The Cardinal

Nature's Fancy Boy
everyone loves him but only because
he's so loud in volume AND color.

Tips for Moms #1

My kids listen to me better when I talk in a Southern accent.

Or maybe when I talk in a Southern accent I act more graceful and in charge.

Characteristics I ascribe to Southern women.

Philosophy

Watching Doctor Who
Little Em's playing with her gum
Bubbliscious-finger strumming

Smoking cigarettes
   it's like paying someone to kill you slowly

Letting anything take over your life, thought processes, to that degree is wrong. Doing it and also knowing it's wrong--double the consequences, double the mind-Hell.

What's that story about the shadows? One the wall? And escaping, seeing the light, going back to the shadows, being miserable? Hm.

A bunch of people, in a dramatically-lit cave, sounds like a party!

Playing with miserable, nothing left to lose people... it's the best
               wildest
                free-est
                 most uninhibited
               easily caught up in the moment.

When I quit smoking cigarettes
             drink copious amounts of coffee
               don't take anti-anxieties
                 get high
           I think I'm Jesus, reincarnated.
I understand everything I've learned.
Every time.
Everything comes together to mean everything right now.
All the people I've met, meaningful and meaningless. Everything I've ever noticed. Everything I've noticed without knowing. All the social interactions are experiments.

Guessing and checking.

All add up to equal a philosophy that is exactly and fully right.

Springummer

Walking down the sidewalk
sideswipin' wishes
<pop pop>

Increase inner surface area by adding dimensions
Two-dimensional people, flat, robotic

Today I'm as big as the sky

I understand the composition of the clouds

As if I was their creator.

Sharp, pleasure-filled breath inward

I see myself as a smaller than everything cartoon and did this well before Lizzie McGwire, mind you. I wish I could squish your status up to my belly in a giant note hug to me piece of treasure. 

an ear to ear, super pleased with myself giant grin

the most simple grin ever dropped

perfect circular pink spots perch on my mouth corners.

Witches

Their power source is others' misery and negative attention.

When people laugh at their stealthily crafted, secretly negative jokes.

Secret and stealthy.
Secret and stealthy.

Bringing the world down one ruined smile at a time;
one smile-of-a-brick-of-a-smile at a time.

crumbling cities, skylines, view-finder windows full of skyscrapers, so many jutting and expanding.

too many in the space; defying physics.
CHOCK_FUL;
towers and towers full of positive energy.
knocked down, wrecking ball.

You know it's evil what you do,
Black Magic.
Insidious.

Unreasonable

Today I'm adorning a corduroy, green, mini skirt.

(A little unseasonable, I realize.
Well, actually,
reasonably seasonable.
There should be nothing so stretchy about being able to wear a mini skirt in Near-May.)

Avert your eyes! lest you    
                                              be

                                               blinded.

                                               Blound.

                                               Bound--

                                               by an enticing,

                                               unexplainable attraction.

Like Craigslist personals.
Or buying flowers.

The Good in Them

One of the best things about being a mom is getting an excuse to re-little myself.

We love walking, spontaneous walking adventures.

I got from someone once that a home isn't a home until you've explored what's around it.

"We're adventurers! Adventurers never give up!"

M. said this when I suggested she go around the "mountain," which was actually just a 6-ft tall pile of dirt and rocks in the middle of an unconstructed sidewalk.

We found lots of treasures, also referred to as clues: eye-catchingly colored beer bottle caps, dried up corn husks, a plastic letter "Q" from a marquee, and an intricately detailed button.

At every corner, whenever there were "which way do we go" moments, I let them choose. We couldn't move forward until they agreed on a direction. Taking turns, valuing a peer's ideas, staying together were all lessons our walking enforced.

To convince them it was alright to head back towards our house we started pretending we'd been on a 100-day walking adventure. We'd had to sleep on the ground, even when it was wet. We lived in the forest, in the woods.

Really immersing myself in the experience, at one point I exclaimed, "We'll never find our new home! I'm giving up hope, I'm getting discouraged."

As a mother living under the poverty line, the most valuable thing I can give my daughters is Imagination Fuel.

"Don't worry," says Maya. "I have enough hope for all of us. I have enough hope for 100 people!"

::

I rubbed little Em's back until she went to sleep.

"Do you want me to scratch your back, Mommy? I'm very good back-scratcher." Her sweet hand touched my face in a way that was more gentle than I'd ever seen her touch anything. She smoothed my cheek skin and gave me a look that reinforced everything good in the whole world.

::

The good in them outweighs everything else.

Boyfriend Box

Warning: The contents of this post will lead you through the deep, dark, irrational thoughts of a girl who's been stop-seeing-each-other-ed.

Any and all indications that I was emotionally victimized are completely unfounded and it's unfounded for me to imply that at all. I indulged my ridiculousness and wallowed one last time so I could write a good essay about it. And that's where this came from.

::

I'm sad, I said I wouldn't be, but I am. We said no strings attached, but the strings snuck in! I had no idea what they were doing! I swear, I was sleeping, and SOMEONE came in and tied my heart to yours.

And, unfortunately, like when you pull apart a wishbone, I got the side that ripped. It hurts. 

And I may have considered if ONLY for the briefest shadow of a second--
putting things on your Facebook wall insinuating that you are a woman-beater. I'm sorry! I'm sorry. 

                "yeah -- @ ___ (your name here)"

Then I found an ad on Craigslist looking for a couple to play strip poker with. And I sent you the CL link and say “we should just get back together to do this. Didn't you always want to have a threesome?” Just trying to trap you with my awesome boobs and sexual liberty, rrRawr...

But it'll be ok.

I had a vision once, where I met Aziz Ansari.
Soooo, yeah.

Trying to realize my potential with the two little lives mine is entwined with is confusing enough.

::

I used to put my boyfriends in boxes. I’d break up with them and put all of their little mementos: notes, things they’d made for me, things they’d given me as gifts, pictures everything, in a little shoebox, with their name on the outside in sharpie. Then I put all those boxes in another box. 

It's a little serial-killer-y, you think?

Like when you think you're insane, you're definitely not insane. When you think you're a little serial-killer-y, you're definitely not a serial killer.

Oooooh--wait--not killing people serially is what makes you not a serial killer. I don't do that. So we're good there.

::

Anyway, the boxes are good. You can look at the boxes and be happy and know, "there are good things in there."

Monday Musings

I love the way it feels when I quit smoking cigarettes. That's why I can't stop! Seriously! It opens up the creative part of my brain. I think it stops working the same way for a while and then the flood gates open back up. There's so much more juice flowing through the wires that it floods the levy and picks up magical bits along the shore. These magical bits are added to the monologue as fairy dust. And we fly, we fly away.

If you can time the quitting with a creativity-forcing life situation (negative money, husband being a douche, no money, car troubles, ill mother, many, many guys, illnesses, two moves, everything changing) HA! Culminates to inspiration.

Research: Jesters

nobody LIKES toothpaste

"Don't just suck it off" is what I just said to my three year old daughter.

She was brushing her teeth.

We currently have three different flavors of toothpaste. They don't like any of them! I just want them to LIKE brushing their teeth. So I don't have to harp. 'malways a'harpin'.

I don't care that no one was there to laugh with me at that.

Except I totally do.

April 2nd 2013 Tuesday 8:54 pm

The girls and I walk home. We play red light green light. I am sick, I am tired. I am getting sick. But that's not the end of the world. They make medicine for that. Once at the bottom of our hill, the hill down Reeds which ends maybe 150 ft from our front door.

“Red Light!” I shout. They stop in their tracks

“I'm going to say green light one more time. Whoever gets to the door first wins the race and gets some candy. Green light!”

They are excited. They run past me quickly. I audibly observe how fast they are. Gleeful giggles, over the shoulder glances. Up the steps now, half a flight to get to our floor. Maya loses a golden shoe and begins to despair.

(Her whiney voice has been catered to for a year. Give her anything she wants just to make the loudness stop. Just so he doesn't have to hear that whine right now. God. So loud, so whiney. Can't take it.)

I encourage Maya to keep going, “we'll get it later!” I say, Emery catches up to Maya as Maya hesitates to react about her shoe-dropping. Without missing more than half a step, though, Maya kicks off her other shoe, laughing in surprise at the events. Maya is about six feet in front of Emery when she touches the door and is so excited, so proud of herself. Emery dramatically throws her tiny body onto the floor. On her belly. Sincere, sad sobs crescendo out of her mouth and onto her face. “I wanted to win, I wanted the candy.”

“Get up," I say! "Get up, the race isn't over yet! It's alright Emery!” I help her up and we take two more steps to get to the door. She wins! I touch the door just a hair of a second after she does. “Guess what,” I say. “Guess what, the first place and the second place winners BOTH get candy!!”

I make a huge deal about presenting the candy (they actually requested popsicles instead). I get the stool out for Maya to stand on. They have these construction paper heart flowers, one with a glitter “E” the other with a glitter “M.” I have them wait by the dining room table while I get the scene set up. I try to make my mouth sing a celebratory, respectful, patriotic song but the only thing I can come up with is a mouth horn sound singing some dark, villainous theme. Ah, well. They don't know much of a difference. 

They are invited to stand on the prize podiums. Emery's “E” is on her spot on the floor, Maya's “M” is on the stool, the highest spot for the first-place winner.

I make an announcement speech dedicated to each one of them. Emery's speech highlights how she never stopped trying, never gave up (even though she did). Really she got the better, longer speech. Maya's speech just says that she was the best, first-place runner. But her pedestal is a little higher so that probably gets the point across sufficiently. Cancer: you know how you're scared to dig underneath layers and layers of wet, soggy leaves? Well, that's kind of like cancer. Like, you can never know what you're going to find underneath all that excess. I'm so tired. I can't even lift up my head. I'm getting sick, fast. I'm so tired. 

Medical Theories from Someone with Nonexistent Medical Experience

It is my belief that many of our psychological disorders that are developed at some point later in life, come from our own actions.  These are my theoretical and philosophical and existential beliefs related to depression and alzheimer's.

Depression

“It is no little thing to make mine eyes to sweat compassion,” said Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.

Origin: from the stifling of crying.

My father hated loudness. Loud laughing, crying, door shutting, talking, everything. Spilling things was also cause for severe disappointment and exasperated sighs that bordered on temper-blowing. But, I digress.

Crying and laughing are adaptations that are solely human. They relieve a tension that cannot be relieved any other way. In my own personal experience, tension is not relieved unless I can make inhuman sounds come out of my mouth, inhuman, loud noises that come from way deep down in my belly. Uncontrolled wailing, unsuppressed sadness transformed into air waves and vibrations and eye sweat. It's beautiful and un-substitut-able.

It is my belief that if this inner tension produced by tragedy, stress, sadness isn't expunged through uncontrollable sobbing it will turn into clinical depression.

Survival of the fittest:

LET IT OUT;

wail it out;

whale it out?

Alzheimer's 

Origin: from trying for years to forget regrets, eventually the brain relents and learns to forget--everything.

Pretty self-explanatory. I haven't done the research but I wonder if there's a correlation between traumatic pasts and Alzheimer's diagnoses. Or maybe people that are prone to traumatic lives due to other mental illnesses and chemical/nutritional insufficiencies have the same genes/chemical make up that leads to this disease.

In other news: Weed helps! THC and coffee (among other things) are good preventers of the evil and feared Ally-Z.

In conclusion:

Learn to feel. And think and work and live with your history. Not against it. Like I said, purely theoretical. And, hopefully, not offensive.

St. Patrick's Day

There were ducks copulating in the generously referred t0 "creek" behind the APT. Ha HA! You can't fool me, shitty weather. Spring's nearly here Bee-oTCH.

Sorry, I'm sorry.


Crawling under M 's bed with the vacuum to save our markers was the most heroic thing I've done in weeks. I tell them all the time:

It's ok to be scared. Just because you're scared doesn't mean you're not brave. Brave is when you do it anyway, even though you're scared.

HAHAHAHA
I didn't even finish getting all the markers out. I bribed M to do it.

WHAT!

...they  were  sticky.


Whyyyy?

Why were they s t i c k y ?

Because at some point EVERYTHING is sticky.

TRUTH.

SpringBreakWhoo!

Notes for someone to use when they write my biography

You're welcome.

"In the fall of 2012, Anna went back to school taking night classes at the University of Phoenix. It wasn't until the Spring of 2013 that she realized she only liked going to class when it gave her a chance to test out new material. Jokes, that is. To brush off the old Social Skills. 

These classes also gave her the opportunity to write new material. This was the point in time when she wrote the majority of The Pointlessness of Higher Education and How My Parents Blackmailed Me and Took Over My Adult Life."

An e-mail to a friend

I have a chair at work. I think it's broken... well, everyone says it's broken. But I love it. "It's the best chair in the building," I say. I say that every time ___ choose one of the following:

    a) I fall out of it

    b) a student falls out of it

    c) the arm falls off

    d) I touch the gum under the seat

    e) I roll over my toes

     f) the demon inside of it acts out and flings me around the room causing me to vomit all over myself.

     g) all of the above (albeit some of them purely conditional on future    events)

Does this mean I'm a curmudgeon, too?

Am I A Curmudgeon, Too?

  (a work in progress)

  by: me

And the soundtrack to the movie which is coming out this fall:

the title track is called Doot-Doodley-Doo. Other songs include: I Wear Flannel PJ Pants and Goddam Music's Too Loud. Soon-to-be hits for sure!

In real life:

How legit do you think this is?

http://kansascity.craigslist.org/fuo/3617869005.html

-- 

Do you think someone is just robbing a hotel they work for?

Because I really want that chair.

I <3 Squints

Valentine's Day events

We were at the grocery store this morning at 6:40. We walked past the flowers and chocolates just inside the front door, convenient for last minute shoppers. We walked past these to the back of the store to get Valentine's for their Valentine's Day Party. 

Ah, mission accomplished.

Post-purchase we pass the mechanical horse who gives away free rides. Oh, no, wait. We don't pass it. We never just pass it. Do you know what a strange sound that is? It's a strange sound in the grocery store at 6:45 in the morning. People with plans walk fast in business clothes. Long, black pea-coats. Toddlers are a strange sight this early--like, in public, I think. They get lots of sideways smiles. (the emoticon :) has given that phrase new meaning, eh?) 

we stop at the coffee counter for my 'videt' gift for myself and

out of the corner of my eye I see my oldest sneak a chocolate from the counter into the waistband of her skirt. I give her a look, an intense look, a look that says 'I have no idea what to do about this.'

We step over to the station for cream and sugar. This is an excuse for me to think of a plan. What do I say? How do I do this without embarrassing her?--

             (sensitive girl)

--Then I see! The chocolate has fallen onto the floor. I assess, "She doesn't know."

We get out the door,

Curtains up, lights on, deep breath, start acting:

I say "Wow, (sigh of relief [practice deep breathing]) that chocolate.
 I think it fell on the floor."

"No... .... ...." She searches the absence.

"You're so lucky."
Uhn... Duh... Twoi
"Do you know what happens?
what happens when you steal something?"
...
"The police come, they take you to jail."

I muster all the feeling of hope and love I have for this girl, it wells up in me to a never-ending maximum:

"I'm so glad they didn't take you to jail,
that would have been a terrible Valentine's Day."

She has a great depth for empathy and an extreme sensitivity I'm afraid I damaged. As TRULY as I can I feel emotion for her. It's how she learns.

Their school is so close, less than a mile. By the time we get there each chocolate gift has suffered a few nibbles. Inside the schoolhouse door, I greet the parents from a tiny chair while I assemble Valentine's cards. And I STILL make it to work on time. 

I am a badass :)

A Proclivity for Loving

and Loving Sex

I think one of my favorite things ever is the struggle between a boy and a girl.
But I imagine love is universal, I mean, that's the only thing that makes logical sense. Love is something that we as humans have evolved to feel for each other.


Evolution and biology:
Have we evolved to a point that our procreation is totally decided by love? Or influenced by it? Is love a product of spirituality or biology?
is love biological? or created by our thinking minds?
i don't think badgers "love" each other.
There is something there, there is something there to the argument that same-sex romantic proclivities are unnatural. That since "love" came from the animalistic, instinctual, base need to recreate oneself as much as possible it is "dirty" to "love" or "make love" to someone of the other sex because it doesn't come from the same base need for procreation...

OOOooooh, that's why you don't like it?

Don't even act like that's why. I fucking would HOPE that you have enough SENSE to realize how much fun sex is SIMPLY BECAUSE of this option. I don't have to have sex with someone ONLY to have babies. This is something that is nearly unique to humans. Sex for pleasure? People who are against gay marriage should be against sex for pleasure, too, in order for their argument to be valid. If the only pure way to have sex is for it to be for the purpose of baby-makin' you KNOW those people have shitty sex lives and, therefore, can't TRULY love each other

(intimacy;
 bare-hearted,
 orgasmic
intimacy
is how I get to the love cliff.
Whether or not I fall off that lovely love cliff depends on more, different things.

Orgasmic vulnerable SEX will walk me right up to the edge, though. Every time.)

"My steps cannot be learned. They're intuitive based entirely on jungle rhythms."

Gray,

Sad

Place

My

Mother

Is.

I had a vision last week

This was my vision:

There are two of me, two more East Asian-looking, More male versions of me. One is older, the other is young. The old me and the young me nod to each other in mutual respect, honest hesitance and slowly retread. The older gentleman is at the base of a slow hill.

And then there's this:

What does it mean???

Uplifting Nostalgia

These are some of my favorite classic Sesame Street clips:

Oh, and also,

I've just been thinking, 

if you end up being married now

it means you are a psychopath

because you lie flawlessly. 

I'm not scared, because my arms actually turn into guns.

Also, I have shoes with blades that come out the toe part. 

Point F.cking

In response to my request for a hang-out so soon after we hung out already

I am aware that my proposal makes me appear abrupt and full of hidden attachment issues.
It may be the case that I am lonely and socialize when I should value time by myself.
Do you not?
It may be the case that I use social situations as a way to escape from my important obligations like dishes, groceries, laundry. 
Please don't underestimate me, though. I am strong and 

can get through anything. 

even you leaving me. or losing interest. or lying. people do these things and if you show that you are a person that will be ok. I won't dwell. 

I am out for myself. I am out for myself. I am out for myself when it comes to that. 

I've found with new relationships, it's scary. Because everyone has shitty dads and everyone pretends they don't care.

Good show, suh! Good show. WELL done, son.

It fucks us all up and you will feel sorry for me because I will let you down. It's inevitable. 

(scene clip: Frasier riding his bike. Frasier learning to ride a bike.)

(lesson: stumble together movie clips? overall theme?)

You will let me down. And I'm ok with that. My expectations are too high.

But you could be the one! You could be the one I lower them for! For just a little bit I will lower my expectations (which are only high as a survival strategy) and be with you and we will fall in love! and we may or may not be together for ever. And either way it will be ok.

Just give me someone to be honest with. completely honest with my feelings all the time. teach me how to do this. 

and we will fall in love and we won't feel that way forever. and that's ok. it's ok. 
Or we may just have fun laughing and fucking and become good friends. 
Things will change. And one of us will have to say it out loud.

I will not die. And I won't hate you and spread all sorts of nastiness about you. At first I will hurt. But that's a natural part of the cycle of feelings. And I want to feel them all equally. To love a great deal hurts a great deal eventually. No one wants to get attached because nothing lasts forever anymore. 

love greatly. and lose it. lose it in a good way and then lose it in a bad way. it's ok. it's the cycle of feelings. you can't just ignore the bad ones, you have to indulge them.

Do what you want, always. Be fulfilled and enjoy yourself, always. Or else what's the fucking point.