That's My Bix!

Over the weekend, a friend was telling someone I had only met that night (who, upon hearing my name, said ‘Oh, so THIS is the infamous Weet!’ which is always a little scary to hear when meeting someone for the first time) about how she now had mad oral skilz and told a story with a plot right out of a Penthouse letter. This impressed him to no end, as any single man might be. I had heard the story before, so I wasn’t paying attention. Finally, she got to the end and said ‘And I owe it all to Weet, who is a master’ my blow job Yoda!’

I, because I had had more Blind Russians than was probably prudent, quipped, ‘Oh finally, the afterthought.’

‘No, no, no, it was like the credits at the end of the movie!’

‘Great, now I’m the head gaffer?’

Which only one other person got, but we both thought it was brilliant. Because head gaffer! And then I had to explain it to everyone else, which sort of killed the brilliance. Sometimes, it is not so great to be a funny girl.

Later, someone asked me what my secret was and I said, ‘I’m good at everything I put my mind to’ except for bowling.’ Which probably sounded egotistical, but the bowling part is totally true. I am quite possibly the worst bowler I have ever met. It’s very disappointing, as I am somewhat fascinated with bowling accessories. The shoes, the bags, the shirts. I would have stolen a pair of bowling shoes in high school, but I didn’t want to walk around advertising that my feet are size 11. That was during my ‘Maybe if I am extraordinarily feminine, I will appear delicate and waiflike’ stage (followed closely by my ‘Grrrr! I am punk and have big long bangs that hang in my face and will totally fuck you up, bitchass!’ and then the ‘I am so over this whole need to belong to a social subgroup, so now I’m thinking about joining a sorority’ stage). But I am indeed very bad at bowling. Witness the one time when I actually got a negative score when I accidentally let the ball fly backwards instead of forwards and broke the scoring machine, which then displayed my score as negative 97. Which was funny, because I didn’t even have 97 points (goals? Touchdowns? What?) in the first place. Anyway, I’m just chalking the comment up to my inappropriate bitchiness when out with friends and hope that they will forgive me. They didn’t find anything wrong with ‘It’s Elvis, you fuckers!’ so hopefully they love me despite my occasional imperious behavior.

I have been in a mysterious funk all week. I was in this weird fugue mental state where I didn’t want to do anything and kind of still don’t, but I now have guilt because my stats tell me that a rather shameful amount of people are checking this page everyday. Let’s see, what has happened since last we chatted? I have done the following: wore a black velvet dress, got a manicure, made a necklace and bracelet out of ridiculously expensive but incredibly gorgeous smokey crystals, cleaned the house, got a new flat monitor for my computer, gained an iPod, made a stop at the Prescriptives counter to be color printed AGAIN, made chocolate chip cookies (by the way, the Nezlay Toolouse recipes blows goats), bought a kitchen island with a granite top that is cracked and now must be returned, bought and ate too much Godiva chocolate, and told the vice president of our company that he was a cold distant ass and while I personally don’t need or want senior management to be my BFF, it’s the reason that he hears hissing when he walks through our offices.

Maybe my job isn’t so safe after all. Heh.

Actually, I probably wouldn’t have unleashed with the hard opinion like that, but he was smoking a big fat cigar and also wearing a Van Heusen tie. From JCPenney. I could have forgiven It’s All Inside, but don’t cop attitude at me when you’re polluting the world with blue smoke.

So the ennui’ honestly I have no idea why. I’m not depressed about my goals in life (usually a huge source of discontent). Actually, I just came off of a huge wave of submissions (and no thank yous) and am beginning the second wave. Also, I am being stalked by my bingo story because I have yet to get it on paper. I have finally gained enough distance to see that my Baby Story (which first made its appearance here and still lives in the private area) is sort of crappy and sad and makes the reader weary, and while I have not yet figured out how to change it to make it not so weary, the concept will marinate on the backburner of my psyche and then at some point, that inner writer voice will tell me what to do. So, anyway, I’m satisfied with that.

I have an exciting trip planned, where I will hang out with fun people and drink too much vodka and also have my Vegas cherry stolen from me. So that’s something to look forward to. Keeping the size of my ass human is always a challenge, and somewhat moreso with a hobbled leg, but my physical therapy is going swimmingly (especially now that I’ve switched from the Impersonal Uncaring Nazi to the Ex-Cheerleader Happy Girl who actually asks me how my knee is feeling and how I think the treatment is going and also since I’ve started being a Type A about how much electro-shocking I can take. When I started, I could stand level 7, but now I’m up to level 15. Go me) and I have received the ok to begin the morning walks which were so critical to the jumpstart of Operation Hottie two years ago. And I do realize that once I manage to get my ass up out of bed early enough to take the walks, I find them very enjoyable. And also, the iPod should also make that pleasant; especially since I’ve loaded it with more Mozart than is probably allowed in the Cool Girl Handbook.

Anyway, the ennui remains a mystery, but it’s turning a corner. The catalyst was a text message from a friend telling me to ‘Cheer up, damn it!’ which was precisely what I needed to hear. Or read. Whatever. So I’m trying to cheer up. Damn it.

Last weekend was a lovely weekend, all told. I languored around doing absolutely nothing on Friday night, basically blew most of my night waiting for Esteban to come home from cleaning out his office (he changed jobs recently). He finally came home at 8:30, forgetting to procure a Jake’s Pizza as he had promised to do, so we drove through Taco Bell and had dinner like we were 21-years-old, camped on the sofa watching Firefly DVDs. Esteban probably suspects that this is part of my generous ‘Care And Feeding Of Your Pet Sci-Fi Geek’ but he doesn’t know that I spend most of my time staring at the entirely lickable pectorals of one Mister Adam Baldwin. But what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

We got up fairly early on Saturday, ran to the dry cleaners, went out for pancakes, and then to Target for storage bins and a present for my mom. I have a feeling that the first time I break my nasty Satarzhay habit, I will receive a phone call from them ‘Hi, we didn’t see your hundred dollars here this Saturday? We’re wondering if everything is ok? Is your hundred dollars sick? Is there anything we can do, like maybe send a car to pick it up and drop off a bag of random crap?’ Then we went home and I did some general housekeeping and Esteban finished detoxing his office. Then I lounged around, sort of enjoying the ‘doing nothing’ slackerness of a rainy Saturday and kind of wished that I didn’t have plans to meet a bunch of people out for playtime at the Bad Bar. The big old ugly beige recliner was simply too comfortable, but I persevered, hauled myself up to take a shower and decide what to wear and sprinkle my cleavage with the Urban Decay Redd Hott body glitter stuff. At the appearance of this culmination of hotness, Esteban decided, well, maybe he would come out to the Bad Bar as well. Even though he has vocally expressed his dislike of ‘that kind of bar’ and even though he said that it is somewhat ‘boring’. Uh huh. Whatever, bucky. I think most of the time, he just gets to see the sloppy sweaty flat haired drippy makeup post-Bar Weetabix and when he saw the full-blown (heh heh’ blown) hotness, it piqued his interest. Although, he did watch me get ready the night I wore the jean skirt with the black fishnet stockings and the black knee high boots. I certainly can’t figure out his logical process. Whatever.

As we were driving to the Bad Bar, Esteban was admonishing me for showing too much bosom. Most of the time, I have that particular shirt unbuttoned even one further than that, but with the spouse along, I had to behave.

We got to the Bad Bar, where we were soon joined by all of the Bad Bar Faithful as well as several newbies. Bald Bartender Mike wasn’t there and, in fact, the bartenders were all women but not the lovely bi-curious Nancy nor the hip shaking leather pants wearing Steph, so my drinks were not comped. Except that Esteban, Eric, and Scotty Boom Boom kept my glowy pink cup filled with Malibu and Diet Coke. It is good to be surrounded with boys who adore me. It really is.

Esteban, of course, completely underestimated the evil genius that is the Bad Bar with its throbbing sing-a-long atmosphere and the cumulative hotness of my friends, and found himself pounding on the bar in time with the music and, when asked if he was having a good time, he could only slap himself in the face with both hands, ala The Three Stooges, to indicate that he was now so drunk that he could not feel it.

Talk, as it often does at the Bar, turned vaguely sexual and soon we were sharing a blue raspberry Dum Dum sucker and also using it to demonstrate proper oral sex techniques. I probably frightened one of the newbies, but then, he joined in with the inappropriate conversation and all was well (except for the blushing the next time I saw him at work).

Penny, Carissa, and I, because we are all secretly hoping that someone will ask us to perform in a Broadway musical, developed a new step for our Dancing Queen choreography and then soundly declared that we are, indeed, big Abba loving losers. Anyway, now we’ve got the entire chorus worked out, which seems to be the most we can remember while intoxicated. It’s too bad that we only feel the need to perform at the Bad Bar, as I am certain we could give Toni Collette a run for her money. Or perhaps that drag revue that Screech is in now.

Ok, I made that up. I have no idea what Screech is doing now.

There was a lot of foolishness, sadly most of which has been caught on film. After Esteban was reduced to monosyllabic grunts, I decided that the jealousy monster had been subdued and I could lose the top button of my shirt and release the girls to their proper glory. Eric claimed to have seen my breasts, which is a complete fabrication. I explained that there were only three people in that entire bar that had seen my breasts (Carissa, Penny, and Esteban) and then Penny added ‘And they are fabulous!’, which made me giggle. Especially since she also has a rather exquisite set herself.

Later, I was having a grand time, but Esteban decided that he was ready to go, so we took a cab home and I made a drunken entry followed by several drunken comments on said drunken entry, and then went to bed.

We woke up early on Sunday morning, jumped in the truck to recover the car and swing through McDonald’s for a Big Mac and large Diet Coke sans ice (the only thing that can revive me when I’m ridiculously sleep deprived) and then went to my drunken mama’s for Mother’s Day. Mo and Abby were there too. We sat around, gave her our gift (a full set of pots and pans because her current stuff is the same mismatched crap she had when I was in high school), then went to Ward and June’s, where we hung out with them for a bit, gave her a gift (many bottles of smelly girly stuff from Victoria’s Secret) and then fled homeward where Esteban packed for Las Vegas and I zoned out and watched the Survivor finale and again enjoyed sort of floating with the tide of the weekend.

I drove through Sbux this morning and ordered an iced venti no whip nonfat mocha with a shot of vanilla. Flirtista Barrista answered back ‘Do you want one pump or five?’

I blushed. One pump or five? What? Was there something in my voice that belied the sexy dream I had the night before as I swam in the white expanse of my empty king-sized bed? The dream involving Russell Crowe and gladiators and also pirates with eye-liner and also Paul Bettany and Alton Brown? Alton Brown who whispered into my ear about the science behind pheromones and how the word ‘moan’ was in there for a reason, all the while Russell kept watching us warily while avoiding being flayed by the other gladiator pirates and also Paul Bettany’s rapier wit. One pump or five? What kind of choice is that?

I almost said, ‘As many pumps as it takes to get the job done, man!’ but instead reverted to the much-loved classic ‘huh?’

‘Do you want one pump of vanilla or the whole five pumps to make a shot?’

‘Oh! One is fine, thanks.’

‘Are you sure? ‘Cause I’m totally up for five pumps.’

‘Maybe another time.’

Talk of pumping’ he is such a flirtista!

Unsurly Girl met me at the window, which was a relief, because I wasn’t sure where the whole pumping conversation was going to go. I asked her for a new Sbux card, since mine still had penguins and a winter theme and with my sunroof open and the warm weather, it just deterred my whole Sbux experience. Yes, I am high maintenance, but Sbux, of all places, understands and embraces that need, and for which I love them.

‘Uh, well, we only have the generic one or a Mother’s Day one. We haven’t gotten the summer ones yet.’

‘Oh, never mind then, I’ll just wait until they come out to get a new one.’

She pulled out a box of used cards. ‘Well, we could recharge one of these? But they used to be someone else’s?’

‘No, no, really, that’s ok.’ But she was not to be deterred. She methodically went through each and every one of the dozens of cards, looking for one with a unique design. Finally, she pulled out one she declared ‘Way old’ and showed it to me. A pastel card, depicting summery Shaq-esque girls in capris, sipping lattes.

‘Ooooh! That’s it!’ I am ashamed to admit that I was one step from squeeing.

‘Excellent! It’s awesome! Can you sign with this lovely purple pen?’ She handed me the clipboard with my credit card slip.

‘Nice pen!’ I said, making a big smooth purple W.

‘You can have it, if you want it.’ She said shyly.

Moral of the story: if you are nice to your baristas and tip them well, you will be rewarded.

Really, it’s the little things in life that make one happy.

When Esteban started feeling like crap last summer, one of the things he did to attempt to remedy the situation was to quit caffeine cold turkey. Then he quit his rather excessive soda consumption entirely and began drinking seltzer water instead. So much seltzer water, in fact, that he has gotten a tad compulsive with it. For instance, one week I went grocery shopping and came home with 18 20-oz bottles of seltzer for him and 18 16-oz bottles of Dasani for me.

Two days later, I ran back to the store for something and as I was walking out the door, I said, ‘Do you need anything at the store?’

‘Yeah, I’m out of seltzer water,’ he replied.

‘No you’re not. There’s some in the breezeway,’ I replied, ‘I just bought you a bunch the other day.’

‘Uh’ yeah,’ he replied sheepishly, ‘I know. I mean, I’m out again.’

I bought him more 20-oz bottles and also all of the 2 Liter bottles of seltzer they had in the store (which amounted to five). Esteban was skeptical about the big bottles, figuring that they would go stale before he finished drinking them, but soon he realized that he could sit at his desk and not have to get up as often for more seltzer.

Then a few months ago, Esteban was watching the Tivo when I crawled into bed and then squealed as something cold and hard touched my bare skin. I looked down and he had propped a chilled 2-Liter bottle of seltzer between us.

‘Uh’.’ I said, about to seriously object.

‘Yeah, I have a problem,’ he said, clutching his water bottle closer to his side.

Except that it’s not. It’s not even bad for him. It’s just water with bubbles in it. The only thing I can think of that is wrong with this addiction is the possibility that all of those plastic bottles are bad for the environment.

Esteban wears baggy jeans. I hate how they look, and always want him to buy normal fitted jeans. He prefers the ‘loose cut’ kind of pants because they are more comfortable. But these’ these were now ridiculously baggy. Like clown pants. He could hide things in there, perhaps engaging in a very profitable career at watermelon thievery.

I asked him if he was losing weight but he pshawed my question. Or maybe that was just the sound of another seltzer bottle being opened. Later, Mo asked him the same question but he shrugged.

‘We need to buy you some new pants!’ I said, knowing full well that Esteban loathes shopping for clothes and would much rather send me to buy him pants and then try them on at home and declare them unworthy, leaving them in a heap on the floor of the bedroom for me to reassemble and return back to the store.

Hence the reason he hasn’t had any new pants in a very very long time.

‘Why do I need new pants? Why do I even need pants?’ Esteban’s motto: the best defense is to question societies most inherent dogmas.

‘You need new pants because the crotch on the ones you are wearing is currently swinging down around your knees.’

Normally, when faced with a comment filled with such potential for double-entendre (or even single bald-faced entendre), Esteban will always devolve to the lowest common denominator. I fully expected him to retort ‘Yeah, my pipe finally has enough room.’ Or ‘Oooh, you give me half a stick when you talk dirty.’ Or the perennial favorite ‘Why don’t you get down on your knees and take a closer look?’

Esteban looked down at his belt, which he had tightened to the fifth hole and then his pants, the cuffs of which were dragging on the ground.

‘Yeah, ok, these are almost a dress. Fine,’ he conceded, and then wandered off into the dining room, dragging the ass of his pants behind him.

Today at lunch, I went back to the park by the river to eat my cheese, lettuce and tomato on whole grain hippy bread. It is very sunny and lovely today but also sort of nippy, hovering in the low 50’s, but just fine if you’re in a car with only the sunroof open.

No pelicans today, but after I was sitting there eating my lunch, listening to a CD and staring at the waves on the river, I noticed that the other car in the park was occupied by two people having sex. Which was, you know, interesting. Not as cool as, say, pelicans, but very cool, because you just know that they were on their lunch hour and it was probably an illicit tryst and one or both of them were cheating on their significant others. And he’s her husband’s twin brother and really the father of the baby growing inside her, and he just found out that his wife is a post-operative transsexual crack addict. Or at least that’s the story I’ve invented in my head.

I must make a note to go to that park more often. I can’t wait to see what happens next time.

A few years ago, I found a bill that had been marked with a Where’s George? stamp on it, so I registered it on the site and realized that the Where’s George thing is kind of a silly little cool thing. Since then, I’ve gotten about five or six more of the bills, some with actual custom stamps, some with colorful handprinted messages, some with just the website address scrawled in the margin, and I dutifully log them as I get them.

A few months ago, I got another one. However, at some point, I forgot which of my five passwords I used for my account, and I locked myself out of the site. When I requested a new password, they either never sent one or it didn’t make it past my spam blocker. I kept the Where’s George bill dutifully in my wallet, trying not to spend it whenever possible, but always forgetting to further investigate the website issue or just signing up as a new account. Then I decided that it would be cool to take the bill with me to England and exchange it there, so it would get hella amounts of mileage. But then I ended up not spending it in England because I really never exchanged actual paper money, preferring instead to just go to an ATM and get British pounds that way, without paying a commission. As we were packing to come home, I shoved it into my makeup case, which I always end up using as a wallet in my carry-on. And promptly forgot about it.

So, George is still there, folded small and nestled betwixt an eye shadow brush and my ass splinter pearls. Now I’m afraid to release him into the wild. I’m afraid that I’ll get a little email from him saying he’s in Vegas. Maybe it’s best to not know where George ends up. He might just be dancing in La Cage dressed up ass-less leather chaps like Christina Aguilera, flexing his butt cheeks in time to ‘Dirrty’.

Actually, maybe I’ll just bring him with me to Vegas in a few weeks. Save him from riding in the gold lame’ fanny pack of a divorcee who just got her eyes done.

Yesterday, I stopped at Lane Bryant after work to see if anything caught my eye to wear to the Bad Bar tomorrow night. Nothing did, but I ended up buying a wife beater with a bralette in it and pair of boxer shorts to sleep in. As I was wandering around, there was a lady in there, mid-forties, wearing a lime green sleeveless sweater with a navy bra underneath (and I know this because you could see the band through the sleeves). She was chatting with the sales girls, bragging about going to Hawaii and how she wanted to find a man and how she drove a lime green VW bug and blahety blah blah. I wanted to shake her ‘Stop trying to make the salesgirls like you!’ But then, sometimes I have an attitude, particularly when I am shopping.

As I was paying for my purchases, she was back by the lingerie. She fingered one of the Dayam!Bras and said, ‘Wow, these are really cute!’ The salesgirls chimed in immediately on how they are buy one get one half off right now (So what? I’ve never seen them not on sale) and she said, ‘It’s a good deal but I certainly don’t need more padding.’ And she was right. Her lugubrious breasts were hanging down around her waist.

I couldn’t help myself. ‘Actually, they’re not really padded, so much as reinforced. I’m wearing a DD right now. The padding is just there to kind of push everything forward, like a Wonderbra.’

She checked out my rack, which was fairly evident in a slinky black t-shirt. ‘You’re a DD? I’m a DD.’ And I could tell she was looking at my perky girls standing at attention and thinking there was no way that we were the same cup size. I assured her that the perkiness was all me and she’d be surprised at what the Dayam!Bra could hoist. Then I quipped that my husband is a big fan of the results of the Dayam!Bra as well.

She looked wistfully back at the cute lime bra and said, ‘Well, I wish, but it’s not like anybody would ever see it on me.’

Without thinking, I shot back incredulously, ‘You’re somebody. And you deserve to look cute!’

She looked at me, furrowed her brow and replied, ‘You know, you’re right. I’m getting it. I’m totally getting it!’

‘Great! You’ll love it. Trust me.’ I said over my shoulder, walking out of the store.

‘Thank you! Have a good weekend! Thank you’ thank you, Bra Fairy Godmother!’ She yelled across the store at my back.

I prefer the term ‘Guerilla Fashionista’, but whatever.

I am having an unkind body day today. I stood in front of my closet, pondering what to wear for no less than half an hour (ok, it was really fifteen minutes, but still, could there be a more unproductive way to spend precious minutes of my life? I think not). I tried on five different pairs of pants, including the new ones that I just bought on Saturday and found them all to be unsatisfactory and uncomfortable. The new ones don’t fit. Older ones don’t fit. There was one pair that fit fine but used to be loose. I even put on a pair of my old track pants, the ones that I have to fold over at the waist two times and found that I only had to fold once. I rejected them, however, because I refuse to go to work in FAT PANTS. It occurs to me that I am slowly morphing into a woman toad. Seriously… the fun pillows have definitely gotten larger and my midsection definitely thicker because apparently, the Operation Hottie pounds are starting to creep back on. Not so much creep but stomp in wearing big twelve-lace Doc Martens, parting the fat like a Red Sea made of gelatin. (Because of their “resistant to fat” stamp on the bottom! Oh, it makes me laugh! It does! And I am the only one! Note to self: stop making jokes that need explanation.)

I blame The Knee. The Knee is somewhat vengeful about any walking I attempt. It will swell up and ache and generally be stiff for several days after any sportyness whatsoever. I also should probably blame things like my key lime bars and also eating chocolate and barbecue last week. And also, the new Strawberry and Cr’me Sbux frappuchinos, which have literally 600 calories, even without the whipped cream. And that is just wrong, because they taste so very good. Of course, I didn’t discover this until two of them had gone down my gullet in one week’s time, but now, they are on the verboten list. They are good, but certainly not worth feeling like El Toadus Diablo.

Oh, of course I know that an extra five pounds doesn’t make me a Weeble, but still, it is just disappointing. To make matters worse, my lips have had their weird allergic reaction thing again. I don’t even know what caused it this time, although I’m starting to suspect that it’s my Prescriptives Lip Gloss or the Aveda Lip Saver combined with a little too much sun on my lips (see below). So, now they are red and puffy, looking like a post-injection Melanie Griffith. I can’t imagine why anyone would pay to have this done… my already impressive pout feels like it’s practically jumping off my face at this point. I feel as though I’m walking around, waiting to be kissed and kissed often, by someone who knows how.

Perchance, Adam Baldwin?

Deep dark confession time: I have had a 20-year crush on Adam Baldwin. Seriously, it’s pathetic. He was in My Bodyguard with Chris Makepeace (who, in my opinion, should have stopped at Meatballs… wait, for all intents and purposes, he did) and I was all over that brooding quiet guy thing. He was misunderstood, of course. And also, linebackery salty goodness. Pretty much my life at age 11 would have been complete had sexy bully with a heart of gold Adam Baldwin asked me to couple’s skate to the stylings of one REO Speedwagon (“I Can’t Fight This Feeling”).

To be clear, this is a different crush than my Russell Crowe fixation. Russell Crowe is my pretend boyfriend. Adam Baldwin is how I will get back at Russell for being a fooking wankah. Adam Baldwin is my pretend one night stand.

For many many nights.

Many hot, sweaty, prolonged, multiple nights.

Involving possibly props.

Hmmmm…..What was I saying again?

Oh yeah, so imagine my delight when he appeared on the waning Angel episodes! I squeed and then I ran to IMDB to confirm that yes, it was the guy who had two lines in Independence Day (and still managed to make my ovaries swell) and was the star of a majority of my pre-sleep mind movies from December 1981 through June 1984 (when we began the short-lived Bruce Springsteen fixation). I am very much hoping that he’ll end up naked at some point on the series. It’s not much of a hope, but a girl’s got to dream.

Oh, Adam Baldwin…. I’ll bet you taste good.

Speaking of trout lips, there’s more news about the scary Snakehead fish.

I could have lived my entire life without ever needing to know that fish have tongues. Why… why do they need tongues? Why??? Are they French kissing each other? Do they gossip? Are the snakefish fry getting them pierced to rebel against their parents? It just makes no sense! Darwin, please explain to me why fish need tongues so that I don’t have nightmares about snakefish dressing up on the weekend and performing in KISS revival bands.

My wannabe bronchitis has been trying its darnedest to earn a permanent guest starring role in the double feature that is my lungs. I have been fighting this with juice, water, and more juice. I’m a big fan of the juice cure, which I invented. It involves drinking yummy juice and feeling smug. I have yet to find an easier cure-all.

However, with the warmer than normal spring weather, my allergies kicked on a little earlier and thus this has fueled the fire (with phlegm!) and the bronchitis is beginning to tip the scales. I would like to stay away from the doctor if at all possible, because I start to feel like a hypochondriac, with my knee and my wimpy lungs and the weird stupid ways I injure myself, so I scrounged around in my medicine cabinet and retrieved one remaining prednisone tablet from the last Zith/Pred session. Ah prednisone. My old foe.

I downed it on Monday. I sort of like taking Prednisone (especially in the beginning of a Pred run, before it starts storing up in my system and making me hate sleeping and food and life in general), because it zaps my appetite and I feel sort of peppy and bright for the entire day. However, for some reason, this particular single pill did weird things to my head. It made me sort of stupid, like I had been confusing lead paint chips for goldfish crackers as a child. I think it was the magical blend of the prednisone and also that I was freebasing on estrogen cocktails, but I was dull and listless and sloe-eyed and couldn’t concentrate to save my life. I went shopping with Penny and wasn’t my normal effervescent self. Then I went home and worked on a freelance project, then wandered into the bedroom and joined Esteban for some Tivo time.

Now, normally, I fall asleep by the middle of the first show. For instance, I think I’ve only seen the end of maybe three episodes of CSI. As for Good Eats, I have a bit more of an attention span (mostly because Alton Brown works that Thomas Dolby goofy sex appeal so well) but for the most part, I’m in a coma after forty-five minutes. However, this time, we watched until long after midnight (which happens when our bedroom clock says 12:44 am, because we are both broken and terribly paranoid about being late for work, however we now automatically subtract 44 minutes from the time without even thinking about it’ these silly brain games we play) until it was Esteban and not me that said ‘No mas no mas’ and begged to turn off the television.

Fine, I would just lie there. We were out of Ny-quil, the thick slurpy red river that my dreams travel on when my lungs go wispy and filled with cotton. I haven’t wanted to buy more. Esteban thinks already that I take a ridiculous amount of Ny-quil. He worries about this. He does not think about the fact that each dose is one of those little cups and thus a whole bottle of Nyquil is probably only six doses. He is always worrying about something. It is his job, he says, to worry about me, like some bearded mother hen. He should probably be right to worry but I do only take it when it will be impossible to sleep through the wheezing. It’s not even a struggle to breathe that keeps me awake, it’s the whee whee whee whee banshees howling in my chest.

But I was out of the Ny-quil, so I instead tried to hypnotize myself asleep and kept huffing on the albuterol. Except that was not even the problem that night. No, instead, my mind was racing and I made it through three different whole plots of mind movies before I realized that sleep was no closer than it had been two hours ago. This was crap. I’m a big fan of sleep. In fact, I’m head cheerleader on Sleep’s varsity squad. I tried another position. And another. Esteban snored, then talked in his sleep about mushrooms and flannel and hijackers (which all go together so rationally) then kicked his feet, shuffling a waltz between the sheets, modified box step that signifies that he’s still a little bit anemic (that’s a symptom, by the way, of anemia’ restless feet.) until it was utterly impossible and I was mentally planning to buy another bed to stick in my office when the damn thing gets finished, and I don’t want to hear any kvetching from Esteban either. Suddenly, even buying a tony Pottery Barn day bed complete with the posh twin sized pillow top to match our own seems like the best investment in the world. I got up and choked down some Vicodin cough syrup, stuff which is so vile and nasty that each time I am desperate enough to take a dose, I think that it had to be some kind of mistake at the pharmacy and really I must be swallowing ear drops or perhaps a fungal ointment, because nothing but nothing that was meant to go in your mouth should taste that nasty. Nothing.

The clock kept showing me ridiculous times. 1:49. 3:00. 3:37. 4:01. Am I dreaming that I am awake? Perhaps lying here is just as good, or at least half as good as actually being asleep. Finally, I got up, went to the bathroom, got another drink of water, and sat in the ugly beige recliner in the living room. I didn’t rock because the recliner squeaks. I sat there and stared out the beveled glass front door until the window becomes a purple bruise and then the stone in a mood ring going from despair to sad to neutral and I could see the baffled shadow of the house across the street. I got back up and figured that for certain I would fall asleep now. That’s always the way of it with insomnia. You finally fall into a deep restful sleep about an hour before your alarm is scheduled to go off. Except that I didn’t. I slept off and on in fifteen minute stretches, finally giving up and showering a half an hour before the alarm was scheduled to go off.

I stumbled into work, sipping on a venti frappuchino and then a large diet Coke. Nothing. Around 10 am, I hit the wall. My eyes became the holes you punch in cardboard to safely view eclipses. I couldn’t concentrate. I started to feel dizzy and nauseated. One of my two teammates was out sick and the other one, when I murmured something about not sleeping all night and how I was thinking of going home at noon, hissed ‘Oh you have GOT to be kidding, leaving me here all alone?’ Yeah, because I’m so valuable to you as a walking zombie. Whatever. I could stick it out. I could stay upright. I just couldn’t do that and also think.

At lunch, I stumbled out to my car, barely steering my way to the lovely little park down by the river. On my way, I saw a raven fly over the top of my car with some kind of rodent that squeaked and squealed. Was that a dream? Was I hallucinating now? It was a beautiful day out, unseasonably warm, sunny and in the low 70’s. I parked at the end of the park, about fifty feet off the water, locked my doors, turned on NPR, opened the sunroof, then the powerseat sank down into oblivion. I grabbed my jacket from the backseat, wadded it under my head and flipped the hood up over my eyes. Then I just sat there that way, feeling the sun bake through the open roof, the gentle strains of Handel and the sound of the river at high tide lulling me to sleep. Somewhere along the way, I would catch myself drifting off and jolt back awake, certain that someone was coming, someone would see me prone in my car and think that I was a suicide or something. After a little while after maintaining that tenuous grasp between sleep and awake, I started noticing that my synesthesia was showing itself and how different music was different streams of material. The Mozart was a ribbon of white bridal silk, sewn with pearls. The Offenbach was spider web strands and insulation fibers mixed with silver Christmas tree tinsel. The Debussy was a bolt of clouded velvet, first purple then black then blue then scarlet. And then before I knew it, they were announcing the 12:30 quiz question and I knew that I had to get back or I would receive nasty glances from my already petulant coworker, and also I had sunburned my lips, which were ow.

I pushed the button that would return the seat back to its right position and saw a cloud of white on the water. Geese? Tundra swans?

The pelicans were back!

A fleet of pelicans, each with a snowy body and bright yellow beaks. They cruised the river in synchronized perfection, each dipping their heads below the surface at precisely the same time. The pelicans were back. I had heard that they showed up last summer for the first time since Green Bay has stopped piping polluted sludge into the river, and had seen them in the air, but I had never seen them so close, so graceful, so in the act of being pelicans.

They swirled around in a little cluster, homing in on what must have been a school of fish underfoot, then all at once dipped their heads below the surface, their legs kicking and then popped back up and gulped in rapid succession one two three four five six seven eight nine throats swallowed their catch and let the water roll down their necks. Then they did a figure eight and as if it were planned, popped down all at once again for an encore performance. Again and again, they scoured along the park’s edge, all clustered closely together, all turning in perfect unison for an unbeatable Esther Williams tribute. I wanted to laugh and cry all at once because it was so beautiful, so perfect, so funny and lovely and pelicany all at once.

Needless to say, it’s been the best thing I’ve seen all week.

Happy birthday Chauffi!