so we are going to the cabin.
then, we aren't going to the cabin.
yes we are.
no, we aren't.
guess what? yes. we are.

"the children" have me drinking early. if you ask me, they both need a good 5 minutes in the penalty box. fucking psychoes. no offense to the yet to be renamed psycho jen.

while i am all up for taking my parents to the cabin, i don't want to go and have my mom be uncomfortable. and that is what is going to happen. she'll hate it and come wednesday i'll have to go up there and get her.

this little power struggle isn't up my alley either. first we are going, now we aren't, yes we are. fucking children.

now it's a mad dash to do laundry, shave my legs, pack up our shit and be ready to go. i mean a part of me wants to go, but but will any of us be able to really enjoy ourselves. i'll tell ya right now, i am NOT going to share my Jameson with the old man. fuck that. he can buy his own booze. thirsty miser.

so i refilled my Rx for xanax and i think that with the Jameson and my new portable DVD player, i'll be ok. maybe we'll just come back on sunday - who knows. early monday morning?

and here is what gets me. i don't want to play hardball like this. i don't want to keep boo and them apart, but i honestly want nothing to do with them for a couple of days. my dad has no idea how much he hurt me with the "i don't care what you think" comment. and my mom, well she HAS spent the last 35 years passive aggressively doing and not doing what my dad tells her. i just wish we could all get it out of our heads that mom is sick and just respect what she wants.

she tells me she doesn't want to go, the she tells my dad that she thinks she can do it. but she doesn't want to go. and i am in the middle which is where i don't want be. and it's unfair of them to do this to me. it's like they don't understand that if i go and boo goes, then i'm not going to be able to take care of much else. she's just starting to walk and it's wonderful, but she's into everything.

so i guess i'm just going to drive a car up there and be a slave for a day, cuz you know my old man isn't going to cook and clean. and my mom will want stuff done.

maybe i should start taking the xanax now so i have some already in my system. hopefully all their shinannigans skips a generation.

henceforth i will be referring to my parents as "the children". since they are acting like six year olds, i will treat them and refer to them as such.

so after all of this bullshit with the cabin "the children" announce "we're not going to go". if it can't be our way, we don't want to do it, so nyah. it's more my dad than my mom, but they are both in this together. and if they contact me today i will make one last attempt to get them to go up for at least the weekend, but other than that - i am making no efforts to join in the craziness.

i have, however, devloped a twitch in my left eye because of all of this. and a bit of a stomach ache. so in an effort to free my mind i went to a late movie last night, after boo was in bed.

i went to the davinci code and let me just say that mediocre books make terrible movies. i am glad that they changed what they changed because it makes more sense now, but still, it was shyte. and what's really disappointing is that ron howard and tom hanks had no intention of making a good movie. they just cashed in on an already popular book - that wasn't that good - and made a shyte movie with the sole purpose of making money. it was sad.

there is no great message to be told in davinci code, no great secret revealed. and the movie was subpar at best. not that i was expecting total and complete greatness, but howard and hanks have done some good work together, but this was a low point. i did however get to eat nachos in the dark and that's always a good thing.

the davinci code makes it to the shitty shitty list though for sure. the shitty shitty da vinci code, joins the shitty shitty secret life of bess, the shitty shitty the omen, and the shitty shitty nicholas sparks the wedding.

coming in last is my shitty shitty mood.

here is what i have been repeating to myself over and over since yesterday:

go fuck yourself
go fuck yourself
go fuck yourself
go fuck yourself
go fuck yourself
go fuck yourself
go fuck yourself

leave me alone

go fuck yourself
go fuck yourself
go fuck yourself
go fuck yourself
go fuck yourself
go fuck yourself
go fuck yourself
go fuck yourself

leave me alone

when i repeat this to myself i'm not using my own voice though, it's lenny bruce ala "don't come in me".

i wouldn't be surprised if one of these days when hubbin comes home, he finds me slowly rocking in the middle of the floor whispering my roasry of "go fuck yourself" and "leave me alone".

i just got off the phone with hubbin's bro, CK, and he had a good one "sometimes you just have to say 'what the fuck?', other times, just FUCK will do." god love him.

now please, to all family members young and old, closely related or not, STOP. LEAVE ME ALONE.

go fuck yourself
fuckers
fucking fuckers
fucking fuckwad fuckers
go fucking fuck yourself

i don't know about you, but i'm starting to feel better.
now, go fuck yourself

i just got off the phone with my mom and i am in trouble. i felt physically sick after hanging up. the stress in starting to affect me. we are still working out the details of getting my parents up to the cabin this weekend. my dad has this idea that the two of them will stay up there for two weeks. i don't need to tell you that it's a lose/lose situation, for them and me.

there are no accomidations up there for my mother. she has an automatic bed and chair at home here to help with her mobility. the bed and furnature at the cabin are 100 years old and crap-crap-crappy. the cabin has become a graveyard of used furnature, beds, and it's where old towels go to die - the ones that don't get made into rags.

but i am not entirely understanding my dad's motives for going up there with her. he has to know that she won't be comfortable, he has to know that she isn't going to have a good time, he has to know that they are at least a hour away from the closest medical facility, he has to take into account that neither one of them can drive if anything were to happen. and yet, none of these things seem to matter to him. maybe i'm over-reacting. but i know for a fact that my mother does not want to go.

so what does that make her? baggage. something to be thrown in a car and schleped around so my dad can go up to the cabin and fish. and that infuriates me. especially since he just spent a week in canada fishing. and there is no reasoning with him.

when i spoke to him earlier today he actually said "I don't care what you think." it was awful. it's awful because what's going on isn't bringing out the best in him, it the opposite. some people take an illness in the family or a spouse and they try to get every little positive thing out of it that they possibly can. and that isn't the case with my mom, or my brother.

when this is all said and done i want to have a relationship with my father, i love him, he's my dad. but i think i have to seperate the fact that he's my father with the person who is actually is. and i am so nowhere near ready to do that, because i know what will happen.

i am angry that i can't focus on my family. it's not just me, hubbin and boo, and that's what i want it to be. outside of my mom, the only other person that i got support from in my family was auntie jan and she's dead. so i guess i'm finding it difficult to be thrown back into the mix all of a sudden and expected to obey. that's the first word that came to my mind.

this weekend is going to suck. it's going to be hot and buggy at the cabin and i am going to be treated like a slave by both parents, hubbin too. my dad will have hubbin doing all sorts of stupid cabin shit.

not to mention that the cabin isn't really a suitible place for boo. the way my dad has things set up it is so not toddler friendly. so there is going to be that to deal with too. might as well load up on xanax and keep my mouth shut. since that's what i'll do anyway.

aahhh homer. so many great lines, but only one that really applies to my life.

i am not about to recount my own uterus problems - actually, i didn't have uterus problems - but the whole infertility thing is too much to get into here and now.

let me begin by saying that although i did get some down time yesterday, it was not family free the way i wanted. and that's ok.

at the start of the day brother's wife called me in the morning and i talked to her for like an hour, getting the scoop on what's going on. then later in the day, hubbin's sister - patty - calls. patty is going to have a baby in september and i am giving her a shower, so we needed to talk details. so i'm on the phone with her for about an hour.

during our conversation, she tells me about hubbin's brother's (CK) wife - judella - who has to have surgery for uterine fibroids. which is something that patty can relate to, since she's had them too.

so i call and leave a message for judella asking her to call me about the shower - ha ha ha. and when we get home from helping patty get registered at "Babies R Us", there is a message on the machine.

"yeah, i can help with the shower only until july 10 because i'm going in for surgery for uterine fibroids. call me back"

god love judella, she doesn't fuck around. so i'm on the phone with her for over an hour. and towards the end she says "i haven't really gone into this much detail with anyone else, i'm glad it's you." which made me feel useful, in a really good way. and i also gave CK some advice a long time ago - since he's a little uptight - and that came in handy for him too. which i am not sharing details about because if they ever find this site, CK would die of embarassment and then come back from the grave to sue me for libel or something.

by the end of my conversation with judella, i had her laughing. i pulled out that homer quote and she was on the floor. then we started changing the holiday of festivus, to include an annual airing of grievences of about our uterus - festivus for the uterus. then hubbin says - why not just air out your uterus? and judella and i both started laughing our heads off.

no details for the shower were made, but that's ok. it was all about judella and her baseball team of fibroids. i'm glad i could be there for her.

however, i am not answering the phone today or calling family memebers back. i'm serious - i'm done with you people, you're killing me.

although i had decided not to talk to any family members today, i did not hang up on my sister-in-law when she called this morning. look below for my take on brother's weird manic visit saturday morning. anyway, i got the other side of the story. and all i could say was - i have a spare bedroom and there is always white wine in the fridge. and when this is all over she and i, hubbin, boo, kk, and bubba are all going to mexico. 'nuff said.

so i am taking the rest of the day off. it will just be pop-tarts, dried apricots, cherrios, blocks, balloons, and i'm going to make dinner. because i have time to do that.

but i'm done - mama needs a break. i have been going nurse nightengale ninety for the last ten days and i'm done.

i'm just going to sit back and watch boo do her best impersonation of maggie simpson - walking really well for seven or eight steps and then face planting into the carpet. god love her, she giggles at herself and gets right back up.

there is probably a lesson for me there, but i'm off today.

you know the deal this week - my dad is in canada fishing, and with all the other helper gals and the home health aides we are all talking turns staying with and taking care of my mom. friday night i went over there around 5:30, fully equiped with "walk the line", "get shorty", "king kong", and "batman begins". for a hot friday night of movie watching and eating pizza.

my mom was in a pretty good mood, and we ended up staying up late and talking until about 11:30. then i gave her the meds, put her to bed, and tucked her in. it's weird being the mom for your mom.

i was pretty restless, so started watching a movie myself. i was up until about 1:00AM - then hit the wall hard. something woke me up at 5:00AM and then my mom buzzed me at 6:00AM. the phone then woke me at 8:15AM and it was brother (the one with cancer). and he's on his way over.

so he shows up with like a kit bag full of meds and all his feeding tube stuff. what the hell? i ask him.

"i just had to get out of there" he says. it's not even 9:00 in the morning.

so i listen to his bullshit about his marriage for like an hour. then i think his mom calls him (since we have different mothers - same dad). so i pop in to check on my mom, since she's still tired and whatnot. and she says something like, how i'm responsible for everything now.

and here is the deal, i've always wanted a brother and while i am related to some, the have never been brothers to me. hubbin's older brother has done more for me in the last nine years that any of my own related ones have in the last twenty years.

and now he's here, in my mom's living room telling me how bad it is, and that he has no where else to go. and it broke my heart.

my whole life i have wanted to be a part of my own family, but because i had it "easy" (and by "easy" that means that my parents didn't get divorced) my brothers and cousin kind of shut me out. now that my cousin's mom died, and my brother has cancer, and my mom is sick, all of a sudden i'm the "it" girl of my family.

and guess what?

i can't do it.

my feelings aren't as harsh as "go fuck yourself", but that thought did cross my mind for like a nanosecond. and that is so not the right attitude to have about it, but that's who i am. and if i pretend like it doesn't bug me, well then i've turned into my mom and you need to take me out back and shoot me.

but they are my family, and they are deminishing by the year. pretty soon i won't have many of them left, and the ones that are around, i won't have anything in common with - since i don't buy a new truck or boat every year and i don't smoke pot everyday. yeah, yeah, yeah, i am related to white trash.

and while i can't have a brother of my own, i'll take hubbin's. and while my own kin are sitting in front of me, telling me what's bothering them i can pour tea and serve rice krispie bars and hook up the feeding tube and listen. if i can't have a brother, i'll just be a good sister then.

i had one of several recurring dreams last night. i have a dream once in a while where i lose all my teeth. and it's probably because my teeth are terrible in real life.

but, more than once, i have had a dream where i'll spit out a part of a tooth and then all the other ones come loose and i spit them out too. and all of a sudden i am holding a huge pile of teeth in my hands, crying and begging whomever i am with for help. when my tounge searches for the holes, there aren't any. my mouth is full of blood and teeth and i just keep spitting out teeth. it's bizzare.

last night i had this dream, but there was someone there with a car and i asked them (through broken teeth and blood) to take me to the dentist. so we get in the car to go and we hit a huge puddle, the car bottoms out and floods - we all get wet and i lose the handful of teeth in the mud.

i have no idea what this means. except, obviously, that i need better oral hygiene and a vacation.

ok, JCSG tweeked it and polished it and she is really the brains behind "the jodi(e)'s". so here is the actual podcast and not just the mp3. you can download this to your mp3 player and put the earbuds in and have a geeked out little ménage à trois to Ray Bradbury's F451.

enjoy.

oh, p.s. the next book is craig ferguson's "Between the Bridge and the River". i think is said it the other way round. i was drinking, you know the drill.

i was so tired last night that i ended up staying awake until at least 2:00 AM. i'm blaming the solstice -fucking shortest night of the year, my ass!

and i am overwhelmed by the feeling that i will never be happy again. like every shred of innocent youth is gone, baby gone! i am truly an adult now and there is no going back. it's all mortgages, college tuition, and 10-year old scotch.

i don't even feel like today is real. i am lacking so much sleep and running on fumes. i kinda feel like, maybe i shouldn't be taking care of boo today because i am so not with it. but there is shit to do. i gotta hit cub and target today and visit my mom. and i think there is still a load of laundry in the dryer.

it never ends, it never fucking ends.

even when i try and get a break with sleep, i can't sleep.

and i guess what's really bugging me is that, when i stayed overnight with my mom, that was really hard. and i called hubbin when i was over there and we talked about it. then i come home, take care of boo and hubbin and i meet up at her baby class. and he doesn't say hello to me, there are no kisses, no hugs, no "i missed you", nothing.
and i guess that made me feel so worthless. like i can be gone for over 24 hours and it doesn't matter.

i'm a ghost in my own world. another comparisson to the walking dead - which is what i look and smell like.

remember that post about boo throwing up on me - last saturday? that was the last shower i had and let me tell ya'll, i am ripe! it's part of my natural defenses, foul mood, foul odor, foul face.

i noticed it the mirror this morning how ugly i have become. but maybe we just see what we want to see.

when i was in college i worked at the title wave in roseville - across from har mar mall and next to guitar center. it's where i met hubbin (since he was dating a co-worker of mine) and where i rocked the movie scene like never before. plus, they had a porn section - buttman goes to rio 6 ya'll!

it was also where i met one of the sexiest nerds ever! mike wiles - and dude if you are reading this, please e-mail me. mike had silky long artist hair and was a film maker. he wanted me to be in one of his arthouse films about superwomen. he wanted a scene where the six superwomen are still in the womb - that means all of us naked in a pool and shooting underwater. and i thought he was brilliant. i think he had a girlfriend though, so he was a little hesitant to my sex-me-up vibe (not to be confused with jodi's make sweet sweet love to me vibe).

the sex-me-up vibe kinda worked once - he came over to my apartment and let me brush his long silky artist hair, and i want to say that we kissed a little, but i'm not sure. there was one scene in his car, in the winter time, parked, heater and radio going, when he told me how special he thought i was. and that i better cut it out (the sex-me-up vibe) because he didn't want to have to choose between me and his current girlfriend. or mabye that was a different guy and i'm just remembering it as mike.

anyway, getting to the point, i had a dream about mike and his cool artist hair last night. and while i can't remember the details of the dream, i woke up missing him. and missing all the other cool people who were once part of my life and have seemed to fallen off the "gone our seperate ways" cliff. colby, paula, mike roeder, PT, barker, marc... it's sad when you lose friends that you really, truly care about.

and part of me totally wants to call oprah and have her track these crackers down (although i know where all of them are, except paula and colby). it would be nice to see what they are up to, if there are ok, if they are happy. because i am, i totally am.

or aka - the grossest thing to happen so far

i love being a parent - i really, really do. i never once questioned my or my partner's abilty to parent when i was pregnant. it never crossed my mind the question whether or not i would be a good mom. i guess i always knew that i would be.

and boo has had her moments, not many though. one came when she was only a couple weeks old and we just sat in the rocking chair, both of us crying, but i hear that's normal. another time, she pooped in the bathtub and i was in there with her. and it wasn't chunky poop either, it was the soft serve baby poop. and of course, she has peed on me, more times that i can count.

but saturday, for the first time in her life, she totally threw up. i picked her up, and was lifting her a little over my head and she puked. my mouth was open. she puked on the middle of my forehead, my face and then it ran down my shirt and it the floor. milky, white, soutpuss puke, the smells like everyone thinks it does. all and i could do was hold her up at arms length away until hubbin took her and i stumbled to the sink.

spitting and gagging and laughing all at the same time, i tried to rinse out my mouth and get it out of my eyes. when i looked down at my self there was a skunk effect, a streak of white puke straight down my black tank top.

i headed into the shower, still laughing and wondering if boo was ok. hubbin assured me that she was, since she was babbling and laughing. and she's learned, as all of us have, that sometimes you just feel better after you throw up.

and i was greatful for the shower, since it was only my second one that week. the funniest part though was when i told my mom the story, all she said was "did you get a picture?"

after the drunken post david sedaris podcast that the world will never hear - unless JCSG has a contest like carly simon and the winner gets to hear it - we got our shit together (supposedly) and did the real first publishable podcast for Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451".

hopefully PT will forgive my non-Strunk-and-White style.

so here is ya'll...the F451 podcast!

so, you all know about my gulity pleasure "Days of Our Lives", and last week i let out a scream, more of shreik really, a squeal of excitement as Stephen Nichols popped onto the screen at Jack's deathbed in his old role as Steve "Patch" Johnson. yes, patch is coming back to salem. and i can't wait! and get this, he has a blog! that's so bloody brilliant, i can't stand it.

and the flair! the flair on the orderly scrubs - goddamn that's just fantastic.

i was a huge fan, huge fan of patch and kayla - to the point of during the ages of 13 to 17 i was going to name my first daughter kayla. i was also a huge fan of justin and adrienne and calliope and eugene. i even copied down a song that justin sang to adrienne in my lame little eigth grade poetry book.

and calliope and eugene - that was just good TV right there. the show needs more humor from it's characters and not it's "out there" storylines. i was joking with a friend that now that clair has zach's liver, and bo and hope are done, hope will eventually crack under all the pressure and clair will suddenly be five years old next week and exhibiting charateristics of zach (from left over genetic material from his liver), so hope becomes convinced that clair is really zach come back to life. hope then kidnapps clair, cuts her hair and starts dressing her in boys clothes and calls her "zach." this causes a countrywide amberalert/manhunt which ends with clair safely back with belle and philip, but because she was hurt in the final showdown the lab has clair's blood samples and it comes out that she is really sean and belle's baby meaning that hope kidnapped her granddaughter and tried to turn her into her dead son.

raise your hand if you think i should write for the soaps?

anyway, welcome back patch! more patch, more jack and less sean and mimi - come on, IVF in two weeks? i don't fucking think so!

i am crushing all over itunes and my ear buds. it's just me and david bowie at the moment. and i believe him.

we can be heroes.
just for one day.

i have to admit that i have a bit of a girl crush on jcsg. not only did we hang out all night last night and whoop it up in the limo, but we chitty chat chatted on the IM this morning, then met for lunch and when i got home the super rad "iwilldare.com" t-shirt was in my mail box.

it's so fucking rad i can't stand it. it's so sweet i don't know if i can wear it. it might go the way of the david sedaris book i had signed for PT - something that is just too cool to part with or use or anything. it just needs a space on a shelf to just be fucking awesome.

and i still can't get over the fact that the vodo showed up. he must like jodi a lot to do that, or maybe he succumbed to the lure of the birthday fairy's promise of beer and cake. few men can resist such a combination.

speaking of cake, here is a little chip that i need to get off my shoulder. the craptastic reverend pat d - a sub-par poet at best and i think the main slammin poets keep him around because they all look at little better by comparison. and this schlomo nicks not one, not two, but THREE, yes THREE extra pieces of cake. i passed out cake to everyone in the bar and the fucking reverand went back THREE times for more cake - FOUR pieces in all. that's just rude, ya'll. that aint cool. the cake was gone! which means that i couldn't bring home a piece for hubbin. THAT AINT COOL REV!

but on the plus side, when i was done passing the cake out, i sat next to the vodo and finished off his cake, like we were boyfriend and girlfriend. like he left just the right amount to satisfy my sweet tooth, but to not feel gross for eating an entire piece of cake. i suspect the vodo is inheriently charming like that. so he's on my crush list too.

i have to give a shout-out to the funkiest man in south dakota - thank you for doing all the you did, singing and signing and holding up the slam so jodi could be completely embarassed. fuck you clown!

the brightness that you see all over the place today is JCSG beaming. and a girl deserves to shine like the sun at least once. last night i officially became the birthday fairy. and although i don't dig a big to do over my birthday, i love blowing up everyone elses.

i have two words to describe jodi's birthday bash last night:

fucking vodo

after two e-mails, which i thought were well crafted, polite, and to the point, the vodo strolled into keiran's like he owned the place, promptly knocking jodi's socks right the fuck off. there was a puddle under my chair before he even sat down. the vodo, gotta love him. he makes girls giddy just by showing up. and he was hii-larious.

the slam was fun, not the best one i've been two but with that much giddiness it's hard not to have a good time. i only wish there had been karoke afterwards.

now i'm off to write the vodo a nice thank you e-mail which i hope hope hope he doesn't find snarky.

happy birthday jodi, remember all this, because i'll never be able to top it.

JCSG gets the award for having the coolest birthday ever, 06-06-06. and while we did hit the shitty shitty "The Omen" on tuesday (06-06-06), and while she did get flowers and m&m's, she hasn't gotten her birthday yet.

i am planning a special evening at the slam tonight with a little help from my friends. i hope she has fun.

i think that everyone deserves one really special birthday. i gave hubbin a surprise party for his 30th. and i had the biggest dinner party ever for yet to be renamed psycho jen on her 30th. BF and i gave The Boy a great birthday back in the day. and last night i finished making all of boo's invitations for her first birthday.

so i hope that my girl has a good time, she deserves it.

- as i am relaxing on the couch talking to JCSG i get the hankerin for some pringles. as i offer some to hubbin he says no, i'm going to have an apple.

- the 80 year old jewish lady that lives across the street has been outside all day, just sitting in one of her patio chairs while her daughter-in-law puts in a rose garden. i should be sitting outside enjoying the nice weather and enjoying my own flowers.

- CMC is on her way over and i have not gotten her a wedding gift nor do i have any idea of what we are going to talk about.

- i will be heading out to stillwater tomorrow to see KK and Bubba and my brother (the one with cancer), and while i love seeing the kids, my bro looks like the walking dead.

- the lawn needs to be mowed

- the laundry needs to be folded

- the sadness needs to end

once in awhile i'll have a really emotional night. i'm sure you can relate. and it can be a good thing, it doesn't have to be tears and sadness. but these types of evenings just make me feel ass over barrel the next day.

and i've had two of them in a row, for different reasons. i feel like i am running on fumes. i can honestly say that if i were a celeberity, i would have checked myself into the nearest hospital for exhaustion.

i would take a weekend and get away if i could. hubbin suggested that i go to the cabin for a bit - without boo. it's tempting, but i need her, maybe more than she needs me. but i do feel the pull for some downtime, just because i know that if i grab some now, i won't crash and burn later on.

but there is guilt involved with that. and i can't deal with it right now, so i'm just performing the delicate balancing act that is my life today, just so i can get through it.

another question from "the book of myself"....

if i had any trouble with mom growing up, it was in this area:

that i was my own person and not an extention of her. whenever i wanted to wear what i wanted to wear going out with my friends, if my mom found it unacceptable she was say something like "when you leave this house you are a representive of me, if any of MY friends saw you dressed up like that they would think i was a bad mother. now, go change and put on a skirt."

yet to be renamed psycho jen witnessed an now infamous moment between me and my mother. sometime in 1987 or 1988, jen and i were going out to something (i can't remember the occasion). and i had put on two different earrings as i had seen madonna and cyndi lauper do. my mom stopped me before i even got out of my room and said i was going to leave the house until i put on matching earrings. it's laughable now, but that's how it was back then.

in many ways i felt responsible for my mother's happiness - but that was because of her expectations of me, however unrealistic they were -like a bunch of AT&T sales reps were going to show up at Rocky Horror at the Uptown on a saturday night at midnight, see me dressed in goth glory and go to work on monday thinking less of my mother. riiight.

but it was real to her. and instead of celebrating the fact that she had raised an independent thinker and a young woman who wasn't afraid to be herself, she questioned my ability to conform to the norm like it was a bad thing.

and now that i have a daughter and i see goths at the mall i can't wait to see what she comes up with. i don't see those kids as extensions of their parents, i see them as themselves - angst ridden and confussed, just like i was. but that's how we find our path, isn't it?

i am more tired than i care to admit to. i want to say "no" to everything and just sleep. i want someone to come over and take boo for three or four hours so i can shower, masturbate and sleep - and yes, in that order.

i had a bit of a breakdown last night.

upon confirming dinner plans with psycho jen (yet to be renamed) and her hubbin, i announced that i have nothing to wear. i'm not really a shopper, and i don't like buying clothes, i don't like picking them out or trying them on. which is why i NEVER have anything to wear.

but in my closet was a black summer dress and it's the perfect thing for these types of situations because it's long enough so you don't have to shave your legs and it's short sleeved, so you don't have to shave your pits. and for whatever reason the black summer dress found its way into the wash and shrunk.

and i was devestated. it was the last thing i remember my mom shopping for and buying for me when i was pregnant. so i could have something nice and cool to wear to work and it would still hid the bump a little bit. and now i feel that it's ruined.

and mom my isn't going to go shopping like that for me ever again. i mean she does, but it's different. for my birthday she bought me a really nice Coach purse. and i've always wanted one. but she had to call the store and order it and have it waiting at parcel pick-up. she can't just get in the car and shop because she wants to. and that kills me, it just breaks my heart in so many ways.

this shouldn't be happening to her.

and i'm having a hard time remembering the person she was - which is hard because all of her changes have been physical, and she's still very much my mom.

and as i'm crying about all of this, hubbin was great and supportive and loving. he belongs on a soap opera sometimes.

i just so don't want this to be my life, but i don't have a choice. i just want a little bit of a break. i feel like i'm going to just lose it and i won't be any good to anyone.

there is only one word to describe going to see "The Omen" (a remake) on JCSG's birthday (06.06.06) and that word is....

tough
(fucking tough)

from the ass end of shakopee comes a horror unveiled. first yahoomaps and mapquest both gave wrong directions to the creepy little movie theatre in shakopee - the parking lot was a ghost town with third-ring suburb goths flittling about like ants at a picnic.

then the psuedo-goth kid in front of us (with plastic chains attached to his too baggy black shorts) gets carded for The Omen and - get this- doesn't have ID. (tough)

the actual theatre is packed and the second we sit down, the second we sit down the two blonde barbies next to us have to get up with thier boyfriend and get popcorn. (tough) the three high school senior prick/jocks behind us wouldn't shut up, and JCSG and i almost peed when the super tough shakopee theatre manager comes up and busts them all for not having tickets. i'm guessing they went to see "The Break-Up" with Jen and Vince and then snuck in to see "The Omen". they had the stench of extreme repressed homosexuality about them.

or maybe the stench was just the shakopee theatre wanting to deliver a full sensory interpretation of it's movie showings, i don't know. when you are in that kind of situation, it's best to keep your mouth shut and let the unholy events unfold before you. keeping an escape route in the back of your mind the entire time.

the unholiest of the unholies a remake - a shitty shitty remake of The Omen. steller cast with Liev Schreiber (hot), Julia Stilles (cute), Mia Farrow (tough), and Michael Gambon (dumbledore), and the dude who played the photographer (although i can't quite place him yet - and i'm not going to use IMDB to cheat either!) my thinking was this was going to either be incredibly painful or just plain stupid.

both were true.

however, we all know how remakes go, vince vaughn in gus van sants "Phycho"? COME ON! they rarely ever work. and, as all signs pointed to, "The Omen" was a complete stinker. maybe that was the stench i was experiencing all along.

choppy dialog, bad camera work, tactless tie-ins to modern times, and thankfully one scene that made me(and just about everyone else in the croweded theatre) jump out of my skin. although my first reation to such things is laughter and not the typical "Oh Shit! That scared the piss out of me!" this reaction is why i'm often given hateful stares as i leave certian movies.

the scariest part of "The Omen" happened in the parking lot afterwards when i got a big bug in my hair and JCSG pulled it out. that creeped me out more than anything - since i cannot stand bugs.

but it was JCSG's b-day and she is the type of gal i'd follow to hell and back. and now, as i have fulfilled my obligation, she needs to repay me by singing karoke. i'd rather have had a hot iron enema than do what i did - going to shakopee and all - and i'm not proud of myself. but there are somethings you just do for your very good, special friends. and here's hoping the pearly gates opened a little wider for me now.

P.S. the little psuedo-goth kid got his dad to buy him a ticket, because as JCSG was pulling the bug from my hair we saw him heading to the car with his other 18 year old friends.

the dml - the dream make-out list. so far with only three people on it:
noah levy
adrian brody
constantine (from last years american idol)
and now....darin brooks.

darin brooks is a 22 year old soap star, currently appearing on days of our lives as Max Brady.

for whatever reason last night i had a dream about him. which was so silly and stupid that i had to tell fellow days fan jcsg about it. that prompted a quick synopsis of a storyline involving Natalie West
(that's me) and the young hot Max Brady.

Natalie arrives in Salem via Canada where she has just pulled off one of the biggest corporate mergers this decade. Hired by Kate Roberts to keep Basic Black from being a take-over target, Natalie West soon proves herself indespensible and instantly gains the trust of Kate with some senerio that a less talented writer can come up with. However, during a routine background check, Basic Black Human Resources informs Kate that something doesn't quite check out for Ms. West.

But Natalie's past is much darker than that......

nothing like chedder chex mix, mini charelston chews and some dasani to get the creative juices flowing.

i am truly humbled by what jcsg put on her website about me. i can't even thank her enough for such a ringing endorsement. and it's touching that she takes it to a positive place. other friends in the past have accused me of being an attention whore, "madonna complex" was used once. but that was a million years ago.

anyhoot, i like to have fun and i guess in a way i am a natural performer ha-cha-cha-cha (jazz hands). and i will get carried away in the moment and do almost anything for a laugh. such as the prim and proper patrons of park tavern found out last saturday night. however, i don't do it because i have to or need to. i don't need that kind of attention, i don't crave it. i am not lonely without it. i can walk into a room and not talk to anyone and be fine.

i can let my birthday slip by undetected by friends and family because i really don't want any to-do about it. i am perfectly ok being private and shy. something PT understands better than anyone else. and this above all other is the reason why i miss him so very much.

being open and friendly to people can still mean you are shy. being cute and funny can still mean that you don't want people in your business. that is probably one of the most misunderstood things about me.

and yeah, i'll admit to hamming it up at the park tavern and maybe it was a little hurtful to tell a bunch of strangers that jcsg "puts out". but if you were singing the rolling stones' beast of burden you could make that same mistake.

and i am touched beyond words that she saw it as magic and not just me being annoying (which is what a lot of people think of me).

the world is full of such kind and gentle souls and i'm so happy, so hap-hap-happy that my path crossed hers.

i can't wait for her brithday........

when i was a kid, my parents had me in daycare. mrs. b took wonderful care of us and she was a terrific lady. every year on my birthday she would pack us all in her station wagon and take us to como zoo and park. it was great.

and i'm reinstating my birthday trip to the zoo. this year boo, hubbin, kk (my neice) and bubba (my nephew) all went to como zoo and it was a blast! polar bears, giraffe's, monkies, face-painting, and rides. one of my favorite birthday's so far.

then at the end, after kk and bubba were picked up by their parents, boo and i went on the merry-go-round. she dug the first minute, and then just want to be held by mom - which was cool, i love being the mom. but it was just a sweet way to end the day. just me and her and dad taking pictures.

we are going to go to the zoo every year now for my birthday, since it's fun and it what i like to do and i can't wait until boo is a little older and gets it.

so last night as i stumbled into bed i was a little distraught because i screwed up my netflix timing and i am completely out of 24. for the last couple of months it has been my bedtime ritual to put boo to bed and then watch 2 episodes of 24, then kick on Craig Furgeson and fall asleep. i know, i'm a TV whore.

but last night, drunk and lucious from an evening at Park Tavern with jcsg, i had to substitute 24 with a second season episode of Strangers With Candy. this was ok, but my DVD player is ancient, so eventually i just clicked it off and channel surfed at 2:00 AM.

and Lost Boys was just starting on SciFi.
i almost peed.
it was like Keifer knew i needed him and he was there.
and it's my birthday.
the only thing that would have toped it would have been Flatliners on TBS. but that's asking a little much.

more on my evening with jcsg later, it was a riot though. at least what i remember of it.