everything is edible

just happened to notice this sponsored link at the top of my gmail account today:

split a bottle of wine with a friend and stayed up talking until 4 last night.  my facebook status today?  "hungover but happy."

i'm staring sleeplessly into space (thanks, prescription decongestant, you fucker), dabbing at my bloody nose, gingerly swallowing past the sand paper in my throat while hacking up globs of monkey poo.  in the limp defeat after a coughing fit, a white-hot needle of pain works its way through my left frontal lobe to the base of my skull and i weakly think, "so many... so many symptoms..."

this is what happens when friends let friends go to work sick.  two journal entries.

Today, I am the hideous phlegm beast.

Nice to meet you.

But I went to work anyway.  I frightened the patrons, alienated my co-workers (or was that entertained my co-workers?) and put all the books in all the wrong places.

My work here is done.

Good night.  Must rest up for my encore tomorrow.

and the next day.

Today, I continued my career as The Hideous Phlegm Beast (or, as I like to be called, The Uber Goober).

This time, I alienated the patrons, baffled my co-workers and, oh yeah, managed to shred my name tag.  In a shredder.  While still wearing it.

Don't ask.

ah the good times.

have you heard this crap about not catching the same cold twice?  apparently once your body kicks a virus, you're immune to it.  funny, because here i am trying to sleep propped up, drugged and desperately grasping handfuls of puffs plus and i could swear this cold is just the SAME. DAMN. ONE.

sia's done it again.  Some People Have Real Problems is just the album i needed.

Sia

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Soon We'll Be Found

Sia

Song for Paul

Hearts review their old wounds

The way new weather breaks;

In the quiet, a change in air brings the rain

And all those forgotten aches.

And I’m still here

I’m still alone

On this September night

But the strangest light

Just broke free

In my mind

And I see

It wasn’t me

This time.

Spent all this time feeling wrong,

My thoughts etched hopeless circles on

The glass that’s you; your subtle spin

Can’t let me go, won’t let me in.

There was nothing

I could be or do;

You grow cold because of you.

And I'm still here

I'm still me over here

And you never saw

You never saw.

i realized the other day i badly need to change my profile information.  it no longer applies.  here's the old one:

lets do this in lists! **phobias i am conquering: (1 vomiting (2 germs (3 men (4 food (5 old people (6 teenagers (7 glamorous people (8 horses (9 enclosed spaces (10 things that are uneven [like a list of 9 phobias] **things in my purse: (1 antibacterial hand gel (2 antibacterial hand lotion (3 toothbrush and toothpaste (4 kleenex (5 chapstick (6 eye drops (7 the traveling [and only slightly illegal] pharmacy: ibuprophen, tylenol, aleve, promethazine, zofran, immodium, beano, alka seltzer, benadryl (8 an airsick bag from United [never used!] (9 a feminine product (10 oh yeah and money and cards and stuff

as a recently reformed hermit, i am going through adolescence about two decades late: a drastic body change (weight loss), experimenting for the first time with glam clothes and flirtatious behavior, trying on different identities to figure out who i am and how i fit into this world, getting my heart broken repeatedly, learning to recognize the real friends from the fake, and going through different personalities almost moment to moment.

the whole thing's a real bitch, i don't know how teenagers do it!  but as for me, i intend to laugh along the way.

Last Saturday, we went to the Museum Comes to Life.  It was freezing, but we kept warm with fresh kettle corn, questionable hot dogs and ample heartburn.

In case you've never been, here's my colorful and most likely inaccurate impression.  Each era of reenactment has it's own "camp" so to speak: from the more mainstream Civil War dudes right outside the museum, to the eccentric medieval Society for Creative Anachronism pitching their tents in the far-flung reaches of the rose garden.  The Union and Confederacy trade cannon blasts and the S.C.A. beat the crap out of each other's armor with wooden swords and duct-taped axes while everything in between roams the grounds, from Highlanders to trappers to girl scouts to Allied soldiers to tie-dyed hippies in a van (I think they were with the museum) to even a couple scrawny Centurions, dwarfed by their own impressive armor and crimson-brushed helmets, who wandered over to the Yankees' display only to receive a chorus of, "Garr!  It's those Romans again!  Yer roamin' in the wrong place, fellas!"

July discovered an acquaintance of hers leading the bagpipe procession.  She's worked with him for seven years and has never before known he played the pipes, nor seen his bare knees.  They stopped right by us to play a few lively tunes followed by a mournful one.  Then, at a whispered word from a man in breeches, cloak and plumed hat, July's friend turned to her and muttered, "Gotta go.  The weird S.C.A. people want a parade."

Inside the museum, I found a coworker of mine churning butter and baking bread in a real Victorian kitchen that used to be part of a Boise house before it was razed in the 70s.  Eerily disembodied under spotlights against the black backdrop of museum walls and ceiling, the room is tacked piecemeal onto a porch, parlor and dining room from other vanished houses... sad, surreal refugees of urban renewal.

For an extra dose of surrealism, my coworker suddenly jumps the railing into the saloon to serenade some truculent-looking cowboys and miners with the player piano.  The stuffed, two-headed calf watches from its unlikely perch on the bar.

Back outside in the cold, girl scouts have given up hocking their cookies but the caller by the log cabin is starting up a new dance and the Scots are winding their way through the inventions exhibits to the tune of "Yankee Doodle," trailing the nerdiest, sluttiest, clanking mob of lords and ladies who all grin and wave like they're riding a float down Capitol.

July and I start our long walk to the car we left several blocks away.  First to die away are the clang of the blacksmith's anvil and the square dance music.  Then the bagpipes fade.  As we pass the steaming hot dog stand, we catch a few notes from a couple of vagabonds in leather fringe heading down a garden path with mandolin and fiddle.  I wish we could follow them, but we strike out alone across the empty park, away from all the voices, delicious smells and fluttering standards.  I catch one last glimpse of purple and scarlet among the white S.C.A. tents before we head across the bridge to the concrete storeys of the university, downtown and reality.

Thanks for a great day, you Idaho State Historical Society you.  Now for Oktoberfest.

Dejamoo

1 comment

just a note to one boy.

to the rest, i say: i'm onto you.

don't try me out.  don't play with me.  get your ass on the level before you make a grab for mine.