Le maudit Mo D.

trash the dress

Pandagon has an entry today about the "trash the dress" phenom, wherein brides post-nup go out and "trash their dress," which to them means taking sexy morning-after photos in a pool or ocean, gazing seductively at the camera. Nobody really trashes their dress.

I didn't particularly like my wedding dress. I was the laziest, most uninterested bride ever and just walked into Unbridaled and said "sell me something that hides the damn crater that isn't foofy and is less than $500." That is not how one should buy a wedding dress, but there you go. I had vague plans to get another wedding dress after the surgery that didn't happen and drag Borpe out to Vegas for recommitment vows in the presence of Elvis/photo op, but since that's probably not going to happen, I am left with a dress I could give a shit about. I've thought about dying it black. Occasionally there are events that are appropriate for its revival. However, due to the fact that it's just a plain white silk sheath dress and not some flouncy layered monument to the virginity I lost to someone else years ago, I don't think that arty photos of me shooting bullets at it and grinding it into a mud puddle would have much cultural relevance. Besides, I don't want anything to happen to my pillbox hat.

meat makes think

Today, while I was sitting around the HRC reading room waiting for the nice page to fetch the Dame Enid Van Wyck Picklepussy Papers for my current research job, I was perusing the NYTimes online and learned that the owner of the Johnsonville bratwurst company has passed. Five years ago, I wouldn't have known a Johnsonville brat if you thrust one sideways into my left eustachian tube, but because of Bob, my midwestern meat-lovin' husband, I am now familiar with Wisconsin bratwurst culture and customs. Bob spent most of his youth in Wisconsin and hails from the Bratwurst Capitol of the World, Sheboygan. That we both hail from food-related Capitols of the World is just one of the countless reasons that Bob + Mo = magic.

Sheboygan's main attraction is its Bratwurst Days, sponsored by the Sheboygan Jaycees and Kohler, maker of fine bathroom fixtures. I wish that their slogan on the bratdays website was "Kohler: Where Your Brat Goes When You're Done With It," but of course it's not. Bob would object to my sullying a local tradition with my apparent poop fetish, but tough shit. BD happens in August, so I was thinking maybe Meat Man and I could celebrate 11.5 months of wedded bliss with a trip up to his hometown to eat sausage sandwiches and enjoy musical headliner Dokken. We could stay at a La Quinta and even go visit T-Square and Al down in Madison. And eat Babcock Hall ice cream! It could be an entire trip focused on the consuption of fatty foods! We could come home ten pounds heavier and with the gout.

Yesterday I attended the new Farmers Market with Nadine and Andy. Among the many vendors was a truck capped with a ceramic roast chicken that was outfitted as a mobile spit. Seasoned chickens spun on the rotisserie while improvised word-of-mouth marketing occurred in the line. I overheard one customer foaming at the mouth over how this was the best chicken he's ever had, his girlfriend nodding and wiping anticipatory saliva from the corners of her mouth. The vendor guy was loudly repeating and accepting the compliments. Both Nadine and I came away with half a chicken. The chicken is split with a pair of bone-cutting scissors and is served in a bag. I must say that the chicken is hot and flavorful and is definitely worthy of a repeat trip.

About six or seven vendors were peddling tomatoes. I wondered to myself if there is some kind of tomato turf war heating up. Some tomatoes looked healthier than others. Maybe the bumpy yellowish ones were some artisanal variety that is really delicious but just looks kind of beat-up.

There was a plethora of youngsters in the 2-5 age range availing themselves of the coolness of the fountain. Obviously the parents had prepared for this and had outfitted their kinder in swimwear. One young boy very unself-consciously made it known that he prefered to experience the water unclad and ditched his shorts in a puddle. His indulgence was brief, as Mom gave chase with the shorts in her hand, demanding he cover his bottom in public so that the surrounding marketgoers didn't think she was an inattentive parent. The young boy had the "naked at home is okay/naked in public is not okay" rule re-read to him and he scampered back to the fountain defeated. I don't think he knows that it will be another 18-20 years until he can do that, in college, drunk as hell, before society will accept public nudity from him again.

Zippy Zappos

I ordered a pair of sandals from Zappo dot com yesterday. This is my preferred method of acquiring shoes. For those of you who have seen my feet, not only do you know that they are my best feature, but also that they are damn skinny. Buying narrow shoes is a bitch. I am categorically excluded from 99% of cute shoes; therefore, to avoid the agony of shoe shopping in public, I prefer to buy them in a dark room, alone, in front of a computer, where no one can hear me crying.

Zappos allows one to choose "NARROW" and then all the narrow shoes I could possibly want appear on the screen and I don't have to see what I'm missing out on. I click through until I see something that I like, and then I buy it. If they don't fit or I hate them in person, then I take advantage of their free return shipping/100% cash refund option and it's like nothing ever happened.

I ordered my new sandals yesterday around noon and when I got home today from "work," there they were waiting for me in their little box. That's fast! I like the shoes, but they make a sort of weird air noise when I take a step. Somewhere between a baby's breath and a baby's fart. Maybe only I can hear it. They're pretty comfortable and look good, though they regrettably do not seem to be of the same quality as maudit standard SAS. I get pissy at SAS because they're the only purveyor of narrow shoes that I can rely on, and their shoes designs are targeted towards women in floral blouses who remember what they were doing the day Kennedy was assasinated. I've been wearing granny-assed shoes since high school and I get tired of it. You'd think that in our thin-obsessed culture, thin feet would be rewarded with a multitude of beautiful, stylish shoes. BUT NO. Those of you with obese feet, especially those of you who can wear Crocs, are oddly rewarded and considered normal. But why?

awaiting the rebirth

I worship Lorrie Moore. She is one of my favorite writers. Her stories are warm and generous, clever and cute, funny and sad and funny again. Compared to L. Moore, I am a sour old picklepussy, a bitter melon, the old crank who doesn't want to share her seat on the bus. If I live long enough to become genuinely old, not only will I have long, white hairs growing out of my chin, I will also be one of those cranky seniors who barks orders at the retirement home kitchen staff:

What the hell is this white shit? I asked for REAL creme fraiche! To hide the taste of this shitty apple pie! You call this a crust? --Me in 2056

How can I be more like Lorrie Moore? How can I be "at once, sad, funny, lyrical, and prickly?" How can I get Michiko K. to form an opinion on me?

"Cut your whiskers and shut your mouth, Mrs. D!"

The first pregnancy of my Smith crew has been announced. Iowa is getting another corn-fed baby in January and she or he will be cute as hell. At first, I was a bit jealous of this announcement, but then I looked over at Little Bro and remembered that I could end up with a kid who can't order food at a restaurant without asking a million embarrassing questions. "Do you put sauce on your spaghetti?" I shouldn't be so hard on the kid, but doing shit like that makes you the person on the bus that no one wants to share a seat with. He is, after all, the biological son of the former stepdad, a man who is proud of the fact that he lives in a large house denuded of most of its furniture and has no plans to replace it. The reason he won't replace it is not because he can't afford furniture (he can) or because, practically speaking, he has no need to replace it, since no one is ever going to come over to play poker or anything. It's because he thinks that having huge empty rooms in his house is cool.

I am awaiting the rebirth of wonder.

can boys have a sweet 16?

Today is Little Bro's 16th birthday. Due to a variety of factors, such as his recent movin'-on-up departure from Da Juana to Rich Mar, he was not able to celebrate with his peers and so was shipped to me last night via Southwest Cargo with a note pinned to his sleeve to show the kid a good time. Not that I'm a barrel of funzies. I'm a curmudgeonly old writer. However, due to my youth and my willingness to spend more than $6 on a birthday dinner, I won out over Little Bro's dad. Ex-Stepdad seemed to think Little Bro should be obligated to share a pizza with his old man on his 16th b-day, even after it was understood that there would be no gift of a motor vehicle. (due to changes in CA law, L.B. will not be allowed to get his license until his 18th birthday)

We were discussing whether or not males should have "Sweet 16" parties. I told him my 16th birthday was hardly sweet, since it involved baby Little Bro upstaging me and stealing focus while I made use of the family videocam. I was trying to make an arty teenage DIY film about myself, but not being an adorable baby made one's relevance in front of the camera highly suspect to our mom and she soon grabbed the camera from my teenage fingers and pointed it at Little Bro--I still have the tape in fact. Who wants to watch an eight-month-old drool on his Onesie while a pouty teenage girl yells "put the camera back on me! Give me that! MOOOOOOM!"??

Now we're both in the cuteness doghouse, and the family videocamera was not replaced, and we're spending his sixteenth birthday arguing over whether or not boys merit Sweet 16s. I support a turbo-gendered masculinist approach, offering to take him to a titty bar and pay for a feel, but the kid's queerer than a cat fart and openly dislikes breasts. I find such a proclamation shocking. Even I like and appreciate boobs and am totally unashamed to say so, but to Little Bro their just affirm his inner knowledge that he's a big maricon. Oh well.

We can't even come to a consensus on where to have dinner, other than it must be more than $6 and that there be no animatronic animals. Little Bro is vegetarian on Jewish holidays and alternating weekends, so I'll need to check in on his present commitment to animal rights.

Happy birthday, Little Bro.

mettlesome busybody

My mother has a cousin we'll call Sally. Sally is in her mid-sixties and was widowed in her early thirties. She hasn't been to bed with a man since, and it shows. Normally, I wouldn't be so callous towards a woman in her circumstances, but in her old age she has turned into the nosiest, most overbearing twit and now she's gotten her claws into my affairs and it's pissing me off.

While most everyone else in the Maudit Universe understands that confronting me on my decision to cancel my surgery is unwelcome, Sally has decided to make it her cause-of-the-month to get my mom to force me to have it. I haven't personally spoken to Sally on the matter. She heard about it second-hand and wasted no time calling up my mother and asking the most personal details on my decision. She then decided to take matters into her own hands and call up the office of the surgeon and ask a bunch of questions and then report to my mom that she did so, instructing her to not pass that info onto me. Well, of course, my mom thinks she's a nuttybar and told me everything.

I told my mom to grow a pair and tell her to knock it off, that she's being rude and mettlesome and that I'm an adult who can make her own decisions without secretive parental collusion at work to force me onto the surgery table. Sally is also not known for her sensitivity or lovingkindness. Last Christmas, her older brother was in the hospital getting his foot amputated due to diabetes and she turned around and evicted him from the house he lived in because she owned it and she wanted the money! The brother died two months later. He probably wouldn't have died if his sister hadn't been such a thoughtless bitch and he had a home to go to after major surgery. She piled up his belongings on the front lawn so he'd be good and humiliated, which proves it was about more than just cashing in on the last of her family's money. So if she thinks I consider her to be a loving and concerned advocate for my health, she'd be sorely mistaken.

Today she sent another e-mail to my mom, trying to convince her to talk to me again about the surgery. I assume that she thinks she's doing me and my mother a huge favor, since obviously I'm a child and my mother's an idiot who needs Sally's infinite wisdom to make a damn decision. I intercepted said e-mail and wrote her the following:

Did you intend for me to find out about the e-mail below? Well, it doesn't matter because I did. I will thank you to end your behind-my-back campaign to, what, get my mom to force me to have surgery?? My mother may not agree with my decisions, but she is required to respect them, and you are too. I don't appreciate being second-guessed and I certainly do not appreciate you trying to work up my mother on a matter that, for the time being, is settled.

I absolutely refuse to discuss this matter with you or anyone else, so please, no follow-ups.

Because Sally cannot follow directions and is far superior to me, I expect she will indeed follow up with me, at which point I will tell her to knock that shit off. Usually, these people can't be reasoned with. I'm sure my letter will be used against me to show the rest of the family what a rude and ungrateful person I turned out to be.

big bend big heart

Today I registered for West Tejas Writer Camp, out in the middle of the scrub and desert. The camp is taking place on a college campus in the town of Alpine, twenty miles away from hipster capital Marfa, where I will get to spend a couple of hours on this whole thing. Twenty-five hours of writing instruction plus social events and Marfa and other schtuff, out in a crazy foreign place that I've never been to before. Texas as northerners dream it. I am looking forward to intense writing study with an author who lists Elinor as one of her favorite novelists on her own website. This should be fun and educational.

sorority rush

I've spent the last few days trying to gain admission to an established all-female writing group. I wrote a polite e-mail and was asked to provide more information about myself. This is fine. I believe in weeding out the marginals. The last writers group I was in was populated with a BATSHIT CRAZY lady who wanted to turn it into therapy. She was so obsessed with getting her memoir published as a means of revenge that she had green goo oozing off her fangs. She found out I had worked at a Major New York Publisher for awhile, and though I explained to her that my position there was about a half-step up from janitor, she still thought she was in the presence of Wallace Shawn and proceeded to use all available time to ask me repeatedly "will this sell?" The writing wasn't bad, but she was a little too obsessed with her own project to be much use to others. If you need a psychic, talk to my mom.

I wrote a kicky little paragraph, name-dropping two writers (Marrit, if you're reading this, I name-dropped you) and mentioned GGG explaining my reasons for wanting to join. I feel like this is sorority rush. I don't know if I will like this group or if they will like me. That is okay. I still believe in the power of numbers. I believe in las mujeres, les femmes, les ecrivaines, etc. I believe.

And with that, I am going to venture off into the day with my sore butt and my gimpy gait.

back pain back

My awful lower back pain, in remission for nearly two years, decided to return today. I took a shower and then as I was towelling off, bam! I didn't even strain anything or do anything weird. It just crept back. It feels like someone is pulling the muscles inside my left butt cheek. That's the weird thing--two years ago the pain was on the right and now it's on the left. I hate this.

So now I'm walking like a little old lady, butt cheeks clenched, unable to stand up straight. Not classy.

why do I hate things other people love?

Based on a 2001 prediction I believe was handed down by Ms. Milkes, I am pleased to report that she knows/knew me very well and I did indeed hate the film Moulin Rouge. What an annoying parade of shiny shit set to modern music! It was like being trapped in a speeding NYC taxi, but with brighter colors and flagrant disregard for historical accuracy! And the viewer is cruelly deprived of Ewan McG's sizable wang!

I usually hate things other people love. This has been going on for years. My earliest recollection of public distaste for something hugely popular was junior high, at the pinnacle of New Kids on the Block's popularity. As one of the few members of NKOTB's target demographic who roundly denounced them as vapid, talentless, and unattractive, even as my fellow peers spent their parents money on their tacky merch and proffered actual death threats against me for publicly stating that the music of NKOTB was vapid and stupid and sucked ass, I was setting myself up for a lifetime of cultural isolation, which I was able to celebrate during my hardcore indie snob years (c. 1995-2000) but lately has just left me wondering if it's me or them.

I was the only girl at Tenaya M.S. (alma mater of K-Fed!) who openly adored and worshipped Morrissey. He was sensitive, easy-on-the-eyes, tragic, and looked good in a suit. Moreover, he didn't hop around in baggy pants or shave lines into the side of his hair. The Smiths had only recently broken up and Morrissey had just released his first solo album, Viva Hate, which included honest, heartfelt lyrics such as "me without clothes, well a nation turns its back and gags." That was what 13-year-old Mo could get with. Nearly twenty years later, Morrissey's career endures and Jordan, Joey &c are ironic jokes whose early careers are only remembered today via heavily-edited VH1 retrospectives.

Still, anything major label, mass marketed, marketed at all, etc. is usually distasteful to me. Why, I can't say. Maybe it was the New Kids. Or maybe it's just me and my high IQ overthinking everything. It's awfully lonely up here.

poopin' p.v.

In the ladies room at Quack's, there is a little graffiti tribute to the colleges of the Pioneer Valley. Local alums of Smith, UMass, and Hampshire write that queerness was better in the PV than it is in Austin. It is right next to the toilet.

I'll be sure to relay this message to Little Bro, who I think still has Hampshire on his list of colleges. Dave, if you know of some good geography/cartography/GIS programs, let me know!

Dah-Vee-Oh Woot Woot

This evening we attended the lovely and touching nuptials of Geegster Shelly and her longtime beau Chad. Maybe it's just a Texas thing, but at the reception we observed that the two families were given to cheering for themselves whenever their surname was mentioned. The groom's family has more children so they seemed to be filling the halls with riotous woot-woots everytime their surname was spoken, as if this were not a melding of two families into one but something closer to league sports.

I grew up around very few people who share my hard-to-spell, easy-to-pronounce-once-you-are-told-what-it-is last name. Once dad died and mom married the now-former stepdad* who weighed her down with his clunky Armo last name, I was the only one in my little world carrying the name around. I have an older brother who I rarely speak of. He very clearly and unabashedly gives not a shit about me, which is a damn shame because he is old and not well and wouldn't it be in his favor to have family who cares about him?

In a way, I envy this. So disjointed my family life has been that to have my own little D. army, a cohesive cause, banded together and strengthened by repeated spelling and pronouncing of a complicated surname shared by few others, would have probably made me a stronger person, more comfortable, more American, proud and free. Or does the fact that I go forth alone with my name more American, more independent, knowing that no one south of the Eastern Townships can say my name with any accuracy?

My beloved's last name has two consecutive p sounds. You can't chant it. It is the sound of mashed potatoes hitting the plate. AP! THORP! My last name is quite lyrical, and sounds very good when chanted. Let the rooftops rise and the crowd go wild: DAH-VEE-OH! DAH-VEE-OH!

*I am tickled by being able to say this. It is like a gift I get to open again and again.

UW Dept. of Geography

I've been looking up geography undergrad programs for Little Bro. Kiddo's got this crazy talent with maps. He's like the Rain Man of the San Diego Transit system, and he rarely even rides the damn thing. I suggested he apply this gift in an academic/careersy way and am finding him universities that might appeal to him that offer a geography program. I came across this website:

http://depts.washington.edu/geog/

For the U. of Washington and am completely taken with it. It is just so beautiful. The black and white photo of evergreens juxtaposed with pleasing Pottery Barn colors is just too much for me. I want this site to win an award. I want to kiss the cheek of the person who designed it. I want Little Bro to go to UW and major in geography!

I have some ripe bananas that need to become good-ass banana bread. I am going to go bake now.

mean glitter

I'm sure that some Brown U. semiotics major has already thesised about MySpace glitter as communicative tool. All those years of academic awards and time spent in swanky classrooms has naturally caused me to look my big Armo nose down on glitter as a way for badly-educated netizens to express themselves. But some of them are just brilliant in their bizarreness and cruelty and deserve my lofty-assed appreciation. Take for instance this:

Ooh! Burn! But do people really mean that when they apply this sparkly diss to someone's MySpace page?

Yeah! Take it out on the birds!

Kiss what? Your ass? Hell no! You forgot the comma! GGG should get shirts like this made.

Engineers everywhere, take heed!

YEAH! Let's get a sparkly blue dick on that guy!

This one cracks me up. Since when is Dooney and Bourke ghetto? My mom had a D&B purse back in the '80s. This is like L.L. Bean getting all blinged up.

This is my favorite one. A woman bending over, combined with the term "badonkadonk," a word I learned during a McNichol & May show, is really a great way to express sexual vivacity and a commitment to southern pride!

GGG's gotta get something made up like this. We've waited too long already.

National Elinor Day

Elinor is kicking my ass hard today. In honor of my love and respect for her, and my appreciation for everything she's done for me, the first person to leave a comment down below there will be sent a paperback copy of her latest novel, "My Latest Grievance," by yours truly. Hand-delivery available in Austin only. Void where prohibited.

maudit california follow-up

A few things I wrote about months ago:

PINKBERRY. I read that article in the NYTimes about Asianish biflavored yogurt w/fruit operation Pinkberry last February and swore to my ancestors that the next time I passed through LaLaLand, I would pay an exorbitant amount of money to park the car so I could sample "the flavor that generated a thousand parking tickets." On the way to the chop-socky pre-op at Screamers-Sinai, my mom and I stopped in Westwood Village and found the place. The line was only moderately long. I had a brief altercation with the UCLA undergrad manning the cash register. I only wanted two fruits (blackberry, mango) on my yogurt. "Usually we put three," she said, her fingers resisting the input of my order. "But I only want two fruits (blackberry, mango)." She sighed. Clearly, its in the Pinkberry employee handbook, "if they want less than three fruits, CUT THE CUSTOMER DOWN. Make them feel dumb and then force fruit on them they don't want. It's good for them!" I told her that my three fruits then would be blackberry, mango, and more mango, and that she could live with. Mom wanted green tea yogurt devoid of fruit and that was clearly lame-as-fuck but they gave it to her anyway.

Honestly, I wasn't all that impressed. I was expected a more dairy-rich yogurt experience and the consistency of the yogurt was more ice-milky/icy/watery. Very little cow went into its production, probably to better serve the self-starvation community of Greater Los Angeles. Lest a fat gram find its way into the yogurt, those Ugg boot wearing hos would start to cry and ruin their makeup and holy shit if a casting agent happened to walk by...

In sum, the Pinkberry experience was just another reason for me to hate L.A.: a lot of hype over something disappointing and artificial.

FORMER DRAMA TEACHER. Apparently, FDT cornered my little bro and asked him point blank what I've said about him. "Did she tell you I was the worst drama teacher ever?" he said to my brother, perhaps in jest, perhaps in truth. I don't care. My mom also reported that FDT managed to name drop one of the good-looking male classmates of mine that he behaved skeevily towards BITD during a conversation that was supposed to be about Little Bro's progress in his class. He made it sound like the two are still in constant contact. "And he has a girlfriend," FDT managed to work into the conversation.

First of all, as I will tell anyone who will listen to me, all of my other C-Juana H.S. teachers have been eclipsed, memorywise, by O Captain My Captain Neil, who I will continue to romanticize until I die. I realize that's unfair to the good number of hardworking educators who lacked his charisma and brazen videotaping of Tecate drinking, but that's just the way the mop flops. Second, whether or not FDT was a good teacher is so not the point of anything. I can't remember or assess his pedagogy fairly because he was such an inappropriate blabbermouth with no boundaries and no shame that whether or not he was behind my inspired portrayal of General Matilda in Guys and Dolls just doesn't matter. However, the fact that little, if anything, has changed about him in fifteen years should give me cause to be charitable towards the guy. That, and I saw his picture in the yearbook and the ravages of time have been cruel.

Oh, Harold...

I just applied for the position of part-time assistant obituaries sales/editor at the local paper.

My attraction to old-timey, austere professions remains.

the V word

It's one thing when you're told to be more vulnerable in your improv. But when your award-winning novelist mentor tells you you need to be more vulnerable in your writing, then you have a problem.

This is a note I've been getting from the Geegsters for years and I understand it and embrace it, but I can't seem to put it into action.

Shit!

viva my ass

Uneventful flight home, save for some bumpity-bump turbulence. The knowledgeable flight attendant suggested placing beverages on the floor if you don't want to end up wearing them. I did the Spirit magazine crossword puzzle, fucking up by putting fuguefortinhorn when the correct answer was abushelandapeck for "lively song from the musical Guys and Dolls." I ROCKED G&D back in '94 on the C-Juana H.S. stage, so damnit if I don't know Guys and Dolls. The eventful travel event came when we boarded the shitshow-on-wheels known as SooperShittle. Usually I am fond of the blue van, but tonight we should have hedged our bets with Austin's ex-con/African immigrant community and taken a taxi. Skyrocketing gasoline prices have inspired Shittle to cram in the passengers. I made sure I got in first because those sitting in the way-back ran the risk of being conked in the head by a falling tower of wheely suitcases.

The driver stuffed nine people in the back and then turned his attentions to aiding the morbidly obese woman with a walker into the front seat. She couldn't figure out how to back her giant ass into the seat, and complained loudly that she couldn't see her feet. I alternately felt sorry for her and then sorry for the rest of us. I was angry that the Shittle wasn't accomodating this woman with a handicapped van, which she clearly needed. Instead, we a captive audience to a fat lady sideshow.

I was also chastised by the driver for opening a window. It was awfully steamy and close in there and after all the physical exertion on the part of the obese lady, I got a hit of her ripe fat lady stink, reminiscent of that girl Jessie back in high school. So I cracked the window, thus earning me a lecture about how the a/c doesn't work when you open a window. Austin is deliciously humid and hot tonight, so it wasn't as if I was enjoying the hot stream of air.

For those planning to visit the upper regions of Sandy Eggo, I highly recommend a trip to S-Con-Deedo to the STONE BREWERY. A free educational tour is offered, and their bistro is full of tasty slow food. A little on the pricey side, but still delicious and top-quality food.

I am home, sternum intact, back where I started. Improv, novel, a job. I'm just happy I get to have a summer now.

root down!

Today, rather than have my thorax cracked open like a 1.5lb lobster, I spent the day shopping at various large San Diego-area retailers. I saw my mom slip the young IKEA deckhand a Hamilton for lifting two heavy boxes out of the back of her Volvo. Believe me, those in sales/service LOVE my mom because she tips like a crazy woman. She had me go and get her Apple computer consultant guy a venti latte at *bucks while he was trying to upsell her on .mac.

Bob and I went to Solana Beach for dinner to find some brew pub he got shitfaced at sometimes during the Clinton administration. The place was called Pizza Port, a quotidian pizza and beer joint with three long picnic tables full of pizza-chewing sports fans and squeebler shepherds. We sat next two a pair of Aussie lads who had a good crack-up when I yelled across the noisy restaurant at Bob, who was in the beer line, "Get me a root beer!"

"We thought you were yelling, 'get a root!'"

"No. Root beer." I thought they were mocking my choosing a non-alcoholic beverage.

"Do you know what a root is?" one bloke asked me.

"Uh...that part of a tree that is in the soil?"

(laughs)

"Uh...an Aussie word for sex?"

(laughs more, nods head)

I've been to IKEA four times in the past week.

lungs and breath

Okay, allow me to explain:

Since arriving in my mom's new chichi burg, I have been ass-clenchingly nervous. Obviously, I have a right to be freaked and nervous before major surgery. The whole landscape was just bugging me, and I felt sad because the triumphant new house should be making me happy and I was just thinking to myself, "I am going to hate this house forever because it is going to be my landscape of despair." On Thursday my blood pressure was ridiculously high, especially considering I'm on beta blockers that make me about two beats above a corpse. I was nervous and fearing that I was going to have an asthma attack. I couldn't breathe. I felt awful and pukey and the littlest things set me off.

Compounding this were missives from my PE pal Stacy, reporting her horror show of a hospital stay at C-S. She was in pain, the nurses were inattentive, her concerns were not taken seriously, she nearly fell and peed the bed. She made it sound like C-S was a shithole hospital. I understand that nurses are under a lot of pressure, but the thought of going through what she went through, knowing full well this could very well happen to me, was making me more freaked out.

So last night, I very calmly told my mother I had to call it off. It was either that or take me to the local hospital now for panic attack treatment. I had to admit to myself that I was 100% not okay with having the surgery at C-S, LA made me nervous, and I was not going into this with a successful attitude. My brain was telling me NO, so I listened.

So fuck it. I sent e-mails to the scheduler at C-S, I canceled our hotel reservation, I left a message for the medical supply company to cancel the gimpy chair. After I undid everything, I felt so much better. My heart rate went down and I had a good cry.

I am going home next weekend. I am going to finish my fucking novel, do yoga, and have a goddamn summer, PE be damned.

i'm holding on to it, 'cause only losers quit

I CANCELLED MY SURGERY.

VIVA MI TAZON!!

different ladies, different rooms

I think I've mentioned before that my mom moved from the C-Juana to the Juana by the Sea. No Juana here. I am situated at the coffeehouse down the hill from my mom's house. The place is full of geriatrics and gently wrinkled mothers sporting large diamonds and sixty-ish long-haired earth mother types, the ones who have "arrived" but don't have the ticket stub to prove it. A few high school kids with laptops are absorbing the meagre number of outlets available.

There is a bookstore next door, a very useful, hoary one. Del Mar, like Northampton, suffers from a dearth of 30-year-olds. If you're thirty and can afford a house in this neighborhood, then novel-writing is probably not one of your endeavors. The book store has creaky wooden floors. Keep in mind that it's in a stucco strip mall with an artisanal cheese shop and a couple of Precious Decadence-type stores. The floors, their creakiness, was designed by a firm with an LLP designation that has a very high hourly rate. I must say that this coffeehouse has gelato, if that floats your boat.

It's strange how an age demographic can define a place. It seems that everyone in Austin is young, or at least does a good job acting young. The heat, the spirit, the real estate prices keep the very young hip vibe alive.

Even the Target is uppity. Everyone was white and if children were present, their carts were filled with the pink and blue plastic spoils of the spoiled. When I casually mentioned that my mom had moved up here from C-Juana, the cashier made this "uh!" noise, like, "uh! Your mom moved from the rat-infested diarrhea-strewn streets of Perdition, aka TIjuana." This from a dude in a red shirt making $10/hr. C-Juana has a bad rep here in North County.

The thing is, to say that you've moved from the C-Juana to Del Freakin' Mar is to make a statement about your assets. People move to C-Juana because it's one of the last bastions of affordability in San Diego. People move here to avoid the types of people that live in the C-Juana. That wasn't the greatest motivator for my mom, but I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't part of it. I mean, the Target here is clean. Damn clean. Not as clean as the one in Holyoke, but clean enough.