guitar hero

Me: I want to get the kids Guitar Hero for Christmas.

Corinne: No, no… I don't want you doing that. It's too expensive.

Me: It isn't! I found it online for like $89. Of course, we'll see what we get. This version of Guitar Hero will only come with half a guitar or something.

Corinne: Yeah, not so much Guitar Hero. More like Guitar Not-A-Bad-Guy.

do you have cheeken?

Hola Peeple of the World!

Eet is I! Fred! (Or as you say in your country, Fred!) My girl (her's name ees Jeel) ees no good for the writing thees days so I am here on the blogger to tell you about my advaintures. For I have them many and they will to interest you very much I theenk.

So anyway. Do you know about thees thing called the bath? Eet is horrible. Eet no make my tail to wag. Eet is unpredictable like the cheeken, but in the no bueno way.

Eet is so bad I am having the difficulty to write about it.* Entiendo? But I must purge. Like the Romans. Eet is the only way and the reason I eat the grass. (I like the grass very much. Do you like the grass? Tell me.)

So anyway, one day I am asleeping on the beeg bed, dreaming of my luffer Dante and how him and me chase our balls. How we run and run and run to the bedroom and then to the leaving room and then to the bedroom and then to the leaving room and how him bites at me's balls and me bites at him's balls and how we bark and then we sleep. I am dreaming thees wonderful dream and then I am waked up! I am taked to the place weeth the water! Oh, how I hate the water and eets wetness! And my girl she puts the water on me and makes eet to go all over my body! And eet is mas terrible! (Eet ees terrible for anyway, but more because I theenk she love me and yet...thees. Am I fool?, I theenk.)

And then for worse, she rubs my body with the wetness! There ees much rubbing of all my places. And I no like. For normal, I like the rubbing. But the wetness makes me to forget. The wetness makes me to forget everything! I forget my luffer! I forget hims balls! I forget the cheeken, even! ...

...

...

Noooo! I tells you joke! You are fooled! I can never to forget the cheeken! Seely blogger person.

Anyway.

...

Oh, but me's dignity! Me's pride! Ees forgot. I am shames to tells you, but I shake. With muy fuerte, I shake. Like the time I come face to face with my nemesis, the fearsome Baloo. Him ees cat. But him ees not normal cat. Him ees ninja cat. (I save that story for another day.) But like that, I shake.

Then there ees a beeg rubbing weeth the towel. This ees not so bad. And then in a sudden... I am free! I am free! And I run!

And I rub my belly on the carpet!

And I run!

And I rub my back on the couch!

And I hear "NO FRED!" But I am no care!

I run!

And I make the beeg leap onto the beeg bed and I rub!

I am an ecstasy of the rubbing!

And I hear "FRED, NO!!"

But I am steel no care! For I am free! And the wetness, eet is destroyed!

So anyway. That ees all.

Hasta luego!

* Also because I have only the paws and no thumbs. You no appreciate your thumbs enough. Try to blogger weethout them. Just to try.

p.s. You send cheeken now?

watermelons and lingerie

"It's cold here," I tell my aunt, living in Albany, NY, who's been racing the snow to the ground, armed with nothing more than a shovel and an indefatigable determination, for about a week now.

"Is it eight degrees?" she asks.

"No, not quite," I laugh.

"Then it's not cold," she says.

But it is cold here, for here. And I'm sitting now in the chilly showroom of Discount Tires, the same showroom I've dallied in on three separate occasions over the past month and a half. A nail here, a curb there, another curb.

And as if that isn't enough to get my attention, last week, I thought for a few days that all my possessions -- everything but some pictures, my clothes and bedroom furniture -- abandoned to storage for the past several months had been auctioned. Defaulted payment they said. A glitch in the system it turns out, and not my (de)fault, but regardless. . . stuff gone. And then, to make a long story short, it wasn't. Thankfully. But still. Something is off.

As I wait for the change, acrid smell of new rubber wrinkling my nose, I'm reading E.B. White's "Here is New York." My boss gave it to me for Christmas with a card that read, "To my writer friend." And when I thanked him, he said, "That book will turn you into a writer."

I like the book. I love the card. I love the sentiment and faith behind it. The feeling of being welcomed into the fold. My boss is a writer and one I admire greatly, but if I told him how much his gift means to me, his nose would wrinkle as if stung with sour smells. But still, one day, I might.

The book is one Mr. White wrote one sweltering summer in New York after he'd relinquished his residency and returned for a season as a "transient," a "vagabond," staying at The Lafayette Hotel. His account so specific. Attentive. Rich. ("In the candid light from unshaded bulbs gleam watermelons and lingerie.") Reading it reminded me that being aware is key. And I haven't been.

When I thought my books and tables and glassware were all gone, I kept saying (and for the record, truly believing), "It's only stuff." And then, "Well, I guess now I'm free."

But it didn't feel free. It felt cold. And irresponsible. I don't want to lose what I've spent a decade and more gathering close. And even with all intact -- no love, no life, no stuff lost -- how much richer would I be today, if I'd been attending more carefully to the details?

please don't call the a.s.p.c.a

I walk out of the coffee shop and over to the bench where I've tethered Fred -- for no more than five minutes and with enough slack on the leash so he can't pretend to hang himself in protest at being left outside and within plain site through floor to ceiling windows so I can see if he tries anyway -- and find him huddled in the lap of a woman I don't know. This complete stranger is shivering in the cold, arms goose-bumped and blue as it seems she's wearing only a short-sleeved shirt despite the forty degree cold. And then I see she does, in fact, have a leather jacket. Only, she's taken it off. And wrapped it around Fred.

leap of logic

She said, Freud said there are no such things as accidents. Or something like that. But that we'd save that discussion for another day. (We only ever have 45 minutes at a time, and so we must stay on task.)

Regardless, I didn't know we didn't think Freud was a kook. But then I'm always sort of walking into walls in these conversations. Tripping along happily when I'm stopped up short.

I say, "Uhhh. . . " a lot.

And, "I guess?"

And, defensive, defeated, "I don't know." The frustrating part of which is that I think she does know and just isn't telling.

Usually, though, I'm down with that. Not the not telling, but rather the idea of an intentional universe. I can point to specific examples in friendships, in relationships, in jobs, in travel and in blogging even, that feel so wonderfully, specifically un-accidental. Moments and stretches that feel guided, orchestrated in a perfect symphony of synchronicity. Even if Freud agrees.

But what about when I want off the hook? It's only spilled milk, right? No latent anger there. No hidden sadness. No frustration made manifest. Just milk on the ground.

Can't we leave it at that?

And then this.

Lately, my most concrete acts of good-citizenry are met with bizarro karma.

I help a stranger at the bookstore jump her car.

A few days later, I get a flat tire.

I help a friend jump his car.

A few days later, I get another flat tire.

Yesterday, another friend calls, stranded with a dead battery and could I swing by to help. Of course I oblige, because what am I going to say? The universe says I'm not allowed?

Tires fat with air, I worry them and the meaning of this circle. Am I creating something? Do I mitigate healthy pride with misery? Or can it just be spilled milk?

You know, I just don't know.

once again, into the breach

Don't ask me why I've been gone, because I don't really know. But I am, I'll say, trying to figure it out. Paying good money (you'd gasp if I told you the sum), to discover why it is I haven't been:

Writing or sleeping or journaling or playing.

Yoga-ing or reading or traveling or praying.

Competing or painting or dating or styling.

Crying or loving or falling or flying.

Or. . . or . . . or . . . or . . .

The ings that aren't are infinite.

But what's money for, if not to invest? And so I consider it a down payment on life. Independent study. A graduate degree in me that -- who knows? -- might lead to the kind that's made of ink and sheep. And better goodness done in the world. And even more bank to bank when I finally learn to ask for what I'm supposedly worth and not settle for the tuppence I think I am today.

You follow?

I barely do, but I've never been so happily confused in my life. Having been miserably confused, I know the difference.

It's called hope.

I've started praying again. And that's a step. There's been a fair share of crying. Which I hate and love and love and hate and hate and love and love and hate . . . . And now, defacto, here I write.

So I suppose there's some progress already. It's not money flushed.

And then today the good doctor said, "If I were you, I'd be writing every day."

And I thought, if you were me, you very obviously wouldn't, because that's not what me does.

So I can only guess that what she really meant is that if I were her being me I'd be writing every day.

In other words, I should be writing every day.

It was more of a quiet dare than I concrete assignment. Or maybe it wasn't even that. I do tend to read unnecessarily vast volumes between other people's lines.

But still. . . I'm going to give it a whirl and we'll just see who wins.

fred out of the box

Cheeken?













¿Qué? What mean you, "No cheeken?"











I spell eet out for you, "I WANT THE CHEEKEN!!!!"











My lawyer say, "No cheeken, no peectures."












Aind right now? I deeslike being made to wear thees sweater. Eentensly.

in absentia

The writing assignments call for moths, limbs and blood and I think I should join the fray, but, today, I have no story. Neither today nor in recent memory. In fact, I'm vaguely surprised by the words deeper in and down below, curious about the person who wrote them, because it certainly isn't the me of the here and the now. I can barely fathom an interest in creating language and am formulating a grand plan wherein I co-opt someone else's words for mine very own.

You see, I've got carpal tunnel and in the meantime find my feet itch to tread boards and hit marks again. To let trip words not of my making and better. To surf tsunamis of emotion under lights, minus the post-mood-pangs and apologies that come with kitchen table rages.

So I'm imagining it into being -- you feel me?

A reformed realist, my glass overflows.

But, alas, not so much my blog.

Still, Amazon just sent me a camera and there will be pictures of mostly Fred (I'm sure) to amuse you soon.

So hang in until after Monday. I'm off to Colorado tomorrow and will be back refreshed and hopefully with stories.

Much love chickidees. . .