Angst.com

About 11 years ago I used to work with this very plain woman. She was a journalist. She used to have screaming arguments with her boyfriend on the phone all the time. Even though I worked in the production room and she worked in the news room I could still hear her yelling at him. And what was funny was, she was very quiet, intellectual and demure. I’d go in the bathroom, and she’d constantly be brushing her hair between fights with her boyfriend. I guess even though she was plain, she wanted her hair to look nice.

Anyways, I guess she finally broke up with the toxic boyfriend because the screaming arguments stopped. I wasn’t really that friendly with her. Creative types and journalists don’t always mesh. Journalist wear suits. Graphic artists where shiny scarves and sneakers with green neon soles. But I was in the lunchroom one day and she was talking to the editor who I was actually friendly with. The editor K was a mess. She really wanted to get married. I mean really! She was involved with a married man. He was an idiot, so the conversation they were having was basically “MEN ARE IDIOTS”. K still wanted one, but the Plain Girl said, “No. I’m giving up men. Forget it! They’re not worth the trouble!” I think she was about 25.

Shortly after that it was Christmas season. I was alone as usual. I think K had a fight with her married man. And Plain Girl? Well, for some God-forsaken reason she decided to give sMatch.com a brief try. She was all meh, this will never work. MEN ARE ALL IDIOTS!!! So what do you think happened? Go ahead, guess?

She went out with her one and only reply. They went to a hockey game and it was love at first sight! And I believe they were married within three months. I wasn’t invited to the wedding, of course. I’m a graphic artist and she was a journalist and I might possibly do something crazy like spray graffiti on the wedding cake or something. But they’re still married, and have a nice house and two beautiful sons. I see her in the grocery store occasionally and she actually talks to me now. I guess she’s very happy.

The moral of the story? 99% of the woman I know who are on sMatch.com have horror stories. 1% have good ones. I signed up for sMatch.com this weekend. Sure I’m stone cold broke and just got my food stamps chopped to practically zero. But I’m also in this incredibly dire holding pattern in my life and basically I can’t stand it anymore. I need someone to talk to.

Who MADE me do this? The Shrinkster of course. I think he almost fainted when I e-mailed him and said I finally did it. Why? Because we’ve had this conversation at least 1.6 trillion times in the last 14 years. I did briefly stick my toe in the Match pond a long, long, long time ago, but I never dated anyone….which is why I asked you for advice, Cranky (http:///crankygirl.wordpress.com).

What happened then was this. First guy popped up on my Instant Message: ”Hi! Blah, blah, blah! Do you want to know what I do for a living?” I was trying to be friendly, even though I was terrified he might type: “serial killer and I’m standing outside Your window.” But he told me about his fabulous career as a UFO Investigator.  He told me that his latest (cough) case was about a woman who had been abducted and then dumped in a local field and had to find her way back to the street and flag someone down to rescue her. DAMN THOSE ALIENS! With all that technology, you’d think they’d at least leave her off at a Denney’s or something. He asked if I believed him. I said, “SURE!!” (you damn Nutball). I guess he was excited that he had a captive audience, so then asked if I wanted a photo of him? Me: SURE! This was still in the day of slow dial up, so as his photo slowly unfurled on my screen, blipping 2 pixels at a time, it soon became very apparent that Mr. E.T. was al’naturale. You know, like no alien death-ray deflectors. Nothing! Ugh! This was long before I was OTAY with full frontal nudity.  Of course he did soften the blow slightly by holding a Chihuahua in front of the family jewels. And I was thinking to myself, “Duuuuude, you should at least round up a Great Dane, or something. Not the smallest dog on the fucking planet.”

The next responder was a guy who wanted Instant Message Sex. Click. Bye now!

The last guy was someone, in retrospect, I should have met. He was gentle, funny. He was a tall, gawky Jewish guy and one of the first photos he ever sent me was him dressed in a fluffy pink Easter bunny suit. He was an architect, but he also liked to draw cartoons and he used to send me cartoons with our frequent e-mails. We did this for three months, but I was too frightened to meet him. Not because of him. But because of me. I was pretty ill at the time. I had just been diagnosed bipolar. I had anxiety problems. I was agoraphobic. I even went into the hospital during all this, and he said he had no problem with that and said he missed our e-mails while I was gone. But he finally grew frustrated and ended it.

So “A” and I had a really intensive session this last week. We both practically needed oxygen by the end of it. At least I did. I was actually shaking. Anxiety I guess. But I know he’s right about meeting someone. He told me all the nice qualities I have to offer. That’s not something I get to hear very often and for some reason I totally burst out laughing during it and almost couldn’t stop. I think it was when he said I smelled good. WTF? Really? Ok. He must really be into smells because when I dated Handyman that was his advice then too. Wear perfume. Heh! I don’t even own any perfumes. I’m allergic to almost everything. And I hate men’s colognes.  But note taken.

So I put the damn ad on very late Sat. night. I still wasn’t really sure. Plus I don’t really read things very closely. I thought I had to pay before the ad would go  live, but the next morning I already had dudes winking at me and two e-mails waiting for me. It took me another 2 1/2 days before I even finally decided to part with my very precious money. This better be fucking good. By then I was really racking up hits and winks. I have over 210 hits the last time I looked. I mean I have winks from guys in Wisconsin and Virginia. Like where are we supposed to meet for a cup of latte ice cream? Pennsylvania? Plus a lot of them appear to be unable to comprehand my needs, like : NO SMOKERS. (period). Ages 48-53. And I have like Regis Philbin sending notes. Guys! Read the fine print! Oy!

But I have selected one very lucky fellow from the thronging masses for a witty interlude this weekend. He told me he’s a tree hugger and hates the war, so that pretty much already won my heart.  So we’ll see. Oh, and he also says he’s an optimist. I had to look that up in the dictionary. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

wanky biorhythms leave me perplexed

Here is your single’s love horoscope for Wednesday, April 30:
Your friends are all abuzz about you and some new hottie you’ve been spotted with. Let them wonder if there’s really something going on. You don’t have to kiss and tell-unless you really want to!

Wha-t-t-t?? Where??? Who??? Me??? Yeah right. I’ve been communing with my couch for over two weeks now. Other then the occasional walk and night out with the arty types, I’ve been slowly sinking between the cushions in my couch and Guardcat may soon be eating creme wittee brulee. You know….since the love between you and your cat can only take a turn for the worst, if you don’t move for a while and you suddenly look like a pile of human Friskies.
 
I’ve actually been obsessed with two things the last two weeks….lottery tickets and sleeping, with sub-headings of weird dreams and an uncontrollable obsession with numbers. Where should I start? Well, since sleeping isn’t very interesting, unless its WHO you’re sleeping with, and its certainly not the hottie in my horoscope, we’ll go directly to lottery tickets. They’ve been calling my name.

Now even though I’m poor and getting poorer as we speak, I buy a lottery ticket every time I go to the grocery store. Its an obsession. The potential for free money and financial freedom. Why not?? Unfortunately I have monumentally bad luck and couldn’t win anything higher than $1 if God/Allah and Howie Mandell dumped all the lottery ticket machines in New York on my bed.

 I mean I just can’t win. Its funny how that sorta parallels my life. The most I’ve ever won was $8. Woo! You should have seen me! I was jumping around like those idiots on “Deal or No Deal”. Although just for the record….I would only jump around on that show if I was near my honey bunny super stud Howie Mandell, not because I was going to pick the case with $1.00 in it. Ya got it?

Anyways, in the last week I’ve been having lottery tickets literally throwing themselves at me. First at the yuppie grocery store where I went to buy my $1. ticket and there it was….a $2. crossword lottery ticket just randomly laying in the tray. Eek! Was it a sign? Or was it that news show that films people in those what-will-they-do situations and then films them to see if they do the RIGHT thing? I’m always worried I won’t and then I’ll be on National Television talking to John Quiones and some nun from my Catholic school days will be sitting in some convent nursing home somewhere, shaking her head in utter shame, saying “I thought witty was better than that.”

So I took the “lost” lottery ticket over to the customer service counter, which obviously had cameras on it from ABC News too and asked if anyone had asked about a lost lottery ticket. At first they wanted me to just “leave it” in case someone came to claim it.  I wasn’t born yesterday chickie! So finally the young girl asked around and nobody had been looking for it in the last 1.5 minutes so then it was now MINE….MINE….MINE!!!!!! Woo! Hoo! Was it a winner?

What do you think?

And then the next day I went over to the Village to do my laundry and then onto my favorite ice cream place and on the way back I saw something rather interesting in the trash by the pond. TEN FREAKIN’ LOTTERY TICKETS in the FREAKIN’ GARBAGE CAN!!!!!!!!!!! THE TWO DOLLAR ONES!!! OMG!!! And they were only partially scratched off.  And they were calling to me. Really loud…”witty….witty….that economic stimulus check will barely cover all the money the government has taken away from you in food stamps this last month…scratch us…you could be a winner!!”

So there I was on the main street of our tony little Village, overflowing with SUVs and Porches, digging through a garbage can for half scratched off lottery tickets, mixed in with food wrappers and old diamond tiaras, mumbling something about Howie Mandell, I think. Talk about humiliating! Fortunately they were fairly clean, although I had to wash my hands about a hundred times before I folded my laundry back at the laundromat. But there they were…10 freakin’ lottery tickets for the taking!! I didn’t do anything with the tickets until I got home where I found one winner for $2! Woo! It paid for almost a load of laundry. Woo! Call CNN!

So why the obsession with numbers? I’m not really sure, because I’m really terrible with numbers. But I do like free things and money, so I do every little thing online to make money including surveys. Some surveys pay money. Others just offer you gifts. But this last week, one of my gifts arrived and for someone with OCD, it was like the funnest thing ever. A pedometer. It records number of steps. Like four steps from my bed to the bathroom. 8 steps to the fridge. 16 steps to the mailbox downstairs. 39 steps to the library across the street. The other day I went on a hike and recorded 5634 steps. I definitely needed a nap after that one.

 And therein lies the other problem I’ve been having lately. Excessive napping and dreaming of strange dreams. Dreaming of having job interviews in seedy places with tall dark ceilings. Standing out by a street in a see through negligee kissing Married Guy with my tongue. And then having him trying to run me down with a car. I mean WTF? What does that mean? Am I trying to resolve strange things in my subconscious? Am I having anxiety about finding a job and having it turn out badly. Or is my next relationship going to end badly, by me getting run over by an SUV? Wouldn’t that be poetic justice, getting squashed by a Dodge Caravan.

So like any overtired, angsty artist type I had to check in on my biorhythms. Why? I had just read the blog of our local newscaster (who incidently lives in my neighborhood. I see him out running). And he had cut himself shaving, punctured his shin with a stick out in his yard and fallen when he was out running….all in the same day. His decision? Check his biorhythm chart. So see, I’m not so flaky. He’s a newscaster fercrissakes! So I went to http://www.bio-chart.com/. And I’m so glad I did!

First of all I found out that I was 18,340 days old. No wonder I keep needing a nap. That’s almost as old as Larry King and his socks added together. And then I looked at the charts and graphs and most of them were under the normal line, as in bad.

It said: Your general well being is moderate. Tendency: Its getting better.
You are in very good physical shape. Instead of wasting it go for a walk or a jog.
Emotional: You can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. The time for self pity is over. There is only one more hurdle to pass.
Intellectual: You spend these days without any plan or aim. Also, your reactions leave much to be desired.

Holy crap, that’s my life exactly right now. All the couch sitting. Aimlessness. Window staring. Self pity. Oh, and thanks for pointing out that my reactions leave much to be desired, oh biorhythm goddess. See if I ever laugh at your stories about sMatch.com again.

In the end, however, I am somewhat buoyed by the light at the end of the tunnel thingie and also by the fact that I only have one more hurdle to leap. What it is? I have no idea.  But dog-gone-it there’s only one left. I just wonder if that will require me getting off the couch and relinquishing my remote control for human contact. Can you imagine how scary that could be?

cool art show shows just how uncool I am

Yesterday when I went to pick up “L” to bring our artwork to our funky/Goth/comic book/sex/political art show around 12:45, and she was the late as usual. The latest ever actually. At least 30 minutes late with the usual bath towel wrapped around her. I did wait in the car for a while, but damn, we were having the hottest day of the year so far (87 degrees….WTF? It was just snowing 10 days ago) and I was roasting out in the car, so I finally went in her house.

I’ve never been in her house before and it was quite a sight to behold. I won’t go into it here, but while she was getting ready upstairs I sat down at this ancient piano to play a few Broadway tunes….since I was pretty much afraid to sit down anywhere else and it was the most out of tune piano I’ve ever played…a fact we later discussed and of which she was proud. I mean when I played “Wilkommen” from “Cabaret” and it came out sounding like “Oklahoma” as sung by Richard Simmons shrieking while seeing a mouse.

We finally got down to the bar with our artwork at around 1:40. It was weird going from bright sunlight into the Bowels of Hell, i.e., a pub with a bunch of Goth types. And I so fit in with my shorts and striped shirt from J.C. Penney’s, via the Salvation Army. About 2/3 of the artwork had already arrived and some of it was (cough) pretty interesting, especially the rather large painting of former New York governor Elliot Spitzer and a very lovely young naked woman doing something rather private with her fingers and her va-ji-ji! Yikes! But it was beautifully painted and if PBS ever needs a painting to auction off, some late evening, this one would surely fetch a rather princely sum. And rather nerve-wrackingly, the guy who painted it, kept looking at me for most of the afternoon and evening.

So I didn’t really do much at the hanging of the show until the Sci Fi Guy pulled out a twenty and asked “L” and I to go around the corner and get some loaves of bread and some salsa dip for the people working. Even though the place we were at is kind of a dive, the neighborhood is very yuppiefied and has a lot of high priced eateries and Starbuck places. It is, in fact, the area, where I will have my art show next summer.

So “L” and I walked over to this high end bread bakery and told the young girl, who looked a little arty/Gothy that we were looking for some bread and dip for some artists who were setting up a show.  So she pulled out two huge, freshly baked loaves and a tub of the most expensive dip.  “L” and I started going “Oh no. We want the cheaper stuff. We only have $20″ and then she pushed everything towards us and said “Here, take it!” Well, with both “L” and I being poor,  we weren’t about to argue. And then the girl said she was an artist too, so we told her more about the show and invited her to bring stuff over. 

 We were so excited when we brought the goodies back to Sci Fi Guy and handed him back his money. We did tell him about the girl and fortunately when her boyfriend brought in her work, it fit right in with our theme and was quite decent. So yay on that! And yay for the additional fresh pizza bread she sent with her boyfriend and her artwork!
 
I went home in between. I’ve been tired the last few days. My new neighbor, the Loud Talker has been waking me up every morning, yakking at top volume out on her porch, which faces my bedroom starting at around 8:15 a.m. She literally sits on her porch all day, chatting on her phone, and it’s been even more fun last couple of days she was babysitting her grandson, who ran up and down the courtyard yelling and screaming and slamming doors and bouncing balls and her yelling at him THE ENTIRE FUCKING DAY. Summer, should be awesome!

When it was time to go to the show I absolutely did not know what to wear. Gah! When I had been at the set up of the show, my little teenage Goth friend had told me that my newly cut bangs made me look like the lead singer for the Seekers. Is that good? I dunno. But as far as the clothes, I pretty much look like a chubby housewife from the ‘burbs. I mean I was thinking of what the people at the SET-UP were wearing.
 
* sneakers that laced up to the knees. (don’t have)
* tee-shirts with either skulls or anarchy logos on them (don’t have)
* pants pinned together with huge safety pins and patched with skull logos (don’t have)
* purple, green or pink hair, possibly a mohawk (don’t have)
* striped shirt, plaid pants, orange tie, John Deere cap, Converse sneakers (don’t have)
* tattoo of “The Ironm@n” on my neck (don’t have…yet)

I am just so freakin’ plain. I need a Goth makeover for elderly women. Hopefully it won’t make me look like Keith Richards.

So instead I ended up wearing my Laura Ingalls/”Little House on the Prairie”/Texas Compound of 12 year old Mormon Wives sundress. Eyeliner. Sandals. And yes, I even wore underwear!
 
I got down there around 7:30 (it started at 7), but it still was pretty empty. Vagina Painting Guy was sitting on the couch looking at me. Stop! I’m wearing underwear you weirdo. So I went back out and walked around the yuppie neighborhood which was teaming with activity since it was the warmest night of the year. People sitting in outdoor cafe tables. Mean Girls in tight dresses outside of bars, lining up the rich guy they’re going to nail for their first husbands. 

I finally went back in around 8 and it still was pretty empty, but I sat and listened to a guy playing “Misty” on acoustical guitar with Vagina Painting Guy staring at me. Stop! It finally started to pick up at around 8:45. More kids came in. A couple of people from my art class showed up. My painting had no wire on it, so it was just propped up against some electrical cords. I had Professional Artist Guy take my picture with it. I took pictures of him and his girlfriend. But mostly I just sat in a chair with sweaty palms having social anxiety problems because everyone was there with someone and it  really hit me like a ton of bricks. What? The walking around the neighborhood on a warm summery night and seeing everyone interacting with someone and me sitting alone like some zombie staring off into space.  I really am lonely and not real confident that I’ll ever find anyone.

I mean, here I am with people…my people….artist-types and I still can’t really talk to anyone. I feel awkward. Insecure. Tongue-tied. Sure, on occasion, I feel like I’m a legend in my own mind, but in reality, my social anxiety is so severe, especially in crowds, that I just disappear into myself and feel invisible. And its kind of hard to meet people when you feel like that. Or when only the weird Vagina Painting Guy is staring at you.

So I finally left around 9. I didn’t even say good bye to anyone or get my uber-cool tee-shirt from the event. I just went home and finished up Photoshopping the cemetery pictures from last week and sent them to the client. Doesn’t that sound like an exciting Saturday night? It is for me.

By the way, this is my painting from the show.

 I was so insecure about trying to do some hip, bold piece with a condom dangling off it, that I just submitted a painting I had done about a month ago. Way to go, Hipster Artist Chick. Next I’ll be teaching Guardcat how to do Jackson Pollock paintings with her tail.

boob squish and cemetaries

Who knew that the Pope’s visit to the United States would absolutely set my blog on fire!! I mean all my usual Googles for “ghetto crackhead whores”, “Creamsex” and “Nude woman bending over a car” are now mixed in with a bazillion hits for the “Pope’s Seven Commandments”. Woo hoo! I should really run for President. I mean look at the vast cross section of people I appeal to!!! Pervs and Catholics!! 

Oh wait….I know there an obvious joke in there somewhere.

Anyways, I went for my yearly mammogram yesterday. I had to sorta press for it because it seems that our lovely government just arbitrarily decided I could no longer get a yearly physical like I have for the last 12 years. Oh no. Why would we want to do preventative health care when we could just let people get sick and accrue millions of dollars worth of medical bills.

 I do enjoy my yearly school pictures of “the girls“…not. But since breast cancer runs in the family and killed my grandmother in her early 40’s and even had me under the knife about 10 years ago for a lump, I am vigilant about going every year. So I got to the place at 10 a.m. and what do you think? There was yet another bratty little boy in the small room where you take off your clothes on the top half. The kid was talking a mile a minute and running around near the dressing rooms and knocking magazines off the table. WTF? Why are they bringing little boys in there? And then  suddenly I hear him ask his mother “What’s a MAN-ogram?” I had to laugh to myself a bit. I had just been looking for a birthday card for “A” and saw this one that said: “If women ran the world…” with a nurse leading a quivering guy to a mammogram machine, only a little lower, if you get my drift. I knew it was wildly inappropriate, but I still considered it for about 3 seconds.

Finally mom and ritalinkid disappeared and it was time for my mammogram. Naturally on the paperwork I had indicated that I had been operated on and for some strange reason the nurse wanted to actually see the scar….on my boob. HUH? Nobody has ever asked me that before. Its been 10 frickin’ years. I barely even remembered where it was. Besides the fact that its weird anyways that you have to unsheath your mammory to a total stranger (is it warm in here?) and literally put it into their hand (What sign are you again? A Leo? Oh, I’m an Aquarian) and let them handle it like a piece of chicken they’re marinating (Do you want to meet at Barnes and Nobles for a latte?). I mean, why should I have to get it out to just show it to her?

So I opened my little generic nightie and nervously looked down at my left breast and kind of examined it like Agent Mulder might examine a piece of  glowing alien cranium. Hell, I couldn’t find a 10 year old scar, in a darkened x-ray room, with some woman looking at me.  Eeeesh! So I finally just said, Oh, I think this is it. And then she proceeded to say, “I think I see it” (yeah, right, should we smoke a cigarette now?) and then we finally went onto the squishing of innocent breasts into heavy machinery part. Yay!

Amazingly, she called me within an hour and said the results were “negative” and have a nice day. I guess that’s good. Is it? So I turned to Guardcat and said “She said the results were negative, just like me!!” Sometimes only Guardcat “gets” my humor.

It was art class day that day, and I had to call “L”s answering machine. She had a message with a Cockney accent, so I left a message for Eliza Doolittle. Why? Because I actually had a minor freelance job Wednesday afternoon. I haven’t had any kind of job for over a year, over or under the table, so I jumped at the offer. The job? Put together a newsletter about cemetaries. First thing on the agenda? Meet the person and drive up to the cemetary and take pictures of masoleums.

Did I mention I’ll do almost anything for money?

So we met up where I have my art class a little after 5 p.m. and fortunately it was a beautifully warm and sunny day. And I’m an avid photographer, so I had my little digital camera all set in my purse.  I had never been to this particular cemetary before and little did I know it had something in common with the freakin’ Swiss Alps…as in large steep hills. Oh. my.god.

Now even though I’m a little chubby and suffer from fibro, I’m in pretty good shape from lots of walking. But as we drove around this huge cemetary,  the person would stop their SUV and say “I’d like a picture of that” and it would be this tiny, little speck up on top of a muddy steep hill, I’d say “Oh, no problem”. But I really was afraid that I’d either fall on my ass or twist my ankle or something. And as I was traversing this one particularly big hill, I even momentarily felt like I was doing a “Biggest Loser” competition. Run up the steep muddy hill. Grunt. Make lots of faces. Cry a lot. Burn 3000 calories. Get yelled at by the skinny chick. Win a million dollars. But no, I was just taking pictures of dead people places.  Whee!

They did hand me a twenty dollar bill when they brought me back to my car 45 minutes later. I guess I’ll be doing the graphics part this weekend.

I was totally exhausted for my art class with lots of sharp pain in my calves, but I really wanted to go because one of our usual artist guys was going to be posing nekkid and being the red blooded female that I am, I wanted to check out the goods. This guy is very full of himself and the one time he deemed me good enough to talk to, we realized that we both knew Married Guy’s wifie. Afterwards he said he had fruit flies flying around his head during the one hour pose. I guess when you’re totally awesome, stuff like that happens.

Give piece a chance

The other day I was sitting at the stoplight at the bottom of the hill going up into the Village. I mean its not exactly like NYC letting out into Jersey.  But as I looked around, I once again noticed that I was the only person who was not driving an SUV. Fortunately, I am very secure in who I am…a driver of a station wagon with 226,000 miles on it and a leaking gas tank. But who are they?  The Drivers of SUVs? I mean besides dumb-ass yuppies? I don’t really know.  So being the supreme (cough) wordsmith that I am, I decided to start coming up with some new titles for my fellow road friends. Maybe something cool like SUV-idians….SUV-etarians…..SUV-publicans.  I mean how great would it be to have one of the words I created, under the influence of antidepressants and dark chocolate, become part of the American lexicon?

Not much has been happening lately, although I’m totally lying through my teeth. Its just that my blog has been infiltrated and I can’t really say much, although if I could make up a secret code that only you and I could understand and they couldn’t, that would be totally cool, but since 99.99% of you are total strangers, I don’t know if I could get you the secret code word list in time for my next entry, so that plan kinda sucks.

I have been having unch-lay with a an-may the last two eeks-way. Its been leasant-pay. But that’s all I’m going to say. No more miscommunications or things that can be used against me, I’ve decided, you know like the 1300 hits on my old defunct diary in last two weeks by some mysterious interloper.

I continue to live in the soap opera that is my art class however. Its the only soap opera I’m in since I don’t work, but it has all the drama of a workplace. People with crushes on people. Humor.  Secret alliances. Eccentric co-workers. Nudity. Maybe that’s why I like “The Office” so much….because it reminds me of my art class.

Like last Wednesday, for instance. ”L” the Hippie Chick called for a ride. I don’t mind at all. We’ve become very good friends in the last year and she’s enroute. About the only thing is….she’s almost always late. Not sure if that is an artist thing. It certainly isn’t for me. I’m anally on time. I know this week, I got there about 5 minutes early, so I didn’t blow my horn or anything. It was a pleasant evening out and I felt a little day dreamy, so I just looked around at the newly greening lawns. Fives minutes turned into 10 minutes so I beeped my horn and suddenly one of her room mates came out and said she was running late. I was a little stressed since I was co-hosting with Charlemagne, but he’s usually late too and Late+late= Potentially the same time of arrival.

So I waited about another 7-8 minutes and suddenly “L” came running out around the edge of her house with only a towel on, saying “I’m running late”. I looked over and she was smiling and then she did something that, well, heh, kinda both shocked me and made me laugh. She flashed me. Towel open. Boobs asunder. Out in her front yard. And then yelled “Do you want to draw me?”  I just buried my head in my hands and waved her off. Oy!

So we finally got to our art place at like five to seven. Charlemagne was frazzled by then, having to do most of the set up himself and then “L” was saying antagonistic things to him and he was getting pissed. This was actually the second time “L” did this to me…making me intentionally late when she knew I was helping Charlemagne. And then I’m stuck in the middle, trying to be all things to all people and failing miserably.

Things finally settled down somewhat by the break where I got cornered by Tall Skinny Guy. Did I mention he has a little crush on me? I won’t go into it in detail here, because of the interloper(s), but I’ve been getting cornered by him lately and this week he even attempted to tell me a joke while eating tortilla chips and he managed to spit tortilla goobies on me two or three times. And when you’re schmooshed against a wall by a 6′4″ guy and you’re only 5′3″, what can you do except flick the moist gobs of tortilla goodness off your spring dress.

Anyways, by the end of the night I was in a dazed/horny (thanks new meds!)/semi-conscious state and I was wondering around asking anyone if they had pot. Why? I have no idea. I haven’t smoked pot since the 80’s, but it just seemed like a good idea at the time. Being amongst artists, like over half of them, had some to offer. But no, I didn’t take anyone up on it. Just say no and all that rot!

Anyways, I’m still trying to get ready for my wacky, raunchy art show next weekend. I’ve been so dead creatively lately. I need some Creativity EMTs, to come and put their paddles on my chest and give me a few thousand jolts of electricity. I did gesso over an old painting yesterday and smear it up with bland yellows and browns and grays and stuck a postcard on it with a woman lusciviously biting into a big hunk of cherry pie. I’m trying to think of some clever words to put on it like “Give piece a chance” and maybe staple a condom on it.

Oh witty, you’re so freakin’ cutting edge!

Hey, I’m just trying to keep up with all these 20 year old kids that will be submitting art at the show. I hope nobody steals the condom, you know, in case I need it.

Yeah, right!!!

naked short stories

I’ve been on antidepressants for about 2 weeks now and I can always tell when they’re starting to work a little. Why?

• I open and throw away the mail on my kitchen counter from as long ago as October that is threatening to fall over and crush Guardcat.
• I suddenly realize: ”Oh! I’ve got unpaid bills! Oh my! How did that happen?!? Why is Architectural Digest billing me? I don’t even get that magazine! This is a travesty!”
• Why do I keep getting things from AARP. What is AARP anyways? The sound you make when the cat jumps on your stomach during “Dancing with the Stars”? Although dig that current issue with a picture of Jamie Lee Curtis and her naked boobs at 50?
• And then there’s the truly excessive cleaning. The shaking of the toaster over the sink to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. I think I might have possibly sprained my neck this morning. But dammit, there’s not a single crumb left in the toaster. Instead my entire kitchen is now knee deep in Whole Wheat and English Muffin crumbs. Maybe I can just dump some water and yeast on it and make a giant pizza.
• Did I mention the inappropriate behavior? Nekkidness. Oh dear. Dear Certain People of the Internet: Hope you didn’t need to call 911 when you saw some certain photos. I was just reliving the 60’s, you know. Free love. Naked boobs. I see naked people every week. Naked is beautiful. Except if AARP is bugging you with subscription requests. And if you don’t have Jamie Lee Curtis’ plastic surgeon. Sorry, everyone.
• And then there’s that other inappropriate behavior. The one I’ve been prone to for many years. The one that would probably prompt “A” to give me an appointment before his vacation next week.  Hint, hint.

But really, the only thing that’s really been keeping me on the straight and narrow has been my art class. Its one of the few things that shuts down the continuous negative chattering that goes on in my head. I guess its because I have to actually stop and focus on something for more than 5 seconds. 

I’m also getting ready for my first art show for 2008. Its the crazy, anarchistic monster/big boobed women/space alien one. I really enjoy it, even though I’m kinda not hip or crazy enough for it. Who’d thought, right??

Anyways, I went to a drawing marathon this weekend up at the local university and drew some nudes, as usual and then they had a big sheet of butcher paper on the wall where you could draw anything you wanted. So I drew this little guy.

I didn’t get to keep him though, since he was up on a hallway length sheet of paper, so I might repaint him and submit him to the weird show in mid-April.

But back to the self talk thing. Even though things slow down considerably when I’m working, I do make up stories about our models as I draw them. If I like our model and they’re not just sitting there like bulimic, catatonic sacks of rice, they get nice stories. Franco Zefferilli directs. There’s beautiful cinematography. The soundtrack is by Nino Rota. And I can usually draw something halfway decent.

But if they’re bad….well, they’ll definitely get the weird Charlie Kaufmann interpretation. Lethargic people working on the 13th floor where the elevator doesn’t quite go. Or they’ll be inexplicably left off on a New Jersey turnpike after entering John Malkovich’s brain through a heating vent.

Example: This week we had a new model. I always cut them some slack if they’re new. I mean, they’re suddenly naked with 18 of my best friends and I’m sure its pretty nerve-wracking. Some are nervous. Some are stiff.  And some, like the woman this week, just really want to show off their awesome new boob job….that hadn’t quite healed yet….and had some really wicked scary stitches. Eek! I guess if you pay a lot for new boobs, you want Everybody to see them!  …even if they’re not quite healed yet and are oozing a teensy bit.

I have no problem with plastic surgery. If I ever won the lottery I’d get a nose job and liposuction, like immediately. But this woman looked scary, especially when she turned towards me for one pose and YIKES!!!! It had to be what I could only describe as BS, the Botox Stare. Nothing in her face moved and her eyes looked glazed. And did she even blink? I don’t think so.

When I first started going to my drawing class, most of our models were young students. Now, in recent months, we’ve been getting what I call The Stepford Wives. All 40 something women, who have had obvious work done. I mean yay for us older chicks for jumping up on stage and ripping off our clothes. But gack to only doing it to show off their expensive plastic surgery and taking a break from their pilate class. I mean whatever happened to just being natural. Chins hairs. Varicose veins. Our fewer, natural models are so much more interesting to draw then the supposedly perfect MILF editions of Elder Barbie.

The week before was…well…probably the most intriguing week ever in my class. Two men. Together. Nekkid.

Unfortunately, it was also the day my mom was supposed to come home from the hospital and I was supposed to go get her but since it was the same sucky hospital I had been at recently, they probably lost the paperwork or a doctor was fondling a 90 year old woman, so she did indeed stay til Thursday, which she really needed anyways, since they had just slit her neck open Monday, to scoop out all the gunk from the last 79 years. I’ve been scared to death about this operation for months. Fun, yes? No, its been an absolute freakin’ nightmare, especially since she has dragged it out since last July, asking for second and third opinions and firing doctors, trying to delay the operation. But she made it through and is now healing for an upcoming  cancer operation. I’m happy just emotionally exhausted.

Anyways, back to nekkid men. I really wanted to see this/them/it. One of the models is this really outrageous guy, a local judge/nudist who does the most unusual poses. He’s modeled in drag, on a bicycle, tied in ropes, with boxes on his head, with chainsaws, with a burlap sack over his head right after the Abu Ghraib photos. He’s Charlemagne’s favorite, right Charlemagne? Hee hee! Just kidding.

The other guy is pretty mundane. He looks a little like Alex Trebeck. Although Tall Skinny Guy did draw this drawing of him as a Super Hero with an enormous penis. Not sure where that came from.

Anyways, I was kind of anxious when their robes came off. Anxious and a little warm. I’ve been seeing naked people for 4 1/2 years now. It means nothing to me. I’ve even talked to them…naked. But seeing two penises at once was just a little much for poor witty. Phew! Damn those Her-mones!

We have a series of 5 two minutes poses, 5 one minute poses, 5 30 second poses, a 10 minute pose, a 20 minute pose, a 30 minute pose and then an hour.  They started out doing manly men things like arm-wrestling — nude….pretend fighting — nude…tug-a-war –nude. And then they started upping the ante… Oh my goodness. Because by the end of the night, the poses went from swaggery machismo to full embraces and naughty bits touching. Gunsmoke to Brokeb@ck Mtn.

It was like the best $8 I EVER spent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Afterwards I made a joke to “L”. “I wish someone would pay me to lay naked for an hour…oh wait, that’s prostitution!” Zue, of course, came running over and said she would do that pose with me.

WTF? Eww!  So.not.happening.

But as far as the inner voice that is usually talking endlessly while I am drawing and creating elaborate movie scenarios… about the only thing it was really chattering about was…”oh wow, his penis almost touched the other guy. Wait. Oh. He’s turning. Oh! Oh wait. Oh my god, its touching the other guy’s leg. I wonder if he’s getting turned on. I wonder if anything is going to happen. Eee. Yikes. “ 

I guess you can see why I need to be medicated. 

a new meaning of bedside manner

A special treat today, a blog entry where I don’t make fun of yuppies, but I complain about just about everything else under the sun. Are you on board? I’ll be gentle. I promise.

Its been a rough couple of weeks. Depression has been kicking my ass in a big way. So big, in fact, that a week ago Wednesday, I decided to check myself into the hospital. I had tried going it alone– exercising, getting out of the house, going to my art class, going to my one support group, calling crisis help lines, but nothing had been working. Not even chocolate fercrissakes!

So with much trepidation, I slogged up to our local hospital, which has a mental health wing and checked into the emergency room. At the time I was going through my second round of a really bad case of Sinusitus. I had just had it two weeks before, taken 10 days of Antibiotics and then - WANGO! Sinusitis again! Must have been those 49,000 germy drunk Irish people at the parade.

When I got in the first level of the ER the guy asked me if I wanted to go through what they call the FAST Track (remember the word FAST, its important to this story) to have my sinus problem looked at. My mom had been yelling at me to get some more antibiotics, because she didn’t want me to “ruin” Easter by being sick. She was also going into the hospital herself the next day and wanted me available for daughterly services.  So I said yes. This was around 2:45 p.m.

Mistake #1.  

I went back to the waiting room, where at least there was a TV and candy machine and waited for about a half hour. They finally brought me into a little cubical where I was looked at by Dr. Jason Priestly of 90210. Yes! It was him! I swear! The Jason Priestly from the early 1990’s.  I mean, how cool is it for Jason Priestly of 90210 to press your naked stomach. I did laugh when he asked if there was any possibility that I was pregnant.  So many one liners wanting to escape, but so little time especially since I haven’t had the red menace in over a year now. Its nice though that somebody thinks I’m still viable. Thanks Dr. Jason Priestly of 90210.

And then came the hospital vampire crew, taking at least 5 vials of blood to make sure I didn’t have Uglygirlcitis. And then…nothing. At like 7 p.m. I finally called a nurse. I hadn’t eaten since 10 a.m. I was starving. So like an hour later she finally brought me a squished half frozen roast beef sandwich and a tiny glass of ginger ale. Hey I almost felt like I was at Quiznos!

Suddenly some bratty kid blew in through my curtains. By now I was taking sheets of paper out of a bin and drawing on them. You know, just your usual self pitying depression fare….

Can you tell that I was frustrated and that the bratty kid was traveling in dangerous territory, especially when the mom let him loose again and he ran directly back in AGAIN and screamed directly in my face and then coughed on me. I did keep my cool though. Mainly because I was so sick.  Good thing, you little bastard. You would have needed stitches too.

Anyways, its nearly 8:45 before this older tall doctor came in. Come to find out, Dr. Jason Priestly 90210 was just an intern and this was the “real” doctor. By then I was standing up, pacing around. There’s only so many things you can draw in an ER cubical.

I guess he introduced himself. I was too sick to remember. Nobody ever gave me anything to relieve my symptoms. Way to go ER personnel! Anyways, he walks up to me, pressed his body firmly against my arm, puts his one hand on my back and then took the stethoscope and instead of holding it in his fingertips like most doctors do, he cupped his whole hand over my entire right breast (i.e., I think they call that “copping a feel”) and probably got an inaccurate reading since he was feeling my boob. I mean WTF? I always have trouble dealing with pervs at the moment of impact. I just sort of watch them in slow motion, make note and then angst about it later.

Our little conversation that followed wasn’t much better. He told me my blood sugar was a little elevated, probably because “I was such a sweet girl” (huh?? WTF??). I tried to veer the subject back to reality, like something medical and told him that when I was 30 pounds heavier I had had diabetic symptoms and had taken diabetes medication. And then he sort of stands up tall and pats his abs and says, “Yup, I could stand to lose 30 pounds!” The guy was thin, folks. He was just fishing for me to say he was fine or in good shape. Evidently he thought we were at some BBQ  at the country club and it was OK to flirt with the woman whose breast he had just felt up. He then announced the need for x-rays for my sinuses. WHAT-T-T-T?

I KNOW AND YOU KNOW AND WE BOTH KNOW I HAVE SINUSITIS, JUST GIVE ME THE FUCKING ANTIBIOTICS!!

I didn’t say that of course. I’m a wuss. I just stood there in disbelief. I had been there now, for 6 1/2 hours…for a fucking stuffed nostril and severe headache. And the real purpose for my visit…my mental health issues were getting less and less important. I also knew if I went over to the mental health wing it would be at least another 6-7 hours, before getting any help and I was just too exhausted.

I did sit in the cubical from hell for like another 45 minutes. I finally just couldn’t take it anymore and put on my coat and walked out into the hallway. I told the guy at a computer I was leaving, because I was tired of waiting…for nothing. He said, “Are you feeling better?” And I actually managed to get off one good zinger. I said, “Believe it or not, your room didn’t have any magical healing qualities.”

SCORE!

He calmed me down and then said the magical words I had been wanting to hear for hours: “I can have you out of here in 5 minutes.” Why didn’t they say that like 7 hours ago?? He asked me if I still wanted to go over to the mental health wing and I said I was just too tired. I also felt anxious about the Drive-By Boob Grab and didn’t really trust whoever else I might possibly come in contact with at this place.

I was finally sprung a little before 10 pm. Fortunately they have valet service up to your car, although I did get to see a bloodied stab victim fall out of a car as I was waiting. Woo hoo!

When I got home “L” the Hippie Chick called. It was Art Class night and I usually drive her to class, but my phone had just rung and rung and she was worried about me. She said I can call her anytime I want.  And this week, several people in my art class  asked if I was alright. I finally saw “A” this week too, after a month. He’s going to try and get me services at my old place again. I hope so. I really need some support in real life.  

you don’t have to be drunk to be Irish

I guess the bus ride down to the St. Patrick’s Day parade should have been indicative of what was to come. There was the guy around 35, across the aisle, picking his nose, examining it (and yes, I could see his boogers too. YAY!) and then slurping them up before digging for more gold. There was the Loud Talker, as they might call her in a Steinfeld episode. She’s actually my new neighbor. Usually when new people move in, you barely know they’re here except for the moving van. This one? She’s been out sitting out on her back screened porch, which faces my apartment, in 20 degree temperatures, yacking so loud I can hear it through double paned windows. Oy! I can barely wait for summer.

We finally got downtown, and it wasn’t soon enough for me with Loud Talker talking at 500 decibals the entire ride. It was about 15 minutes before the parade was supposed to start…11:45 a.m. and it was immediately apparent that cocktail hour had already started. According to something I just read on the web, we have the largest St. Patrick’s Day parade per capita in the country. Over 50,000 people attend. I’ve lived here about 19 years now and I’ve only gone about 5 times. Its usually weather related, as in 15 degrees and snow banks, but it was decent yesterday, so I thought I’d give it a try. Next year? Not so sure….

A friend from my art class, who is also a musician, was supposed to march in one of the first bands. I tried desperately to get closer to the parade route, to take his picture, but no dice. It was like the freakin’ Berlin Wall.  (sorry C.T.). But I was finally able to squeeze through a hole and run over across the street where I met my first new “friend” of the day. Heh. She basically told me I could not sit on the ground in front of her (she was standing), but I could stand behind her if I wished, you know, where the other, 49,999 people were standing. What were the choices again, bitch?

I tried standing behind her, but she must have hit me in the face and ribs about 150 times with her little delicate Botoxed elbow. Gee, I wish I would have known I was training for the Passive Aggressive Olympics. I would have practiced harder. Sheesh!

I finally moved on up the parade route a little further to what I’ll call The Future Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting Group #129 corner. It was comprised of about 5 guys, yelling, screaming, getting up on the police blockades and yelling “King of the Wooooooorld” and then doing a kamikaze dives into people walking by. One kid finally threw beer across a bunch of people and hit an old lady pushing a baby in a stroller. So I went and told a cop to get the assholes on the corner under control.

After that, fearing retribution, I moved down in front of our classic old theatre downtown. It turns 80 this year. There were a bunch of old grannies, lines up in wicker chairs and I figured they wouldn’t be too bad. Unfortunately it turned out they were right next to the Teens from Alcohol Hell. These kids had several huge backpacks full of beer, and later I realized jello shots.

I tried watching the parade, I really did. But how can you when the people behind you are howling like coyotes and trying to knock 400 pound cement garbage cans over and playing hockey with beer cans making your ass their goalie net. I mean , there were cops standing about every 20 feet, but what were they doing? Absolutely nothing. Even when Jimmy Joe Bob was feeding his 15 year old girlfriend jello shots five feet from a cop. Like what the hell? Isn’t that against the law?

His girlfriend did disappear for a while…probably to go puke and buy condoms or something and he started to talk to me. Can you imagine? A teen boy talking to a 50 year old woman? A parade character that looked like a loaf of Italian bread had just walked by and he said that reminded him of his favorite cartoon on Channel 51. He said some name….but god knows what it was since it sounded Lithuanian. But he said it starred a loaf of bread, something else and a “wad of meat”. Umm, ok. He kept drunkenly talking to me, although I wasn’t really listening, except to hear him say how proud he was that the sidewalk where we were standing had the most garbage, so we were probably having the most fun.

  

Yup, I was having fun all right. Incidentally, that’s my new “boyfriend’s” leg on the right side of the photo. Don’t tell Guardcat. She’ll try and bite my aorta while I’m asleep, if she thinks I’m cheating.

Anyways, basically our parade consisted of three things: Irish dancing school kids, tractor trailers with lots of people hanging off them and guys in kilts (the REAL reason I went. I can never get enough of Guys in Kilts. Woo hoo!!!!!! Woof Woof!! Like what is under yeeer kilt thaar, Sean O’Shanaughnessy???? A couple of Lucky Charms, yee say?????). There were other random things in the parade like Biker dudes and the SPCA with a bunch of Irish Setters wearing green scarves.

And then there was a guy dressed like the Statue of Liberty. He was about 9 foot tall with lots of foam rubber parts. I mean how else could he be 9 foot tall? So one of the Drunk Idiots from our Sector decided it would be kinda fun to give the Statue of Liberty a big ol’ drunken kiss. He was kinda tall though, gosh darn it! So when he approached him, instead of just asking for a kiss, like they do in polite society and British movies starring Dame Judy Densch, this asshole decided to just tackle the poor guy, knocking him down and knocking his head off. I mean, WTF? You just knocked the Statue of Liberty’s head off, dude! What are you…the freakin’ Al Queida??

Fortunately, there was a stunt double Statue of Liberty that helped the lead one, retrieve his head. But in the meantime, the cops all rushed the Drunk Idiot. Initially it looked like they had him. But just when they were on the verge of putting on the handcuffs, the Drunk Idiot broke loose and took off down the street. By now the parade had come to a standstill as 2, than 4 than 6 cops started chasing this little bastard down the street. It looked really absurd, especially since the crowd was cheering like we were watching “My Dad is Better Than Your Dad” or something.

They finally nailed him over across the street and when they were walking him to some unseen cop car, the people over in the drunkest part of town (my side) started chanting, “Attica, Attica, Attica”. Of course they were the same people who had earlier started the whole street chanting “U..P…S” when two UPS trucks were in the parade. Like what the hell? Why are we chanting UPS? Oh, 98.9% of us, are drunk…that’s right!

By time 3 p.m. rolled around, very few people were even looking at the parade. Cops had absolutely no authority. Garbage was now ankle deep. I was desperately afraid somebody was going to puke on me. Fights were breaking out. Yeah, I was so proud to be Irish at that point. Truly.

But at least I got to see some guys in kilts.

And isn’t that what St. Patrick’s Day parades….realllllly about? Woof.   

the new seven commandments…maybe

Has anyone watched that new TV show called “Eli Stone” about a lawyer with a brain aneurysm, who formerly was a total asshole and made lots and lots of money for his law firm by steam rolling over human decency, but then discovered that his new role in life was to help the little guy. His change in behavior comes in the form of outrageously strange visions that no one else sees, like bi-planes swooping down on him on a San Francisco street a’la “North by Northwest”, him opening an office door and suddenly being hit by an ocean wave and first and foremost, a rocking church choral group abruptly popping up in courtrooms, law offices, singing spirituals that are supposed to give him a clue about what is right and wrong. 

Even though I don’t watch much TV, I particularly like shows like this because 1) they’re whimsical 2) they have heart 3) someone is giving someone a message on how  to change their lives for the better. Oh, and I also have whimsical flights of fancy when I’m out in the real world. 

I have written about my repeated fantasy of going into some bleak, depressing store like the Salvation Army and hearing Aretha Franklin singing “Respect” over the loudspeaker (Oh, the irony for people in the Salvation Army hearing a song like that).  Because suddenly, upon hearing that music,  I’ll suddenly start doing a little sassy Aretha walk. And nearby clerks will suddenly be holding up hangers like microphones and become my backup singers. And then all the customers, who were formerly just people sadly pawing through the linty, torn, out dated clothes along the racks will suddenly burst into a major Motown number in sequined jumpsuits.  And then, of course, I’ll jump up on the counter and finish things off  with my soaring vocals to thunderous applause with the total flair and polish of the superstar I really am.

Unfortunately, these fantasies have been coming closer and closer together in recent weeks.  I mean I’m gonna have to call in Bob Fosse from beyond the grave soon, you know,  since how can you really do a big musical number without Fosse.

So do I have a brain aneurysm or am I just severely depressed. Wow. What a fun choice.

I pulled out of the yuppie grocery store the other day. I had turned on the radio and the Bee Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive” was playing. I decided to turn it up. Blast from the past and all. But I found the lyrics a little troubling. Since this is all I heard:

Life goin’ nowhere. Somebody help me.
Somebody help me, yeah.
Life goin’ nowhere. Somebody help me yeah.
I’m Stayin’ alive.

Just the ”Life goin’ nowhere. Somebody help me yeah. I’m stain’ alive” part over and over and over. Nothing else. WTF? Was I having one of those “Eli Stone” moments? Because I had it turned as loud as I could in my car and then it ended abruptly right when I drove by “A”s office. He’s on my way home. (No, I don’t make special trips by his office, despite what certain people think).

I’ve had a rough week. Food stamps were taken away from me, because: 1st woman on phone: We screwed up and lost your file. 2nd woman 10 minutes later:“YOU screwed up. You didn’t fill out your budget form (which, whoops, wasn’t included in what THEY  sent me, but pshaw, its only $100 out of a poor person’s budget. Hee hee. We’ll just go all official and make the pee-on feel like maggot poop on the bottom of our shoe and then they’ll back down). I mean it was a bad enough  going in the office and having the guy at the counter say I wasn’t in the computer. And then next being bitch-slapped by some toady woman (worker because I hadn’t completed the form correctly. And then next being told by Worker 59B that I was rude when I said I had done everything correctly and yet I had to fill out the form for a third time because evidently I had committed a mortal  sin when I had filled it out in pencil because according to him “No form in pencil will ever be accepted on my watch.” What are you? A fucking soldier guarding the Afghanistan border?

Truth was though, I was too tired to fight. I had just fought a three day battle with AOL They had taken over $100 out of my bank account over several months without my permission. And all I could do was talk to was some guy named Abu from India. Does anyone else see the irony of AMERICA Online being manned by people from India? I couldn’t understand him and  I was unable to get the charges reversed. I did leave a complaint on a Consumer website. I then talked to a guy at Time Warner where I now have my service and he said he had so much trouble with AOL taking money out of his account after he left, he had to change his bank account number.

So I’ve also had lots of other things going on, some that I won’t get into. But they are all crushing. I even ended up calling a crisis help line last weekend at 1:30 in the morning. Just couldn’t handle it anymore. I finally went to my medical doctor yesterday. Lots of anxieties, aches, shortness of breath, sharp jabbing pain in my neck and chin. I was sure I was on the verge of another heart “situation” like a year ago January. I think she could see that I was just mainly severely depressed. So she hooked me up with a psychiatrist who I guess will help me with meds sometime next week.

I think perhaps the weirdest thing that happened to me this last week though, was something that sounds like it fell directly out of an “Eli Stone” episode.  I’ve been so anxious about my health, that I’ve been trying to sleep in my bed, but its too far from my phone, so I’ve been sleeping in the living room on the couch. And the word “sleep” is relative. Its been sketchy at best, especially the night before I was waiting for my phone interview with the idiot food stamp guy the next morning. I just could not sleep. I’d sleep for like a half hour…wake up. Sleep. Wake up. Finally at 3 a.m. I just decided to grab my remote control and see what was on TV… at 3 a.m. I’ve never turned on the TV at that time before, so I had no idea what to expect. So click:

ABC News: Two Jennifers were giving the news at 3 a.m. against a black backdrop. They were both very young… actually  a little too young to be reading news at a major network, I thought. It was so strange I even began wondering if this was beaming out live or not. They were both impossibly pretty and had flippy hair. I don’t remember what the first story was but I definitely remember the second one. The fact that the Pope at the Vatican had just released Seven New Commandments.

Huh?????

I was laying in the couch in the dark, thinking, now that’s weird.  How can the Pope do that? Doesn’t there have to be like a burning bush or something? So Jennifer #1 started reading them off and there was a graphic behind her. Can I remember them? Not really, it was 3 a.m. But there were two in the middle that I definitely do.

They were kinda informal, these NEW Seven Commandments.  None of that  ”Thou Shalt Not…” stuff. Because the two that I remembered said that it was a sin to have “Obscene Wealth” and that it was a sin to “Cause Poverty”.

And its funny, because both newscaster girls started to giggle like giddy teenagers when they were through reading them. They even wondered aloud how much money was considered obscene and why would it be considered obscene to have money. They were probably just wondering how many pairs of Manolo Blahniks they could own before they had to go to confession.

So anyways, the next day I had the phone interview with 57B. It went poorly. I lost everything. Afterwards, trying to blank things out, I went on the internet to research the new Seven Commandments. After all, I had seen it on ABC News!! First I Googled ”New Commandments” “Seven Commandments”, “Pope + Commandments”. I certainly came up with some funny things like Commandments for Driving like ”Don’t kill people’ and then a humor website that included the commandment “Thou shalt not bounce a psycho”. Dang and that’s what I was gonna do tonight after my art class.

Anyways,  I finally went to the official Vatican website…AND….nothing about the New Seven Commandments.

So….? Ummm??? Heh.. I guess there ISN’T any new Seven New Commendments and I was just having some funky-ass, Charlie Kauffmanesque movie dream about waking up and receiving Commandments from two Jennifers on ABC News. Were they my Burning Bush? Do you think I know? I’m the one dreaming about biblical things as filtered through ”Girls Gone Wild”? I know one thing. I definitely need to see a psychiatrist for new meds.

My aura is grunge

The week before my birthday was awesome. I was wrapped in the warmth and love of my friends. The weeks since…total darkness. I always get this mid-February depression thing. I’ve been in my apartment almost the whole week. Except when I went to the Food Stamp office midweek and witnessed some woman bitch-slapping her little kid with a fist. Nice, huh? No body did anything of course. We were all too busy listening to some other woman freaking out in the stairwell screaming “Motherfucker — red…motherfucker - blue….motherfucker-orange” . Not sure what she was getting at. “Sesame Street - The Ghetto Edition — Learn Your Colors Motherfucker”?

And then the guy behind me started bitching that some women up at the counter had cut ahead of him. He was yelling in my ear. He then started yelling at me to “DO SOMETHING“. Like me, the only white woman in the middle of 400 “culturally diverse people” could step in. Dude, I forgot my hand gun!  What makes you think I could possibly get off a few warning shots into the ceiling, before getting my ass kicked?

I did go my Wednesday night art class. My oasis. The place where they talk to me like I’m normal (i.e., not bipolar or poor) and I was able to toss off a decent drawing of one of my favorite models.

Thursday and Friday…more couch time in my apartment  in my pajamas. No human contact except phone calls from my mother talking about her grave site and imminent death.

I finally decided I had had enough. I had been watching these commercials on TV for a “Psychic Fair” at the local Holiday Inn Hotel, so  I decided to just go, dammit. Sure, its flaky, but hey, I grew up 15 miles north of Haight and Ashbury in the 60’s and 70’s. I used to do astrology charts. I believe the moon and nature have magical powers. Why not?

And also I’m always looking for answers. Why do you think I’ve been in therapy so long? I’m not there for therapy. I’m there for answers! I also unfortunately bug the heck out of my friends for answers, like why do you think this person did that? Etc. I guess it comes from growing up with a mother who only talked about herself and never did anything to help me be a complete person.

So I headed over to the Holiday Inn, sort of with kind a half sneer (ha, what a bunch of loonies) and a half glimmer of hope. The old guy taking the money at the front counter was pretty weird. Bolo tie (oh witty, you know you used to wear them in the 70’s!) and humming WHILE he was talking. Was he getting some vibe off me? 

….you will strip naked at the yuppie grocery store and jump up on the natural food display and sing “Yanni, How I love Ya, how I love Ya, My Dear ol’ Yanni!”

But no message was forthcoming. He just stamped a small face of an space alien on my hand and I went it. It was jammed… with mostly women. I really had no idea how or where to start. I knew I wanted to get a reading though. I had gotten over $100 for my birthday and had been really strict with myself. No gifties!! Must.pay.bills!! But I had decided that I was going to “let” myself do this. Sure Food Stamps had just completely cut off my food stamps this last week and its still up in the air whether I’ll get them, but dammit I wanted some answers. My life is really stagnant right now. I need to know what to do.

So I started to walk around and look at the various psychics and clairvoyants (”Jennifer: You have Uranus in your twelfth house” Why did that make me laugh like a 10 year old boy?) and reiki people and people dangling crystals over feet and my personal favorite the “Aura Photo - $20!” booth. My camera does that too. The swooshy, flare thing off the edge of the image? Its usually means your camera batteries are low, people! 

Anyways, I was shocked at how expensive the readings were. $35-40 for 15 minutes. $70 for 30 minutes. Gulp! I sure wasn’t expecting it to be that much! I only had about $28 in my pocket…the last of my birthday money. I finally found an inner circle of (ahem) cut-rate psychics for only $25. One guy just looked plain scary, like a serial killer. Another one looked like my mother. No thanks. I finally got it down to a hippie chick and an African American woman. I took the African American woman. She had a raven sitting on her table. I liked ravens. And her name was “Ravin”.  And I also kept thinking of Whoopi Goldberg in “Ghost” since she was sort of dressed like her in crushed purple velvet and lots of jewelry. So I set my appointment with Ravin…my Intuitive Consultant.

We finally met 25 minutes later. Most of the psychic ladies were holding hands with their people. Not Ravin. She just had me write my name on a piece of paper. She also had a pad of paper for me  to write down her impending thoughts on. I wasn’t sure how to act or interact with her. Didn’t want to give her any info for her to work off of.

Guess what the first words out of her mouth were? “Guarded and has to be in control of every situation.” And oh dear, she did go on and on about that and me liking to be in control of everyone and everything. Can you imagine? Me?

And you better leave some comments, bitches. 

 (cough)

And then her eyes rolled back in her head once again. (She was talking to her guides). And she said there was a lot of black energy around me and that my aura was very smudgy and that it was a grunge aura (I’m definitely copyrighting that name for  like a band) and that I needed to breathe because it was taking all my air and I haven’t been able to function very well recently.

Hallelujah to that, baby!

She finally exited the Grunge Aura room and said that I would soon be the Executor of Knowledge. She kind of chuckled. She liked that title. “Executor of Knowledge”. Had a nice ring to it. All I could think was Executor of a will, considering how my mother’s been lately, but Ravin, in fact, said she saw that I would be teaching children and adults. She didn’t say what though.

Next up, out of no where. “You’re a writer, right?” WTF?? Now that was weird. Maybe it was because I’m Irish and look all depressed and angsty. She did tell me I’d be writing a book sometime soon. I rather think if I’m teaching anyone anything, it might be via a book, since I can’t see myself standing up in front of people pontificating, although I did want to be a music teacher when I was a kid.

She finally finished up by saying I really have to do something about taking care of myself first …AND STOP TRYING TO CONTROL EVERYBODY. All right already. And maybe create a “ME-room” with a lot of plants and music and sounds of gurgling brooks. She also said I needed validation. I started to cry at that point. Validation is a huge thing for me. Never got much growing up, which made me needy as an adult. And needy= No love life or a fucked up one.  Working on that one. thanks.

Anyways, she finally asked if I had any questions. I was a little surprised that the subject of love didn’t come up. Isn’t that what most woman want to know about? She said nothing will happen until I get rid of my grunge aura and dark energy and then the men will “rush towards my light in droves”. Oh my goodness, I guess I better get those traffic signals working then!