Whilst getting a Diet Coke from the machine, a co-worker walks up and says, “Jennifer? Have you been to Thai Place in Westport?”

I had to lean on the machine, I couldn’t stop laughing, and I was certain I was being set up somehow.

The co-worker looked confused. “What? Did (the other) Jennifer already ask you this?”

Me: “No. It’s just that I go there, like, 3x a week.”

And on the Thai Food Front: Whilst getting donuts this morning (I’m not sure where this 14th century English affectation is coming from, please let it blur by), I drove by the now-defunct China Spring, and it appears, in fact, that everything my former-Thai-Place waitress told me is coming true: they are under new management and opening soon. As a Thai restaurant. Peeps, having this restaurant means hot Thai food will now be available a mere 6 blocks away. They are long, irregular blocks, but all the same. A Happy Thai Dance Must Now Commence. Prithee.

So, I thought I’d move on and do another post. You try, too. Props and recognition to Friday’s Feast.

Appetizer – Name something that makes you scream.
Well. I guess that would be PHIL FUCKIN’ KLINE. And bad drivers.

Soup – Who is a musician you enjoy listening to when you want to relax?
Coldplay, Sarah McLachlan, October Project

Salad – What was the last book you purchased?
A Treasury of Magical Knitting” by Cat Bordhi. I saw the sequel last night & thought the first book had to be rockin’. Hello, my dear friend Amazon. You make it all so easy.

Main Course – If you could live one day as any historical figure, who would it be, and what would you do?
I would be an unknown assassin who killed Adolf Hitler before he could come into power. If this is not Quantam Leap & I can’t change history, then, I would be Dorothy Parker & hanging out with my Algonquin Round Table chums.

Dessert – Tell about a time when you were lost. Where did you end up? How long did it take you to get back to where you were going?
Oh sweet mary. I was on a business trip, and we were going to Adamsville, TN, (you turn south just past, I kid you not, Bucksnort TN.) We left Nashville, and our puffed-ego twit account director was driving (he was wearing a scarf, and DRIVING GLOVES), and of course was in charge, as he had been to the client before. He went the wrong direction on Hwy 40. FOR AN HOUR. We saw a lot of pretty countryside, but when three of you are squeezed in the back of a Jeep, it is not comfortable. Why rent a Jeep for five people? Because Jeep used to be his account when he was Big Time. So he only rented Jeeps. A couple of other people kept asking, “Are you sure this is the right direction?” I always called him the Bloviator. Because he wouldn’t ever SHUT UP. (Bloviate is a word: to speak or write verbosely and windily.) And I lost my temper because he tried to blame US for going the wrong direction and in one of the few instances I didn’t bite my tongue, I screamed back, “If you hadn’t been going on and on talking & waving your hands TALKING the whole time, like you do in every Monday Morning Meeting this wouldn’t have HAPPENED.” Oddly enough, my outburst didn’t affect our relationship. He was just. that. self-centered.

Right now, I am so apoplectically irate with Phil Kline, the Attorney General in Kansas, that I couldn’t even call the radio station this morning to voice my anger. I was spluttering, fuming, and unable to fully construct sentences. If you have no idea what he’s doing, you can read about it here

This is a post that may alienate some people, because it’s a big ol’ issue and people tend to be black & white about it. I am. Splutteringly so. I wrote this a few months ago when my alumni listserv was yapping on the subject of stem cell research & abortion, and I was rather amused that my post shut down the entire conversation. I don’t often go for the full smack upside the face, but when you read this, you might understand why.

You may judge me for my choices, but in the end, my life is not (and should not be) measured by your values and choices.

My stance on abortion’s pretty galvanized. I accompanied a friend to a clinic when I lived in Minneapolis. At that time, the early 90’s, it was a pretty volatile scene. As soon as the police officer (sitting near the door) saw us, he left his post to come down the sidewalk to escort us in.
A man with a gun and a bulletproof vest on.
Walking us up the sidewalk.
We could have been there for birth control pills for all anyone knew. And we required police freakin’ protection to walk 25 feet. Honestly, my memory of it comes as close to shock as anything else. Pro-life people were flat out screaming at both of us (they didn’t know who was pregnant and who wasn’t, of course.)
Plastic bloody babies, signs, bibles open, shouting “Don’t kill your baby!” We got past the locked lobby (with bullet proof glass, having surrendered our drivers licenses through a slot much like the bank or a gas station) only to discover, after an hour, that my friend’s pregnancy was too early to terminate. She was distraught, having mentally endured the choice, the gauntlet of judgement, and the stress of knowing she’d have to wait a month and come back and go through it all over again. Leaving was the same thing in reverse, except now we steeled ourselves against the protesters, escorted by the same officer to her car, protestors blocking the road, placards smashed onto the windshield with people screaming at us again.

I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, ever again.

I understand it’s those people’s right to protest. It’s their right to believe ardently, fervently that burgeoning cells equal a child, no differentiation. But. Creating the sense I should fear for my life to enter a clinic that exists more to provide prevention, sex-education and lower-income counseling to reduce the planet’s overpopulation of unwanted children? Not cool. Hands, laws, threats – off my body. I don’t “like” abortion. I think it’s awful, and I wish it didn’t have to even exist. But I do not want to tell a rape victim, “Just give the baby up for adoption.” I don’t think it’s my right to tell another woman what she has to do with her body. I also don’t want women to die in back alleys or motel rooms because they are denyed medical care for their bodies. For now, these reproductive rights and choices are supported by the laws in our country.

To finish the story of my friend – an irony of sorts – she miscarried the next week. was it nature’s solution? The stress of what she’d gone through? does it seem more acceptable that she “lost” her zygote/baby even though she’d already made the choice (and appointment) to terminate the cell growth/”kill her baby”? I just think there are things that require us to step back & say, those are your shoes & I could walk a mile in them – and I still wouldn’t know how you feel inside, so this choice is yours.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fuck you and your witchhunt, Phil Kline. I hope with every cell in my body that the highest courts strike down & disallow what you are doing, because it is being done to intimidate and create fear, not to prosecute crimes. You are further victimizing and villifying women, who have every right to the privacy of their medical records. The doctors at the clinics are mandated to report any suspected abuse or crime. Using your office to exploit these women’s experiences, because of your personal values and anti-abortion agenda is an abuse of power.

I will return later with a more cheery post. I just had to get this off my chest.

My boss sent out an email that Quentin Tarantino will be directing the season finale of CSI (May 19), so expect it to be awash with blood & gore.

Pulp Fiction is one of hubby’s favorite movies. I thought it would be fun to see if I could accurately list his top five movies (I reserve the right to claim victory if they are correct but out of order.)
1. Reservoir Dogs
2. Pulp Fiction
3. GoodFellas
4. The Matrix
5. Something Wild

I’m not sure if that last one is still in his top five. (He told me it was his favorite when we first started dating.)

I’ve turned into a crazy lady, and I don’t care. So let’s get that out there and done with, right off the bat. I carry a little spiral notebook with me everywhere, because otherwise, thoughts, things I need to buy, things I need to do – all fall right out my various head holes and onto the ground and my little gnomes don’t leave the body to go and grab them again. So I jot. I scribble. I list. Sometimes it’s about things I want to blog, or things to buy at CostCo, or that I need to go buy one more button at Urban Arts & Crafts. See! Right there! I’d already forgotten about that, and I promise you, I will forget again.

So, I will use my notebook at any point in time – even while driving. That requires a certain kind of shorthand and finesse all at once. But this is why: there was a cah-ray-zay license plate the other day and I could NOT figure out what in the hell it was supposed to be telling me. I still can’t. So if this makes sense to you, or you have a guess, leave a comment!

NONSIBI

I now state forth that all medicine directions should be printed CLEARLY and in BIG TYPE. Granted, I’m being pouty and sullen because I took two horse-sized caplets with barely enough water and they left the memory of their size on my throat, and so I sit here, vacantly gulping, not to mention still mouth-breathing (so sexy! It’s the lambada of breathing!) and I’m looking for things to be mad at, rather than go to the kitchen and get some water. And the whole thing reminds me of how discerning dosages and maximum quantities and frequency and quantities and all that stuff that never seemed too pertinent before, all of it’s written in TEENSY WEENSY TYPE as though you have become a Borrower, or a tiny gnome living in my body. Or perhaps a cockaroacha. It’s your story too, if you like Kafka, go for it. But the sicker I am, the less inclined I am to read anything that’s written in TEENSY ITTY BITTY letters and the more it hurts, the more I am inclined to WHACK OUT FORTY TABS and chew them up. I would have made a very good monster in Japanese Cine’.
*BOOM* *BOOM*
{Big lady enters city, knocking over buildings, stomping on cars}
“RAAAAAHHHHHRRRR” as she siezes a gigantic bottle of NyQuil. The streets are filled with cherry -flavored syrup as she throws the bottle back and the glugging medicine flows down from her cheeks.
“MOOOOOOOOOORE! NOOOOOOOOW!”
*STOMP* *STOMP* {crunching noise as giant bottle of Tylenol is wrenched from billboard}
[much cursing]
“Dammit. How many of these do I take?” {Monocle to eye, because monocles are so cool} {Entire city is ablaze from sun’s reflection on monocle.} “RAAAAAHHHHHHRRRRR! WHY IS THE PRINT SO SMALL?!?!?”

Don’t get me started on these foil-wrapped horse pills. They’re so damned hard to get open I have to use scissors & I’m just waiting to pierce one by accident.

It won’t end well, I know it.

Ahhhh, the stretch van. With only one side window, no rear windows. EX. CEL. LENT. Backing that thing up was joy-rriffic. But! It was not a stick shift, and I was far enough away from my father’s reach that he no longer was smacking my right knee.

I got the hang of driving, and soon I was sent to get the mail by myself. Now, this was awesome. This is what driving was all about. Our lane was a gradual slope, and my father had put small speed irrigation bumps in to control rain washing everything away. Let me tell you, you can get some serious jumps in an empty stretch van if you hit those fast enough on the downward trip! Ha! And right now my husband feels affirmation that I’m still a reckless driver when it comes to my car’s suspension.

Anyway, it was time to make a Real Trip, beyond our little half-mile lane. We were going to Drive on the Highway. We would also compound the solemness of this journey by taking the NEW VAN. Also a stretch. But with back windows. Yo. I don’t think I’m gonna be backing this muthah up on the highway, but ok, it’s a more glamorous ride. This made me a whole ‘nother level of nervousness, though, because not only had I bonded with the Blue Bomber Van, but the van was like, NEW. And I wasn’t going to have wrecking it on my conscience.

So off we went. I could not tell where I was in the lane. You must remember this as well. It’s hard at first, figuring out where you are in proportion to the lines down the middle of the road, when you’ve spent your whole life in the passenger seat, or worse, in a director’s chair in the back of a stretch van, slidin’ around, hanging on to shit to keep from falling. My father kept reminding me that I did not want to be like our family friend, who was always mocked for how tightly he hugged the center line. Hell, I could care less about him, I don’t want to have a head-on collision with the NEW VAN. So I hugged the pavement on the shoulder side. For half of the trip, this was fine. It was gravel on the side, and I knew enough to not stray into that, and I began to think that this driving thing was really going to smooth out. Then we turned to head to Prairie du Chien. This strip of road is narrow, winding, and a sports car’s dream. Not the dream of a teenager in a hulking van on her first paved road excursion. This part of Iowa is also very hilly, so there are significant valleys and gullys off the side of the road. Oddly enough, though, there was a bike lane, so now I had a paved shoulder I could stray onto, as I kept a very safe distance between the front end of the van and the center line & oncoming traffic. I honestly thought I was “getting away with it.” What I didn’t realize, and was too nervous to even feel, was that the wise construction people had texturized the bike lane with “rumble strips”, so errant, sleepy drivers would be alerted if they were going off the road.

For those long miles before we found a place to stop and switch places, my only memory of that white-knuckled drive is my father pressing his body flat against his seat, hairy-eyeballing out the window and grabbing the handle above the window, shouting “BIKE LANE!” “BIKE LANE!” “JENNIFER! BIKE LANE!” as I kept using that strip of pavement as my “cushion” and my father saw his new van careening ever-so-close to catapulting off the side of a hill, his side first.

They let me get my learner’s permit, but not my license. I had to wait until I was 18. That experience being its own story.

It has only been in the past couple of years my father has become capable of riding as a passenger in my car. Either he’s relaxed and trusts me more, or? He’s made his peace with this world.

If I answer the phone, croaking like a dying frog, and you, sales rep from hell, say, “How are you?” and then you keep talking because it is apparently ALL ABOUT YOU, oh, my mistake for listening to your words, then you, dear sales rep, deserved the “fuck you” I said after I hung up. For I barely had the time to inhale to answer your question and you were launching into your All About You speech. So I exhaled, wishing the alien creature deep in my chest could smash through the phone lines and rip your head off with its glistening wet teeth.

I know I can be self absorbed? But some people take it to such a higher level, even I am astounded.

I thought, last night, it would be interesting to play “Bejeweled 2” while trying to numb my brain down enough to go to sleep. You know how it is, after a certain point, the Brain Gnomes refuse to play cards anymore and they want to go joyriding for some action, even though all the other Body Gnomes are laid up or working their little gnome asses off, fighting infections, mucus, and sweats.

So I think to myself, Self! If you cannot get past level 3 on Bejeweled 2, you are not qualified to drive a car (further justifying not going to work!) Because, as I started playing the game, there was a certain slackjawed panic in the first level and I tried to find matches and things were taking a lot longer than usual. And keep in mind, this is now under the influence of one mega-dose of NyQuil, followed up by a couple of nighttime caplets an hour later, when my brain refused to let me sleep. I was lying there listening to my wheezing, whistly exhale, each breath reminding me more and more of the vicious, viscous creatures that burst forth from every hapless victims’ chest cavity in the Alien movies. I kept seeing that shiny dripping little head with its own rows of teeth. Pleasant, eh? Don’t think I’ve been mouth breathing for the fun of it, folks.

So I make it past level three on Bejeweled 2. Surely this is a fluke. No, I made it all the way to my usual level (9) and the second dosage of medicine finally started to kick in. Bejeweled 2, under the influence. I guess I’m ok to drive, operate heavy machinery and do my job. But when that horrid alien creature pops out of my chest, eeeeverybody at work is gonna wish I’d stayed home.

Every so often, the Ear Canal Gnomes pry open the seal the Cold from Hell seems to have placed on my sinuses and other whatnot things going in and out of my head. It’s like a burst of sunshine, freedom, and a wonderful feeling that my head, indeed, is not 12 sizes too large and submerged in a fish tank.

Alas, they can’t keep them open and so the ucky feeling returns rather quickly. But it’s good to have hope, glimpses, of the Other Side. Thank you, Ear Canal Gnomes, your efforts are not wasted.