Leezer

 I’m getting this for my boss on his birthday.  It’s April 17th. 

Update: Here are some lyrics from my friend Katyess,  from a song by the Arrogant Worms:

One day I sang an aria that caused a hernia


 it was a massive bulge

 to the doctor I divulged

 that I still had to play though it caused me massive pain

 I wont throw in the towel just please hold in my bowels

  I love my hernia belt

 I love my hernia belt

it'll keep my guts inside me

 til the end of the show

  I've got a little friend down there (not that one)

a different little friend down there

 a better one you can't find

to hold in your intestines

a high fashion wrap

that hits beneath the belt

I don't cause a fuss

 in velcro I do trust

 I love my hernia belt

 I love my hernia belt

it'll keep my guts inside me

 until I have my surgery

what are they gonna shave

 what are they gonna save

when they fix my hernia

 hope the doctor doesnt slip

 when he cuts into my skin

I just want to piss in one direction!

 now I love my hernia repair

I love my hernia repair

it'll kep my guts inside me

for the rest of my life

The photo above has nothing to do with what I’m going to write about.  But what better occasion to post this photo than in a list of the seven songs I’m loving right now?  I was tagged by Cruel Shoes and I welcome the opportunity to talk about my favorite songs, as follows:

Go It Alone, Beck.  This song is so beguiling in its simplicity.  (That sounds pretentious, doesn’t it?)  It’s just a drumstick on a muted cymbal, a bass, then some clapping, and maybe another instrument or two.  I don’t even think Beck opens his mouth all the way when he’s singing this song; he’s kind of just mumbling it.  Saying he’s “singing” is being generous. He’s hitting no more than three notes.  But it’s dark and primitive and I love it .

In the music-video I’ve choreographed in my head of this song, I’m all dolled-up in a black turtleneck, black skirt, black stiletto boots, and my hair is Bridget Bardot-messy.  I’m walking through a dark alley in some industrial part of town. Of course, the pavement - no, cobblestones - are wet because it’s just rained and there’s a thick fog in the air.  Oh, and I’m wearing a ton of black eyeliner and it’s smudged a little.  Why am I doing this in the music video? I don’t know!  Why is there a Japanese Elvis in The Killers’ Read My Mind, which brings me to . .

Read My Mind, The Killers.  I can’t get enough of this song. I listen to it twice, maybe three times a day.  I love the line, “A southern drawl, a world unseen; a city wall and a trampoline.”  My husband has the sexiest southern drawl, although he’s lost most of it now.  But I love the song because it speaks for itself.  Such a sweet song.

When You Were Young, The Killers.  I was young once.  I still feel twenty inside. But I’m not as stupid as I was then.  Everyone tries to imagine who she’ll love when she grows up.  “He doesn’t look a think like Jesus. But he talks like a gentleman.  Like you imagined when …  YOU WERE YOUNG!!”  I never imagined a boy who looked like Jesus.  Carlton Fisk, but not Jesus. 

Say Goodbye, Dave Matthews.  My husband and I saw Dave Matthews in concert about three times in the ’90s before we were parents and responsible.   We always went to the Gorge, which is a large outdoor amphitheater in Eastern Washington with a spectacular view of the river and cliffs.  The last time we were there and trying to leave we were in a mob so thick that some college guy behind me kept grabbing my boobs so my husband had to wedge himself in between me and the other people. 

I love this song because its about two friends - one male on female - who are just friends but there’s “a storm outside,” and “the fire’s bright,” and  you get the picture.  He figures that they’ll have this one night together then “tomorrow?  Back to being friends.”  Another sweet little song.

Dig, Incubus. I like this song because it’s not bright and cheery, but intense and driving.  I like the little tinkling guitar hitting the eighth notes in background. It’s a little bit of an underwater sound and I’m all about the underwater world.

Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters, Elton John.  This song makes me sad but I love it anyway.  Once after my husband and I had been married a couple of years we weren’t getting along and fighting a lot .  One morning we had a bad fight before each of us left for work.  He left the house in his car and I in mine at about 8:00 a.m., each of us mad as hell but tired at the same time.   Tired of fighting.  We sat in our separate cars at the same stoplight and this song came on the radio.  I looked over at him in his car and he didn’t know I could see him.  He just looked so sad.  I felt at that moment that I was very possibly making another human being miserable.  And a good person at that.  I think things changed for the better after that moment. 

American Girl, Tom Petty.  It’s hard for me not to think of that scene from Silence of the Lambs when the girl who is about to be a victim of the “puts the lotion on”-guy is listening to this song on her car radio, and it’s a weird juxtaposition because this is such a happy song.  The song still makes me happy whenever I hear it. 

Fooled Around and Fell in Love, Elvin Bishop.  This song reminds me of going to Hawaii with my family when I was a kid.  This song was popular during that trip.  It makes me happy every time I hear it.  I’m glad they used it in The Family Stone soundtrack.  An excellent movie, by the way, if you  haven’t seen it.

What is the point of a blog if one can’t go on and on ad nauseum about one’s self? As if it isn’t enough that I write about my thoughts and feelings as though others gave a damn, I’m about to undertake a task of mindless hubris and list forty-three things about moi that you probably don’t need nor want to know.  Nonetheless, here it is:

1.  I don’t like fireworks. Never have.  I’d rather go to the dentist than see a fireworks display.  In fact, my favorite “fireworks” as a kid, if they can be called “fireworks,” were the worms.

2.  I think Lenny Kravitz is under-rated as an artist.

3.  I once wore a used swim suit I found in my gym’s lost and found.  I forgot mine at home and I promised my daughter I’d take her swimming and I didn’t have time to go home to get my own.  But it looked and smelled clean.

4.  My favorite colors are tangerine orange and navy blue, but not together.

5.  Biggest fear: dying before my daughter is grown.

6.  I can wiggle my ears.

7.  I won my sixth grade (or was it fifth grade?) science fair.  I built a terrarium.

8.  Least favorite part of my body - the spot where my thighs meet my butt.

9.  I drove through a closed garage door when I was seventeen.

10.  I hate the Beatles.  I couldn’t care less that John Lennon is dead.

11.  I think Tony Blair is sexy. It’s the voice.

12.  I would rather be able to breath underwater than fly.

13.  My fingers are longer than my husbands.

14.  I once escaped from an intruder trying to break into my apartment by climbing down three stories of balconies.

15.  I can’t drink hard liquor without getting sick.  Wine is fine, though.

16.  Once in college I was standing at the elevator next to a guy I didn’t know well. To make conversation, I said, “Do you have a ham sandwich?  I’m hungry.”  He, in fact, pulled a ham sandwich out of his pocket and gave it to me.

17.  My roommate in college was homecoming queen but didn’t want to be so she went to her coronation ceremony without taking a shower.

18.  My favorite movie of all time: The Big Lebowski or Office Space

19.  I took tap-dancing lessons when I was little but hated it.

20.  I was never a cheer leader.

21.  I hate it when people talk loud in public like they don’t care if every one can hear their conversations; this is especially true for people on cell phones.

22.  I love mushrooms.

23.  (half-way done, whew!)  I hate country music and jazz.

24.  I don’t keep painkillers lying around the house because I’d eat them like candy.

25.  I wish I would have lived in Washington D.C. when I was younger.

26.  My idea of perfect happiness:  At home with my family, snow falling outside, no where I have to be, good wine, a fire in the fire place and a chicken in the oven, watching the History Channel.

27.  If I had twenty four hours in which to do whatever I wanted I would spend it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or in Venice, just wandering.

28.  If I had to choose a uniform to wear each and every day for the rest of my life:  Civil War Calvary.

29.  The designated hitter rule is stupid.

30.  I don’t really like ice cream.  But I love potato chips.

31.  I broke a rib when I was pegnant and it hurt more than giving birth.

32.  I watched the marriage of Charles and Diana on television in 1981 and thought at the time she was carrying out her own death sentence.

33.  I really want to go to the Florida Keys.

34.  My best feature:  eyebrows.

34.  My good friend’s ex makes his life a living hell for him and their ten year old daughter. Sometimes I wish she’d drop dead of a heart attack.

35.  I don’t think I’m aware of the extent of the racism in America.  Mostly because I was born and raised in Seattle where it’s not that bad.

36.  I am easliy suffocated emotionally.

37.  I think there might be something - SOMETHING, although I don’t know what - to the concept of astrology.

38.  I have a recurring nightmare of being caught in a tidal wave - the nightmare started long before the 12/04 tsunami.

39.  I went to a phsycic once who said dreaming was as important a part of my life as my waking life.

40.  No one in my family has ever had lice.

41.  My hair is naturally blond.

42.  I won’t watch the local news nor will I read the local paper.

43.  Most overrated virtue: thrift.

Last year, I read an article in the Seattle Times (that apex of exemplary journalism) suggesting that a Korean airline would offer discounted flights in which passengers weren’t assigned seats but would stand during flight.   At the time, I questioned how much more abysmal air travel can possibly become.

Gone are the days when air travel was glamorous , expensive and therefore reserved for the few who could afford such luxuries.  I imagine myself travelling then, wearing a pencil skirt, white gloves, pill-box hat, and carrying - not a purse - but a handbag.  In this fantasy I look like Grace Kelly and sit next to Cary Grant while we drank Manhattans and discuss jazz, Noel Coward, and the Kennedys.   Rather than methane and disinfectant, the smell of roast duck and cinnamon waft from the galley.  I arrive at my destination rested, refreshed, and - curiously - much more affluent than when I departed.

Over the past year since reading that article, I’ve traveled by air a few times and the experiences were so awful that having been transported in a burlap bag in a cattle car would have been preferable.   I loathe travelling by air and know so many others similarly disposed that I’m thinking of starting my own airline.  It’s going to be called the Percocet Express.  Here’s how it will work:

First of all, Percocet Express will carry only those passengers who are accepted into the program.  The program requires certification by a physician in good standing that the passenger is physically fit and able to endure the rigors of the Pre-Boarding and In-Flight protocols.  Passengers accepted into the program must also be willing to sign a carefully-drafted release, hold harmless, and indemnification agreement.   Acceptance into the program entitles each passenger to one-year of unlimited travel to the destinations of the traveler’s choice PROVIDED that the passenger is willing to submit to the following pre-boarding and in-flight conditions. 

 Pre-Boarding Phase I or what I like to call, “Clean-As-A-Whistle Stop Cafe” occurs after each passenger checks luggage and successfully passes through security.   Each passenger will then enter a waiting room not unlike the waiting room at a doctor’s office.  The passenger will remove all clothing, jewelry, and any other accouterments that didn’t accompany him into this world and that he won’t take with him when he dies.  Such personal effects will be stored in a zip-lock bag and will be kept on the passenger’s person. 

The naked passenger/ziplock bag will enter the Colonic Chamber otherwise known as the “Clean-As-A-Whistle Stop Cafe.”  Here the passenger will receive a warm saline colonic that will evacuate his bowels.   This process will be done assembly line-fashion, but to preserve the privacy of the passenger, a hospital gown will be worn by the passenger.  Passengers will enter the Colonic Chamber one-by-one.

Pre-Boarding Phase II is a bit more fun.  It involves narcotics.    Each passenger will lie on a gurney where he will be intravenously fed a narcotic cocktail of percocet (thus the name, “Percocet Express”) and a secret ingredient that will render the passenger, not unconscious, but blissfully unaware of his surroundings and unable to detect foul odors or noises.   As you may have guessed, the purpose of the previously-administered colonic is to ensure that no passenger finds himself having to go to the bathroom while in such a state.   The passenger will then be rolled-off the gurney where he will be draped in the softest angora robe and slippers (the color of which will be chosen by the passenger).  A headset will be placed on the passenger’s ears, and music, inspirational messages, or affirmations will be played for the passenger during the flight.  Each passenger will be placed in his own personal Luxury Pod: a cozy egg-shaped bed in which the passenger will sleep/dream during the flight.

Pre-Boarding Phase III  represents the loading of the Luxury Pods  into the belly of the aircraft known as Pod Village.  Pod Village will be designed by a team of theatrical artists to resemble various themes:  Moon-Scape, Tuscan Villa, or Rainforest, for example.  At this point in the process, most passengers will be unconscious.

 The In-Flight process is simply that - the conduct of the aircraft from its point of departure to the final destination.  Upon reaching the destination, Percocet Express personnel will ferry each Luxury Pod to the “Wake Up, You’re Here!” room, where passengers will slowly arise and will have access to a personal Starbucks barista who will create a beverage of the passenger’s choice, and will escort the passenger to a private changing room in which the passenger will dress himself out of the ziplock bag.

 When I get this little idea off the ground, I intend to conduct an IPO that will make the national news.  Stay tuned.

My name is Ernie.   This is a picture of me when my Mom brought me home last year.  I look pretty much the same now, except I am about ten pounds bigger than I was back then.  As you recall, my arrival sent my Dad through the roof, and he questioned whether he could ever trust my Mom again to keep her word.  But my Dad likes me now.  He even calls me “little guy,” or “giant fighting Shih Tzu,” although I don’t really like much to fight. Just play.

 There’s this six year old little girl who lives at my house.  She’s o.k., but she likes to cover me up in blankets and make me wear her underpants.  I don’t mind though.

Last Friday my Mom was pretty mad at the little girl because she spread half of a tub of margerine over me.  I was buttered up like a cob of corn.  Then I ran around outside and rolled in the dirt. 

 My Mom gave me not one, but two baths to get the margerine out.  My hair is still a little limp and oily on top.  It’s not as puffy and full of body as my Mom would like.  Not surprisingly, I really don’t care.  But I have to go to the beauty shop this week.  I like it there.  They give me treats.

My mom pooped her pants at the opera.   There.  I said it.  She’s going to kill me - KILL ME - for writing about this but, what the hey.  She’s on vacation in California without much access to the internet.  (I know, I know. There’s always access in Wi-Fi coffee houses and the like, but this isn’t how she rolls, as the young kids would say.) Chances are, they’ll be too busy reading my adoption stuff to find this wee bit of history buried within the annals (hee hee) of my putrid little blog.

So here goes:  My Mom somehow wound up seeing Wagner’s The Ring series at the Seattle Opera House.  I was about twenty at the time, and home from college for the summer.  About one in the morning, she came and sat on the edge of the bed and just started talking, as was her practice.  (Tangent: She would never ask if I was awake, she would just sit on the bed and start talking.  A few years back during one of my migraine attacks, I had to go to the doctor to get a shot that would put me to sleep and out of my misery.  She sat on the bed and talked even though I was so drugged up I couldn’t stay conscious.  Yes, I know it isn’t forever, and yes, I’ll miss it terribly when I don’t have it anymore).

 So she sat on the bed telling me how she pooped her pants at the opera.  Boy, I shot up when I heard that!  It was summer and it was hot.  She had a hankerin for beer and polish sausages with sauerkraut.  Not a good combination for the opera.

Apparently, opera etiquette is quite exacting, if not draconian.  When the lights dim, no one is allowed in or out of the theater/auditorium, whatever it is.  So the lights dimmed, the curtain went up, and she felt that churning and burning deep in her gut.  She knew she had to exit immediately. 

She jumped up from her seat and, apologizing to those she stepped over along the way, made the usher let her out.  She didn’t.  Quite.  Make.  It. 

 In the ladies room, she removed all her undergarments and - I think this is how the story went - threw them in the trash because she didn’t see the need to try to salvage them.  Besides, where was she going to put them?  Was she really going to carry around  wet undies, slip, and pantyhose in her purse at the opera?

 She washed herself up, and like the good Swedish farm stock she is, she sashayed herself in her dress with no slip and no panties right back into her seat and enjoyed the opera.

I was amazed.  Fortunately, she had just returned from Mexico and, because I think my mother is part Indian or something (I know I know! “Native American,” blah blah blah!) she was quite tan.  She looked lovely. 

 Things like that happen to my mother, and she is so awesome, she just laughs about it.  This is one of the reasons I love her so much. 

How do you like that, Mom?  You do a lifetime of the right things, parent-wise, you give and you give and you give, and in the end your daughter loves you because you found humor in pooping your pants at the opera!??  Damn straight. Damn. Straight.  (Dad, don’t show this to her, o.k???)

When you have children you pretty much have to accept the fact that you’re going to be covered with vomit and poo for the next eighteen years.  There’s nothing you can do about it, so you might as well get used to the smell of vomit and poo.  Learn to embrace it, I say!

Our daughter likes to sleep in the marital bed.  We don’t let her, not because we enjoy a raucous and prolific sex life, but because she sleeps like a whirling dervish.  We succumbed to allowing her to sleep with us on Fridays, when it wasn’t so imortant that we be able to close our eyes all night.

Last night about 1:00 a.m. I was watching “The Guardian” (don’t bother. It’s a lame rework of “Officer and a Gentleman,”) when my husband came downstairs and, as is his practice, shouted at me that our daughter was projectile vomiting.  By “as is his practice,” I mean that whenever my husband finds himself overwhelmed by the messiness of parenthood (read, poop, barf, and pee) he shouts at me as if somehow I have created the mess.  In a certain way I have, but not without some help from him.   So anywhoo, I wander upstairs, completely calm and serene, and hug my crying, vomiting child.  She is so upset by the fire hose that has erupted out of her esophagus that she is hysterical.  I hug her tight, comforting her, meanwhile feeling the vomit ooze and smear all over my body and into my hair.    I take her downstairs, and quietly put her in a warm tub.  Within twenty minutes, she is clean, dry, happy, and fast asleep.

And I smell like vomit.  I shower at about 2:00 a.m., and because I’m wide awake, watch the end of “The Guardian.” (It doesn’t improve. The only redeeming thing about the movie is getting to look at Ashton Kutcher for two solid hours.  Nothing more).

 This morning, our house smells of vomit.  We had to put all of our bedding outside until we can get it through the wash.  I had to buy candles to light throughout the house to cover the smell. 

To make matters worse, I was in the bathroom at about ten a.m. this morning and, because I haven’t gone to the bathroom alone in six years, my dog was in the bathroom with me.  He puked all over the floor. 

On my first day back to work after my maternity leave ended six years ago, I put on a nice suit and a pair of high heels and headed of to court.  My baby puked all over my jacket five minutes before I left the house.  I don’t think I ever got the smell of puke out of my hair that day.  It should have been an omen to me.  My life had changed and it would never be the same.  I will always be covered in poo or vomit, if not literally, in the figurative sense.  Parenthood is worth it though, because by the time you become a parent - hopefully - cleaning up after your own vomit has become a wee bit old and it’s time to make someone else the center of the universe.  The center of a universe of poo, pee, puke, and love.

Epilogue:  Sunday, 0700 hours. I don’t feel so good.  I puke my guts out for a couple of hours, go back to bed, and don’t wake up until Monday 0730 hours.  It is now Monday 0952 hours.  I think I am going to die . . . .

First of all, thank you ALL for the comments of support and encouragement you sent yesterday when I announced our imminent trip to China.  I never thought I would find - in cyberspace - such wonderful people as you. 

If any of  you are interested, I’ve started a blog on the whole adoption process here: A Song Heard Far Away.  This blog, however, will remain as sophomoric and childish as ever.

In June or July my husband, my daughter, and my mother and I will be travelling to Shenzhen to adopt our new two year-old daughter, Song Song.  She is beautiful.  We will give her an American name, although it hasn’t been decided upon. 

 I am somewhat consumed with this prospect and its attendant plans and questions.   I may start a new blog about it.  If so, I may place this one on hiatus for awhile.  What say ye?