Songs of My Misspent Youth: Hazy Shade Of Winter

We rejoin our heroine at a stoplight, headed away from yet another eye doctor who not only didn't see anything in her eye, but suggested the girl had lazy eyes and merely needed focusing lessons to solve her problems. From behind her sunglasses, a constant accessory to dull the searing pain even the dimmest light causes, she spots the planet Jupiter off to her left, hovering over the Sprain Brook Parkway like a beacon that was not at all grail-shaped but sort of starbursty on account of the scratched corneas viewing it.

She doesn't point out the planet to anyone outside of her head, because no one is interested. They have their own interests. Any friends she may have had tired of the crying and complaining months ago. Who cares about some kid who can't go out in the sun or even maintain eye contact? But she doesn't need the sun, she has other stars, and the planets. They're easier on the eyes.

As the light changes to green and the old station wagon begins moving away from the Jackson Avenue sign, the new Bangles remake of Hazy Shade Of Winter kicks in. Time, time, time...see what's become of me.

The song became such a favorite that I once got it into my head to tell someone to quote it on my headstone. "Seasons change with the scenery, weaving time in a tapestry, won't you stop and remember me." Depending on the time of day I would omit the snide extra line from the original, "at any convenient time."

Too many words.

This song, this version of the song, with Debbi Peterson's intense drumming and the whole smart chick rock thing The Bangles had going on, made me forget not being listened to for a while. Not even three minutes, but once I bought the 45 with the picture from the movie I still haven't seen all the way through because it's too sad, the song was on constant repeat until I had every note committed to memory.

As for the eye doctor, who only felt it necessary to tell me it would be a shame to give up playing the piano but not to fix the things needed to see the music in the first place...I drew a picture of her standing over someone with a spear through the head, telling the unlucky bastard it was nothing serious. It made me laugh a bitter laugh.

(click it, it needs to be viewed in all its gory detail)

I considered writing a strongly worded letter to her when it was all over, about all that metal she missed because of EyeLab's policy of giving the glaucoma detecting air-blast to everyone before they saw the "doctor." I never did get around to writing the letter, probably a good song came on and took my mind off things I couldn't change.

Songs of My Misspent Youth: Hazy Shade Of Winter

500 Words About Not Knowing What To Write

I can't think of anything to say.

I mean, I can, but I'm a guest in your computers, there are things you're tired of hearing about and you don't come here to read about my latest ache--hell, I don't even talk to my family about that stuff. My Uncle Gene, bless him, taught me the proper response to the general greeting, "How are you?"

Can't complain, who'll listen?

I'm not a complainer, after all. Oh sure, I'll get on my soap box sometimes hitting up people I know in states where decision makers are undecided on things near to my heart, but I'm like the weather, wait a few minutes and the clouds blow over. I say what I need to and move on. Sometimes that gets mistaken as backing off, or not being interested, but to be honest you get 10% of me in this blog, another 10% in the comic, and %5 on Twitter and Facebook. That's not enough to figure me out, and I like it that way.

I won't talk about work, I'm not comfortable telling day-to-day tales of my family and I definitely wouldn't go into detail about my neighborhood because I've gotten enough e-mails and friend requests from guys who live a little too close telling me they love my smile and would like me to turn on my webcam. Or just the random tweeting from someone who is quite obviously not Prince. I'd break the Internet with my fangirl squeeing about all the music I like. Did it come from England in the '80s? I love it. Was it played on WLIR? I love it. Is it played on WFUV? I love it. I'll leave it at that, because this post is already running overtime.

I read neat things elsewhere and wonder who I can share them with. Like this brilliant response to a now-deleted diatribe by a homophobe complaining about SyFy's commitment to make less stereotypical characters. Some of the things I think are brilliant might not be safe for work, though, and how do I know where you read me?

I'm always writing offline, I have about ten projects going on but my life doesn't always allow me to say, "I'll be ready to show you X in September," so I'll mention them when they're ready to be seen, like how I sprung Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap on you. It got 54 views. THANKS!

Every social networking site greets me with, "What are you doing/thinking/feeling?" I could just respond, "A lot," and leave it forever but that's dull. I dread being dull. I like having something to say.

I also like LOLcats, but who doesn't? You all read I Can Has Cheezburger, what's the point of me repeating the day's fuzzy cuteness?

So I've got nothing new. It was a lovely day, the weather has been pretty good to me. Hope it's being good to you too, and thanks for reading my stuff, even when I have nothing to say.

500 Words About Not Knowing What To Write

The Killin'ing.

I gave a lot of thought to starting a blog post out with, "I am actively trying to kill myself through neighborhood beautification."

I knew it might bring out a few reminders that I have everything to live for by people who don't know me, don't get my sense of humor, and don't get how I sort of nearly die when exposed to sunlight. I also knew it might invalidate the insurance should I in fact drop dead of the stroke I'm pretty sure is coming.

Not that I'm really actively trying to kill myself, but it's summer, and after all these years I'm getting bored with this malfunctioning scrapheap I'm stuck in. I do have everything to live for...I'd like very much to do that without the sound of grinding gears emanating from my throat and the smell of whatever just washed up my throat in my ears.

After all the thought, mainly done while raking and hacking away at overgrown things, I said screw it and posted the damn thing anyway. It's up there with the migraine-brought-on-by-the-Oscars post, really. By the time this post goes up the episode that brought it on will be as forgotten as what I opened the browser for.

What did I open the browser for?

I'm getting incoherent from the heat and sun, kids. Nothing I can do about it, it happens every time. This is only a warning that I may be around even less. Then again, maybe my plan will work, and like the vampire Lestat in that book where he goes out into the desert to roast himself and instead gets a spiffy tan, I'll come out the other side a little bit tougher.

Because I'm not already as huggable as a brick wall.

I know, I know, you're saying, "But [whatever you call the me in your head], you're perfectly cuddly and huggable!"

In response, I offer you a translation of a recent noise I made that sounded like, "Okay, thanks!"

The next well-meaning soul to suggest wearing a hat will solve all my problems gets my clippers so far up their ass they'll be able to help me trim things just by blinking.

The Killin'ing.

It's Just Me

The pain in my head is not real. You can't see it, after all.

Much like the Electric Slide, it must be felt to be fully appreiciated. Only I believe duplicating the feeling in another person is a felony in this state.

When I was six years old, I sat behind a chair in the living room crying on my cat's shoulder about how my head hurt. I used to throw up a lot after getting off the bus that would take me home.

When I was nine I watched High Road To China in my room while the wood stain on the cabinets dried. By the time the credits were rolling and the plane behind them was dipping and spinning, so was my head.

I remember my worst migraines more clearly than happiness. Fortunately sometimes they overlap. I traveled cross country once. It was something to see. Only the scenery whizzing by--flickering by--triggered a migraine. This spawned the hilarious tale of the white bag of powder I pulled out of my bag to deal with the nausea. It was only baking soda, and luckily it was only during Desert Storm, when people weren't encouraged to be vigilant in there alertness, so I went on to my destination and made it home again without being arrested. Unlike poor Pee Wee Herman, whose mugshot in a paper I remember fixating on instead of the sun filtered through trees outside the window of the train.

A year before I'd ridden an hour in a car and videotaped most of the ride. Watching it back later triggered a migraine. I didn't know about the baking soda yet and spent most of the next day throwing up. I heard the movie my grandfather was watching in the other room, that Keanu Reeves movie about the school production of the HMS Pinafore getting hijacked by a student's death. Permanent Record, it was called. Later that night Nan and I watched Leviathan. I thought it was hilarious that the first symptom of mutating into a deep sea creature of DOOM was vomiting and itching. I didn't recall drinking any deep sea vodka, however.

I can't drink, I've never done any drug stronger than a half dose of an over-the-counter allergy pill, and yet when I have to walk after driving somewhere on a sunny day, I stagger around like the most wasted freak on the planet.

I wouldn't say my life has been wasted. Hijacked, derailed, kicked off course, sure. But it's me. Maybe it's what I was meant to know this time around. Maybe my lesson is to accept that I'm mortal, and weak.

I keep it to myself most of the time. What I feel can't be seen. What I want is to fit in with everyone else, watch the shaky movies with the lights out, play the spinning games without having to look away, go somewhere and not end up crying in some dark souvenir shop, smell meat cooking and not need to run outside. None of that will never happen. People who notice tell me to feel better. I thank them, even though I know it will never happen.

This past weekend another one hit me. It was one of the bad ones. I knew it was coming, and ignored the signs until they would not be ignored any longer, like Glenn Close with a frikkin' carving knife, just with less nookie beforehand. It was hot, mind you, in the house anyway, and I had watched The Clone Wars the night before and the Golden Globes that night, maybe spending four hours in one sitting in front of a flickering computer screen. What did I expect to happen? It's almost like I long for the times when I sit in my dark room with my earplugs in, sometimes listening to music, sometimes listening to British comedy, never forgetting those flickers of my life when I could have been creating something lasting.

The pain lets me know I'm alive.

Tags: January 2009, health, photos, babble, confessions

It's Just Me

Ho Ho Holy Is It The Weekend Already?

I taped Stephen King's Desperation off the Sci-Fi channel for us to watch, and man am I sorry. No, it was okay in a not-as-good-as-The-Mist-but-better-than-Rose-Red way, but I had forgotten King's got it in for animals and holy hell there is some imagery right off the bat that even horrified one of the characters. Then it gets worse (I'll leave it up to you to decide whether I mean the scare factor or the story, because even I'm not sure). But you know, it's King so even a not-great King TV movie is better than some other movies I can't think of right now.

One incredible bit of lost continuity that made Desperation worth watching for me had to be the first person to get shot onscreen is shot near another dead body, and throughout the rest of the movie there's only one body in that area and the character who gets shot onscreen is never seen again. O_O At first I thought it meant impending heroics, then I thought something grosser happened, but then...he was just never seen again. Things like that in movies fascinate me.

It was really windy the next day, which is why I got to write two whole paragraphs about a movie we saw. I also used the indoor time to decorate the tree, and I call it a tree because I observe more than one holiday, so it's got birds and angels and Santas and Snoopy and pictures of my cats and dogs and unicorns and I sometimes like to piss off sticklers who think it's important that one holiday wins (being nice to people wins). It's a tree. I decorated it. I had PMS at the time but the 12-minute Salsoul orchestra Christmas medley was playing on the radio as the cats chased each other around so it all balanced out and it looks quite lovely.

Then we watched School of Rock, and THAT...THAT was a fantastic movie. OMG, how did we go so long not seeing that? Fun frikkin' movie and even the kids were great, and I can be bad when confronted with a movie full of kids, but these were like, actual kids. Amazing!

The Last Mimzy also had kids, and a cute bunny, and Roger Waters singing an amazing frikkin' song. I always suspected cute little bunnies would have a hand in saving the world, and this movie ends happier than Watership Down.

I could leave much of the rest out, but I wrote it when I was really tired and that's when I get honest, so here goes. My current reason for being rather bitchy (as you may have picked up) is not merely the holidays, as it's never just the holidays, but family stuff. Health stuff. From all angles. This week The Fluffy One gave us no choice but to take him to the vet who saved The Puppy's walking parts in the hopes of saving his eating parts. My head has pretty much been on backwards for a few weeks about this and my uncle's kidney stones and Thursday will come to be known as Tauruian poking day, during which hunk men born in April have to deal with undeserved crap. I hope the day does not catch on and become any kind of tradition.

This week I also learned that butter is not the correct response to cat seizures. No, really! Who knew? I mean, I kinda knew, but it's like that line from Mr. Mom about whatever it takes. This week that ended up for me being covered in pancake-smelling hairball medicine and for The Fluffy One being full of barium to light up the sexy intestines. It was worth it, of course, because my cats are worth being a crazy cat lady for. There was a happy ending to the freakout this week. Of course everyone who ever wanted to see me get my come uppance for picking on how many treats the cats get had a good laugh, but then the diagnosis was possible food allergies SO THERE.

I honestly got little else done because I went into the same sort of fight-or-flight freakout mindset that my last blog back couldn't overcome when my little flannel-loving man widowed my left arm five years ago and I wouldn't be talking about it at all except that it's the truest part of my life and it wouldn't be fair to not be honest about it, even if it seems like I'm talking in code (I'm not). Hi, my name is Lynda and I'm a crazy cat lady.

You know what else is a pretty good movie? The Dark Knight. That was one of the movies we most wanted to see when this year began, and not to get all serious but after all this year has brought and taken away, getting to see the movie with my favorite people around me in our house was sort of fantastic. Now I get to say I talk like Batman when my hernia acts up. HAHA

Ho Ho Holy Is It The Weekend Already?

The Long Trail Of Gravy

Hancock is actually as good as it looks in the ads! I know this from my viewings. Yes. Not that I sit around watching movies all the time, mind you, no. It's just the movies are the things I enjoy that I figure everyone can relate to. I inhale my cat's armpits a lot. See? Movies!

I'm missing Dancing With The Stars already, that show's just fun. I...guess I'm old now or something. I don't care, I love it. Totally got to see Cloris Leachman tango again, yay!

The night before Thanksgiving I not only burnt out, crashed and dissembled, my hands cracked off. It's very irritating, and I'm using present tense because I don't know if I'll live through the next three days and so this may be it...I never saw the pumpkin pie coming.

This next line is to let everyone know that of course I lived. That's the part that never fails to amaze me. But I am in no place to whine about my maladies when it could be much*...much...much worse. *I was going to link to something about the first much, but it's a family thing and not my story to tell. Suffice to say I am impressed by some people's ability to handle crap and not be whiny.

I, however, am whiny and dammit I missed seeing the wayward toolbag in space! I think. Unless the NASA Flyby website is accurate and it'll still be in orbit next week. I do realize I could just toss my own toolbag into the air and create the general effect, but the most expensive things in my toolbag are my chisels and they weren't even $30 all together. Plus I have chisel karma coming to me so the least amount of chisel misuse I partake in the better.

Nan found a movie called Zoo and it's like a David Lynch story...about a man who died after an encounter with a horse.

Sunshine, the Danny Boyle movie about an amazing cast trying to re-ignite the sun, was also really good, but then I'm a sucker for the skiffy. Even if it does involve extreme sunburn.

I spent the rest of the time adding to my NaNoWriMo wordcount.

The Long Trail Of Gravy

The Eight Demands Of Migraines

I Am Having A Migraine, Therefore I Am A Migraine

Thou Shalt Not Make Me Want To Kill You

Thou Shalt Not Idolize Rave Lights

Thou Shalt Put No Billy Mays Before Me

Thou Shalt Not Make Wrongful Smells

Remember The Migraine Days And Clear The Schedule

Thou Shalt Not Empty The Medicine Bottle Without Replacing It

Thou Shalt Not Claim To Understand The Triggers, For They Are Mysterious And Many, And Violaters Shall Be Cast Into Puke

The Eight Demands Of Migraines

Oh Glorious Boobie-Sparing Brain Lightning!

By now the news has been everywhere that women with migraines are 30% less likely to develop breast cancer and man oh man, I am THRILLED.

Of course it could be the painkillers some women take for the migraines, it could be the ants, it could be that those women just weren't going to get breast cancer, but no, here is a reason for doctors the world over to tell women to be glad they puke while driving, to embrace their inability to watch TV with the lights off, and holy crap, yay for periods! Because there is now only a 70% chance that their body will give a big up yours to them in two different ways! OH BOY!

Janet Jackson fans, rejoice.

Oh Glorious Boobie-Sparing Brain Lightning!

The Scary Type of Boo

Last Saturday Nan found The Abandoned, which proves Spain is steadily creeping up on Japan for makers of the scariest frikkin' films imaginable. Disturbing scary, I mean. Really disturbing.

Then we watched Gone Baby Gone, which Nan and I had caught the end of a few days before, but then I taped for Mum to see because she totally loves Ben Affleck. Hee! I mean, we thought she'd like to see it because it's a really good movie. Rough story, and I don't entirely think I know what the hell I'd have done in that position, not that I'd ever be in that position because even when I was nine and went through my whole "I'm going to be a detective!" phase, I never left my house. The Internet was made for me. But that's beside the point. Gone Baby Gone is really really good.

Nan found Guyver 2: Dark Hero which is a sequel to the somewhat clever Mark Hamill movie The Guyver. Mark Hamill is not in the sequel, but the extras from every Power Rangers cut scene ever try to make up for it...not really. I'm sure there's a very good comic book geek reason for what goes on in this movie but the rubber suit smackdown at the end with the girl yelling, "Dad!" at one of the strange creatures cracked me up. How does she know. I wasn't paying much attention to the movie until the end so I don't know, maybe she was aware beforehand she was related to a huge mutant bear/roach. There were a load of seemingly random action scenes and I was in the middle of a story outline, so...I just don't know.

Just like I don't know what was up with the anime Nazi vampire musical that was on the next night after the werewolf movie (The Company Of Wolves)...I totally got some sort of street germ up my nose and spent the early part of the week reliving my entire childhood, sneezing, looking clueless, leaving a trail of tissues to find my way home...ah, autumn.

Something great happened this week, though. To look at it now, no one would think the stained gutter over the porch is such a great thing, but this gutter is now, for the first time in seven years, not sagging, not pouring water up into the porch roof, and no longer rotting the wood behind it. The wood had to be replaced too, but now it's done. All better. It involved the exchange of money for services, but to know that the porch is on its way to no longer resembling the entry to a crackhouse thanks to my stingy ways was my Christmas present this year. The guys who did it also cleaned the gutters, so that's taken care of for a while.

Other movies Nan found were Isle of the Dead and The Body Snatcher, which were both full of Boris Karloff goodness; and Secret of The Cave, which sort of fit into that theme of weird stuff going on and...it was one of those kid gets sent off to family and has such a good time that it will never ever wear off ever movies. I don't know if I believe that really happens, although I do tend to flash back to New Fairfield circa 1980 every time I hear anything from Glass Houses. I don't get these kids in movies, in my day we were content with using spoons to dig holes and didn't feel the need to go running off to well-lit Irish caves somewhere in torrential downpours on a whim. I don't think I did, anyway. Unless you substitute "Irish cave" for "doll my Mum didn't pack," and swap "me" with "Mum," possibly converting "running off" to "borrowing a car," and thoroughly confounding the whole thing with the lack of mysterious Irish townsfolk. I'm still coming off the cold medicine.

The Scary Type of Boo

Better Than Making Pinholes In Your Eyelids!

It's true I got paid to write this, but having wonky eyes as I do, I've tried some questionable things to reverse the scarring without the use of a time machine and a baseball bat, as I don't have my baseball bat anymore.

I always used to see those pinhole glasses and wonder if they'd help my eyes, because I was once told I had the focusing ability of an 80-year-old and needed to strengthen my eyes.

Now there's an entire website devoted to those very pinhole eyeglasses, and it explains what they are, how they work, and even how they evolved from the slatted wooden spectacles the Eskimos used.

I should repeat the warning on the website that these pinhole glasses should not be worn while driving. I do not want to be the one who told you to go wear some pinholes and then have you crash into me while I'm crying about how the sun is flickering between the buildings and trees that are all out to get me. These glasses are to exercise the muscles of your eyes, they aren't going to cure my kind of crazy what goes on between the eyes and the brain, and for Cyclops' sake if your eyes burn and run and you feel like you've got things in your eye, odds are you have something in your eye and need an eye doctor to fix that, so see an eye doctor if your eyesight suddenly changes. Then you can try strengthening your eyes. Don't be like, "Oh hey I've got the focusing ability of an 80-year-old and stabbing pains, maybe I'll try this." No, try these only after you know your eyes are okay. Okay?

If you've been curious about those strange glasses and feel like trying them out, they're available with free shipping and a 100% satisfaction guarantee at http://www.pinhole-glasses-direct.com/. There's also carry an acupuncture eyemask that by name alone makes me want to freak out my aunt. But I will not. At least until she's right in front of me, then I'll be all, "AGH, NEEDLES! THERE REALLY ARE NEEDLES!"

(There aren't really needles, I'm kidding with you, it's a very proper-looking massager.)

Better Than Making Pinholes In Your Eyelids!

Almost the Definition of Irony

Did you know it was National Invisible Chronic Illness week? Neither did I! I didn't even know there was such a thing.



It's too late in the week to get into my history of burning innards and disco brains, or how I eventually became grateful for the nosebleeds because it was like big messy proof that something weren't right in this girl. Wasn't always pleased to wake up with one, though.

So instead I'll make fun of the latest NY Deptartment of Health and Mental Hygiene bulletin about sleep, called Sleep: Are You Getting Enough?. This is on the same page as the 9/11 memorial. Um. Sleep well! Hope you wake up.

According to the bulletin, many people don't get enough sleep, but some people don't need so much, and newborns need to sleep away their youth. Tsk. So if you happen to be a newborn and you are not getting 18 hours of sleep, ask your parents for Benadryl. They'll be giving it to you soon enough. (I should note nobody ever drugged me to sleep as a kid--no, Nan was happy to have the company watching Britcoms and the Late Night Double Feature and I learned a lot from late-night HBO. You can search YouTube for Dressed To Kill on your own.)

Some reasons for not sleeping include having a fast-paced lifestyle or children in the bed. No explanation for what a newborn is to do if he happens to be in bed with himself. One offered solution is to go to bed only when sleepy. I predict all of New York is going to be really quiet tomorrow afternoon.

Then they go into how you may not be sleeping because you might not be breathing, or have a disease keeping you awake. Well...I hadn't thought of that...gosh....

The last page goes into the usual accusations of being a lazy sod, or a drug addict, or using the bed for unbedly activities, and promotes use of the medical industry. It took four people to create that brochure and waste an hour of my night. Well, the whole hour wasn't a waste as I found the original CBS Late Late Show intro and the WPIX Film Festival. I used to wait for those things, man. Never used to be able to explain how great they were, either, because all the other kids I knew went to bed way before Hart To Hart even came on. I used to feel like a freak because I couldn't sleep on command, and it's cost me jobs and friendships, but those late hours of the night were made for something, and someday, maybe, I'll figure it out.

Until then, turn off the TV and go to bed.

Almost the Definition of Irony

The Week I Got Verbose Late At Night

Much of this week was taken up with repairing technology. I think it all went rather well, now I just need to find the cure for the kind of injuries incurred crawling around behind furniture with a FANTASTIC-SMELLING coaxial cable (I like the smell of new cables, lumber, eggcrate mattress pads and cat armpits) and playing with IDE ribbon cables (yes, I inhaled).

We saw The Forbidden Kingdom, the new Jackie Chan/Jet Li movie. I mean, come on, it's got Jackie Chan! And Jet Li! And...a white boy as the main character. He turns out okay, though. It was sort of like The Wizard of Oz meets The Katate Kid with some Lord of the Rings thrown in for good measure. And the ending was nearly better than Xanadu, but if I say more than that I'll spoil it.

Somehow I managed to not know anything about the Large Hadron Collider until the logo changed on Google on the day the potential black hole maker was turned on. Of course, once I knew about it I started to wonder if I should attribute the way my dog walks around looking spooked to some special canine knowledge that the planet is being sucked in on itself. Then she saw the neighbors and all was right with her world again. Hussy.

I had decided not to write anything about 9/11 this year, because I've told my story of that day so many times and all I wish now for everyone who died as a result of that day needs is peace. So I was out in the yard, taking pictures of the wildlife and cloud formations, and this bird, perfect little flying bird-shaped bird, got into one of the pictures. The angle reminded me of one of the last pictures I'd taken before that Tuesday in 2001, one that everyone went crazy over because wow, the colors! And a plane, not blurry at all, just PBBBT in the middle of the shot. It was the last time I deliberately took a picture of an airplane. I don't like airplanes, never did, much like I wouldn't like living in the path of oncoming trains or buses, so the picture caught "Ew," and I rarely thought about it over the years. It's sleep deprivation that makes me think a bird reclaiming the sky in my photographs is worthy of an entire post and 189 words the next day, but there it is.

If there's anything that stays consistent about 9/11, it's that we watch a lot of movies that day. No, really, that may seem harsh but there comes an hour when I need to stop experiencing things I can't fix. Generally this is about ten minutes after I wake up, but the women I live with are hardcore. TCM was playing a bunch of Kay Francis movies so I got to see Gloria Stuart (I make no apology for how many times I've seen Titanic) play pool and crash a car in Street Of Women and then we all started cracking up during Give Me Your Heart because Robert Osbourne had to tell the story about Kay Francis' problem with the letter R. I realize I've just made people who can't form Rs very angry, but remember, I can't walk around in sunlight without looking like a drunken maniac, so feel free to giggle at that and we'll be even.

I had the unfortunate experience of not only finding aphids checking out my forsythia, but a chunk of rot in one of the side supports of my swing--now entering its twentieth year of standing outside in sun, rain, snow...hell, I wouldn't have made it past that first summer. I busted out the horticultural oil for the aphids, but found that the tub of wood filler downstairs shares my tendency to crack and dry out over time. So I used Phenoseal. I caulked wood. The end is nigh but I'm holding on. I'll be damned if I don't go out swinging. As high as possible. By moonlight. Listening to '80s new wave. Surrounded by cats. You know, that swing has tried to kill me three other times, but I keep coming back for more. Sometimes I wonder if my love of swingsets is connected with my loathing of things like tags in clothing and being touched or my ability to blather on at length about the songs that were playing when I had a thought twenty-four years ago. Most of the time I don't wonder about it at all.

This week Mum made pancakes, and when Mum makes pancakes, I eat pancakes for days. Those pancakes frikkin' rule. Refrigeration and microwaves are also pretty neat.

Hurricanes aren't neat, though. Way to make me feel like a whiner about my rot, Ike. Stay safe, kids.

The Week I Got Verbose Late At Night

Six Months In A Leaky Boat

Last week we finally caught Harry Potter and the Order, based on the book I still haven't finished. I will reserve my opinion about whether the director did the same. I realize it couldn't be an eight-hour movie, but I would watch Gary Oldman stand around in doorways being underused for at least three hours, then they'd better give him something to do for the next five. It was a good advert for the book, though.

Superhero Movie, the latest (I guess?) of that spoof series...that spoofs...movies. I enjoyed it, I actually laughed a few times even, which is generally unheard of.

Then I watched a lot of tennis. Oodles of tennis. Tons of tennis. And Jon Stewart. Then I found myself outdoors one night staring at my feet, and that never ends well. I'm still waiting for it to pass, actually. Now it's raining and no one can play tennis, so I have to watch other things. Like Frontline. Hmm.

You know how the sun has that warning label about not staring directly into it? I haven't quite figured out how to pull that off while driving. Everyone gets annoyed when I close my eyes, so that's out. The great thing is that even on these rainy days I still have the image of the sun burned into my retina. It's super!

I also dodged a bat and chased a raccoon this week. I wouldn't have noticed either, except the cats tend to pay attention to great big creatures infiltrating their space and they've not got the afterimage of the sun burned into their eye, so that also gives them an advantage. I had to walk up to the raccoon with a flashlight before we saw each other, and the raccoon was like, "HOLY CRAP!" and slowly scaled the fence. The bat just flapped about, avoiding us. Luckily these two incidents didn't take place on the same night, or I'd be checking for snakes and Indiana Jones in my hedges.

Six Months In A Leaky Boat

I Slip Further Into My Split Personality.

Last Saturday we were still not finding movies that were more interesting than Olympic tennis, but we tried anyway.

I Could Never Be Your Woman, and this is a first for all the movies we watched this year, we turned it off before Paul Rudd even showed up. One of the main draws was Tracey Ullman in the cast, and she was a pretty neat pissed off Mother Nature ranting about humanity but um...then there was a plastic surgery montage. A graphic plastic surgery montage. I guess it just wasn't the right night for it, we did give it another five minutes after Saoirse Ronan (fabulous actress nominated for an academy award for Atonement) was given a line describing what she found in her underpants at school that day, but when the period storyline seemed to be dragging on longer than most girl's first--I'M SORRY GUYS, I'LL STOP NOW.

We checked out another movie, Meet Bill. Once again, we went for it based on the cast (Aaron Eckhardt! Jessica Alba and Timothy Olyphant are in it too, and Craig Bierko's not credited but he is in it as well and so that was a nice surprise). I learned that night that I prefer guy awkwardness comedies to girl awkwardness comedies. Because the second movie was better.

Sunday morning I woke up in the middle of a midlife crisis. I hate that. It's been happening more often (again--last time was 2001), and I hope it stops (again--sooner than six months later) because it's bloody annoying and there's very little I can do about the state of my roof even if I was near it. After a while I went back to sleep, and luckily something in that sleep made me want to repair the couch when I saw it again. It's got these rods that go through the coils, you see, and one rod has slid sideways out of one coil ages ago. I couldn't get that to go back but by god I had scrap wood to make a BETTER support. Then again I was told it was a bit rigid, so maybe better isn't the right word.

Sunday also redeemed my faith in movies. Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day is crazy adorable if you happen to love Frances McDormand and Ciarán Hinds, which we do.

The Olympics continued to be on and I continued to get more interested in Beach Volleyball despite knowing Tibet and Burma are still having a bad time. Not in Beach Volleyball, just in general. I keep assuring myself watching something that's being broadcast anyway is not going to doom Tibet anymore than if I didn't watch it. It's the same reasoning people have used on me for why I should eat meatballs. It isn't really necessary, you know, Nan and Mum's meatballs are on the list of exceptions because really, fifty years down the line (and unfortunately it looks like I will have another fifty years) will it matter than I refused bits of dead cow or that I ate the family meatballs? Exactly.

Around Sunday I also started to question the amount of reviewing that I'm doing.

Like on Monday, while I was watching the two-hour Chinese beach volleyball match getting some writing done, I slowly noticed parts of my innards burning. I hadn't eaten anything to cause it unless the peanut butter finally decided to kill me--oh, that's right, I lifted a couch. You know, the first year I had a hiatal hernia, I totally thought I'd inherited exploding heart, and then weeks went by and I kept not being dead, and now some twelve years later, I no longer think I'm dying so much as I hope I would, quickly, because the burning, it burns. Alas, I will live, and next week I hope to report that all my parts have gone back down where they belong, quicker because of my tilted bed.

Other highlights of my week were rescuing a ninja ladybeetle (this was the bizarro black-with-a-red-dot variation) from a scaly euonymus branch I was pruning by letting it walk on me, and being asked by someone I don't know on Twitter if I wanted to do it. The Twitter post he replied to was a lament about not having a fan built into my brain, so perhaps he was just offering to help me install one. Still, I declined. I also rethought my original response of, "Pfft! In 140 letters?!" because maybe I'd be hitting a nerve. Wouldn't want to do that to someone who's been looking for a lady for sex since May (going by what came up when I Googled his username) and obviously has no idea who he was hitting on.

I Slip Further Into My Split Personality.

The Week We Got Out Of July.

I can't really remember much of what I did with my personal time this week but I think I spent a great deal of it sitting around thinking Ow and taking massive quantities of vitamin C. I once again discovered that drinking more than an ounce of fluid in a day is pretty neat. I forget that sometimes. As a kid, I used to have chugging contests with myself at the bathroom sink. I uh...would bet myself I couldn't drink four paper cups of water in twenty seconds. I lost a few times. I never let me live that down.

Faced with all the new movies we rented finally making it to cable, we had nothing to watch but Definitely, Maybe, by the people who brought you Love, Actually but not, if I'm correct, Girl, Interrupted. Totally different film. This one we saw was not actually as bad as I'd feared. I'm not much of a girl, you see, but that Abigail Breslin is a neat actress and music figured heavily into the soundtrack, and so I was able to latch onto something until it got to the point where I wanted to see what happened, because I like Isla Fisher and Rachel Weisz too--but OMG, Kevin Kline is in this movie! Why isn't he in more movies?

Then it started to rain and the satellite, along with Balls of Fury was knocked out. I love that damn movie.

Like I said, I spent much of the week in a self-imposed chugging contest deadline where I wanted to finish my August comic strips by the 31st. So I'd be a month ahead. The intent is that if I keep that sort of lead up, I will be able to not have to worry about making a comic during, say, NaNoWriMo '08. Because I so have a story in my head. Oh yeah, also holidays and other things that might need doing like vacumming and food gathering.

So other than catching the end of the 1979 remake of The Lady Vanishes, which gave me all sorts of warm fuzzy memories of 1980, I really don't remember much...that I want to get into.

It was five years since I ended another blog of mine, and the reasons for that don't merely get tucked into a review of the week. I'll go as melodramatic as possible and say my life ended the next day, but the foosh out of the ashes and all, five years later, I'm using MAPS to personally believe I can gather food from a new place, with new people, and the people that far from home don't know me, so it's good I didn't fall over, because that would have made the sale on Entemann's chocolate donuts a little less spectacular.

I came home to find a brand new Cat Face episode, and later that night something exploded in the sky over my head. I suspect it was just a rather large bit of Perseid. At least I hope so. It got quiet afterwards. Maybe because it was after midnight. Sure.

The Week We Got Out Of July.

Almost Lost My Head

Last Saturday we watched Be Kind, Rewind, because it seemed so hilarious in the commercials and Jack Black has become a favorite of ours. It was funny, for the most part, but the plotline about saving the building reminded me of my life a little too much and not in a *Batteries Not Included kind of way. Perhaps it was just the day.

I totally fell over and got my head wedged against the wall. What are the odds? It sucked in many ways because on my way down the little MSG-laden caramel things I was planning to eat went all over the (eh, hairy) floor and once my head dropped below chest level I lost my voice and so no one knew I was in any trouble until my arse was spotted. Didn't help that the only arm I had to get away from the offending wall is the shoulder that I somehow messed up back in April. The moral of the story is that if you find someone wedged against a wall, don't just assume they will get up if you tell them to, even if you tell them really really loud. Also, don't be surprised if said slab of meat and bones flips you the finger because really, attempting to move the wall with the sonic quality of your voice is just not helping.

The next night we saw The Other Boleyn Girl, which reminded me that people kinda suck. I don't know, that's what I generally take from history. Other people get romantic notions about England back in the day of beheadings, but damn, I have yet to see a period in history where people were not screwing each other over and resorting to grudge killing. I liked the movie as a movie, though. Natalie Portman's a favorite of mine, though. I've read...unfavorable reviews. I shouldn't, really.

Tuesday was depressing. It was the last time I paid for groceries in the first store we shopped in when we moved here. Yes, the building hasn't seen a remodel since those days, but dammit, when you're as insane as I am, you get attached to things like people who know you and the feeling that no matter what's going on around you, you can get a damned loaf of rye bread after 1PM within ten minutes. Of course because of the weather, I was on Sudafed knock-off and so any real emotion was completely deadened to the point where I just ran around like the Tazmanian Devil. But I say it was depressing as the guy who was working the deli counter was holding his cellphone with the plastic food service gloves on. I think I covered this.

Nan found a doozy of a movie called either The Favorite or Intimate Power, neither of which title really does the film justice. Cuff from The Bloodhound Gang is the would-be sultan of...where were they, anyway? Turkey, I think. I would say watch it just so you can experience the strange, rushed lives of a bunch of people who were not French or Turkish in any way. Ah, '80s movies.

I got it into my head to create 24 comic strips in one month. That means every weekday in July, I have to draw, scan, put together and otherwise create a comic strip. Which is I think what I already said. But I don't usually do that many. If I pull this off, I will be able to take some time off from strip-making in August. Or at least it will give me a lot of lead time for when I go insane from trying to make 24 strips in as many days.

Perhaps unrelated, I had the strangest allergic reaction in all the time I know me. I was sitting here minding my business, when all of a sudden my hands started itching. That's not really rare, nor is the progression of the itching to my arms. No, I've been itchy before, I've been itchy for about thirty years, but when my throat suddenly closed up as if I'd been using Capsasin-P for toothpaste (I had not), that sorta weirded me out a bit. The wheezy nastiness in my chest that followed was entirely new. I've added the feeling to my list of ways I wouldn't like to die.

On the fourth, I stayed indoors. Many of the neighbors were setting off small explosives and it's best if I stay out of the way when they do that. So instead of maybe catching up on replies, I went and played with Twitter. I am now officially a twit. Somewhere along the sidebar is the Twidget, and anyone wanting to follow the moment-to-moment dullness that is me can find me at twitter.com/LyndaN.

Almost Lost My Head

Do Yourself In Project #34: The Bed Blocks

So I have this hernia. I mention it only because it's the entire reason why I hauled out the sawhorse and the jigsaw and a bunch of wood to make my bed look like a funny car.

Why make bed-raising things out of wood when you can buy some ready-made? Because that takes mo-ney, and after all I have bits of wood left over from all the other things we've built...those heavy things that aggravated my hernia. So six months after this most recent big-time* hernia aggravation, I finally got it into my head to make proper permanent blocks to replace the stack of wood I had to remove because it wasn't safe for others. Nothing wakes you up faster than the sound of your bed killing people.

Raising the wheels at the head of the bed is really the only effective way to make a hiatal hernia stop being an annoying little bastard. So it had to be done. Once my mom saw the first one all stuck together with duct tape (makes it easier to nail), she realized why I was making her saw all these tiny little pieces into even smaller pieces. She was impressed the next day when I woke up and could speak without the use of gymnastics or caustic food. Before that she was just like, not enthusiastic aboutthe project.

This is what I had her cut:

• Two 3-inch long sections of 2x4 for each leg (that would be 4)
• "Sides" for each leg, sort of a box around the 2x4 blocks which were measured very scientifically by holding the 2x4 bits up and drawing a line around them. The purpose of the box was to keep the wheels of the bed from rolling off the blocks in case the bed is moved.
• A 4-inch square to sit all that on, and a 5-inch square to sit that on, because pyramids don't tip, yo.

This whole thing, nailed together, brings the head of bed up six inches, which is said to be the proper gut-dropping angle. It worked, really. I mean, after lifting the bed to get the wood under the wheels. That part sort of sucked.

As of today it's been a week since this project and hopefully all the damage that started during the happy healthy Puppy time to eat too much Lo Mein and then prune trees day is healing. I can talk more often than not, which is a complete reversal of how it's been since that nice patch of weather in January when I decided to get a jump on the yardwork, followed by that bad patch of weather where I shoveled the slush...after er...eating too much. ONE TIME. ONE TIME AND I GET MY ESOPHAGUS HANDED TO ME. Fie foul noodles! They really were quite tasty, I can't lie. Not as tasty as the smell of fresh-cut pine boards, but hey.

*No, really, I knew it would take a while to go away, but dude, six months?

Do Yourself In Project #34: The Bed Blocks

I, Like Spring, Am Sprang.

Last Saturday, we had a special dinner! Mum made coconut shrimp, which is batter-dipped coconut and shrimp and it tasted very good. Of course I am still allergic to shrimp, and fried food also likes to try to kill me in my sleep, so believe me, it tasted very good. I was still itchy on Monday. But it was really very tasty.

Then of course we watched movies! First was El Orfanato, a.k.a. The Orphanage, or as I like to call it, don't flip the hell out on your kid while trying to show other people you can take care of a bunch of kids...it will end badly. And, oh...did this end...well, not exactly badly, but bad things happen. It's one of the better "my imaginary friend is a wronged soul" movies, though.

After that, we watched Sleuth, the remake of Sleuth, that movie which has Michael Caine in both versions. I was surprised the remake was as short as it was, until I watched it, and wondered how they stretched it that far. The cell phone ring towards the end made The Puppy do this adorable thing with her ears and her head and it was so very adorable that I think Michael Caine and Jude Law deliberately did not answer the phone just to look through the TV and see how long The Puppy would continue to be adorable. I made a soundbite of the ringtone, and I plan to use it. FOR THE CUTENESS.

Then on Sunday, Nan found Blood For Dracula again, and Mum hadn't seen that, and Nan hadn't seen Flesh For Frankenstein, which was coming on next, so we watched them all together and it was glorious. Nan likes Udo Kier now. I think I love those two movies. I mean, I've watched them three times, and I can remember bits of them and everything. Wow.

Art School Confidential was coming on after it, and being it was one we hadn't seen before, we left it on, and it was all well and good with us making remarks about the levels of snobbery in schools and the art world and the next thing we were onto fowarded emails that promise 16 years of bad luck of the forwarding does not continue. I delete those letters, and that may explain my personal life, but saying it didn't go down too well because Nan just sends those kind of messages back to the senders, and Mum thinks the Internet should stop existing and we fell into a toned-down version of my childhood, where everyone is wrong, but we're all too tired to leave the room. These are the parts I don't blog about usually, but I'm writing this after a long day of working on things I can't blog about and therefore all I have that is mine are things like this and endless deadlines that all get in the way of each other and keep me from actually putting any real joy into any one project. Plus I have what the earthlings call PMS.

Then something in the movie we were watching made me think of that time Pa said something about shooting someone with a book, and I was okay again. And by okay, I mean I crawled up into my head where the '80s music plays and cats leap through grass and dogs look adorable digging holes and all I have to do is make sure I keep my face clean and change my clothes when they get too much mud on them.

At the beginning of the week, Nan found Heaven, with Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi. It was one of those movies I like, but it was mostly in Italian, and when I had my head in the computer, I was unable to get the subtitles. I got what was going on, though, and thought it was pretty good.

I think it was Tuesday that Nan found Age of Consent which we started to watch just to see Helen Mirren as the young girl James Mason meets when he goes to live on the Great Barrier Reef, but then we watched the whole movie because it was pretty good. Godfrey the Dog was made of awesome.

Nan also found The Linda McCartney Story, and while I knew most of it (possibly more than the movie covered but I guess the sponsors of the TV movie didn't want to hear too much about vegetarianism), the actor playing Paul actually looked like him so I looked up occasionally from my work and thought, "Wow, they matched him pretty good."

And then, I think on Thursday, it was 80° and sunny out. And I died. As I think back on it, it must have been interesting to those who noticed the zombie dragging along that day. I don't think any other time I've said that I made it home without causing a car accident was ever so amazing to me. It's another one of those things I don't talk about merely because no one gets the joke, but the rather nice-looking guy nearby did laugh when I was trying to get Mum's attention, and she's sort of deaf and I lost my voice, so um...I really made an ass of it all. Since that day, I've been regaining the feeling in my right arm, and I've been trying to catch up 44 pages on my Script Frenzy story, edit some family videos, continue to stay ahead on my comic strip, and also make appearances so my family does not think I really have finally laid the hell down for good. Luckily, I have some David Cook albums I found to keep my head occupied. It's almost wrong, the way I like this guy.

I, Like Spring, Am Sprang.

How I Continue to Confuse Myself.

Fisherman's Friend is a throat lozenge with capsicum in it. You know, that stuff I couldn't be in the same room with from August of 2004 until about two months ago but now helps me speak? I'm mutating.

I bought the last package of extra strong original formula at the Rite-Aid near the 99¢ store. They worked great! They worked so great I was able to string together a particularly nasty set of compound nouns at the intersection ten feet from my driveway. With any luck my neighbors still think I have no voice, and so couldn't possibly have said what I said to the car behind me as it scared me into oncoming traffic. I hate driving where other people also drive. Have you seen No Country For Old Men yet? That scene at the end is not leaving what's left of my mind so easy.

Unfortunately, Fisherman's Friend also comes in a low sugar, cherry-flavored version that has no capsicum, no sugar, but aspartame. So the extra packages that my Mum found in the other Rite-Aid? No help for the voice and I'm just a little more brainless. I think that may be the plan.

PEZ distributes Fisherman's Friend, and while I highly recommend the original version, I'm planning to hold a grudge against the three bucks I lost to the candy-flavored chemical cocktail Rite-Aid foisted on my mother and aunt. At least until I forget, which should be any minute now.

I wish I could forget the feeling that I'm about to be broadsided by an 18-wheeler. It's annoying. Especially when I'm parked in front of the bank, minding my own business, enjoying the view of the blooming hedges, and an 18-wheeler comes off the highway and blows its horn at me. Those things, they've not got drivers, you know, they just travel around renegade, looking for victims. I'm sure if it had a driver the truck would not have needed to blow its horn at me...like I could do anything about getting out of the way.

I didn't really feel like dying on Nan's birthday, either. I mean, generally people tend to either die or come pretty close to it on her birthday, and the previous night's mouse incident was bad enough, but there's nothing that makes me realize my emo tendencies are crap faster than trying to cross the street in the same general piece.

How I Continue to Confuse Myself.

An Experiment of the Most Mute Kind

Looking around this Internet thing, there are a lot of hits on searches about losing one's voice. Mainly things like, "I have to sing tomorrow, OMG, what do I do?!" and invariably, there will be at least one reply that will invoke hot sauce.

I'm allergic to hot sauce, you know, once upon a time I ate a pretzel using the same hand that I'd used to rub Capzasin-P onto my arm. Doctors don't technically call what happens anaphylaxis, but for five years, among the symptoms of my exposure to hot sauce is the loss of my voice.

And so it was that I took out a packet of Yi Pin hot sauce that came with some Chinese food we got, and emptied the packet onto a slice of bread. Eating the bread did not kill me. It did not even burn...at first.

I got my voice back.

Ten minutes later, I'd lost my voice again.

The next day, I tried mustard. Mustard, Lowry's Seasoned Salt, and paprika. All together, because I felt like rushing the experiment. I got my voice back for a few minutes.

The next day, I took a spoon. Onto the spoon I put red pepper flakes, and coated that in honey. My thinking was that the honey would slow the pepper down as it went down my throat. It did! It's burning still...but not my throat.

Today, I just left myself alone. My findings are that the thing which could have killed me for five years now allows me to speak, if only momentarily, so I can only conclude that I have been replaced by a replica.

It boggles the mind.

An Experiment of the Most Mute Kind