That’s right. I’ve been blogging here for 9 years now, and last month I missed my blog’s birthday. So Happy (belated) Valentine’s Day, blog, and happy damn birthday. I didn’t get you anything.

xoxoxooxoxooxoxx

wm

“…put your toothbrush/on your mouth/put your toothbrush/on your mouth…”

American Idol gone wild.

We have mourning doves up on our roof — they look just like this. No that’s not my picture, you know all I do is write, I don’t take pix, too. Unlike some of you overachievers out there. hahaha. They’re just chilling. They seem to like it here.

I’m fighting off bronchitis, my lungs are a mess. Fever (never a good sign) and the general feeling that if I just break on through (to the other side, break on through, break, break) (key word: break) that this time, I will not get bronchial pneumonia. I’m fine, see! Fine! (Then I collapse. Drama queen.)

Pam: “Would you like some aspirin? You seem kind of fussy…”
Michael: “No, I don’t want any aspirin! Aspirin’s not gonna do a dang thing, Pam. Of course I’m fussy! I’m sitting here with a bloody stump of a foot!”

I haven’t slept much in a week — for two nights I barely slept at all.

I, like many of you, get stupid as hell and confused when I don’t sleep. Also not safe behind the wheel of a car, fyi.

Last night, I knew I was going to sleep okay. (powerofpositivethinking.) Willed myself to. Curled up in a ball, made little kitten noises, and when I woke up, the sun was up (sleep! i love you, my friend sleep) and I could hear the mourning doves, right outside my window.

nice.

ps yes we’ve been watching American Idol. This is all you need, though.

updated on Saturday: ppss WAIT the RAPTURE is today? Thank God for my father-in-law and Bossy, otherwise I would never have known. Eh, I’m not sweating anything now, especially not this frickin’ fever. Wait, doesn’t a fever come right before the Rapture? I think it does.

What did that cabbie in New York say to me, that one time? “When the end of the world comes, there won’t be any more worrying about the trillion dollar debt, or AIDS, or the drugs, and you, princess, you will never have to work again.” I was all, “Good by me.” Then he gave me one of the best smiles I’ve ever seen in my life, and off he went.

Here she is. All of us are a little possessive of Y, it’s funny. She is my Y, mine, nooooo mine! She takes amazing photos, go see if you can talk her into selling you one. I love the blogs because many talented women are now… visible. Who needs a book deal? A photo exhibit? We’re going renegade around here, and have been for awhile.

Speaking of books… Mine is going well. I’m at 305 pages now and 88,008 words (nice!). If you’re not impressed with that, then I’m asking you, What the hell is wrong with you? Cuz that’s a lot of words and pages and commas, all put together by moi. You’ll buy an e-copy when it’s done, yes? Yes! (I hope so, anyway.)

And speaking of books, part deux… Classics book group was last night — we read Aristophanes’s play, “The Frogs.” It is from 404 B.C. or something like that, which is apparently a verrrrrrrrrrrry long time ago. Ribbit. I liked it, it was hilarious. Just the fact that the text (different versions of it, who knows which one is the closest to “real”) has survived all these centuries is pretty cool.

Next we’re reading Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American.” I’m already in on the joke — Americans aren’t quiet. The only quiet American is a dead American.

Hmm. We’ll see if I can get through it, here’s hoping. After that we’re reading “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “Heart of Darkness” (which Steve already finished and I have almost finished — Norton’s edition is best, I’ve heard — I’m reading the Penguin Classics version. I’m finding the notes helpful and yes, I do understand where one of my favorite writers of all time, Chinua Achebe, is coming from, in regards to Conrad).

As Beth would say, That sentence is too long, I’ll start over.

We’re reading Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer,” too. We reading only books by dead white guys. (Typo that I refuse to correct. “We are reading…” make that, for you copy editors out there.) This fractures me, as I managed to avoid most of them in college. Dead white guys, not copy editors. I wrote for the student newspaper and edited the college literary magazine. You couldn’t move two feet without elbowing a copy editor or two, drinking all the coffee and bitching that they would have to return cans if they wanted some beer money.

But now I’m reading the dead white guys for fun — irony, see?

I was an English major. You learn all about irony and how to avoid work as an English major. OK, let’s just ponder that one for a moment and then have a good laugh. Seriously! Here is who I studied in college: Tillie Olsen, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ntozake Shange, SHAKESPEARE!! (didn’t avoid all of ’em, see?), Chinua Achebe, Zora Neale Hurston… and a bunch of dead white guys. Dreiser, James, Fitzgerald… all good. So when I saw “Moby Dick” on our list… (“Mopey dick!” — Leon on “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) heehee I am looking forward to reading Mopey Dick for our September book. Cuz I would read Raymond Carver all day long, but keep Updike, Cheever, and Mopey Dick the hell away from me. I did enjoy Milton, and Wordsworth and… Donald Barthelme, of all people.

(“OK, now you’re just name-droppin’!” — anon. critic in my head)

No, I’m not! I would start reading Kerouac aloud at 11 at night with a friend and keep reading until we’d finished the book.

(“College is hard, but it ain’t work” — my friend Jim, who I read Kerouac with)

If you asked me, which writers have most influenced your writing, I would have to pick Toni Morrison, Stephen King and Donald Barthelme. And Raymond Carver. OK, that’s a little scary, eh?

I somehow ducked and wove and arranged my own deal, all through college, man my professors were something, y’know? They sized me up and said, It’s gonna take some work, with this one. And they let me go for it.

Thank you, English Department at Portland State University. I love them so much for what they gave me, I might just send them a check. Or maybe just copies of “The Bluest Eye,” “Song of Solomon” and “Beloved” to hand out to some deserving students.

Let’s. All. Read!

Except for me, I have to write for awhile, then clean the house. But tonight? I read. Right after we get the results from “American Idol,” make that. hahaha.

…when you can stay up watching American Idol and crap like this with the kids?

that’s the line i love, and when Joe Cocker sings, “i’m certain/it happens/all the time…” (so steady.) (i love this song so much, esp. when you see the angel chorus of hippie boys singing back-up.)

and this one always gives me shivers, too. that’s his daughter, Mary, tucked into his coat on the back of the album cover. (Linda McCartney took the pic; Mary grew up to be a photog like mama.) (and that’s your music trivia for the day.)

Aw, those songs you grew up with, they stay with you forever, don’t they?

Then American Idol (or “American Ideal” as Wacky Boy calls it) comes along to cuss it up.

and… here is “Inception Remade as a 60-second Victorian Woodcut Animation.” Nicely done.

ps — have a splendid weekend.

pss — what’s a weekend? hahaha.

what if your band released four albums in four years and they were these four: Aerosmith, Get Your Wings, Toys in the Attic and Rocks? hahaha. Yeah, we’re watching Steven Tyler, JLo and Randy J. on American Idol every week, Steve and the kids and I. (Note to self: Get Steve hooked on American Idol. Check!) And all I think when I see Steven Tyler is, His first album came out in ’73 and I remember when it was released. OK, that’s bad enough, I’m so freaking ancient. Not as ancient as him, but still.

But my copy? We didn’t have a lot of money when I was a kid, so buying a new album (or 45, more like, more in my price range), it was a big deal. When my friend gave me a copy (I was 12 by then) it was such a gesture of love. He’d been carrying this album with him everywhere (his family moved a lot, including back and forth across the country, between Oregon and Washington, and Oklahoma and Missouri). It was broken right in half — just the very edge, maybe three inches or so into the record? He was heartbroken and couldn’t afford another copy. And they didn’t have a record player by then. When your dad likes to play the dogs and the horses, food and rent and everything else come last place in the family budget.

And you can sell a record player and buy a few drinks. So he gave me his copy. When I played it, I’d just snap the edges back together and rock out. We both liked Movin’ Out and Mama Kin. “Living out your fantasy/sleeping late and smoking tea…” And Dream On, of course, but who didn’t? And One Way Street. Who am I kidding? We just loved the hell out of that record, but those were our favorites.

Oh, my God. Our childhoods, growing up in that neighborhood. Whenever my kids kvetch, I ask them, Do you know how to drive yet? (They’re 8 and 11.) Get on it, because in my old neighborhood, we all learned to drive by the time we were 12.

(Let’s say, for example, you’re at the track with your dad. Not my dad, he was long-gone, but my friend’s dad. Drunk dad = you better know how to drive his drunk ass home.)

“You’re lucky you don’t have to drive your drunk daddy home! You’re lucky you don’t have to go get a job helping the guys at the gas station, cuz your mom doesn’t have enough money to support you! I started babysitting when I was 9! We all worked!” At that point they’re all, Here, I’ll set the table, OK? Calm the cuss down, Mama.

So Aerosmith meant a lot to this little rocker. And still does.

The End.

So. Good.

Susan Boyle’s performance on Britain’s Got Talent.

I interview myself sometimes. If I’m feeling like a dirty slut. Tina interviews God.

Also (Part II), if I don’t get Milli Vanilli’s Blame It On the Rain OUT OF MY HEAD… well. I don’t know what will happen. But it might be bad.