Dotty Parker

prodigy strange

There are days when I feel very self-conscious about my personality. I sometimes wonder if it looks like I'm flapping around the room like a cawing crow or rolling on the floor with spines poking people in the ankles.

The further difficulty with this problem is that I always thought that I should be able to turn it off the flappity-pokitisity. I always thought, although it never happened, that if I were vigilant enough, I could be like other people--the ones that don't make people nervous at dinner parties. (When I was in college, after a meal at the president's house a friend of mine said, "Actually, I was a little worried that you were coming along. But it was okay. You were very Dotty, but you were fine.")

(She's boring.)

Although the self-consciousness may remain, I no longer feel burdened with my inability to be less wacky because of those little journals I brought from home. Check out this entry from my childhood.

Yow! I was weird then! And funny! And sassy! And amusing to myself! And already very familiar with my property rights, apparently.

I love these little kid journals. They make me so happy. I feel renewed. I have early-onset weirdness.

And there is no cure.

Ha!

santa, baby? dotty was a baby?

Check it, yo.

At Christmas I went to my parent's house and I went through three not-so-big boxes of stuff from school. I threw away two not-so-big boxes, and kept one. The contents of the boxes had, of course, been shuffled to suit my needs and desires as far as archival Dotty P stuff goes.

I found three Carder Koalaty (Why not koality?) journals from when I was eight.

Eight!

I shall share with you some of my more pithy observations.

Here's my opening entry. All spelling variants are included for your reading pleasure.

September 5

Some things I might like to write about are:
Piano Lessons
Mr. Hamon[the principal]
How School was
How Day was
How the weather is
Animales that I've seen.

To illustrate my desire to stick to my plan, witness September 6.

Today looks pretty warm but its pretty chilly. Today we had gym. Mr. Bush our gym teacher told us things that we learned in kindergarden.

Wow! Resentful little snot! Just like this grown up little snot! Yeah! Don't tell me what to do! I already know.

I think I was six or seven in this picture.

And here comes some more. (Background is that Mrs. Ore was the cafeteria monitor and she had a microphone to tell us to behave.)

Sept. 6th.
Today I just got to use a third grade math book. Today Mrs. Ore was really talking. That dumb micriphone makes me sick. Mr. Hamon was in the cafitiria and someone through food.

Sept. 7
Today alot of people have gotten yelled at and we've only had an hour of scool yesterday Lark came over and we flew kites. Right now I'm in group I and reading book Growing.

Such a fabulously me childhood so far.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

have a dorkalicious new year!

I'd forgotten how much I love reverting to childhood, dorky pursuits.

Our neighbors have three children, two of whom I went to school with. We shall call one River and the other Ash.

I went to middle school and high school with River. He and I were in plays and singing things together. We were mistaken for twins once, despite the fact that he has olive-ish skin, super dark hair, and dark brown eyes. Ash is two years younger. I dated him my senior year. River wasn't happy. He said it was incest. I told him that I wanted to be involved in some kind of Greek epic. River didn't buy it. At any rate, Ash and I were also in plays and singing things together.

Their family is a musical family. Our friends are musical friends. We all know the same songs since we're from the same music groups and we always had a repertoire that was used before we got there and after we left.

We sang. We sang a lot! And we didn't have music! And it didn't matter! We knew it anyway! We talked about which songs were the best ones to sing if you needed to keep driving but the radio was putting you to sleep. (The Hallelujah Chorus is one.) We talked about the ones that get stuck in your head and just won't come out. We talked about the alternate lyrics we made up for warming up our youthful voices and for songs we didn't like.

Ah! Oh! So much fun!

But! Oh! Reading this kind of indicates to me that I was not only a bit of the nerdy, drama club kind of kid in high school, but I am a bit of the same now.

And yes, I already knew that. What I didn't know, however, was that I actively like it. Yes, indeed, if we could all get together once a month or something and sing our little hearts out, I'd be so very, very happy. And that's dorkalicious.

I am a bit ashamed of myself for getting all giddy and happy and laughing and saying, "Don't you remember Lirum? How about Planets or Kittery? (I don't remember Kittery. I do remember Chester; the previous song and Planets, Stars, and Airs of Space are two more song good for keeping awake in the car, according to River.)

But I must determine if it's worth getting people together for this stuff. The folks there were from Cleveland and Nashua and Boston and Pittsburgh. Other places, too, but I didn't pay enough attention.

How?! Oh, dear Santa, please provide a sleigh to capture all of my cuckoo friends and put them in one song-filled place!

tartan envy

I'm making a project with a family tartan. I have twelve "wee pieces" of a variety of tartans.

I wonder what happens when you don't like your tartan. My bet is that most people, especially Scottish people who like to feel cranky and stand in the rain in their wet wool tartans, just live with it. Perhaps women are motivated to choose their mate based on the attractiveness of the tartan.

zang!

I had coffee with CoolCat today. I ordered decaf coffee. You know, the kind of coffee that doesn't make me crazy? Well, guess who got some other kind of coffee!

Me! Mememememememememe! Me!

Being a clever guy, CoolCat flew outta Christmas town before the drug went to work. Very clever. He did not have to witness the next bit. I went Christmas shopping after I had the coffee. Coffee coffee coffee coffeeeeee! I needed some advice about my purchase and the fellow who was paid to give me advice was doing a really, um, not good job.

Caffeine does funny things to Dotty Parker. Everything was dandy for a good long time. I was shopping, asking questions in my usual persistant way when ZANG! it was all over. Mmmmhmmm! In the middle of the store it happened. I

t occurred to me that since the employee didn't know what the hell he was talking about I should ask someone else. So I asked someone else. Not an employee, but a person who doesn't work there. You know, someone who isn't an employee. Who spent half an hour with me helping figure out how to do things as simple as tying my shoes and as complicated as building a raft out of toothpicks, chewing gum, and the memoirs of Henry Kissinger.

Half an hour! Out of his life! To help me with Henry! Zang!

I even tried to get rid of him, but the coffee was contagious. He was on a mission! He was destined to find the product of my dreams! And he did. What a charmer! Perhaps he was a snake charmer.

*music* *Doo de doo doo doo.* *There's a place in France where the naked ladies dance.* That kind of snake charmer.

Or not.

Then I went to buy wrapping paper. Apparently caffeine makes me indecisive, too. I spend quite a long time choosing wrapping paper. As if anyone else knows if I chose the wrong one. As if there is a wrong one. Although I do think the Scooby Doo paper might be wrong. I'll have to rethink the use of that wrapping paper. I've sent diamond cufflinks (I love those French cuffs!) to my secret admirer, but maybe I should have waited to get some fancy paper. It probably would make a better impression. Maybe SpongeBob SquarePants paper would have been better than old Scoob. I sure hope my secret admirer is forgiving. Those Yogi Bear cufflinks were very expensive.

But about going to buy wrapping paper...it's hot in those stores. Why do they do that? People are dragging around their coats. (People being me.) And it's still hot. I wore a sweater today. And my favorite, toasty silk shirt. Mmmmmm. It's never quite warm enough at home. Although home is warm, it has drafty spots. So the toasty shirt and sweater seem like a good thing. But they don't seem like that when I get to the mall and shop around a bit, perhaps it's more evident when the caffeine kicks in full force, but hooahhhhh, too warm. Too warm!

No wonder shoppers are angry people. They should be wearing some kind of summer hiking gear. They should have one of those Camelback things so they can sip Gatorade laced with calming St. John's wort or the hypnotic valerian or the exciting guarana!

(Have I told you that we gave Spring valerian once? She had an Elizabethan collar on so she wouldn't scratch at her stitches. She was miserable and she kept walking around banging into doorways. I gave her valerian to make her get calm. It was the weekend and the vet was elsewhere. It's not a sedative. It's a hypnotic. Oops. She walked into the closet and stared out at us for hours.)

I'm dreaming of a drinkbox (bag) full o' liquid and herbal refreshment to make shopping easier. Mmm! Maybe I'll get myself one.

With caffeine!

it's still sweet

I talked to ChillyLily tonight. She's ab fab. She called me to say hello. Her name's Chilly and she lives in Florida. She said it's in the fifties there. Chilly, yes. So I suppose her name is appropriate. I must admit some envy, however. The green-eyed monster is ready to whisk this blue-eyed girl away to the great-wide-open waters of toasty-warm vacation-land.

I am also envious of Florida. Florida gets to spend time with ChillyLily, and she's a funny lady.

We were talking about things people do that are described as "sweet" but still bring people like me up short when it comes to comprehending the action. I just read an article today about an adopted woman who has coffee a few times with her birth mother. Her birth mother ends up being a codependent stalker with dreams of making up for lost time. Despite these shortcomings, the daughter sends flowers on the birth mother's birthday. Yes, it's sweet. But yow, why? So today, as a topic hung in the air between us, I said, "Oh, that was sweet."

silence

"But the way you said that, Dotty..."

"Well, it's kind of painful and untenable, but it's still sweet."

Then we laughed, perhaps ruefully, knowing that it will always be true and will always be part of being human.

Humans. Bah.

And what do humans do that's so bah worthy? Among the many things that would give me a leg up over the saddle of my high horse are good luck/bad luck forwards that come over email.

I started bitching about a batch of forwards I got that never came along with a note.

So ChillyLily said, "Oh, well, I'll remember to never send you a forward."

To which I responded with a self-conscious roll of the eyes, "No. You know. The kind of naive, useless forward that acts like correspondence..."

I trailed off.

quiet

ChillyLily helped me out. "Hey, Dotty, have you heard from Bedazzled?"

"Yeah, actually, she sent the forwards."

ChillyLily murmured, "Sweet, naive, and ineffectual, so that's why she came to mind."

I love ChillyLily.

549+tax

A price tag was bestowed upon me by TheLion. Tex tried to guess my worth. He began with 499 and then moved up to the generous 515.

I was worth 549+tax.

He had underbid.

I'm not sure how I feel about being undervalued. I am further unsure of how it feels to be a taxable item. Unnecessary items are taxed. Items like food and milk and clothes (valued at less than $110 per purchase) are not taxed.

I am taxed, apparently. I could look at this as if I were an inessential item.

Clearly untrue.

So perhaps I'm a luxury good. Like a fur coat or a fancy car.

Or a six-pack of beer.

There are no units on my price tag. I might name any currency or non-currency I want. Five hundred forty-nine peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Plus tax, which is a glass of milk. Fat content your choice. Five hundred forty-nine million billion pairs of blue shoes. Plus a tax of shoe laces and replacement heels.

But I must say, despite the authority most certainly weilded by a person named "TheLion", I must point out that I don't live in his jurisdiction. So the price tag is irrelevant.

I didn't notice a price tag for anyone else, although there was a laptop computer with the same price tag...still, once a person has used a computer for a while, that computer certainly becomes priceless. There are so many thoughts and schemes, so much data and information, so many stored games of solitaire, that a value could never be placed upon the small electronic box.

And so I thank TheLion for his inadvertant pricing of Miss Dotty. There's no way to put a price on all the stuff jangling around in this head of mine.

I wonder about his...

foot-lickin' good

Sprocket is currently licking my foot. She prefers my calf, but both of them are currently covered by blue jeans.

Sprocket is a lickety dog, A friend of mine had a dog named yippity. Perhaps I should have followed her lead and named mine lickety.

I tried sprinkling salt on my hand once, but she didn't like it. I presume it was too salty. When I put moisturizer on my hands, I have to pull them inside my sleeves so that she won't lick them so much.

I think she prefers me to BE since she doesn't seem to tickle me as much. She doesn't like a moving target. I suppose if I were going to lick a flagpole in winter, I'd want it to be standing still. So maybe that's why she likes me more?

Still, I wonder why she does it to begin with. I don't lick flagpoles, even though I could. She'd probably lick those, too. But nor for as long a time as she licks me.

BE suggests, and I tend to agree, that she's licking the salt from my hands. But after a while, doesn't the salt go away? How many layers of salt must there be if she just keeps licking my hand or my foot or my ankle?

Perhaps I'm a modified Lot's wife. A moving pillar of salt layered with skin and dog spit.

monkey shines

I was thinking about what to talk about today and everything seemed serious. And uninteresting.

So I've made a picture. It's entitled "Skeptical Worship".

You may feel free to make up your own story.

I already have, but I'm tired and want to sleep.

g'night

*blip*

Last night we had a half way power outage. (Quite possibly a squirrel in the transformer. Good eatin'.) Our lamps were dimmed. The power backup things (UPS and I can't remember what it stands for--Unifiedl P-funk Superfire?) To keep our machinery from sizzling out of usefulness (which has heppened in the past) BrilliantEditor went downstairs to turn off all the computer action. I was internetting it up when all of a sudden, *blip*, no more internetting for me.

Speaking of internetting, there's a word in the sewing world: interlining. Clothes have the "fashion fabric" and then the lining. Fancy schmancy clothes have a lining between the lining and the fabric. Thus, interlining.

If a person (like me) were to use the word "netting" a bit more liberally, then many of the preferred interlinings could be made of netting. This would thus allow a devotee of the needle arts (like me) to create our own internet any time we started a new schmancy project.

If a seamstress were to make wedding dresses, the bride could do background checks on her guests at the reception. She could blog during the ceremony. She could manage her newgroups and order champagne for the honeymoon.

Although not directly related, the following does relate to one of my fabric dreams. (I have them. How screwed up is that?) To go along with the wedding dress, our bride would have a beautiful veil.

I want fabric with fiber optics woven in. I want to have some kind of battery power thing or preferably a body-head powered light system to create a net of gently sparkling lights. The sparkling fabric would be miraculously not pointy so breakage would not be a problem.

How fab would it be to have real light-up clothes? Halloween costumes, wedding dresses, costumes, athletic clothes (to avoid being hit by scary cars).

*blip* our power went out. But the internet is so very in.

don't (invisible) fence me in

Spring bit the UPS man's pants last week. I tried to tell him to stay on the stairs, do not come up the stairs, but I think he was trying to be nice. And his pants got bitten. I'm very happy to have an invisible fence, but am discovering that a lack of signage to acknowledge said fence leaves an element of mystery for anyone visiting the house. They may think, "Well, the dogs are outside with no fence! Must be happy, friendly dogs!"

They'd be wrong.

To distract me from my horror at my dog's miserable behavior (which I am endeavoring to correct) I decided to sing a fence song.

Oh, give me land, lotsa land, under starry skies above.
Don't fence me in.

I think Spring would sing that song if she had a penchant for singing. That's left to Sprocket. Sprocket speaks in tongues, though, so she wouldn't sing that song either.

Speaking of speaking in tongues, I saw Hell House tonight. It's a documentary about a Pentecostal church in Texas that does a "haunted house" each year at Halloween time. The wacky twist is that instead of creepy, spooky, un-namable stuff, you see school shootings re-enacted. Domestic violence and incest. A gay man dies of AIDS. You see the results of going to a rave, taking drugs without knowing it, being date-raped, figuring out that the repercussions of that evening's events are so severe that a young woman screams, "What kind of God are you?!" at a picture of Jesus and then slits her wrists. And in the meantime, a Grim Reaper character is wandering around being the devil on the shoulder.

Shockingly, the documentary is completely balanced. At least it seemed that way to me. There were things that I felt the urge to snicker about. I generally gave in to those urges. Yet, it was really hard for me to chalk up their behavior to complete idiocy. And I really wanted to. I hate that. I want to be just as prejudiced and ugly as the people I'm preparing to meet, and then I discover that the prejudice isn't necessarily ugly. They really think they're saving me from eternal damnation. They really do! (I'm waiting for a personal letter informing me of my position on the list of folks to be eternally damned.) And it's kind of obvious that the prejudice thing, the one that I firmly grasp and hang on to, isn't one that's of a right or wrong nature. There are different questions being asked and answered. It's a bit like jousting, but the riders have their lances on the wrong side so no one can do any real damage except to try to push them off the horse.

And here's a tip from me to you:if you're on a moving horse, don't try to push anyone off of theirs. You're going to fall down.

As usual, I'm struggling with how to make my gut feelings match up with my thoughts. I think the problem is that they're so far apart. Brains at the top wanting to be in charge; guts in my belly warning of gastric distress should they be ignored.

Don't fence me in.

art

I have a notebook that has little sayings about art and such on the bottom of every fifth page or so. It was on sale for $2.99 when I was in Florida and wanting a place to write things down. The page I've just turned to says, "Art should encourage you to ask questions and, even more important, to be happy that you don't know all the answers."

That sounds very wise, doesn't it?

It also sounds completely unsatisfactory to me, as I'm in a not-so-mystical mood.

One thing is true. I don't know all the answers. I don't even know what I want all the answers to be. I do know that I don't want there to be any difficult answers. I want the questions to be as impossible as they want to be and have the answers be perfect enough to grant the desired result and leave no wreckage behind. That's what I want. It doesn't look like a likely thing, however.

Take an example today. I was helping Florette out with some holiday greens. We had some variegated holly that was intended for use in floral arrangements the next day. Some of the holly was gross and blackened, though. A few of the berries were moldy looking.

So what's the question here: how does a person best deal with unacceptable holly and a deadline?

Even for something as simple as this, the answer isn't easy. The answer Florette decided to go with was to rescue as much of the holly as possible. She'd save the unacceptable holly and send it back to them. It seems kind of easy, but it isn't really. The easy answer is that after a phone call they would stop by within a few minutes bringing new holly. The complicated part comes with how to complain and when to do it and if it will be worth the time and will it make a difference and is there any way it could be fixed tomorrow and why should she have to worry about this nonsense anyway?

See? Not an easy answer. Not a difficult question. Although the repercussions of this particular series of questions that I have devised are small, imagine building it up into a big pile with lots of difficult questions like which groceries to buy. Or the Middle East Peace Talks. Even Jimmy Carter has failed to scale that particular mountain of questions.

So. Art should encourage you to ask questions...Okay. But be satisfied, happy, even, with no answers?

I don't think so.

Art should have answers, since there aren't very many in real life. Leave the frustrating enigmas to reality.

pitching pine

I was making a wreath tonight out of pine boughs from the yard. I made what I think is a pretty wreath. (I also made a mess, but hey, that can be fixed. I've heard that, anyway.)

By the time the wreath was ready to be decorated and the decorations were out, my hands were pretty well covered in pine sap. I look like I've been playing in coal.

It's intriguing that I'm fine with having sticky, piney hands. Why? I got my hair cut today. Getting my hair cut is such an ordeal for me that I do it three or four times a year. I'm trying to get better. (Go to Nancy at Scizzor Wizards. She rocks.) Nancy keeps me calm. She inspires confidence in her skills and decisions, too.

She suggested that I try a new shampoo since it's winter and split ends (omigod!) will start to be more prevalent. She also suggested a HAIR PRODUCT.

I bought the product. I'm now afraid that my hair will be crunchy like it was in plays in high school when they helmeted me with AquaNet.

Ah, but anyway.

Pine pitch. Do you think if I put that in my hair I'd be more comfortable since I know what it would do? I totally need to get over this. Apparently fifteen years isn't long enough.

Get over what? I could tell the real story, but it's boring. So maybe a more interesting one would be better...hmm.

Here we go! Just an FYI to anyone who might have a smart/dorky kid in the vicinity, gym class sucks. (That's true, by the way.) There were all kinds of kids who were not aware of my delicate, princess-like nature. Even in high school, there was a bit of this kind of anger.

One woman in my gym class was in the cosmetology program. The girls in that program were the ones who had bangs that scraped the doorframes when they walked through. They smoked on the corner. They had leather jackets with puffy shoulders and then tapering to the waist, often with long, narrow triangular accents on each side.

This woman was, for reasons unknown to me, my mortal enemy. We'd play mat ball and I'd have to go to the nurse's office and then the hospital for treatment of a concussion. She hit me so hard with a dodgeball that one of my eyes popped out. Thank goodness Dr.Dad was there to put it back in. He said, in his laconic way, "Good thing they didn't pop the globe. Use some ophthalmic antibiotic."

At any rate, I went to get my hair cut the next year, after she'd graduated. I just wandered into one of those haircutting places in the mall. I sat down in the indicated plastic chair, and it was her.

Her!

She used water that was too hot, nearly separating my skin from my skull. She cut my hair badly. I looked like my hair had been terraced and that the left-over products she'd gunked into my hair was the crop of the season.

I swear she would have burned me with a curling iron, but I was already weeping and sliding down onto the hair covered floor begging her to have mercy on my poor head.

She stopped. The other hairdressers looked at me with venom. One of them tripped me on the way out. My eye would have fallen out, but I had my hand over it. That's where some of the hair product had already fallen into my eye.

I gave her a generous tip and ran as fast as I could to Burger King. People laughed at me as I ran through the mall. Little did I know that one of the hair products she put in my hair was one like Nair--it dissolves hair. By the time I figured it out and washed it out in the bathroom, I had tiger stripes of weak hair. I begged a little girl to bring me a crown from the front of the restaurant.

She told her mother that I accosted her in the bathroom. I was afraid that her mother was going to be the hair stylist, but it was just a semi-weird lady who offered me a hairnet, too.

I left the mall that day knowing that I never wanted to get my hair cut again. And that I wanted to slash that stylist's tires.

So that's a way better story than the real one.

shhhh...imagine...hush...!

Wow! ChillyLily just called with the most amazing news ever.

She was listening to a relaxation tape, and she was feeling pretty chill when something happened. And she couldn't stop laughing. So she called me. She played me the tape. And this is what I heard.

Your purpose is to relax, to let go of stress.
Allow yourself to relax more deeply.
There is no need to justify or judge your feelings.
Just watch them.
Honor your feelings even if they hurt.
All of your feelings are valid.
You may feel the desire to do something.
No matter how small or large, whether you feel the willingness to go or whether you feel the desire to stay, whatever you choose will be right for you.
You will feel aware.
If you don't wish to go, you can rest in your acceptance of where you are.
Much change begins with thoughts, prayers, and visions, or maybe external action.
You may want to begin change within yourself, your workplace, or your community at large.
You don't need to know just yet where or what.
Again, get in touch with your feelings.
Ask your feelings quietly and internally,
is this my energy to make this world a better place?
A place where terrorism no longer happens?

Yes. Hush, sweet love, hush. Feel quiet, gentle. Know that you are accepted and honored. Know that you have strength and intuition that will help you make your world a better place.

AND STOP TERRORISM, DAMN YOU!

ChillyLily called me up laughing and asked if I had a minute, which I did. She played me the cd this was on and I was wondering, "Hmm, am I supposed to laugh? Because I don't get it." And then I learned that I can help to change the world, to make it a place where terrorism no longer happens.

Ha!

Lying on the floor hoping not to get stepped on or licked by a pet, being dedicated to truly resting, relaxing, to really letting go of the tension that lives in our muscles...oh yes. When it can happen, it's truly fabulous. It doesn't happen that often, though. There's the phone or someone talks to you or the curtains are on fire--something is always in the way.

Here, though, they've cut out the whole concern about kitty or telephone or fire. They've jumped right in and said TERRORISM in the middle of a relaxation session. "Your happy place is always within you." That's what the man said. Unfortunately he set up detour signs on the way to relaxation that said ALARM and WHAT? and LAUGH.

I told ChillyLily that it wasn't entirely without merit. If she had to go into a meeting that made her nervous she could just think, "Terrorism. Relax." and feel much better about everything.

I don't think it gets to any underlying sources of stress, this terrorism method. In fact, I think it might reinforce the habit of dealing with tension by using inappropriate humor. Not that I'd know anything about that.

What it does get at, though, is the idea of me solving the problem being completely absurd. So absurd, in fact, that I don't have to worry about terrorism anymore.

I'm relaxed about it, too.

Rockin.

did you know that old people knew about sex?

I spent this morning folding newsletters for the Vernal Community Association. The people I worked with were all at least forty years older than I am. I sometimes wonder what will happen when they die, and how soon that will be.

One guy talked about his time in Korea. He used to have to drive in mine fields. I'm not sure why, but I know it wasn't for fun. At any rate, he was in some supervisory position and he had a fellow who wasn't terribly bright. This fellow did have an appetite for sex, despite his dimness.

There were prostitutes outside the base and he went to one for some satisfaction. She told him, however, that she was diseased and that for $4 more, she would give him a penecillin injection.

He was a doofus and got the shot.

The next day his upper arm was swollen to the size of the thigh. He went to the hospital area the next day and they discovered that the "penecillin" injection he thought he'd received had been milk of magnesia. The prostitute was known from then on as the Milk of Magnesia Mama.

In honor of this strange (to me) revelation, that no matter how many times it's revealed is still strange, that people have sex. Most people, in fact. Old ones included.

It's so weird.

soundtrack

I do believe I've written about the soundtrack for my life. I do believe I've explained that TheGirlWithTheHair gave me a theme song--Long Train Running by the Doobie Brothers. I think she just liked to think of us both walking down the street with our hair doing what our hair does while that song sings, "Without love, where would you be now?"

Ha ha! Losers! We have the hair! Without hair like this? You'd be right where you are now, kid.

Um, so maybe I have to grow into that song. It doesn't seem to apply to me as passionately as the singer would like it to.

At any rate, I took the dogs for a walk today. They aren't good at holding conversation with me, so I tend to think.

A confession for you. Please, you must not reveal this. I often think too much.

Oh! Well, the cat's out of the bag now. And if I were going to think too much, I would ask who the hell put a cat in a bag anyway? And what does it mean, exactly? Why don't we say that the crayons are out of the box? Or the keys are out of the lock? Or the filling is out of the tooth? All three of those things could have sticky consequences. And none of them involve trapping a live animal in a bag of any sort.

Sometimes thinking too much begins to be a problem for me. When it's silliness, I'm all for it. Almost all. It is generally inappropriate at funerals. But when the thinking is not silliness, when it's the kind of thinking that people do when they're driving to work or standing in line for the elevator, too much of that kind of thinking isn't such a good thing.

What I need to do, you see, is to have some kind of valve to let these thoughts out. I imagine them as a growing piece of licorice. When I'm thinking silly things, the licorice is tasty and so I eat it up and mmmmmm yummy licorice. When the thoughts are serious (I swear, I've been serious at least once. At least.) the licorice is not tasty. Thus, I have an ever increasing spool of not-tasty licorice growing in my brain. It makes my thoughts squish around and there isn't enough room for them to be teased apart so that the wheat might be separated from the chaff.

Instead, the thoughts are plucked at and torn so that the original idea can only be found in tatters and threads, yet the processing isn't complete. And it's all because there are too many useless thoughts in my head.

It should be perfectly obvious that I need to have a non-tasty licorice dispenser. I could probably sell the stuff to the Scandanavians. They eat the licorice that's very black and tastes like salt and licorice and burned things. I betcha that's what the non-tasty licorice would taste like.

The short story is that I think too much and have decided to think too much only at pre-approved times. I do the approving, of course.

To not think so much today, I started singing to myself. There's no one around; the dogs don't care; I can entertain myself by making up lyrics I can't remember. It's all great.

When I got into the car after our walk, though, I started thinking. Not too much, but thinking. I thought, "Why do I choose the songs that I choose? Does this mean that I'm crafting my own soundtrack? And if that's true, perhaps I should take a song list with me in case anyone's writing down the songs I'm singing to myself." Well, yeah, it might be too much. But it's meaningless. So it doesn't count.

This may seem absurd, but imagine going through your whole life hearing someone singing, "High on a hill, was a lonely goat herd...yodel yodel yodel." I bet you wouldn't be satisfied with your personal soundtrack, even if it did come from The Sound of Music.

Today's Dotty Soundtrack consisted largely of showtunes from The King and I, , and West Side Story. Even then, though, I was concerned that I'd be forced to have only Broadway songs in my head. So I started singing music from high school. "John Brown's boots, the sparkle and shine! John Brown spurs, they jingle and chime..." Old German folk tunes. I wish I could have remembered the words to the la la la la song where you put granny's head into a basket.

I grow certain that I'm going to have a life full of surreal exchanges and the certainty of being impatient for mundane things to be interrupted by weirdness. It seems to me that a bunch of showtunes, a Doobie Brothers song, some Christmas carols, and a few madrigals and motets from high school won't cut it. Not for me. I want to be fancy.

Fancy, though. That's something that's hard to get a handle on.

the texture of mmleh

Sprocket likes to help me with my projects. She really likes to stick her head in the trash and pull out the interesting and tasty bits. I would put these bits into a trash can that's dog-inaccessible, but I don't know what she'll find interesting. And it keep her from being bored. I was watching her tonight as she picked through the bag of trash that I'd just filled. She allowed me to record her internal musings.

(Sprocket wants a byline.)

oh i found a feather oh its wet now with my face and mmleh mmleh mmleh when my mouth goes chewing and the feather isnt so good now but i spit it out and oh i found a feather and oh it gets wet and mmleh mmleh mmleh its good but now im done and oh i found a feather mmleh uh oh hey whats that over there uh oh now i have paper pieces in my teeth and they stick to my tongue and then i go mmleh mmleh mmleh and try to peel them off my tongue but think i will just eat them like when i find a kleenex and just eat it and oh that girl left her coat on the floor and theres stuff in there to pull out and taste and spit out mmleh mmleh mmleh and wish i had my own coat to put things in to taste things but that girl made me a coat and i wont wear it because i look stupid like a stupid dog with a coat on and there are no pockets anyway and thats stupid but i wish i had a coat to put things in so i just eat them or bury them in dirt which is better than a pocket because it makes things tasty but maybe just a pocket would be good

I was watching Sprocket eating/licking/tasting feather bits and tried to figure out what sound she'd make if she were making letter sounds. The best I could come up with was mmleh. Say it out loud, or mouth the word, when no one's looking and you'll find that your mouth will make the shape of spitting things out or trying to scrape bad tastes of your tongue. You might look a little like Mr. Ed, too.

So here's a tip from me to you: if you want to know about the mouth-feel (thanks to Mr.Guy for that word) of a particular food item, or potential food item, talk to Sprocket. Sure, her punctuation is a little nonexistent and she tends to go on a bit, but she can tell you if something feels weird in her mouth.

Live insects, for example, have been deemed weird.

Spring used to like to eat straight pins and earrings. I think it was a fetish thing.

Neither one of them likes to lick rocks. I think the whole anhydrous action sucking the water right out of their tongues is a bit of a turn off.

If you have a question about mouth-feel and are curious to know what my dogs think about it, drop me a line and I'll let you know the verdict.

Incidentally, while I was recording Sprocket's internal dialog, I had BE recording Spring's.

(She wants a photo byline. She specified so I said okay. I didn't tell her Sprocket was going to get the same thing...)

Here they are.

I see pigdog.
She snorts through trash.
It is disgusting.
I cannot believe she does.
Feathers are sticking.
Dust sticks on nose.
I know more.
I do not dig in trash.
I am choosy.
I pick careful.
I invented mmleh.

So there you have it, boys and girls. The tasty textures of Dotty's pups. This could be my doctoral thesis for when I get a degree from a college in some other dimension.

oh, sorry. right? sorry?

Some days there is simply nothing to say.

Today, however, isn't one of those days. Sorry.

I was thinking today about how sometimes apologies are not called for, even though embarrassment or remorse is felt. Even though the urge runs deep, deep down to the internal demon that made you so unworthy. Oh. Sorry about that.

A real life example: I'm driving down the road and this kid throws his brand new balsa wood plane at my car and I run over it. I kill the gnome who was learning to fly, as well. Of course I'm sorry it happened. Still, it's not as if I did it out of malice. And there's remorse, well, I may have scarred that child for life! And gnomes have it pretty hard to begin with...so you see my action is so incredibly powerful that the entire world will crumble as a result of it! Oh yes!

An actual real life example: Sometimes I say the wrong thing. Sometimes I say the wrong thing in a fabulously spectacular way. The night I insulted my father-in-law's boss at a banquet for my father-in-law...I didn't know it was the boss. So was there malice? Maybe a little. I was trying to make my father-in-law look so clever and ingenious. But was I sorry? Of course. I didn't want to be a jerk. And remorse, oh yes there was remorse. But he said there was no reason to apologize. And I did anyway. I bet I apologized for that, too.

But what do you do after you apologize? What do you do when you apologize and it still doesn't feel like enough? Or it doesn't feel quite right? You're still sorry after you've said so?

Well! If you're me, and you could be, if you try really really hard and give me lots of money so you can have lessons and some of my clothes, you just keep apologizing. It's totally endearing. People love it. Oh, yes. Do spend hours begging forgiveness for an already forgiven sin and watch the person whose mercy you request turn into a fiery-eyed monster of retribution! Don't you feel better now? No more sorry, right?

Wrong. Now you're sorry for inspiring such ire.

I'm working out a dance routine for my excessive apologizing. It'll be better than the Macarena since the hand gestures will be limited to things that go well with wincing looks. Hiding one eye while you scrunch your nose. Putting your hand over you mouth while your eyes are wide in shock and self-loathing (that's a little strong, but dance is all about the passion!), turning away looking at your shoes, furtive glances and then quick darting movements, as if to escape!

It's a work still in progress. Sorry.

It's hard to translate, you see, although I do this dance a lot. And it's not a good dance, you see. If it were, I wouldn't have to say, "I'm sorry." I'd just say, "Oh, yeah! That's fab! What a strange thing to have happen! Hahahahaha!"

I was teasing TheLion about this today at lunch. There are things that happen all the time that we say, "I'm sorry," for and it isn't really appropriate to say, "I'm sorry." I apologized to the server at lunch today and I don't remember why. I was probably apologizing for ordering. I think he said that I didn't have any reason to apologize. So I told him I was sorry that I'd apologized.

There's another part of the "I'm Sorry" dance. The foot change and then the cross over to another dancer to say, "Sorry!"

Then I can say I'm sorry with good reason.

And somehow it still isn't enough.

I guess it's like a game.

working hard, yo.

As you now know, I am the wind. Whooosh.

As you may or may not know, it is v. v. windy. Oh yeah. It's so windy that the windows seem like they're going to break. I hope that won't happen. I prefer it when glass is intact. It's not quite as pointy or dangerous. Sometimes dangerous is good, you know, the danger of a Cuban cigar or saying naughty words when standing next to the Pope. But pointy shards, I have to vote no.

They hurt.

But the wind, you see, is so frantic. More frantic than even I am (when I'm not being the wind) most of the time. Not all of the time, of course. Sometimes the frenetic pace of Her Royal Highness Dotty Parker rivals the energy level of a gas molecule on fire. Whoa. Spaz.

Speaking of spaz, I watched a clip of Ali G, a cuckoo guy that CoolCat told me about. Ali G was talking to Boutros Boutros Ghali. Interviewing him.

Click on the first clip (even though it looks like it should be the second clip, at the time I am writing this, it's the first clip). Check out the spazzy nature of his spaz gesture.

That spaz could be me.

There's a small part of me, the breezy part that switches direction for no reason at all, that thinks that I might be a bit, uh, excitable. When I'm in public and meeting new people or trying to behave as I imagine other people behave, often I wonder what I look like from the outside. Do I look the way that I feel? Do I look like I have weights on me so I don't fly away? Does it look like I have spray-glued my face so that it only conveys a certain range of emotions?

I bet that it does. An advisor of mine summed up my behavior in two anecdotes.

One--I described something that was insignificant, but freaked me out. He looked at me with that wise old owl face and said, "You've got the panic knob turned up a little high, there."

Two--Keeping that in mind, I decided that at least once I would be professional and not let my mind wander. Although I always wanted to talk about the birds' nests on the roof of the biology building, (Named Winston Hall. The Chemistry Building was called Salem. The art museum was Reynolda House. Can you guess which tobacco company had lots to do with our founding?) this day I sat still, did not let my eyes flit around to read the cartoons he'd posted or the spines of the books he'd read. This day, I was determined to be good.

Yeah, well, good doesn't look very nice on me. It isn't my color. He, once again, gave me the professor owl look and said, "What's going on? You seem like you've been holding back...like you've tied yourself down."

Then, of course, it came pouring out of me. Blah de blah de blah! Exclamation points everywhere. Babbling all over. Explanations of how I was wanting to pretend to be a grown up.

He looked amused. I'm sure he was. I would have been disappointed if he hadn't noticed how scientific I was being. I guess I'm glad I failed. I would have been horrified if I'd had to repeat the performance day after day. Bleeehhhhhh.

And so, I'm coming to believe that I'm just going to be like that. I may have to not sit still sometimes, but, in fact, it may not look as seizure-like as I imagine. And even if it is, I'm going to have to find a new way to deal with it.

Currently, I see, from afar, that I take up as much physical space as any human being is allowed to. Flapping around, gesturing wildly, sticking my legs out weird when I walk. See the Leonardo drawing if you have any questions.

In real life, this can't be true because almost everyone I know still has both eyes and my ankles seem to work well. What I must do is rethink the Leonardo drawing. Instead of focusing on these arms and legs flapping, slaves to the wind, I should look at the divine proportions that have been noted for centuries. Most authoritatively in the book, The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.

Yes, Dotty, think, as the breeze blows through your hair, you are still excitable, but in oh-so-beautiful proportions. Like that man said in that book.