The Wantonly Ironic Blog Post

This is the last day of April and I haven't posted yet this month. I set it as a personal goal to post at least once a month and for most of the seven years I've been puttering on this blog, I've achieved at least that. But not this month, apparently, or not. Now that I'm telling you this, I'm stuck in a paradox loop.

The whole fam damily

In the beginning, I posted many times a month, and once I even posted more than once in a single day! They were short posts, more about keeping in contact with our old friends and our diaspora of families. Since then it's morphed in to more of an essay thing. Often, I omit the various details of our lives, the ones I might share with friends, ones like: I put my back out on the back porch on the first hot day of the year and I got stuck out there but I had my cell phone and called Huck who happily took the rest of the day off work to care for his can't-get-up wife. While I waited for him, I got too hot in my black velour pants so I scooched them off of me. This might have been obscene but I 1) live in the country and no one can see me, 2) Except for there turned out to be construction workers building a house on the lot next to ours and they had a perfect view, 3) My unders often offer more coverage than my bathing suite bottoms.That sounds very granny-panty vs. string bikini, which would send the wrong message, both ways. And finally number 4) I don't give a shit who sees what. But then, pants-less, my legs burnt to purple and are just now, two weeks later, beginning to peel.

My view on the porch: that's the underside of the lounge chair

Huck's former work with severe Cerebral Palsy patients meant that he knew just how to pick me up without hurting me, how to feed me tacos by turning my head to the side, and how to sit me on the toilet. After a few immobile days I was fine, if a little resentful of what two and half years of laying down recovering from my head injury has done to my core strength. So now I'm doing more core exercises. The delightful thing was that it was just my back that hurt, not my head. So I laid flat on my back in bed and played on my phone which only fell on my face a few times. It was Mahjong Solitaire for days, baby. Having a hurt back was not boring, not like having a head injury. I was annoyed that the gardening would have to wait, but otherwise, it was a delight, interrupted only by stabbing sensations in my lower back. My mind was able to play, read, sing, tolerate light, and talk. Piece of cake, a little crumbly but yum.

I also would have written something about our heating system breaking down and how we have to buy a new one. I will post pictures when we finally get it done. These photos will be en lieu of photos of us wearing clothes, the ones I might have purchased for me and my family and our pets during the next five decades. Instead of enjoying clothing and shoes and desserts and beer and electricity and gasoline, we will be paying off this machine that's the cost of a car but doesn't even have cup holders. It's okay that we won't be able to afford clothes because our 27 year old washer and dryer just broke too, so what clothes we were going to buy wouldn't have been clean anyway. It's okay that the dryer is broken because it's clothesline season. And it's okay that the washer fills up at a drip and takes 2-3 hours per load because that's the same rate the 20 year old water-heater fills at too. But no worries, we will have warm air, if not warm water, in our home. If we weren't paying the mortgage on the house, we'd be able to afford it's upkeep. Next time I buy a house, I will be paying attention to the age of the appliances. Oi Vey!

Oh well, that's life: impossible situations, inconvenience, trouble, nuisances and frustration. Life is suffering, as the Buddhists say, no matter what you decide to do. Life is other things too, but suffering is the part we're always squirming away from. I often look at children (and myself sometimes; I'm young yet) and pity the sheer volume of suffering they have in front of them --days, decades, centuries-- and the obnoxious process they will have to go through of acclimating to it, accepting it, and finally laughing languidly in it's face. Hahaha.

Party's over for the blossom carnival

I almost made my self-imposed monthly deadline. I started a blog post yesterday, but I keep having more and more ideas and things I want to write and now it's getting really long, way too long for this blog. I don't think you people can handle the 15 page essay, not here, not in the few minutes you have today. So I'll need to cut some things. I do this for free, out of my own need to connect and communicate and string together pretty (and sometimes ugly) words. I do it as honestly and as compassionately as I can figure out how to do. The words come easily but the cutting is hard. Although I'll do it as much as I can stand for you, my unknown readers. Thanks for reading, by the way. The verbiage of the internet is so absurdly copious that I am always happy that anyone picks a blog post of mine from this ocean of blather and takes a few highly coveted moments of their time to read what I've written. Thank you.

About you: You are anonymous. My blog has a statistics page which keeps you that way but also lets me know the general gist of my readership. I wish I knew more about you all, but the most they'll tell me, that I actually want to know, is search terms and country of search. Recently, someone found my blog through the unlikely Google search: "Sarajoy, your ass.my life." Ooh-kaaaay.

Also, I've discovered that if you are in Denmark and for some very disturbing "reason" you Google, "Cow Shit Porn," photos of me licking cow shit off a pitchfork will be at the top of your search. Obviously, looking back on it now, I can see how I would end up there. Back then, however, I was clueless about cow shit porn. Now that I've seen the Google search habits of the Danes, I can see how my silly photos would have landed me at the top. That was not the intended outcome. Oh crap, I just realized that every time I use the term "Cow Shit Porn," (Now CSP!) I create a stronger and stronger link from CSP! to me. This is not what I want! I am not CSP! No. No. No. If you are looking for CSP, this is NOT it! Please! Look away!

The spider I didn't see until I went inside and inspected the photos

That post, however, is obviously the most popular one, at least 15 times more viewed than any other post. The next most viewed is One Black Sex Link Ninja Chick, a harmless post about our baby chicks that happens to have a much-sought title.

Since it's been seven years, I am wondering about changing the name of my blog. "Sarajoy FRESH!" has gotten a little old and sounds like a cooking blog, which it really isn't. I'm thinking of "Dura Matters," but that might be too medically, TBI-y referential. And don't want to get stuck on this topic for the rest of my life. Because that's how it works, you name your blog and then you HAVE to talk about only that thing, FOREVER. ONLY. THAT. It's in the Blogspot marriage license.

"Dura Matters" also doesn't sound very perky or clever. Maybe "Dury Maties"? Or maybe something more sophomoric-ly sophisticated and un-spellable like "The Bureau of Recollections." Maybe I should rename it "Inutile Larrikin," a nutty phrase I put together just now using Google, which is about as much thought as I put in to the original title. But I'm not sure anyone would ever find my blog, or care to, if I named it that. Maybe I'll just refresh the name a tad to "SarajoyROTTEN!" But more likely, I will think about it for a long time, so long that I'll feel enough satisfaction from having day dreamed about it and I won't actually do it.


What do you think I should rename my blog? Or should I? "Let me know in the comments!" I finally wrote it! I may be a blogger for real now! And I really do want to know what you think! Unless you are my mother. If you are my mother, you are officially invited to stop telling me how much you "can't stand" my blog.

Driving Confessional

Last week, driving back from the kids' school (late, thanks Day Light Savings Cluster Fuck!), the orange sun rose in my glaring rear view mirror and I suddenly had the eerie sensation that I was Matthew Cuthbert driving his wagon to town the morning he picked up Anne from the train station. (Yes, all of life still relates to Anne of Green Gables, always has, always will.) I felt transported in time even as I was traveling at speeds unimagined by the imaginary Mr. Cuthbert. While making my zippy way to a zoomy on-ramp, I felt like an old man bumping along on a wooden wagon.

My kids attend a public school for gifted kids which is housed in an adorable old brick building in the worst part of town, to which we must drive them daily. This neighborhood now has signs posted around it: "Designated Area of High Prostitution Activity," and I've also heard it referred to as the "Prostitution Watch Zone," which makes me think I should bring a bag of popcorn. The official story is that it's part of a "crack" down on illicit commercial activity in an effort to "revitalize" this... um... business district. But I suspect that the signs were...ahem, erected, in response to the city's johns
complaining that they were having trouble locating "some" ever since the police shut down Spokane's thriving network of brothels. It seems more like an attempt to create a red light district, within which my kids go to school, rather than stifle one.

wasp home

One day, on my way to pick up the kids, I stopped for a woman who seemed to be trying to cross the street. Except instead she bee-lined for my passenger side door and while maintaining a talented level of eye contact. It was her giant shoulder bag that gave her away. I mouthed, "OOPS!" and sped off. The strange thing was that this woman looked exactly like me, same age, same hair, same body, same face. It was like looking in to a mirror, except for the bag. I would never have a bag like that. I spent weeks wondering how I got there, what choices, what events, what happened to me? Why did my situation require that I turn to the world's oldest business? What was the tipping point?

This school has also been locked down by SWAT raids on the houses and warehouses around it.

I have swerved around some interesting items on the roads near the school: 1) a very large, anatomically decorated black butt plug with a dangerous looking (but important safety feature) flange and 2) a white chicken that did not actually succeed in crossing the road, making every other chicken of every other joke sound not so much the butt of jokes, but more lucky duck survivors of a high risk venture.

Walking into the school, I have dodged used condoms on the sidewalk, and if you knew this school you'd know they're not from the kids.

And just last week a man in a truck blew through a stop sign near the school because he was... guess. Just guess. Just try. Nope. Nope. Nope. You better give up, you're never going to guess. He was shooting up!

Aspen flower

Almost all the time while I'm driving, anywhere, not just near their school, I'm thinking, "I could be killed (or possibly worse? maimed with piles of medical bills and a never ending stream of paperwork... okay, not worse but just by a soupcon) here. Or here. Or here." When I arrive at my destination, I am surprised. How was I not killed? How many things just went right? How was it that everyone was paying enough attention to not kill me? How did I travel that fast without any incident? How did I make all of those lane changes without running in to anyone in my blondspots or ramming anyone in front of me while I was checking my blondspots? (Officially I've sworn off all blond jokes as everyone but me in my family is blond, but that one was a typo and I am helpless in the face of blond typos.) I'm still alive and it's a goddam miracle!

I have an ancient phobia of cars and driving from two car accidents 13 years ago. A great therapist unraveled the phobia in only 8 weeks. But it still pops up now and again. This brain injury certainly resurrected it, what with my year of missing peripheral vision, the zooming visual cacophony, the quick decisions and always forgetting where I was going, plus the adrenaline dumps that happen as soon as I hit highway speeds. I'm not sure my resurfacing phobia is really a phobia, at least not an irrational one. Graphs like this (from Fear of Flying) freak me out. Sure, flying is safe, but look at the ROADS!!!!

Last week, I had shifted, slightly, from daydreaming about Mr. Cuthbert to day dreaming about this Day Light Savings Crapathon and how ruled by clocks we are and how twice a year we are annoyingly yet cleverly reminded of the glorious fact that numerical time is just a collective hallucination, a social construct we have more control over than we imagine.

Aspen flowers

I was now cruising down our offshoot highway at 60 mph when someone, probably sleep deprived because of the Day Light Savings Shitticane, pulled right in front of me, perpendicular, trying to cross to the other side of the highway. She slammed her brakes and I'm not entirely sure how I managed to swerve so fast. It's easy to imagine twenty different gruesome outcomes, or more, if you count the various ways body parts can land after flying through the air.

Aspen flowers

I did not get angry.

Sometimes I do get angry, with occasional bouts of admittedly pointless road rage. I don't typically feel insulted or challenged when cut-off or swerved at. I feel terrified. That's where my yelling comes from, fear for my life and for the lives of my children (attentively listening in the back seat), fear of bills and insurance companies, and fear of accidentally harming someone else and being put on trial for it. My intended audience can't hear a damn thing, but my unintended one in the back seat certainly does. But that's okay; It's important to teach children how to vent at clueless and/or self-absorbed drivers, right? They need to know what to say, how to say it. It's an important life skill. I learned it from my father, although he always included the withering insult, "Woman driver." And my children will learn it from me. Blue, precocious and creative always, created her own phrase when she was just three. "Fuck Ass!" she called out to another driver on my behalf.

When the kids are around I do try to come up with tamer insults and curses, usually involving penile appearance and function. You know, hit those jerks right where it counts. If your gonna drive like dick, then I hope it turns green with pink polkadots and sprouts a tutu before it rots off your body. Since my head injury, my curses have been shortened to "Privates go BAD!"

I also get road rage when people drive dysfunctionally too nice. These are the ones that wave every damn car through at the four way stop while I remain trapped behind them, polite to everyone but me. Once I sat through four stop lights as the person in front of me waved through 12 cars. Meanwhile my kids lingered outside their school, in THAT neighborhood, waiting for me to pick them up. And I yell at these people... or rather, I yell at my windshield, "You are the most sactimonious, self-righteous, clueless fucking moron! You pious pile of crapola!" Then I go all analytical: "You just want to look good, you just want recognition! That's why you don't have tinted windows! That's why you're only nice to people who can see your fucking face! Turn around and let ME get a good look your mug! Go jack-off your self-rightousness in your own driveway! Just take your turn! Ain't no brownie points in heaven for not taking it!"

Aspen flower

The other place where road rage sneaks in is with assumptions about the motivations of other drivers. The person who speeds up while I'm trying to time a tricky merge? "OH, I can't get in YOUR lane?! Really?! well this lane doesn't have your name on it, asshole! It's not like your mama paid for this lane from Seattle to St. Paul!" So I try my assumptions on the opposite way: they might be actually trying to make space for me, although it just screws up my timing. Or maybe they are in labor and headed to the hospital and don't give a shit about my merge. Or maybe they have a head injury and it's all they can do to stay inside the lines. I apparently need to be told a little bed time story about the actions of other drivers. 

And then there are the timid mergers who seem to need a bottle and diaper change and 400 car lengths, "What, do you need me to hold your fucking hand for this merge? I can only baby you for so long!"

A sticker knock-off of demi-god Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) pissing on anything can also be a trigger.

I can tell how serious the threat to my safety by how I feel afterward. Obviously the person crossing the highway made a serious and stupid mistake. It's a mistake that has killed many on Hwy 195, but I wasn't angry, I was simply grateful. I felt lucky, like a chicken who'd successfully crossed the road.

the flowers are resurrecting!

I've heard people say that who you are in your car, alone, isolated in your steel and glass bubble and yet still interacting with the world, is who you REALLY are. I object. Driving is a curious psychological scenario, certainly. It's like a physical version of the internet: no one knows you personally, yet you are interacting. There are driving trolls, of course. But I can't bring myself to believe that who you are at your worst is who you "really" are. When we are at our ickiest, it's not our truest self. I also don't think your Sunday Best is our truest self either. These are parts of ourselves, parts what we value, what we fear, what we hope.

Don't even pretend you don't experience flushes of frustration when you drive. That's just a pile right there. Maybe you don't express it exactly the way I do, but it's a crime to deny your humanity entirely. We cope with 1000's of random who-knows-who's on the daily and not one of them ever gets your goat?! Oh please.

Sunflower seed spring holdouts

I was recently dishing about this with someone who proclaimed that they NEVER get mad and certainly NEVER with kids in the car. What's wrong with me that I do? And then 20 minutes later the confessions started rolling out.

I've also known people who maintain a saintly public disposition, but while driving they shriek from start to finish. Everyone is evil and the only perfect driver on the road is them, never mind they're cussing someone out for a move they just pulled not 1/4 mile back.

Do I think it's wonderful? This silly ineffectual road rage? Obviously not. I'm not advocating for it. But my blog isn't about donning a wordy halo of sainthood. We've all got it somewhere inside. When we drive, or bike, or walk through city crowds, inevitably we'll cross paths with someone whose methods of motion disagree with us. And we get disagreeable.  It's enough to make me wish I really was an old man with a wagon. Although, I'm not sure there wasn't road rage back then too, more likely involving the horses than other drivers.

5am Somewhere

Warning: contains strong language not appropriate for those offended by four letter bombs. Also, I may have woken up too early this morning.

You know who I really can’t stand? People who wake up at 5am. They don’t just wake up at 5am and live their merry little lives on their own circadian rhythm. No, they wake up at 5am and crow about it to the whole world. They get all sanctimonious about waking up at 5am. It makes them better than everyone else, more productive, more worth their space on earth. Like 5am is some morally superior time. They wake up at 5am and look down their noses at everyone who wakes up after them, like it’s a race to wake up and they won! And they stand on the tallest podium and put a little gold alarm clock around their neck. You can’t help but wonder: if they ever got an adequate amount of sleep, maybe they’d be nice, maybe a little normal, maybe someone you’d actually want to be in a room with.

Listen, 5am-freakers, we all have 24 hours in a day and what does it matter how we situate those in which we sleep and those in which we are awake?

You know who’s cool? People who sleep in until 10am. They won’t be in your face telling you “YOU SHOULD REALLY SLEEP UNTIL TEN!!! You are so much more productive when you sleep until 10 because then you can get a lot done at night. Only successful people sleep until ten.” You know what, businesses are still open at 10am. The gym is still open at 10am. The bank is still open at 10am. The internet is still open at 10am. The 10am-wakers wake up and mind their own fucking business. Maybe they say, “I woke up at 10.” But they certainly don’t get all up in your business barking about the virtues of waking up when they wake up.

You know what happens when I wake up at 5am? I’m a fucking bitch. Especially at 8:30pm when it’s time to get the kids to bed. I find it really helps the kids sleep deep and rewarding sleeps if I’m super bitchy for the all of 5 minutes I can stand of shuffling them off to their beds. And you know what I’ve discovered? EVERYONE who wakes up at 5am is a fucking bitch. Because why would they make it their business to tell the rest of the world when to wake up? As Ram Dass says, you wake up when you wake up. And although he’s speaking of enlightenment (whatever that even means), it’s the same with any given day. You wake up when you wake up. You’ve got your circadian rhythm. I’ve got mine.

You know what happens when I hear someone telling me to wake up at 5am? I’m a fucking bitch. I used to hear things like “Real moms wake up at 5am.” Real bitchy moms wake up at 5am, Ms. Case-in-Point. Why would the time you wake up make you real or not real? Make you a better person, a better mom? And you know what’s not being a better person? Waking up at 5am and telling everyone that if they had any worth or value they’d wake up at 5am too. They’d tell me that if you wake up at 5am, you get time to yourself and can plan out your day and prepare everything before the kids wake up. You know what happened when I tried that? My kids woke up at 5:15am and everyone was a fucking mess by 6:30pm. 

Blue face-palming over my inability to selfie

You know when I plan my day and prepare everything? The fucking night before. Because that’s when I have the energy and the clearest mind. Why would planning my day 8 hours before make me less of a mom? In fact, if the planning-of-the-day is the race, then put me on the top podium and tie a gold spreadsheet around my neck because I kick your ass every.damn.day.of.the.week. And it's not even like we have to get to work on time; we're stay-at-home moms. Home is always open. My kitchen doesn't have a time clock. No one is breathing down my neck about getting here on time. I can't be fired. Why act like I've got some asshole boss when I don't? Maybe you do, maybe you're your own boss and your boss is a fucking bitch. But mine's nice and well-rested. I'm not scared of her.

Just when I was out of the woods, when the other moms have finally wound down their incessant mom-talk, have stopped preaching about 5 am, I now am inundated by profession advice to wake up at 5am. REAL writers start at 5am! You know what would happen if I did that? I've get 1 1/2 hours of completely incomprehensible crap written before I had to get the kids up and take them to school and then I would need a long-ass nap.

I do wake up, voluntarily, at 5am as I keep a dream journal and that’s often a time that I wake up, roll over and write on my notepad about my dream. And half the time I can’t read it when I wake up later. And if I can, it doesn't make sense: “Not hearing the sounds of breathing. The empty cartridge? Not his breath, not hers, but they were weren’t they? I hear nothing and that can’t mean anything we are not single use. Turn to see Open eyes… how much we have left,” scrawled over an entire page in large, floppy “letters”. That’s what I fucking write at 5am. Greatness, right there, right?!

I’ve also woken up at 5am too many times these last few months, not just for dream entries but to shuttle Blue to her Ground Zero Hour drama class. But you won’t hear me bragging about it. Au contraire.

Zinnia: dramatic death scene

You know, I start to feel sorry for people that wake up at 5am. People that wake up at 5am seem to be under a lot of pressure to prove their worth and value and they seem to think that waking up at 5am and telling everyone they should too adds to their worth and value. I’m calling all you 5am crowers out right now: you’re insecure. That's okay, everyone's insecure sometimes. But please, for the love of sleep, keep me out of it. If you need to tell everyone else when to wake up and that that is the only way to obtain the same worth and value 5am has brought to you, that’s just sad. Certainly, if you enjoy waking up at 5am, if it suits you and your temperament, go for it. I won’t stop you (unless we share a bedroom, then we will stop sharing a bedroom). But how about you shut the fuck up about it. Back OFF. BACK WAAAY OFF. Just go live your life, wake up, quietly, keep the lights low and keep it to your own insecure little self. Maybe say, once in a while, “I wake up at 5am,” but as a statement of fact, not a badge of superiority. And try to remember that your worth and value as a person have nothing, whatsoever!, to do with the time you wake up in the morning. It actually has nothing to do with anything that you DO or don’t DO -- at any time of day. And try to remember that it’s always 5am somewhere in the world and so, in a way, we ALL wake up at 5am, bitches.

January: decay and decadence

I have found something to love about January: photos! And now that I have a working phone-camera again I am on the hunt for fun, decay-filled things to shoot. And some sunrises too, because Lard (a term we learned from a church kiosk with a few misspellings) knows that winter time is the only time I’m up for sunrises.

an empty brassica seed pod

drowning leaves, frozen

grass in ice

a pumpkin leaf in a frozen puddle

Abandoned cherry tomatoes in a frozen garden puddle

January sunrise on Paradise Prairie

pine cone after a wild harvest

the crab apple ages well

still hinged, after all these years

crab apple sunrise in fog

rotten sunflower seeds, or maybe dragon scales