Mness

Current Mood: tired

I’m often pretty quiet - definitely very private in a lot of ways. A friend told me once that I’m open in all the ways people expect me to be closed, and silent about the things that everyone else tells. That’s probably not entirely true, but you know how it is - exaggeration makes a point.

Currently, I’m in a pretty anti-social phase; that’s my standard when things are busy. But since I don’t have much time to actually talk to and spend time with my friends, I’m craving attention a bit and wallowing in introspection (what a shocker). Anyway, I was digging through some of my old poetry files (I haven’t written in a while) and found some of the pieces from when I took that class with Codrescu. This one I thought might be up for sharing. I’ve changed the name for the sake of posting since it’s a profile about someone and the real name is… well, her real name.

I need time to breathe so I can write again…

_____________________________________

dorothy

from far away she always looks like something out of a Fra Angelico
big round halo surrounding her head as if bits of ether found their way
into the enormous bottle of hairspray she keeps in her twenty-pound purse
her arrival brings with it the heavy scent of Dorals and muddled vanilla
from the lampe berge she burns in her house both day and night
she’ll sit and talk for a while, a bundle of nervous energy
jigging her leg, a cigarette in one hand and a Coke in the other
fifty times before she leaves she’ll say the same phrase
“I’ve gotta get home and cook Fat Bastard his dinner or he’ll curse me from here ’til Sunday”
people don’t even know her husband’s name now, only the epithet
her abrupt departure leaves that smoky sweet smell behind clinging to the furniture
and it hangs there for hours even as she pulls away in her big red Dodge
in the back window, her halo’s silhouette

9/30/03

Current Mood: amused

Behold…
the somewhat amusing and sure-to-piss-off-my-friend-Jay tale of how I got a Wii.

So I went to bed around 1:30 but was having a lot of trouble falling asleep. I feel asleep around 2:30 and at 6 I was wide awake. After trying unsuccessfully to go back to sleep, I got up and went to the evil kingdom of Wal-Mart to get some sweatshirts. There was a brief delay because all of my car’s windows were covered in ice. Not too much of a problem since I’m one of the only people in South Louisiana who always has an ice scraper in her car. But I digress. Went to Wal-Mart, got some sweatshirts, wandered over to electronics to look at DS games and noted the big “Wii may be available on December 6th starting at 8 a.m. sign.” Noted that that would be a horrible time to come to Wal-Mart.

Still not sleepy.

Hey, it’s 8:30 and Target opens at 9. I can go get some mai fun! I’ve been craving those tasty little noodles. So I drive two interstate exits down to Target aaand I’m sittin’ in my car nice and toasty because they didn’t open for another 15 minutes. Nice and warm. 10 minutes until the store opens and a bunch of people start gathering at the door. Hey, why not, I can brave the chilly air for a few minutes. I get up to the doors and they’ve all got these little vouchers - they’d been there waiting in line earlier apparently and had gotten voucher for a Wii. Huh, whadda ya’ know. I’m just here to buy some noodles.

Then out pops the manager, “Anyone else want a Wii?” Well, I wasn’t going to take it from someone who *came* for it so I didn’t leap right on it. One guy who’d gotten there about a minute before steps up and takes a voucher. Manager says, “Anyone else? I’ve got one left.” No one’s steppin’ up. Might as well! So I step up and take the last voucher (number 24) all like sure, why not?

It then becomes a source of major amusement for the rest of the group that I came to buy two $2 boxes of noodles and ended up with the last Wii. Go me. Or should I say… go Mii.

Less invasive,
greater peace of mind.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. A giant billboard of those words and some smiling blond 40-something woman tower over me every day as I approach the interstate exit for my city, returning home from a long day of work and/or classes.

And every single time, I am thoroughly creeped out and try to banish it from my mind. Maybe I’ve just watched too much Cronenberg. To me, that billboard could have easily been an eerie movie poster for Dead Ringers. Bev and Elli with their twisted co-dependent twin relationship, toting about gynecological instruments for mutant women. There’s nothing the matter with the instrument, it’s the body. The woman’s body is all wrong!

Note that I do realize and fully understand that the use of robots to perform surgery has loads of potential benefits; I’m not knocking that. It’s the billboard, the picture, the wording.

Still, if I ever met one of the gynecologists from that hospital, I don’t think I could resist introducing myself as Claire Niveau.

Current Mood: amused

Yeah, you heard me. I’m trouble with a gun - a watergun. I’m the bane of all cats in… my house. So, basically I lead a reign of terror over three cats who aren’t really intimidated by me at all (as evidenced by their tendency to march across my head in the middle of the night) but scatter like crazy if I even pick up the watergun. I rarely actually shoot them - except for Jenny the Destroyer, and she isn’t afraid of water at all. She’s just annoyed that it musses her fur. Very fashion conscious cat.

My rapidfire supersoaker skills came in handy this week when I glanced in the back yard and saw two of my clueless cats closing in on a large snake. Of course, cats can kill snakes, but there are a few things to understand about the situation:

Cat #1 is Verbal (we have pet-naming issues but that’s another matter entirely) - the most paranoid and skittish cat on the planet. He only shows himself around my mother and me, and even then he sometimes pretends he doesn’t know us. He is terrified of men, presumably because he’s only ever lived in a house with women since he’s never been hurt by any men as far as we know. Once he was outside in our ordinary suburban backyard when one of my friends came and went into the yard. Instead of running inside through the open door, Verbal proceeded to fling his entire body at the living room windows in an attempt to get inside. He has never seen a snake before this week.

Cat #2 is Jenny. She’s still a kitten and is afraid of exactly… nothing. Although she’s very bitey, her fangs cannot compete with snake fangs. She also thought it was a great idea to stick her face directly into the face of the snake. Even if this is a nonpoisonous snake, a bite to the face is not going to be pleasant. Jenny has also never seen a snake before this week.

I’m not afraid of snakes or even bothered by them really, but I couldn’t really see it well enough to identify it so this is all about caution. My mother was in the dining room talking on the phone when I said, “the cats are after a big snake” in my perhaps too casual way.

Mom: Well get them away from it!
Me (opening the door and contemplating the situation): How?
Mom: Call them!

Oh. Of course. Because, surely, me calling their names like I do 20 times every day is SO much more interesting than this new 4 foot long cat with no legs, no fur, and a funny shaped head. Thanks, Mom. So she goes trotting next door to get the neighbor while I contemplate how to get the cats away from the snake without antagonizing it.

Ah yes. The mighty watergun.

So there I am, standing in the backyard with a watergun aimed in the general direction of a snake, no cats in sight (I told you they scatter) - just me, a 4 foot snake, and a watergun - when the cavalary (aka my mom and the neighbor) comes in armed with garden rakes.

They pause. They look at me. And my mother says, “I don’t think that’s going to work.”

-_-

Thanks again, Mom.

After that we gently moved the snake - now easily identified as nothing more than a large salt and pepper king snake - out of the yard with a fan rake. The cats stayed hidden the neighbor was gone and the watergun was put out of sight.

Watergun 5782, cats 0, snake confused.

Current Mood: tired

Today was the first day of classes for me. Joy. Everything’s good so far; I’m just a little tired because I didn’t sleep well last night and then had night class tonight. I’ll be going to bed shortly, but I felt the world needed a little blather from me before I go. I think this batch of classes with be something like last semester in that they should all play off of and work well together. Last semester it was World Literature, Foucault, and the modern period of Chinese literature. This time it’s Caribbean Literature, African Diaspora, and Marxism. I real feel like this is going to help round out my exposure to a wide variety of world literature. Hurrah.

Well, it’s off to bed now! I’ve got work early in the morning and some Marx to read for Thursday. It’s shaping up to be a good week, boys & girls.