accidental hipsta

First Caiti and Miles tell me that my sunglasses, purchased for their darkness (for wearing home in the morning after a night shift) and only incidentally because of their Blues Brothers style,

are hipsta.

Then today on one of those surreal YouTube treks which started with freestyle dog obedience heelwork and somehow found its way via an 11-year-old contortionist on America's Idol to street dancing in Asia, I discovered that all the cool kids are now dancing the way I've been dancing for the past 15 years (that is, when I'm dancing to BlackEyedPeas, not, say, when I'm doing Israeli line dances, or C&W line dances for that matter)

and it's called "the dougie."

Nice.  (Although if Justin Bieber is doing it, I'm not sure I want to know.)

I wonder if there's some way I can turn this into a lottery win...

why I use a plastic Christmas tree

People seem surprised when I tell them I prefer to use a fake Christmas tree.  I guess it's because in matters of foodstuffs I am so fervent about local and organic and as fresh as possible.

But Christmas trees are different.  I'm not eating my Christmas tree.

The way I see it, the "real" tree is symbolic, right? It's a symbol of a living tree.  Which is in turn a symbol of life and renewal and some other sexy pagan stuff we won't go into here.

Well, my fake tree is symbolic of a "real" tree which is symbolic of a living tree which is symbolic of life and renewal and sexy pagan stuff.  And that's symbolic enough for me.

I like trees.  A lot.  I like trees like some people like horses.  To cut a living tree off from its roots and the earth,

and watch it slowly die of starvation and thirst in my living room,

isn't exactly festive.  

So I hang my ornaments on a reusable metal-and-plastic Christmas tree.  

(Purchased at my local St. Vincent de Paul, of course.  I do have standards.)

a year later, and National Novel Writing Month, and WTF

Friends, I thought I was writing 50,000 words of cute little lesbian romance novel set in San Francisco at the time of the earthquake in 1906, and I still am, I think, but after two weeks of writing pure crap and stream of consciousness and anything else that I could think of (because NationalNovelWritingMonth encourages you to do whatever works to churn out the word count) this is what came out of my hands tonight. 

"I am the city made from gold

I am the city made from gold, and sand, and sweat, and blood.

The  blood of the people who died for these lands whispers under my feet.  I hear them saying “one day the earth will avenge us; our mother, your mother, will suck your city down and down and shit you out the other side of the planet like bad tacos. ” But they are talking to their mother and not to me because I am the bastard child of this earth and gold and greed, and I eat blood and sweat and lust and gold and cum and sand and steel and glass, and I spit out sound and pain and babies and greed and gold and Empire

and the Future;

I am San Francisco."

(WTF, people? Is this the creative process? or have I been possessed by a demonic host?)

now

I just saw a dear friend who reads my blog and who says he worries about me.  So I want to keep him and anyone else who reads this to keep up with me, updated.  But I have a splitting headache and spent about two or three hours already writing and revising stuff for this blog earlier today and I have no more left in me. 

So I am just copying and pasting this reply of mine to an email from a friend who asked me how I was doing:

"I had an intense week visiting family I have been estranged from for six years, clear on the other side of the country.  It mostly went okay, but I really don't travel well and I'm still recovering.  Fortunately I have another day off before I have to go back to work.

I'll be checking back in to the yahoo group soon and looking forward to reading your new pieces.  Tomorrow probably or Wednesday.

Anyway I'm definitely doing okay, to a--what do they say in physics--to a given value of "okay".  Functioning, able to get around and "do" life stuff, albeit cranky and obsessive and socially awkward and full of aches and pains and reflux and overweight and kind of agoraphobic.  But as Heather once reminded me, I can tie my shoes.  It's all relative.  And I am still very determined and only very rarely have suicidal thoughts, hardly ever any more."

ouch

woke up this morning everything hurting, queasy, feeling sick.  If I weren't tapering psych meds I would think I had the flu and call in sick to work. But it's not the flu, it's just another morning, thanks to GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly.  

I AM SO FUCKING FRUSTRATED THAT THIS IS GOING TO TAKE YEARS!  But it has to take years, because when I try to go faster, it's a complete nightmare.  Because it's going this slow that's keeping it from being much, much worse.  

At least I can think, most of the time.  I can work.  I can go dancing (I'm dancing again! I love love love to dance).  I'm stable enough that my daughters don't have to call me every day to make sure I'm not suicidal.  Most days I'm able to write a little.  Some days I can even manage to say something kind of close to what I'm actually thinking.

Me and my fucking silver linings.  I'm an incurable optimist.  (Seriously.)