October 27, 2007 -
Hey, Sweet Brother.
I can’t tell you how much I loved getting your letter. What an unexpected and wonderful surprise. The following three pages is the last letter I wrote to you -- in a rush. I was packing, getting ready for my 20-yr reunion. I have started this letter with that, and then I will pick back up with more current letters that I started, finally wrapping up with the present.
(written sometime in early August…I think…hell, I’m not sure)
….Good morning, my dear. This will be short, as I'm packing to go out of town (Hughes Springs) -- and, if recollection serves me, everything is sitting in a laundry basket… dirty.
I'm back onto black coffee now (sigh) It was healthy green tea for a while, but I could only take so much of that. And I betcha I have a little too much blood in my caffeine system right now, so as we “speak”, I am having another cup of Joe.
The kids are doing fine. Kris and his friend Scott have been home for a
couple of weeks, visiting before they head back to the real world. They brought their motorcycles. We all took a long ride the second day they were here, around the hill country area, and we had a blast. They took the bikes to Austin yesterday, to see some friends.
Ironically Baylen had been planning a trip to Austin for two months, to see a concert. The Black Keys. She saved her money for a month to make that trip. Word has it, from her brother, that she was kicked out within the first five minutes: one, for being underaged, two, for drinking anyway. I haven’t heard from her, and that was last night. She is going to be home the rest of the weekend and I certainly don’t look forward to being around her. Fortunately we will probably leave before she gets here. What a bummer. She will be like living with Wolverina for a couple of days. Talk about bad luck.
About the book, Regarding Uncertain…ah, how you say...is in hiatus? On hiatus?
It has always been my painful, daffy style to take the most challenging, intriguing, dear-to-my heart material and just stamp all over it (with the best of intentions, of course.) I regret doing this with (Uncertain). As it sits, it is trite and embarrassing. A first, miserable attempt at something way over my head. I eventually hit rock bottom with my first attempt at a sex scene -- oh, pray. I will never forget it. I was sitting on my couch with my laptop, feeling like a total pervert. I yanked up all of the cushions around me, in case the kids or Kevin walked into the room. The scene ended up sounding something like a flying circus, or something like that.
According to “most writers,” first attempts are beastly; just magnificent works of junk. Those admissions bring me comfort. ( and now I need a big, dumb-ass hug to go with my coffee) One day I will hoist myself up by my bra straps and resume “Uncertain.” You know, when the time is right. Do you think I could find a ghost writer for my sex scenes? Haha.
Good news is, I have been working on a few fresh ideas and actually have started on two of them.
For the most part, the extent of my literary endeavors are currently letters addressed to Inmate #12798, Federal Correctional Institute, P.O. Box 1500, El Reno, Oklahoma 73036... Hmmm, Maybe we can figure something out with that??
Lately, for recreation, I have been writing dark poetry (who the hell knew?) I'm thinking…am I on the cusp of a midlife crisis? What else could it possibly be? I mean, read this stuff! I will send you a copy and you can analyze. Please tear it up when you’re done. I do not want someone else to make a fortune from my dysfunction. Sometimes I wonder where my stuff comes from. I am now starting to scare the shit out of myself -- can that be good? I just don’t know.
Hey, hey, tonight is my 20-year class reunion. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm nervous. My damn chin has broken out, like a 16-year-old's would do the day before the big dance.(sigh)
I’m not sure if I told you this or not but the last reunion, 10-year, was a very pretentious affair. Everyone feigning success, boasting about their bush league management jobs, new babies. We thought we were real preps. I was trying out my new, professional personality. I was a hit -- hilarious. Yeee-frikkin-haah.
As a result I acquired a stalker. Some guy that moved away in 5th grade -- but was invited to the 10-yr anyway (???) had began calling me, anonymously, whispering hilarious crap like, "What would you do with 9 inches…?" Dear Gawd. It horrified me at the time, but now it makes me laugh my head off. He got busted when his older sister called me and point-blank asked, “Who are you??” Her brother had been ringing up some serious long distance charges on her line. She saw my number, she calls. She then starts to rant.
Well, something jolted me back to my home town. Mostly it was her lisp. Oh, my God, the cheerleader -- Tammy -- with the lisp! Oh…my…God. It was her brother -- K****** D*******.! I know you know who I’m talking about.
He was always very quiet in elementary school -- he and I tossed the football together at recess after lunch. Now, isn’t that sweet?
K******… you dirty little ratbastard.
Hopefully the dirty little cowboy will ask me tonight me what I want to do with his nine inches; I’ll tell him that I will be happy to tie his nine inches around his scrawny little neck.
Hopefully my husband will take care of it if “it” becomes “a situation.”
Hopefully, I'm going to get a chance to humiliate the hell out of the rat if he even looks at me funny.
Hopefully, he will not actually be there tonight.
Well, this one is short. C'est la vie. Somehow I am going to pack, perform a minor surgery on these zits -- oh, and drag out a year book and try to remember everyone’s names. (sigh)
I love you, brother. Hurry up!
October 12, 2007.
All right. Here we go. Last weekend Aunt Donna and Uncle Ken came “down” for a visit. They are the most authentic, awesome people I know. They wanted me to send my love to you.
As you know, Aunt Donna is a very intellectual, well-read, well-versed, well-opinionated Cajun. That being said, well, I really embarrassed myself in front of them. It went down like this:
Aunt Don, Uncle Ken and I were sitting around the table, discussing "stuff." You may not know, but Kenner is working in Cleveland (near Conroe) He might as well be on the moon, because I don’t get to see him. He works 12-hour days, always has.
You may remember Grandmother talking about this… but one of her youngest brothers, our great uncle, was "sawed in half" in a mill accident -- AFTER he returned from the war! Uncle Ken claims that he is buried "somewhere in Montgomery County.” That is Conroe area. Kenner is interested in visiting the grave but doesn't know quite how to get started looking for him, so I confidently pull my laptop over between Aunt Don and myself and start Googling -- like a big shot -- confident that I will have the answer shortly.
"God-damn, girl! You misspelled cemetery!" Aunt Don was looking at me as if I had just farted during mass or something. "Girl, you know there are three god-damn E's in cemetery?!!"
Well...yes, I do (don't I??) but one just doesn't bother making any excuses to Don. In my eagerness to show off my computing skills and helpfulness, ya know, I wasn't really thinking too hard about things like grammar and spelling. I'm still stinging over that slip.
When I was in second grade, Ms. Russo, my teacher, put a big, red circle around the word "verry" in one of my little essays. I was so proud of that essay, because it was about "gohsts." That nasty bitch made me write "very" 200 times! Why she chose to ignore "gohsts" is just beyond me. To this very day, I still sometimes have to back up and erase that extra "r" in very. I guess the same holds true for "cemetary" and "gohsts". (sigh) I am definitely a creature of habit.
Today Aunt Don has an appointment with a very long-time friend. Perhaps you have heard of him. Dr. Red Duke. Red, U Ken, A Don are birds of a feather, hilarious people. Long-time family friends.
Yesterday, en route to Kohl's (in search of "a good bra") a framed photo comes hurtling off of the dash and into my lap. It is a beautiful wood frame with turquoise and silver embellishments, framing a lovely photo of...Rudy and Dudley, hip-deep in the snow. It is a breathtaking photo. Glossy red and white coats, startlingly blue eyes. Rudy and Dudley are the working dogs of the Pea Patch.
"Red wants a picture of those god-damn cow dogs! He'll get it tomorrow, after he's done looking at my boobs!"
No comment. Red has "cussed and discussed" her mammograms forever. She and I were supposed to have buddy mammograms this time, but I would just about die of embarrassment if Red and I were to start "cussing and discussing" my rack!
Okay. Enough. Kevin and I had quite a big time at HIS 30-yr reunion. Regarding the forms you sent (thank you!!) they wouldn’t have been useful that weekend, and I will explain. I have a funny story about OKC.
The reunion was actually in Wichita's Old Town, not OKC. I totally confused myself about that. We flew in to OKC, drove two hours to his mom's in Wichita, KS, spent the night there, then the next day we were about to head out to "Old Town." I gear up with Stephen King's "The Stand", a couple of water bottles and a sack of mixed nuts. Kevin looks at me kind of funny, then 15 minutes later he announces, "we're here." Wha??
I crack myself up. Really, I do.
The reunion was a hoot. Everyone that showed up was just awesome. I ended up at a table, talking to "reunion crashers." Hell, I didn't know. They were a blast. Had flown in from Melbourne, Australia on business. They had come down to have a drink at the bar and ended up mingling, ya know? They were sitting with two women (one was an actual classmate) I assumed they were all together as couples. Well, wrong.
I ended up getting chatty with one of the gals, who was a total, awesome doll. Since I tend to say very outlandish things when I drink Chardonnay, I announce to her, and to whoever else is within earshot, that she is the cutest little thing and that if I were a lesbian, I would make her my woman... (um hickup)
Lil' cutie cracks up and plants a mushy kiss on my lips. Well, whatever.
Well, the other gal about turns the table over because she can't push her chair back fast enough. And THEN I immediately understand "the situation." I'm mentally gearing up to get my skinny little ass kicked by a lesbian at my husband's 30-year-class reunion. Well, thank god she goes storming off somewhere. Her partner decides to go after her, so I'm alone with the business guys.
The business guys get all worked up and start having fun with the situation and start asking all kinds of, um, inappropriate questions. I look for my husband and spot him across the room. He has someone's wife in his lap. Wait a damn minute! She is straddling his leg, actually. He is smiling pretty big and smoking a cigar.
At this point, there is a big blank...
Then suddenly we are all (about 20 classmates) headed down the street to a novelty bar -- as if we had not had enough half-assing around back at the hotel. By this point, I am sloshed. I vaguely remember these professional, successful people passing a joint around on the walk between the hotel and bar. I have never smoked weed so I thought, what the hell, they're doing it… I'm so f'g ambitious after a few glasses of wine, you know.
(Another chunk in my memory goes missing here...)
And then here we are, sitting at a big, round table in the bar. I feel suddenly compelled to reveal a strange talent, something that that I am very good at. Across the table I see my husband cringe. He is giving me the "shut up" signal. I feel an encouraging hand on my back, urging me to continue. Whaddayaknow.... my little cutie pie lesbian buddy has suddenly shown up again.
I think the whole damn bar got quiet. I even think the rowdy B-52ish band probably stopped playing. I announce that...
I am a rutter! That I f'g love to rut! (I need to interject with something here. At that point, I thought the word “rut” simply meant to butt heads, clash antlers, you know.) I lean across the table and smash my forehead into one of the male classmates (a lawyer). You should have heard our heads crack. Well, he loved it, so we start mashing our heads together. He was losing to me big-time.
The cutie pie lesbian starts saying, oooh, me too, me tooo!!! By this time, Kevin has made it around the table with the intention of pulling me off of the poor lawyer dude, but he stalls, completely mesmerized by me and cutie pie, who are now rutting.
There's something about two women doing something together like that; no man has the will to break it up, ya know? (Let me make sure you understand, we are only butting heads!)
(a huge freakin' chunk of memory falls away)
...the bar, and we are walking back up the street, to someone's "hospitality suite". Her name was Barbara. Well, guess who shows up? The two business devils!! (My husband didn't know anything about them at that point) "Hey, beautiful! We've been looking everywhere for you!"
Well, I have to make my pickled brain work fast, I mean FAST. So I introduce them to the crowd as "domestic partners." Well gawdam, it was another pin-dropping moment. I observe as the businessmen exchange bewildered glances, one mutters, okay, sure, and then we are all good. Whew! One of Kevin's buddies eventually grumbles..."I hate fukkin queers." The he looks over at little cutie and squeezes her shoulder..."they guy kind, I mean."
...The business partners scatter very quickly.
Back to Barb's hospitality suite. … I vaguely remember going into the bathroom to tinkle while at least 5 people (mixed company) are in there filling pipes, (wtf?) drinking beer, laughing about the old Speedo pictures that everyone was passing around. I say cute little things to them like, "oh, don't look at me!!" Yeah, right.
A few minutes later I end up joined at the hip, literally, with the lawyer. We are sitting at the foot of the bed, laughing about the huge, purple welts on our foreheads. My brain is now lime-pickled and I'm talking kinda Cajun, because...well, because I can. I'm very good at it. He loves it, of course. He keeps looking back at Kevin, asking "oh, my god, where did you find her???"
I cannot for the life of me remember the very intense conversation I was having with this lawyer, in my Cajun brogue, but the next morning in the lobby, he kept staring at me like a total pervert.
Well, now I have just lost the energy to continue with this sad tale. There has to be a funny story in here somewhere, hehe.
Jake is the horror that is full-fledged adolescent now. I figure I have at least another good 5-7 years of dark circles under my eyes left to go with him. About every third day I get a call on my cell phone. It usually goes something like this…
“Mom, I need you to come pick me up. I missed the bus.”
“Why?”
“I had a hard time getting stuff out of my locker.”
“I see.”
“Mom, can you give my girlfriend a ride home too?”
(sigh)
(October 27...later sometime in the day…)
I’m back. I woke up so ugly this morning that I had to sneak up on my mirror. It has nothing to do with my lack of makeup or getting old. Let me explain. Buckle your seatbelt. It is related to your lack of letters from me …
(An example of the “hamster on the wheel” a/k/a my brain lately…)
Do I really believe in God? Indecision…outrage…exhaustion. Indecision…outrage…exhaustion. Indecision…outrage…exhaustion.
Jack, please die… Lynn, please live…
Jack, of course, is my very terminally ill father-in-law; Lynn is my mentor, one of my “mommas” and a very dear friend who has been diagnosed with cancer.
If you have ever placed yourself in the elevated position of, well, willing someone to die, and then willing someone else to live, you might be overstepping your boundaries just a bit. You don’t get any audible response from The Creator, so maybe he has forgotten about a few people? Or even worse, he is not really there? And then you realize the rubber has hit the road. You have to make a decision about what you believe in.
To actually will someone to die slowly turns you into a monster. That wish slowly leeches into your own life, causing you to doubt everything, compromise what you have built your foundation upon. It makes you angry, resentful, sloppy and lazy -- (if you allow that to happen.)
Internally you feel so mired down by guilt, and then the guilt manifests itself as “I must be bad”. You start gnawing away at things in your own life that “are bad.” Eventually you go from bad or worse OR you realize that there is a Something Spiritual to hand these burdens to, because you are just not equipped to handle such things. Now the tables have turned back again. You are at a new crux in your belief system. Things have gotten serious. You’re up against some true heart-wrenching dramas in life. It hurts, it sucks, it’s too much for the mind to take. Life doesn’t always turn out like a Nicholas Sparks novel.
I catch myself making outlandish, self-righteous statements like, “I would never put my family through this! I will get into my car, shut the garage doors, start the damn engine before I would put my family through this!! Well, we’ll see about that, little lady.
It is hard watching people that we love get old, sick and crazy. It makes you doubt a lot of things -- if you let it. Maybe that is why you had the dream of me, where I kept popping up. Please pray for me, for us.
I am beating myself up because I found Jack’s expired “flu shot election form” mixed in with my own huge stack of mail and bills. Not to mention Jack’s huge stack of mail and bills…and Kris’ huge stack of mail and bills. Earlier this year I also forgot to send in the “hurricane evacuation options for your loved one” form to the nursing home.
When you miss delicate deadlines like that, you have to jump through even more hoops in order to get that flu shot. You certainly don’t want him to die of that, of course. Can you think of a comfortable way for a severely afflicted Parkinson’s sufferer to die, by the way?
It must be more cruel to fear death than to actually die, I think. But here I go again, writing my own bible. And now I will wipe up this vomit (sorry) and try to work my way out of this subject.
I need to get strong again. I have been jogging four times a week and lifting weights. I look great but I still feel unhinged in my head. I really do believe in God; that he is trying to reach me. I also believe it is time for me to give up my little girl notions about him. I’m learning I can’t rely on just making my body strong or relying on executive-style management to get my life in order.
I miss the days when I felt settled, when I just relied on Him. I didn’t question Him. I didn’t try to be super-analytical about any of it. I just woke up, said my goofy little drunk prayers… oh, thank you! I love you! I love you! -- and of course that was before all of this real-life shit hit the fan, giving me a reason to unhinge.
I know this much: I know that I have changed. I know that HE hasn’t. I need to reacquaint with Him. Strangely, I feel a little stubborn resentment in saying this. But why??
(And now I need a break)
I’m back. This week I have been watching these silly morning programs. Those that teach me how to be a hot mom at around age 40, also how to make holiday pumpkin tarts and maple cookies, cute and clever wreaths to decorate my front door with. You know, things that fire people up for the oncoming cool weather season… and look extremely sexy while doing it...
These are things that I always get really excited about, and I’m just not feeling much.
Ken and I had a conversation about drinking too much, and I made the decision that that crap has to stop. I hope he does too. Maybe we will help each other with that. I pray that you do not come back to us with a sweet tooth for alcohol. It sucks.
It would be just as easy to have a big glass of ice tea as opposed to one beer that leads to six, or one glass of wine that leads to a bottle. Ideally, we would train ourselves to stop after one, but not many people can do that, unfortunately.
Before I really work my ass into a rumpus on this subject… and get into a debate with myself… something I’ve been doing a lot of lately… I’m just going for another subject change here. Pass the beer nuts…
But wait! Good Lord, I have just realized that Tiki Barber is an actual fixture of “Today”. I suppose I thought he was a favorite guest??? The realization dawned on me after I kept noticing him on there quite a bit lately. Wait, he’s on every day! I am thinking to myself. Damn, this man is fine!… and then the old prejudices of our grandparents grab hold and I catch myself looking over my shoulder to see who heard me say that. But then I see clearly “that generation” has evidently lightened up a bit. Or at least they do when they are vacationing in New York. Hordes of 70-year-old women are staring up at this man adoringly, you know. I hear one say, “Tiki, I love you!” I think the camera cut away right before Helen tossed her Playtex Cross-Your-Heart... Jeez.
Then we go to a commercial…Daryl Johnson, The Moose, is standing with a uniformed man. When-the-hell did Daryl’s hair go completely gray??? Daryl is giving us a spiel on professional air duct cleaning, and how that has changed his life.
Then another celebrity is trying to sell something. I vaguely recognize him as somebody from NASCAR. He’s wearing a retina-searing jumpsuit and cap ensemble, featuring about 20-or-so sponsors. Then I know for damn-shure he’s NASAR, once he starts schlepping a product for “far aint in-fes-tay-shun.”
It all ads up to mesmerizing television…air duct cleansing and fire ants… and I sit there trapped, becoming indoctrinated to it all, because I am sitting on my launch pad, awaiting the countdown from KPRC master control.
And the beat goes on…
And now I’m just about done expending my “imagination wattage” on the subject of mesmerizing morning television.
Funny story…well, it didn’t start funny but certainly ended funny. Kevin and I met a young man at Babin’s Seafood. He is the bartender there. Sometimes we elect to eat at their stylish bar. It is dark, shiny and mahogany, mirrored, old-brick-pillared, large gas lamps are suspended down from the ceiling. Very classy Bourbon Street motif.
The young man and woman tending bar are college students, intellectual types. He is a math fella, she is working on her anthropology major.
A very cool reggae song comes on. I tell Kevin that this is Bob Marley’s son, Ziggy. Kevin is impressed; he didn‘t know this. The young mathematician bartender overhears and comes over to make conversation. He starts out with…“Yeah, when Eric Clapton’s son died, he almost went crazy, so he went to the Caribbean and met Bob Marley. Bob Marley kept him from falling to pieces, and together they wrote, “I Shot The Sheriff.”
Um… Kevin and I looked at each other with a whuu? expression and just sorta grinned. The young man felt very sure about this. I considered correcting him, but too many young people around us heard his version on the birth of “I Shot the Sheriff” and were impressed.
The moral of this story: There is no use arguing with a young man who can multiply anything by the square root of minus one.
This segues into the next head-scratching conundrum. There is a sticker on Baylen’s jeep. It is displayed on her back window. It is a black-and-white of a ruggedly handsome Latino man. He is wearing a jaunty beret, has a disheveled beard. More than anything, his eyes just speak volumes…
“Isn’t he hot, Mom?”
“Well…”
“That’s how all the guys in Austin look now.”
“Well, Baylen, he certainly has a presence about him.”
In my mind I’m thinking… Think! Think! You know who this man is. But I can’t, for the life of me, come up with the answer. It is starting to bother me.
“No, Baylen, really, who is he?”
“Um, I think he has this really cool band in Austin.”
“Why do you have the sticker on your vehicle if you are not clear about who this man is?”
“Um, because he’s hot.”
Well… as it turns out, I was on the internet the next day or so, checking my mail, reading Yahoo! news headlines. I see an article: Rich Houstonian buys “lock of revolutionist hair. This man spent like $120k, or some shit like that, for this lock of hair. Well, headlines like that just draw me in like flypaper, so I click on the story. Turns out, this lock belongs to Che Guevara.
Texas Collector Buys Lock of Che Guevara's Hair
Weekend Edition Saturday, October 27, 2007 · Bill Butler, who owns a Texas bookstore and collects memorabilia from the 1960s, bought one of the ultimate mementos of that age: about a hundred strands of hair from Che Guevara.
Gustavo Villoldo, a Cuban-born CIA operative who helped Bolivian troops capture Che Guevara in 1967, snipped the strands before Che was executed.
Butler says he admires Che, and told reporters that he was "one of the great revolutionaries of the 20th century."
Rene Barrientos, who teaches math at Miami-Dade College and is the son of Gen. Rene Barrientos who was the head of Bolivia at the time, told The New York Times he is puzzled by the adulation and says, "There is no basis to admire him. He destroyed a lot of lives."
Earlier this year, three strands of former President Abraham Lincoln's hair sold for a little more than $11,000. A whole lock of Lincoln's hair sold for $21,000.
Butler paid $119,000, but that price includes a set of Che Guevara's fingerprints, pictures of him in death, and maps the Bolivian military used to find him.
Quote from Wikipedia…
Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (June 14,[1] 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as Che Guevara, El Che or just Che was an Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary, political figure, and leader of Cuban and internationalist guerrillas.
As a young man studying medicine, Guevara travelled throughout South America, bringing him into direct contact with the impoverished conditions in which many people lived. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to the conclusion that the region's socio-economic inequalities could only be remedied by socialism through revolution, prompting him to intensify his study of Marxism and travel to Guatemala to learn about the reforms being implemented there by President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán.
While in Mexico in 1956, Guevara joined Fidel Castro's revolutionary 26th of July Movement, which seized power from the regime of the dictator[2][citation needed] General Fulgencio Batista in Cuba in 1959. In the months after the success of the revolution, Guevara was assigned the role of "supreme prosecutor",[citation needed] overseeing the trials and executions of hundreds of suspected war criminals from the previous regime.[3] After serving in various important posts in the new government and writing a number of articles and books on the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare, Guevara left Cuba in 1965 with the intention of fomenting revolutions first in Congo-Kinshasa, and then in Bolivia, where he was captured in a military operation supported by the CIA and the U.S. Army Special Forces.[4] Guevara was summarily executed by the Bolivian Army in the town of La Higuera near Vallegrande on October 9, 1967.[5]
After his death, Guevara became an icon of socialist revolutionary movements and a cultural icon worldwide. An Alberto Korda photo of him (shown) has received wide distribution and modification, appearing on t-shirts, protest banners, and in many other formats. The Maryland Institute College of Art called this picture "the most famous photograph in the world and a symbol of the 20th century."[6]
Here we go…
Even more ironically, weeks earlier, before my discussion with Baylen, I got sucked into a radio piece in the car (I am an NPR geek) and they were discussing Che. Interestingly, his relations with Fidel Castro, and their eventual fallout.
As I dip into my huge vat of parakeet knowledge on the subject of Mr. Che Guevara… a ball finally falls into a slot -- Eureka! “Motorcycle Diaries!!” A movie that I happened to enjoy a great deal.
Where I am going with all of this…?
I’m sure that you have guessed by now… that sticker on the back of my daughter’s jeep is Che Gurevara.
She has no clue…
Isn’t it interesting how the young clans immortalize rebellious, malcontent figures, turn them into icons, but, in a lot of cases, have no idea what they represent? Che was fighting for human rights of a disenfranchised group of people. Baylen is fighting for her human rights of uninterrupted bitchiness, unlimited text messages, Menthol Camels, no curfew and her God-given right to sleep in until 3:00 p.m. every…damn…fukkin’…. day… and then get up and do it all over again.
Please slap me. It’s not like we haven’t taken her car keys, cell phone and internet… she just moves out of the house.
Sometimes I think the only way to raise functional, avid, responsible children is to let them grow up working the farm, with absolutely no access to anything… and then ice their little cakes with a horrifying Southern Baptist upbringing.
Man, your sis is really cooking on the front burner today, huh?
Jake has informed me that he NEEDS black hair dye, black eyeliner, some sort of arm bands with spikes and Halloween scar trickery. Something to do with a dead skateboarder. And the ONLY place to get this necessary crap is across town in some abandoned grocery store building/turned Halloween super center. It’s in the back of one of those ghetto-fabulous shopping centers that you can get into pretty easily but not out of. And he needs it TODAY.
(sigh) I really need to figure out a way to ratchet up some motivation for this project. If I have not acquired a keen hankering for Virginia Slims by the time you get out…it will be by the Grace of God.
We’re gearing up for Thanksgiving here. I don’t mean to sound un-thankful or anything, but I intend to have a stress-free holiday this year. The most taxing project I will be taking on is to remove that puzzling sack of grossness from the turkey’s ass, then handing that bird off to Kevin -- to deep fry on the pool deck. I will let mom take care of the vegetables, Jake and I will bake the pumpkin pie, Baylen will pace around in her cage (room-to-room) . She’ll be on her cell phone, giving us those trademark kiss-my-bitter-ass looks. She will undoubtedly be searching out other families to celebrate her Thanksgiving with, as her family is just the pinnacle of sucktitude. You know…
My house is filthy. Do you think Sears is making a vacuum cleaner yet that a woman can ride on? I think I’ll just wait around for that model.
Hurry up.
K
Hey, Sweet Brother.
I can’t tell you how much I loved getting your letter. What an unexpected and wonderful surprise. The following three pages is the last letter I wrote to you -- in a rush. I was packing, getting ready for my 20-yr reunion. I have started this letter with that, and then I will pick back up with more current letters that I started, finally wrapping up with the present.
(written sometime in early August…I think…hell, I’m not sure)
….Good morning, my dear. This will be short, as I'm packing to go out of town (Hughes Springs) -- and, if recollection serves me, everything is sitting in a laundry basket… dirty.
I'm back onto black coffee now (sigh) It was healthy green tea for a while, but I could only take so much of that. And I betcha I have a little too much blood in my caffeine system right now, so as we “speak”, I am having another cup of Joe.
The kids are doing fine. Kris and his friend Scott have been home for a
couple of weeks, visiting before they head back to the real world. They brought their motorcycles. We all took a long ride the second day they were here, around the hill country area, and we had a blast. They took the bikes to Austin yesterday, to see some friends.
Ironically Baylen had been planning a trip to Austin for two months, to see a concert. The Black Keys. She saved her money for a month to make that trip. Word has it, from her brother, that she was kicked out within the first five minutes: one, for being underaged, two, for drinking anyway. I haven’t heard from her, and that was last night. She is going to be home the rest of the weekend and I certainly don’t look forward to being around her. Fortunately we will probably leave before she gets here. What a bummer. She will be like living with Wolverina for a couple of days. Talk about bad luck.
About the book, Regarding Uncertain…ah, how you say...is in hiatus? On hiatus?
It has always been my painful, daffy style to take the most challenging, intriguing, dear-to-my heart material and just stamp all over it (with the best of intentions, of course.) I regret doing this with (Uncertain). As it sits, it is trite and embarrassing. A first, miserable attempt at something way over my head. I eventually hit rock bottom with my first attempt at a sex scene -- oh, pray. I will never forget it. I was sitting on my couch with my laptop, feeling like a total pervert. I yanked up all of the cushions around me, in case the kids or Kevin walked into the room. The scene ended up sounding something like a flying circus, or something like that.
According to “most writers,” first attempts are beastly; just magnificent works of junk. Those admissions bring me comfort. ( and now I need a big, dumb-ass hug to go with my coffee) One day I will hoist myself up by my bra straps and resume “Uncertain.” You know, when the time is right. Do you think I could find a ghost writer for my sex scenes? Haha.
Good news is, I have been working on a few fresh ideas and actually have started on two of them.
For the most part, the extent of my literary endeavors are currently letters addressed to Inmate #12798, Federal Correctional Institute, P.O. Box 1500, El Reno, Oklahoma 73036... Hmmm, Maybe we can figure something out with that??
Lately, for recreation, I have been writing dark poetry (who the hell knew?) I'm thinking…am I on the cusp of a midlife crisis? What else could it possibly be? I mean, read this stuff! I will send you a copy and you can analyze. Please tear it up when you’re done. I do not want someone else to make a fortune from my dysfunction. Sometimes I wonder where my stuff comes from. I am now starting to scare the shit out of myself -- can that be good? I just don’t know.
Hey, hey, tonight is my 20-year class reunion. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm nervous. My damn chin has broken out, like a 16-year-old's would do the day before the big dance.(sigh)
I’m not sure if I told you this or not but the last reunion, 10-year, was a very pretentious affair. Everyone feigning success, boasting about their bush league management jobs, new babies. We thought we were real preps. I was trying out my new, professional personality. I was a hit -- hilarious. Yeee-frikkin-haah.
As a result I acquired a stalker. Some guy that moved away in 5th grade -- but was invited to the 10-yr anyway (???) had began calling me, anonymously, whispering hilarious crap like, "What would you do with 9 inches…?" Dear Gawd. It horrified me at the time, but now it makes me laugh my head off. He got busted when his older sister called me and point-blank asked, “Who are you??” Her brother had been ringing up some serious long distance charges on her line. She saw my number, she calls. She then starts to rant.
Well, something jolted me back to my home town. Mostly it was her lisp. Oh, my God, the cheerleader -- Tammy -- with the lisp! Oh…my…God. It was her brother -- K****** D*******.! I know you know who I’m talking about.
He was always very quiet in elementary school -- he and I tossed the football together at recess after lunch. Now, isn’t that sweet?
K******… you dirty little ratbastard.
Hopefully the dirty little cowboy will ask me tonight me what I want to do with his nine inches; I’ll tell him that I will be happy to tie his nine inches around his scrawny little neck.
Hopefully my husband will take care of it if “it” becomes “a situation.”
Hopefully, I'm going to get a chance to humiliate the hell out of the rat if he even looks at me funny.
Hopefully, he will not actually be there tonight.
Well, this one is short. C'est la vie. Somehow I am going to pack, perform a minor surgery on these zits -- oh, and drag out a year book and try to remember everyone’s names. (sigh)
I love you, brother. Hurry up!
October 12, 2007.
All right. Here we go. Last weekend Aunt Donna and Uncle Ken came “down” for a visit. They are the most authentic, awesome people I know. They wanted me to send my love to you.
As you know, Aunt Donna is a very intellectual, well-read, well-versed, well-opinionated Cajun. That being said, well, I really embarrassed myself in front of them. It went down like this:
Aunt Don, Uncle Ken and I were sitting around the table, discussing "stuff." You may not know, but Kenner is working in Cleveland (near Conroe) He might as well be on the moon, because I don’t get to see him. He works 12-hour days, always has.
You may remember Grandmother talking about this… but one of her youngest brothers, our great uncle, was "sawed in half" in a mill accident -- AFTER he returned from the war! Uncle Ken claims that he is buried "somewhere in Montgomery County.” That is Conroe area. Kenner is interested in visiting the grave but doesn't know quite how to get started looking for him, so I confidently pull my laptop over between Aunt Don and myself and start Googling -- like a big shot -- confident that I will have the answer shortly.
"God-damn, girl! You misspelled cemetery!" Aunt Don was looking at me as if I had just farted during mass or something. "Girl, you know there are three god-damn E's in cemetery?!!"
Well...yes, I do (don't I??) but one just doesn't bother making any excuses to Don. In my eagerness to show off my computing skills and helpfulness, ya know, I wasn't really thinking too hard about things like grammar and spelling. I'm still stinging over that slip.
When I was in second grade, Ms. Russo, my teacher, put a big, red circle around the word "verry" in one of my little essays. I was so proud of that essay, because it was about "gohsts." That nasty bitch made me write "very" 200 times! Why she chose to ignore "gohsts" is just beyond me. To this very day, I still sometimes have to back up and erase that extra "r" in very. I guess the same holds true for "cemetary" and "gohsts". (sigh) I am definitely a creature of habit.
Today Aunt Don has an appointment with a very long-time friend. Perhaps you have heard of him. Dr. Red Duke. Red, U Ken, A Don are birds of a feather, hilarious people. Long-time family friends.
Yesterday, en route to Kohl's (in search of "a good bra") a framed photo comes hurtling off of the dash and into my lap. It is a beautiful wood frame with turquoise and silver embellishments, framing a lovely photo of...Rudy and Dudley, hip-deep in the snow. It is a breathtaking photo. Glossy red and white coats, startlingly blue eyes. Rudy and Dudley are the working dogs of the Pea Patch.
"Red wants a picture of those god-damn cow dogs! He'll get it tomorrow, after he's done looking at my boobs!"
No comment. Red has "cussed and discussed" her mammograms forever. She and I were supposed to have buddy mammograms this time, but I would just about die of embarrassment if Red and I were to start "cussing and discussing" my rack!
Okay. Enough. Kevin and I had quite a big time at HIS 30-yr reunion. Regarding the forms you sent (thank you!!) they wouldn’t have been useful that weekend, and I will explain. I have a funny story about OKC.
The reunion was actually in Wichita's Old Town, not OKC. I totally confused myself about that. We flew in to OKC, drove two hours to his mom's in Wichita, KS, spent the night there, then the next day we were about to head out to "Old Town." I gear up with Stephen King's "The Stand", a couple of water bottles and a sack of mixed nuts. Kevin looks at me kind of funny, then 15 minutes later he announces, "we're here." Wha??
I crack myself up. Really, I do.
The reunion was a hoot. Everyone that showed up was just awesome. I ended up at a table, talking to "reunion crashers." Hell, I didn't know. They were a blast. Had flown in from Melbourne, Australia on business. They had come down to have a drink at the bar and ended up mingling, ya know? They were sitting with two women (one was an actual classmate) I assumed they were all together as couples. Well, wrong.
I ended up getting chatty with one of the gals, who was a total, awesome doll. Since I tend to say very outlandish things when I drink Chardonnay, I announce to her, and to whoever else is within earshot, that she is the cutest little thing and that if I were a lesbian, I would make her my woman... (um hickup)
Lil' cutie cracks up and plants a mushy kiss on my lips. Well, whatever.
Well, the other gal about turns the table over because she can't push her chair back fast enough. And THEN I immediately understand "the situation." I'm mentally gearing up to get my skinny little ass kicked by a lesbian at my husband's 30-year-class reunion. Well, thank god she goes storming off somewhere. Her partner decides to go after her, so I'm alone with the business guys.
The business guys get all worked up and start having fun with the situation and start asking all kinds of, um, inappropriate questions. I look for my husband and spot him across the room. He has someone's wife in his lap. Wait a damn minute! She is straddling his leg, actually. He is smiling pretty big and smoking a cigar.
At this point, there is a big blank...
Then suddenly we are all (about 20 classmates) headed down the street to a novelty bar -- as if we had not had enough half-assing around back at the hotel. By this point, I am sloshed. I vaguely remember these professional, successful people passing a joint around on the walk between the hotel and bar. I have never smoked weed so I thought, what the hell, they're doing it… I'm so f'g ambitious after a few glasses of wine, you know.
(Another chunk in my memory goes missing here...)
And then here we are, sitting at a big, round table in the bar. I feel suddenly compelled to reveal a strange talent, something that that I am very good at. Across the table I see my husband cringe. He is giving me the "shut up" signal. I feel an encouraging hand on my back, urging me to continue. Whaddayaknow.... my little cutie pie lesbian buddy has suddenly shown up again.
I think the whole damn bar got quiet. I even think the rowdy B-52ish band probably stopped playing. I announce that...
I am a rutter! That I f'g love to rut! (I need to interject with something here. At that point, I thought the word “rut” simply meant to butt heads, clash antlers, you know.) I lean across the table and smash my forehead into one of the male classmates (a lawyer). You should have heard our heads crack. Well, he loved it, so we start mashing our heads together. He was losing to me big-time.
The cutie pie lesbian starts saying, oooh, me too, me tooo!!! By this time, Kevin has made it around the table with the intention of pulling me off of the poor lawyer dude, but he stalls, completely mesmerized by me and cutie pie, who are now rutting.
There's something about two women doing something together like that; no man has the will to break it up, ya know? (Let me make sure you understand, we are only butting heads!)
(a huge freakin' chunk of memory falls away)
...the bar, and we are walking back up the street, to someone's "hospitality suite". Her name was Barbara. Well, guess who shows up? The two business devils!! (My husband didn't know anything about them at that point) "Hey, beautiful! We've been looking everywhere for you!"
Well, I have to make my pickled brain work fast, I mean FAST. So I introduce them to the crowd as "domestic partners." Well gawdam, it was another pin-dropping moment. I observe as the businessmen exchange bewildered glances, one mutters, okay, sure, and then we are all good. Whew! One of Kevin's buddies eventually grumbles..."I hate fukkin queers." The he looks over at little cutie and squeezes her shoulder..."they guy kind, I mean."
...The business partners scatter very quickly.
Back to Barb's hospitality suite. … I vaguely remember going into the bathroom to tinkle while at least 5 people (mixed company) are in there filling pipes, (wtf?) drinking beer, laughing about the old Speedo pictures that everyone was passing around. I say cute little things to them like, "oh, don't look at me!!" Yeah, right.
A few minutes later I end up joined at the hip, literally, with the lawyer. We are sitting at the foot of the bed, laughing about the huge, purple welts on our foreheads. My brain is now lime-pickled and I'm talking kinda Cajun, because...well, because I can. I'm very good at it. He loves it, of course. He keeps looking back at Kevin, asking "oh, my god, where did you find her???"
I cannot for the life of me remember the very intense conversation I was having with this lawyer, in my Cajun brogue, but the next morning in the lobby, he kept staring at me like a total pervert.
Well, now I have just lost the energy to continue with this sad tale. There has to be a funny story in here somewhere, hehe.
Jake is the horror that is full-fledged adolescent now. I figure I have at least another good 5-7 years of dark circles under my eyes left to go with him. About every third day I get a call on my cell phone. It usually goes something like this…
“Mom, I need you to come pick me up. I missed the bus.”
“Why?”
“I had a hard time getting stuff out of my locker.”
“I see.”
“Mom, can you give my girlfriend a ride home too?”
(sigh)
(October 27...later sometime in the day…)
I’m back. I woke up so ugly this morning that I had to sneak up on my mirror. It has nothing to do with my lack of makeup or getting old. Let me explain. Buckle your seatbelt. It is related to your lack of letters from me …
(An example of the “hamster on the wheel” a/k/a my brain lately…)
Do I really believe in God? Indecision…outrage…exhaustion. Indecision…outrage…exhaustion. Indecision…outrage…exhaustion.
Jack, please die… Lynn, please live…
Jack, of course, is my very terminally ill father-in-law; Lynn is my mentor, one of my “mommas” and a very dear friend who has been diagnosed with cancer.
If you have ever placed yourself in the elevated position of, well, willing someone to die, and then willing someone else to live, you might be overstepping your boundaries just a bit. You don’t get any audible response from The Creator, so maybe he has forgotten about a few people? Or even worse, he is not really there? And then you realize the rubber has hit the road. You have to make a decision about what you believe in.
To actually will someone to die slowly turns you into a monster. That wish slowly leeches into your own life, causing you to doubt everything, compromise what you have built your foundation upon. It makes you angry, resentful, sloppy and lazy -- (if you allow that to happen.)
Internally you feel so mired down by guilt, and then the guilt manifests itself as “I must be bad”. You start gnawing away at things in your own life that “are bad.” Eventually you go from bad or worse OR you realize that there is a Something Spiritual to hand these burdens to, because you are just not equipped to handle such things. Now the tables have turned back again. You are at a new crux in your belief system. Things have gotten serious. You’re up against some true heart-wrenching dramas in life. It hurts, it sucks, it’s too much for the mind to take. Life doesn’t always turn out like a Nicholas Sparks novel.
I catch myself making outlandish, self-righteous statements like, “I would never put my family through this! I will get into my car, shut the garage doors, start the damn engine before I would put my family through this!! Well, we’ll see about that, little lady.
It is hard watching people that we love get old, sick and crazy. It makes you doubt a lot of things -- if you let it. Maybe that is why you had the dream of me, where I kept popping up. Please pray for me, for us.
I am beating myself up because I found Jack’s expired “flu shot election form” mixed in with my own huge stack of mail and bills. Not to mention Jack’s huge stack of mail and bills…and Kris’ huge stack of mail and bills. Earlier this year I also forgot to send in the “hurricane evacuation options for your loved one” form to the nursing home.
When you miss delicate deadlines like that, you have to jump through even more hoops in order to get that flu shot. You certainly don’t want him to die of that, of course. Can you think of a comfortable way for a severely afflicted Parkinson’s sufferer to die, by the way?
It must be more cruel to fear death than to actually die, I think. But here I go again, writing my own bible. And now I will wipe up this vomit (sorry) and try to work my way out of this subject.
I need to get strong again. I have been jogging four times a week and lifting weights. I look great but I still feel unhinged in my head. I really do believe in God; that he is trying to reach me. I also believe it is time for me to give up my little girl notions about him. I’m learning I can’t rely on just making my body strong or relying on executive-style management to get my life in order.
I miss the days when I felt settled, when I just relied on Him. I didn’t question Him. I didn’t try to be super-analytical about any of it. I just woke up, said my goofy little drunk prayers… oh, thank you! I love you! I love you! -- and of course that was before all of this real-life shit hit the fan, giving me a reason to unhinge.
I know this much: I know that I have changed. I know that HE hasn’t. I need to reacquaint with Him. Strangely, I feel a little stubborn resentment in saying this. But why??
(And now I need a break)
I’m back. This week I have been watching these silly morning programs. Those that teach me how to be a hot mom at around age 40, also how to make holiday pumpkin tarts and maple cookies, cute and clever wreaths to decorate my front door with. You know, things that fire people up for the oncoming cool weather season… and look extremely sexy while doing it...
These are things that I always get really excited about, and I’m just not feeling much.
Ken and I had a conversation about drinking too much, and I made the decision that that crap has to stop. I hope he does too. Maybe we will help each other with that. I pray that you do not come back to us with a sweet tooth for alcohol. It sucks.
It would be just as easy to have a big glass of ice tea as opposed to one beer that leads to six, or one glass of wine that leads to a bottle. Ideally, we would train ourselves to stop after one, but not many people can do that, unfortunately.
Before I really work my ass into a rumpus on this subject… and get into a debate with myself… something I’ve been doing a lot of lately… I’m just going for another subject change here. Pass the beer nuts…
But wait! Good Lord, I have just realized that Tiki Barber is an actual fixture of “Today”. I suppose I thought he was a favorite guest??? The realization dawned on me after I kept noticing him on there quite a bit lately. Wait, he’s on every day! I am thinking to myself. Damn, this man is fine!… and then the old prejudices of our grandparents grab hold and I catch myself looking over my shoulder to see who heard me say that. But then I see clearly “that generation” has evidently lightened up a bit. Or at least they do when they are vacationing in New York. Hordes of 70-year-old women are staring up at this man adoringly, you know. I hear one say, “Tiki, I love you!” I think the camera cut away right before Helen tossed her Playtex Cross-Your-Heart... Jeez.
Then we go to a commercial…Daryl Johnson, The Moose, is standing with a uniformed man. When-the-hell did Daryl’s hair go completely gray??? Daryl is giving us a spiel on professional air duct cleaning, and how that has changed his life.
Then another celebrity is trying to sell something. I vaguely recognize him as somebody from NASCAR. He’s wearing a retina-searing jumpsuit and cap ensemble, featuring about 20-or-so sponsors. Then I know for damn-shure he’s NASAR, once he starts schlepping a product for “far aint in-fes-tay-shun.”
It all ads up to mesmerizing television…air duct cleansing and fire ants… and I sit there trapped, becoming indoctrinated to it all, because I am sitting on my launch pad, awaiting the countdown from KPRC master control.
And the beat goes on…
And now I’m just about done expending my “imagination wattage” on the subject of mesmerizing morning television.
Funny story…well, it didn’t start funny but certainly ended funny. Kevin and I met a young man at Babin’s Seafood. He is the bartender there. Sometimes we elect to eat at their stylish bar. It is dark, shiny and mahogany, mirrored, old-brick-pillared, large gas lamps are suspended down from the ceiling. Very classy Bourbon Street motif.
The young man and woman tending bar are college students, intellectual types. He is a math fella, she is working on her anthropology major.
A very cool reggae song comes on. I tell Kevin that this is Bob Marley’s son, Ziggy. Kevin is impressed; he didn‘t know this. The young mathematician bartender overhears and comes over to make conversation. He starts out with…“Yeah, when Eric Clapton’s son died, he almost went crazy, so he went to the Caribbean and met Bob Marley. Bob Marley kept him from falling to pieces, and together they wrote, “I Shot The Sheriff.”
Um… Kevin and I looked at each other with a whuu? expression and just sorta grinned. The young man felt very sure about this. I considered correcting him, but too many young people around us heard his version on the birth of “I Shot the Sheriff” and were impressed.
The moral of this story: There is no use arguing with a young man who can multiply anything by the square root of minus one.
This segues into the next head-scratching conundrum. There is a sticker on Baylen’s jeep. It is displayed on her back window. It is a black-and-white of a ruggedly handsome Latino man. He is wearing a jaunty beret, has a disheveled beard. More than anything, his eyes just speak volumes…
“Isn’t he hot, Mom?”
“Well…”
“That’s how all the guys in Austin look now.”
“Well, Baylen, he certainly has a presence about him.”
In my mind I’m thinking… Think! Think! You know who this man is. But I can’t, for the life of me, come up with the answer. It is starting to bother me.
“No, Baylen, really, who is he?”
“Um, I think he has this really cool band in Austin.”
“Why do you have the sticker on your vehicle if you are not clear about who this man is?”
“Um, because he’s hot.”
Well… as it turns out, I was on the internet the next day or so, checking my mail, reading Yahoo! news headlines. I see an article: Rich Houstonian buys “lock of revolutionist hair. This man spent like $120k, or some shit like that, for this lock of hair. Well, headlines like that just draw me in like flypaper, so I click on the story. Turns out, this lock belongs to Che Guevara.
Texas Collector Buys Lock of Che Guevara's Hair
Weekend Edition Saturday, October 27, 2007 · Bill Butler, who owns a Texas bookstore and collects memorabilia from the 1960s, bought one of the ultimate mementos of that age: about a hundred strands of hair from Che Guevara.
Gustavo Villoldo, a Cuban-born CIA operative who helped Bolivian troops capture Che Guevara in 1967, snipped the strands before Che was executed.
Butler says he admires Che, and told reporters that he was "one of the great revolutionaries of the 20th century."
Rene Barrientos, who teaches math at Miami-Dade College and is the son of Gen. Rene Barrientos who was the head of Bolivia at the time, told The New York Times he is puzzled by the adulation and says, "There is no basis to admire him. He destroyed a lot of lives."
Earlier this year, three strands of former President Abraham Lincoln's hair sold for a little more than $11,000. A whole lock of Lincoln's hair sold for $21,000.
Butler paid $119,000, but that price includes a set of Che Guevara's fingerprints, pictures of him in death, and maps the Bolivian military used to find him.
Quote from Wikipedia…
Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (June 14,[1] 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as Che Guevara, El Che or just Che was an Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary, political figure, and leader of Cuban and internationalist guerrillas.
As a young man studying medicine, Guevara travelled throughout South America, bringing him into direct contact with the impoverished conditions in which many people lived. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to the conclusion that the region's socio-economic inequalities could only be remedied by socialism through revolution, prompting him to intensify his study of Marxism and travel to Guatemala to learn about the reforms being implemented there by President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán.
While in Mexico in 1956, Guevara joined Fidel Castro's revolutionary 26th of July Movement, which seized power from the regime of the dictator[2][citation needed] General Fulgencio Batista in Cuba in 1959. In the months after the success of the revolution, Guevara was assigned the role of "supreme prosecutor",[citation needed] overseeing the trials and executions of hundreds of suspected war criminals from the previous regime.[3] After serving in various important posts in the new government and writing a number of articles and books on the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare, Guevara left Cuba in 1965 with the intention of fomenting revolutions first in Congo-Kinshasa, and then in Bolivia, where he was captured in a military operation supported by the CIA and the U.S. Army Special Forces.[4] Guevara was summarily executed by the Bolivian Army in the town of La Higuera near Vallegrande on October 9, 1967.[5]
After his death, Guevara became an icon of socialist revolutionary movements and a cultural icon worldwide. An Alberto Korda photo of him (shown) has received wide distribution and modification, appearing on t-shirts, protest banners, and in many other formats. The Maryland Institute College of Art called this picture "the most famous photograph in the world and a symbol of the 20th century."[6]
Here we go…
Even more ironically, weeks earlier, before my discussion with Baylen, I got sucked into a radio piece in the car (I am an NPR geek) and they were discussing Che. Interestingly, his relations with Fidel Castro, and their eventual fallout.
As I dip into my huge vat of parakeet knowledge on the subject of Mr. Che Guevara… a ball finally falls into a slot -- Eureka! “Motorcycle Diaries!!” A movie that I happened to enjoy a great deal.
Where I am going with all of this…?
I’m sure that you have guessed by now… that sticker on the back of my daughter’s jeep is Che Gurevara.
She has no clue…
Isn’t it interesting how the young clans immortalize rebellious, malcontent figures, turn them into icons, but, in a lot of cases, have no idea what they represent? Che was fighting for human rights of a disenfranchised group of people. Baylen is fighting for her human rights of uninterrupted bitchiness, unlimited text messages, Menthol Camels, no curfew and her God-given right to sleep in until 3:00 p.m. every…damn…fukkin’…. day… and then get up and do it all over again.
Please slap me. It’s not like we haven’t taken her car keys, cell phone and internet… she just moves out of the house.
Sometimes I think the only way to raise functional, avid, responsible children is to let them grow up working the farm, with absolutely no access to anything… and then ice their little cakes with a horrifying Southern Baptist upbringing.
Man, your sis is really cooking on the front burner today, huh?
Jake has informed me that he NEEDS black hair dye, black eyeliner, some sort of arm bands with spikes and Halloween scar trickery. Something to do with a dead skateboarder. And the ONLY place to get this necessary crap is across town in some abandoned grocery store building/turned Halloween super center. It’s in the back of one of those ghetto-fabulous shopping centers that you can get into pretty easily but not out of. And he needs it TODAY.
(sigh) I really need to figure out a way to ratchet up some motivation for this project. If I have not acquired a keen hankering for Virginia Slims by the time you get out…it will be by the Grace of God.
We’re gearing up for Thanksgiving here. I don’t mean to sound un-thankful or anything, but I intend to have a stress-free holiday this year. The most taxing project I will be taking on is to remove that puzzling sack of grossness from the turkey’s ass, then handing that bird off to Kevin -- to deep fry on the pool deck. I will let mom take care of the vegetables, Jake and I will bake the pumpkin pie, Baylen will pace around in her cage (room-to-room) . She’ll be on her cell phone, giving us those trademark kiss-my-bitter-ass looks. She will undoubtedly be searching out other families to celebrate her Thanksgiving with, as her family is just the pinnacle of sucktitude. You know…
My house is filthy. Do you think Sears is making a vacuum cleaner yet that a woman can ride on? I think I’ll just wait around for that model.
Hurry up.
K
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