Rob Breszny's Free Will Astrology column. Last month, Robin Renee forwarded to me correspondence with a Californian who mistook her for me. So I wrote to this interesting stranger. I mean, I had 3000 miles of personal space if said stranger should prove dangerous. Anyway, getting her emails is more fun than pie-facing your compatriots, and I'm sure of this because for my birthday one year I got 240 lbs. of pudding.

What fun! Reduced paranoia, interesting letters, stories I haven't heard before. We should all have an interesting stranger.

Ever get so sick of yourself you think 'If I don't start doing something new and different there's going to be an Unfortunate Incident at the Kentucky Fried Chicken, with film at 11'? Yeah, me too. If we pass one another on the way to making this terrible mess, let's double-park on Easton Avenue, exit our vehicles and incite onlookers to riot. But with music, so technically it's dancing.

Maybe Poor Impulse Control needs a daily tipline for poorly controlled impulsives, who could ring up and hear wacky thoughts: "Lips do not exfoliate. You must assist them." Who else is going to tell you the ugly cartoon truth?

first blog!

http://poorimpulsecontrol.net/