I can’t pinpoint that exact moment when the headache started.  It feels like it’s just always been there.  My cold has lingered like that unwashed guitar playing dude at the end of night at a crazy college party, strumming along obliviously, preventing you from pouncing on the cute guy you’ve been making eyes with all night.  This headache is basically cock blocking me.  I’m not enjoying anything as much, when I laugh, talk, sing (which is all the time), it sends shooting stabbing pain straight into my jaw.  And then, it traveled behind my eye, this incessant scream in my brain. It was distressing to say the least.

To remedy the eye pain, I would scrunch my ocular cavity. Now it looks as if I were eying you up suspiciously…or trying to wink flirtatiously and failing miserably or that I was a peg leg short of being a pirate.

And the thing is, if I worked in a library or a quiet office, it would be manageable.  In my profession, I am surrounded by  joyous, excitable noise.  You put twenty children in a room together and things can get pretty rowdy.  Laughter, crying, complaints, it’s all at a rather bold decibel.  During the day, it’s children’s music, and there are moments where the children’s version of “Crocodile Rock” really takes you right on the edge of sanity.  For the afternoon parkour classes, the coaches sometimes crank some pretty intense house music.  I’m sure it’s super inspiring music, but if you are hunched in front of a computer, feeling as though your right eye might cave in from the pain, you just wish they had a little Billie Holiday on tap.

Each afternoon, I pick kids up from school and bring them to after-school programs.  This is one of my favorite parts of the work day, listening to the conversations of 5-7 year old children, hearing their thoughts about life.   One recent afternoon, when this headache was squealing in my head like a whistling kettle, there was one child talking so loudly and excitedly, that it was actually painful to listen.

The pain had resonated within my neck, shoulders, jaw, and then my head become a glistening orb of blistering pain with a long staff of twisted gnarled muscle mass connected.  Come Sunday morning I was in shambles, feeling sickly and whimpering like a child on the sofa.  Our landlord wanted to show our townhouse, and whenever anyone comes by, we make a point to leave. It’s too weird watching strangers appraise your home.  I pushed the time back as much as possible.   I just couldn’t leave the house.  I texted my friend Sheanna, a spiritual healer and all round amazing person.  She brought along her dachshund Harriet, who nestled over my belly as I reclined in the chair while Sheanna pressed gently on my neck and shoulders.

This beautiful lady then proceeded to work on me for Philip Glass‘s Metamorphosis and Miles Davis‘ Kind of Blue…twice.  And that that album may only have six songs, but its 55 minutes and 26 seconds long.

All the while, a very patient and kind friend works away at this geologically dense, sedimentary layers of tension.  Little clusters of worry or distress, collecting slowly overtime.  As she placed pressure, she asked questions, and I found myself recalling memories, things that were forgotten or stored away.  A childhood carnival ride that gave me whiplash (and made me barf up hamburgers…not a pretty sight).  A drunken night in high-school–vomiting in front of a beau at a sexy viewpoint, a car accident…no vomit but going off a rather sizable embankment and being tossed like a rag doll, and my various dental traumas.  Each memory had common themes, mostly of being quite vulnerable or exposed. But it was like fragments of those moments had stored themselves in amidst of the threads of my insides and began to decay over time.  I think it also speak volumes about that it all comes back to my mouth…which has often gotten me into trouble in the past.  If my parents got a dollar and invested it for every time they read “Alicia talks too much in class”, I could have paid for my university education and possibly have some left over for a summer home.  As I grew up, I was always yapping and wisecracking, saying too much and repeating gossip, and never knowing when to shut up.  I had braces when I was twelve, and a year later they were taken off. Meanwhile, there was a rogue, undescended tooth bulldozing it’s way through roots of potential neighbours.  I learned of this in my early twenties, a totally inappropriate time to get “Braces: The Sequel”.

From there, about six different oral surgeries followed.  All with a healthy dose of Ativan, because I’m not just going to lie back and let you drill into the roof of my mouth without a fight.  And then, after the procedure, it is the distinct pleasure of whoever is waiting for me in reception to get incoherent, boozy me, with a mouthful of blood and holes.  There are a slew of funny stories from those times, but I couldn’t share them here…only because I don’t remember much from them.  The taste of blood, forgetting my address, breaking a vase, and attempting to play “Raining in My Heart” by Buddy Holly on my record player.

What’s worse is not being totally fucked up the next day, with this raw hamburger in your mouth.  All for what? Trying to dredge the tooth from the roof of my mouth as if it where a sunken ship?  And then, after all the exposures and Ativan laced interludes, the dentist was defeated.  That tooth, along with two others would have to go.  Which again, is not the greatest news a mid-twenties bride-to-be wants to hear.  Dentures was not on the menu, thank you very much.  Alas, the teeth had to go, and I was devastated.  As time passed on, when my wedding was cancelled, that was one of the first things that came to mind.  Meeting someone knew, and being all cool, funny and sweet, but then taking him home and putting your teeth in a fucking glass on the nightstand.

Shortly after my breakup, and right before I left for New Zealand I took part in a Fringe Festival.  I was feeling raw, and felt I’d done terribly in the last performance. I was at a closing night party, and someone had bumped into me, and I then knocked into an actress I admired who split her beer, and then spewed venom at me for the accident. I was horrified, felt totally alienated.  I felt terribly alone, and so I stepped outside, and called my ex.  That’s the worst part about breaking up with your friend because you get all Barbra Streisand to Robert Redford in “The Way We Were”: “I just want to talk to you about someone we both know”.

I stood outside, at one am under an awning on a rainy night, next to a rather busy gentleman’s’ nightclub…and talking to someone I used to know. After the conversation, I stepped inside, sat down on a sofa. I felt an unfamiliar looseness on my teeth. I open my lips and there, like two tiny bones are the dentures divorced from the device inside my mouth.  It was like being kicked when down, only it’s God kicking you.  I traveled all the way home without my teeth and to me, it felt like walking around naked.  People said “It’s only teeth”. To those people, I invite them to go around without their cuspid and lateral incisor and get back to me.  It’s not cancer or a prison camp, but it’s not pleasant, and I’d prefer it wasn’t so.

I was days away from leaving New Zealand and had to borrow my parents car to drive back to the place I just moved away from to get them fixed.  My mother, who was a real champion in my jilted bride chapter, said “Never look back”.  And when I had to return she said “Okay then, get your teeth fixed and then never look back”.  Of course, I dropped them off first thing in the morning and they said “Come back at the end of the day”.  I got my hair cut, and avoided looking into the mirror.  I bought a large pot of flowers and went to the cemetery, and stood a long while at my friend Monica’s grave.  I figured it was a safe place to be; the dead don’t really care and Monica wouldn’t have minded.  I picked up my dentures at the end of day, and I didn’t look back.  Of course, when I met my husband, that fear cropped up, that missing those two teeth made me ugly.  In the heat of a moment, slightly drunk and trying to tackle kissing a nearly seven foot man, he confessed an insecurity.  He was sweet and vulnerable, and also a little bit drunk so I replied “That’s okay, I don’t have all my real teeth”, and in that moment we accepted every thing about each other, and were already falling in love.

But still, there are moments of being caught without them.  Once in New Zealand the police came to the door, looking for a friend of one of the flatmates.  I was like someone you’d see on cops, flapping my lip, all gap toothed and ghetto “. Honestly, I could fill a rather “War and Peace” length tome of toothless anecdotes.    Moments where having all teeth like guns a’ blazing would just be better. Occasionally  I catch a glimpse in the mirror and I resent that gap along my gum line.  And lets be honest, it would be cheaper to get breast implants than to get tooth implants, and it feels like a very long road before I can get fancy new teeth…or boobs for that matter.

All these thoughts come to me as I lie back with my eyes closed.  Harriet on my lap and Sheanna pushing down on calcified concerns trapped in my jaw.  By this time, my landlord has popped by with a young Asian couple. We’re listening to Philip Glass, a Wayans brother movie is muted on television, my spiritual healer is working on my throat muscles and there’s a wiener dog nestled on my lap.  When she returns with another person, I’m fielding work texts and frowning slightly, looking ever the pampered movie executive trying to get a moment’s peace.

Once the house is shown, and our space is returned to us, I begin to weep as I  confess these things.  This is something that I truly hate about myself. I live with a constant, genuine frustration from the pain and pressure of wearing a partial. Never properly tasting food, being so painfully aware of my mouth at all times.   And of course, the issue of receding gum-lines and decreasing bone density, the only solution being more painful and expensive work in the future.  Admitting this aloud is like poison begin drained from my body.  Sheanna continues to push and press and exorcise some of this pain that’s been stashed away.  When Sheanna finished, I felt ten pounds lighter; my thoughts clearer, my mood brighter.  I felt relieved, like I’ve been holding my breath for a century and finally got to inhale. Sheanna and Harriet went home, and I was able to reclaim my Sunday, going for a walk and cooking a meal with my husband.  I crawled into bed at nine pm, nestled next to my husband, my two teeth nestled in another room.  And for a split second I wasn’t defined by what was missing.

Images Courtesy of Google

I don’t mind the food baby or the exhaustion from a rousing little mini-break, what concerns me is my throat.  It’s like my vocal cords are bruised.  How would I injure myself, you ask? How else does anyone damage their vocal cords, it’s a scientific formula.  You take one wedding, a cold Saturday night of a long weekend at a quiet ski village, pour endless bottles of wine, mix with hilarious, jovial people and add one karaoke machine.  It was the kind of fun you have when you keep saying: “This is soooo much fun, this is so much fun, I never have this much fun!!”  The bride, myself, and another fabulous lady were making that microphone our bitch.

Karaoke is a dangerous thing, drink enough and you think you look like this…

When really you look like this…

Or you think the crowds are adoring you…

When really, those around you look like this…

No matter, when we sang “She’s Like the Wind“, I meant it.  when we tackled “Total Eclipse of the Heart“, I owned it.  And in my mind I sounded like this….

When I probably sounded a little more like this…

But it wasn’t the drinking, the cackling and the singing, and the occasional cheeky cigarette that did me in…

I blame it on Roberta.  This feisty lady is a tough act to shake.  She was a character I created for a Tony and Tina type-show last summer.  A brusk, boozy chain-smoking mother of the bride, that’s one part Selma and Patty from “The Simpsons”, a dash of David Sedaris‘s mother Sharon, a splash of Mike Myer’s Linda Richman with two parts Mia Farrow from “Broadway Danny Rose“.

She is one mouthy, opinionated broad, and I really like her.  It is addictive to talk like her, those around her can’t help but adopt the voice.  I dare you to spend a night with Roberta and not wind up talking amongst yourselves in this gravely, vaguely Jewish dialect.

Talk about a recipe for disaster.  Roberta does karaoke.  I’m going to have to pull a Celine Dion, and stop speaking for an extended period in order to rest my voice. Although with my level of talent, I have no legal right to copy Dion in any way…but the methods of Liza Starlight…well she’s fair game.

On Sunday, we went from Sun Peaks to my parents house, about two hours from the king sized bed we were sprawled on, watching bad television, and riding out the full extent of our checkout time.  All yesterday I felt mildly hung over, and perfectly strained in and around the head neck and throat area.  Now it’s been two days, and I’m still on Roberta-recovery.  So if you see me, unsmiling, unapproachable, hiding behind my dark sunglasses, please don’t take offense…

Don’t think that I don’t have anything to say…it’s just that I hurt myself from letting someone else speak for me.

Images Courtesy of Google

Officially committing to physically abandoning the bed happened around 7:15am. Technically, I should be out the door around 7:45am, but I get pretty slutty with my E-T-D’s as well, so there’s a very solid chance that when the 8:00am news starts, I am still on the highway.  The good news is I am very up to date on my current affairs, which is altogether enlightening and depressing.  After this quick run-through of all the death, war, crime, injustice and corruption, I park the mini-van and head off to spent the day with children.

And bless all these little ones, running around like drunk little midgets, in tiny little pants, crying for their mothers and calling their yoghurt “yogies”. You gotta wonder what the government, environment, the general state of humanity will be by the time these slobbering, sticky fingered, little yogie spillers are my age.  And then…there’s that crushing responsibility of having any part in molding young minds.  And you really wish you had not been so slutty with the snooze button, and had started the day on a brighter note.

Lately, I’ve been up at 630am, and it’s pretty blissful to have time in the morning.  After a leisurely coffee, I putter about, listen to the radio, and do a few housekeeping duties, or answer a few emails.  But then I get Girls Gone Wild  with my spare time, and then I have to do an Olympic speed walk through the parking lot to the minivan, and am made to face the news again.  But, I’m far more relaxed, less rushed, and I can take things like, oh the collapse of the American government, with a bigger grain of salt.

Things are achieved before work, and then I get home for a half-hour around lunchtime, and I also take care of a little business then as well.  So, come time when the work day is done, I can come home and have spare time on my hands.  Time well spent, I think, drinking a rather large glass of red wine while Googling Ryan Gosling memes.

My husband is working late, and I am busy with “work”, which means getting increasingly drunk, while blogging and perving on Ryan Gosling photos.

Oh Ryan.  It gives you a little faith in this dark world, seeing  things like this.

Don’t worry Ryan, I’m not going anywhere…I’ll just bring the wine bottle into the office so I never have to leave you again.  Or…about ten seconds before my bladder bursts.  Finally Benjamin called.  He wasn’t coming home for a while as he was going to the pub with a workmate.  This is exciting news.  Now was I off the hook for making dinner, and was free to cyber stalker Mr Gosling and then do some drunk blogging.  It’s also nice that Benjamin is meeting people, and making friends.  I do wonder how men approach one another and make friends.  And I want for my husband what any woman does.  I want him to meet a nice young man.

I was pleased to hear that he was going out.  But I hoped it wouldn’t turn out to be one of those “Hangover” type situation, where he calls me from a drunk tank in Tijuana. He had committed to staying up until 10:00pm to watch the very special of Glee, where Cory Monteith‘s “Finn” dies.

I don’t really even watch “Glee”, this show is like that person you knew in high-school that you never talked to but always smiled at.  Yet I am so curious as to how they are going to handle this situation.  It will be like a train wreck of music and emotion. A musical car crash.  And I am going to be there with a box of tissues and whatever is in the bottom of the wine bottle.    So this can mean one of two things.  That Benjamin has met a nice man and is chatting about men stuff over a few pints at the pub, or that he made the story up to avoid watching “Glee” and is sitting alone at the bar while I sob myself into a Glee-induced Coma.

He’s since come home…and wondering where that delicious stir fry I promised I’d make, while I was commending his decision to go out for a pint.  When I was fresh from the grocery store and feeling like a productive wife.  Before the red wine and drunk blogging.  And now it’s nearly 8:00pm and I should have been to bed hours ago.  Damn you Ryan Gosling, you did this to me damn you!  I know I said I would stay here forever, but I’ve got a pressing stir-fry. But thanks for the dreamy eyes and positive affirmations.  They need to put these on the ceiling at the dentist and gynecologist offices.  Because sometimes, your spirits just need a lift.

Images Courtesy of Google

Nothing a little coffee, breakfast and Miles Davis can’t fix.  And light cleaning of course.  It’s like putting on a bra, it’s not always comfortable, but at least everything is in the right place.  The phone rings, and it’s Benjamin, standing in front of the parking meter downtown.  He was dreading the appointment, which I totally get, it’s rather high on my top ten ways not-to spend a Saturday morning.  Then again…I don’t think anyone looks forward to hard time in the dentist chair.

He sounds tired and vulnerable, out there in the big bad world, short on change.  He said, “I’ve forgotten my chapstick, and I’m worried about getting chapped lips“.  This breaks my heart, for all it’s cuteness, and I can’t help but imagine a bear with a little suitcase lost and alone in the city.

Poor fellah.  To think I kept him out late, after my improv show,  myself getting pre-hungover while he politely sipped ice tea, and then shipping him off to the dentist for a cleaning without appropriate change or chapstick.

I offer sympathy and solutions, and recommend asking the receptionist for change, and the hygienist for Vaseline.  When we hang up, I return to Operation: Relax & Rehydrate.  As I move around the house, there’s a dialogue rolling along in my mind.  There’s a steady thread that is rapidly growing into an afghan quilt of ideas for today’s blog.  Of course, my writing process is a bit like my cleaning–fold three t-shirts in the laundry pile and then wander aimlessly into the kitchen, drink more coffee (which, let’s be honest is like hot, milky anti-Gatorade, for all it’s non-hydrating properties), before moving on to thirty other half-finished projects.  And to be honest, I’m not sure I even know what I’m writing about anymore.  I’ve been listening to the composer Philip Glass, who creates the most exquisite pieces of music, but I think it’s leads me to believe that I too am writing something that is dramatic and timeless, when mostly I’m just blathering incoherently, and trying not to barf on the keyboard. 

By the time Benjamin returns home, I’ve listened to the entire soundtrack of “The Hours“,  did a thorough search of a variety of images that are connected to “dentist” and “hangover” and written two meager paragraphs.  Freshly dentisted, but feeling raw like sashimi, he shows me the spanking new chapstick he got along with his toothbrush.  He pulls it out of his pocket in a way that reminds me of a little boy I know, who always carries a lip balm around, ‘just in case’.  When I met him and his mother at the pre-school-year orientation, he took it out to show me, and explained at great length the importance of hydrated lips.  It was about the cutest thing I had ever heard. When my husband, almost seven feet with a red beard and big blue eyes stands in my office with his new chapstick, all can think of are bears and little boys.  And so I wrap my arms around my husband, who is embodying both boyish and bearish at the same time.  And in my less than sprightly state, I wrap as much of him as I can in my arms, and love him just a little bit more than I did before he left the house this morning.

Images Courtesy of Google

I felt so tired that I couldn’t read, write…but I also couldn’t nap.  Which is my curse in life…my inability to nap–I wonder if this is how a Vampire feels about never getting to die.

Ben is happily immersed on the old X-Box, so I curl up on the air mattress with Sex and the City: The Movie. And I’m sorry for the SATC haters out there…yes it’s just horrible, sexist, materialistic, ridiculous…yes, the movies (namely the sequel, which was a bit of a misfire and was vaguely racist) diminished the street-cred of the SATC franchise, but I’ll still tear up when Miranda and Steve reunite on the Brooklyn Bridge. Furthermore, when you feel like all your energy has been usurped from your being…there is no better way to spend two hours and fifteen minutes.

After the film, I ran a hot bath, lit a few candles, and soaked in the dim bathroom with a stack of People magazines that my mother had saved for me.  I selected the Most Beautiful Woman issue…which was…thank you, not me but Gwyneth Paltrow.

She’s such a fabulous dickhead.  You hate her only because you’re not her.  I wouldn’t mind the legs and the bank account, and passport stamps.  Also to call Beyonce a dear friend, and claim Brad Pitt as an old flame, you know she’s got some good stories.

She talked about a day in her fabulous life…and how she ends each day with a bath.  Oh goodness me, I’m just like Gwinney.  I soak in the tub, my knees jutting up like two flesh colored icebergs among dated seventies tiles, with four tea light candles and the faint sounds of Randy Bachman‘s Vinyl Tap, a Sunday radio program that ran with different themes each week. This week’s program was disco-one-hit-wonders. You know, those songs with those complex lyrics.

Get on up on the floor
Cuz we’re gonna boogie oogie oogie
Till you just can’t boogie no more (boogie)
Boogie no more.

I have a real soft spot for disco, the haters can try to bulldoze disco records in rock radio station parking lots all they want, but it’s fun in a cheesy gold lame kind of way.

I mean, nobody ever died from listening to disco.

Though..I think it’s safe to say that someone may have died when listening to it. There’s a difference.

Maybe that’s the band “A Taste of Honey” meant in their seminal track “Boogie Oogie Oogie“, that when you can’t boogie oogie no more, it means that you die…or pass out, or sit down cause you’re tired from all the strenuous dancing in platform shoes.

I finished the Paltrow article, got out of the tub and returned to my giant sweatpants.  Though I had spent the whole day relaxing, taking care of myself, I couldn’t shake the exhaustion.  Another classic, “Car Wash” by Rose Royce starts.  It makes me think of this funk compilation album my best friend had when we were growing up.  I am very familiar with “Car Wash”.

In a split second, I went from perfectly exhausted, to feeling as though I was in a bit of a danger zone. I exhale and inhale deeply.  I say aloud to my husband that I am feeling unwell just as he brings dinner to the living room.  I stand up, as if to go for the patio door, suddenly overheated and in need of cold fresh air.  I wrench the pashmina from my throat, and promptly collapse into a puddle on the air mattress.  Thinking I’m to be sick to my stomach, I use what remains of my energy, and get to the bathroom. I catch a quick glimpse of my green face before I slide down to the floor, using a towel as a pillow and panting like a nauseous dog. Ben has followed me to the bathroom, and his voice is nervous.  He suggests going to the hospital.  But I just lay there, panting and feeling like the bathroom floor is the only place I am capable of being.  I loathe the hospital, and the wait.  But he’s starting to sound scared, and that’s starting to scare me.  My eyes are closed and my head is against his knee.  I felt myself actually fading, Ben nudging me and trying to capture my attention.  And all I can muster in my mind is the thought “Please God, don’t let me die during “Car Wash“.    A fever broke, and like a storm it passed as quickly as it came.  Ben helped me up, I changed my clothes, and quietly ate dinner, falling asleep at 830 and not waking up until 700 this morning.  It was terribly frightening, not to feel unwell, but to hear that palpable fear in your partner’s voice, that makes you think that it’s far worse that you imagine.

Surely nothing bad ever happens during “Car Wash”, surely when the good Lord decides to bring me home, he will do so when I’m 102, and listening to “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, or “Turn Me Loose” by Loverboy. Health scare and dizzy spell aside, I’m feeling much better. I’ve still got plenty of boogie oogie left in me, don’t you worry about me.

Images Courtesy of Google

]]> https://pinuppickspenup.com/2013/09/30/rose-royce/feed/ 0 aliciaashcroft McCall's Magazine cover, Woman wearing scarf x3 vnR8cbMvTob1Okh56G5s4HYVfNNofgbA_598x414 gwyneth-paltrow-vogue-us-2010 Bee_Gees_154.jpg studio-54 studio54-ny-1978-mandancingshorts soul-train roseroyce1 tumblr_mrqbvm25B81rn4z2eo1_500 abbas-15 https://pinuppickspenup.com/2013/09/27/animal-house/ https://pinuppickspenup.com/2013/09/27/animal-house/#comments Sat, 28 Sep 2013 01:47:26 +0000 https://pinuppickspenup.com/?p=10036 ]]> My friend Chelsey and I were exchanging a few messages about the fact that the house she rents with her husband is going for sale.  What an inconvenience, especially if leaving is not your choice.  I gently brooch the subject: “Could you buy it yourselves?” She says that the house is a cool $500,000.  To which I reply ‘What? You don’t just have half-a-mil lying around?’.  How embarrassing for her.  I said this outright to which she begged me not to spread word, for she feared she’d never be able to show her face at the yacht club again.  And I don’t blame her, she is the belle of the ball when it comes to being a seafaring siren.

But she’s not the only the gal at the club, and to be frank, she often struts about like she owns the place, which obviously she doesn’t because she can’t.  Like…what do you want to do when you want to buy a house? Save for it? Get a loan? You don’t just buy places to keep your expansive shoe collection? Buy a flat in London because you go there once every two years?  Buy a beach house in Fiji, just cause you’d like to go to Fiji someday? How does one live?

This information could really elevate me to a higher level of popularity at the Boca Del Rio Club.  Not that I need it.  People know me there.

Truth is, I don’t have half a million myself, I don’t even have five dollars.  I don’t even own that captain’s hat.  So, what does one do in this kind of economy?  Just take it? Just pack your bags and slink away because your landlord wants to lose the pleasure of receiving your measly rent cheque just so he can make half a million, when you know he probably paid $50,000 in 1960?  Yeah, that’s called injustice and I don’t think she should take it. I tell her to look on the bright side.  “I totally smell a ton a wacky hi-jinx where you can deter potential buyer”.  Oh the hilarity.  “Isn’t that the theme of Animal House?” she responds.

Confession time. I had to confirm with IMDb whether that was the general premise.  It’s not exactly my friend’s case, but I think it’s fair to take those subversive shenanigans and use them as the basis of our war against the real estate crazed owner.  After all, not only did I learn about the general gist of the film, which I saw many, many years ago, I realized that this movie is actually a rather big deal.

 In 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed Animal House “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. It was No. 1 on Bravo’s “100 Funniest Movies.” It was No. 36 on AFI‘s “100 Years… 100 Laughs” list of the 100 best American comedies. In 2008, Empire magazine selected it as one of “The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.

So, clearly “Animal House” is a commendable source, and it’s just the beginning.  What other crazy things could we do to scare away potential buyers?  Just spit-balling here, but I think a meth lab would be a great start.

She asks whether I could commit to chemistry classes at night school . I don’t know how to make meth…apparently neither does Chelsey.  You think you could get two attractive intelligent women in a room together and scrape up half a million dollars and a meth lab.  Sadly with us, you’d get spare change and a delicious smoothie.  But maybe that’s the problem.  We’re not bad ass enough.  We’re both married women, we keep our houses clean, pay our bills, and live generally quiet lives.  Therefore, we must go under the radar.  Create super identies, in which we could really do some damage…without ruining our credit rating.  Chelsey will be Anastasia Beaverhausen…

and I will be Shanequa la Fontaine,  and neither of us are going to take anymore of anyone’s nonsense.

As of this press date, Chelsey-er Anastasia is trying to rustle up some rough and tumble boys who can be fast and loose with some cans of spray paint.  This could help with our meth lab cover.

To that end, I think we should get cute kittens to run said meth-lab.  Mostly so we can get on with our daily life.  And second, so if the cops bust in, they’ll be so knocked out by the kitten in the charming glasses and think. “I’m going to let this go, but being this adorable should be illegal”.  Also, because I really wanted to find a way to include this picture in today’s blog.

As for me, let’s just say that  Shanequa’s got her work cut out for her.  I’m going to scrounge up a pack of loud mouthed ne’er do wells. Preferably, chain smoking night owls, that get into passionate, profanity laced arguments at four in the morning.  When all is said and done, we could devalue the property so much,turn it into such an animal house, that they could buy the house for a cool buck fifty.  Wish us luck.  It’s about to get raw like sushi.

Images Courtesy of Google

That movie is comfort food for the soul; it’s engrossing, well-acted, set in Alabama in this romantic time (not counting the KKK whipping the help and throwing rocks through window). Still there’s a whole lot of tragedy mixed in with all the fried chicken and biscuits.  And for me, by the time Jessica Tandy tells Kathy Bates that “best friends” are the greatest thing in life, tears shoot out of my eyes like vomit out of the mouth of a teenage girl after a ride on the Tilt-A-Whirl.

I’d really like to come to the table with something light and jokey–maybe discuss Miley Cyrus, and how my only issue with her controversial VMA twerking, was use and abuse of that god-damned foam finger.

Listen, Miley is a little bat-shit, I’ll grant you that.  But she has been employed since she was 5, working hours that would break a grown adult, her father is Billy Ray Cyrus…plus she’s got a rocking figure, and if I looked like that, I’d rock beige latex and rub my foam finger all over Robin Thicke‘s wang.  You only live once right?

When I came home from work last night, Ben was on the phone looking rather serious.  He was listening intently, but being equal measures of concerned and nosy, we had a brief game of “Is everything okay?”  “Is everyone okay” “Is someone dead?” “Is it your Nana?” .  It’s possibly the worst game show idea ever, but I really excelled at the task at hand.  But it’s not really a fist pumping, couch jumping, ‘in your face’ kind of moment.  It’s just sad.  And when things like this happen, you feel so very far away.  Like you wished you could hop in the car and pop down the street to comfort the ones you love.  Or just have a cup of tea and a chat.  But we’ve all scattered to the winds, and really the glue that holds us together is the internet.  I immediately send some messages, make connections with Ben’s family, who are so much more than in-laws to me.  I say to Ben that we should write a little something so someone can read it.  Ben shakes his head, “That’ll never make it in time”.  Uh, well there’s this new invention called the ‘interweb‘, and apparently you can just send things and people get them instantly.  But that’s fine, grief does strange things to us all, forgetting the internet is a symptom of loss.

I kid, but of course, it breaks my heart.  Especially when Ben starts reminiscing.  We go for a walk, and after a moment of quiet Ben starts talking.  His oft-mentioned memory was visiting their Auckland home, one with a grand pool and a hot tub.  His Nana would always put on quite a spread.  His eyes really light up at the mention of the food, and he always called it a ‘spread’.  Apparently at Nana’s house, you’d just eat and swim and soak up the rays. Then you’d eat an amazing roast dinner with these amazing potatoes that you couldn’t even cut.  They were that crispy.  And she wore delicious perfume and gave excellent hugs.  “She was a good Nana”, he said, his voice husky and soft.  I couldn’t get that picture out of my mind, the thought of my husband as a child, lounging poolside, a full tummy, a face smiling.  I always imagine him smiling.  He has mentioned this often enough for it to make me believe that that was a childhood happy place.  When we were last in Auckland, we went to visit his grandparents at their home.  We had champagne in the same kind of glasses they used in “Casablanca”, and the whole thing was very civilized.

Their home looked dusty, rough around the edges, the pool was empty and the shrubbery had grown over.  Ben saw small repairs to be done anywhere, and it bothered him deeply that he was leaving the country soon and couldn’t do much.  We were days away from leaving for Canada, and this was our last visit with them.  Last night, lying on the air mattress, talking about his grandmother, an invisible thread was spun between this blissful boyhood experience, with the disrepair of their home, the weathering of time, to this moment when she was gone, and we were so far away, and all we could do was remember quietly in the dark.  Ben, feeling bereft and homesick this morning, took a personal day.  I started later, so I could sit with him longer, nestled on the couch, coffee in hand.  I wanted to be with him all day, but didn’t want to miss work, so I thought about getting home for a bit of lunch, and trying to nip out a few minutes early.  All day my mind was stuck on my husband.  How was he feeling? What was he thinking?  Was he coping?  Of course, of all days, fate intervened and I got so busy at work, and traffic was thick, and once I burst in the door and I had all but ten minutes to see my lover.  On the radio was a very soulful rendition of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, which was a real steering wheel gripper.  Gulping back emotion, I park the van in the loading zone and sprint up the stairs and burst into the front door.  Ben is playing X-Box, and pauses momentarily to acknowledge my presence.  Clearly this is a man who did not just hear “Bridge Over Troubled Water” while playing online.  He also feel asleep before “Fried Green Tomatoes” ended, so I don’t think he’s as emotionally amped as I, even though it’s technically his loss that we’re dealing with.

Now I’m bugged, and really regretting having sprinted up the stairs.  I could have gone to Starbucks and had a latte, but instead came home to be ignored by you.  But…wouldn’t you like to sob into my bosom while I hold you like a baby?  Wouldn’t that be a nice use of time? “Is this how you are reflecting today?”  I make that squinty face that many women make, when they are trying to appear hip and ‘with it’, when really we want you to change that shirt.  He’s fragile, I know, he’s dealing with a loss, so he should pass the time as he likes.   Ben makes a squinting face back at me, in the same way most men do when trying to assess whether his Mrs is being serious, kidding, or just fucking crazy.  Not quite Miley Cyrus foam finger crazy, but somewhere in that neighborhood.  “What do you want me to do? Wear a black veil?”.  Well, yes, I know that life goes on and all, but there’s protocol.  But it’s difficult when you are far from home, absent from the planning, the service, exempt from collective grieving.  I remember when my Welsh-Grandpa died, the next morning I wore florescent lime green socks.  I was a young, rather conservative kid dealing with a first brush with death, it was a real ‘what the hell, live a little’ moment.  Some bully made a point of joking about my socks but I was indigent.  You don’t understand, I’ve suffered a loss; these socks are my way of cutting loose.  So, I suppose we take our losses, and bury them somewhere under a bright color, or in whatever gets over those waves of bereavement: talking, working, reading, writing, blogging or gaming.  A good movie, a yoga class, a warm blanket and a lingering hug.  You still got to have a little fun.  After all, you only live once.

Images Courtesy of Google

I had geared up for this big purchase, and in the end they didn’t have my size.  When I was told I could order them, I just shrugged.  I didn’t want to drop a couple hundred bucks on the idea of something.  I wanted to leave bag in hand.  Annoying.  But, on the grand scale of bothersome things, its a mosquito among mountains.  I had to actually creep down the hall to pluck the box of the tissue from the living room, to bring it into the office.  I’m extremely aware that writing is going to open up a whole can of weepy whoop-ass.  Ben was facing the television, doing god-knows-what on the X-Box, and so he didn’t notice me doing so.  Not that he would care, it’s no secret that I like to resolve me things with a good sob.  I cried at the end of “The Guilt Trip” last night, and it was just totally out of my control.  So when it really counts, when it actually belongs to me, when I find it in my back yard, there will be tears.

It was my friend Shannon’s birthday the other day.  Her thirtieth.  Just days before marked the fourth anniversary of my moving to New Zealand.  Four years…astounding.  In a week or so it will be my third wedding anniversary.  And it becomes a rather reflective time as the leaves begin to fall.  I was in New Zealand for a few days when I got word that Shannon had been in a car accident, on the way home after a birthday holiday with her fabulous boyfriend.  She was alive in a legal sense, but was in a coma, and her entire being was in great distress. And I felt like I was living a different planet.  

Having moved to the other side of the world because of a broken heart and a cancelled wedding, I was already feeling jet-lagged and fragile.  Learning this about one of my bridesmaids, one of my most favorite people in the world –was one of the worst moments of my life.

{Tissue Break}

She’s still alive, but in a different form.  I had only seen photographs before I met her for the first time last summer.  When I went to see her, in a neighboring town, in a place that’s somewhere between a hospital and a home.  I brought along my husband and my brother, and the plan was to drop me off, and then go out for dinner and bowling.  It was my idea, for the fear that the sight of her would shatter something inside of me that I could not possibly piece back together,  And bowling seemed like a suitable diversion.  I went into the building alone, wanting to find a washroom to clean my hands and take one last calming breath.  Of course, I went further than the directions I was given allowed, and I passed Shannon’s room.  Her name on the partially opened door.  I hear a fluster of activity, and so I slink past unnoticed.  Well, it was more of a scatter, I bolted in the proper direction.  I washed my hands, swallowed a grapefruit sized lump, went back outside and called her mother, who was expecting my call.

…

For those in her inner circle, most have adjusted to a point of normalcy, or at least routine. I had been so detached from the situation, that for me it was like it had just happened.  I was freshly devastated.  I loved this girl. She was like a slapstick comedienne, mixed with Lana Del Rey, and a healthy dose of the musical “Hair“.  She was impossibly optimistic, active, beautiful, well traveled.  Wasn’t the most exceptional dancer though.  I remember going out to a bar with her, and watching her dance and feeling sort-of surprised.  She rocked everything else, but she was never going to win “Dancing with the Stars“.  Which I told her, which made her laugh.  I knew her from university theatre, and we were in Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall” together. She was the Marilyn type, and me the embittered first wife.

She taught me so much about the acting process, and her enthusiasm was deeply infectious. I lived with her one summer in this little holiday town.  We waitressed in the same spot on the lake, and after busy nights, we would leap off the dock in our clothes and walk home soaking wet.  We always had a good laugh and honest talks. When I was engaged, I asked her to be my bridesmaid, more specifically, my something blue.  As a vivacious red head, she wore blue like nobodies business.

The night I first saw her was at a party.  She was in a dark blue trench coat, and was terribly drunk.  She kept leaning against walls and sliding down them dreamily.  I remember thinking that if that were me doing so, that I was look like such a dick. On her, it looked strangely ethereal.  When I came across that coat last summer, when I was organizing her clothes, I wept into the fabric.  A few items of clothing got that treatment.  Occasionally pausing to remember the ridiculous girl who tromped around in tasseled cowboy boots and wore impossibly tiny shorts. I took many things to the theatre, kept a few personal favorites, and shared the tinier sizes with the girls I was working with.  Being such a clothes horse, I felt comforted at this fashion reincarnation, that they would continue on in some way.

Shannon always brought things back from trips for me.  In that first week in New Zealand, the strap on the purse, the string on the colored wooden beads, and the pin of a peacock brooch, all things she gave me, they all broke in the days leading up to her accident.  That bothered me.  Tasting that bad omen like it was acid on my tongue.  I’ve kept them, stored away with other trinkets and actually carried the peacock with me, along with a dime on the day I got married.  She gave me many scarves, which I still wear.  When I went to that psychic reading in Auckland, the medium was picking up on a very strong presence.  “Did I know a person in a wheelchair”.  ‘Nope, sure don’t’ was my first general response.  “Are you sure? Because she’s with us in the room, and she’s holding a big bunch of wildflowers and they are for you”.  I immediately think of my passport, more specifically of the picture I carry around in my passport, a snapshot of Shannon I kept tucked in the middle.  Standing in a field wildflowers.  She said she wanted to meet me and travel to Australia and Bali, and so when I went to these places, that is how I took her with me.  ‘I guess I do know someone in a wheelchair’. Anyway, Shannon totally commandeered the reading, and the psychic was saying a whole bunch of stuff that made me sob uncontrollably.  Then she looked at me, and said “When you dream of her, she’s dreaming of you too”.  Ugh, I just cracked like an egg then.  I would dream of her, and she would always be as she was when I knew her.   She would never speak, but would sit serenely.  And I would be crying because I was so happy to see her, alive and well.  In the heat of emotion, I wrenched my pashmina, a raspberry color, another Shannon present, from my neck. Like fog, her presence lifted and then she was gone.

I was able to celebrate her birthday last year, in a large hotel room with her mother and other family and friends.  What struck me while looking at the girls around me were their new last names, new babies, pregnancies, travels. Everyone was a little bit more grown up, a little more refined.  Careers instead of jobs, mortgages instead of rent.  We were all growing up and changing, and on that level Shannon’s journey has ended, though her heart keeps beating.  And this was along the vein of thought that was choking me the morning of her birthday.  I paid my Visa bill, folded my husband’s laundry, puttered around in my bare feet as I sipped coffee and listened to the radio before heading off to work.  And it made me sad that she would never have these silly little things that we all take for granted now and again.  The dignity of independence, the blessing of perfect health, the last days of summer.  And so, as the fourth year passes by, and I am still no closer to knowing how to grieve for her.  Though we are now in the same province, I still feel like on that different planet; missing someone terribly even though you could still sit across from each other, reach out and touch their hand.

Happy Birthday, my lovely friend.  May you know in your heart just how much you are loved.

Images Courtesy of Google

I really anticipated that September would be a change of season, the leaves would turn, the air would crisp, and I would start to wear cute boots and light sweaters.  My life would just melt into a new routine, and I could mold my time into what ever shape I needed.  But then I got sick.  The first time I’ve been sick since I’ve been in Canada, the sickest my husband of three years ever saw me.  I continued with my life on a strictly skeletal basis.  I never missed any work or deadlines, I just ceased to participate in anything social.  I was running on empty, chugging along for far too long.  But it was in the middle of the night,  every night for weeks now, waking up at three in the morning, writhing feverishly, my head feeling like a balloon about to burst; my neck tense, brittle and burning.  There have been very few times when I felt badly enough to think I would never get better.  I began to feel this way within the last few days.  Will I ever be able to shake this cast-iron-clad feeling, dragging it around like a prison sentence?

I remember being young(er), and flipping the bird at my health.  I must have been twenty-one or so, and being sick for like a solid month. Like, having the worst cigarette and whiskey voice in the world, a shattered immune system and was still running around at four in the morning, kissing strange boys and never wearing a bra….like ever.  Whatever, you think you are young and free, and will live forever.  Now, in my thirties, getting back to a healthier place was my new full time job.  By the end of the first week of my new career, I woke up the Friday morning, at three am, feeling as though I was haunted by a viral ghost.  I got through the work day, and spent that weekend chiseling away at my ailment.  We are still sleeping on the air mattress in the living room and so I watched four movies, napped, took hot baths, drank fluids, and felt satisfied with my efforts.  By Sunday evening I felt as though I had licked my illness.  But, once again, three am, and I felt more haunted than ever.

This continued.  And it began to dominate my life.  I missed a friend’s birthday party, opening night of the production I worked on, a special showing of “Before Midnight” at the cinema.  I have declined a number of invitations, and was beginning to feel like the girl in the Norman Rockwell painting that my mother had framed in put in my childhood bedroom.

I would stare at it as a young girl, and really feel bummed out on this gal’s behalf.  Missing the big dance on account of a miserable cold.  I thought about that picture, as the clock crept past four am, five am, knowing that soon I would have to go to work.  And this job is such a blessing, such an excellent fit, such an opportunity, and by the second week I’ve arrived on the scene looking and feeling like the living dead and sounding like someone’s boozy old aunty.  To preserve my husband’s health and sanity, (as writhing and profusely sweating on an air mattress on the middle of the night is not conducive to a good night’s sleep for those around you), I started to sleep in the bedroom, taking enough cold medicine to sleep through the upstairs thumping…until I was woken in the middle of the night.  I developed the habit of sipping hot water and lemon, and reading a book on the history of the Chateau Marmont. 

In those moments, potential passages would pop in my head.  Blog topics, vague ideas, random punchlines that I could fit into something, somewhere along the way.  But I didn’t write anything down, I just let it drift in and out of consciousness, as I absorbed vintage celebrity gossip.  And each night passed, and I didn’t write.  I didn’t lie next to my husband.  I started to feel as though I was living outside of my self. And now, here we are, and I am writing after a nearly two week absence.   In case you hadn’t noticed.  And I appreciate that this is a problem.  When I lost my wallet, around the beginning of the accidental writing hiatus, my friend Sheanna reckoned that writing would bring it back to me.  I wrote, and I didn’t find my wallet, I just lost another thing.  My voice.  On a physical and metaphorical level.  That symbolism will get you every time.  Yes, I am a little lost on a creative level.  Yes, there was a time that I was pumping out a rather decent yarn of material for an extended period of time.  I was once bursting with creative juices, a plump grape surging with delicious nectar, and now it’s a little more like that last shitty raisin at the bottom of the box that you got on Halloween, and begrudgingly opened and ate well after all the good candy had been consumed.  But what can I do? Chastise myself? Torture myself? Hardly. My immune system is doing it’s part in tearing me down.  I have to believe that I will fully recover, and that I can always go back to writing, come home to the art form, no matter how many days have passed me by.

  Images Courtesy of Google

Apparently this song is a thing, and it never occurred to me. Although, when it came on the radio, the speaker announced this song, and described it as possibly the ‘greatest pop song ever’, and the first existential song. And Glen Campbell, Mr Rhinestone Cowboy sings it? Ugh. Where have I been? Ben said that he loved this song growing up. I’m feeling very out of the loop. But I get it almost immediately, it is instantly captivating and melancholic. A little sad, and a little cheesy, so it suits my temperament completely. This song seems to capture the image of light dimming into dusk, when everything is a golden yellow, and you’ve never felt more lonely in your life. And I wanted to share it with you.