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#248 - so much for cozy (and other winter ramblings)
12/28/01 @ 8:35 pm

I'm kind of afraid of cars. I realized when I was a teenager what the problem was. I was convinced that I would die in a horrible car accident one day, and probably sooner rather than later. I'm not so terrified that I run screaming from them or anything, and I feel pretty comfortable driving. Safe even. But there are certain situations that make me god-fearing all over again: crossing bridges, passing semi's, and being a passenger. And my, there was so much praying today.

I really don't like being a passenger when my husband is driving. At least once per trip, I squeak/cry/moan, "I don't want to die!" OK, so maybe I'm slightly melodramatic sometimes. Slightly.

Today? Holy shit. Today's under the breath mantra was, "...we're gonna die... we're gonna die... we're gonna die... we're gonna die..." Why? Because Sweetie's father was driving. GOD that man should not have a license! Sometimes he's ok, but dammit if someone is going too slow for his liking and he tailgates within an inch of his/their/our lives!!!! No matter that the line is a mile long of cars who can't go any faster. By god, he's gonna tailgate! And get us all killed!

Like today. Returning from Crystal Mountain. Death grinning at us at every snow-covered curve. Yes, I was a-praying and a-swearing away what I thought were surely my last moments on this earth!

The rest of the day was quite pleasant though. Sweetie woke up at 8am to get ready to meet his father & brother, and oddly enough, I was awake enough to get up and ask if I could tag along. Y'know, snow and all. He had wanted me to come, but the 7am wake-up call was not high on my list of ways to spend my vacation. The wake-up got pushed to 8am, but we were out late last night, so I thought for sure I would be all a-snooze come this morning, but I surprised everyone by coming along.

So I got to see snow finally. Yay!!! It was very pretty. Took some nifty pictures. Stood in the snow just relishing the cold & the beauty. Supposedly you can see Mt. Rainier from Crystal, but I couldn't. There were just enough whispy clouds to keep visibility in that direction a little limited. Other than that, it was a gorgeous, blue-skied day. You wouldn't know it from the temperature though! So much for cozy! Take one step away from the warm car or lodge and it's like a freeze ray or something, shooting right down to your bones! There was no cozy, despite my nifty new red chenille sweater. There was only freezing your patooties off & huddling in the lodge wishing you could get completely warm. Hmph.

Anyway, yah, I didn't do much today. Mostly just sat around the lodge listening to cd's & reading. And what could be better than reading Francesca Lia Block & James Alan Gardner while listening to Le Tigre? Before I go on, I really must say, I finally found a FLB book I could finish. The Weetzie Bat books were so off-the-wall, I couldn't finish them. They were just a little too weird. Strange, but true, there are even limits for me! A few months ago I bought Violet & Claire, and just couldn't get into it. But I got The Rose and the Beast : Fairy Tales Retold for Christmas, and I finished it up today at the lodge. I loved it! I always knew, from what I did read, that FLB's draw is that she sounds like a real teenager when she writes (even if she doesn't look like an akward young girl on the back sleeve!), but finally I could revel in her words. Which were quite remarkable. Anyone wondering what it's like to be a teenage girl should not bother with teen movies, but instead read anything by Francesca. Especially this one, a collection of short fairy tales. My favorites were "Charm" & "Ice". Lovely, truly.

Then there is James Alan Gardner. He is fabulous! It took awhile into the series for me to confirm Festina Ramos' sexuality, which is even better. He is amazingly subtle when he wants to be, but lets characters other than Festina hit you over the head with details about her that you've been craving for hundreds of pages. Another cool thing about his books - Festina is the heroine, and there's only 1(?) book from the series that's from her point of view. Everything else is in 1st person of some other character that she encounters, and usually grows quite fond of. The strangest of all of them so far has been Commitment Hour, not for subject matter, which was damn awesome to write about (a third sex!), but because I didn't know until the last chapters (pages?) that this was even a Festina book! But, there she was, for about 2 seconds! Anyway, I didn't even know that Ascending even existed until Vixey mentioned it a few weeks ago, and now I owe her! I went out & bought it the day after Christmas because no one bought it for me and I was desperate for more reading materials! And how happy I am! Oar is alive! Yay!

Um, where the hell was I? Talking about today. Ooooohhh... Le Tigre. I soooo love Le Tigre. I'd heard them mentioned by a few different people, so I downloaded some songs by them, and now I finally have 2 of their CD's, and they rock!!! But here's my problem. Because Sasha, my favorite Suicide Girl, mentioned them, I always seem to think of her when I'm listening to them. And back in my "wishing for cozy" days, I had this vision of sitting in a cozy sweater, typing away on my computer listening to Le Tigre, and visiting Sasha's page at the same time. And getting really turned on. And crushing her breasts in my hands. And suckling her fucking delicious looking clit. Yes, yes, yes!

Can you guess my dilemma? I can't listen to Le Tigre now without thinking of Sasha. And thinking about Sasha has become very dangerous, because the last time I went over to SG, I checked out her "In The Closet" set, and fell so head-over-heels in love that I couldn't breath. OK, maybe it's lust, but I swear to fucking Christ (or whoever) that ever time I see this... Precious... (hehe) vision, weird things happen to me. Like it feels alot more powerful than lust, and it's starting to wig me out. So I haven't gone to SG in many weeks, despite my subscription.

I'm very happy with my life right now, despite the depression crap, and don't need to fuck it up with bizarre fantasies about girls I can't have! I mean, lusting over someone who didn't know I existed led to the closest I've ever been to suicide, and many self-mental-fucks. Yep, it was a bad scene. So I want to just quit, because it terrifies me, this capacity to obsess within me. But she's like candy. Sugar. Chocolate. Heroin. Maple syrup. Yum, yum, yummie! Grr...

Next subject: Christmas. Argh. It was quite a trip, let me tell ya. This whole, "It just doesn't feel like Christmas" seems to be plaguing a lot of people this year, so bonus for me, I guess. But come Christmas morning, it felt pretty damn close. Had a lovely morning opening presents with Sweetie's family. Everyone seemed quite pleased with their haul, yours truly included. Yep, I am the proud new Mama of a 20gb external HD, for the express purpose of transporting mp3's to & from work. Sooooooo sick of my freaking 2gb drive at work and my limited music selection there!

Before I go on, does anyone know what the fuck a Cassavetes is? I need to look it up. Le Tigre sings about the strangest shit....

After gift-opening, there was no time to go over to my Mom's that morning, so I stayed & helped set up for Christmas lunch. We had awesome fucking steak & amazing yummie ceasar salad & cheese bread to die for! My sister-in-law's husband is an amazing cook! Well, then it was off to Mom's to present gifts.

Oh, wait... first, right before lunch, I went downstairs by myself to check my mail. And got the best Christmas present probably EVER. Leah, who I believe is the lovely lass that I keep meaning to read here, sent me a Christmas tree. Right there, just opening the card, I had tears in my eyes when the tree started blinking, but then she sent me some kind words too, plus a lovely poem about how silly self-pity is, and I was sunk. I was a bawling baby! My face was a mess when I was called to the dinner table! So thanks so much to Leah, whom I shall worship for all my days! You should really sign the gbookie, so I know that in fact it was you, Ms. "f-the-world". 'k?

Um, sorry if my mind is all over the place guys, but alots gone on (and through my mind!) over the past few days, and I'm trying to capture as much as possible here, so bare with (please).

Have I mentioned that my Sis was thrown out & I've been all a mess trying to decide how to spend Christmas with them, if at all, because of it? Argh. Finally, I worked it out with shrink-a-dink lady Monday. It pains me greatly that the whole reason why I don't talk to my relatives in Hawaii is because they didn't believe my sister when she said their father (our step-grandpig) had molested her, and here's my mother taking my father's side when he throws my Sis out of the house. Fuck. I decided a teeny amount of time to hand over presents, then jet out of there, and see everyone together at my Aunt's, which my sister would be attending because I was giving her a ride.

So onto mother's house we went, me & my man. Ick. Ugh. Fuck. My mother opened the door near 1:30pm, and admonished herself (me?) that she was still in her PJ's. And that's my problem WHY? 1) it's never been an issue for her before. 2) it was fucking well after noon now. 3) they were expecting me hours before this so why is it my problem that she's not dressed yet, since I didn't surprise her early or anything. Little thing. No biggie.

I walk in, and my big little brother is there. He is almost incoherent, terrifying me more than all the weird-ass phone calls & letters I've gotten from him in the past few months. He's so fucked up, I don't even know what to do, so I end up ignoring him for most of the time. I ask where big littler brother is, Mom goes to call him from his room, and then comes back and tries to turn down the TV.

Been there for maybe 60 seconds, and my father is screaming at the top of his lungs that he'll fix the damn TV himself. And my mother? She spends the rest of my time there trying to placate & please him with smiles & ways to include him in the conversation. When the fuck did this happen? When did his opinion/affection/approval start to matter to her again? And after a clearly blatant display of why the fuck I don't speak to the man has just transpired. It took all my might not to run from the house. Instead I stayed long enough to open their presents to me, and see their faces when they opened mine. Littlest brother was embarressed about the Bondage Fairies, & trying to hide their existence from Mom. Little brother looked right through everything (including me) like he didn't know what the fuck I had given him, even after asking if all the songs he asked for were there, & me explaining the quirky little 70s handheld football game I got him as a recollection of our childhood together. Mom, she acted like I was the Messiah, and anything I showered on her was gold. In this case, it was 3 records: Jim Croce, Bill Cosby, & Credence Clearwater Revival. I thought she'd dig 'em, but damn if she didn't look like she was gonna start springing rainbows from her eyes or something.

After that, there were about 2 minutes spent in the kitchen, as I watched the bond between her & Littlest brother to make sure that it was as strong as ever. And I noticed she was completely different from her weak, frail, shakey self that terrified me so at Thanksgiving. Nope, now she was loud & boisterous again, but for some reason placating a dragon.

I left. And tried not to cry all the way home, wondering who the fuck these people were. Sweetie asked me what was wrong in his driveway, and I lost it. I decided on the car ride home (because his parent's house is so much more "home" than my mother's is now), that I don't ever want to step foot in that house again. No matter what. I knew it was coming, but I wish it hadn't come this way.

Later that afternoon, we went over to my favorite Aunt's and most of the family was there. Crazy, but my mother was just like I remembered her at every other family function other than this last Thanksgiving: my Mom, whom I miss & adore & still cry out for when I get an owie or a tummy ache or a broken heart. Weird. And my sister's now engaged. Weird. And my Littlest brother looks like a man. Weird. And I am in love with my cousin's infant son. Annoying. And my Aunt has the cutest cat who ate ham from my fingers. Cutie patootie! And my annoying cousins weren't annoying. Weird. And when my brother took my husband to the car to get a "special" present for him, he didn't weild an axe & chop him up into tiny bits. Odd. And my special present from him was french manicure nail polish. Because said has kept him from committing suicide many times. As a distraction, he paints his nails. I always wondered why he painted his nails so often, in so many different colors. Never knew it had anything to do with distracting the voices in his head. Yep, he's become a creepy mother fucker. Yes, indeedy!

Once again: there may be families more fucked up than mine, but I've never met 'em.

I think I'm going to leave it here. Oh, after I mention that I got my hair chopped. By some matronly woman with an Eastern Block accent. If only I would listen to that little voice that said, "Flee! This person is going to ruin your hair!" that I get every so often. I decided to finally get bangs again, after years & years without. I said short & sparse, displaying a picture of exactly what I wanted. She chopped off enough hair to be half of my bangs, and stepped away to reveal about a 1/4" bouncing up by my hair line. "Is this what you wanted?" Well, hot damn, SURE! Now that you've butchered it and you can't make it LONGER! Why not! Grr... It looks much better now that I've fucked with it myself, but god if I wasn't terrified when I left that place...

Everyone remember, when you get that odd feeling in your gut that you don't trust this person's skill/creativity/whatever with your hair, just LEAVE! Politely, impolitely, WHATEVER! Just do it!

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