Dotty Parker

god says, "sell sell sell!"

I have all kinds of things I'd like to whine about. I'd like to whine about how I'm sleepy and about how I feel like I have too much to do and not enough time and about how this week feels like a very long week and about how absurd it is for me to whine with the expectation of gentle sympathy that will come with comfort and reassurance when most other people in the world likely feel the same way.

I'm lonely in the absence of my own uniqueness. That I can whine about and be unique! It still doesn't bring comfort or reassurance, though. Boo.

At work today I had two people walk in and say, "I want to buy a sewing machine." I like it when they do that.It makes my life a bit simpler.

To entertain myself this evening, I've been skipping around websites. Surfing, I believe it's called in these new and jangling times. I found some interesting ones. My favorite right now, at 12:04 midnightish is yo-God.com.

You should go there. I wish I had one. Then I'd know how my sewing machine sales were going to go. Just by using my God Detector.

teaching songbirds to scream

I taught band.

On Monday I went to school to substitute for the band teacher. Middle school and high school.

Back in my day, although I never took band, I did take chorus. When we had a substitute teacher, we had study hall. What was the substitute supposed to know about music?

Well, in this teacher’s world, the substitute is supposed to know some things.

I did fine for a while. I counted out rhythm charts with the middle school percussion people. Then I had a free period where I ate some lunch. I did well at that, too. There was high school band which was largely a blur. I asked some students to do most of the work and they were happy to oblige.

Then I had the trombone twins come in a try to play music. Holy cow. Those twins could have combined their talents and still have been less than good. Yes, they were only middle school students, but those were my ears they were playing near. It was soooo loud. So loud.

Middle school band was in the afternoon. I had one kid who decided to play a different instrument. Another decided to be a mouthy little bastard. I said something like, “If you’re going to play it, then play it the way you’re supposed to.”

He said, sort of quietly, “I’ll play ‘it’ when I find out what ‘it’ is. Do you think it will be fun?”

I said, “’It’ is a game called, ‘Shh.’” It was an abrupt kind of shh with my hand closing as if it were a puppet’s mouth. “You should be playing it right now.” “Shh.”

That was a popular response among all by the shh-ee.

Little punk.

I went to bed at 8:00-ish last night. I slept until morning. Mmmm. Sleep’s so good.

rabbit season...

I'm watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. Marvin Martian just showed up with his wicked, wicked plan to blow up the earth with his dynamite (uranium something something explosive space modulator) and huge cannon. He's also brought his weird green dog. The kind of dog who falls for the great trick where he says no no no no and Bugs says yes yes yes no...then the dog says yes, instead. Foolish little guy.

BellyRub and I used to try that on each other. We were cleverer than the dog, though. The person who tried the reversal got the short end of the stick. The other person just said, "Okay, that's what I wanted anyway."

The classic was

"Duck season."
"Rabbit season!"
"Duck season!"
"RABBIT SEASON!"

And so forth.

I have created an image for you. Pictures of us at about thirteen, likely when this game was long over, but I am not currently in possession of those adorable photos of yours truly. Oh yes, and BellyRub, too.

It amuses me to see where our pictures came from. I don't know that I've shared the sources of my picture parts before, but there's no time like Sunday night, I suppose.

Here's BellyRub having a good ol' time killing pumpkins.

And here's me. Notice where we're all standing. I think I've been raised to be surly when that name is arouned.

hey, lemme whine about sleep some more

Last night I fell asleep around 5:30 or 6. I woke up at 8:30.

The babies upstairs were crying a lot last night. I couldn't sleep anyway, but hearing them made me a little edgy. I think they must be sick, though, because they were crying today.

Sometimes little kids get overtired and they get cranky. Sometimes they have these little tantrums full of rage the object of which really isn't anyone's fault.

That was me. I was tired. They were crying. More loudly and again and again. I looked up at the ceiling and said in a whisper that had the passion of a scream, "Shut up! What the *!@% is wrong with you?!"

Does anger about baby crying require such language? Does it require such punctuation? It sure felt like it at the time.

So I got creative. I did allow myself the indulgence of one door slam, but then I sat in the bathroom with the water running doing copy edits. My very own waterfall. Ahhhhh.

And so screaming babies.

Tonight, if I can't sleep, I'm going to make a bed in the bathroom and turn on the water and sleep there. It may not be the most comfortable bed, but it would work for sleeping, and that definitely counts for a lot.

rose colored glasses

There's a very cool site out there. It's called Human Flower Project and it has some v. groovy articles on it.

I got an email from it's v. v. groovy goddess of flowery prose, Miss Julie (who deserves a Dotty name, but will have to wait until inspiration strikes) saying thanks for a picture of rose hips that she used on her site.

You really ought to read her stuff.

This is one of my favorite recent entries. It took bread and flowers to make this badass saint.

Julie's cool.

midnight at the oasis

I want something tasty to eat. I had some dinner, but it wasn't tasty. I didn't expect it to be, but there's always hope.

I'm having an apple now. I had some raw cashews before. Now I want something dense and tasty and good.

Here's the dilemma: what exists out there that is dense, tasty, and good, and can be eaten with only a smallish amount of guilt? Forgetting the guilt, what out there is dense, tasty, and good?

Brownies are good. But I'd have to mix them up and bake them and eat them and that isn't happening anytime soon. The already made brownies at the store aren't what I want.

Lasagna. That's dense and tasty and good. But I'd have to buy it frozen right now. And then I'd want to buy the lower fat kind. Then I have to remember which one I liked. Then I remember that none of them are going to fulfill my craving because they aren't as dense as regular lasagna would be. So no.

Pie? Not dense.

Sandwich on dark wheat bread with smoked turkey and cheddar cheese and lettuce and tomato and onion and Dijon mustard and toast the bread. Lots of ingredients. Has potential to be dense, would be tasty and good...

Cookies? With the huge variety of cookies out there I would surely find one that fit my needs...

For the first, I'd have to go to the grocery store to buy the ingredients, and, perhaps, a toaster, although I can toast bread like a champ without one. For the second, I'd have to go to the grocery store and stand in the aisle and stare at the shelves and pace up and down them looking at the nutritional information and deciding if the low fat Oreos are worth buying or if I should get the thin cookies over in the exotic food aisle. Should I worry less about calories and fat and get the ones with the healthy nuts? Should I go get graham crackers and hope that I'll be able to fool myself into believing that these really are yummy? I could try buying a small package of something, like Animal Crackers. But then I'll be kicking myself for the obscene unit price.

I think I'll go with the healthy nuts. That's right, I'm staying home.

Nevertheless, I love going to the grocery store at night. It might contain exactly what I want. At night I have as much time as I need to find it.

An oasis of answers for a big world full of questions.

growl

I'm a very angry woman today. Perhaps not "very", but it's certainly obvious.

At work I said to a coworker, "I have so much venom to spill." I was telling the truth, but I hadn't actually realized it until the words touched my teeth.

In the car I sat looking at traffic and hating everyone who drove by. Jerks. I don't care about you at all. Jerks.

(Why? I don't know.)

I stopped at the car repair place. I chatted with the guy behind the counter and he wished me good luck with my choice, whatever it was. I said, "I just won't make the choice anyway. It doesn't matter."

(Snippy! Unpleasant!)

I got a chicken sandwich at the McDonald's drive through. The woman who handed me my food said, "Thank you. Have a nice day." She didn't smile when she said it. She barely looked at me. She didn't mean that. I told her, very sweetly, to have a nice day, too. I was hoping I would make her embarrassed to not pretend well enough.

I'm am such a pain in the ass today that I'm a pain in my own ass.

oh yeah...that thing i said i'd do...

I think I need a larger calendar. The kind that's large enough not to forget to look at.

I think I need a smaller calendar. The kind that's small enough to take with me so I can see where I'm supposed to be.

I think I need a calendar that's so sophisticated that it records and cancels the things that should be recorded and cancelled.

I think I need a calendar that's to simple that I don't even need to be reminded of things.

I'm growing more embarrassed by my lack of awareness of what day, time, hour, season, month, location...my surroundings, I suppose. I'm also growing a bit embarrassed that my lack of awareness is being interrrupted by my sudden awareness that, "Oh. Wow. This is not where I need to be."

Oh wow.

terror for the imaginative

I've got some big stuff going on in my big life and I'm still feeling big sick, yet I have an urge to amuse someone. I fear I may have posted this at some point, but I did a search and couldn't find it.

So my assumption is that I did not post it. This means that I can tell a story and give you funny things to smile about.

I was once sent to sales training for work. (Notice the word once. There is a reason for it.) It was a few months after September 11, 2001, and I was feeling worn down by stupid people who had been molded into big stupider people by other entities who need not remain nameless, but I can't spell Cheney or Rove or Bush or Scooter, so I guess that's the way it's going to be.

The people I was with, managers of stores like mine, were largely foolish. They didn't know how to take notes. (How can you not know that?) We did some math stuff so we could learn how to figure profit margin. These lovely ladies wrote down the numbers, but gave no indication of what the numbers might mean.

Yes, I'm still irritated by this, but I give you this example to show the grand absurdity that seemed to be trickling into their brains.

Our vice president for new business development, now president of the U.S. part of the company, began talking about how September 11th influenced our lives as people selling sewing machines. (?) (!)

He began with a little blurb about terrorism. He asked, "What are terrorists trying to do? Why are they trying to do it?"

Now brace yourself for some things you haven't heard in a few months.

"They want to scare us!"

He says, "Yes, yes."

"They hate us because we're free!"

"Good," said he.

"They want us to be scared!"

"Yes, they do," he said.

"They want to take away our freedom!"

"Mmm hm." Guess who said that...

"They want to scare us!" (I know I wrote that before, but they said it more than once.)

He said, "Yes, they want to frighten us."

I had been trying to keep my mouth closed. Really I had. That time was over, though. From my troublesome lips came these words, spoken with distain and cynicism.

THAT'S WHY THEY CALL THEM TERROR-ISTS?

Vice President Hoohah looked at me and said, "Oh, very good!"

I looked back at him with an incredulous look on my face. He realized that I was irritated, but he also realized that you can't make everybody happy.

The woman next to me said something like, "We have to bomb them. We have to make them know that what they do was wrong."

Once my words had started gushing, I couldn't stop. "There's no reason to do that! Those are innocent people! The people who did this are dead. What more do you want from them?"

"What would you do, if you're not going to bomb them?"

"Nothing. You can't respond to an irrational act of a few people by bombing an entire nation! You just can't!"

And she didn't get it. Not one little bit did she understand what I meant. And I got upset. I had tears in my eyes. I know I was stressed out and distressed by the episode. Nevertheless, I'm embarrassed that I cried. It's necessary to the story, though.

He said, "If anyone is really upset by this, they can leave and come back later. That's fine."

So I sat there for what was an eternity but was likely two minutes, then I got up and hurried back to my room to call BrilliantEditor and confess my sins. As I recall he said something like, "It's not really that bad. You'll be fine."

And I was. Am. I'm not really sorry about what I said, either. I'm not sure I would be sorry if I threw things at these people. Small things. Like a spool of thread or vegetables. Useful things. Useful to me because they would hurt them a little. Useful to them because, hey, who doesn't need more thread? We all need more vegetables.

I'd be helping.

The part I really wanted to get to, though, are these quotes. These suggestions were solicited in light of the 9/11 Commission's inclusion of "lack od imagination" among the reasons the World Trade Center attacks were not averted.

-Terrorists might incite trampling in crowded churches.
-Terrorists might start lots of fires.
-Terrorists might fill a burlap sack with bullets, climb a tall building, and throw the bullets off in handfuls.
-Terrorists might work to slowly erode the racial harmony that makes our country strong.
-Terrorists might use life-sized plastic explosive sculptures of homeless people in cardboard shanties.
-Terrorists might poison drinking straws at the factory.

Yes, indeed, terrorists might hate us just because we have freedom and they don't! They want to scare us; that's for sure. Or they might think we're a bunch of stupid people who use poison drinking straws. That's got to be what they're thinking.

eck. sick

I have a weird tummy ache thing. I had a sore throat to go with it, but that seems to have escaped. I hope it's happy to have its freedom. I'm happy to have released it.

In an acquisitive society like ours, it's good to remember that we're very generous when it comes to some things.

It's also good to know that sometimes no one can say, "No." They can look the gift horse in the mouth all they want and they still can't return it.

When I find out who bestowed my weird stomach ache and my sore throat, I will thank him or her with a gallon of spoiled milk and a box of kleenex.

That's what I'll do.

voting up a storm

I have a really bad stomach ache today and feel all icky. (A technical term. Don't go throwing it around.)

And yet, I have virtue enough to continue onward with extraordinary power to make it to the voting booth before collapsing on the floor in a pile of agonized victory.

Oh! Do be proud of me! Oh! Look within yourself to get your ass out of the house or where ever the hell you. Get your body into that voting booth, put in your one minute of civic duty or maybe of nihilistic amusement or maybe I don't care, but vote, doofuses. I won't call you a doofus if you vote.

And wouldn't that just make you day?

can't see!

I haven't made a picture here in quite a while. I feel like I'm lacking motivation and inspiration.

In the past I made a picture of a girl with moth wings and one with Sprocket and her monkey. I've got myself as Da Vinci's man and a mushroom in a life jacket. There's the kangaroo whose Joey is smoking a cigarette.

Now that I think about it, though, I did make a picture recently. I made it for my grandmother. She was in the hospital and it was her birthday and they found some cancer. How much does that stink?

At any rate, my gram has a thing for baby butts. I made her card to have lots of baby butts. I don't see the fascination, but she's the boss of the butts. I'm just making the picture.

little miss thing

Oh! How helpful I am!

Oh! I went and tutored my friend about making web pages. It's a simple page, which is nice, that we're working through to make into a guide for a family reunion. Aren't we sweet?

Then! I went to Ali's house. We played "Glamour Shots" and did each other's hair (I haven't put hot curlers in people's hair and done their makeup since high school) and makeup and then took pictures. Weren't we good friends to each other? We're putting Ali's pictures on Match.com so she'll have all the men after her.

This is Ali before:

Yhis is Ali after:

I'm saving mine for the day I'll have to be a 1982 waste-oid Hollywood wannabe.

Photo excised for the well-being of the world.

That photo scared me every time I saw it. So here's a new one. I sent this to my grandmother for her birthday and as a get well card. She loves baby butts.

I also went to pick up info from my new job copy editing scientific papers! (I wasn't dressed and painted like a waste-oid then.)

Oh what a busy day!

dogs on my mind

I was working as a substitute teacher today and had some time to think. There wasn't a lot of time to read as I was constantly interrupted, but I did have time to think about Spring and Sprocket.

Sprocket often steals focus from Spring. She's the most fun to "listen" to much of the time. She talks and babbles and doesn't use punctuation. Spring is more assertive and she's made clear declarations of her rights and privileges. Here are some samples.

Today, however, I was thinking of Spring. The people in my classes tended to be on the obnoxious side. I imagine Spring would walk around to meet them happily and when they pet her incorrectly, she'd walk away. That's how I felt about them. They weren't petting me, of course, but I had distinctly Spring-like thoughts:

Stop.
Stop now.
You're loud.
I didn't like that.
I like when you do what I say.
Do what I say.
Now.
Stop.
Pay attention to me.
You should like me.
Now.
Now.

I didn't say those things. Not as abruptly, anyway. But sometimes I wish I knew the magical trick that Spring has. She may not get people to pay attention, but she often looks satisfied anyway. I want that part.

absolutely wild!

I’ve not written lately for at least two reasons. One—I’m out of practice writing consistently. Two—I’ve been substitute teaching for elementary and middle school children.

Today I worked with high school people. I love them so. They long to be anywhere but school. They have a vague distaste for substitute teachers, which can be overcome by promising things or by giving snappy retorts. I love them.

Middle school students, they also have a distaste for substitute teachers, but it’s more a taste for blood, rather than a distaste. These are the ages when nothing is their fault and everyone else is doing something wrong and it’s entirely up to them to inform me of their classmates’ wrongdoing.

They’re annoying.

Elementary school children, well, they aren’t recognizably human, I mean they are, but they aren’t the same as the others. They have endless energy and an endless need to be paid attention to. They’re small and, in kindergarten, everything is made small to suit them.

So what does that have to do with not writing? Well! I’ve been coming home, doing whatever it is that I do, and falling asleep at 7:30 or 8. When I wake up in the morning, I still feel groggy and cranky. It seems that they’ve taken my energy and used it as their own,

Little bastards.

But they’re really cute! I’d like to treat them like wild animals. I can watch them from afar, their hi-jinx and fights. I can watch as they burst into tears for small reasons. And I won’t have to intervene, because they’re wild animals. Very wild.