sharing the positive now

she is "seeking to move to a more positive environment that facilitates personal growth" for her and her 14-month old. that is a tall order for a 2 bedroom apt in Troy, but we are the agreed-upon tableau where this growth will unfold.

we like her, and the baby. we know her, she's a former Sage student and outspoken woman. smart, motivated, comfortable in her skin. and seeking happiness. this is something we understand.

so welcome jessica and jordyn. maybe betthany too (no they aren't lesbian lovers).

this is a good place, this house.
we have been officially told that there is positive energy radating from here.
what a change from what came long before.

weddings make good landmarks

OK, it was 8 or 9 years ago yesterday that our little sister was married. we remember the wedding party very well. we were standing on the sidelines with PG, man of the hour, marveling at the amazingness of the whole thing: our brother had just finished aggressive treatment for lymphoma, the entire family -- california, florida, and NY -- were in the same room for the first time in who knows how long, and PG and we were together after some major bumpy roads. oh the good old days.

the chicken dance
the electric slide
our brother's bald head and waxy pallor
our father's obstinate video-taping
our sister's adherence to tradition
the $1400 wedding dress with long sleeves in August
the pasta buffet and cocktail hour
the three course meal
the lemon sorbet between plates
our sore feet and an ice-blue gown... ugh

but it was certainly a memorable point, a chapter unto itself
we continue to wonder at it, from so many years later.
happy anniversary Effie.

there's a fog in our head

yes, a new, damp, cloying cloud has taken up residence behind our eyes. but we are still (nay, even more) our usual curmudgeonly selves, wanting to stay wrapped in the white sheets all day today and quite unhappy about having to leave that womby place and drag our sorry selves here, to work.

it's not so bad, really. we just likes to whine. (we wonder, whatever happened to the fabulous kvetch.com? not out there anymore, far as we can see.)

"therapee, therapist"

on thursday we told our therapist that we are going to write a novel in november and that it will be all about what goes on between he and we... he laughed. but it will happen and it will surely be filled with tons of transference and freudian scenes. we are such good therapees that we never let on how we really feel about "John," but in november, watch out.


rated R for crude language, gore, and raunchy sex

flicker flicker

drink, smoke, snort, sorry

we visited an old friend this weekend -- a woman we had not seen in about 8 years, a woman we used to "run" with in college.

last time we saw her she had just been proposed to by some loser duded named Brian. when we made contact last week after oh-so-long, she had JUST signed the divorce papers. he gets everything so she does not have to pay him alimony.

so she's living at the parent's place again, in chelsea, she is clean but nooottt squeaky clean. and still extremely well-equipped to persuade our little selves to break all sorts of rules and do all manner of nasty things to our bodies. we are still recovering today.

cue crickets

Ok, so do you think bloggers are simply lonely people who like to talk to themselves via their own solipsistic, narcissistic web pages?

Don't all of you out there answer at once.

falling back into memory

this time last year: we were at her side as much as we could possibly be. it was not necessarily pleasant. we (all) were wishing hoping praying pretending there was some other way out for mesa, while her human decline only accelerated. it was silly to imagine she might make it. but we did imagine that. we wanted that to be possible. we clung to the possibility.

looking ahead at the next two weeks feels like Lent to us --- we are walking the signs of mesa's death, reliving each step, each stumble, each fall. ah, the memories are so bitter and so sweet --- she was still here, and she was suffering so much.

oh, she was our friend. our dear sister and heart's mate. we felt it, and there was agreement --- our birth signs, our star charts, our life's paths, our love for each other.

mesa we are missing you tonight. the pain of the last year is building up, and all we can lean on is the truth that you are certainly beyond your pain now, hopefully beyond our pain, and free in the way that only the dead or the never-born can be free.

"per aspera ad astra"

new drug

our doctor -- well she is not really a doctor, she is a psychiatric nurse practitioner "NPP" -- has given us some samples (hehe samples) of a new drug. called lexapro.

we find ourselves eager to do some web searching, find out what this one is about. but first, we really want to ask the little white pills, "are you a good drug -- or a bad drug?"

such a crapshoot. the ones that work well get toxic after a while, the ones that don't work usually have fewer annoying sideeffects.

but she said if this one is no good, we can always go back to our current love, zoloft. the z is just fine, except for the fact that it completely erases our sex drive. oh, and our suspicion (always met with sympathetic looks) that it's rotting our liver.

so lexapro it is. the package is very cute. there is a little gender-neutral and faceless person with arms outstretched rising in a sort of ghosty or phoenix-from-the-flames way from a strange spiral shape. cool.

off we go.

answering ourselves

we are bothered because we are a hypocrite. we feel better now.

irritant

our friend, we'll call her Zadie, is a black woman. we hesitate -- recoil against -- using the phrase "african american" because, really, who the hell knows where anyone's ancestors came from? it seems presumptuous to assume. maybe we are wrong, but...

Zadie has issues with being black. though you wouldn't know it when you first meet her. or for months after. in fact, it only came out long after she and we became friends.

it's interesting. she is married to a white guy (european american? ugh) and has two absolutely beautiful, smart, healthy mixed-breed daughters. Zadie tries to present the best multi-culti world to her girls: black angels at christmas, enrollment in a progressive charter school, dancing lessons, auntie "us"...

but there is a chip. and it's right there on Zadie's shoulder. she experienced a little meltdown a week or so ago when she pulled into a fast-food joint and saw, through the pickup window, some dork wearing a confederate flag belt buckle to hold up his polyester maroon-and-gold costume -- oops we mean uniform. she refused the order she was about to pay for and asked for the manager -- reasonable. and told the manager how affronted she was. Zadie got an apology, had a life lesson to share with her little girls (so little to hear about this kind of harsh crap!) and found her way home .

but then, when Z and we were sharing a drink, she confessed to another big bump. she is in the midst of a lawsuit against a former employer. apparently, they passed her over for a promotion or fired her or something, and Z believes it's based on race.

we are so sorry. we love Zadie and like we said, we believe that who the hell knows where anyone comes from. we are all the same. so why does this bother us about our friend?? the two incidents she shared with us are INDEED annoying, wrong, and worth bitching about out loud. what is our problem?

only part of the problem

it came to us as a revelation -- but more likely we've just been in denial. we are a timewaster. a terrible habitual timewaster. we are so very good at it, the problem goes way beyond simple garden-variety laziness. this is malicious intentional self-sabotage.

we are aware that there is nothing like the good feeling that comes from an honest day's work, yet here we are, once again wasting time. accomplishing nothing that we can show for today, yesterday, saturday, friday... but we do this without the free-wheeling refreshing abandon that laziness would imply. in fact, we are hardly relaxed, instead, wasting time in a stressed sort of way. brilliant. and then stressing even more later, when time's up.