*

I am so * angry. I am so mad that the only words I can think to type are obscenities, and I feel like I shouldn't be using those so much, which * me off even more.

I am angry at my family. At my friends. At my life. At God, david for sure, I hate him, leeroy. everybody. Every * costco member, employee, especially the * managers who sit all day in the break room drinking coffee and discussing how horrible the new * carts are but not doing a * thing about it. I hate them. I hate the helpful good samaritans who pick up my cart strap where I threw it down while I take a * fred meyer cart back to their lot, so that no one will steal it. Who the * will steal a cart strap? ok, maybe I would to use to beat my children. I * hate the stupid people who are either too busy for me or don't give a * at all. I have lived here for a * year and I have one person who will hang out with me. One. But then again, who wants to go to your * parents house and watch a * cartoon and drink * coke since you can't have liquor in the house. So then my siblings come home for the holidays, and I get all excited, thinking I will have some adults (other than my parents) to hang out with. Turns out our whole holiday was about * board games (as always), curing all the latest deathly diseases, and pattern store mishaps. Oh yeah, and screeching one year olds, 4 year olds with black eyes, and super snotty jerk-faced pre-teens that spent most of the weekend either in a corner, mouthing off to random adults, or crying in their beds. I am * *. *****.

I just want a * hug, or a * cup of coffee that doesn't involve stories about someone else's * sexcapades, or * homeschooling and * up the next generation as well as we were * up. I * hate Marble. I hate that * that is still eating my sister's soul, and will her kids as well if they don't get the * out of there.

Am I done yet? I would like to be rational. I would like to be sane for a minute and not hate the whole world. I hate friends who are your friends and will spend time with you if they know you will either a) * them, b) babysit their kids c) ooh and ahh over their * sexual exploits, or d) come over and fix their * house because it's the only place that you can go to get some time off from the family. I shouldn't need time off, I know. I have a great family. They're great. Really. But I forget when everybody else comes home that they don't live with dad and mom and sanna and they want to spend time just hanging out, watching cartoons, playing board games, fixing pattern store quirks, diagnosing dread diseases and drinking coke. That is my everyday life. I want to interact, sit in a kidless place that isn't costco and laugh about things over some cheesy bread. Play scrabble and tell stories. escape for two minutes this insane round and round life that I live. I feel so selfish, so horrible. I am asking my family to split up, or something, because all the time they had during all the hours I was at work, kissing costco member's asses, they were here having quality time together, playing board games, etc, etc, etc. *.

I think I feel better.

PS - I am moving to Bend. ASAP. and I am buying a new car. Maybe tomorrow. We'll see. Because it's MY ******** life. and only I can change it and make it what I * want. and all the guilt in all the world isn't worse than living a life I don't want to. Which I am now. But not for long...

on pain

yesterday while I was pushing carts (which is much like pushing drugs in that is a senseless, endless excersize in suffering and futility), I had no less than three members act a little insulted when they asked for help with their load and they were sent me. One asian woman loudly protested: "I no want lady! eeess too heavy! I want man!" while I tried to calm her down and loaded her three boxes of "pine mountain" fire logs into the back of her minivan. One older lady kept reminding me to be careful of my back, as if loading her utility shelves was the hardest and heaviest work I had ever done. I explained to her that it was too late, my back was already shot, and she shook her head and said I would regret it later, and I assured her I already did. We had a little conversation about the benefit of work, however hard on the body, and no work, when one has no other income. "well that's what women's lib gets you," she said regretfully. No, I thought to myself, that's what a deadbeat ex husband and seriously repressed economy gets you. A 32 year old mother of four children straining with 22 year old guys over 120 lb boxes of metal racks, nordic track machines and the occasional refrigerator. It's work, right? and the shooting pains in my ankles, wrists, the spasms in my lower back, the blisters on my hands, the pretty much constant pain somewhere, is all worth the $330 a week I am making. Because it's more than the nothing I was making before. Yes, now that I must work to survive, I would love to stay unliberated at home with my kids, who are bobbing precariously on the very rough sea of our life right now. But it is what it is, and someday it will be better. In the meantime, I am ready to retire. Right after I run this wheel of cheese back across the warehouse for the 16th time because Betty Member decided it gave her gas.

on being loose

mostly I said that to see how many people had to read it. my mom wants me to clean my room so I am doing everything in my power to avoid that, and the WAAAAAYYYY overdue homework. I wish I could communicate in words how great I feel having all of my hair gone and leaving all of the years that that hair was associated with, behind me. I really feel free. I mean, I almost hate my short hair, but I love being out from under the burden of what it meant. When I cut it off, with a pair of poultry shears, sitting on the floor of my bedroom in front of my mirror in a legends of the fall moment, I was listening to Sugarland's song "Keep You", on repeat. I am ready. ready to move on. to be done with the anger and the pain and the memories that I have been clinging to so fiercely. I am ready to be happy. To be different and to be driven to my own happiness. Hummingbird sums it up for me. So many songs do. I am just ready. It is time. Maybe more than time. I am Peter Pan, and I will never grow up, and it's good.

boycott black friday

Today is one of the many days annually when humans make asses of themselves. They rush the doors of wal*mart stores (WTF????) to save two dollars on a barbie, literally killing people in the insanity that our society has carefully cultivated with our shameless consumerism and lavish idiocy. I speak pharisaically of course, being one of the worst trangressors of said offenses (minus the killing). Economic crisis be damned, door buster advertising go to hell. This is wrong. This craziness must stop. I have to work tomorrow, and I stand convicted, accepting this as my punishment for being a participant years past in the absurd tradition we call black friday. This is the culmination of the evils of our culture. We are bad. This is wrong. I am guilty.

Last night, shortly before midnight, I drove with my sisters and Phil to Toys 'R Us, for the novel midnight opening of their black friday sale. The sight that met our eyes was unaccountably shocking and steeled my resolve to remove myself from this tradition as far as possible. We got caught in a traffic jam of circling vehicles in the TRU parking lot as they weaved in and out of the snaking line of probably 500 people, standing in the pitch dark at midnight because there were $3.99 DVDs. Or maybe it was the $12.99 transformers. Whatever it was did not justify the line that had obviously been there for hours, growing like those spongy water grow toys. (I had a mini cowboy once that someone gave me so I could grow my own boyfriend, but I discovered on rehydration that he was seriously lacking in personality, so I dried him up again.) The parking lot was overflowing, pedestrians were nearly dying on every side of us as they scurried through the parking lot on their way to the ever-amassing line. The parking lot across the street at Fugiyama's Japanese Steak House: full. Across the other street, the strip mall parking lot too was bursting at the seams as furtive shoppers dressed in tactical black and trendy pop culture camouflage darted across the four lane street that was ridiculously busy for such an ungodly hour. We immediately wrote off the great deal on Thomas the Train cars and decided it would be far better to pay full price than endure the madness, but decided to pull into Old Navy where we saw a little line straggling up to the door to find out which "door buster" deal we had missed in our ad searching. Turns out, Old Navy was opening in no less than three meager hours, and some of the champion shoppers at the door would be the lucky recipients of LEGO Rockband video games. Wait, that is a game? Because it sounds for all the world like the surreal and uncomfortable combination of two not well matched adventures. Little lego men flipping from platform to platform with electric guitars strapped to them, killing bad guys with their wicked tunes. Uhhhh,,,,,

Can we please stop this? One at a time, every non-consumer helps win the battle against a morally, ethically, technically and tragically wrong beast that we have created in our lemming -like naivete. No more. Help me.

so

frustrated. angry. angry that I died somewhere along the line and nobody told me, and now I am in hell. I think it must have been on the plane to Hawaii. cause everything since then seems to be surreally wrong. Some moments I think I am just being punished forever for the wrong things I have done. I have an eternity of rainy, cold cart pushing, hurting back, hurting wrists, overdraft charges, breaking down cars and fighting children as recompense for my evil deeds. But I think that since the punishment seems eternal, it must actually be hell. And I am unwittingly dead.

It's one of those days when even my cuticles hurt. I don't know why, and I am annoyed at hearing myself complain. My desk lamp is broken and my hair sucks. I am either overmedicated or in drizzling pain. The kind that just makes you want to snap people's heads off for no apparent reason. It makes me feel sympathetic towards really bitchy women in the Costco parking lot who do stupidly mean things and nobody knows why. I think maybe they have drizzling pain as well. Today Aaron Linder was pushing carts with me, and as if he were reading my mind, he was speculating aloud about how great it would be to be able to pick one member at the end of each cart shift that we could beat up. Beat up for being stupid, and for being clueless and careless and completely self absorbed. That they would be bearing the consequence for all of the other thoughtless, selfish members that visited that day seems less important than the delight of working our irritation out on someone. I of course interjected that we should be allowed to save up member choices and trade five in for one good Michael Charles Pritchard beating, since he comes on the days he feels like, posing as the cart supervisor, works for 5 hours, takes 6 breaks and basically does nothing all day except be annoying, ogle cute members, and smoke cigarettes.

I almost quit today. It was one of those days when the combination of drizzling pain, overmedication, Michael Charles Pritchard and stupid members were enough to convince me I must really be in hell and had died, unbeknownst to myself. The four new overdraft charges on stupid little $1.27 transactions didn't help, as I watched in horror my nearly $800 paycheck evaporate to less than $300 overnight, with no proactive bill paying on my part. This must be hell, because there is nothing more senseless than things like $35 overdraft charges on $1.27 expenses. God help me.

I talked to stupid Leeroy. Which probably only confirmed my hellish existence, as I came to the conclusion that I not only A) still love him hopelessly, foolishly, and wrongfully, but I also B) need to find someone to date to distract me from A). I would like to just move on. I would like to just spend time with someone and have fun. Talk, hang out. I would like to hold a hand. Lean on a shoulder. Feel a touch on my back. I'd like to argue about where to eat, or who pays the tab more often, or who listens to worse music. I'd like to wake up with arms and legs wrapped around me that didn't belong to a sweaty six year old, although for the time being I will take her.

On the bright side of all of this, since MacKenzie somehow made the lamp by my bed quit working when she jumped at the balloon stuck to the ceiling of my bedroom, I dug into my eBay cache and pulled down a vintage lamp with a fredrick and nelson shade that had been in my room when I was little, and plugged it in next to me, and it makes my room feel so much more... cool, than the old functional desk lamp did. The fact that my kids and mom surprised me with a spotlessly clean room and feel better cards when I got home helped too. Along with the relief I had knowing that my vibrator was packed safely away in the storage unit so my mom and kids didn't stumble across it during their intensely thorough cleaning.

So all in all, maybe hell isn't as bad as one would think. other than the drizzling pain. I could do without that. So I think I will stay overmedicated until my prescriptions wear off, which should be just as soon as I am thoroughly addicted, so I can enjoy the withdrawals while I push carts and mediate middle school homework. And it was sunday, which means I got paid time and a half, so that's almost twice as many overdraft charges that I can afford next week! Yay!

There is, no escape.

Hummingbird

When it's cold it's too cold here
When it's hot it's too hot, dear
We were up for a while
Now it's come time to fold

I've been leaning on you
Without reason or truth
Now I'm dreaming of leaving my demons
And the first one I'm leaving is you

Well it's foolish to pretend
I can't do it again
They tell you you live and you learn
Yeah but they never tell you when

I've always been waiting for something
Someone to come pull me through
Now I see that it's all up to me
There ain't nothing no one else can do

We've worn our backsides out
You know what I'm talking about
I wanted so much to please you
But we were living in doubt

Raise a glass for the memories
Some take all they can get
When we met you seemed so easy and free
How could anyone settle for anything less?

(Langhorne Slim, 2008)