No no no no no no no no no no!!!

OK, I guess I'm back after a very long hiatus to rant here, in my wordy medical cabinet full of balls, because they're trying to kill me. An FDA recommendation to outlaw vicodin?!? I heard that and my immediate reaction was "Jesus Christ, it's a good thing I've already taken my meds for tonight so I don't fucking freak out and throw myself off a cliff."

Fucking FDA. If they want to take away my vicodin, they better supply the fucking heroin.

Who is backing this? I bet it's the Aleve motherfuckers. Gah!
Where do I picket?! Where are the petitions?!?! Where are the addresses of the people on this FDA panel???!??!

Maybe I shouldn't have said that last one. But still, who are these people? They haven't walked a mile in my fucked up hip moccasins. I dream of stuffing a stone in their collective kidney. Let us drill holes in their teeth too close to the nerves, then give them ice cream and no root canal. I want to put pure glucose in their IV and watch them scream.

I honestly don't know what I would do without my vicodin. It scares me. A lot.

If they do take away the only thing that helps me walk like normal person, the thing that allows me to sleep on my horribly fucked up hip bursae, the drug that keeps me from stabbing my legs repeatedly in an effort to somehow relieve the horrible aching of petrified muscles, the thing that keeps me from screaming and punching walls, I will explode. And write terrible run on sentences. If I thought becoming a survivalist and barricading myself in a one room cabin with hordes of prescriptions and paintball guns would work, I would do it.

But I realize that eventually I would run out of pills and paintballs.

Keystone Kommute

An all-zone ticket for the Tri-met busses and Max lines costs $2.30. When I have certain doctors appointments, I have to leave work early and take a half-hour, multiple zone ride to Beaverton, then walk nearly a mile to the office. Since the husband occasionally has to take Max to his office in Beaverton, we maintain a cache of all-zone tickets.

Since I had an appointment after work today, I was pleased that I managed to remember to grab two tickets before I headed off to work.

"Look at me," I thought as I tucked them in my back pocket, "with the thinking ahead, etc."

I was nearly at the bus stop where I catch the bus every morning, ready to board as I usually do with my Zones 1 and 2 bus pass, when I reached into the pocket of my brand new awesome hoodie and did not find the wallet that I had tucked into it four blocks ago.

Well, poo.

A neighbor I had greeted as I left the house this morning found my wallet whilst walking her adorable pointy dog, and she met up with me as I was retracing my steps. Wallet back in hand (and NOT in pocket), I headed to another bus stop, this one for a different line that is usually busier than I like. I prefer not to stand or sit next to anyone when I am commuting, as I try to avoid interacting with anyone, at any time.

Well, the bus was full of snotty young whippersnappers storing their weirdly irony-free Strawberry Shortcake backpacks on the empty seats next to them, and so I stood with all the other worker bees who really didn't want to start a ruckus with the rude and mopey teens and I didn't really want to sit by the guy who smelled like dog shit, anyway.

Skip forward to lunch. I'm off to the place down the street for an egg salad. Nervous that I'd lose my wallet again, I check my various pockets for my accoutrements: phone, iPod, wallet, bus ticket.

Ticket? I stop and discover that there is only one all-zone ticket in my back pocket.

Crap. How does something fall out of a back pocket? It's not like I spend my days hanging upside down from a jungle gym.

Well, having experienced missing a train because the stupid machine wouldn't print the ticket fast enough, I thought I'd buy my replacement ticket in advance from the machine at the stop before I picked up my egg salad. I carefully tucked my purchase into one of my front pockets and headed off to the sandwich place. I spent the rest of the day suddenly wigging out and checking all my pockets in a panic. Everything seemed to be in order.

Work continued and finally let me go. As the train approached the stop at its appointed time, I reached into my front pocket and pulled out my ticket. And it was then I noticed the note at the bottom that read "EXPIRES AT 2:14 PM".

Shit. I'd forgotten that tickets bought in the machines, rather than at the Tri-met office, expired after two hours.

Well, I still had the one that survived the trip this morning, but not wanting to have to buy another ticket for the return trip, I risked getting caught by a traffic cop and boarded the train without buying another ticket. I managed to get to my stop without incident. Huzzah!

So, I walked to my appointment, whined to my therapist, scored some sleeping pills and started my trip home. As I walked past the bus stop half way to the station, I checked the arrival table and saw that there was one due in two minutes. Well, wasn't that handy? I watched the silhouette of the bus lumber toward me, I reached into my back pocket. My empty back pocket.

Fuckity fuckerson! What? Why? Argh!

I dug into my bag trying to find my wallet, which of course had settled underneath every single thing I had in it, simultaneously reliving my sandwich purchase, trying to remember how and how much I had paid for it. Did I pay cash? How much did I pay? Did I have any enough left to buy another goddamn ticket?

Well, turns out I bought the egg salad with my ATM card and I had exactly 3 dollars-- three soft and crumpled dollars that are difficult to stuff into the bus fareboxes. The machine finally took my fare, but its initial resistance allowed the driver to lecture me for wearing a black coat while waiting at a bus stop at night while she handed me my transfer.

I sat at the transit center waiting for the train that would finally get me home, clutching my transfer with both hands, and I wondered where my lost tickets ended up. I decided that if they weren't found by an indigent person desperate to get to Gresham, I imagined they were riding the wind in poetic circles like a plastic bag in nineties a movie.

Memories of a poisoning

I meant to post this entry on the twenty-fourth, but I think I took one nap too many that day. Consider this a belated xmas fable.

Picture, if you dare, a smallish dining room that opens out into a living room. Both rooms are cluttered with doily-draped furniture and bookshelves with books. Many, many creches are set up pell-mell on every available flat surface. Finally, the room is lined with an impossible number of ticking clocks, all set to slightly different times so that each clock can ring solo on every fifteen, thirty, forty-five or sixty minutes. As soon as one welcomed inside, any visitor will feel like they're late for something. Conversations will seem to clock in twice as fast as any normal verbal exchange. Everyone is just a little bit jumpy.

There are ten people crowding around a square dining table. On the table, there are dinner and salad plates, salad forks and dinner forks and two types of spoon. There are water glasses and wine glasses and tiny butter pat dishes. The table is so crowded, there is no room for any food.

It is christmas dinner at my mother's house. The wine flows freely as Mom and, more annoyingly, That Woman race back and forth between the dining room and kitchen with plates of food. The whole time, Mom is talking to us and That Woman is talking to herself. We all sit down at the table as That Woman walks us through every single plate and accoutrement at each place setting. She makes a big big deal over the one and a half inch logs of ugly-ass crystal sitting just below the water glass. These are the new knife rests she purchased at the last Questers meeting. There is a story that goes with them, but like everything else she says, her lecture goes in one ear and out the other, inflicting only minor damage to our ear bones. We hope.

As we eat, That Woman continues to jump up every two minutes to get more plates of food. When she does this, she calls back to specific people to offer them even more food.

"K - can I get you more Jell-O? A - how are we on green beans? Young C - can I get you anything? Anything at all? You can have whatever you want, you know."

(She has an unhealthy fixation on my 13 year old nephew, young C. She once announced at lunch one day how much she "love(s) to watch a young man eat". Ew.)

Her food related hollering mostly focusses on my sisters, occasionally calling to me and my mother. One person she never surveys is The Husband (let's call him "Ernesto").

After coming and going at least 5 times, she finally sits and starts to eat. We sisters and husbands talk amongst ourselves whilst buttering bread, pouring gravy and drinking wine. Suddenly, all heads snap to the head of the table as out of nowhere That Woman clangs her knife against her water glass and hisses,

"Ernesto!!!!! Knife rest!!!!!"

It was one of two sentences she said to him that night (the other instance was a snippy accusation about stealing his own chocolate Santa). Not that he minds that she ignores him. I should be so lucky.

Whenever the husband tells this story, he points out that neither K nor A were using their precious knife rests either, but they probably got a pass due to their role in creating young C.

Shortly after leaving my Mom's, The Husband started feeling a little iffy, which soon turned into a horrible case of what could only be food poisoning.

Coincidence???!? You decide!

Weather update update

The Chicken Index measurement tool (the "Chickometer") has collapsed under the weight of the off-the-scale readings. Until the thaw, any further updates are cancelled.

Here's something weird about Portland: there have been several press conferences downtown, discussing how people should be dealing with the weather. Our city has had a pretty good response, opening emergency shelters and adapting the public transportation.

But the press conferences have all been held by the mayor-elect.

Nothing against Sam Adams, but where the hell is Tom Potter? Seriously, the guy's been MIA since the election results were announced.

Lamest. Duck. Ever.

Christmas should be fun this year

Artwork by David Behrens

My cousin posted the following status update on Facebook the day after the election:

"[My cousin] is sad for the founding fathers of the United States. A Major travesty has been committed and the ideals of this nation will be but a memory. DAMN YOU DEMOCRATS"

Can someone perhaps enlighten me on what ideals, exactly, will be "but" memories? Something like this?

No free man shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or deprived of his property, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor shall we go against him or send against him, unless by legal judgement of his peers, or by the law of the land

What's that? Oh, that's out already?

Oh.