Personal Assistant Kikkaido Message! Fourteen Battle

I am pleased to say that The Playboy of the Western World survived his final cardio assesment. You might recall that he momentarily died when he was injected with whatever heart accellerant crap they injected him with last time.

See, to me, the very fact that he is physically incapeable of the relatively gentle exercise needed kind of indicates that yes, there is a certain amount of cardiac stress already occurring here. But no, they wanted to be all scientific about it, so they sent him home (to stress out for three weeks about the upcoming do-over) made him starve for half a day beforehand (more stress) with no coffee or chocolate (inhumane levels of stress; I bought him a cheesecake) and then called him back in all early in the morning and shit so he could sit in the damn waiting room for half an hour after his procedure was scheduled AGAIN. And stress.

So we're cooling our heels, reading magazines together when I turned the page to reveal this advertisement: a big green wino monster with crap all dripping off it and huge block letters which say KISS ME I'M MUCUS!
We both went 'Aaaa!' and I tossed the magazine aside. The receptionist almost knocked her chair over.
Cardiac patients who jump and say 'Aaaa!' in the waiting room is probably one of the things she's trained to respond to as an emergency.

Finally they take him back, injected him with meth and shoved him in the easybake oven for twenty minutes and placed bets or whatever goes on back there. They wouldn't let me come back with him so I don't know. I'm left jitterbugging on the worlds most uncomfortable waiting room chairs reading back issues of People magazine so old that Jennifer and Brad are still together and thinking 'You stupid, stupid woman; thats BRAD FRICKEN PITT and you just let that run around off-leash like a dog at the park. Serves your moron ass right he ended up with Fishlips.'

He survives part one.
They roll him back out to the waiting room with a candybar and a bottle of water, and then 45 minutes later they DID IT ALL OVER AGAIN.
Twenty more minutes of wriggling and flumping from cheek to cheek on the giraffe legged cement chairs wondering if he's coming home in my car or the coroners van.

He survives part two.
And we hightail it out of there. And I mean he was banking up the corners up on two wheels like Dukes of Hazzard. I had to scamper up in front of him to open the doors and just impressed the hell out of myself; I can still scamper with the best of them. Dang.

Lunch at the Olde Englishe Halfe Timberede Lesbiane Bar. The waittress hadn't even fully greeted us before he looked at her over his glasses and cut her off. 'Coffee, honey' he said in regal tones. "It's been awhile. And SHE takes cream," he added, gesturing towards me.

I love this man.

Back to the Leopold. As I pull up to the porte cochere a lumpy old gent just wandered right out in front of the car and went lumbering cluelessly across my bow. " Oh that's Mr. Whatizface" says The Playboy. 'You can hit him.' He did look well insured. Still, Mr. Whatizface was a pretty solid looking chunk of geezer, and I drive a compact, so I asked if I could take a pass and The Playboy agreed.

All I can say is this better be the last time they pull this shit. His recent medical adventures are largely the result of his doctors not communicating with each other (I've seen it in action. Or not in action. Happening, anyway. Or not-oh fuck it.) All of them are trying out their pet theories one after the other. With my father-in-law as the subject, getting batted back and forth to various clinics and testing facilities like a well-insured ping pong ball with a walker, all covered with cotton balls and sticky tape. I mean come on. It's still a small town here, folks. Most of you see each other every day. Barring that there's email. What? Go old school then. None of these people can pick up a damn phone and arrange a conference call? What?
Welcome to Bellingham, home of the nations' C student medical school grads.
I SAY: Get over yourselves and do your fucking jobs.
You are pissing me OFF.
This you DO NOT WANT.

whut i dun on my crimmus vicashun

It has been an interesting holiday, my darlings.
SWAG:
Almond Roca! (four pieces left)





Handcrafted designer beer! (gone, baby)
Decorative fairy lights shaped like little chili peppers for my kitchen snack lighting!
A t-shirt with the word 'SEX' on it!
Casho dollars and buckolas!






My daughter is getting married!
This is excellent news!
The Poor Bastard is a super good guy. He is great with the Goonybird and generally a really quality human being. He seems to have the Amazon's number, too, and this speaks well for him. I am all for this.
But the wedding?
A wedding?
I never had one, and I've been married twice. I never dreamed of one as a little girl either...Sure, give me the princess dress and the pretty cake. If you want a show, go to Vegas. If you want a ceremony join the Masons. Intimidated and without a clue; that's me. Great mother of the bride, don't you think?

My husband has a new job! He is now TORVOLD DOGSWALLOWER, WIELDER OF VOLCANIC HELL-BORN FIRES, ARMOURER TO THE IMMORTAL GODS!
Oh fine. He works in an aluminum smelter.
Yes I know. I do. I wish I didn't.
Now, this is a real job. This is American working-class heaven, in fact. The benefits package is actually the size of the Whatcom County phone book.

(phone book on right, benefits on left.)

The pay is obscene. They hand out overtime like big crazy overtime-handing-out guys who hand out overtime. The company ranks number one in the world for its' high standards of job safety. (It's Alcoa, not Reynolds, in other words.)
It all seem like a devils' bargain to me. I wish I could shake this. After all, he qualified with flying colors on the preliminary medical exams. He is smarter than me and any of you all put together. And of course HE is convinced that he is sixteen, bulletproof, chews coal and shits diamonds. Meanwhile I feel like he is being deployed to Iraq.

Holiday misadventures: none. Despite having a houseful of stray bikers, grandkid (that's half a houseful right there) and sleep-deprived Amazon, only one minor skirmish occurred over the steaming pots, where I was accused of being touchy. Which I am not. Am not, am not, am not. I was, however, hung over and trying to make conversation while simultaneously performing delicate and complicated cooking operations over a red hot stove, and certain people were doing that 'question every move I make and stand right over me and stick your nose into everything and demand snap answers' THING THEY TEND TO DO instead of staying out of my face when they can clearly see that someone is busy and they should probably go away and watch that "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Prepares Human Flesh' show; which if that's what it was really about I'd be watching it too instead of COOKING YOUR HOLIDAY MEAL which I've been managing to do unassisted for a number of years now.

But really, one of the things we do best here at rancho FirstNations is provide warm and happy holidays. Nobody gets drunk, passes out, falls into the Christmas tree and splats facefirst on the floor with their pants around their ankles (one of my favorite holiday memories involving my father) Nobody has huge embittered arguments. Nobody gives or receives humiliating 'joke' gifts. The police are not called. No one sits in stupefied boredom staring at the 1120th annual holiday parade of scary inflated shit and marching bands on television. The sound of formula one cars is not heard throughout our land, nor are the electronically enhanced cheers of drunken sports hordes howling for blood from their televised arenas. We sort of romp and roam and munch and cook and make phone calls and mill around happily, play with toys, roll on the rug with the Goonybird, nap occasionally and then wake up and do it all over again. And the chow is always excellent. This year was no exception!
The Biker made a glazed ham; a perfect, flawless ham, a tender, pink and juicy ham. I did the overly complicated gravy, and a butter Yorkshire Pudding (a drippings one would have been kinda ick, under a ham and all.) The Goonybird ate mashed potatoes and peanut butter sandwiches. Don't Be A Dick, the stray biker, brought premium hoity toity beer, and the Stainless Steel Amazon brought chocolate cake and wine. There was other stuff too. It's all a blur. Ask the dogs; they made out like bandits.

partied out dog on partied out couch

See You On The 27th, My Darlings!

I'm taking the holiday off. I will leave you with this uplifting thought, taken from a Taco Bell tray liner . I think the message they were trying to get across is "What would it be like if the regular signs of the Zodiac were replaced by items of faux mexican food?'
This is the SIGN OF THE BURRITO:

THE NOBLE BURRITO

The BURRITO is a sign of honor and sophistication. With it's classic shape and combination of ingredients, it's considered a role model among its peers. Late night, the BURRITO is usually responsible for taking care of others.

Have a wonderful Christmas, everyone!

The Dance Of The Adhesive Lumacats

I sent it off this morning.
They say they'll be publishing it in February.

omigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigod
omigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigod
omigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigod
omigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigod
omigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigod
omigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigod
omigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigod
omigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigodomigod.

god bless this article and all who sail in her

I love all of you!
And because I love you so, here; read an uplifting article about lesbian cooterpie.


You gotta scroll. It's way down there VVVV which I suppose is kind of appropriate.











NEW PEOPLE READ THIS: 1. If reading about vaginas, lesbians or my husband's new job (which I never mention) is going to offend you, then you'll probably want to hit that 'next blog' button up there on the extreme upper right hand corner jiffy quick. Congratulations for being an adult, good bye and don't forget your Rice a Roni.
2. If you intend to read on, but then you get all offended because you just read about nasty lady potty parts then you'll probably want to go soak your head in a big ol bucket of cloudy pee with a ham sandwich floating around in it and ask me if I give a fuck.
I don't by the way.
Ok? You have been warned and you're lucky you got that. Really. Ask anyone who regularly visits they'll tell you.





________________________________________________
Ok. So this is the first draft of an article I may get published if I muster up the fortitude. Onward.

______________________________________________

Take care of your poontang, and your poontang will take care of you.
Now I don't mean to echo the sentiments of big Mama Thornton here, whose'If I can't sell it, I'm gonna sit on it because I aint givin' it away" are words many an enteprenurial dyke has taken to heart....no. I do mean to impart some basic operating instructions to those of you who might be new to the game. And welcome.

Girls, those of you who have strayed into the boys side of the sockhop have doubtlessly noted that their congratulatory juices smell like chestnut trees in blossom...that, and the last meal they had. Or, the cigarettes/cigars/chewing tobacco/bong last mouthed.

This goes for cooze too, my darlings.

If this suprises you, remember that Sappho noted the same thing centuries ago in her lyric "Just because it has a cute expression on it's face doesn't mean it won't tear off your arm and club you with it."
If you smoke, whatever you smoke, be assured that it will end up making your cooter taste as though you store it in the ashtray of a cab. Just because you yourself detect no smell does not mean that you are the magic exception to the rule; no, this is due to the amazing ability we as humans have to develop an insensitivity to our own fonkay.
THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS.
For shame. Your sweetiepie should be nicely flavored of freshly showeredness, or at least Wet Wipedness. It should not smell or taste like whats' in that coffee can your Uncle keeps in his truck*. (Unless your partner also smokes/chews/tokes. In that case bust out the Mrs. Butterworths, try not to scare the horses, and skip down to 'Part Deaux: Hair' because neither of you can smell or taste a thing anyway. Which is the first sign of MOUTH CANCER by the way.)

Alcohol is fun and can lead to heavy petting, true, but it does tend to make your snatch smell like you douche with Muscatel.

Onions are to be avoided before a night spent taking turns on the lube rack-and I mean avoid them like you'd avoid Gary Glitters' application for a daycare license. Anything from the allium family, in fact...garlic, ramps, offramps, Dale Evans, her horse, chives, leeks, all that oniony type stuff. Don't. Eat. The. Onion.

And while I'm on the subject of aromas...
Sex, my darlings, jostles the lower torso.
This produces gas.
Farting cannot be avoided.
EXCESSIVE farting can.
Avoid farty foods. Simple.
So simple a caveman could do it.

(By the way, Beano really does work. It is a particular boon to vegetarian carpet munchers everywhere. God bless you, inventor of Beano. Your place in heaven is assured. )


Part Deaux: Hair
If you're picking pinecones out of it after you jog, for the love of God trim your pubic hair back. Likewise if people down at the pool keep calling you 'Buckwheat' and you aren't a little black kid, it's time to dig out the hand mirror and the scissors. Otherwise it's all part of the natural landscape; fun to twirl and tickie.
However:
Face facts. You have a vagina. You cooze. When you get horny you cooze even more. In fact you cooze to a greater or lesser degree all the time; it's our automatic self-cleaning feature; like a Jenn-aire only without that barbecue deal on top with the really loud fan.

This means that you will and do develop dreadlocks, which is why you should always carry one of those travel-sized packets of Wet Wipes. Lifesaver? Oh. My. God. They fit right in the breast pocket of your Carharts with room to spare for the keys to your backhoe. No shit; it can save your entire evening when those unexpected 'away dates' occur. Otherwise, at least have a quick spritz under the bathroom faucet. Be extra stealthy and pat dry with the cuff of your Levi's (do not attempt if you're drunk or you'll end up in the tub. Never mind how I know that.) If no other choice presents itself use her mom's bathrobe. It's right there, see? Hanging behind the bathroom door? Be considerate; use the hem, not the sleeve.

Vigorous sweat-producing activity, like dancing, or skinning elk, will also leave your cooter with an unfortunate resemblance to a Jeri-Curl marinated Michael Jackson back in his 'Thriller' heyday. This is not a face you want to see in any situation but particularly NOT when you haul down some hot chick's drawers. (In fact you probably don't want to see any faces unless you invited company. Faces can indicate an obstetric emergency or the presence of a hithero unsuspected conjoined twin.)

Current fashion would seem to dictate the total eradication of pubic hair. If you feel that the nadir of sexy is to present with the hot body of an adult woman outfitted with the mons of a three year old child you are a sick dog and I do not want to know you; but of course, that is your choice and none of my business you dirty icky potty person.
But let's say you have what you feel are good reasons to keep the trails clear. Maybe you have wacky aborigional handlebar pubies that foof out the sides of your Hanes. Maybe you look as though you are transporting the decapitated head of Gene Shallit. Perhaps you have wandering bush that grows over the river, through the woods, down your thighs, and tickles the tops of your hiking boots.
Or perhaps you know that to occasionally rock the Mr. Bigglesworth look is an assurance of perpetual semi-arousal until the fur comes back in.

That's right.

It is a fact. No I am not lying.

It's SCIENCE.

In any case, if you must depilitate, suck it the fuck up and wax. Wax, wax wax.
Why wax?
Because cream depilitories have a tendancy to not stay put. Believe me, if you happen to get even the tiniest particle onto your inner labial regions, or your barking starfish, or GOD FORBID the clitoris, you WILL REMEMBER IT. And you'll have time to recall it in detail because you'll have to soak your ass for a WHOLE WEEK in a Mr. Turtle pool full of icecubes, and that means time off from work, at least in this town.

Shave it? Those first few times- lemme tell you. Setting firmly aside for the moment the psychological sugarplums that putting a MANUAL razor in proximity to your tender parts will inevitably cause to dance in your head, using a blade, even an electric, even with lube, will leave Miss Kitty all red, irritated and bumpy for days afterward. This makes Marshal Dillon cry. It'll make you cry too. IT HURTS. Not in a good way. A burny, salty, bleedy way.
And as if that weren't inconvenient enough, once shaven, those little hairs grow back fast; why, I have no idea. Nature is said to abhor a vaccuum. Ask your mom (she's downstairs doing laundry.) Tell you what, though, in what seems like a matter of hours everything will emerge all at once, SPRONG! in the form of #40 grit sandpaper.

Ok fine. If you 're smoothing Bondo, this might save you some cash. It could even earn you a raise if you use this method in a professional autobody setting. But if you're planning on having sexual relations you're both going to end up with bad razorburn in really inconvenient places.

It should be needless to point out that butt stubble isn't particularly attractive either. It is in fact decidedly grandfatherly in appearance and texture.

The last image your partner wants to have come to mind when she is munching your muffin is kissing her grandpa. And not the nice one, either; the skeezy Parkinsons' one who smells like horehound drops.

If you decide to go for the 'Ami James' look, then, for that first time I suggest you visit a competent salon. Yes, I am asking you to pay money to have a complete stranger daub creepy sticky axlegrease-looking hot crap all over your cringing poontang, slap a page of the Herald on top and then rip the bastards out by the roots in one brief hellish explosion of pain. Why: because it pleases me to imagine it. That, and the fact that it just might possibly be worth it in the end. So to speak.

THE GOOD NEWS: because you chose to wax, you won't see any regrowth of hair for weeks. Why? Because it is AFRAID. When it does return, it will come in fine and soft, not stickery.
THE BAD NEWS: Now you have to wait a few days before resuming sex. Or doing anything besides lying in front of a fan with your legs spread (have one of those Glade Scent-Story things going; this can attract gulls.)
Chances are you ain't gonna feel much like exposing your nethers to the public anyway, nethers which are asking you 'Why? Was I bad??' in a trembly little voice and will be for at least a day or so.
Trust me, your patience will pay off ; and I mean pay off like a Bally slot firing ice-cold Sacagawea dollars into the ostomy region of a septugenarian- pay off. What was once a weedy pasture full of discarded farm machinery is now pouty, bouncy, breezy-bare and almost supernaturally sensitive!

Don't believe it? Sit over the motor next time you ride Transit and just see if I'm not right.
Don't blame me if you miss your stop.

Your imput, please!

TRIPPIN HARD, MY DARLINGS.
omg.
I have been asked to consider writing for the local lesbian, gay and bi-friendly newsfagazine
The Betty Pages. Which I think is an adorable title, btw.
I will not be making any money doing this. I'd do it for free anyway.
The Yummy Biker and the Stainless Steel Amazon think it is a great idea.
Me, I'm fighting with my natural compulsion to be a free muk, set shit on fire, exceed the speed limit, spread anarchy, dissent and freedom with....
Fear.
I've lived out, tits first, and I regret not one moment. It's one of the best things about me. But I have never written out.

Not publically, close to home.





Gimme your thoughts!

Vaseline for Africa

Caring for your Ficus

SUPPLIES NEEDED:
one ficus tree
hippie
pestilence
biker
___________________________

Surprise! It's getting near Christmas, and in those last frenzied weeks of preparation, your beloved 15 year old ficus tree suddenly comes down with the sniffles. When you examine it you discover that in the space of one weeks' time, in full midwinter yet, your ficus has become infested with not one, not two but THREE different types of death dealing gross insect bugs!



1. The thrip is a fascinating creature. Attaching itself permanently to the stem of the plant and then concealing itself with a hard coating of chitin, the thrip is easily mistaken for a leaf bud, which strategy is purposefully deceptive on it's part and meant to lure you into it's thrippy trap. Not only will it subject your woody-stemmed plants to a slow death, it will actually shoot disgusting thrip faeces out its tiny thrip ass for a distance of up to three inches, coating your corner table, wall, telephone and neiboring leaves with clear, sticky driblets resembling Karo syrup, but not as tasty.

2. Mealy bugs are another threat to the health of your ficus. The mealy bug first permanently burrows its tiny mealy head into the leaf axils of your plant. Straining its minute sphincter muscles, it then poots out and coat its' mealy rest of itself hanging out of the branch with a wad of white, cottony fluff. Once hidden inside this fluffy white domicile of pooted outedness it performs secret mealy rituals which eventually prove fatal to the ficus.

3. No bigger than a gnat, the fungus gnat is a flying, beer actuated gnat which is driven to a suicidal frenzy by the presence of adult beverages in open containers, into which it leaps like a meth crazed diver off the rocks of Acapulco. Those gnats late to the fray retreat in a sulk to the potting soil of your ficus and burrow in deeply. Millions of vampiric grubs then shoot out their asses (seeing a pattern here?) and proceed to burrow into the root system of the plant and chew their way up to its' brain and out its' eyes. Most ficii find this fatal.

THE CURE: I used to have their t-shirt . The 'Absolute Beginners' one.

Have a glass container ready.
Grasp your biker firmly by the handle and squeeze gently. When the quid emerges, catch it in the glass container, and pat and pet your biker lovingly. This reinforces positive behaviors in your biker.
Add hot, not boiling water. To the glass, not the biker.
Set aside for several days, covered lightly. See above.
Watch as the fluid in the glass turns dark brown.
Transfer the now unnaturally thickened, lumpy substance into a larger glass container.
Add more hot water.
Place in an area reserved for the sanitary preparation of food.
Wait until someone complains.
Using a fine meshed, metal tea strainer which you fully intend to soak in boiling bleach afterwards, strain the liquid into a clean, empty spray container. Tap dregs into sink. Avoid examining the drain trap. Really. Don't do it.
Turning to your ficus, remove any dead leaves or twigs from the branches and the surface of the soil.
Place the giant, heavy, rootbound ficus tree into the center of your dining table, directly on the surface normally used for the sanitary consumption of food.
Go put on your husbands elastic hernia belt and take a brief lager break. Bat at fungus gnats.
Contemplate your ficus tree. Watch leaves fall off.
Work yourself into a murderous frenzy.
Without spreading anything to catch the drips, thoroughly and liberally spray the entire ficus with the unutterably foul nicotine solution, taking great care to coat every single surface above and below, as well as the entire surface of the soil, the table, the chairs, part of the carpet, your Opie, and the glass shade on the dining room light.
Step back and enjoy the fresh, holiday aroma of wintergreen chew and fermented biker saliva!
Note that your table, the chairs, your Opie, part of the rug and the glass shade on the dining room light now sport a shiny brown glaze, adding to that holiday mood!
Adjust hernia belt and settle in for another lager break. Curse fungus gnats.
Blog.
Notice that as your body temperature adjusts upwards to compensate for the arctic conditions in your kitchen, the sleeves of your sweatshirt are emitting the fresh, clean
wintergreen aroma of chewing tobacco and fermented biker saliva.
Go back, stir the surface of the soil to a depth of at least one inch and soak with remaining tobacco solution. Watch emerging fungus gnats skitter across the surface. Soak them mercilessly with the solution, taking inordinate and unseemly joy in watching them twitch and struggle in agony as they die.

No it would NOT be easier to throw the whole thing in the trash. I raised this thing from a twig with two leaves on it. I'll be damned if I give up without a fight.

grumpy cold little Muk (with spectacular tits) misses you!

Speaking of spectacular tits, THE CHAMP has returned from exile, and we are all proud as a hen done laid a square egg! Now give me some goddamn fight points, Mary.
I am tired of making excuses for not visiting or posting, and you are tired of hearing them.

Too bad; get over it.

It been one motherfuckin thing after another here at the rancho. Storms, power outages, high winds, low temps, blogger beta; yea verily the enchilada in its' entirety. I done been visiting, I swear to youse. But see, I go visiting, and I cannot comment. I switch browsers, and I cannot post. Half of you won't load. I switch back and I can post, but not pictures. Then the fuckin eel lick trisuddy goes tits up and I have to reload all my passwords and cookies and FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK FUCK!

AND POOP!

... in a big mud puddle with some ketchup, and garbage, and some tartar sauce that has mold on it and French's mustard and toilet paper, and a pinecone!!!!!!!

Pam, Eats, Shoots and Leaves and any of the rest of ye who live in the Pungent Sound Region, kids, hunker the fuck down and stay at HOME. Y'all are expecting winds up to 100mph. It is eerily calm and quite still here at present. I don't hear any birds - wait, lemme check something-
nope. A couple of juvenile ravens and crows drifting over, looking around. Nobody on the ground and nobody in the trees, though. The birds, even the winter loving ones, are all roosted up waiting for the weather to pass.

Members of the Corvidae are generally accepted as the most intelligent of the northern bird species. They exhibit amazing and creative problem solving behaviors. They use tools. They adopt creatures from other species as 'pets' or 'friends', establishing mutually beneficial relationships with them. All this, in addition to the problems of flight and the everyday challenges of survival, and all done with a brain no larger than a pecan.
So, come this next storm: How many crows or ravens will there befound stranded up on some logging road for a week in their Yugo sucking on frozen pee to survive?

There are three mountain climbers stranded up on Mt. Hood at present. I feel badly for their families, but as someone who has lived next to the Cascades all her life I have to say that I don't feel a whole lot of pity for the climbers themselves. This happens EVERY. SINGLE. MOTHER BUTT FUNKY YEAR. Right around Christmas or Thanksgiving, sure enough some group of dipshits choose to get themselves lost up on the mountain. Then a whole pile of rescue personnel who really deserve better have to leave their families and homes and go search for their sorry mountain climbing asses and risk their own lives doing it. And this particular group of hikers really should have known better; they were experienced enough to have known better by all accounts. I hope they are found alive, but I also kind of hope frostbite causes them to lose a couple of fingers or a toe as a permanant reminder NOT TO BE FUCKING IDIOTS AND RISK OTHER PEOPLES LIVES.
One of the miniature bikers has this birth defect. Granted, he is a hardy sort, and knows his shit; the man's a qualified Alpine Search and Rescue stud for heavens sake. But this last Thanksgiving sure as shit the dumbass decided, on a whim, to head up to the mountain and go hiking IN A FUCKING BLIZZARD. And put his miniature truck into the ditch halfway there. Did I feel pity?
No.
-because I am a bitch, yeah, ok, but still. The roads were deserted (because the SMART PEOPLE were all home cooking meth or screwing their housepets-it is Central Sound, after all- or watching the Seahawks) So he GOT OUT OF THE TRUCK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BLIZZARD. All 93 lbs of uninsulated gristle. Yeah. He hiked up the road. He found a rangers station. It was deserted. He tried to break in. He couldn't. So he hiked back to his truck. Several hours later a PSE truck came and hauled him out just as he was turning into a miniature Cajuncicle.
So . Major holiday of joy, perfect for inflicting the upcoming aniversary of your senseless death on your loved ones for the rest of their lives? CHECK
Dangerous recreational outdoor sport? CHECK
Middle of winter? CHECK
Bad weather expected? CHECK
Unfamiliar with the terrain? CHECK
Attempt to 'go for help'? CHECK

STAY.

AT.

HOME.

UPDATE: it is now straight up noon, and THE WINDS ARE BEGINNING.
YIKES.
UPDATED UPDATE: at 2:45 sideways sleet and 40mph sustained winds from the northeast give way to crepescular darkness, torrential downpour, and seagulls. stay tuned.

GAY-FRIENDLY UPDATE: 6:pm sees continuing downpour. No wind, just rain. Worst storm since 94? meh. Ellen Degeneris, Sir Elton John.

TWEAKING UPDATE: 9:30 on the dot. the Gale has begun, and I is out! see y'all later!

the calm between the storms UPDATE

Have you switched to Blogger Beta?
I can't leave a comment on your blog until I do too.
Funny how that works.
I thought I had a choice, Blogger. Apparently not, eh? Funny... I feel as though I am being lead down into an increasingly narrow chute...and that light at the far end might be a man in a white lab coat weilding a 'humane killer'.
Or maybe thats just me. I get funny around this time of the year.

I stuck a needle into the second joint of my index finger the other day. It didn't hurt as much as you might think it would, but it did kind of ache; and it made bending my finger difficult. To make matters worse, I couldn't pull it out. As I was attached at the time to a rather sizeable piece of sewing soaking it was out of the question ( and stupid, in afterthought.) Furthermore all my pliers were OUT IN THE GARAGE FOR SOME REASON. I ended up pulling it out with my teeth. This made an audible popping noise as the point left the cartilage, and chipped my front tooth.
No, I don't do things halfway.

The snow has gone. However the wintry assaults continue on rancho FirstNations. Yesterday starting at 11:30 in the morning, freaky disgusting bathtub-temperature winds rose up from the south and maintained a steady 45mph with gusts up to 60. Good thing, then, that these were not the usual winds from the south we experience here at rancho FirstNations. We expect more of the same tomorrow, along with torrential rains and a chance of snooooo. It almost goes without saying that we'll lose power again. We did twice yesterday. Yay.

In Oregon they called these freak warming trends a chinook.
A chinook is a salmon.
This is not a fish.
There are no fish associated with this phenomenon.
There is nothing remotely piscine about it.
That is why I moved away from Oregon. People in Oregon are fucking strange.

Tell you what though, I look out at the giant rotting stump which markes the place where the Tree of Evil stood only one year ago and thank God we kept bugging the city until they took it down. For those of you who have just joined us, the Tree of Evil was a freakishly large Lombardy Poplar that stood in the center of my driveway, just on city property. Lombardy Poplar is a softwood anyway, but this one was rotten all the way down the property side-that is, OUR side. To make matters more interesting, yardarm-sized branches would tear away from the main trunk and fall off just for the hell of it. Rather than breaking, though, they'd burst and shatter and spray wet cottony pulp all over the place. This made our driveway and the sidewalk out front a less than optimum place for mommies with baby strollers and hippies and dogs and cars and people and things.
Understandbly we got real tired of waiting for the next high wind to bring half the bastard plowing through our roof in the dead of the night and started a campaign of 'friendly visits' to City Hall. Finally the city removed it. No charge; their tree, their dime. SoooWEET! Took two days, four trucks and a crane. Giant chunks of this tree are still to be found at the city compost heap, chunks bigger than my car. All of them rotton and hollow down the side that faced our house.
Better there than my roof.

i want answers.

Serious questions.

1. What is behind the impulse to denigrate utility?
When I step into a room in which every object that meets my eye is patterened and ornamented and stylized my first impulse is to turn and walk back out. It seems to camoflage everything, to level things out to a baseline background hum. To put it in the form of a question, Alex, is there something rude or unacceptable about a bucket being a container to hold stuff? Is it really improved in any way by being covered in flowers and shaped like a duckie?


2. Why is 'prettiness' generally accepted as an ingredient of Beauty? Think about it. Generally accepted standards of beauty include prettiness (prettiness is a combination of shiny, colorful, symmetrical, uniform, and rounded)

3. Why do people seem to equate 'shininess' with value?
To me a room full of shiny objects is a room full of moving white dots. Like being surrounded with cabbage butterflies. And while that might be momentarily lovely outside, when the same effect occurs indoors it is unsettling. When it occurs contantly it is beyond irritating.

Feel free to suggest studies and books and things. To me these issues aren't airy fairy concepts; they're issues of basic comfort. Who wants to be surround with confusion? Apparently most of the world. And I want to know why. Do other people experience some kind of visceral animal pleasure response to pattern and shine and symmetry? I don't. I never have.

And so, let me close with this plea:
Ladies and gentlemen, if you are Christian, if you truly love Jesus, then please, please...walk the talk this Christmas season.
Ignoring the color wheel makes Baby Jesus cry.

UPDATED: a peek inside the sanctum sanctorum

NOTE: this is my SPARE BEDROOM. I was in a frolicsome mood and I did a post about my SPARE BEDROOM, OK???
There are a couple of pictures of my husbands' GARAGE tacked on at the end.
Good Gravy MARIE. This is not what my whole house looks like. We are somewhat civilized. Even though there is a great big picture of a naked blue woman displayed in my dining room in such a way that it can clearly be seen from halfway down the street in either direction. It is a Matisse, therefore it is classy.
Now then.
Welcome to the craft room and emergency dormition chamber!
Everyone should have one of these. This is where I keep all the supplies for my art stuff. It also holds a purportedly 200 year old bed to which I retreat when the Biker is staging one of his nocturnal performances of 'Drowning Phlegm Mammoth Submits to Liposuction.'


Yes it's sideways but you get the idea. It's a poster with different North American snakes on it. I buy old posters at garage sales because they're pretty useful for making patterns, or to back collages with. I really liked the picture on this one so I stuck it up.
I like snakes; they're so graceful and elegant. And yes I pick them up and shit. It helps that there aren't any poisonous ones on this side of the Cascades. I can just run around thoughtlessly waving them about. And I do.



One wall papered with Civil War era sheet music, masterfully applied by this little Muk if I do say so myself. I cooked up -literally, on the stove- an archival adhesive to stabilize them with, treated the ground with the same and finished it with water based polymer. Shit was like handling cigarette ash, some of it. Time is not kind to acid treated pulp. Makes rockin' wallpaper though. Plus it cost 3 dollars and sweat. Can't beat that.



The Skeletal Hand of Doom suspended over the Purportedly 200 Year Old Bed of Obscene Frolic. I'm probably the first splittail thats been between these rails since Pearl Harbor was attacked. From the Biker side of the family. 'Nuff said.


I've had this poster since I was 17. It is a reproduction. No you may not have it. No I will not accept money for it. Quit bothering me.



My beloved Tank Girl sticker, blocking the breeze that shoots out of the cable outlet whenever there's a high wind from the south. Why someone saw fit to put a cable outlet halfway up the center of a wall is a mystery, like Mothman, and why Lindsay Lohan refuses to wear uns and REALLY REALLY SHOULD.



I've had this map of Stonehenge for 20 years. It was folded up in the back of a British Parks Department (whatever the correct name for that is) booklet. The whole thing is beautifully, beautifully hand inked. No not this exact one. You know what I mean.
Whoever produced this map was a master. I've done calligraphy since 1978 and I know how difficult it is to simply maintain uniformity, let alone freehand map symbols. A beautiful thing.
I was on a Stonehenge kick about ten years ago. I read every nonfiction book and article I could find on the subject. What I learned is that nobody knows who built it or what its for, but they DO know that it's 1. big, and 2. made of rocks.



Let's call the large skull here Mr. Coyote, although I suspect that it may actually be a rottweiler. Really. We won't ask, though. The small one is Mr. Bunny Rabbit. The neibors cat drug it in off the road and left it in my shed to rot into a squirming mat of bones, fur, and what we ardent compost devotees here at rancho FirstNations refer to as 'motile rice'.

Did you know that if you dump bleach on maggots they foam up? They do. Just like pop. Try it sometime and see! It's science!




Speaking of unpleasant decay, here's some socks.
I like socks.
I should wash these.
No this is not why we have maggots.
Come on. We live in dairy country = cows = manure = flies, and the neibors cats like to kill shit and leave it laying in my yard = dead shit in my yard = flies = promiscuous fly sex = muk with a shovel full of maggoty field rat walking towards the neibors yard looking pissed off.
Ooo. Wait a sec:

Meet Hanta!
Hanta here is a field rat I found dried into a hairy little hardtack wafer in my shed. I brought it through the shop on my way to go flick it over into the neibors yard when I had a brilliant idea.
I nailed it next to the doorway to the Bikers' spray booth. At eye level.
And said nothing.
It took him ONE YEAR to notice it.

As long as we're invading his privacy...

The Shop of Evil.
There is No Humping in the Shop of Evil.
That USED to be our Sportster.

...and this USED TO BE MY WORKBENCH.
Can you spot it?
This is where I used to refinish furniture and make things. This is where I used to keep my bench vise, circular saw, clamps, bits, my detail sanders, my power drill, my woodworking tools, abrasives, paints, brushes, hand tools, thinner, masking, tape, scribes etc. All organized, all painted orange so they couldn't get mixed up with his tools, yeah.
See much orange in that picture? Me neither.
It's been taken over.
It was built for me. It was made for me. It is too short for the YB to use.
Now you know who uses it?
Miniature bikers.
All YB's miniature toy-sized companion breed biker friends come over and use MY WORKBENCH and get all their miniature biker crap all over it.
Stupid miniature bikers.

Blue Mole Misery Of Entrail Kikaido!

THE EVIL SUBSTANCE HAS VANISHED!
The weather gods have seen fit to remove the vile, vile frozen vileness and return something approaching normalcy to my little slice o' heaven. Which means rain, floods, high winds, falling trees, power outages and death dealing, cartwheeling, jagged sheets of corrugated barn roof flying past.
But no snow!!!!

This week I discovered that I have a WAY BETTER car stereo than I thought I did.

Monday, I left early and was driving through Lynden on my way to go pick up the Goonybird. I had the radio on, something of a novelty for me because I really don't need the distraction. That and if a good song comes on it makes me drive faster and I don't need any more speeding tickets either. But the Yummy Biker had left it on turned to his classic rock station, and they were playing 'Queen', and so, you know.
When I heard the first bars of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' play I reached over and beeped the volume control a couple times. The speakers didn't distort or anything, so I beeped it a couple more times and that was pretty good too. I gave it a good 'shave and a haircut, two bits!' and yup, still clear as a bell!
So then I sort of kept my finger on it for a couple of seconds and the volume went up REALLY REALLY LOUD.
I mean DAMN.
The rearview mirror was actually vibrating along with the bass notes. The metal grille off the drivers side speaker popped out.
Yeah.
Righteous.
Me and Freddie Mercury were well into 'gotta MOUCHE gotta MOUCHE can you do the fan DAN go?' at the light on Benson and Grover when I noticed all the kids at the bus stop staring. I think the side panels must have actually been fluttering at this point. I keep a lot of change in the ashtray but it sounded like a great big 'ol vibrator on the 'Xaviera' setting buzzing away in there.
I have never had a really good car stereo in my life.
I was feeling COOL.

Despite having a city budget that allows for things like providing detailed, fitted Dutch costumes for all the employees of all the businesses along Front street, the streets in Lynbden were covered in ice and slush about seven inches deep.
Perfect roostertail conditions.
So I hit the side streets and did a little painting.
For those of you who had parents who actually gave a fuck, 'painting' means you select a suitable medium, in this case filthy, icy slush full of gravel, and apply it to your ground, in this case maybe possibly the fronts of some houses. And some cars. Now what I might actually have been doing was simply gunning the engine in order to avoid being stuck, and should that have happened to kick up a little bit of a roostertail or maybe even quite a sizeable roostertail, maybe like a tsunami kind of a thing actually, well, blame that on the city of Lynden. Lax bastards.
Amped on vandalism, I went down (sideways) to the Dairy Queen and grabbed a couple of burgers. As I waited in the drivethru I noticed that the parking lot of the nearby Fairway Center grocery store was nearly abandoned and was also covered in beautiful brown heaps of slush.

When the accident involving a double trailer semi truck and the Land Rover occurred I missed the whole thing. I sure as fuck had no chance of hearing it because me and Jimmy Page were singing 'Valhalla' at the time. I was also going in rapid circles, or maybe sideways. I recall being more concerned with trying not to hit any light poles. My view was further obscured by grease, ketchup and splattered tomato fragments. This happened when I had the wheel cranked over hard with one hand and was kind of gesturing operatically with the burger in the other and slapped it into the passengers side window.
DOWN INTHE LAND OFTHE ICE! AND! SNOW!
WHERE THE MIDNIGHT SUN ANDTHE HOT! SPRINGS! GLOW! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
-HA!
Blat!
Because you have to gesture right there at that 'HA!' part. Only not with a hamburger. And probably not going in circles in a tiny underinsured car in an icy parking lot with the radio cranked so loud it was making Baby Jesus cry.

And maybe not with two sherrifs' cars parked out on the main road.

When the revolutions slowed I finally noticed the wreck. A nasty one. Someone had come around the corner of Kok Road and run their Land Rover under the rear end of a semi trailer carrying a metal cargo container. The entire front of the 'Rover was peeled back to the windsheild. I mean, this thing was BAD FUCKED.

As I sat there and goggled at the wreck I noticed the sherrifs get out of their car. Then they turned to each other. Then turned and looked straight at me.

I turned off the stereo.
I drove away.
Slowly. With part of a tomato and a piece of cheese stuck to the passengers side window.

make it go away.

POME ABOUT HOW SNOW SHOULD NOT BE ON THE WORLD.

make the bad potty snow leave.
bad, bad toilet snow.
dirty smelly potty snow,
stinky butt fart snow.
i hate snow.

No longer snowbound thanks to the City of Sumas, I roamed at large yesterday. Our streets are plowed and sanded and have been maintained that way. No sweat; no problem. Run the plow-sander around every few hours while the snow is falling, every evening when it isn't, problem solved, move on.

See, out here on this end of the county people retain some dim memory of weather past and don't spaz the fuck out like a bunch of overstimulated chihuahuas every time the white stuff arrives, like they do down in Seattle. I swear to you.
And whats even worse is that every person with an ailing car and a fresh lobotomy scar decided to take to the goddamn freeway at the same time. And what time was that? Why, right in the middle of the assbastardly BLIZZARD. C'mon, Ru Leen, git them kids inta their shorts and t shirts! Hell yeah I know yew having labor pains. Don't be a damn wimp. Lemme crack open this here bottle of Canadian Mist and go warm up the Volkswagen!
And there they still sit, knawing on their own extremeties and huffing their own funk inside the frozen tombs that their Mitsubishis and Toyotas have become.
WHAT
THE
FUCK.
When I lived in Seattle, I was poor. I was a single mother. I relied on public transport. Still, I did not instantly dash outside like a depressed lemming when the snow hit. I watched the news and the sky and stocked up on cnadles, canned food and baby milk. You see, I knew, thanks to something coded deep within my dim ancestral pool of instinct, that ICE IS SLIPPERY.
And so I would sit in my cozy apartment, cuddled in the bay window seat drinking nice hot soup with my baby, watching the Mercedes-es and the BMWs-es of the financially fortunate skating sideways down 17th Avenue hill, twirling and pinballing from side to side of the street, bouncing off parked cars and snow berms and retaining walls and the front of busses while the clueless organism behind the wheel frantically floored the gas and honked the horn. This would happen all damn day and on into the night. You could hear them beeping and whirring into the distance as they glissanded down into the center of the MLK way five way intersection at the bottom of the hill, where they were turned into the worlds most expensive bump actuated pinwheels.

I got out to see my Goonybird yesterday, and my face still aches from smiling. This is the BEST KID. Of course he has the BEST MOMMY too. He is way into playing lets pretend games, so we sat in a circle on the rug, and he made us a campfire out of whole wheat bread crusts.

So far the Stainless Steel Amazon has failed to chase off her boyfriend, so who knows? I may have to come up with a nickname for this one. Seeing as how he has chosen-voluntarily, without outside coercion, kids; CHOSEN- to contend with my daughter and her amazing Random Death Dealing Temper and Explosions With Fire and Death Fragments Of Deadly Death and Exploding Gasoline Napalm Angry Of Temper, that nickname might just end up being 'Poor Bastard'.
In fact, I think that's it. D, you are hereby christened The Poor Bastard.

If my daughter reads this I am so dead.*snerk!*
MISUSE OF BLOG MEDIUM ALERT:
well, maybe if she changed her tune he would be 'lucky bastard.'
MISUSE OF BLOG MEDIUM COMPLETE

Yeah, I'm going to quit now while I still have an extended family.
I love you all deeply and unreasonably, my darlings, but I cannot spend the time visiting around that I used to because this end of the house is freezing.
This SUCKS.
I MISS YOU.
XOOFN
*snif*

The Callous Red Donkey Siphons Kikaido Car Petrol!

SOM POMES OF IN HONUR THE SNO



1.
Six inches more. Quick;
plow the road in case some dumbshit
wants to drive in this.


2.
Birdie feetie prints
hop, hop, hop in the snow. Go
put on some damn shoes


3. Muk prints in the snow
reveal that someones cat has
peed next to the door.



4. my dog has four legs
though you might guess five. click to
enlarge, then use +.

snow: six inches by tonight. for more, visit Frobishers site.

Since the snow hit my life consists of daytime television, keeping toilet paper stocked in the can and coffee, coffee coffee. And thats fine; I mean, it certainly beats the fuck out of being out in this. I feel particularly bad for all the guys up in the woods at this time of year...I can see the lights in the dark of the morning as their log trucks toil up the mountainside and it just makes me shiver.

As my daytime activity shrinks to almost nothing my nightime dreaming life becomes incredibly vivid. As probably comes as no big surprise to anyone, I dream BIG. And even in busy times my dreams are complicated and vivid. I was told when I started taking Prozac that it tends to make you dream vividly at night, and laughed out loud. The addition of Prozac to my nighttime cranial stew has made as much of an impact as throwing a brick into the Grand Canyon. Prozac didn't stand a chance. I dream bigger after a slice of anchovy pizza. (And by the way, anchovies are good and nice and great, with all tastiness and goodness and deliciousness? and are also very yummy and super of tastiness? So don't dis on my damn fishies of anchovies.)

If you have never seen the movie 'Dark City' then do so AT ONCE. It's in my list of favorites for a reason, and that reason is that whoever planned out the concept for that thing has an imagination I admire and a brain that works a lot like mine does at night. (Not that my dreams are all dark and full of flying alien zombies in bowler hats...um, not that they aren't; c'mon, just, you know, not exclusively.)

When I dream, I dream in detail. Full detail. Smell, sound, songs on the radio, patina, taste, temperature, it's like daytime life.
But now I have episodes.
Continuing stories, reacurring characters and places, subplots. The backdrops and props are places and things I've seen in everyday life over the years, but with no regard to the time in which I first encountered them. A building I lived in when I was 19, full of people I knew in gradeschool, a car I owned when I was 23 parked out front, on a street I remember from a movie I saw last year...like that.
But all these things stay the same.
I could draw a map of the place. It would have to be on layers of transparencies, like the visible man in the medical books*, but I could do it, and I can visualize it. It stays the same. Details that get added stay added. Details like fabrics. Perfume. People that get older. Things that get broken and are repaired. Seasons. And layers of combinations patched together from my daytime life that make no sense in my daytime memories stay combined in the dreams, from night to night, and from year to year.
Year to year!
This has been going on for years!
It's not bothersome in any way, just odd. I've never heard of anyone else who has dreams like this. Unless you do?
Do you?
I have my own private television shows!


*you ever notice that the Visible Man had no dick? he didn't. Visible Broad had boobs and a uterus with a baby in it, though. christmas miracle? or Visible Damian? you decide.

postcard from the frozen wastes of Leng

...Quite a different picture this morning, eh, my best beloved? The snow blew away during the night. The sky is so blue it's painful to look at. My front yard is clear, our driveway is clean, and the windchill factor is -20.



The back yard is a different story, though. And this isn't even my damn snow; this is snow from somewhere up around Cultus Lake.
The wind has been blowing steadily, gusting up to 40-50 mph. The ground is frozen hard as iron. The snow that fell as wet flakes has been transformed into diamond sand. Snow ghosts and whirlwinds and huge tall mares' tails all made of ice crystals are blowing past. I wish I could get a picture of what it looks like when the sun hits these brief formations and turns them into moving diamond rainbows; it is enough to break your heart for beauty.
Not quite beautiful enough to distract me from the fact that my hot water lines are frozen solid, and Opie is refusing to eat because he doesn't want to have to go outside. I can't take a shower, and my dog is emitting foul, green, chunky gasses that simply defy explanation. I mean, even worse than usual.
But while I sit here, unshowered, watching daytime television inside my chilly house with my farting dog, I can console myself by looking out my front window and seeing this:



At least I didn't have to hire heavy equipment to dig me out of my brand new house. Thats right. Enlarge this and check it out. I watched it all morning as it scooped snow only to have half of it blow out of the bucket when it turned to dump it.
I am trying SO HARD not to feel all smug about this.

quaint blizzards from my charming rural ice prison

This is the view out my front window this morning...


That white fog you see in the distance? That's freeze dried Canada coming at us in 40-50 mph gusts. Come the thaw it will all reconstitute and I'll be living in Saskatchewan. I have no problem with that. Oh hell yes. If I become a Canadian by default? Hello, no Bush? NHC? Fuck YEAH I'll fly the maple leaf. *warms up pipes* 'Ooooo, Ca, Na Daaaaaaa, some something are so something...'



This is why, in a northern clime, with prevailing northeast winds all winter, you do NOT want to build your home with the front door facing...what directions, kids? NORTHEAST. Brand new fucking houses, too. Every one of them up to the doorknobs in packed snow.
Btw, do you like our festive Christmas lites?
Nothing says 'Holiday Spirit' like a string of bloodshot eyeballs.



As the wind went crackin down between my house and the flowerbeds it carved the snow all the way down to the grass in my front yard. The sidewalk is gone, and beyond that the road is under 2 inches of polished milk ice. That stripe you see in the next field that looks like a road? Not a road. A wind carved bare patch that leads up to the base of a utility pole one block north. Through a blur of blowing ice, this can be really deceptive looking at night. Many drivers end up in the ditch taking too sharp a turn at the corner, thinking they're aiming for bare pavement.

Unfortunately nothing brings out the 4-wheeler dipshits like a blizzard around here. Because having 4 wheel drive means you can drive around the county like a bat out of hell with it's ass on fire, righteo? Having 4-wheel drive means you are INVINCEABLE. Despite which a lot of morons get vinced anyway.

We are fine. BORED OUT OF OUR FUCKING MINDS, but fine.
Stay home, my darlings.

quaint vignettes from my charming rural idyll

It is quaintly snowing here at rancho FirstNations this morning.
Behold:

...the rancho at 6:am.
Actually it was quaintly snowing then. Now, it is a baby blizard. We have a full on northeaster wind howling down the Frazier valley and the snow is drifting and packing.
The rancho is mostly uninsulated. What that means is that some portions have some insulation in stupid places like over half a ceiling of a closet and one wall, but most don't. Like eighty percent-type most. Like the entire original house section.
Which faces due northeast.
This means that the back half of our house is colder than a dead eskimos' dick, a witches tit in a brass bra and a whores' heart. And the master bedroom is the coldest of all, placed as it is in the apex of the triangle facing northeast... followed by the bathroom and the kitchen. And the kitchen is where Command Central is, so I'm sitting here inside a heap of ultrafleece blogging with only the tips of my fingies and my nose sticking out.
'Oh gosh', wished the starry-eyed young dumbass, 'it would be SOOOOOOOO ultra cool to live in a historic farmhouse.'
Be careful what you wish for, my darlings.

There is a frozen puddle just beyond the back fence, in back of the garage where in warmer weather the blue herons like to fish and wade. The steady winds have blown the ice to a high polish, and it resembles a slab of black obsidian lying in the snow. The weather has brought out tiny, tiny birds in their hundreds...a tiny little needle-beaked grey and black thing hardly bigger than a female hummingbird, and they are merrily boucing round the gutters and windowframes and the branches of my trees like popcorn. They seem to be finding something of interest to pick at on the ice, because they wait in ranks on the wire of the fence to take their turns inspecting it. While the latecomers wait, the one's whose turn is up hop down to pick at the surface, and as they pick, facing into the wind, the wind is blowing them steadily, steadily backwards along the length of the puddle like little skaters.

The night before the snow started I woke up to the sound of a frog. Down behind the foundation just under my bedroom window, this little frog creaking his little frog song was the only sound I heard for miles and miles around. He will gradually make his way around to the south side of the foundation, under the front porch, and for the rest of the winter he will sing his creaky song every time rain threatens, as he does every year.

Our Thanksgiving was wonderful. For the first time in awhile we had the place to ourselves. The Yummy Biker and I made a meal I would have been proud to serve Careme.
The Biker went down the street and stole some apples off a tree in front of a vacant house. He made an applesauce out of them that would have made a stone saint cry. I could devote an entire post to the perfection of ingredients, method and flavour that was this applesauce. My house smelled like the land of the Blessed all day long, y'all. And just for something to do while he was waiting he threw together two pies and a lasagne for the next day.

He is MINE. He is TAKEN. Back WAY OFF.

I made a sauce and a small loin of pork, and added in a couple of small ears of local corn from this autumn. There was stuffing too, just a neutral one to catch the sauce and the juices.
Now that sounds simple enough, right?
But it was perfect.
Perfectly made perfect ingredients, perfectly combined, perfectly executed. If I do say so myself, he and I know our food backwards, forwards, inside and out. We are one of those rare combinations in the kitchen where the sum is astronomically greater than the parts. Nobody eats better than us on the holidays.
Anyone can bathe things in spices and gravy and call it yummy, but when you can compose a meal where all the ingredients are perfectly in balance? That's a gift. When you can do in in harmony with another person, that's just a damn miracle.

ALL MINE, bitches.

Now I have to go into the other half of the house and thaw out my fingers. Try and stay warm today, northerners! (Southern Hemispherians? Go suck my socks.)

Viridian Elephant Mad Sandwich Debacle, is Jiro Defend?

Mangonel immediately captured my heart by being able to hurl large objects, sometimes in flames, quite a long distance where they would land and cause all kinds of damage. Plus Mangonel knew that Pangur Ban means "White Cat'. But I know what 'Blodduydd' means, so HA. (This is where Chaucers Bitch struts onto the scene and blows us all away with her Old and Middle English and a smitch of Welsh fu. Smartass.) I'll do the linkie squinkie thing after I've had some coffee; in the meantime link back through my comments on mangonels avatar. SUFFER.

So-FIVE THINGS ABOOT ME, tagged via MANGONEL:

1. Other children want to be firemen, president, perhaps ballerinas. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a wilderness person. Or, in other words, a hermit. Seriously. I must have read 'My Side of the Mountain' fifty times. I gathered survival supplies like wax coated striker matches, a pocket knife, tinder, first aid stuff, string, boullion cubes... oh yes. I had them hidden all over the neiborhood. I studied the old Boy Scouts manual on woodcrafting, army manuals, hunting magazines; I was totally into it. I was going to survive, man. Raise bees, weave wildgathered mountain goat wool, gather berries and herbs, kill and dress my own game...I was going to build a stone cabin and chop wood and dam a crick and raise trout. I have all the Foxfire books and the early hippie Whole Earth - Shelter publications, and I have them practically memorized. I was totally into biology and animal and plant identification, all that stuff. In fact I was....

2. One of the few, the proud, the Rangerettes. Yes, I was a charter member of Ranger Ricks Nature Club, and I have the badge to prove it. (It was a kids wilderness magazine.) Had I not had the respiratory difficulties I would have happily gone into the Forest Service. Mountain Muk!

3. I have never been arrested or questioned by the police. And that's their fault, not mine. Ahem.

4. I cannot display a picture of a person if the eyes are staring straight out at the viewer because eyeballs creep me out. I also do not display family pictures. When I want to see them, I will. Otherwise I already know what they look like.

5. In 1978 I was solicited to appear in a porno movie.

Nails on the head with a pinecone: Chaucers Bitch, Ziggi, Tom 909, Treespotter and Noshit Sherlock!

this is what i did

...in between bouts of hacking, barfing and trying not to pee myself from all the hacking and barfing. Yes, it's been nothing but refined and tasteful family fun here at rancho FirstNations.

I have mentioned in passing that I like to do embroidery.
Well I do. Like to do embroidery.
It's a perfect sick-person craft. The supplies are small and not too messy and the working of it is fascinating in the best sense of the word; it captivates your full interest.

I taught myself embroidery when I was about twelve or so and by the time I was in high school I was embroidering Levi jeans, jackets and cutoffs for $$bux. Lotsa peace signs, dope leaves, that 'Cocaine' design that looked like the Coca-Cola script, album covers, 'Keep On Truckin', etc. (It was the 'Seventies, ok?) I never did the tea towel and antimacassar thing. I learned to make all these dainty little stitches through heavy denim because I didn't know any better. That and nobody was asking me to embroider 'Things go better with Cocaine' on tea towels. The unexpected side benefit of all this was, I got fast, because I wanted that cash, and I developed a lot of strength and dexterity in my hands.

I wanted to make a quilt out of embroidered patches. In order to keep this quilt from ending up weighing 50 pounds I couldn't use full weight denim. That meant I had to re-learn all my techniques when I started working on lighter weight cloth. I still have a really heavy touch so I have to stitch all my fabric into the embroidery frame or else it warps. Once I do that, though, I can work in fine detail at an even faster pace and use longer hanks of thread - heavy fabric wears thread down to a hair so you have to keep it short if you want your finished design to look nice. I work like lightning now, and thats a new and interesting thing. If you're, you know, sick and limited in terms of outside stimulation.

The stitches I rely on most of all are the split stich, wrapped split stitch, the chain, backchain, buttonhole and modified french knot. I used to work a lot of things in blocked or couched satin stitch, but it doesn't hold up well under wear. Lately I've been using forbidden stitch and although it's ruining my eyesight, the outcome is dazzling!
Every one of the following images can be clicked on and enlarged, in case you are bored enough to want to examine the work closely. So here ya be:
(CAUTION-CUTENESS AHEAD)




Three kinds of bumblebees that live in my garden, full and fat and all loaded up with pollen. I didn't include the stingers because this is a friendly quilt and maybe little kids might sleep under it, so you don't want stingy bees.






A single wild rose with a variegated petal. This is in honor of my grandmother, whose name was 'Rose', and so it is simple, beautiful and old fashioned.







Here's one for you cat lovers. This marmelade kittys' name is, of course, 'Kells'. He started out plain, but ended up illuminated. I thought this sleeping cat looked very much like calligraphy and vicey voisey, so I hung some from his tail and illuminated that, too.


Everyone always wants to see what the back looks like. So here ya go; the back. Looks like crap, right? Thats why it's not the front.
I tack these patches onto a percale backing which protects the knots and bridges. Sometimes I'll dab a bit of clear nail polish on things if they seem tenuous just to be sure. Another leftover from working on denim clothes; things have to be sturdy.



The Mystic Pontiac 442 Tesseract of Mystery! I thought it would be neat to have the shadow of a fourth dimensional object on my quilt. Drawing a hypercube is a lot harder than you'd think it would be. I was going to make it look all electrical and lightning-y, but I decided to customize it with hot rod flames instead.









The initials of a person who paints like a magician. I hope it doesn't look like he owns the Gas company. It's supposed to be an attenuate painters brush.














This is a blue frog with a wand of black pussywillow over the top and a wand of staghorn willow on the bottom. I started it 2 weeks before the Goonybird was born; my willows were in bloom then and they'd come on like mad things!
When the Goonybird emerged he was cerulean, shaped small and sweet like a small frog you find in the garden, all curled up and blinking. He changed from blue to pale pink to vermillion like a chameleon, all in the space of five minutes, and then he was in our world.

Ok. Thats the result of seven days work. Next are a few pieces I've done in the past and an overview of the project so far. So sit down, strap in, and keep your head, hands and feet inside of the car while this ride is in motion, kids!



This is very much like a beautiful (dead) moth I used to have (tacked to my kitchen wall with a straight pin). When it fell apart I copied this picture of it out of a book. I did it in full strength thread (six strand floss) using a seed stitch and french knots to represent its' matte, velveteen texture.




Step back; the grooviness is almost too much for mortal eyes to bear!
This is cotton floss worked on a cotton-polyester ground, and the polyester content has made it pucker over time. Had it all been pure cotton all the fibers would have 'come into agreement' after being washed and dried on a flat surface and the piece would have remained relatively stable. All embroidery puckers to a certain extent, though. Just not this damn much.






This is an imaginary spider. Honest. I had Shelob in mind; the first Ring movie had just come out. I had a blast working in the beads and the different strengths and stitches of floss to represent the crustaceous abdomen.





I join different patches together on the backing with an embroidered overlay. This is a fatty-fat little chinese good luck bat and some chinese clouds for him to fly through.







Tree copied from a medieval manuscript. The red fruits are fancy cast glass beads and stand proud of the surface. Those sapsuckers are fastened on like barnacles, too...I used fishing line and nail polish to reinforce them. I ain't fucking around here.







Tree copied from a Persian manuscript. Experimenting with a more traditional look I worked in a very loose stitch here and didn't like it much. It's pretty, but it pulls, and eventually it will come out. Traditional embroidery was more for looking at than using.







My girldog Jett. Although she is black, not blue, and does not fly. Much. I'll sew the patch with the stingless bumblebees next to her so she can always play with her favorite toys and never have to worry about them biting her back. Yes, her head really is that small in relation to the rest of her, poor dippy thing.







A cartoon rendering of my boydog Opie, tatoing.
And farting.
Both dogs are done in contoured forbidden stitch with a wrapped split stitch outline and lettering. Opie also sports a split stitch aura of mystic tatoness.










...And this, finally, is a really bad overview of the work so far; at least the stuff on backing. Theres a whole pile of other finished patches waiting to be pieced and joined. However I intend to spare you.

For now.

Bison Demanding! Surgical Mandate, Chrysler LeBaron!

AHA!
You are not rid of me that easily!
I am back!
Yes!
*hackgaghackhackbarfgag ack bleah frap*

Right now I'm at the Stainless Steel Amazons' house watching the Goonybird.

I have arm cars.

A Chevy, a vintageT-bird, a Caddy and I think an Impala.

I was wondering why he kept running back and forth to his room and patting me on the arm. I just looked down and noticed I've been running around for the past few hours with a bunch of car stickers on me.

Taking those off oughta feel real good. Thank you, white people dna, for the fuzzy arms. And for the fuzzy legs, the fuzzy upper lip* the sideburns, and the hairy hobbit toes. Thank God I'm Red. That counteracts the ofay somewhat. Therefore I have the gracious dna of my native ancestors to thank for the fact that, apres shower, I do NOT look like I am showing a Komondor while carrying a Poodle under each arm.

Little Crufts joke there.

I'm ambulatory, but I'm still coughing, and by this I mean coughing until I barf, sometimes. No shit. Of course it doesnt take much to make me blow chow; I even have to be careful brushing my teeth, but still. Not cool.
Ok, maybe a little cool, but it depends on what I've et recently. Say, Oreos. Fuck yeah. Profoundly cool. Black vomit? Come on. Gene Simmons doesn't even do that.

So it looks like I am as recovered as I'll ever be. Seems this last bout of flu fried the fuck out of my lungs to the point I have to go back on a steroid inhaler and a steroid nasal spray too. Now, that has a good side and a bad side...the good side is that I'll be able to breathe and my allergies won't bother me. I'll also have beautiful skin and hair, put on muscle mass with little effort and be full of ambition. The down side is threefold: 1. My face will get round and peachy colored like a goddam alcoholic Swede 2. Merely walking past a person who is thinking about a donut will cause me to gain weight, and 3. I'll be hornier than a three peckered billygoat. Yup. All side effects of steroid use. And I always get 'em. In another week the Biker's going to have to lock himself in the truck to get any sleep.
I'll be standing on the hood flexing my hairy biceps as I try to pry open the cab with a crowbar.
"Let me in, sweetheart! I only wanna talk to you!" WHAM! BASH!

Still, breathing is better than, you know, not breathing. Because not breathing sucks kinda.
Ask me. I know.

Tomorrow I will show you what I spent my week doing. No, not for me this vapid languishing on any bed of pain...mainly because lying down makes my damn lungs fill up with guck; otherwise I'd be on the olympic languishing team, yo...no, I know how to keep myself amused.

Anyway, I have a bunch of pictures to download so watch this space!

Oh. And, a burrito is a rockin' ass combination of a flour or corn tortilla wrapped around some nice warm refries, with maybe some onions, maybe some cheese. Definitely hot sauce. I've done a disturbingly large number of posts devoted to this most perfect of foods, so backread.



*also partially the fault of Catholocism. Check it out sometime; it's a fact. Catholic women are fricken Sasquatches. Even converts. Oh hell yes. When My ex-mother-in-law converted, one week later BAMMO! Barbershop quartet! It's just one of those mysteries of nature.

burritos in the news

Burritos in the news! Newsmaking burritos! Burritos on the move! Around town and in your neiborhood! Burritos that are newsworthy and making news even as we speak! Or whatever. Read. I dunno.
Burritos: natures' most perfect food

My darlings, I am going to take a break for about a week. We are all recuperating and nobody wants to hear about that. Same shit, different day, nay say, pa?
I love you all deeply, truly and alarmingly. If you MUST communicate, communicate via the magic of email at:
redace1960@yahoo.com

.....Now if you'll excuse me, I have about a quart of phlegm to chuck up.

please help me.

It has been a Carnival of Pestilence here at Rancho FirstNations. Bacteria roam freely, breeding in uncontrolled wads. Virii are forming herds of brackish evil. The trail of pain is written in effluvia, phlegm and befouled towelling.
Yes, I am sick again, yes, I have bronchitis again; or rather, I still have bronchitis, and it is resisting all antibiotics. Next week I will be rippin down the Cephalexin, most likely, and that means I'll be blogging between frantic sprints to the toilet and frantic trips to the quickiemart to buy Ritz Crackers to forestall frantic trips to the toilet. Because Cephalexin and my lower intestinal tract are not the best of friends, friends.
Meanwhile....
Yesterday I juggled Germans.
In this corner at upwards of seventy the Playboy of the Western World, his walker and his overly complicated, day-long series of nuclear cardiac assesments!
...And in this corner, weighing in at none of your business, The Yummy Biker and his amazing Blooping Bellybutton! Bloop, purple! Bloop, not purple! Bloop, outie! Lookit! Bloop, innie! Are you looking? Look!
Both of them were scheduled for their procedures
ON THE SAME GODDAMN DAY.
And I was barely able to walk without pausing to huff and blow and drool and pant and watch the pretty fireworks go off around the sides of my field of vision and try not to pass out.
YAY!
Guess who had to drive?
First up, the Playboy. We pull up in front of his residence and there's a fire engine and an ambulance out front and a gurney in the lobby, which was full of interested wrinkly observers. No, it wasn't the Playboy's turn, but I didn't know that before I took a sprint into the place and almost passed out in front of the receptionists desk and rolled down the stairs. It was like a goddamn wedding reception and how we managed to get the Playboy out of there I'll never know...A tiny little old lady with blue lips was the star of the show and she was doing the Rose Festival float wave as they loaded her onto the gurney, everyone was chatting and re-establishing old acquaintance with the firemen and the emt's, people from different floors and dinner schedules who hadn't seen each other for a few hours were catching up, and the Playboy in the middle of it all announcing to everyone at random 'I have to get a Nuclear Assesment!' and receiving the admiring congratulations of everyone in earshot.' Wow! I've never heard of that before! A nuclear assessment! '
We bundled him into our tiny car, folded the walker into the tiny trunk, bungeed it shut and headed off to the lab, which was running late. OF COURSE.
Left him there with some magazines.
Took the Biker to his appointment...oh no, wait, I mean, the Biker DROVE and I PASSENGED BECAUSE AS LONG AS THERE IS A BREATH OF LIFE IN THE MAN HE HAS TO DRIVE. I AM INCAPABLE OF DRIVING AT AN ACCEPTABLE LEVEL OF SKILL TO SUIT HIM. Of course you have to realize that JUNIOR MOTHERFUCKING JOHNSON , MARIO ANDRETTI, AND SHIRLEY 'CHA CHA' MULDOWNEY WOULD BE INCAPABLE OF DRIVING AT THIS LEVEL OF SKILL.
We got there and made arrangements to meet at noon, assuming (naiively) that since his procedure was scheduled for five minutes hence, that it would be over and he'd be all straightened up from the anaesthetic.
I was NOT looking forward to this part of our program. The man reacts very badly indeed to general and becomes combative and loud. That kind of behavior from a sober person his size is frightening, but coming from a disoriented man who is both incoherent and unable to walk a straight line who I am married to i's hilarious, because I am kind of a bitch like that. I mean fall on the floor hysterical, too...but god help you if you laugh. Because THAT, he'll remember. He won't remember asking you at the top of his lungs to 'Ma fa gub wha voobuh nuh gub" in the lobby and he won't remember trying to enter the car by the drivers side door and then denying loudly and publically and repeatedly and semicoherently that he had any thought whatsoever about driving as he attempts to sidle past you and sit behind the wheel... oh, but he will remember that when he tried to put a chew in, and he missed and poked himself in the side of the face, you laughed. Yes. That, he will remember, and you'll never hear the end of how you ridiculed him while he was helpless.
Marry a German. Do it now. I'll wait.
Drive back across town to the Playboy, who is finished with his first procedure. Since he hasn't eaten since 6pm the previous day we go out for lunch at the olde englishe halfe timberede lesbian bar. Outside, we were greeted by a wino who was scavenging cigarette butts off the pavement. He followed us inside and began loudly trying to bum a pancake off the bartender. ( Hey! I want a pancake! How mush I got fo a pancake! Gimme one! Gib me a pancake!) While the company was iffy, the food and service remained excellent and we had fun people watching and cracking each other up with outrageous observations.
Then back we go to the same clinic for his second procedure, which is running late, of course. We kill time reading magazines and criticising all the recipes.
Then I have to leave him cooling his heels while I go back to get my Biker out of pawn.
It is noon.
The Biker has only JUST GONE IN FOR HIS PROCEDURE.
Please come back in 45 minutes, he'll be all done by then, I am assured. Oh, he'll be completely out of the anaesthesia too, I am promised.
Yeah. Right. Ok.
Back across town to get the playboy.
The Playboy has ONLY JUST GONE IN FOR HIS PROCEDURE. Come back in an hour. he should be done by then.
Back across town to the Biker.
By now I am nervous as a stripper in a room full of lacrosse players. I am expecting to have to drag him out of the office with him three sheets to the wind, trying to steal all the candies off the receptionists desk and slurring 'Wheres my chew? Go get me some chew! I forgot my chew! They took my chew! Go look for my....' you get the picture.
I go back.
He's done.
You want to come on back and we'll give you all his post-op instructions?
No.
They make me.
And he's fine.
Apparently once they FINALLY got around to making the 1/2 inch incision and taking the three tiny little stitches, they only used a twilight anaesthetic and lots of local. He's lucid. He is ambulatory.
And he wants to drive.
I do not let him drive.
He wants to eat. In a restaurant.
I make him sit in the passengers seat and watch me order him a small shake from a drive-thru. All the while he is clutching the grabhandle as though AT ANY MOMENT I will floor the gas and drive off uncontrollably into oncoming traffic and hit a fuel tanker and explode and roll in a ball of flames into a grade school full of crippled orphans and DIEDIEDIEDIEDIE... yeah. By the time we are partway down the road the fabric around this handle is beginning to tear from him grabbing it like a spazmodeus every time I slow down for a corner.
Grab the first German you see and marry him. Really. You'll thank me.
Baaaaaack across town to the Playboy.
The playboy is still cooling his heels. While I am commiserating, the biker roams off while I'm not looking. When I get up to look for him, I come back and the Playboy is gone as well.
Where is my father in law? Oh, they took him back for the stress test a minute ago. He'll be right out.
I decide to stay in one place. I figure that will make me easier to find, in case either one of them is so inclined. I am also experiencing the coming attractions of an asthma attack, so I take a couple big woofs off my inhaler and wonder whether or not passing out and being hospitalized might not be the better option at this point.
The Playboy returns.
He looks like he has seen a ghost.
He is walking very, very slowly.
You can see the white all the way around his eyes.
He died again.
When they injected him for the stress test.
While all this is being explained to me, the Playboy and I both sit down, wheezing and gasping and holding our chests and shaking our heads.
The biker returns and everything is explained all over again.
The procedure is rescheduled.
We leave.
The Biker wants to drive.
No. I realize that is been almost an hour and a half now since you had abdominal surgery but no, you cannot drive. I know this is both unreasonable and mean on my part. Sit in the back seat and grab the headrest every time I slow down for a corner. Ok? Ok.
All the way back to the Playboy's residence he and the Biker make plans about how they're going to go shopping together the next day.
Right. And run the Boston Marathon and conquer Everest and fight rabid republicans in a steel cage suspended over a pen of starving zombies, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Today, the biker, as predicted, is lying on my sofa watching SpongeBob Squarepants, moaning and clutching his tummy and asking me to bring him shit, refusing to take his pain medication and stumbling around like Frankenfrickenstein.
However I think I was able to convince the Playboy yesterday that the isotopes they shot him full of would make his whiz glow in the dark, and the thought of him turning the light out every time to check the contents of the bowl is the only thing that sustains me.
That's all I have left.
Pray for me.