Apparently it wasn't only my liver aching so last week, for now we must consider the gall bladder -- you know, bile ducts and all that. (There are some charming moments in that link, but if you don't choose to click on it I'll just tell you that "the function of the gall bladder is to store bile and concentrate." Gall bladder, if you want to land on that aircraft carrier you'd better concentrate!) This from an acupuncturist, who has co-opted the next ten to fourteen days of my life to infuse them with cleansing herbs and a cleansing diet. I NEED TO CLEANSE, PEOPLE. No beef or chicken, no oils, no spices, no wine, no beer. Distilled spirits are A-OK, though.* Jack made me a big fat salty margarita last night before dinner, and I drank it down like a good little girl. Cheers! Doctor's orders!



After the acupuncturist I took Jackson to the zoo. I think they trucked in the entire population of Bakersfield, I have not seen so much acid wash in a very long time. (That link is worth it just for the article about local police: The Department of Justice is trying to prohibit the cops there from shooting at moving vehicles. I guess they'll just have to go back to having target practice at the dog pound.) At the zoo I also saw what for me qualifies as Worst Tattoo Ever. Fortysomething guy ordering a hot dog, the back of his left calf: huge, badly drawn, black-eyed alien smoking a joint. And blowing smoke rings. As you know, images like this are only revealed to people in moments of tenth-grade methamphetimine psychosis, but it isn't too late for you to crank up the ACDC and shout over to the guy in the next cubicle Whoa, dude, look what Satan told me to draw on the front of my marketing proposals binder! It's like he was guiding my hand!

*Also, twice a day, squeeze one lemon into 8 oz. of cranberry juice, and dilute. With vodka presumably.

Perfect for your vegan Thanksgiving!

The Thorax Cake


click for full image

via Tuckova 22

Yesterday as I sat in the dentist's chair while Brooke scraped nine months of double lattes off of every gilded and be-porcelained tooth in my head, and my hands clenched as though my saliva contained my own cerebralspinal fluid, I remembered a meditation that a sex therapist once taught me. You imagine a bowl full of warm golden oil balanced in your pelvis, and there's a tube running from the bowl up the back of your spine to the top of your head. The tube then loops over and runs back down the front of your spine and into the bowl, and with each inhalation you imagine the warm oil rising up the back of your spine to the top of your head, and then as you exhale you imagine the oil running -- or perhaps trickling, or oozing, depending on whether you're imagining olive, grapeseed, or honey-infused 40-weight STP -- back down into your secretly rousing and warmly rubiginous nether regions. The sex therapist swore that this was an Ancient Chinese Secret for building health, charisma, and a relaxed attitude toward having your fillings removed without novocaine. The meditation kind of works, depending on your powers of concentration and how much your gums have receded, and better with your eyes open than closed, I found. And you know what else? According to Brooke, porcelain and gold crowns, you can still get cavities. You'd think that after the nuisance of bad enamel, numerous root canals, and the expense of eight new teeth that they -- THEY -- could make me some cavity-resistant choppers. Men have walked on the moon, etc., and I still have to floss? Bastards. Bastards!

Yesterday Jack and I experienced the miracle of both of us being at home alone forty-five minutes before we had to pick up Jackson from school. And you know what that means!

Jack (walking in the door): What the hell are you doing with your clothes still on?

But I was still in the grip of a gentle undertow of paranoia about my aching liver [Ed: What, we all have Alzheimer's?] at that point. So we're lying in bed and I'm waffling between hepatitis and early cirrhosis -- you know, just thinking out loud -- and at the same time I'm sort of unconsciously trying to lift up my ribs and get my hand underneath so I can massage my liver. You know, to make it feel better. And Jack watches this for a minute, and knowing how I like to act like a witless ninny before sex [Ed.: Stop it! Stop it!] he goes, "Yeah, I think I have BALL CANCER, can you rub that out for me?"

The other night Jackson and I walked up to the rose garden in front of the Mission. I'm sorry -- the rose garden in front of the big, spooky, horrible symbol of oppression. [Ed.: Exactly how narcissistic to you have to be to link yourself?] There we met our neighbors, TM and AM. TM being the mom, and AM being the most logical, beautiful five-year-old in the world. She's like a miniature Marilyn Vos Savant, and TM is exactly like Meryl Streep's rehab roommate in Postcards from the Edge, [Ed.: She did it again!] i.e., she's both extremely funny and on the wagon, and who knew that was even possible?

So we're sitting on the grass looking at this really ugly caterpillar that AM has trapped in an upturned Frisbee and is force-feeding clover, when this skinny lunatic with a rolled up umbrella starts violently chopping and hacking the heads off some white roses one bed over. Petals are flying everywhere. Then he sees us looking at him and he starts going, "Those bitches. They hit me with their goddamned Frisbee and didn't even apologize!" And then he walks around us and starts appraising some roses right next to us. I'm wondering if the ugly caterpillar is now inhabiting the Frisbee of Previous Violation, but he ignores it and starts yelling, "You're all voyeurs, you're all fucking voyeurs, and you know what? I feel fucking sorry for you. I really do. I pity you." And he starts whacking the shit out of some roses only six feet away.

Now, TM is nodding sympathetically at the beginning of his little speech, presumably working on the Don't Rattle The Cage Of An Already-Agitated Mind theory, so I decide to follow her cautious lead and restrain myself, because I always go the opposite way, I get very confrontational with the insane, kind of on the Black Bear theory, i.e., rattle lots of pots and pans to try to scare them away from the campsite. Then very reasonably TM steps up and says to him, "Yes, well, that's too bad, but I really don't feel comfortable with that kind of language around the kids." Which I'm sure is just a fascinating insight for him, but it doesn't stop him from enjoying a little more outraged hacking and slashing, so we gather our children and our ugly caterpillar and hike up out of range while the madman moves down to a new rose bed. A couple of earnest blond co-eds next to try to educate him on less drastic garden maintenance techniques, but judging by the body language they only get pissed off, and then Our Man in Havana storms off into a eucalyptus stand.

So we're all rolling around in the grass and pretending to be monsters rrAAARRR! and I'm keeping one eye on a couple of potentially child-mauling off-leash German shepherds, and within the space of, like, ten minutes we see three police cruisers drive by reeeeaal slow. And TM tells me how when she lived in San Francisco she once called the cops on her neighbors who were beating the shit out of each other and nobody ever showed up, but Hey! Santa Barbara! Skip your meds and abuse some roses and ten minutes later six cops have you up against a black-and-white in handcuffs. Which is exactly what happened. SIX COPS got skinny mad umbrella guy in cuffs on the steps of the church of our blessed disease-carrying, Indian-killing Spanish fathers and stuffed him into a squad car and drove him away.

Hey! I just found $60 in my pocket. Also, I painted my toenails Passion Punch Shimmer while at work this morning. And since I had to keep the office door shut to block the sound of jackhammers, thus trapping the incredible smell of several nail polish toxins that my eyes are too unfocused to read in gold letters on the tiny pink bottle, PLUS the room-temperature curried chicken lunch, and I'm feeling preeetty good right about now.

Great God in heaven above! I went out last night! With a friend! By ourselves! Sans balls, chains, or children! Hey! Are these exclamation marks! Getting tedious! But! It! Was! The! First! Time! I'd gone! To A Grownup Music Function! At Night! In Something Like Four Years!

My date, GW (who is actually the boss of my job, and is quickly becoming my number one male girlfriend), and I took a pleasant walk down to the almost-renovated Santa Barbara Bowl to see David Bowie. The geezer factor was pretty high, and if I ever wondered what happens to Indieboys when they turn 50, now I know. If the Indieboy has a sense of humor about himself, he's fat and his hair is bleached white and sticking out in all directions and he's drunk and doesn't give a fuck what you think: he's having a great time. If the Indieboy is merely intent on looking adult and urban (despite that really intense Hunky Dory phase in eighth grade), he's wearing a black leather Kenneth Cole-type jacket. And believe me, it was a sea of black leather Kenneth Cole-type jackets last night. Naturally I had to blurt out this observation to the first acquaintance-couple we ran into: She was wrapped in a bright orange down coat (it's an outdoor venue, so when the fog rolls in you really want to be wearing your electric earmuffs), and He was wearing (say it with me!) a black leather Kenneth Cole-type jacket. And didn't seem to appreciate the fact that I was out-loud noticing his conformity issues. I was also particularly struck with Her complexion: as with many women with too much money, her skin seems to have absorbed an entire cake of paraffin, and was so waxily smooth and moisturized that I almost asked her if she'd been using The Soap.

In true Santa Barbara fashion GW managed to buy both sushi and Chardonnay at a food truck, and after we'd hiked up to our seats I found my favorite screenwriting bartender escorting his sister on our right, and my hunky Chinese-herb-and-acupuncture guy on our left.

Bowie hops around pretty good for a 56-year-old man, and his voice is terrific. He sang some great anthemic ballads that the radio hasn't played to death, like The Man Who Sold the World and Five Years and Quicksand. Plus, he covered a Pixies tune, and if you want to see one hundred and ten rows of middle-aged Indieboys come in their Lucky Brand jeans, make David Bowie sing "Bloody your hands on a cactus tree / Wipe it on your dress and send it to me." But then don't let him follow that up with my most-hated Bowie song ever: China Girl. Cover your head with your orange down coat. Is it over yet? No? *sigh* Okay, now? Jesus.

On stage, the percussionista was wearing some highly covetable green leather pants, and GW quickly became obsessed with the bald black female bass player/high note harmony wizardess. I mean, he kept tugging on my sleeve and shouting, GOD, SHE'S AMAZING, DO YOU THINK SHE HAS ANY SOLO CD'S? This from a man who worships Sarah Brightman, so I think we're making some real progress on that front.

I live about eight blocks from the Bowl, and it's a big enough venue that people are always parking miles away and walking down, so before and after shows the place is always aswarm with strapping young men in helmets (I should stop that sentence right there, shouldn't I?) pedaling pedicabs. I guess that's another peculiar Santa Barbara phenomenon, getting a ride home in a sweaty frat boy's rickshaw. We declined many attractive offers and hoofed it back to my house, and just in case we had for a brief moment at any time during the evening felt not-middle-aged, we talked about life insurance all the way home.

When people who don't understand blogging dismiss the whole phenomenon as a fad for teenagers complaining about homework and gossiping about spring break, I think, Really? I've never seen a blog like that. And then Janna left a nice comment on my site and I clicked on her link and I was like Oh My God! Prom's a month away and nobody's asked you!? Well, I didn't get asked to my senior prom but it didn't stop me from teaching myself to type, and look at me now, with the remains of my Tri-state Blogging Champion March 2002 blue ribbon still proudly pinned to my dirty bathrobe.

*wipes away a single tear*

It must help to have a friend you can IM about wedgies.

Today at the grocery store a woman came up and told me that Jackson, who was crouched in the back of the cart with his arms out hollering "SURF'S UP!", was going to fall out of the cart and hit his head on the floor, where his eyeballs were going to pop out of their sockets. To which I said, "Thank you for your concern." To Jackson I said, "Do you want to sit in the seat up here with me so your eyeballs don't pop out?" And he said yes and climbed over and put his legs through and sat down and gripped the cart handle and didn't move for ten minutes.

Yeah, but he's not such a scaredy cat when he's operating heavy machinery!

Jackson drives the excavator (with Mike).
[Quicktime movie, 2.2 mg]
Music by Bluegrass 43

Today at the playground, while Jackson and I were eating lunch, a scavenging couple ambled through, magically pulling whole meals out of garbage cans. Jackson watched with great interest as the woman triumphantly dug up an uneaten sandwich, still in plastic wrap, and half a bag of nacho cheese Doritos. The man was unimpressed with his own take from another barrel, something wrapped in a napkin, I didn't stop him and ask for a peek. Jackson, however, pointed at the man while looking quite indignantly at me, which I took to be a silent reproach along the lines of How come HE can take food out of the garbage and I can't?

I've been told that empathy doesn't kick in until around year seven, but after some chasing, a long stretch of swinging, and two pit stops (pee and poo), we stopped to do some tree-climbing, where Jackson noticed a woman sleeping on the grass about thirty feet away, and I thought it might be a good time to take a whack at The Facts of Homelessness: Preschool Edition.

Jackson: There's a woman sleeping!

Me: Uh-huh, well, that's her spot, she's been sleeping there for years. When she's not sleeping, she's walking, you see her all over town. She doesn't have a home like us, or a bed, or a TV, or a refrigerator with juice boxes.

Jackson: Yeah, but I have juice boxes! I have red, and green.

Me: Yes, you do, you have lots of things, but all she has is that spot and the clothes she's wearing.

Jackson: And she doesn't have a bed!

Me: No bed.

Jackson: She sleeps on the grass!

Me: Right.

Jackson: That's disgusting!

Actually, he said misgusting, but I am no Art Linkletter.

I *heart* you, Alice, and your son's dangerously untethered head

"When I first felt the impact I thought someone had playfully chucked a bowling ball at my teeth."

Here's a nice holiday mp3 for you.

Easter [taken down]

WARNING: POOR DEAD BILL HICKS IS UNSAFE FOR WIDDLE EARS

Jackson had an Easter egg hunt at school yesterday, which meant that the teachers put a bunch of soft-boiled (!) eggs sort of near the hedges and next to the sand box and almost under the picnic tables and, for those who really didn't get it, right in the middle of the lawn. Three-year-olds are in this hard emotional place between being really competitive and selfish but knowing that sometimes it's truly nice to share*. So you had three kids racing for one egg, and then they'd all hesitate to see who'd pick it up, and then one of them would lunge for it, and then the other two would cry.

*if you have extra

It was so mindlessly easy to just throw shit out the other day. Broken black metal table lamp bought by ex-boyfriend's mom at an Ikea in New Jersey that spent five years rusting in the garage after the cat peed on it? (The lamp, not the mom, not the Ikea. I *heart* grammar.) I think I can let go of that now, thanks.

Ugly clothing, broken toys, garbage, trash, warped melted tapes, fucking useless broken wedding presents, all of it, ALL OF IT OUT.

Except the books. By God, not the books.

Will I ever finish Infinite Jest? No. Will I keep it forever, as its pages yellow and its paperback cover curls toward the sky until it's unfit to stop a door, because I got it free from a bookstore I was working at, and was supposed to read so I could talk it up with customers, but never did, and so couldn't, and still feel guilty and delude myself into thinking I might still finish it one day? YES.

Remaindered hardcover of Tender Mercies that I only hold onto because I met Rosellen Brown at a writer's conference once and she broke the news to me that Donald Barthelme had died? HAVE TO KEEP THAT.

Autographed copy of You Bright and Risen Angels, of which I haven't even read the first page? IT MUST NEVER LEAVE MY POSSESSION.

Why, WHY?

Here's why. Because way back when I was piling everything I owned into a Toyota Previa to drive it from NY to CA, exboyfriend and his Ikea-shopping-mom strongly encouraged me to draw a line between "fun to have" and "can't live without." And so I had to make several Sophie's Choicelike decisions, the most ill-considered of which was to keep paperback signed You Bright and Risen Angels and leave behind hardcover signed Surrender the Pink in Ikea-shopping-mom's basement. "I'll get it later," I rationalized; "I'll just ask her to mail it out when we get there."

Pretentiously, I assumed William T. Vollman would have more value to me in the long run than Carrie Fisher. Completely discounting the fact that Carrie Fisher had personally signed the book TO ME, AT HER BOOK PARTY, the invitation to which exboyfriend and I had received as a costs-nothing reward from our manager for long hours toiling down in the stock room of our little downtown bookstore. Still wearing the unsightly, dusty thrift-store dress and clompy boots that I'd been wearing all day to slice open boxes and sticker books, exboyfriend and I found ourselves standing outside a private club in midtown Manhattan. Just a huge oak door with no sign. A rent-a-cop finally poked his head out, checked our invitations, and let us in, and the next thing I knew we were drinking martinis with Philip Glass and Liz Smith. Well, not with. More like in proximity to.

Exboyfriend, being pretty much without scruple when it comes to chatting up celebrities, quickly nabbed a copy of The Book that was standing next to a plant, and flirtatiously proffered it to The Author to sign. Oh, they had quite a little chat, they did. I'm not sure how he got her to sign it to me, as I was busy being embarrassed in a corner, but she did it with a flourishing smirk, and with a friendly hi-de-ho she was off to shmooze someone who actually mattered.

But exboyfriend wouldn't stop there, oh no. Lauren Bacall was sitting in a booth surrounded by five well-groomed, studly, courtier types. Exboyfriend walked right up, book clutched to chest, and obsequiously squeaked, "Excuse me, Miss Bacall?" Really, his voice went up an octave, and all conversation at the table stopped as he was appraised and instantly found lacking by five gay, gay, fabulously gay men. Miss Bacall turned to see who dared interrupt the fun, and you can imagine she looked somewhat like a lioness contemplating a tasty and inconviently chattering lemur. The whole evening was becoming an exercize in agony for me, but exboyfriend apparently didn't have a nerve in his body because he actually laid down some line about her being the brightest star in the firmament, something so painfully retarded that I guess he won her over with sheer stupidity, because she looked at him for a second, and then she laughed. That big smoky, whiskey-colored, I-fucked-Humphrey-Bogart-AND-Jason-Robards laugh. Then all the fags relaxed, too, and went on talking amongst themselves. Thus emboldened, exboyfriend held out Carrie Fisher's book and asked Lauren Bacall to sign it, too.

Now the expression changed from regal purring cat to Okay, I'm done with you. "It's not my book, it's Carrie's," she said flatly, and turned away. But for some reason the Head Fag had taken a shine to exboyfriend (he was always getting hit on by gay men, I guess he learned to take advantage) and he said to her, "Oh, but you're listed in the index, you could sign it there," and he flipped to the back and showed her. So under the filtered sunlight of the flock's admiration, she grudgingly signed the book, too.

Exboyfriend thanked her, winked at his new boyfriend, and let me drag him off. Then he gave the book to me and we had one more drink, and then we got on a train and went back downtown where we belonged. I put the book on my shelf and didn't read it, wrapped up as I was at the time in pretending to read Roland Barthes. And then we moved to California and broke up. And is that book still in his mom's basement, thirteen years later? Or did it wind up in a church rummage sale? Is it now on the bookshelf of a Rumson dowager, or is it halfway to mulch in Fresh Kills?

I don't know. I still have William T. Vollman to keep me warm, but he's wearing his Ice Shirt and he's not doing a very good job. And as my attention span has dulled down to the length of a Tom and Jerry cartoon, I guess I'll just have to dust off that VHS copy of Postcards From the Edge, mix a margarita, and wait for naptime.

A young boy's sexual identity is such a fluid, malleable, squishy thing.

Last night: Didn't want to read a bedtime story, wanted to look at pictures of Gwen Stefani in Vogue instead.

This morning: Woke up and wanted to watch Caddy Shack naked.

Ten minutes ago: After I wiped his butt, but before jumped so much that he barfed on the bed, he told me -- told me -- that he was going to marry me.

Dear Jack;

I'm sorry, but the most very special love between our son and I can no longer be denied. Once we all started sleeping in the same bed, I mean -- well, you've seen him naked, you've pinched those little biscuits! Can you blame me for wanting him all to myself?

I know what you're thinking. When he's thirty-two I'll be seventy. And what about those unattractive adolescent years? What can I say. I think we can make it work!

You and I had some great times. Let's not spoil it with crude references to dead Greek psychos.

Love always,
Mrs. Kennedy

P.S. My lawyer will let you know where to send our Power Ranger Black Raptor Cycle With Chomping Action.

P.P.S. Jackson is prepared to fight you with Star Wars Light Sabers. He'll let you have the blue one.

I'm the number one site if you're Googling optometrists+are+idiots.

I just spent the better part of the afternoon emptying out our corner of the garage/house storage space in preparation for some upcoming foundation work (Everybody! Sing with me!*: Bikes with flat tires/Never ridden again/Just where's the o-o-old tu-u-ube?/I've been meaning to mend?). I'd already made an appointment at a local children's secondhand-stuff store to beg a few bucks for the bassinet and the hypno-baby-swing and the potty that we hate, and I was halfway through picking the spider webs off the Stationary Activity Center before I realized, Gee, this must mean I'm not having any more kids.

I feel really, really . . . sober about that realization right now. Like, it's kind of sad. Kind of. I'd be willing to watch my butt swell back into its Jennifer Lopez-rivaling capacity, and I'd make it through name-picking and midwivving and milk-duct-unplugging and not-sleeping, and all that other jive. But I have this ineffable sense that it's sort of maybe just time to move on. I like giving Jackson my full attention. Like when I'm trying to read maccers and hold up my end of a Power Rangers plot discussion at the same time.

I guess so. I mean, I think it's true. I'm pretty sure we're done.

*To the tune of "Knights in White Satin"

Several years ago someone asked me if I'd ever buy an electric car. And in one of those rare moments when all my filtering systems drop away and I speak as though channeling the ancient gods, I answered directly from my heart with unalloyed honesty, "Only if everyone else buys one first."

Being in L.A. on Friday, I realized that day may come sooner than I expected. Those little hybrids are all over the place, and I can't tell if their drivers are part of an annoying, exclusive, self-congratultory subculture or a charming, inclusive, self-congratulatory subculture. Because it seemed like every one I saw had a cute vanity license plate. The only two I remember were OHMWEGO and CLNMSHN. Plus the one little teeny Toyota who seemed to be rallying his fellow little teeny cars to circle the wagons and fire indiscriminately at the enemy with a little teeny, somehow passive-aggressive bumper sticker that said in little teeny quietly screaming capital letters HUMMERS SUCK.

My dad has been sending me long letters every week since I went off to college, and in the last ten-or-so years they've evolved into this newsletter format with columns and pictures, and he has a small mailing list of relatives. Somewhere along the line he started doing little features and big special editions that come in manila envelopes and are ready for binding about my uncle Harry's letters home from Korea, or my dad's time in the Army during WWII. As we know, thanks to my father and Tom Brokaw, that was The Defining Period for an entire generation. If you understand this, and you know my father, you aren't particularly shocked when you open a letter from him and half of it is about his grandchildren and the other half is about Adolf Hitler.

My father has a way of making it, cute, though. He talks about going through parachute training, and how everyone joked that "Geronimo!" is "Indian" for "who the hell pushed me?" And how someone posted a sign over the cadre shack during jump class that said, It's a case of mind over matter. We don't mind, and you don't matter. A lot of his training took place in Japan, after the bombs were dropped in Nagasaki and Hiroshima; he was part of the mop-up operation, and he's one of many who believe that dropping the bombs saved lives in the end, his in particular.

My father finally got on the Interweb last month. I can't tell you what a breakthrough this is. I have been bugging him for years. And then he gives in, allegedly because my brother wants to do the whole chat room thing, and one of the first things he does is to Google 11th Airborne, and he clicks on a link, and he goes, Hey! I know that guy. Hey! Welcome to the 23rd century. Next thing you know, he'll have his own blog.

Because the Internet is all about community, be you an old soldier or a lonely mom, and I'm testing its limits today by going down to L.A. to meet someone who I only know through her comments on my site. I mean, at first you go through this thing like, is this "Suzyn" just some elaborately constructed mother-of-two persona to put me at ease, but s/he's really a stalker/kidnapper who's going to steal Jackson out of a highchair at P.F. Chang's? Because I don't have any ransom money. I have, like, a nice Mac G4 computer, and it's yours. Some Burberry pants? You want my sea glass earrings? Cause that's about the end of my assets. But in the end I think she's a real person because she called me from Knott's Berry Farm, told me how bored her kids were, and gave me her husband's cell number. So I think it's for real, but in case I don't update for awhile you should call the State Department because my remains will have floated halfway to El Tigre by next Thursday.