I'm going to start keeping this blog again:

I am appalling. (That's all I've got so far... I'm mulling that over....)

"you don't feel like someone I used to know, you feel like someone I know now and I'm not speaking to you anymore"

the bad part is that my ass matches (or, coversely, the upside to my fat ass)

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Both eyes now. It will be 2 days in er with a whatthefuck emergency dermotologist visit between this week, w 2 sick kids and my mom in my asscrack (also sick, btw, arrived that way like a trojan fucking horse). It is not epidural (grr), just pure sinus infection as inconveniently unorthodox as that is for us all. I feel like that is a metaphor. I am inconvenient. I defy diagnosis. Nobody is more put out by that but me (so fuck you).

Sinus infections can get so bad they bust through your eye sockets, fyi

Update: spent the day in the ER w a sinus infection so nasty that snot came out my tear ducts.

He looooves weddings. The whole polish schlomole. One very convenient and yet ultimately unendurable things about the "greek situation" was that I was not a suitable date to weddings. So. Of course, for that reason on top of all the other reasons, it was a big deal that I go, to everyone concerned, especially me. Me, who had the flu. (And nightmare cramps too, cz god has a shitty sense of humor.) I was so pissed at the effect on my hair of ill health that I beat up the bathroom light fixture, busting it to shit a few minutes before we had to leave. Then I drank wine on top of a mountain of cold meds once we were there, while his ma in all her short polish mama glory drank with me and then we all danced. His dad, the stoic workingman dadtype dude to perfection, kept her glass filled as Aaron did for me, then good naturedly donned glow stick jewelry (deadpan, like a noble beast would wear it) while Aaron danced with us to 'poker face', laughing his dick off pleased as punch (giggle). Now I am sick as a dawg (and am headed to the ER in the morning if this keeps up..). But it was worth it.

My mom is staying a few weeks for the holidays as per usual. Except 'per usual' isn't what it used to be. I love her, but still it is a little bit of an off fit, like as if the pipes have been sweated askew now. She's better than most everyone else (well, she is my mother, so she's obliged to roll w the punches as best she can). As my friend Amy puts it, misery loves company and so your company might very well bail if you stray. And so it has been. Sunnie barely talks to me. It's not like a relationship is oo la la easy to make work in real life. It is a lot of simple showing up. It is a lot of laundry. But still, I want to be doing that work, as best I can. I hope it matters. I make soup. Meanwhile, he is sick right now, he is no yogi, he coughs and worries and works long hours (too long) and does not know how to breathe through his ears. Mom says "he is older than you are really, he's too worn down to have kids of his own anyway".

I hide in the bathroom from her.

she&him (aka the delicious zooey daschanel) - please let me (smiths cover)

I’m reading Committed: A Love Story because my lover asked me to marry him, 17 times, then I said yes one night and he stopped asking, which I immediately assumed was the beginning of the end, and a nanosecond later I decided (rightfully, I still believe) that such careening around the mere subject of commitment let alone the practice of it did not bode well some kind of way. I started buying books about it.

I think what he meant, at least in part, if not exactly actually “marry me” was “take me seriously” and I said “I do” – now what?

Taking someone seriously, your commitment to them seriously, the possibility of enduring relation seriously, taking the promise of happiness seriously…that’s not a one-time act, like a leap of faith, and once you leap you fall then land wherever. Then again, it is like that. That, and what’s for dinner (and who will cook it), night after night.

Let’s skip the obvious (for now) – that neither of us is fully legally divorced quite yet. We should both be done with that in January, clearing the psychic and legal decks officially. That neither of us trusts legal decks anymore, after those experiences. That neither of us fully trusts the lack of trust in legal marriage either (even my gay friends want marriage more than not, so don’t get all high and mighty – we are all very conflicted on the subject of long haul relationships that are acknowledged by ourselves [iffily] and others [perforce if necessary, god fucking damn it]). That is he is appreciably younger than I am. That I probably cannot have another child, that he has no biological children (and has wanted that keenly all his life and was the number one reason he married [I can’t throw stones at all on that score – I did that same thing, did the math and could get at least a baby out of the deals I made, yes indeedy]); that except for him, I would not want to risk even thinking about having any more children whatsoever. That he is broke (not poor, which is like a disease you’re born into, but BROKE, as in his career cost him well over 100k in education expenses – his “gina loan” alone is 32K, for the core classes he took almost exclusively with me) and thus I keep the lights on (as I would anyway, so no skin off my nose) and that the disparity is an endless irritant to him, like an existential yeast infection he’s always scratching at. Those last two factors, babies and brokeness = we worry we cost each other too much, and what that means or will/could mean over time….

On the other hand, randomly beginning anywhere in the upsides list to note, I’ll note the fact that the boyz embraced him wholly, with an honestly that only kids (and animals) can bring to judgment; their simple faith in his existence in relation to themselves (“we have a bow shooter in the family now” Bruno says about his JOED archery creds) reads like a cosmic endorsement, as if they turned him over and found a label that reads “suitable for parental ft. dude use”... I start there in the list of upsides because it’s down a ways, past the items of the list that are about his infinite tenderness towards me. I haven’t been writing because to do so would be mostly every day to note instances of that tenderness, like a hot stone on a wrenched twitching muscle.

Right now, he is at traffic court. Several hours ago, I told him to disappear, that to do so is delicious, to have nowhere you’re supposed to be and thus you can wander or drive around and Just Be. I meant that, and God knows I love to disappear and wander myself on a pretty regular basis. Now, a mere 5 hours later, I’m ready for him to come back. That almost watery motion in me like a tide that is not controvertible by any list(s) of how we “match up” or not: I worry that he is dead. The tides of worry come in, love welling up. But/and I know that worrying that he is dead will not keep him from dying (to me) necessarily. Now will it?

What will? (What might?)

I'm losing perspective.


Well I Wonder (Smiths Cover) Sara Lov by americanlaundromatrecords

limerence (I kissed you with the safety off) playlist
death cab for cutie – I will follow you into the dark mp3
iron and wine – love and some verses mp3
bright eyes – first day of my life mp3
rogue wave – California
the black keys – tighten up mp3
the unseen guest – listen my son
chris Bathgate – a flash of light followed by mp3
jose gonzalez – slow moves
kt tunsall – throw me a rope
margot and the nuclear so n so’s – broadripple is burning

Black girls at work call him white chocolate (gigglesnort)..

He's extremely super duper 100% Polish, like w the Polish dancing with outfits and all that (yes, I see the irony - just - shut up), and thus he can go Christmas bonkerinos with me, as if my little cottage house swallowed a tab of ecstasy and is hallucinating that it's in Vegas only different. No fancy car or jewelry in the world could ever please me as a honey-do listing.

clem snide - any way you want it (journey cover)

Nitro paste (a vasodialator) works for penis enlargement. However it also makes you pass out. Then you need one of your coworkers to wipe it off your dick but nobody will, they're too busy laughing while also juggling one girl with lumieres and pnuemonia and an abusive probably incestuous father who you had to have arrested for touching her on your last shift and another girl who drank antifreeze then changed her mind but oh well she's going to die and doesn't get that yet, for instance etc. One of his coworkers proved this, the nitro paste trick, then was at the mercy of the entire unit staff who pissed themselves laughing. It was a gift. He kept their minds off the moment it became 1:00 a.m. again and their 12 hour shifts became 13 hours. They appreciated it, and wiped his dick off finally....

Halloween...some funky vibes been around my place yo, Samhain big time...can't help but think something just changed some kinda way

This is a great time to share some of your deepest and most vulnerable feelings with your close partner Virgo. If you can truly open up instead of telling half-truths or even lies to cover what you think are major faults, then you will also do yourself a really big favor. It will bring you real peace of mind and a feeling of serenity.

Liiiiike??: "Soooo, I have this blog on which mostly I talk to myself about myself and my love life about you without you knowing it...."

Um, I don't think so. I process enough of this in front of him as it is. I talk more about FPH than he does about his exwife, and more about my fear-thinking than I should altogether. The other day, EX hassled me (again, eyeroll) and it was a relief to discuss someone from my past notgreek and about whom I have no lingering ambivalence. I could see the happiness in his face over it, the unequivocality of "we're not friends, I don't miss him and he doesn't miss me".

Meanwhile, Mark Erelli - I'll Follow You Into the Dark, he hummed this to me - beautiful song - I looked up a cover so I won't start hearing Death Cab guy in my head.

The planetary alignment may create a situation in which you find yourself confused as to which lover you would prefer to be with Virgo. Many would call this a wonderful dilemma, but because you have such a strong sense of loyalty, you find it hard to cope with this problem. The answer to this may not be resolved in one day, but you can begin by asking yourself what you really want in a relationship.

I am not confused, but I am still processing, feeling stuff.....

Aaron switched to ICU nights as of last night. Awake for 24 hours, he tends a woman with end organ failure all night long, 42 years old and determined to die, bleeding from everywhere inside herself, shitting blood endlessly like a river of life-into-death. I know nursing is historically a female occupation, but I can’t personally fathom that. Men have such stronger stomachs. He and FPH both have infinitely more patience than I do as well…And I can’t help these uncanny moments of seeing similarities between them. Paralax is the distance between your eyes. Look at something with one eye, then close it and look with the other, and you’ll see that it seems to shift the object left to right. The object is not really shifting, you are measuring its distance from yourself using the distance between your two eyes as a kind of visual sound-bounce, your eyesight literally a think that you are throwing against that object and bouncing it back to imprint on the retina of your other eye. Something similar happens sometimes when I look at Aaron and he reminds me of John and I know that actually I am looking at myself and measuring my distance from the perspective of them-both. I bring in a lamp, put it next to the bed, change the sheets and clean everything up, do laundry and put it away, fresh fluffy socks, and I lay out a local police blotter (omg so boring, but he likes it), the Dick’s ad (I just knew) and Science Illustrated (he loves facts, most of which are way more interesting than useful). Funny shit on youtube. He does not tell me not to do these things. That is a big difference (distance) between my sense of him and any other man I’ve known up close. He neither expects that I will do for him nor does he abjure it. He is neither a tyrant nor a phobe. He simply likes the Dick’s ad. He is thrilled that I’d just know that. He is looking forward to chicken and dumplings later, a lot. He says “you take such gooooood care of me”, and he is pleased. Not gratified as if OF COURSE I would, nor freaked out as if BESET by it. He just….goes to sleep. It is garbage day. I make room in the freezer. I throw out soups I had made which have since gotten freezer burn. For a split second, it feels as if someone has reached through wall of my stomach up under my rib cage to grab my heart in a fist and squeeze as the neglect-wrecked soups hit the garbage can. I "want in a relationship" not to have to hit the garbage can, wasted.

bill withers - use me

I have only one prior experience of a hot tub and it wasn't my experience ft. it wasn't a good one for me (someone I loved banged someone else in one, cementing hot tubs in my mind as something belonging to any other woman but me surely). I never in a million buttgillion years saw this coming. Any of it. And I am at this moment literally exhausted by the emotions of it all. Happy, a lot. Bracing myself for the end of happy too, a LOT, until every muscle is sore from the effort. He says "Never doubt that I love you". I don't doubt it. I just know that sometimes doesn't matter worth a god damn. People hurt you, they hurt themselves, they even kill themselves and/or you passively or actively. They sometimes have to do those things. And on top of all that, pianos fall on us all from time to time. There is no way around it. This will rip my heart out sooner or later. He reads my mind. He says "If you're going to chew me up and spit me out in little bloody pieces, I'd still choose this, like o well then that's what'll have to happen".

A nasty cold makes its way through the house. Aaron brings scary dreck, like a kid going to daycare only bigger and worse. The kids get it, I get it, and then Aaron gets it again. We spend a lot of time simply caring for each other. Comfort foods and hot toddies. Vicks vapor rub.

And we buy a hot tub. A Jacuzzi. The strangest purchase I have ever made by far. I could no more imagine myself doing that than I could imagine myself having a jet boat or a pony dog. But achy and hopeful and tender and embracing the goofy factor (a t-shirt from the gap, “Cougar Bait”, cz he knows that if all else fails and a fear of mine cannot be mastered any other way, humor will probably get the job done as I have no resistance to a good laugh), we go comparison shopping and listen to schpeels about LED lighting and numbers of jets and oxidation. The showrooms smell like chlorine. The smell is the same as the Schaumburg public pool I grew up in until my life exploded forever into a shit splatter pattern of my parents’ manias and economic catastrophes – until it exploded into the person I became. Smelling chlorine again, I walked around the showrooms and watched the cascading LED lights and stuck my hand in the warm water. I can remember the hot sidewalk under my little feet as I ran the 8 blocks or so over to the pool, the pool pass a giant baby pin with my number on it attached to my bathing suit, right hip. My sister’s adorable boingboing curly hair, her polka dot butt bikini bottoms and the halter top forever coming untied and flapping loose around her neck. My best friend Mickey and I would go to the pool every single day, sometimes we’d pick up Sherry, sometimes we’d duck out the north door and go to the strip mall for candy, giant chewy sweet tarts were my favorite. Pixie sticks. Sherry’s cat had kittens on the chair in her living room, and we paused to see the squirmy wet pile of them. Mickey took dares to pull her bathing suit bottoms down in the pool, then dive to up-end her bare ass at the life guard, a maneuver she repeated often and which I found stimulating to contemplate at the safe distance of being me not her. Slightly older boys egging her to flash them her vagina in the stairwell tubes of the giant jungle gyms of the parks with no trees in our squat flat poor new subdivision. She cleaned my room for me and worshiped her older sister. Her mom and dad hated each other and kept the drapes drawn always, her house always dark and over air conditioned. Not mine. My house was awash in sunlight, nothing but flowered valances my mom would sew herself, like fabric bangs across the foreheads of the windows. She liked yellow, and shades of it were everywhere, as on the giant round area rug with long gold tassel fringe at the edge. My father had a component stereo system, box speakers near the real-wood fireplace that had a brass curtain I’d open and close endlessly. Led Zeppelin loud on the weekends. My parents nzling each other next to the sink in the little kitchen while she made the nightly salad, vinegar and olive oil and too much oregano always. They kept bells on the doorknob to the bedroom in case one of us got up in the night and might disturb their fucking. The end tables by their bed and next to the couch were all giant empty wooden wire rolls that my dad hauled home from work and my mom made gingham tablecloths for. My favorite gingham was (is) blue, the same material my grandma used for curtains; everyone was always sewing something, nesting nesting my mom would paint walls colors like “chartreuse”. My dad built me a playhouse on the patio and blasted music out of his van while he tended tomato plants and a little grape arbor. I can see the line of orange day lilies along the garage, happy hippie color splash against the shit brown siding color that my mom said was “earthy”. She took yoga classes at the Slim n’ Trim, which ironically was the storefront between the candy depot and a Baskin Robbins in that strip mall. Before his dissatisfaction with his work and the stress of sole providership broke my father’s will into deadly shards hurting anything close enough to catch their random flying trajectories, before my mother’s fragile mind and strong spirit collided and she disappeared into herself to watch the sparks fly, before I memorized the Book of Ruth to win a stack of white bibles and looked for a Larger Meaning to Suffering, life was good. And now it is good again.

Aaron looks at me worried about my worrying, “You really think I’m going to disappear or something don’t you?” Or something is about right; I worry about what I can’t imagine not so much about anything that I can. I rub his head, press my palm to his mind through his skull, promise to care for it, make bargains like a giraffe caught in quicksand only different, “I’ll do anything, take on anything, just don’t take leave of yourself my man, please be happy….” He has a stuffy nose and snores a little; I like it, that’s how I know he’s still there even if I close my eyes. Then I dream of John who shows me a healing scar on the back of his head where his cranium was pried open like a walnut down the middle. He tells me there was really something wrong with it, his brain, a connection capacity was blocked by something like a recurring tumor. I think it was me, the Recurring Tumor Girlfriend. He tells me no, it wasn’t. “It wasn’t you.” I ask him if he is going to die. He doesn’t answer me. I wake up and listen to the quiet house, breathe in the smell of apple sauce I have slow-cooking overnight in the kitchen.

smells like everything will be okay feist - mushaboom

yesterday was the most contented connected happiest day of my life so far

buckcherry - crazy bitch

bonus track from DmS: (I'm a sucker for funny animal vids)

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I wrote all day (again). Now that I'm done with the tantrum, I think Story's return to the exchange could be good, and besides which Aaron is a Reader of mine, coming towards me rather than away when I boil over, then bending patiently over my foot at midnight to remove a tiny blade of glass using my pink eyebrow tweezers, slowly proceeding despite the precious few three hours of sleep he will get before having to go to work for 12 grueling hours. And today was his grievance too, his one chance to have removed from his file a permanent written reprimand he got for using the word 'niggardly' in the OR, the definition of which his surgical support medic did not know but it sounded some kind of bad to her. While funny to me, it was serious to him, for a reprimand in his file means he can be fired without cause, ie he loses his union rights, for two years. Exhausted, having had to call in crisis counseling (again) and paramedics for his bonkers exwife and deal with that all weekend, having wanted to come towards rather than away from me for "our first fight", having been up half the night with the estrogen tsunami of one woman throwing a weepy tantrum ostensibly about having been flirted with (that's a sore spot, being flirted with as if a man of mine doesn't exist cz he's never around) but really about the endless bonkers tantrums of another woman, he kept a man with stage-4 cancer in 5 places alive all morning and then walked into a grievance hearing with a dictionary and walked out with a letter of apology to him from the director of critical care. And through all this, I sat here and wrote, another chapter, this one about John and G-spots and Botox and Seratonin. And although it was about another man I fell in love with repeatedly and once because he smelled like a stag party and called me Golden Griddle, Aaron smiled to read it, said simply "I love your writing"

when I got done laughing, I threw a temper tantrum ... I haven't done that at a man, to and in his face, in a loooooong time, like years ... it felt okay, actually - it felt honest

clear copy (not live)

how come