Sadly I finished it today so I’m paying more attention to my School Bag book, David Cross’ I Drink For a Reason. There has to be a book at hand, wherever I may roam.

Some hilarious excerpts from the latter:

Perhaps you have just had a huge fight over something trivial that got blown way out of proportion and turned into something else together?

Examples:
Why don’t you like the color purple?
…well then, YOU fucking drive!!
I didn’t know there wouldn’t be any hot water left! It’s not a fucking conspiracy!
You used to fuck a magician?!
You really honestly believe that the Spin Doctors were underrated?

Dumped seems like it should only apply to relationships lasting a year or less. After that the word should be something like killed or temporarily deaded.

I dog-eared two other passages that aren’t nearly as funny when I’m sober. Regardless, this shit is laugh out loud funny so far.

What are you reading?

-CJ

ps:

After a recent episode of Chelsea Lately, I was totally inspired. The motivation and inspiration to do more and to do better with my life came from a musician (of music I never liked) turned actor (in movies I never liked) on a talk show hosted by a sailor-mouthed lush (this I do like!). It was Tyrese Gibson, whom I obviously have nothing in common with, except rock hard abs.* He was promoting his new book, How to Get Out of Your Own Way and talked about how most often, we are our own biggest obstacle between ourselves and our goals. And I was like, “No, brotha. That’s money.” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was kind of slackin’.

I’m of the goal-setting, list-making variety. And I need to feel that the majority of my down time still has to be productive in some way. Folding laundry while watching the baseball game. Listening to educational podcasts while driving. I have struggled with the impossibility to come home and sit down. I get anxiety on the drive home from work sometimes, thinking about all of the things I need to do. This makes my end of the night comedown that much more rewarding but the many hours before it completely exhausting. I will complain to Josh about his not doing enough around the house until he sets me straight. He does his part. Not doing as much as I do is not a fault of his. I set stupid-high standards and buzz around like a Tasmanian devil (assuming they do consistently whirl around like that of the Looney Tunes** character) until I’ve exhausted myself.

It is hard for me to really relax on a weekday if it is still light outside. (I do allow for a lot more down time on weekends.) I am the goddamned opposite of lazy, is what I’m saying. Sometimes it sucks. But I let the chores and ennui of the daily life get in the way of real, personal self-improvement. I vowed to learn to speak Spanish and just stopped after a couple of lessons and index card study sessions. I have all of these plans for the front and back yard of my house but don’t allow the amount of time they’ll take. I want to do these creative projects for the first time in my life, but I’m putting the laundry first. And Tyrese is the guy who made me see my own big ass stuck in the way of things. This is funny, yes? I think so.

The laundry and the sweeping and the dusting and vacuuming can wait, right? The roof won’t come down if I dedicate a solid thirty minutes a day to a new language?

But do you promise?

-CJ

*Sike.
**Um, why ‘tune’ like music and not ‘toon’ like cartoon? Why hasn’t this been protested? We must put a stop to this!

My creativity has dried up like the sponge in the office kitchen and the only thing paying attention to it are fruit flies because they need somewhere to lay their larvae. And they’re like, “There’s the wrung out leftovers of Jill’s mind!” and they kamakaze dive to it.

Human Biology is one class, one night, for just shy of 3.5 hours but it consumes more than 40% of my brain. I want to succeed in the subject I am not good at. I slipped on the first test and scored a high D, adding to it the extra credit I earned in the first week, I balanced a C-. This is not acceptable. I studied like I was getting paid for it and scored a 96% on my second test. I’m balancing out now with a B average and determined to use my last few weeks, chock-full of tests and quizzes, to bring it up slightly.

I’ve always had a very regular reading habit but I’ve devoted my lunch hours and free time to the textbook and the notes to the point that I forgot the story line and who was who in the big ass hardcover I was pointlessly carrying around. I’ve neglected my blog and my personal journaling site. I don’t put pen to paper unless it’s to add cat food to the grocery list. (Man, those furry fuckers EAT.)

School is not entirely to blame. I work on a team of a few people at work, all of us leaning a little on the others to complete the various stages of the order process. Three of our 8 person team have left – one for disability, one for maternity and one for another opportunity. I’ve taken on more than double my work load resulting in some OT (yay!) and major stress, usually held tight in my left shoulder and lately, my neck (boo).

But there is still so much good. I got to go to a Jimmy Kimmel Live taping and see A Perfect Circle perform as a guest (William Shatner was a guest as well!).

I got to swoop up a last minute ticket with my cousin to see them again at the Avalon, where they performed the entire Mer De Noms album in order. And an even last minuter ticket went to my little sister, who I was thrilled to have with me.

I double-dated off to the Galaxy for a night of Joe Rogan’s comedy.

There’s been more social activity than should be for someone working this much, attending school and hanging out with their seven-year-old smartass.

No one warned me about the Smartass. I knew things would get dodgy, rough, patience-testing, infuriating and overall worthy of the pain but BY GOD THE SMARTASS. This phase of sarcasm and dry wit deserves a daily slap upside the head if she weren’t emulating her father and I EXACTLY.

Her father and I… While it is highly likely that this is all in my head, I feel like we’re being challenged to succeed while the people around us are waiting for the crumble. All we ever did was crumble before and build back up something a little weaker. We had a ROUGH five year stretch but we started that stretch at 17 and 19 years old and had a CHILD together before we’d known each other one year. (Kiddo was born three days prior to the one year mark of the day we met.)

Our story goes something like this: hot chick (heh) rolls up in an El Camino with the windows down and talks to a co-worker outside her grocery store job. His two friends linger in the back. One of the friends remarks that he has the same jacket that I’m wearing. (This one.) Girl remains unimpressed. He is, after all, just a boy. And boys are so lame. Girl’s passenger (a family friend) invites the gentlemen to our house for that night’s big boxing match/excuse to party. (Roy Jones Jr. vs. Glen Kelly, 02/02/02) They come. We chat, we beverage. He says now that I was flirtatious. Numbers are exchanged later that week through the co-worker of mine/friend of his and our story began. It went up, waaaay up, and it crashed down. Over and over for five years. And then we spent the better part of three years trying to be big kids without the other to lean on.

It says something that almost nine years after we met, we are having a lot of fun living together with our house full of pets and I still can’t keep my hands off of him. Through the good and the bad, we never lacked passion. And that is weaving into something more solid, stable and exciting than it ever was.

The naysayers, in my head or otherwise, are wrong. We got this.

-CJ

Jamie is trying to work ‘verbs ‘n shit‘ into her lesson plan today! (Teaching English in Prague!)

I finished Sharp Objects last night!

I started Second Line by Poppy Brite!

I’m not hungover though I should be!

Despite cheap hack job cut, I’m having a good hair day!

There’s new vacuum potential on the horizon!

Kiddo gets to experience Legoland for the first time today!

Okay, now you go.

-CJ

You know, I don’t really want to live in a fascist grammarian dictatorship where people have to grasp how the English language is used and punctuated before they are allowed to become parents. Except I kind of do. Maybe. Sometimes.

-mimi smartypants

By way of recommendation (through snail mail! awesome!) I started reading Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. It has the cover of YA self-mutilation awareness fiction but it is an incredible read. Flynn received an Edgar nomination for Best First Novel. I have no idea if this is prestigous or if Edgar just reads and awards from a basement in middle America but it looks good on the back cover. I will happily devour everything this author does in the future. (Thanks, Marci Bones!)

-CJ

I found Fran Varian’s words for the first time in It’s So You: 35 Women Write About Personal Expression Through Fashion and Style. Though I finished the book a week ago, I looked her up today for more, more, more.

At hipmama.com, I found this: Teeth

Fran put words to the death of a young boy who didn’t have the insurance coverage to remove an abcessed tooth. For this, he died. She talks about the passion with which abortion is fought against and the contrasting lack of passion to help the children we already have.

A 12 year-old boy died this past Sunday from poverty, in the United States of America. It’s not as uncommon as it might seem.

Deamonte Driver had a right to life. He had the right to finish the 7th grade and do whatever 12 year-old boys do in the summer these days. His mother wanted this child so much she harbored him inside of her uterus for forty weeks. I believe she had a right to watch him grow up. I believe that every Mother has the right to watch her child grow up.

…

I would join your protests over this boy’s death but I doubt you’ll organize any. Somehow I can’t see you aiming your bullhorns at Maryland in one collective outcry of anger and grief the same way you flocked to Florida and wailed outside the window of a grown woman who wanted to die.

Somewhere in South Dakota there’s a terrified 19 year-old girl with a toilet full of morning sickness, no boyfriend and no money.

Let us pray.

 -CJ

There is a stylish donkey in the middle of no where, rockin’ Juicy Coutures.

• Bring a good looking boy or two for company.
• Always go back for more blackjack. It took a lot longer to mourn the loss of a fifty dollar bill than it did to lose it. (Less than ten hands.) When I returned as a self-proclaimed ‘determined bitch,’ I won it all back and then some.
• Don’t start in on the champagne too early in the morning. It could result in a nine p.m. bedtime.
• Keep a watchful eye on powdered donut boxes when the hungry hands of a seven-year-old are in the vicinity.
• Bring your most awesome pair of shades:

• Don’t bother with six dollar shots when the cost of the bottle is the price of three of them and comes with approximately 21x the amount of liquor
• Bring bubbles

The celebratory means of the weekend away was 90% my little brother’s 21st birthday and 10% Mother’s day, for which I was gifted a gift certificate to a bookstore. There was much squealing on my part, especially when I read the denomination.

I’m going to buy 500,000 copies of Chuck Palaniuk’s new book just because I can.

A day late to all the mamas – happy day!

-CJ

“All of the feminist theory in the world cannot prepare you for the heart wrenching, maddening and completely unexpected experience of coming to know other adult women.”

-It’s So You: 35 Women Write About
Personal Expression Through Fashion and Style by Michelle Tea

and this is the last few months of my life in the truly fucked up effort of meeting new people.

-CJ

http://ingalagringa.com/womanifestos/calamityJill.html

This certainly doesn’t make me special – I think anything you submit can be shared including crap on a log (pending confirmation) but it is pretty nice to see my literary hero alongside my pseudonym in an URL that I didn’t make up.

-CJ

            “In the 1950s bar days, there was a word most dykes would have hissed my direction in an attempt to describe me. Ki-ki. “That one’s ki-ki, a neither-nor,” they would have said loud enough for me to hear, to try to shame me out of their world. “One night she’s a femme prowling pretty for a butch, next night she’s a tom cruising for a lady. Never know what you’ll get, not when she dresses in the morning, not the way she talks, tells a story, acts. She’s trouble, that one.” I’m tough, I could have taken the sneers, but the thing was, time had come I wasn’t even willing to play the tidy-shift role of ki-ki.

            I’d seen signs at intersections that read ‘Diagonal Crossing Allowed.’ Those signs fascinated me. See, even when diagonal crossing is permitted, I’ve noticed that the vast majority of people walk lines perpendicular to the well-traveled roads. Why? Fuck if I know. What I did know was that my life depended on me crossing the street diagonally, sometimes in a winding circular pattern for that matter.

            I wasn’t a boy, not entirely at least, but at times I wasn’t a girl either. Rob would have accused me of being a traitor for claiming part boy. Rob and her blue rosette teacups, she was always ranting and griping and smoking her cigarettes real mean when she talked about how much it bothered her to see hard-core bulldaggers we knew taking hormones and getting the fat removed from their breasts and then cutting their names in half. As if “Rob” was the name her mamá gave that delicate little flower.

            Regardless, there were times I was at least part boy. A femme boy deep down. Shy sweater fag, my cardigan on hand to comfort me in the cold world. Bookworm queer boy at heart, K told me on more than one occasion. Certain moods and I was the most enviable of drag princesses, eyelashes all a-flutter and my fingers tickling the air with each gesture. Sometimes I was full of flirtatious swagger, but that playful swag could turn fierce snarl for defense if need be. Never, I promised myself one line I wouldn’t cross, never would I be the mean kind of boy that laughed me back inside the store’s red doors when I did no good at hot afternoon sour pissing games. Of course, there were plenty of times I was such a fairy lady that I ceased to be even part boy.

            Yes, Rob would have accused me of bringing the communal growl down for saying I’m part boy. And Stonewall dykes would have wanted me to call my game. What kind of dyke was I anyway? Good question. Simple and complicated all at once, I wasn’t a pigeon to be tucked away neatly into a hole. I didn’t wear a fixed category without feeling pain. I was more, or less, or something different entirely.”

-CJ