Lucy's Spleen

Calendar Girls

nines: can't we just let it go? in reality, we don't have a grasp on anything. we live. we die. do you like my philosophical jive talk?

me: you are a beat nihilist

nines: czech out my beret

nines: i have a calendar of me with different styles of berets on.

nines: there is even one shot with me and a poodle, and guess what? the poodle has a miniature beret on

me: wow you are both french AND beatnik. im amazed at you

me: okay- fun game!

in my calendar i'm wearing cutoffs

and sitting on tractors and

motorcycles and stuff

nines: with a john deere cap

me: yeah!

and under my cap i have very big hair.

i have big hair in all my imaginings.

i'm a Big Hair kinda girl.

it coordinates with the size of my ass.

 

Beautiful, Loved.

Last week on this day, we all found out this. I still can't stop thinking about it and I don't ever want to stop, because it means so much to me to be able to.

Precious, young friend, your absence is keenly felt and deeply mourned by many.

Sarah has written that she is nervously training for her impending trip to the dentist. Now, I am aware that I am no model of dental comfort and perfection, but there is one area of oral hygiene in which, after years of faithlessness, I have finally found religion. Herein, I will proselytize.

Cerdo- here is wut you must do! You must go to the drugstore- Long's is best, if you have Long's in Chicago, otherwise Walgreen's will do or another such acceptable alternative- but not the Dollar $tore! The Dollar $tore is NOT an acceptable alternative! Not in this circumstance!

Proceed to the aisle or section labeled Mouth Care, since apparently no one knows the meaning of the word "oral" anymore*; find the floss, and near it find a product by the name of flossers, flossups, or some other stupid permutation of the word floss. Let's see, here's an image:  Now, I myself have never personally tried Fun Flossers, with their luminous green color reminiscent of- what? Dinosaurs? Slime? The slime you are scraping from between your teeth? Boy if there's one image that spells F-U-N for me, it's slime! And oral care, er- I mean mouth care. It is hard to tell what kind of fun DenTek is implying can be had in this particular instance, but I will say I have used the classically "un-fun" Minted Flossers, as well as the Eez-Thru and Dento-Pik varieties and have found them to in fact be kind of fun! You get a little U-shape on a stick, see, on which the floss has been pre-strung; a clever design feature that means you can now floss one-handed! The other end of the stick is pointy-yet-malleable and can be used for scraping around the edge of your gums. Imagine the possibilities! I like to perform a leisurely floss n' scrape in bed at night while watching rented television programs. I also carry a little stash-bag with a couple of flossers in my purse, in case of post-salad spinach-tooth emergencies at restaurants. Forget "home care," good dental hygiene is now portable! You can do it on the boat!

Now, the important thing to remember when purchasing your Fun Flossers is that you don't want to skimp on cheap-o flimsy brands that shred, leaving itsy flossy bits between your teeth. You must look for important key words such as "Tuffloss," or anything that indicates the floss has been quality approved by NASA. Also, look for flossers that have the U-floss at one end, and instead of a mere plastic point, a complete Flossbrush or Brushpik at the other. And buy the big bag! You are sure to so enjoy your flossing experience, you'll be flossing night and day! At the office! While riding public transit! Anywhere, anytime, you too can pump up your dental training! Incorporate flossups into your dental routine, and your next visit is sure to at least suck less on some level! Good luck, Sarah, and have fun!

 

* Except in the specialized instance of abstinence-promoting cheers invented by religious teenagers such as, "Stay moral- go oral!" A real-life rally-cry from morally confused bastion of Mormondom, Idaho Falls, Idaho.

A New Lease on Loaf

Yesterday I was in full freaked-out, mentally ill premenstrual mode and wondering where are the women who all sport my same gang symbol? Why am I not having the usual Sunday Brunch with my girlfriends? I'm missing three unflaggingly supportive amigas upon whose reliably subjective-in-my-favor ears I can direct my wails and always receive sympathy and encouragement. I'm wondering What is this place, this “town” to which I have moved? And why are none of my girlfriends here in it and how can I get to where they are and how soon? Do you ever get panicked like this? I was not feeling very optimistical yesterday.

I've been dreaming a lot lately about food. More specifically, that I AM food. I can't remember all of the dreams, but a couple of nights ago I dreamed I was a beer (one of a six-pack!), and the following night I was some soup. I don't really know what inspired this theme, but it does remind me of this sort of nightmare I had in 1998 that was not really scary when I dreamt it, but which I turned into a big awful saga in my mind in the days and weeks that followed. The dream was this:

I am standing at the kitchen counter getting ready to make a sandwich. I have all these ingredients spread before me; Wonder bread, creamy Jif, and a whole array of other stuff from the fridge. I take out a slice of bread, smear it lightly with Miracle-Whip, top it with a heavy drizzle of honey and- wait, no! Fuck! How did that lettuce get in there? This is not the right combination! Anyway this is supposed to be a PEANUT BUTTER sandwich! Now I have to start all over again. I toss the ruined sandwich in the tall kitchen garbage at my side, feeling incredibly guilty for the waste, and commence again with a new slice of bread. As I pull it out of the plastic I am full of intention, doing this immaculate Choosy-Mom job of spreading the peanut butter and envisioning the completed sandwich with it's layers of brown and purple and a single perfect bite taken out of it how tasty it will be with a glass of cold milk and in my reverie I take another slice of bread and- whoops! Cover it with a heavy smear of whole seed deli mustard. This is not a proper peanut butter sandwich! I have to throw it away. One by one I remove slices of bread from the bag, and one by one I wreck my sandwiches. I seem to get off to a good start, but then I lose my focus; in go onions, bologna, ketchup, pickle relish- I'm just not paying careful enough attention! One by one I drop the polluted sandwiches in the trash, until I have no more bread to work with. I reach in the bag and find it's all gone, I have just wasted the last slice of the loaf.

I was haunted by this dream- the frustration of it. I talked and talked about it with friends and over the course of a few days I concluded that obviously LOAF=LIFE/LIFE=LOAF! My life = a wasted loaf. I was very unfocused at the time, and I had no idea what aim to take for my future. I felt as though I had been trying all these things, was interested in all these things, but that none of them were leading me anywhere- I was not hitting on the right combination, you know?

So lately I am thinking about this because I've been having these other food dreams, which are also possibly ambiguously-meaningful (I am part of something more than myself? In my dream I am not all of the soup, I am only a portion of the soup- yet I am mixed in with the rest of the soup, not ladled out neatly in my own soup bowl.), and because I'm feeling a lot the same way these days as I was eight years ago, namely- confused and without direction. I'm wondering, What have I been doing all this time? What has it taught me? and Where in the hell am I headed?

This is my version of an existential crisis (I can tell when start in with the worrying about the bread), and it only occurs when I have way too much time on my hands. I sit around doing nothing, wondering what was the point of everything that I was doing back when I used to be doing things. Where did all those things get me? Here, doing nothing? (And what were the things, by the way? I can't seem to remember.) Fortunately, this particular crisis seems so much less critical than in the past. At nineteen I thought, "My God! My life is going nowhere, and I haven't even been anywhere yet!" Now I tend more to think if I don't know what I've been doing all this time, I at least know that whatever it was it was pretty nice mostly, that while it was going on I was surrounded with people who loved me, and that overall it brought me a lot of happiness. And so what if now I don't know where my future is going? I reckon that means it's time (way way past time) for me to get an emmer-effing JOB,  because when I'm working and busy I tend not to be worrying and just to be living. And isn't that the whole idea?

So I've decided to stop fussing over what job to get, that it's not really important right now what job it is, because it's not really the job that counts. The point of the job is merely to give me the resources to be able to figure out what I do want to do, the ideal being that one day what I want to do and what I do for a job combine in happy union! And, while we're at it, that they earn me barrels of money! In the meantime (and back in reality), all I have to do is get a job because until I get one, I have no income, and that's beginning to be somewhat troubling. But also, once I get a job, I will no longer have so much time on my hands- there will be less time for the missing of girlfriends and less time for complaining. Of course there will be less time for the drinking of tea and of wine, but there will also be less time for worrying, which to me sounds just FINE.

Several Highly Disconnected Paragraphs of Unrelated "Information"

Guess where I am all up at?

I'm in a BREWERY! It's where you can eat the hell out of some fried fish since you're about to start your period, drink beer (more than 3.2% beer!) AND use the Internet AT THE SAME TIME. Not only that, but it's really fresh, local fish (not-in-the-least-bit-rubbery Monterey Squid), from the nearby OCEAN, which I was just looking at five minutes ago. When I came out of my acupuncture session I felt I needed a dose of watery goodness so I drove to the shore, where I spent a few lovely minutes enjoying the kind of plump, slow waves and that thing of the almost-full moon making a long, shimmery pattern on the water, but mostly it made me really have to pee, reminding me of another thing that makes you pee and that thing is beer! So I came here. Oh my God this is good calamari.

Did you read the post Heather wrote about the sweet Salt Lake City grid system and how easy it is to get everywhere? Well it made me want to tell you about here, and how much less easy they made it around here. There are things about getting around that are not hard, like if you know the major streets than you know that pretty much everything is located on one of those, so if you can find a major street then you're all set. Unless you need a way to get from one major street to another, in which case you're fukt. Salt Lake is laid out in something like a square, where the square is based on its center, not its perimeter. Directions are easy to remember, the mountains are east, and the lake is west, and you can see the mountains from anyplace in the city, so it's not like you can get turned around. Here the town is shaped like a crescent moon, and the ocean selected an alternative to its traditional location WEST of the continental landmass and went ahead and opted to hang out to the SOUTH. Notice how no streets run parallel to one another, how several vital ones share the same name (just replacing "Avenue" with "Drive"), some start out as one street and then split into two, and add in the fact that a couple of them have the names of major nearby suburbs and well, you're LOST. I keep a map in the car and use it only all the time. It winds up that without it it may not be that hard necessarily to get to a place, but then getting from that place to another is a major challenge. For the first time in my life I actually appreciate the freeway, as it seems to remain somewhat consistent and from time to time features SIGNS assisting one in determining wut's about to happun.

Whups. This have not been a Utah beer. These are California bieren, with percents of four and more!

I would just like to say that me and Eazy think that the execution of Tookie Williams is a WHOLE bunch of bullshiznit. I would not, however, like to say we think he's innocent, because we/I probably don't. But being for the first time a little near to it, because if you can believe this fucking joke ARNOLD IS MY GOVERNOR NOW, I decided I am adamantly anti-capital punishment, which I guess I was before, too, but never really felt up to taking a major stand on til now. I'm against it! There you go.

I got a haircut, which is not the best haircut, but I like the color of it, so I took Antes y Despues pikshers which I will reveal to you anuther taym, but for which, while I was at it, I tried the method of using the flash in the bathroom mirror but covering up the flash with your finger so it doesn't bling, er, BLIND you in the photos and I came up with an array of these Rather Arty (I think) pics. I ended up taking pitcures of msyelf for a long time, long enough that I began wondering, "am I VAIN? Cause this makes me question whether or not I am VAIN, when I take all these pictures of myself and I want to keep taking them." But maybe it is not vanity, maybe it is a matter of trying to get the right picture, because none has revealed the true subtlety of your color job yet, and because it is hard taking pictures of yourself in the mirrow and because hey! I dont hate the way I look in thesefor once! Let's take a million of them! Do you know wut I mean? Is it vain or is it no? Is it drunken? You be the judge; for your viewing plezher, here are the arty ones (of course I assume that viewing them will be a pleasure because I SAID I'm VAIN. Didn't you hear me?):

Did you check out the one I took UPSIDE DOWN to get the flash away from my face? The tiny distant first one is my fav'rit, second is the one where I'm squinching my eye. Look at my illuminated E.T. finger over the flashbulb- it looks molten, I love it.

Beers the 3.2 they arunt!

I decided to use the other arty one for my new MySpace profile. I am to my embarrassment officially joining MySpace so I can look at the friends-only sections for friends of mine who I miss and, secretly, so I can look for new friends in California because I am LONELY. I miss girls. In particular I miss three very certain girls who happen to share this birthmark:

Can you see it? It is our Gang Symbol. see how there are four arms but only three birthmarks? That is a mistake in photography, for really there are four of us, and we are attached by many squid-like arms to a network of other amazing women who love us, and who we love so dearly. I have this urge to list them all by name, right here, but I am tipsish so please don't listen to me. Thank you. We had to get Nina a little drunk to convince her to relent to that tattoo, remember? That wuz when we were having breakfast with our mimosas every weekend, before we suddenly got all grown-up and busy. I miss you. I can't wait to see you this weekend, for breakfast, like in the olden days.

Did you grow up saying that? The "Olden Days?" Why did we say it that way? What is the"en" for? Wut were we talking about? It's like, "I beggeth you." Like when I was a kid and I would pretend to be Princess Leia; I'd tie myself to the big brown vinyl La-Z-Boy and it was Jabba the Hut, then I'd try to be sexy and thrash around with my pretend leather bikini and pretend long Carrie Fisher braid (a blue polyester skirt) sprouting from the top of my head and plead, "JABBA, NO! I BEGGETH YOU!" really earnest and sexy and terrified, and then the La-Z-Boy would reach out it's stubby arm to a nearby fishbowl and slurp up a snack of some kind of enormous squeaking alien tadpole.

I have my dates all set up for my visit home this weekend; an appointment with our family eye doctor, then drinks or lunch or something with Chuck (oh yeah, and Heather, Jon and Leta), then Eazy and I want to hear Erin Haley sing somewhere along the Gallery Stroll, we'll probably hit the "Gentleman's Party" (fake moustaches, anyone?), Saturday morning breffus with the gals and the holiday party that is our whole point of going home in the first place. I have no idea what I'm going to wear. I'm also going to visit the Ticket Store, where I hear they've finally replaced me, and we'll squeeze in a whole lot of coffee from Salt Lake institution The Coffee Garden, which we miss with all our hearts. I'm looking forward to home, but not to it's horrible winter inversion pollution which, according to Garling, looks like this:

  See all the gunk in the air? Ick.

Last spring it lukt like this:

and I liked that better.

Have a beer, everybody! Three-to-the-minus-point-two! Do all the math and you get 5.6!

Here is the letter Seth wrote me, printed on ticket stock from the work-hole like I ax'd for:

i'm not a bad guy

i just forgive myself

very easily. okay i am.,

i break my girl friends

heatr or heart and

possibly her heater or heatr

every time i drink.,

mariah carey is still alive

yeah that's dumb to say

would you believe that there

are people out there who hate

me? I'm serious, I am like

so intense. They can't stand me.,

-Seth

,

Isn't it a pretty poem? To the wetted eye it is. Goodnight.

Emptying the Brown Paper Bag So I Can Breathe Into It

I include this photo of Campy and Meredith ripped from my friend Heidels's website and entitled, "Squash, A Portrait," to illustrate why I am drinking alone in the Internet cafe on Saturday night:

It's because I'm lonely! I miss these girls and other girls like them! Look at how they pose with the squash (a gift for a friend on the opening of his play)! Surely they were drunk! Or anyway if they were not drunk before the play, they definitely became drunk afterward. Meredith and Heidels and I recently missed a play we had arranged to attend because of drunkenness and the urgent need to talk for hours about sex and boys and whatever. Heidi! Meredith! That night was so fun! I am lonely and I confess- I signed up for the mailing list for the local Knitting Meetup group AND (and this is embarrassing, but wut the hell) I also signed up for Scrabble Meetup, just in case I never make friends and have finished every crossword puzzle and read all our books and don't have enough knitting projects on my hands and I get really desperate- desperate enough to assemble at a local coffeehouse or other such establishment with "Scrabblers of all ages and skill levels" which I am forced to believe really translates to middle-aged folk who spend their toilet-reading time studying words with two letters and those beginning with q with no u after it. It will be like a Singles Ward for secular, competitive people! Aauugh!

Truly I'm not drunk yet (you'd have recognized my signature intoxitypography); I'm just waiting for my guy so we can go to the movies, which I often like to do a little bit whoo!asted so I'm not as pathetic as I have made myself appear just because I signed up for Scrabble Meetup (board games are fun! Come on!). But the point is: my dog died this week, and she was my only other friend in this town and I effing MISS her. I miss her a lot, and I haven't been able to compose a beautiful poignant heartbreaking post about it for this website which, as you may have gathered, was named for her spleen.

So what I'm telling you is not that I'm unhappy, and I'm not freaking out. We got an offer on the dark cavernous but perfectly acceptable apartment for a month-to-month agreement we can sign tomorrow and move right in; which is important since we must be out of our place by the end of Tuesday. Not only that, but I found another apartment which is GOOD and I covet and we're going over with our broadest smiles and an open checkbook to try to woo the landlords into renting it to us on the spot tomorrow before we sign anything related to the Cave Apartment. Anyhow it's all very up in the air and now I'm going to the movies.

Til next time!

-en, I mean em

Don't Do It At Your All-Day Go Away Party!

And by "it" I mean this:

I just wouldn't be me if I didn't achieve a very grave sprain just in time to have to move like nine million boxes up and down (mainly down) the three flights of stairs to my apartment! These pics are from before I re-destroyed my ankle/life this "Halloween Weekend" (that's what we celebrate here in Utah because there's no partying on Mondays); the colors are much more vibrant and exciting now!

This is the second time in two years that I've rolled my right ankle seriously enough to require crutches, and the second time I've had no idea how it happened. As my boyfriend said, "Flip-flops, sunglasses and blackout drinking are the perfect combination to achieve such an injury." Pretty savvy for a guy who was 900 miles away at the time. I don't recall taking the step that caused this harm, but I do remember the flurry of activity that followed and all the lovely people who tended to me.* They do that for you when it's your Go Away Party, you know. Anyhow since apparently I was not around when my ankle injury occurred, I feel lucky when someone asks me what happened to be able to turn expectantly to my brother, and he'll provide a description of events; like how I stepped like that and my foot went this way. Or something. I'm just happy somebody was around to see it.

 

One of these things is not like the other, but hey- the party was fun! A new picture gallery will be posted soon, but not too soon because it won't be til after we get there. Okay!

* Thanks: JB and Pablo (or Dan?) for carrying me into the house; Doc and Sparky for cleverly suggesting ice and elevation; whoever brought and applied the ice; Tessa and you-know-who for holding my hand and wiping the tears I didn't know I was leaking; JT for the four Ibuprofen and the whiskey with which to down them; Derek for helping me get up and dance when I was ready; Allison for sitting at my side on the sofa; Teaspoon and Johnson for the party- prep and cleanup.

Voice Message from Stevesie

Just now Steve sang this song to my answering service:

Hot tu-na! Come on come on, said-

Hot tuna! Gimme a surprise say-

Hot tuna! Gimme all you wanna give.

Salt me in the foot,

Yooouu-

Saaalt me in the foooot.

You salt me in the foot too, Steve. Thanks for the hit.

happy birthday garling!

and welcome back from vacation! i missed you SO MUCH that i punched, wept, napped and flinched. i hope you have a happy day!

love, em

Three Things Asberger Used to Tell Me I Smelled Like, Which, for Whatever Reason, I Thought of When I Saw Him Again Yesterday

The sunset.

Deep-fried roses.

A million bucks!