Entries from December 2004 ↓

Top 10 Favorite Films I Saw in 2004 Plus One

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Sideways
I *Heart* Huckabees
Shaun of the Dead
Farenheit 9/11
The Manchurian Candidate
Mean Girls
Garden State
Maria Full of Grace
We Don’t Live Here Anymore
Super Size Me

Films I Thought I’d Like But Did Not
The Life Aquatic
Napoleon Dynamite

Films I Did Not See Due to Laziness or Being Poor
Spider-man 2
House of Flying Daggers
The Aviator
The Machinist
Spongebob Squarepants: The Movie
Mean Creek
Word Wars
Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed
The Motorcycle Diaries
Kinsey
Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
Kill Bill Vol. 2
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Collateral
Before Sunset
Ray
Closer
The Incredibles
Team America: World Police

The comments that accompany the photos here tell one half of my Christmas vacation spent in Chattanooga with the boyfriend’s family.  I didn’t have a camera with me for the time spent at my mom’s.  I have only the lovely memories and the not-so-lovely memories that I would tell you about if only this weblog wasn’t public to anyone who wants to read it. 

Including my mother’s husband.  That is all.

If you haven’t already, please, please donate to the Red Cross International Disaster Relief Fund.  Give generously or whatever you can afford. 

Happy Holidays to you and ya’ll’s.  I’ll be with my family for a few days. 

In the motherfucking woods.

Monday was pizza day. I looked very forward to Monday’s pizza lunch in the fifth grade.  I anticipated the cracker-like crust topped with a layer of red, then a layer of ground meat all topped with waxy, snot-colored cheese. It was a scrumptuous treat compared to Tuesday’s papery lump covered in gravy or Thurday’s stiff stroganoff. I would eat my pizza with a fried potato side of some kind and drink with it chocolate milk. This was my school’s example of balanced nutrition for a growing 9-year-old girl.

School lunch cost $1 in fifth grade, in 1986, though that wasn’t what it cost for me. I was on reduced lunches, the discount meal program for kid’s whose parent or parents had a low income. My  lunch cost 40 cents. Some kids had free lunches. At least, I thought, I wasn’t a free lunch kid.

However, no one but me knew the difference unless I told them. Once at the end of the line, tray full of mysterious sustenance, both reduced and free lunch kids used a punch card as their currency at the register.  Having a punch card quickly identified you as a Kmart-clothes-wearing poor kid.  I would keep my card in my sleeve if I was wearing long sleeves and produce it for the cashier at the last minute.  I kept my reduced lunch status as well-hidden as possible.  I wildly envied the kids that paid the whole dollar for their pizza and french fries and chocolate milk in cash.  But not as much as I envied the truly cool kids–the kids who brought their lunch from home.

Of all the kids who brought their lunch from home I remember Ellie
Anne Gore’s lunch the most.  Ellie Anne Gore’s lunch came in a crisp
brown paper bag folded over neatly one time.  Ellie Anne’s name was
always printed on the bag in colored pencil and all capital letters.
Each letter was a different color, and her mother, a school teacher,
would draw little balls at the tip of each ‘l’ or ‘n’.  She dressed
Ellie Anne in lacy dresses with layers of tulle underneath and fastened
homemade ribbon clips into her freshly hot-rolled hair every picture day.

Inside that perfect brown bag was a red, sandwich-sized Tupperware
container holding a turkey sandwich on white bread, crusts neatly
removed, topped with a thick, bright, yellow slice of cheese and two
layers of crisp iceberg lettuce.  The sandwich was cut into four
triangular pieces, the way I liked it best.  After eating her sandwich
she would pull out a tiny bag of store-bought potato chips, often
Moore’s brand.  She would eat each item in her brown paper bag one at a time,
keeping each thing hidden until the other was completely
eaten.  After her final potato chip she’d fish out a bag of
M&M’s.  I was so jealous that Ellie Anne got to have candy every
day for lunch.  Not a fun-sized bag, either.  A full, brown bag of
plain M&M’s that she would rip at one corner, removing each
chocolate piece by piece, poking the candy into her mouth with one
finger. Then she’d chew slowly, always savoring each one.

Ellie Anne never shared her M&M’s, nor did I ever ask for a piece of her candy.

It is funny how little I knew as a 9-year-old about money and how
buying things actually works.  Apparently I was completely incapable of
accurately estimating large numbers of people.  I would stand in
the lunch line, cleverly masking my tell-tale punch card in my sleeve,
wondering how much lunch ladies made every day.  I estimated that there
were probably one hundred kids who bought lunch at my elementary school
every day (even though the actual number was more like 500) and that if
each lunch cost $1, then that meant they made $100 a day!  I forgot to
subtract the loss of revenue caused by free and reduced lunch kids like
myself, but nevermind that.  Waiting in the lunch line on Pizza Monday one day eighteen years ago, I wanted
to become a lunch lady.  Because $100 a day sounded like as much money
as anybody would ever need.  And I would be extra nice to the punch
card children.  Maybe even throw in a free bag of M&M’s from time
to time.

The taglines at the tippy top of this page are wildly outdated.  "Madonna should be so lucky"?  "I was sixth in a stupid blog gameshow"?  That was moons ago, and that first one I mentioned was never that good anyway.

A couple of them are still funny to me, so they’ll stay.  Like "cunting up the interweb" and "The Lynch mob forms to the left".  But the rest have to go.

And who better to contribute than you, clever reader.  Last time I asked for submissions it was a great success.  Submit as many as you want, as many times as you want.  My favorites will be chosen in one weeks’ time, and my very favorite contribution will receive a prize in the mail.  Provided you trust me enough with your mailing address.

So, have at it.  And be nice.  You may think I’m a no-talent narcisstic whore, but that doesn’t make for a good tagline.

A man I know lost his dog, Levon. Levon is a terrier of some kind and,
apparently, full of wanderlust. His owner was crestfallen and nearly
inconsolable by his own admission. He plastered flyers everywhere with
Levon’s picture on them, as well the promise of a $500 reward.

Turns out Levon had somehow made it across West End Ave., one of
the busiest highways in Nashville, without getting hit by a car. He
wandered a few blocks only to be discovered by a very elderly lady who
lived in nearby apartments. Her vision was too bad to read the
inscription on Levon’s tag. When her daughter came to visit a couple of
days later they called the owner, who was ecstatic.

When he arrived Levon was wearing a doggy sweater and eating
chicken pot pie. The elderly lady said he’d been eating chicken pot pie
since she picked him up three days ago.

The woman had no idea about the $500 reward, so when Levon’s
owner handed her a $500 check, the old lady cried. She is by no means
wealthy–she was so surprised and grateful for the reward.

[Thinking about this story and the sight of a terrier named Levon eating chicken pot pie in a sweater makes me laugh.]

Overheard at a friend’s house the other day.

Hester:  "Honey, I laid out your clothes.  Go get dressed."

Hester’s 4-year-old daughter, after looking at the clothes: "Mom.  I am going to be off the hizzy in this outfit."

A sampling of customer responses to the greeting, "Hi.  How are you?":

• "Diet Coke with extra lime."
• "There will be four of us" (usually said while pointing at the empty chairs and menus)
• "What is your soup of the day?"
• "Can we sit over there by the window, we feel this is a lesser table."
• "Do ya’ll have sweet tea?"
• "It’s about time."
• "Give us a minute."
• "What are your merlots by the glass?"
• "Does it seem cold in here to you?"
• "Where is the bathroom?"
• "Is the salmon wild or farm raised?"
• "We have to be at a movie in 45 minutes."
• "What is your name?"
• "We are ready to order."

I have coccydnia, otherwise known as acute tailbone pain.  It started a couple of months ago.  I’d sit down on the floor too fast and pop right back up again from a searing pain in my tailbone.  Occasionally if I was sitting cross-legged and leaned back it would feel really sore right at the tip of my spine.

Well, it’s gotten worse.  In the past three days I have had nearly constant tailbone pain, often stinging and debilitating.  After sleeping fitfully, knowing between dreams that something is definitely wrong with my backside, I woke up pissed and sore.  Getting up to pee in the night was difficult, and when I awoke this morning all I could do was sit and cry at the computer trying to figure out what is wrong with me.

After reading tons of information on the internet I’ve learned that my pain could be caused by any number of things and that the only tried and true cure is surgery.  A few people claim acupuncture and massage and exercise have worked for them, but most everyone who is "cured" has their tailbone removed.  I could have spurs on my coccyx (tailbone) or it could be misaligned, malformed or too long.  My coccyx could be "flipped."  I could have a cyst or scoliosis.  Sometimes it can be caused by the sufferer being too thin, but everybody can just go ahead and cross that cause right on off the list.  Or it could be, my personal favorite, cancer.

The good news is ice and ibuprofen help a little bit.  I’ll try a small dose of a muscle relaxer later to see if that helps.  That bad news is I don’t have health insurance.

It hurts to sit down, my favorite place to be, and I’m not medically insured.  Boy, times are tough for my ass.