Friday, March 30, 2007

Been Awhile, I Know!

Lots of things to talk about - LOTS!

1. We had our floors done - ripped up about 98% of the flooring in the house and replaced with a combo of hardwood (engineered, we're not Rockefellers) and really good carpet. It looks like a whole new house! A WHOLE NEW HOUSE!

2. Had a psychic blow my mind, and then found out that Lakshmi is one, too. BLOWS MY MIND!

3. Worked. My. Ass. Off. Moving furniture and sundry items for carpeting. Alone. Just me and a trillion cigarettes, thankgodIstartedsmokingagain,that'sallIhavetosay.

4. Decided I have waaaay too many sundry items. Funny how you can't bear to part with things, until you move them out and back into rooms and decide what a load of crap you've been carrying around this long.

I'll post more later - we were without internet for awhile at home and it feels wrong to blog from work. I will also give pictures of the new floors! Once the house is back together more.

I'm on a diet, and I'm doing okay on it. Right now I"m drinking a pear vodka and diet tonic, as a nod to the diet. Because I'm not going to stop drinking fergodsake. That would be crazy.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

In case you were wondering....

I don't know if I ever told anyone why this site is named the way it is:

Carcharodon is a long-time favorite of mine. If you've ever been around me and the water, I'll tell you why I won't go in, and then proceed to bore you with every fact about sharks I've ever stored in my head.

Which is why I don't know your phone number by heart.

I'm sorry, I simply don't have enough room for your phone number and still retain the ability to draw three different shark teeth for you and tell you which ones they go to.

You really don't want to watch SharkWeek with me. I've seen them all before, and I find myself correcting the shows out loud, scornfully.

It is the sorriest, the dorkiest, the most-Salome thing I do.

So when I sat down to create a blog address, I sat in front of the prompt for a bit, waiting for something to come to me. That is how Salome came about. I signed up for email my freshman year in college. Remember when email was so new? I was so excited to get an email address, and no one wrote to it for the first three years I had it, because NO ONE wrote emails back then. That was back when I thought the internet contained only one website, the homepage for the band HOLE.

Anyway....
Woo. Tangent.

What came to me in the 15 seconds I had to choose a college email address (they timed you, I swear to god.) I typed in, almost as if I were being channeled, salome@....and Salome was born.

I later read about her (although Catholic, I did not know of her) and thought, "huh." Doesn't really sound anything like me. Hmmmm.
But I have continued to use the name Salome. Ever since September of 1992 I have used that name to write under.

So, I sat at the Blogger prompt and then thought: CARCHARODON!
Yes, perfect!
But it was taken, and I was totally pissed.

So I then thought of ways to use it.

And if Carcharodon means Man-Eating Sharks (which is so catchy, I LOVE IT) or...
Sharp Teeth (or rough teeth, depending on where you look, someone with some latin skills can tell us) then making it Carcharodonna would mean: sharp teeth, lady: right? Are you following me?

But then I thought more about who I am and the way I write. And I typically write dark things. I typically think dark things. And so a note of caution appealed to me.

Sharpen Teeth, Lady.

Prepare yourself for the rest of the world, Donna.

Because it can
(and will)
be brutal.

So that's where the name came from.



Monday, March 19, 2007

This one is for all of you, but primarily....



Lakshmi.

After my most recent post, Lakshmi called me to tell me that the post made her want to cry, and she called to say that I could always call her, anytime, for any reason, that she is always here to talk. That she is always there for me to call to talk to.

I listened to her message and I was so touched.

And yet.....

I would never call any of you to tell you that I am down. It is simply not the way I am wired. I live with a man who would like nothing more than for me to tell him when I am down, and yet still, I cannot do that.

What I do when I am down is retreat within myself. Probably the only creatures I will talk to when down are my cats. And yes, this is sad, and this is insular, but I don't want to burden anyone, and I find that unless I write something down, I can't even make sense of it in my own head. So it is far easier for me to talk you guys on this blog, which you can read, or choose not read, at your leisure. Because the only way I feel like I express myself clearly is through the written word. So I will email you all day long, but will not get on the phone to say Hi.

BUT. Regardless of whether or not I will call you, I'd like you all to know that you can call me. When YOU are down, or frustrated. I think so highly of all of you that I would be the first to want to tell you how wrong you are to think poorly of yourself, and how crappy the world is that may treat you bad.

You would just need to say, in the message you leave (because I NEVER pick up the phone) or the email that you write.....you just need to say that you need to talk to me. That you need this for you, not for me. Because I won't return a call of concern for me, but if I hear that you are in need of something, I will burn all phone lines to get to you.

Because I will jump over tall buildings, I will put out fires with my tongue, I will massacre legions of armies just to get to you all and make you feel better.

You are my friends. I would do anything for you.
Each and every one of you. I would do anything for you.

I hope you all know that.

And maybe it is time for me to crawl out of my 32 year old hole and ACT like I'm that person for you. Because I really am. Should you need anything, I would give it to you.

Should someone hurt you, I would want to hurt them back. Should something bring you down, I would listen for hours about this thing and we could go through it together.

The one thing I really am is snobby. And my friends are the best people on earth.
I know this for a fact. A fact I'm very willing to argue and very capable of arguing.

A fact I'm MORE than able to prove.

I have very few friends, because I choose them so selectively. Not saying that I'm the benchmark you should feel good to be in, by any means, because, Hello, we've all been reading this and I'm no big fucking catch, right?

But I have only so few girlfriends, because so few are worth having.

And all of you reading this, to me, are worth having.

Love you guys, but especially Lakshmi, so named because she is more beautiful than you could ever imagine. And she's funny, and she's so smart and and she's dark at heart, too.

She's my friend.

And, like, I'm totally not kidding. She is REALLY beautiful. It sucks. Because once again, one of my close friends makes me feel like a linebacker, every time I'm around her. (This is shades of my experience at UEA when I hung out with the incomparably beautiful Xela.)

Friday, March 09, 2007

Ashes, Ashes

You know when you were a kid, and you fell down really hard, much harder than you thought you would? And you layed there

stung

reeling from the sudden shock of pain and not sure you'd be able to get back up?

And your friends or relatives were in the background laughing at you, and you knew you had to get up, because you didn't want to act like a baby, but you really didn't think you could?

That is what it has been like.

Lying in bed saying to myself, get up get up get up getupgetupgetupgetup.
And not being able to.

Trying to talk to my parents about it and unleashing a phone call so full of invective and ranting, they haven't returned any of my calls since.

I definitely think of depression as a black hole vacuum that sucks you down into it. And this time I walked past the side of it, swirled around the top for a couple of months and then WHAM! I was pulled down in, breaking every bone on my way to the bottom.

I feel better now. I have felt better the last few weeks (with one crying jag because I misunderstood a comment, and was more truthful about how I felt than I have ever been with anyone. Damn this marriage thing - I let down my guards, I have no guards!) but it has been a slow regrouping.

We went out with our good friends last weekend and every word I said felt like concrete when I spoke it, they crashed to ground and broke apart while our friends looked at me strangely.

I ended up drinking a lot to smooth the edges. Who knows if they smoothed, but I felt better. Tequila, I love you extraordinary.

So I'm kind of back on solid ground again, gulping a lot of air. If there were sun, I'd be standing in it, but there is no sun in Seattle today. Or yesterday. Or tomorrow. This can be a really depressing place to live. The only saving grace in the monotonously dreary weather is the burst of color that signals spring here. You don't even remember that there were cherry trees EVERYWHERE until they burst into color. Almost overnight! And the tiny little crocus patch in our front planter grew a flower this year. I watched it last year and it produced leaves but no bud. So maybe this is a sign that this year is going to be a good year. And the daffodil I stepped on last year grew again this year.

Which teaches me more about the physics of bulbs than it does anything else, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

Sorry I've been away. I'm pretty sure I'm back now.






Monday, March 05, 2007

Indefatigable

Tonight the Pope assented to wear a Breathe-Right strip for me.
He's been sleeping better lately, and a result.....I haven't been.

He snores like a fucking lumberjack.
Who knew?
I'm three years in, and I didn't.

I layed in bed with my Wyoming short stories (E. Annie Proulx and wondrous)
and he drifted off to sleep.

The Breathe-Right held on for a while, keeping it to a dull roar of muffled squeaking and strangled "WHAAAAAs."

All of which I listened to while shaking with laughter. The Pope's own cat was horrified, kept sneaking glances to make sure Dad wasn't dying on the vine like it sounded.

And then I think the almighty plastic laid down its sword in defeat.

Because the Pope is in there sawing logs with the angels.
And I'm on my way to the guest bed.

Darling, we'll try it again tomorrow night.

I'll stop and get some duct tape.



Things I Do

  • Drink so many margaritas that I lose my train of thought - on EVERY SENTENCE from 9:00pm until 3:00am. Talking to me last Saturday night must have been like trying to pry information from an amnesiac.
  • Prepare a lovely and well-balanced lunch for myself - bring it to work and then sit there and think about it to too much and eat the entire thing by 9:15am.
  • Wear that sweater with the hole in the armpit and forget about the hole in the armpit until I stretch my arms behind my head (I also do that a lot) and then remember about the hole in my armpit at the exact same time that everyone in my meeting realizes I have a hole in my armpit.