One of those paint by number replications of the Mona Lisa

Complying with the weather scapegoat.

2007-04-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

I’ve come to view the campus computer lab as a sanctuary. It’s serene, distraction free, a place to do high quality work. The air conditioner is never at full blast, and when the room fills, someone inevitably cracks a window to allow for a comfortable typing experience. I enjoy the computer lab. There are plants here, and a coffee machine within a 50 foot radius. The computers hum in synch, a mechanical choir that prevents the silence from deafening the audience. There is a dictionary that sits on a nearby table, I assume for public use. I love dictionaries, especially dictionaries that are readily available for public use. I sneak peaks at the cover, wondering what words strangers were able to define as a result of that particular dictionary’s availability. I look up words I already know. Lackadaisical. Ampersand. No one questions my behavior because according to them, I am accomplishing great things. I am writing a future classic, here, at this particular computer, in this on-campus computer lab. They are making mental notes of my name, wondering if I am going to be the next great American author, if my works will be comparable to Berrigan or Atwood. In the computer lab, I am everything I’ve ever dreamed I would become.

You can’t smoke in the computer lab. The computer lab is a non-smoking environment. It’s kind of like being in a library, or at a coffee shop poetry reading, only the poetry is in my head and there’s cable internet available. For these reasons, and many more, I love the on-campus computer lab.

Today, however, I have encountered a problem. Actually, to be very specific, I have encountered seven problems, all of which are between the ages of 18 and 20, dressed from head to toe in Abercrombie, talking at a decibel that drowns out the computer symphony that is the soundtrack of my life.

There’s a sign on the door, a sign you absolutely cannot miss upon entering that states in very bold, very clear letters:

Please keep computer lab door closed.
Thank you.

The words, quite simply, hold many implications. Although it does not directly state that there will be no eating in the computer lab, it is assumed. It is also assumed that this is not a room in which it is acceptable practice to hold loud, lengthy conversations. People close doors to diminish outside noise, to maintain a sense of privacy. But here they are, seven gossipy girls, practically screaming in the computer lab. And not just any computer lab, MY computer lab. The computer lab I go to, my grad school refuge. They aren’t even utilizing the computers—they’re eating lunch. These girls are holding a social luncheon in the computer lab, and while I am much too polite to argue with them on computer lab politics, I’m furious.

I depend on this place. I get up early to accomplish day to day household tasks so that I can come here, to this place, to the computer lab that I praise daily. I feel safe in the computer lab, untouchable. I don’t bother bringing my laptop to school because until this moment, the computer lab has been a reliable place of practice. Bringing my laptop to the computer lab would be like bringing a Bible to mass—completely unnecessary. They have Bibles there, use the ones provided.

Yet here I sit, surrounded by Bibles and Bible-less. Wondering where I can go to accomplish the nothing that appears to be on my agenda today.

I don’t know why I’m so irritated. Realistically, they will be gone within the hour. I’m sure they have a class or a mall to go to. It’s dreary outside. Maybe the rain is getting to me.

Maybe I need a breathe of fresh air.

Some men are like peninsulas, pointing at women the way Florida points at the keys.

2007-04-12T22:33:00.000-07:00

Another uneventful evening at Bics.
I don't know why I go there. I almost never enjoy myself.

carpal tunnel cramps my style

2006-12-14T07:24:00.000-08:00

My median nerve has gone to shit.
Add it to the list of worries.

The vortex of suck

2006-11-01T18:58:00.000-08:00

Homework and my back aches.
Tomorrow starts in less than three hours.
Damn.

Operation Live This Life

2006-10-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

I had a job that I hated and school loans to pay off, but at least I wasn't living with my parents and had my own room. There were some rough times, yeah.
But I adjusted.

My 25th birthday was the worst day of my life.
No kidding.
I mean, deaths take the cake in horrible. And I've experienced loss and death and the permanence of it all makes it worse than anything that day to day life can throw at a person.
But as far as life goes. Day to day life. My birthday was the bottom.

At the very least, the first day of my 25th year was the worst, so things are bound to get better.

Months have passed, and I am slowly, slowly understanding with exact clarity why people commit suicide.

Grad school consumes my entire existance.
I should make dean's list, but what does it really matter in the long run?
It's not going to get me a better job.
It's not going to fix my car or pay my bills or do anything really except take up all of my time and skate me slowly along the edge of crazy.

But I study and write papers and keep doing it all even though it's slowly killing me because it's pretty much the only thing I can do right anymore.

Graduate School Tuition

2006-08-09T13:05:00.000-07:00

Today I received my bill for fall tuition.
Ouch.

Two days 'till Tuesday

2006-08-06T06:04:00.000-07:00

In every issue of the Lakeshore Weekly, there is an advertisement that says something like "Professional Nurse will come to your home to soak and clip your toenails. Gift certificates available."

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

2006-08-04T07:49:00.000-07:00

After several illegal attempts at fish catchery, I am finally getting my fishing license. I am going to catch a blue gill. Who knows. Maybe I'll even catch two.

Dear CJ,
The last time I ate blue gill was the day before you left at the brewery tour. Please come home. Please?

love,
Rose

Dial up connection of interweb hell here at my parent's house in the country

2006-08-03T08:09:00.000-07:00

Beneath the maple tree there is a slab of cement that I am almost positive my dad carved our initials into before the wet hardened over into permanence. Years from now, a family other than my own will be walking through the yard, stopping to wonder who the hell poured a perfectly square portion of concrete smack dab in the middle of a perfectly good acre of lawn. It used to house some sort of water tower device that my sister and I would crawl into. We'd sit in there, rust stains decorating our hands and knees, talking loudly just to hear the echoes. I think that might be my earliest memory. Yelling into the tunnel, waiting for my father to hear us.

Lines from my inbox

2006-08-03T07:44:00.000-07:00

of a lifetime

it's always something.... work or sleep or seeing friends, or not seeing friends, actually. And then it's 1 a.m. on a Tuesday evening, and I'm just getting

wide awake and chain smoking on your balcony, waiting less than patiently for the sun to rise. And it doesn't, so I walk aimlessly around blocks of Milwaukee nightlife until I hear a small yet firm

so I stop in at O-P and get carded for cigarettes,

suddenly waiting for the sun to rise

seems managable, and now I'm the one sitting on your balcony, with no ambition to do anything other than stare at the night and I can hear your voice echoing in my mind.

step inside for a bagel and cream cheese, and as I'm walking out of my kitchen with a sandwich that is really only ketchup on a stale piece of bread,

I pause by my computer and put the same song on repeat. Then I wrote you this email, and I hope you're smiling and that everything is going well with you

and I still have trouble with long division.

"Because I could have sworn I saw you on the back of a golf cart. With a bunch of muddy people. And some guy tried to grab my ass"

2006-07-01T14:40:00.000-07:00

Were you at Country USA?

I like to wait to take out the recyclables until after the homeless man is done digging through our garbage.

2006-06-14T07:55:00.000-07:00

As I watch him from my kitchen, I wonder what the conversation would be if I took the cans and empty bottles out now.

Palpatations

2006-05-31T19:18:00.000-07:00

Sitting on the couch I can feel my heart beat quicken to a pace that literally takes my breath away. A loss of oxygen forces my eyes to close effortlessly, unwillingly. If this didn't happen two plus times a day, I might worry more. But it does. So I don't. I suppose some might consider this type of thinking to be illogical. I consider it economic genius.

Sushi for breakfast

2006-05-26T07:11:00.000-07:00

Contrary to popular belief, norimaki does NOT go well with coffee.
Excuse me while I brush my teeth one thousand times and gag.

Sleeping on a trampoline is only as comfortable as the person you are sleeping beside

2006-05-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

Simple equations of calamine lotion.

Do you have the pox? Yes or no.

"I don't see any."
"That's not how it works. If you see some, then you say you see some. If you don't see any, then you don't say anything at all because otherwise you're just going to go walking around saying you don't see any all the time."

We're going up north for the weekend. What are you doing over your holiday?

Hi = I promise I'll love you forever, if only. If only.

To do list

2006-05-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

get oil changed check
go to bank check
call Warren check
mail loan payment check
buy book for book club check
water plants check
put work clothes in the dryer check
call police about handwritten death threat/ murder informant that was in our mailbox umm....

Dear Friends at Cass Street School

2006-05-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

I was walking outside my apartment today and came across two balloons, one red and one blue, attached to a postcard sealed in a zip lock bag.

The postcard read:

Dear Friend,
Please mail this postcard from the city where you found it. Thanks!!

From,
Your Friends at Cass Street School
Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

I picked up the balloons and the postcard attached and brought it indoors, out of the rain. Cass Street School is on the next block over, and the balloons are not filled with helium.
I imagine composing a postcard of my own to send to the address listed.

Dear Friend from Cass Street School,
You need to put helium in the balloons and make sure that it can get off of the ground before you can ever expect this to come back from another city. Try, try again, and next time don't be an idiot.

From,
Your Friend Adjacent to Cass Street School

I will not do this, of course. What I'm actually going to do is give it to CJ when he comes next week and have him mail the postcard from North Carolina.

An entire classroom of small children are going to be amazed.
That's probably going to be the only good thing about him living in North Carolina.

Sick

2006-05-10T09:03:00.000-07:00

I get extremely sick about twice a year, for no good reason.
I guess I should be lucky I don't get sick more often,
but I'm not.
Molly's alarm is going off and it will continue to go off until I get off this damn couch.

Slumped into nonexistence, she grasped hold of nothing & categorized the people in her life by order of importance. The list was surprisingly short.

2006-05-10T04:36:00.000-07:00

Often times I think that people like me more than I like myself.

Methods of madness

2006-04-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

Given a bottle of wine, I drank.
I assumed a liquor induced drowsiness would overcome me and guide me into a sober-less slumber. No such luck. In fact, it may have caused my mind to drain out into this puddle of thought that's normally politely ignored, which in turn kept me awake.

I threw in a movie.
I never, ever make it through late night, couch movies.
The stupid movie was actually so good I watched it twice-- the second time with subtitles, thinking the visual demands would bore and therefore sedate me.

Nope.

I threw on a blanket.
This never, ever fails.
I think the blanket is laced with allergens.

Now I can't sleep and my eyes are forever itching.

Shitty stupid lack of sleep accompanied by the headache of pure exhaustion and the knowledge that a tomorrow waits with anxiousness.

Sleepless in Mil-rock-ee

2006-04-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

Sometime mid-week I ran into a coffee shop and heard my name, all drawn out with full-first, middle, last. It was this guy from high school. He pulled out some picture of his new son and asked what I was up to lately. For whatever reason, I felt incredibly inferior, which is odd because I'm normally pretty proud that I haven't gotten knocked up. I will not go there again and because of this I hate myself a little more.

2006-04-26T21:31:00.000-07:00

Living without you is stupid.

Move in soon.

love, Rose.

Minimize the view

2006-04-25T06:22:00.000-07:00

A little kid is on the corner selling dandelions for a buck; the only weed I ever bought. He'll probably grow up to invent some sort of software or appliance that I'll eventually own but not know how to use.

"It's not a front porch, it's a terrace."

2006-04-24T10:13:00.000-07:00

Today everyone's outside mowing lawns. Even the people who live upstairs are diligently doing laps around the property with some sort of grass cutting contraption in tow, and they've neglected the exterior portion of the house for as long as I have lived here. On the front porch I sit lounging, mildly impressed by narrow minded ambitions and the demise of a nice day. I am halfway through "Letters to Wendy's" and city workers are landscaping the park across the street. The wind shifts direction and offers a gentle reminder that summer is coming. I enjoy the smell of grass, freshly cut, but I do not think I would mow lawns for money. People like myself should probably never own property. There's too much work in the upkeep.

I watched a couple, walking, peer in the windows of the condo that's for sale across the street. They were pushing a stroller. I kind of hope they move in. A nice place like that, vacant all summer long. It's depressing.

Hohenecken

2006-04-24T08:14:00.000-07:00

Rory's been online lately, which is a footnote, but a note just the same. Come November, he'll be moving back to the area... well, if you can call Iowa the area. It's still a hell of a lot closer than he's been before. After running around the world for the past couple of years, I assume he's trying to reestablish contact. Either that or he inherited a computer along with a wife, probably the latter. It's funny, his wife story. It's Dennis and me, rewritten. With the obvious revision where he gets married to his high school girlfriend.

For the time being, Rory and wife are shacked up in Hohenecken, Germany. It's pronounced Ho-Neckin. Given everything I've ever know of Rory, I found that to be oddly appropriate.

The house always wins

2006-04-19T21:14:00.000-07:00

When playing dice with the bartender, you should always know the rules.

Just posting props to Haiku for driving

2006-04-18T19:36:00.000-07:00

Ladies, we may have gone down, but we went down in style.

Organization exhausts me.

2006-04-18T07:34:00.000-07:00

I am one of those people who cant keep anything straight. I don't know when I am working this week, but I know it's a lot. Every day, morning and night, at some job or another. But I don't know what time I start or where I am supposed to be.

This morning I cleaned my room in an attempt to be more organized.

I would like to take this moment to mention that prior to cleaning, my room was so messy that I couldn't take more than three steps in without losing my footing and becoming irritated. I couldn't even SEE my bed, and I have a rather large bed. For weeks now I've avoided the situation altogether by sleeping on the couch and rotating the three shirts and two pants that I store in the backseat of my car for situations such as this.

This seemed to work effectively until 5 o'clock this morning when I realized that I absolutely could not go throughout the day without knowing exactly where my copy of "The Rules of Attraction" is. Nevermind the fact that I have no intention of watching it. I don't have time to actually watch the movie. I just need to know where it is. And if I can't find it, then I need to purchase a replacement copy before I leave for work this morning.

So I cleaned my room.

I threw away a lot of stuff, and found several things I had believed to be eternally lost.
I found the Beetles t-shirt that I thought I had left in Plymouth last year on Lisa's birthday.
I found a stack of Christmas presents that I apparently never delivered.
I found mail, months old, unread.
I found old papers, complete with comments penciled in by past professors,
a stack of graduation cards from assorted relations,
and a DVD from Blockbuster that I rented several months ago.
I found fourteen socks, none of them matching.

Hours later, my room is still messy and I no longer know where my keys are.

This is ridiculous.

I compose lists on a daily basis with markings that indicate where I am supposed to be at what time, as well as what I should hope to accomplish throughout each given day.
Then I lose that list and make another.
That list doesn't look right.
So I make another.
This one I accidentally throw away because it's written on the back of what appears to be scrap paper.
I make a new, extremely detailed list that breaks my day into hourly increments.
I follow that for about 3 hours and then I reprioritize and tear it into shreds.
I start over.

Nothing actually gets done because if it isn't on a list somewhere, I don't know to do it. And I can't find my list because it's jammed into my purse with everything else I might keep in there.
So I give up, mail out a couple of bills and grab a cup of coffee, which reminds me that I should go to the grocery store.
So I make another list.

This process is endless.
I still have not located my keys and all I can think is "This would never, ever happen to Carmen."

Passed down like a family heirloom.

2006-04-17T19:23:00.000-07:00

I still can't stomach the silence, and the slow, methodic ticking of the wall clock forces me into modes of self destruction. My move from beneath the blankets to the couch in the living room has done nothing but assure me that if I die now, at least Ryan will find my body before it gets a chance to decay in the depths of my down comforter. The smell would be terrible, this I'm sure of. I'm actually doing much better, and the transition period from migraine to intolerable headache has been an all day event.

My mom once told me that she used to get migraines, but that she stopped getting them a few years after I was born. Sometimes I think she actually gave them to me, wrapped in a box and tied with a bow, as a constant reminder that I wasn't wanted. Since I've always pictured migraines as tangible objects, mallets laced with a few bad hits of ecstasy being pounded into my skull, this makes sense.

Hoping to be freed by 4 a.m.

Welcome back from crazy camp

2006-04-16T19:27:00.000-07:00

crazycrazycrazycrazy crazycrazycrazycrazycrazycrazy crazy crazy crazycrazy crazy crazycrazycrazycrazy crazy cra zy

Benedict eggs and the morning news

2006-04-02T19:42:00.000-07:00

I spent a significant portion of last summer hanging out with this boy who would always put his hand on the small of my back when I was just about finished with my drink. He'd wait for a pause in the conversation and then he'd do this thing where he would smile as he asked me if I wanted another. If I said yes, he'd ask everyone else if they wanted anything while he was up. And if I said no, we'd cab it back to his place where he would make up a bed on the couch in his living room. We went hiking and talked about books and in the morning there would be coffee in a to-go mug so that I could rush out the door with mobile caffination.

Looking back, I guess I probably should have told him how special that all made me feel.

Cinema verite.

2006-04-02T08:34:00.000-07:00

At first glance I was a movie director. Long before I ever entered college, before I ever indulged in the idea that I might be able to write. It was 99' and I was fresh out of school and Blake and I had big plans to hit the road for Cali. I don't know why we thought we'd make it. I suppose I was a bit caught up in the idea that if I believed in myself, I could do anything. That's one thing I'll never understand: why parents push that idea into impressionable minds. All it leads to is pronounced disappointment when it is inevitably proven to be false. There is no Santa. There is no Tooth Fairy. And believing in yourself will get you as far as the end of your parent's paycheck and then it's out on the streets and into an unforgiving world that demands skill and is hellbent on tearing childhood notions into scrap metal. I've lost my train of thought. Alright. I kind of remember our plan. If I remember correctly, it involved a lot of drugs and illegalities. And then we were going to scrape by on the remnants of all the other deadbeat producers-in-training. With 80 bucks and a '92 Ford we got as far as Chicago before realizing that neither of us were 21 and we were hard up for a hotel room, broke, and tired. I want to say we ended up getting high in a shitty room about 20 miles out of Gurnee, went to Great America the next day. It was kind of a blur. The point is, we didn't make it. Big dreams, big ideas. Thought maybe all we needed was each other. What a bunch of bullshit that turned out to be. It was 2000, maybe 2001. God, am I really struggling to timeline my life's events? It hasn't been all that long, Rose. Pick up the pieces and jig. Anyways, the point of this all is that I don't think the fates ever intended on my becoming a writer. I just stumbled across some ink one day and decided this was a hell of the lot easier than figuring film into existence.

As soon as I find the charger to my video camera (it's probably trapped within the confinements of my car, along with the rest of my life), I'm making a movie; it's a documentary entitled "Letters to CJ". I figure he'll like this better than a book, even if he doesn't know it yet.

I don't kick habits. I just replace them with new, less damaging ones.

2006-04-01T21:44:00.000-08:00

Holding people at arm's length is only beneficial if your arms are really long. I'm talking Guinness Book long-- a long that's way out there on the fringes of human anatomy. Arm's length-- that's only three feet, if you're lucky. That's close enough to do some serious damage, if you ask me.

I'd traded in the nail biting for some good ole' fashioned OCD. Nothing like endless counting in multiples of non-fives to add a few more notches on the crazy stick.

Maybe my mom's right. Maybe therapy is a good idea.

Love and Liquor-ish

2006-03-20T23:02:00.000-08:00

I've spent the past month or so tossing and turning to avoid the vomitous feeling perched beneath the inner workings of my body. Most of the time I place all concentration on holding it in, but for now I wish I'd just lose it already and get it over with. Then the anticipation could settle, and I could grasp hold of something new. At the very least, I could embrace the option.

I canceled my doctors appointment, mostly due to my lack of funding, but also because a lot of the time I think it's nothing more than bottle-flu. I'll entertain the notion for a good day or so before giving in to cheap vodka and watered down tonic. I'll drink it in and tear it up, let it soak within my membranes until I'm smiling high and the sadness fades. I gave my i.d. to a girl on a road trip to South Padre without asking for anything in return but relief from my own bad habits. All it did was leave me with a bar tab running at the Twisted Fork and a left hand in the liquor cabinet, but hey, as a wise man once said,

"These things happen."

2006-03-20T22:49:00.000-08:00

Steps and me on her 18th birthday

Legends of a money launderer

2006-03-20T06:43:00.000-08:00

My mom's been crying less: my dad's feeling better. The scars will last, but the wound'll heal. I've detached myself from the situation long enough to feel bad for both of them.

Friends and finance are looking to the red. I've got a few hundred stashed somewhere beneath the blankets. The nail biting will continue, but at least I've some rent money and a few bucks left over for a movie and a drink. My car's still in contemplation. People have begun speaking to me at work. A few of their numbers are even programmed in my phone. Mo and I did some significant St. Patrick's Day shouting. I'm getting a sense of familiarity.

Brynn's out, and that blows, but Mo's in for the long run. We'll be bounty hunters all summer, in search of a 2 bedroom with room for wine; heat and parking included.

Speaking of running, I'm doing the MS Walk in a few weeks. Sponser me, if you'd like.

That's pretty much the post.

Blinded by the sun

2006-03-04T15:03:00.000-08:00

Goddamn it, kid.
I already miss ya.

452_!&ImpoRTt313!

2006-02-23T19:07:00.000-08:00

alright.
now i might not be very computer literate, but i always thought myself to be fairly competent when it comes to my cell phone.

is it possible to get a virus from a text message someone sends you?

because if that's the case, i think i got one.
I am temporarily out of service and am blaming Brian. (and Moe, if you're reading-- a word of advice: People who send virused text messages do not, I repete DO NOT get second chances. Friday it is....)

At least he's got his humor: A phone conversation.

2006-02-21T17:44:00.000-08:00

"Are you in pain?"
"No... I'm not."
"Are you lying?"
(insert pause)
"Dad?"
"They won't let me get out of this bed. I'm always lying."

something old. untitled.

2006-02-20T15:41:00.000-08:00

one.

You spend all day reminding yourself that it's only temporary. You need a place to stay and he has extra space. It makes sense.

two.
Your mail gets forwarded to your parent's house because you're not sure how long you'll be staying. When he buys you a year long subscription to Backpacker Magazine for your birthday, you obsess over whether this implies that he wants you to stay an entire year or not. Later that week, he sends you a postcard from Tampa. He forgot to do that before he left. You take this as a sign that it's okay to get mail here.

three.

four.

five.
He orders pizza and asks if you have plans for the rest of the night. You lie and say no, silently reminding yourself to call your sister while he's outside paying the delivery guy. She's family. She'll understand.

six.
You wake up at an unreasonable hour so you can talk with him before he leaves for work. It's Thursday and it's pouring, so the two of you curl beneath the patio furniture to avoid the rain while he smokes. You didn't know he smoked, and you say as much. "I hid it from you," he says. When you ask why, he replied, "Because I know you don't like it." Your friends back home help you analyze this over phone lines later that day. He's obviously in love with you, they say. It makes sense.

Peering through the looking glass

2006-02-20T15:00:00.000-08:00

I'm picking at my skin like a meth addict.
I'm extracting the vanilla out of my pores.
I'm wondering how my years passed the point of recognition
without a passport or a photo i.d.
I'm getting old now.
The grays are being held hostage beneath a box of hair dye
& Social Security leaves me thinking of old women in poorly tailored suits.
I'm worried about my 401K & there's a handgun in my purse.
I'm worried about making ends meet and how much protein is in my diet.
I'm just a backup singer in a dorm shower.
I'm late for class and all eyes are on the entrance door.
I'm eating Chinese food with knitting needles.
I'm waiting for a bigger tip.
I'll be a late twenties model airplane beckoning flight and destined to fall.
I'm low on fuel & out of cash.
I can't stop screaming & despite my mother's warnings
I don't always wear my seatbelt.

Their love is stronger than most glues and epoxies.

2006-02-20T10:01:00.000-08:00

Late at night, I’ll come downstairs to get a glass of water. This is where my day begins: mid swallow, quenching a thirst that never really existed to begin with. From the kitchen I’ll hear him two rooms over, lying on the living room couch, eyes closed, never sleeping. Truth be told, he hasn’t slept since he got home from the hospital, maybe before then.

I haven’t been sleeping either. Last night in the midst of making dinner, I woke up from the deepest sleep I’ve had in weeks to see my youngest sister screaming my name, fallen tears staining her sweatshirt, her face streaked with terror and confusion. Crumpled on the kitchen tile, I’m a mess, staring at Steps trying to find out what’s wrong with her only to realize it’s a matter of what’s wrong with me. Fuck. Try to explain this one and I’ll end up beside my father hooked to pain killers and a Blood Bag of my own. So with a crack in the back of my skull and an ache in my temple that’s probably going to last all week, I won’t even try. Chalk it up to last year’s lack of electrolytes and stress.

At 4 a.m. they’re arguing like old times. The blood’s not clotting. Or it is clotting, but it’s not exiting his body as rapidly as it’s supposed to. He’s in pain, and my mom is frantic as she tries to decipher through the material they sent home when he left the hospital. There’s too much medical jargon, too many technicalities. My mom reads aloud, her words shaking, accelerating in volume. My dad is clutching his stomach, moaning quietly as not to wake me. I’m awake. I’ve been awake. I sit up. He does his best to smile, but he’s afraid and his facial muscles betray him with a fierceness that scares us all.

“I’m not going back,” he says.
“You might have to,” she replies.

They go back and forth until my dad asks how my head is. It hurts, and I say as much. He turns to his wife and says, “Check that out tomorrow. I want to know what’s wrong here. Seizures aren’t normal, and I want to know what’s wrong.”

My dad has cancer. I just have a headache. The debate between husband and wife regarding whether my father needs to be rushed back to the hospital or not has turned to the fact that I have a headache. I feel selfish and horrible. And now guilty because I have to leave, but I leave just the same.

There is a clear tube that runs from someplace beneath the blanket to what I now affectionately term “The Blood Bag.”
There is a bag of frozen berries in the freezer attached to the refrigerator in the kitchen of this house where I grew up. If I suck on a blackberry for ten seconds, roll it around with my tongue for a bit, and spit it into the palm of my hand, it resembles what I would think mutilated flesh looks like after a carnivore tears apart small game only to spit it out for the world to witness. This is what is now seeping slowly through what was previously a clear tube. He won’t be going to the hospital again, at least not anytime tonight. Tomorrow the whole situation will replay itself, but for now the clumps flow sporadically. The clumps nauseate me. They are traveling towards the Blood Bag, where they will sit until the bag fills with fluid and this half-frozen-mutilated-flesh-blackberries substance. When it’s full, my mom will replace it with a new bag, and the contents of the old bag will be flushed down the toilet.
This is why I have to leave. I leave to vomit up bile and whatever it was I made for dinner before seizuring on the kitchen floor earlier that evening.
Because vomiting on the carpet in the living room isn’t going to help anyone, I leave.

I left for a few hours the day he came home from the hospital, ran off to Milwaukee for the night to see if the city continues to run in an orderly fashion despite my absence. A quick hello to the boys and I pass out on the couch, waking only to the sound of my phone ringing, my father on the other end, asking where I am and apologizing as though he’s done something wrong. God, it breaks my heart.

So I go home. I go home to the most beautiful thing on earth: My mom fast asleep, one hand on the remote, the other clutching my father’s worn out and calloused hand. The television is off for once, and I stand in the entrance to the living room. My dad opens his left eye for a second or two, whispers, “Hey, honey. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Go back to sleep, Dad,” I say.

He just smiles, and with eyes closed he answers, “I never sleep.”

I haven’t showered or changed clothes in four days now, and despite everything I thought I learned in my twenty-four years of living, my parents love each other.

My mom sleeps on the living room couch when a king size comfortable bed is less than a hundred feet from her reach. She calls in to work and bypasses lunch to change the Blood Bag. She monitors the size and speed of the blood clots in the Blood Bag, hour after hour. She waits to cry until she leaves the room where my father lies.

My dad tolerates mind boggling abdominal pain just so the woman who is changing the Blood Bag is the same woman who’s been his wife for over twenty-four years straight and not an assigned nurse filling a shift at the hospital. He jokes and laughs and does his best to portray a life that’s normal. He’s not left alone long enough to cry in private.

My parents really do love each other.

thursday at the hospital

2006-02-16T03:34:00.000-08:00

it is way too early.

February 13th comes and goes every single year

2006-02-13T16:01:00.000-08:00

happy 20th birthday, m.j.

missing joe every day.

Daytime tv quickens the growth of the mold on the interior of the refrigerator.

2006-02-02T19:06:00.000-08:00

is that better, cj?

Thoughts of you make me nauseous, but thinking of you makes me smile.

2006-02-02T12:38:00.000-08:00

Past due on rent without a friend to stand on
I’m treading water on the kitchen floor and
the dishes are done but the wine bottle’s empty and
nothing makes sense when I’m sitting with you.
I'm anxious
I'm crazed out
I'm bored
I'm bored
All I really learned in college is that you'll leave me
and all I really know is that
when the batteries get low
I’ll be sitting tight,
waiting for someone tall
to come over and knock the beep out of the goddamn fire alarm.
This is the real world and my bank is on the corner.

The sun will set tonight and it won't forget to rise tomorrow

2006-01-30T20:59:00.000-08:00

if it does
then we can drop
out and run
away together
The world’s going to be done before we hit
the freeway anyways.

Driving south
even our breathes argue when taken
in corresponding motions
You smoke in
my car, the nicotine kills
us simultaneously
which is only refreshing
because it is the one thing we’ve done together in weeks

The east coast owns the sunrise
but California crashes the set
and calls it a day every night
no wonder you’re boxed in New York.
They decide the future
every day starts right where it begins
that’s what i've decided.

You're going to have to do more than count bases if you want to be an All-Star

2006-01-30T14:43:00.000-08:00

First.
I saw this documentary about the female sex drive.
Made me think of bussing to a brothel

Second.
An old woman said women
only have orgasms
one out of three times;
that or one out of three
women have orgasms.
Whatever the stat,
it’s a hell of a ways from always.

Third.
My vibrator is more fun than
you. Go home
and quit breathing on me.

Home.
I wonder if my parents
have ever had
sex on the living
room couch.
This is what I’m thinking as
he pumps triumphantly.

a full time job or a 40 hour work week, and that's all there is to it.

2006-01-29T20:21:00.000-08:00

I have no idea how go about checking if my images are being uploaded to blogger in the correct fashion or not. Judging by the lack of imagery, i would venture to say I've failed. Again.

Deal Me In

2006-01-29T19:47:00.000-08:00

It's a little too connected. Like if I'm drinking from a bubbler, and somebody flushes a toilet in a nearby bathroom and the pressure of the bubbler drops. I have to spit out the water in my mouth. I know it's not the same pipes, but the plumbing is a bit too close for my taste. So if that makes any sense to you, you can see how this has all the makings of a logistical nightmare for me. I probably need therapy.

I'm going to have to ask you to leave.

And by ask, I mean that I'm just going to ignore your calls and completely abandon all contact without explanation.

Forgive me if you can.

In all reality, you had it coming.

2006-01-23T18:30:00.000-08:00

I fear that my happiest memories are little more than images of a drunken state.

We'd both be smiling. And Joe would be there.

2006-01-19T20:58:00.000-08:00

Madison is consistantly 2 years too late and 60 miles the wrong direction. It never fails. I always, always miss Andy.