I hate packing. I hate moving. I hate boxes and cartons and dust bunnies and that perpetual question, "Do I REALLY need to take this?"

That is all I have, right now. I am going insane. I am never going to buy another kitchen appliance, ever. Not freaking ever.

If anyone has any extra boxes or some free time tomorrow, please come to my house and help me load the Budget rental truck.

We're leaving Friday. At this point, we will be leaving half of my belongings behind. If you can't make it for the great big packing event, you can at least come and scavenge the leftovers.

Floorlamps, table lamps, a dresser, a side table, a television, and a microwave will be available--free to a good home. There is also a very likely possibility that one deranged cat will be left behind as well, if the tranquilizers don't work.

Or if I haven't taken all of the tranquilizers.

A few posts ago, Tits McGee mocked the startling hilarity of this magazine:

Misery Children Series: Gas Mask Girl Artist: Kathie Olivas

Please feel free to rename these Barbies as they appear in your locale. For your information, I shall be a "Royal Oak" Barbie, and I am consulting with my plastic surgeon accordingly.

Mattel recently announced the release of limited-edition Barbie Dolls for the Greater Detroit market:

Labels: Barbies, Generalizations, Percocet

Michael and I went to Target yesterday for the usual list of needed things around the house:

Labels: Embarrassment, Genitalia, Michael

When I was thirteen, I bought a new bathing suit.

It had shorts and a bra top. I thought I was awesome. In fact, I was a pale, pasty, ungainly ugly duckling who had already developed cellulite.

My (one) friend asked me to go to a water park with her. We went on a weekday during the evening, so no one would recognize me and blow her cover of being 'cool'.

We went on the tallest water slide the park had to offer. It had lots of gushing water streaming down it. The water gushed at a very high pressure.

She went down in her little teeny-weeny bikini. I saw her at the bottom, alive and laughing. The guy at the top of the water slide motioned for me to take off.

Water slides that are tall and have lots of gushing water can really be less of an experience and more of a sensation of having your skin pummelled by chlorinated water. If you're lucky, some of this chlorinated water will be snorkeled into your nasal cavity, and you will go blind with pain for about thirty seconds. In this case, thirty seconds was all it took to push my flabby, pale body down the slide.

When I arrived at the bottom, squirting water from my eyes and nose, my friend started shrieking. I opened my eyes to find my top had been lost in the guzzling, raging waters. It came down about two seconds later.

I covered my sad, adolescent breasts and stomach with my arms and ran to the nearest tree to put my top on. While I ran, crying and blushing, I looked at the lifeguard at the bottom of the slide. She was probably 18 or so.

She had the biggest look of disgust on her face I have ever seen.

No wonder I hate my body.

Look, people, it's starting to settle in. In less than a week and a half, this entire house is supposed to be packed up and moved to Michigan. I'm moving to Motor City, the home of the Satanic GM Overlord and the Ford museum. The home of nostalgic Woodward Avenue and the race wars of the '60's. The nursery of angry, dark, and macabre industrial music (my favorite!). In essence, the home of a great big abandoned downtown with lots of nice bedroom communities.

I've heard the potholes eat small children for breakfast.

The good news is, I'll only be about three miles north of the famed 8 Mile Road. While Detroit tourism magazines encourage visitors to 'traverse the character-riddled road of Motor City, and discover it is much more than what Eminem portrays!', I will quickly rebut and say, 'No. 8 mile road is exactly what the movie depicts--a wash of superindustrialized factories and a ton of cheesy strip malls.'

And the liquor stores! My God! The liquor stores on every corner! But in Detroit, they are called 'party stores'. Who gets that? Apparently, Michael.

Lemmee tell you something: If you are a single, desperate, slightly disturbing man and searching for the quintessential slimy, grody, ew-something-sticky-is-on-my-seat strip club experience, search no further. You have found your Mecca. 8 Mile Road is home to (and I researched this, thanks to Google):

• The Booby Trap
• Hot Tamales
• Trumpps
• The Coliseum (what, do they sacrifice old strippers at the end of the night to lions, or something?)
• Player's
• Tycoon's Reservations

All within a short mile distance from one another.

(Interestingly enough, the Google search also threw the Rosa Parks Institute for Self Development up when I put in 'strip clubs, 8 mile, detroit'. I'm not entirely sure what this means, but I am pretty sure it is hilarious. I have often wanted to strip to make myself feel better, but it has often ended with me sobbing and someone yelling, "JESUS GOD PUT ON YOUR CLOTHES!")

Truly. I'm thrilled about this move and excited for the possibilities. A strip club could very well be in my future. I saw pictures of these chicks, and I assure you. I have a shot. A long shot, depending on my ability to hang suspended from a pole by my wasabi, but a shot nonetheless.

Those girls looked really tired.

Wish me luck in all my new endeavors.

...but then I read about James Dobson through Tits McGee's blog. And I.Just.Got.Angry.

My dear friend Liz was relaying a story to me about a wedding she just attended. In the wedding, one of the groomsmen happened to be gay, and his partner decided to stand up with the brides' maids, which I thought was just touching.

Liz stated that during dinner, another couple made heavy 'Tsk-ing' noises about 'the gays' and 'the gays wanting to get married' and how 'unnatural' the whole situation was, and what threats homosexuality posed to children, and how God does not want children to be raised in an unsanctified and Satanic union.

Interestingly enough, the woman in this couple was very pregnant, and later confessed that she and her husband's first pregnancy had resulted in a shotgun wedding. A year later, the couple separated with intentions of divorcing, but somehow wound up in the sack again, resulting in another (unwanted) pregnancy, so they're going to try to 'work out their marriage'. Hmm. Looks like another winning combination of factors for Heterosexual Marriage in America!

I will not continue this rant, as it is obvious where it is going. However, I just want to throw in that Michael's ex's sister was married to a Promise Keeper. He also had a girlfriend on the side and several unexplained nights out on the town.

The funny thing I was GOING to post was:
Breastfeeding: If you're old enough to ask for momma's milk, you're too old.

After years of seclusion and isolation, the feral child of Marietta, Georgia, emerged from her home, stumbling about on all fours, frothing at the mouth and chewing on dry cat food. It would seem she was ready--ready to rejoin society. Before she was whisked off to London to be taught manners and told to sit up straight, her husband came to the rescue and assured all the media that he would be responsible for her grooming and well-being. It would seem there is a happy story to this particular hermit, left in a house for years, and grooming herself like a cat. Obviously, her standard of hygiene suffered throughout the days of seclusion, but we're working on that.
Good news! I am leaving the house today for the first time in about five days! I'm alive! I'm well (kind of). And I'm meeting my two bestest friends for coffee, knitting, gossip, and commiserating!

That is all I have to report. It feels good to leave the house and have a reason to take a shower. And maybe (just maybe) put on makeup. Well. That might be asking too much, right now.

Now: go read my two previous posts while sipping hot coffee and having a smoke. If you don't smoke, you can still read them. 

I have managed three hours of sleep; I awoke with another sinus headache and this time, the huffing of warm salt water did nothing but get my shirt wet. So, here I am, double posting.

I had this really funny dream during my three hours of respite, in which Michael and I were traveling through a developing country, and we didn't have the proper identification to drive a car, so we had to rely on these natives who were up to no good, so Michael stole an electric handcart. In my dream, this handcart turned into some kind of soapbox racer with a handbrake, and while we were unloading groceries from the handcart into a stolen taxi (I'm a thief in my dreams, obviously), Michael forgot to set the handbrake and the cart crashed into a truck and subuaru, totaling the handcart and the subuaru, but not the truck.

I woke up thinking about traveling.

During the past few days of absolute misery and sinusitis, I began reading Ghost Rider:Travels on the Healing Road by Neil Peart, the drummer and lyricist of the band Rush. If you are a woman and have not only heard OF this band, but HEARD the band, you are by far a better woman than I, because I hate Rush and their ten minute long, monotonous ballads about the Lord of the Rings. I have managed to find one website dedicated to all (five) of Rush's female fans. Anyway, I picked up the book because nothing else was doing.
I'm not in love with it, mind you. The writing suffers a tad bit and I'm not enthralled, but I've come to understand Peart's philosophy about the traveler and the tourist, and how these two beasts can be so different. The traveler gets dirty and sore and tired, while the tourist rests between soft, clean sheets. The traveler finds the gravel, muddy road and drives down it even though he knows no one traverses the road, and if his vehicle get stuck somewhere, he's going to have to bail himself out. The tourist sees the sights from an airconditioned bus on a paved and cushy highway.

I am a tourist when it comes to traveling. I don't do dirt or fear or extreme outdoor sports or anything that may involve a hospital visit or cholera. Perhaps this is a rather philistinism way to see the world, but I figure if I can take a silly tour bus ride and find it interesting, then I really don't need to be hiking through the outback of some uncivilized place, hoping for fresh water. So, I suck, Neil Peart. Sorry.

I'm coming to a point, and if only two people read this, then God Bless You.

What is scary to admit is that people can become tourists of their own lives. I think this has happened to me, somewhat. I have been waiting for things to happen TO me, and have not been proactive in many facets of my life. I can see that in my work, and my attitude regarding Michigan (I'm not taking responsibility for THAT decision, even though I'm all for it--it's Michael's deal...), and my attitude about losing weight (let's just see what happens!) and my attitude about smoking (it's not killing me...yet). All of these things I think about, and I'm letting them happen to me, rather than ME happening to THEM.

In 2001, I attempted suicide and was smart enough to make a phone call to a helpline before I stuck a knife in both arms. I was young and heartbroken and lonely and stressed out and ashamed of all sorts of devious, college antics. I wound up in the psych ward of a hospital for three days, and that stay could be a whole book unto itself, but this is what I figured out when I left: life is a choice.

We have been given this glorious opportunity, through God or nature or whatever, to live. So often, we forget that life is an option. There is always a way out of life. There is booze, or sex addictions, or shopping addictions, or addictions to religion. There is suicide, the most obvious choice against life. There is degradation and suffering, battery and abuse. There is TV-watching and never leaving the house. These are all choices, and they are choices we don't have to make. We can become travelers in our own lives, instead of tourists. Now, don't mis-interpret my words: the person who takes the final plunge of suicide had DECIDED something, which is entirely her right. She has said, "Nope. I don't want to fade out in alcohol or food or TV-watching. I'm just going to get it over with right NOW." Okay. But what she misses are these golden opportunities to get dirty, to travel the un-traversed path, to scream from the pinnacle of her own life!

It is my resolution, then, for 2007, to be a traveler of my life. It took me awhile to come up with a resolution this year, mainly because I think resolutions are silly and metaphorical rather than useful and logical. But logic isn't the goal, this year. Living is the goal. Choosing life once more rather than the isolation of past months. Choosing something more meaningful than the self-absorption of weight loss and gain. Choosing to do more than just exist, and breathe.

So if you made it all the way through this writing, I would ask you to do the same: choose life. Or, choose not to choose life. But don't be a tourist of your own fragile days. We just don't have the leisure time for tourism. There's just too much to do.

I'm thinking about switching my clocks around, so that during the day, it would be P.M. and during the nights, it would be p.m., and then I wouldn't have to worry about sleeping so much as trying to stay awake. Makes sense, huh?

If anyone ever wonders aloud: "Does huffing salt water up one's nose really help relieve sinus pressure?", I want to be the first in line to say "Yes. Huffing salt water will clear out your sinuses and will also result in the humbling posture of an octogenarian in a swimming pool--surrounded by bits of mucous and a viscous array of bodily fluids dripping out of the nose." I did my huffing over a sink full of dirty dishes (see previous post), so while gargling salt and swishing tap water 'round my nasal cavity, I had the additional pleasure of ruminating on this week's food intake.

1. Popcorn
2. Chicken Noodle Soup
3. Something that required a vast amount of ketchup
4. Velveeta Cheese and shells
5. Something else that required a more vast amount of ketchup
6. Is that apple sauce? Who eats apple sauce in the house?

I consider myself a rather simple being. I don't need much to keep myself happy or occupied. Give me some yarn, or some coffee, or a great cigarette, or a good book, or an opinion, or perhaps a compliment. Give me a feeling of contentedness, or a full stomach, or at least the pretense of good health. I'm ready to roll. But take my health away, and I become a squirming child, tearing up and weeping at my distraught physiognomy.

I caught a cold from my husband and immediately assumed it was bronchitis. I rasped for breath and heard the fluid in my lungs bubble up. I coughed violently enough to make my inner ear spasm, and my dear, darling husband reached for the phone. It was eight o'five in the p.m., so no doctor was available. Only one place to go! The ER...

...in which I told the ER staff that I was dying (in between rasps of air) and that I was a smoker (pariah! horrid witch!) and that I required an immediate breathing treatment, steroid shot, and inhaler. After twenty minutes of filling out insurance paper work, correcting the spelling of my last name ('No, not Frizz-Bottle, it's Fritz-COTTLE'), and maneuvering around the mass of Mexicanos inhabiting the bathroom of the ER, I got a room. Michael brought the laptop, so we were ready for a long night of anxious breathing and sermonizing about smoking. At long last (ten minutes, I think?) an ER physician entered our little curtained Mecca of healing and asked what medications I currently was taking.
"Zoloft," (gasp) said I.
"Ah huh," he said stoically. "And now, big breath in. Okay. Good. Let it out."
He listened to me breathe for about thirty seconds and said, "And when did you last take your Zoloft?"
I rasped for a bit, and told him it had been awhile, like seven or eight days. (I do this thing with my psychotropics--I don't take them once I start feeling better and less anxious. When I stop thinking about the possibility that I could have necrotizing fasciitis, or stop wondering when the world is going to end, or watch the cat for signs of diabetes--that's when I decide I'm cured, and just stop taking the Zoloft completely.
Anyway:
"What does my Zoloft have to do with bronchitis?" I asked the ER doc.
"Absolutely nothing--in that you don't have bronchitis. You have a cold. You are breathing just fine."
"I am?" (rasp...breathe....exhale...inhale...no rasp...)
"Oh. I am," I say as I glance over at Michael, who is laughing.
"So, I'll give you some antibiotics and an inhaler...but don't use it a lot, since it can make people kinda..." And the doctor glances at Michael as if to suggest people 'like her' go a little bit 'round the bend' on Albuterol.
"Shaky?" I say for the doctor's sake.
"Yes. Shaky."

Tidbit! I have two insurance companies, because I'm convinced I'm going to get very sick, so I want Michael to be protected from ridiculous hospital bills by allowing him to pay for my insurance through his company, and me paying through my own company (now defunct as today was my last day of work). And even though I have two insurance companies, I STILL had to pay $100 for a co-pay. The lady at the desk told me that if I didn't speak English, she could have gotten me into a program where I wouldn't have to pay anything at all. Rats. Next time you go to the ER? 'No hablas Inglis!" or whatever. This pisses me off, and I'm a social worker. Is there something wrong with that picture?

So, that's my adventure for the week. I have psychosomatic bronchitis. And the best medicine for that is a glass of salt-water (gently teased through the nostrils) and a tablet of Zoloft. Probably not cigarettes, though. They don't help with bronchitis, real or imagined.

1. If one morning, I woke up and discovered I was Miss Kendra, I would be deliriously happy.

2. If one morning, I awoke to a size 8 body, I would run around the neighborhood naked. And people would be happy that I did.

3. Well, maybe not this neighborhood. People are weird in my new-soon-to-be-old neighborhood. The people across the street don't talk--they only grunt. And their front door is off-center by three feet. It irritates me to look at it.

4. Here's a reason to love Michael: he looks after my dear, single friend Liz. Her car is on the Fritz. So Michael checked it out. Michael isn't a car wizard, but still. He looked at it. He's a prince among men.

5. I will not miss cockroaches when I move to Michigan.

6. When one puts in her two-week notice at work, does anyone really expect her to WORK?

7. I've come to a sad realization: I'm lazy. There are dishes in the sink from five nights ago. And the dishwasher is nearly empty from the last cleaning, because I keep going in there for dishes. Which wind up in the sink. The good news is: I've almost completely eliminated the need for cabinets.

8. No matter what, there is never enough money.

9. I have a yarn stash that would make many women swoon in envy. I may not have a great body, and I may have a neck waddle, but dammit, I have a stash.

10. God has cursed me. Drinking coffee nowadays leads to an immediate sensation of fire in my belly. Yet, I persist.

11. If I never left the house, I could die happy. What does this say about me? I think it says I don't really like other people. Or maybe, I don't like myself right now. Hmmm. That's depressing.

12. I may or may not have an addiction to internet Scrabble.

13. I worry that Delilah is going to kill herself running into a wall during one of her fits.

14. Michael is the male version of my best friend, Katie. This concerns me and Katie, but not Michael.

15. Do parents get the heebie-jeebies about their kids having sex the same way kids get the heebie-jeebies about parents having sex?

16. I wonder how hard it will be to find work in Michigan. On one hand, I want a similar job to what I do now. On the other hand, social work is hard. I wouldn't mind being a secretary. It would give me an excuse to wear some of my fabulous shoes. And each month, I could budget towards a pair of these.

17. The world is a beautiful place from my little window. I hope we don't kill it off anytime soon. Of course, if I actually left the house from time to time, I might think differently about it.

18. My parents are spectacular people. My dad teaches English as a Second Language, and my mom is in a national guild for silk painters. But that's not why they are spectacular. They are spectacular because they simply are.

19. Someone told me this morning that I changed the fate of his son's well-being and life for the good. If only I had that power. I would wrap the world in it, and spin it away from me in a great orb of light. And each person born with a 'disability' would become a teacher to the rest of us. How much we could learn.

20. Sometimes, on the motorcycle, I zone into the whoosh of wind in my helmet, and feel almost weightless. I think I could die happy, knowing that I've experienced the quieting wonder of the universe from my yellow bike.

 

...to get absolutely shit-faced drunk.

Today is that time.

If one more damn thing happens in this household, I'm going to have a facking nervous breakdown, no qualms about it. Michael is aware of this, and has unearthed the straight jacket from its deepest hiding place (yet another poorly packed box left from the move to the house). If the cat runs out the door in another fit of schizophrenic mania, I will honestly shoot her (with what weapon I cannot say). If one more car is bought, sold, borrowed, or broken, I will slash every tire of every vehicle within twenty feet of me in a Beatrix Kiddo rage. If I am warned about Michigan's winters being horribly cold on one more occasion, I shall rip every single decent hair from my head and drag myself (starving hysterical naked) through the Atlanta streets at dawn, looking for an angry wig.

And if, IF, one more old bald guy tells me I know nothing of the American auto industry, and don't understand the importance of supporting the bloated, fattened automakers of overpriced steel, and am too naive and young to grasp the importance of a global economy, and that I cannot put the price of the environment over the price of American economic success, I shall PLACE MY THUMBS UPON HIS EYES AND SQUEEZE SO HARD HIS BRAINS POP OUT.

I'm so glad a woman is now Speaker of the House. I am so happy that one day, all these old, bloated, red-nosed, rosacea-ridden, old money, baby-boomer, christian whackjob fundamentalists will one day cease their relentless babble and allow those of us (young, naive, hopeful and idealistic) women to start taking care and taking charge of all that is wrong in this world. Maybe we'll even make some babies.

I nominate Tits McGee for president. Spinning Girl for vice. And myself? Defense secretary. Old guys? You're on Notice.

So, I'm up at four a.m. because I'm absolutely roasting, and I step outside to get cold and have a smoke and I wind up sweating. It's January, people. This is heinous.

Sleep escapes me completely at this point, as I'm incapable of shutting my brain off. Here, I'll tell you all why.

Firstly, thanks to those of you who've come 'round, knocked on the door, stuffed a few presents through the mailbox slot, and left sadly. I've been home. I've just been in my pajamas and haven't wanted anyone to see what a miserable, cantankerous old stuffshirt I can be. So, I haven't been blogging or thinking or really doing much of anything except eating. That, on the other hand, I've been doing quite well and now my pants are all about to split, so eventually, I'm going to have to get off my ass and go to the doctor and inquire about gastric bypass surgery and lose about one hundred and seventy-five pounds (exaggerated) before I suffer from a heart attack and an aneurysm and die at the tender age of 28 from obesity. I should probably quit smoking, too, but that's a freakin' long shot.

So, how's everyone's New Year going? Good? Excellent.

As many of you know, we bought this house-thingy, and I've not even put pictures up because the house needs so much work and I'm EMBARRASSED and ASHAMED of it. And I've been too lazy to blog, so that explains some of it, as well. Let's see.

Bought the house in late November. Then, Christmas came. Got a lot of yarn and some lumps of coal--very OLD coal, by the way--the stuff that has turned to sparkles. No, don't worry, conscientious people of the world. I read somewhere that diamonds sold for jewelry are mostly from Australia, and are not the blood diamonds of the Sierra Leone/Ivory Coast. I hope Australia doesn't use aborigines to mine diamonds. Hopefully, they just overwork and underpay plain old Australians to do the diamond mining. Of course, I could just be telling myself this to make me feel better about wearing rocks in my ears. I'm sure I should be ashamed but I love my diamonds. Not because they are diamonds--I would have loved anything Michael gave me. I love them because my husband listens to me even when I am babbling and I don't think anyone else is around. See, because I also got a Swift and a Ball winder, and that's all about Michael listening, too. So my yarn room and stash is flourishing. I should take a picture of that room. It is a haven of knitting and relaxation.

I should also take a picture of it because in one month, I won't have it anymore. No, not because we will be redecorating for Baby--I'm not pregnant. I won't have it anymore because we are moving to Michigan.

Did you guys hear me? I'm moving out of the South to Michigan. Detroit area, actually. Where Michael is from.

See, this is how Murphy's Law works: you buy a house and then your company tells you that you are the best worker ever and they want you to stay put and climb the corporate ladder and they customize a promotion for you. And you get all thrilled and stuff, thinking about how far you've come since your days as an unappreciated probation officer, and you think about how this fairly modest raise will make life a little bit easier and you can afford more yarn and cute fix-its for the house. And then your husband comes home and says: "Honey, what about a twenty-five percent raise, huge commission, car allowance and a life up North?"

Well, what the hell else do you say if you're from Chicago and miss the Mid-West? You say, "Okay." And then you think about the negatives for a really long time, like how two of your best friends live in Atlanta and your parents are an hour away and how much you love the knit group you started and how you can motorcycle nine out of the twelve months and how you bought a house....did I mention that WE JUST BOUGHT A HOUSE? And your husband says, "We will make sure you visit your friends OFTEN and we will find another home up north that is built better and has original coved ceilings and hardwood floors throughout" because believe it or not, folks, housing is cheaper up North than down South. You take a trip to the area you would move to and find a walkable downtown and parks and people who smile a lot and a handful of prostitutes and bodies of water and the MIDWEST, and you know that you are home.

And you are six hours away from Chicago.

And your husband is excited.

And you love the North and detest the South.

We're moving in February.

So, I've likened this move to the whole picture that is life since I got married. Fast-forward. Living in the fast lane. Running with the bulls, etc, etc. Grabbing life by the horn, possibly cheating something or someone out of a good time, laughing in the face of logic, gambling at the great big game of Life.

There's a lot of cliches for life-changes. Somehow, none of them are striking at the truth of this. I'll keep everyone posted. Until then, for those of you are having a real winter, I hope you are very cold. I am very warm. We are killing our Earth.

I hear Michigan gets cold. I only hope that's true.