"Caws? Caws? Caws?" First thing this morning. "No, there are no more Cars. They all died at the end of the movie. What? I guess you  missed that part. They all drove off a cliff because gas prices are so high and then God got all pissed off because you know, that anti-suicide clause he has to make it harder to get into Heaven, so he banished all the Cars to Hell and now they’re down there waxing Satan’s ass and getting all rusty because the hermaphrodites won’t stop peeing on them and I think I heard that Satan himself took Sally as a reluctant lover and Mater was incinerated and his remains were turned into confetti for the next Hell’s Kitchen finale party. I’m pretty sure Elmo is down there too, just in case you were thinking about developing an unhealthy infatuation for him too, in the future." He stared up at me expectantly. "So yeah, no more Cars." I felt kind of guilty I guess, but he didn’t cry and I was able to get him to watch a few minutes of the second Harry Potter movie before he caught a glimpse of the remote and started chanting "Caws? Caws?" with the incessant determination of a minah bird. I cursed silently and pressed play.

****

When my youngest brother Corey was around two years old, he was super attached to our aunt Sharon. The first thing he’d do each morning was cry, "Shar! Shar! Call Shar?" My mom usually delegated this daunting task to me. I’d have to dial the phone and then hold it up to his ear while he babbled incoherently.  It was annoying because I had more important things to do. Like draw hearts around the name of my crush and prank call people I hated.

After awhile, I began saying that Sharon was dead. "Oh Corey, you don’t know? I’m so sorry, but Shar’s dead. DEAD." He would cry and cry and cry and cry as though someone had, well, died. I started doing this every day to the same reaction. But then one day my step-dad caught wind of the psychological break I was threatening to create within Corey’s mind and he put an end to that real quick-like.

I always said I would never tease my own child that way, but holy shit, old habits die hard.

(Unrelated: I’ve been fighting the urge to call everyone "Dolly" lately. I have no idea where this is coming from, and I can’t figure out if it’s more or less annoying than my previous struggle with calling people "Babe," a habit I picked up from sitting too close to Eleanore.)

In her heyday, Florence designed corsages for potential prom queens (Carrie-like broads were turned away, though) and she did the occasional voice over for fiber product commercials.

But then there was The Scandal.

Florence was caught skinny dipping with Gary Lewis. Everyone in the world hated Gary Lewis because he owned every single television station, even Telemundo, and would interrupt the highest rating, top popular, most scintillating programs in order to air fifteen-hour-long telethons which didn’t even have the purpose of raising money for cancer or sickle cell anemia. The telethons had no benefit other than to showcase his daughter singing sour notes and shimmying with sequined hula hoops.

By the time the paparazzi stuck their lenses in between the ivy of Gary’s trellis, it was only a matter of minutes before scandelous photos of their naked pretzeled bodies were plastered over every gossip publication and Inside Edition and celebrity gossip blog.

The world hated Florence by association. Teenagers stopped wearing her corsages to dances, blaming her for the reason their beloved soaps were interrupted by four hour loops of Gary Lewis’s gardener pruning the petunias.

Her contract with Fiber Fanatics disintegrated, because why bother making commercials when Gary will just hijack their time slots.

Florence never took another lover and spent the rest of her life plotting Gary’s death.

Acrylic and pastel on 5.5″x5.5″ canvas.

First it was “sewing up her vagina.” Now it’s:

Search Engine Terms

These are terms people used to find your blog.

“hand sign for cunnilingus”

With each entry, I’m quickly becoming more and more of a family blog! See that, mommy?

I don’t know when my son’s obsession with cars began. Sometime in November, I think. He’d stand by the front door and yell, "Caw! Caw!" like a true Bostonian, any time anything with wheels drove past, bicycles and skateboards not excluded.

For Christmas, we told everyone to just get him cars. Cars and juice seemed to be all he had an interest in so why disappoint with airplanes, building blocks, or Backyardigan accessories? When we took him to see Santa, he could have given a shit that he was perched on Santa’s knee. All he had eyes for was the plastic car that the photographer was undulating and squeaking in an effort to eke a smile out of him. "Caw! Caw!" he yelled in a panic with outstretched arms.

Some people got him official Pixar Cars merch for Christmas, and he seemed genuinely appreciative, even though he had never seen the movie. It was on last weekend though, so Henry squeezed what little intelligence he has left in his brain cells and had the foresight to DVR it. Chooch’s first viewing lasted a few short minutes before he moved on to other things, like moving his armada of cars from the floor to the dining room table, standing back to appraise the new lineup, and then relocating them to his tent (which takes up two thirds of my living room).

That ambivalence didn’t last long. I made the mistake of placing him on the couch one morning last week, tucked his blanket and juice cup next to him, and put on "Cars" so I could sneak off into the kitchen and prepare his (frozen) waffles in peace. (And by peace, I mean without him standing on the other side of the baby gate and hurling objects at me.)

We haven’t been able to watch regular TV in his presence since. Even if it seems like he’s oblivious to the movie playing in the background, as soon as we hit ‘stop,’ he whips his head around and comes toddling over to us, chanting, "Caws? Caws? Caws?" Ad nauseum. He gets all cozy on the couch and then demands, "And car!" sending me on an egg hunt for certain cars around the house that he desperately needs to have in lap and I try to fulfill this desire as fast as possible, for fear that he might shrivel up and die. I give him his cars. "And juice!" Thus signals the start of the great juice cup hunt. "And bowl!" he commands, pointing to his bowl of pretzels with an angry finger. We do this every day, until he’s satisfied with the pile of goods burying him on the couch.

He won’t sleep with no less than four of his cars now. It’s a good thing my pajama pants are equipped with pockets, else I’d have had to make two trips getting him out of the crib this morning: one for him, one to retrieve his cars. Failure to do so will send him into a shrieking spell and real tears will flow freely. We have to stuff his backpack full of cars just to  get him to willingly leave the house with us now.

This morning, after the first viewing of "Cars," I lost it. I got all caught up in my pent up resentment to being a Pixar prisoner, and defiantly punched the buttons of the remote until something I wanted to watch filled the screen with a breath of fresh air. Then I promptly sat on the remote. He noticed. Oh boy did he notice. But I held my ground. Henry sat next to me and winced, waiting to see what Chooch’s move was going to be. He turned back and resumed play with his cars. I smirked, basking in the win.

But then something tragic happened: I got up from the couch, unearthing the remote. His eyes, full of car-lust, honed in on the site of the magical "Cars" stick, and he grabbed it. "Caws. Caws. Caws!!!" he droned on and on. Then he climbed up on the couch and sat between us on the pillows so he had a slight height advantage on us. He grabbed a fistful of Henry’s hair in one hand; I laughed too soon. He turned to me, glared, and took a fistful of my hair too, and angrily chanted, "Caws Caws Caws Caws."

He was still watching it when I left to go out to lunch with my friend Jess.

Remember how I took that baker’s picture the other day? After Kara read my entry about that, she emailed me and said that she used to be friends with a baker at that same Kribel’s and he went crazy and started threatening her and her friends and then she included a MySpace profile and asked, "Is this the guy?" And of course it was. It’s like my body has a GPS for Crazyland. He has a picture of a tree in his MySpace photos and the caption says, "Painted this while in the hospital." I couldn’t help but imagine a very Dream Team-esque scene with hospital gowned schizos enjoying craft hour. I wish my friend Allison would commit herself again so I could visit and paint trees with the patients. Also in Kara’s email, she said she wanted me to pick out some of my paintings for her to buy, and I almost suggested that she see if Crazy Baker’s pretty tree was up for grabs, but I didn’t want to lose a sale. Naturally, there’s that sadistic part of me that really wants to flirt with this situation, but since he did something directly to Kara, I’ll take the Good Friend exit and leave it alone. If it had been Janna though, I wouldn’t care. Good thing Kara told me before I wound up inviting him to game night.

Halfway through my second night in the new seat over here in the tainted TERRORtory, I was called an elitist by Collin, who then went on to say that post-rock sucks which made the tendon in my right arm pulsate. (It still is.) Go listen to some more Tatu, fagwagon.

Then Bob was looking at my art and when he said he liked one in particular, I quickly chimed in that it was inspired by Chiodos.

"What’s that?" he asked.

"Uh, they’re only like my second favorite band right now." I was insulted that he didn’t know.

Collin said, "How could you not know? It’s only all she ever talks about."

"Yeah, I heard that, but I just never cared to ask what it was."

###$$%%&%^$#

Also, I’ve appointed myself LOL Patrol because sometimes Collin replies to my emails with "lol" but now that I sit RIGHT NEXT TO HIM, I know that he’s not really laughing out loud. I’m going to make a LOL Police hat and pass out tickets. And warrants too.

Edit 9:16pm: Collin is listening to "Glory of Love." I glanced over and he was lip-synching happily.

Bob is disgusted.

Bob was dramatically waving his arms in the air, when Kim walked by and asked what he was doing. He told her he was making fun of the music Collin’s listening to, and she asked how we could hear it.

"Because it’s so loud," I said.

"It’s OK, I wanted to hear shitty music," Bob muttered.

A few minutes later, he asked, "Isn’t there another band with a city name?"

Collin said, "Boston."

"Yeaaaah," Bob said, making us think he was going to say they rawk. "I don’t like that band, either."

Marge, Clive, Rowan and Beulah just escaped from the robot-ward of Sing-Sing, called Beep-Beep, but since they’ve been incarcerated for fifty years, no one knows where to go.

“Wanna go see if the Rusty Tailpipe is still open on 73rd Street, grab us some boltburgers?” Clive’s suggestion was met with silence.

“Perhaps we should think about eating later, like say when we’re five states away,” Rowan patronized.

gouache and acrylic on 8×8 canvas board.

Today, I’m sick of old friends reconnecting with no intention of getting to know who I’ve become. I’m sick of self-serving fucks who schmooze about how it feels like "being home" when they’re with me when they have no idea who I am anymore, or where I am in life, and completely ignore the fact that I’m a mother now and someone else’s girlfriend. I’m sick of pathetic failures who spend all of their time building up a slipshod facade of grandeur and give themselves pompous nicknames on MySpace and wait for all the sleazy goth hoes to fellate their ego. I’m sick of self-aggrandizing assholes who won’t admit that they’re really just not that good, not that talented, but feel it’s necessary to hear themselves making grandiose statements outloud in order to keep deluding the truth, like, "I created a LiveJournal but realized that everything I was writing was just way too good to post there, so I’m saving it for publication." Then they say they care about me, but when we go out for coffee and I stop in the bathroom, they only order their own coffee, leaving me the frustrating task of flagging down the waitress for a cup of my own. Then they say they love me, like the words are laced with magic and I’m going to drop everything and leave my son and leave Henry and run off with someone who can’t keep a job and gets kicked out of school and makes shitty club music but acts like they’re a fucking Goth god who writes manifestos about the "scene" to prove it. Fuck you.

I had to fashion my own privacy wall. It’ll do for now, but I’m thinking I’ll have to bring in some duct tape, peanut butter and a sheet of drywall in order to MacGyver something proper-like; something that would make Walter Ulbricht proud.

It’s really boring over here. Collin’s hobby is “looking at cars,” and that’s all he does here.

I was hoping he’d be into something less vanilla, like perhaps handling snapping turtles or wearing studded leather masks while eating buttered popcorn jelly beans.

I thought for sure I’d move over here and be awash in talk of strippers and the Cuban mafia and Lithuanian knife-fighting.

Not so much. I get to hear about custom paint jobs. And horsepower and torque, which would be awesome if it had anything to do with sex.

I might turn this site into an 8-hour Collin/Bob watch, because they’re just that interesting. I’ll be back later, perhaps to report on Bob’s refilled coffee mug.

Dear world,

This is my first post from my new seat. I made it here safely and unpacked without any injury to report. I am slightly frightened by the giant party of electrical wires to my left.

My new garbage can is bigger and is fitted with a proper-sized bag, unlike my old one which had a very taut bag that wasn’t inviting for any trash I may have had. (I’d toss in an empty bottle and it would sometimes spring back out.)

And there’s no divider, so Collin can spy on me with ease. (And he has been!) I remedied this by sliding over my photo board thing. You can’t spy on a spy!

He and Bob talk about dumb stuff. Like jeep colors.

The two Judases made butter rum coffee but apparently those of us who break down in the middle of the street aren’t invited to join their coffee club.

So I just went ahead and stole a cup.

Eleanore (Judas#1) sits behind me now. In our old area, we didn’t have plastic mats under our seats. Now we do and Eleanore is taking advantage by methodically tapping her foot and I kind of want to scalp her.

I have fewer drawers, no coat hook, cream colored cabinets and drawers which do not complement my aura of mystique, it’s louder and colder over here, and I’m sure I’ll rack up a few more pages of complaints by the end of the week.

You know what’s severely disheartening? When you pull out of the parking lot after work, only to have your steering wheel lock up and the car completely shut off, leaving you perpendicular to the flow of traffic, and then two of your co-workers go out of their way to drive around you while you’re waving frantically because you’re unable to find the button for the flashers since it’s your boyfriend’s mother’s car that you’re driving and you can barely think straight what with the impending fear of being t-boned and you’re so freaked out that your knee caps are tingling and it’s like your capacity to form logical solutions has rusted and seized up. I was so afraid I was looking at a replay of the Great BreakDown of Summer 2007. Boy, I nearly choked on the strong sense of humanity at that moment. I mean, would it have killed one of them to at least stop and help me get the car off of the road? Or maybe say, "Hey, let me wait with you in case you can’t get your car started"? I’ve worked with these people for over a year now! OK, Joe is a worthless piece of shit to be fair, but et tu Eleanore? Et tu? Say what you will about Tina, but if she was still working the evening shift, she’d have bailed me out without blinking an eye. (Now that I think about it, have I ever seen Tina blink?) After I was able to let the car drift backward into the parking lot and got it to restart, I cried silently on the drive home.

This is my last night in my original seat. Kim and Eleanore have already been moved so I’ve spent the night over here, alone, and with heightened senses. Every little sound makes my heart gallop. I feel isolated and fearful for my safety. And sanity, but when am I not?

I took down all the pictures of Chooch which have decorated my overhead cabinets for the past year, and the bare blackness of it has created an annoying glare in my peripheral and Collin just jumped out at me, causing me to steamroll him all the way back to the hallway.

Asshole!

Two more hours, and I’ll have to say goodbye to my beloved cube #954.

Tomorrow I’ll move to the seat next to my MORTAL ENEMY, Collin, who got to experience his virginal dose tonight of Eleanore’s grating phone conversations.

Pros: No more Gum Girl. Not having my boss Kim sitting behind me, yelling at me for typing too much and telling me my hair looks like crap.

Cons: Being a foot away from Collin, and reuniting with Eleanore (who, don’t get me wrong, I like, but her bad moods tend to rub off on me).

Oh my god, I’m choking on a honey wheat pretzel and there’s no one here to hear me.

I’m dying. I could blame this on Collin.

Usually, when scouting the field for some good subjects, I employ the ‘shoot & run’ tactic, an effective choice if you don’t mind angry cries and blurred images.

But today, when I was skulking around Brookline in the spring-like weather, taking my new Diana+ camera out for a test drive, I saw a photographic opportunity that I just couldn’t pass up; to walk away would have plagued me with nightmares of regret. A man was leaning against the brick wall of Kribel’s Bakery, smoking a cigarette. He looked middle age with sandy hair — styled loosely in a rockabilly coif — and tattoos and he sported tube socks that would have made Christina swoon; he looked like he was trying to grasp on to the last few strands of punk mentality that life had alotted him, like maybe he had gotten married and his wife was trying to force him to "grow up" but they compromised on a few accessories.  

As I approached, I recognized him as the baker from Kribel’s; I had seen him just a few weeks ago when I stopped in to buy a cake for Kim’s birthday and I remember promptly calling Henry to inform him of my new crush. I knew I needed his picture. But I didn’t hide behind a car or garbage can. I didn’t act like I was trying to "fix" something on the camera as I strolled past, looking skyward and murmuring "Tweedle dee dee." I didn’t pretend like I was taking a picture of the awesome brick wall next to him. I didn’t distract him by baring my breasts.

No, I walked up to him, caught his eye, and asked, "Do you mind if I take a picture of you?" I wanted a real photo of him; not streaks of his blue shirt, or the ground, or the sky, as I tried unsuccesfully to be covert.

His hand froze, cigarette midway to his mouth, and he repeated my request. "Can you take MY picture?" He looked around to see if anyone had heard. I didn’t make up a story about being a photography student. I didn’t pretend to be a tourist. I told the truth.

"I just got this toy camera, and I would really like to take your picture." OK, maybe I slipped in something about a fake portfolio. And that I wanted to fill it with faces of Brookline, a community that’s so dear to my heart. But for the most part, there was no nose-growing. He said yes, and two old men sitting nearby on a bench scurried away into a store, probably afraid they were next on my hit list.

Jesus Christ: enjoying Pixar movies, mending charred bridges, and now asking for permission to photograph someone in lieu of flat out stalking? What’s next — helping old bitches across the street? Don’t worry — I was terrorizing unsuspecting pedestrians with my Holga in another part of Pittsburgh earlier today, so it’s balanced.

If there is one thing I’ve learned  thus far in life, it’s never to burn a bridge unless the other person actually did something unforgivable, something more than hurt my feelings and make me sulk in a corner.

My quick temper and instinct to resort to scathing put-downs with liberal dollops of slander very nearly cost me a good friend a few years ago.

She agreed to get coffee with me this Saturday so let’s hope I don’t fuck it up.

Mama always said God planted my seed in her for a reason, that I was born to do something great with my life, maybe even the whole entire world. First I tried to end world hunger by not eating so many handfuls of chocolate chips from the pantry; but people still kept on dying over there in that Somalia place. Papa said maybe I was gettin’ too ahead of myself, reaching for too many stars right off the bat, he said. Aim a little lower, Mama said as she brushed burrs out of my hair before bed.

My dreams  fizzled for a few years after I discovered Internet slash communities and I lost several jobs because I’d rather stay in bed with some Hot Pockets reading about Snarry shipping. Just last night, Jesus Christ himself came to me, he done near slapped me in the face with a dildo and he said, “Bertie, get yourself together, girlie. Get up, take a shower, put on a pair of underwear that still has the crotch intact and go out and get youself a job. You need to change the kitty litter. There are maggots festering among mountains of fossilized feces.”

I listened to the Lord because the Bible I use to swat away flies tells me so. I got up this morning to find myself a job. I went to that there mall, thinkin’ I’d like to find me a way to be closer to hot fryer oil. While I was walking through the food court, a gang of hooligans slang pebbles at my ample behind and were fascinated by my unflinching reaction to the torture of my posterior cushion. “It’s like rubber, ya’ll,” I explained, demonstrating it’s durability by stabbing my right cheek with a Bic pen.

And that’s when Jesus appeared to me once more, smiling from a box of Trojans I passed in the drug store, and I realized my calling. I’ll be honest: it didn’t really dawn on me until an hour later when I was eatin’ me some Chik Fil-A. So please, doctor, what I’m gettin’ at is that ya’ll need to surgically remove the layers of my buttocks and have them sent off to be manufactured into prophylactics for white whales. There’re too many of them living underneath that sea and I would be lying if I said it wasn’t unnerving; it was all over the lastest issue of ZooBooks that my baby brother uses to cover up his titty magazine, and I’m frightened.

I was born to stop whales from overpopulating and potentially taking over our great American cities like Trenton and Terra Haute.

Im’ma change the world.

Can’t fit through your doorway,

Bertie