Entries from May 2004 ↓

Last night I had a dream I cut my hair off really short and dyed it jet black. An ugly Dorothy Hammel cut. Then I uploaded a picutre of my new hair here under the heading: MY NEW COOL HAIR.

After that no one came to my website.

There is a pretty sweet website called Gmail Swap. It’s a neat idea that has gotten tons of press lately. You send someone freshly baked sugar cookies, they give you a Gmail invitation. Simple as that.

Here are my favorite offers so far for gmail accounts:

a robot (doing something sad) drawn in MS Paint

the story of meeting Swedish techno star, Nordman

recordings and a hug from a member of the drum corps

an authentic bible signed by Jesus

join someone’s Christmas Card List, for life!

an hour-long recording of one man’s English accent

Cincinnati cicada

scorpions

I was 11, maybe 12. I liked Tetris and Madeline L’Engle books. And riding my bike. My mother and my sister and I all lived in a teen-insy 2-bedroom apartment in Ashland City, and even though it was right by the highway, I rode my bike up and down and up and down Gloria Circle thousands of times. Sometimes I’d just ride in circles on the porch.

We’d only been in that aparment a little while. We girls made what can only be characterized as an escape from our previous residence. My mother married a really insane individual who was abusive in just about every way, and if you have to leave the house running and stay at your uncle’s place for a few days before you move, that is sorta kinda escaping. So yeah, things were volatile. Part of the abuse that occured was my stepfather hording money, thereby leaving my mother nearly penniless on her own. His way, of course, of insuring she’d never leave. But with immense courage that, to this day, blows my mind, my mother did leave him, and she made a new home for us out of virtually nothing.

Times were tough. We ate a lot of eggs, because eggs are cheap. My stepfather was still stalking my mother, and following my sister and I on our walks home from school with the promise of doughnuts. Amy and I would run the rest of the way to the church, where my mother was secretary.
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I thought I’d share with you a couple of conversations I’ve had in the past 24 hours.

How to Tell You’re in Tennessee

Last night, on the phone with the VCB:

VCB: You still at Mark’s?
Me: No, I’m at the grocery store already.
VCB: Wow, it sure is quiet.
Me: Yeah, I know. I’m in the vegetarian section.

How to be Made to Feel like a Racist Asshole

Earlier at work today:

Me: I’m sorry, gentleman, but we’ve had to close. Due to Vanderbilt’s graduation this morning we were enormously busy. So much so that we had to close our kitchen in order to prepare for the dinner rush. Although you are free to have a drink at the bar.
Guy #1: You are closed? (looking around the dining room)
Me: I’m afraid so. Sorry.
Guy #1: Oh, I see. I am not wearing my black tie.
(Guy #2 and #3 enter.)
Guy #1: She won’t serve us!
(All three men turn and leave.)
Guy #3, just before he exits: Because we are Mexican!

*sigh*

And with all the twat-y, monogrammed bleach blondes climbing into their fleet of Lexi* (everybody drove seperately, natch) it’s no wonder they thought so.

*Lexi is, to me anyway, the plural of Lexus.

I never thought I’d have the nerve to say this out loud, much less write it on a very public web site, but I have cankles. Always have, I just never knew they were called that.

See, growing up my mother was never happy with how her body looked. Her hips were too wide, her thighs were too fat and her calves were too thick. Heard that all the time. When, in truth my mother has a beautiful body, albeit pear shaped. She has a very small and femine waistline. Her weight fluctuates a bit, but for a woman in her 50s she’s pretty much got it going on. She looks great in a dress and even better in a suit. But, she’s always talking about how fat she is.

When I hit puberty I watched my body morph into a replica of my mother’s. Small-ish breasts on a petite frame, complete with small waist–everything from there down, though was somehow bloated. From the bellybotton down everything was a sie or two bigger.

For the longest time I struggled with my pear-shaped body. Even when I weighed just 110 pounds of pure muscle (due to non-stop atheletics) I thought I had a hideous big butt. When I left high school and put on the rest of my womanhood weight, thereby scoring a bigger pair of boobs than I thought I had coming. Go me, or something. Some years later Sir Mix-A-Lot and Jennifer Lopez made big booties fashionable. Women were getting ass implants. With time I learned to take the “You’ve got a fat ass!” statements that occured from time to time as compliments, and I learned to accept my bountiful, but beautiful, lower-self.

Well, all except for one feature: my freakishly shapeless and overly-large lower leg and ankles. Trust me, they are heinous to behold. My fat ankles have forever kept me in long pants during the grueling summer months, and out of skirts unless they were long or worn with jet black tights. I’ve only rarely felt feminine in anything that reveals my legs. Unfortunately, my hefty ankles are set atop a ridiculously small pair of feet. Size 6. Teetering about above my tiny shoes are ankles like boulders.

And now, I’ve learned, they have a name.
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I’m making a mix CD for my mom right now for Mother’s Day and I’m having a hard time resisting not slipping in that booty house song “Ass and Titties” as a secret track.

Tonight some blonde girl in strappy stilettos and a little flouncy mini-skirt (What is with those? Ugh.) stumbled like a fawn on its first legs into the restaurant, obviously in mid-conversation, and blurted, “It’s not that hard! It’s not like it’s rocket scientist!”

I made a photo gallery that is, in essence, a retrospective of 26 years of bad hair-dos. Stephanie did one first and way better than mine. Go look at her’s first.

But no skipping mine. Or, uh, else.