Don't Even Ask Me About Lettuce

So I am taking this supplement that my friend sells.
I "won" it in a raffle she held at her booth at a NW Mind Body Spirit show recently.
And by win I mean that I filled out the form with the understanding that if she could swing it, I was going to win. I believe that is the first raffle I've ever won. I'm not particularly lucky, unlike Lakshmi, who makes you want to scream with how many times she wins things.

But then again, she enters things, and I've heard that is a good start on the whole winning thing journey.

But I digress. My friend Gaia (she is a lovely, lovely, nurturing woman) has been taking this supplement for her entire first pregnancy and now through her second. She credits it for keeping both she and her son healthy, and for ensuring she never became as a big as a house.

That was pretty much all I needed to hear. The very day she dropped off the prize to me, I started taking it.

(UNLIKE MY FUCKING CANDLES. WHERE ARE MY FUCKING CANDLES? Don't throw a candle party and then keep the sales open for three months. That's ASININE, and now I don't even want the fucking things. I need instant gratification, and I need it right this very minute!)

Anyway. I started taking the supplement immediately, and I've been taking it every day religiously (except for two days this weekend, which I'll explain later).

And it is a powder that you mix with water and shake up and then drink. It has a bazillion fruits, nuts, grains, and good stuff for you. I will tell you exactly what in a second. I'm getting there, just be patient.

About three days after I started taking taking it, I noticed something odd. My stomach was having a little revolution issue. Revolting. Constantly. ALLTHETIME. UNCOMFORTABLY SO.

I know! Too much information, but then, you're reading my blog, so suck it. It has been a slow week.

So basically it is like this: I take the supplement. Then I eat something, and it is like throwing a food party. I invite all the food into my colon and then they get all out of control, and the music gets going, and someone breaks the fucking toilet tank (CLP!!) and I'm getting pissed and my other organs are trying to do their jobs and the fucking colon won't turn down the bass, and THEN. Someone calls the body cops and they come in and break up the party and it is all, "EVERYONE GET OUT. NOW! You're underage and you're drinking and we're gonna bust every last one of you!!"

So everything in my colon goes flying out screaming, "Damn, it's the pigs - everyone get out of here, dude hide the drugs, my mom will fucking kill me!!!"

I get just a brief rumble before news of the cop show arrives simultaneously to my brain and all pain receptors in my stomach. I've been no farther from a clean and well-smelling restroom than is absolutely necessary since I started taking these things.

So I got curious and really looked at the information packet. (I know, how stupid of me to take something w/o reading the actual ingredients!? I truly DON'T REALLY CARE! Unless I break into hives or turn orange or my stomach joins the communist party. You can ask me about all of the random and indefinable things I ingested in college if you are so inclined. I'm fairly daring when it comes to my body. It should be interesting when I'm in my 80's.)

What is in this stuff:
30 Antioxidant Rich Fruits and Berries (it tastes very berry)
30 Powerful Greens & Vegetables (like berry-flavored dirt)
11 Nutrient Dense Seeds, Nuts and Sprouts (I will admit to gagging down the last swallow)
83+ Active Enzymes and Fulvic Minerals (what is a fulvic mineral?)
22 Strains of Resilient Living Probiotics (WHAT? 22 STRAINS of RESILIENT LIVING THINGS?)

I think I know what is causing my stomach issues.
That must be like eating 357 cups of yogurt that have been left out in the sun all day.
I'm surprised I haven't ballooned into 400 pounds of "living things" and am now considered an amusement park for all various and sundry bacteria in my body.

They are resilient, and they are extremely territorial of their turf.
Which is my poor, oft-abused colon and lower intestine.

But that being said, I'm taking it again, once everything calmed down.
I think the resistant strains now know: Fuck with me again, and I won't let your friends emigrate. That's the kind of brain I am.

And I've been to India, and I've contracted Amebic Dystentery, which is a WHOLE 'NOTHER POST - one which I promise never to write.

22 Strains of Resilient Living Probiotics? Pshaw. You're child's play to me.

Mayakovsky - FRANK O'HARA

1
My heart's aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying. Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it's throbbing!

then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.

2
I love you. I love you,
but I'm turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.

Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,

and I'll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.

Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick

with bloody blows on its head.
I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.

3
That's funny! there's blood on my chest
oh yes, I've been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky
and glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea

4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

Friday Letters

Dear Guy Who Flipped Me Off This Morning:

I cut my driving teeth in California. That's Los Angeles to you, dickwad. You may have heard LA referred to as HELL-A before, and let me tell you why:

There is an extraordinary amount of bullshit driving that occurs in LA. You'd be surprised, no really, you would! I know you're from Seattle, and that's where stupid people drive nicely (an altogether horrid combination, if you ask me....) but I'm not from Seattle. There are drivers in LA that drive so as to PURPOSEFULLY hurt people, and police car chases and the whatnot. So really, learning how to drive in LA is learning how to drive aggressively and reactively, ALL THE TIME. No matter what you're doing. (iPOD be damned! I'll swerve and miss that person who flagrantly jumped on his brakes when the light four streets away turned yellow.) I know, you're not following me. That's okay.

What I am trying to tell you is that when your car came to a DEAD STOP on a busy off ramp so that you could honk and wave at your friend that was stuck in traffic, my teensy horn-bleat was a polite way to say that you're an imbecile who is going to get someone killed. The underlying subtext was, "Let's hope it's you." I did that admirably restrained beep only after stopping so short and so hard that my purse flew off the front seat and hit the glovebox hard enough that now they're married and my lipstick is on maternity leave.

Go fuck yourself,

Salome

Dear Perky Colleague That Freaks Me Out With Cheer:

Sweetie, chill. Your grin is making MY cheeks hurt. I think you may have been hatched from the pod in Stepford, and OMG that's totally AWESOME!, but you need to show a crack, or a bad mood or something.....you're waay too perky and it is fairly unsettling.

As we sat together during that company conference call, I was watching you for some electrical glitch (a repeated movement, a random blinking eye-lid) to confirm that you are a robot. Or probably a Scientologist. I had just reached for my water to throw on you to cause an electrical fire, when you reached up and picked at your right nostril.

AHA! Not robotic, just preternaturally nice. Let me leave you with these small words of caution:

Everything! Is! Not! That! Awesome! And! You're! Really! Kinda! Scary!

I am the antithesis of perky,

Salome

Cop Out

I was going to sit down and write a nice long post about playing tennis with my husband tonight, and something very exciting that might be possible, might be on the horizon for us.

But I don't want to jinx anything and I am tired and ready for bed.

So instead, I will leave you with this picture of an awesome foursome that is going to Cancun in August. Except that we're a fivesome, and a very cool chick is coming with.

So here we are, effected by iSight's Camera:

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.



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.

Eh.

So I heard from a psychic that in order to feel serene and tranquil I need to spend more time in nature.
Being natural. Doing nature things. Gardening. Waha. Gardening!

For me, and this house built next to every fucking tree in Washington State that is designed by God to drop its leaves, gardening means a whole lot of the very relaxing "cleaning shit up."

I invite you all to watch me garden:

1. Stand on back porch surveying all that requires my attention.
2. Smoke cigarette.
3. Better get the iPod, neighbor is blasting oldies rock.
4. Go around the house to get gardening tools out of the garage.
5. Go back around the house to go inside the kitchen and through the hallway to open the garage door - because every other door is locked and you're an idiot who didn't open the garage door to begin with. Revise step one to include this in the future.
6. Get tools and arrange them on the back porch where you will get them when needed.
7. Go back and get the one thing you will actually use all day.
8. Skip this song, stupid iPod plays the same songs on shuffle all the time.
9. Bend down and greet the cats who are swarming around you, shocked that you are not on the couch with a bourbon.
10. Rake leaves.
11. Rake leaves.
12. Rake leaves.
13. Detest leaf dropping trees and wonder about ticks.
14. Is there Frontline for humans? Wonder this as you rake more leaves.
15. Bend down and greet Finny, who is desperately trying to help you in any way he can. OMG so CUTE! Sooo cute.
16. Gather up leaves and put in the.....?
17. Curse as you walk back around the house to get the yard waste bin. RIDICULOUS lack of planning.
18. Gather leaves and stuff into the yard waste bin. Push down to fit at least 7 piles.
19. Spill half the barrel as you tote it back around the house, across the street to dump down the ravine.
20. Smoke another cigarette.
21. Go inside the house to get some water. You're working pretty hard.
22. Walk over and clip dead flowers off of the planet of hydrangea that is growing at the edge of the deck. Any excuse to ignore the leaves for a bit.
23. See Finny stalking you in the creepy creek bed things and pull one up and toss it to him.
24. Laugh with delight as Finny jumps to grab the creepy thing and then looks expectantly back at you to pull up and throw him more.
25. Find seriously decomposed skeletal thing in the last pile of leaves to go into the bin. Think it is a cat. Go get the Pope to verify. The Pope is seriously skeeved, and suggests it is too brittle boned for a cat. Have distinct mental picture of coyotes puking up the neighborhood cats in your back yard. Which would be so RUDE. See a bone sticking perpendicular to the marshy bit, and because you have your dirty suede gardening gloves on, pull on the bone to reveal a decomposed wing. A HUGE stinky decomposed wing which makes your stomach hurtle towards your throat. Throw it in the yard waste bin and now know who belonged to all those large black feathers you cleaned up off the porch a couple of months ago.
26. Find Finny and gush over his prowess for a bit. Finny doesn't remember, but he loves you anyway.
27. Smoke another cigarette, thinking how one less crow is probably a good thing. Big mean birds might not come around here.
28. See Finny cavorting in the irises and are amazed that this goofy little guy can kill anything.
29. Wipe bead of sweat from forehead and freak out thinking it is a tick.
30. Rake leaves.
31. Weed the little starter weeds that were uncovered by cleaning the leaves.
32. Repeat as necessary until your muscles ache and it looks like you have actually done something.

20 Things About Me

1. I can sneeze with my eyes open. Just because my brother once told me it couldn't be done.
2. I love sharks.
3. Passion Fruit flavored anything sends me into a frenzy of joy.
4. If I don't read from a novel at least once per day I get irritable.
5. I cry at FTD commercials. And sometimes tear up at poignant billboard signs.
6. I wish I were more like my friends.
7. I sometimes wonder why they are my friends.
8. I've considered paying them to stay my friends.
9. I rarely ask for help, but am learning to reach out. It feels good.
10. My dream job would be a musician - guitar and lead vocals.
11. I would be pretty wild as a rock-n-roll singer - and probably die from an overdose.
12. My cats are my kids. No, I mean really, they are my kids.
13. I would kill to protect those I loved.
14. I wish I had been born years earlier, as a man who would go to battle.
15. I really, really, really want dragons to have existed.
16. If I could die and come back as something, it would be a housecat or a great white shark.
17. I think I'm smarter than 95% of the people I meet on a daily basis.
18. I choose my friends because I think they're smarter than I am.
19. I'm always right when I choose my friends because of #18.
20. I can't stay on a diet to save my life.

Letters Letters Letters

Dear Drivers on I-5:

I swear to fucking god that you're all morons.
There is absolutely no need, NO NEED, to tap your brake lights every 13.4 seconds for over 4 miles. I understand that no one wants an accident, I certainly don't want one as much as you don't want one, but if you all don't fucking get a clue I'm going to start honking.

And by honking I mean I am going to surgically enhance my chest to include the steering wheel, because that is how far I'm going to thrust my body onto the horn to give you a message.

If it was just the piece of shit landscape truck that I was UNBELIEVABLY trapped behind for 30 years tonight, I would understand that. I would tap the brakes, too, if I were leaking all sorts of fucking debris over the highway.

And hey, landscape truck? Your truck bed was piled too high. I know this because I was flipping you off for about 15 solid minutes and you didn't speed up once. NOT ONCE.

I understand that traffic can be stressful. And I further agree that the city of Seattle founders were totally tripping on acid when they determined where and how you would merge on and off a freeway, particularly as you hit the CBD on the 5.

But listen. Let's all agree to not drive like idiots, and then everyone will have a safer and happier time out there. Are you with me?

Putting the flames out,
Salome

Dear People in Business that call Busy People In Business:

* LEAVE YOUR FUCKING PHONE NUMBER. I am not omnipotent.
* If the machine cuts you off, that is a polite indication that you have rambled on far too fucking long for me to be at all interested in what you are saying. So please don't call back and say, "Hehehehe your machine is having trouble," and then recap the 4 hour message it tried to end. The machine is not having trouble, it is just as bored as I am.
* TURN OFF THE RADIO AT YOUR DESK WHILE YOU'RE TALKING. Be sure that we don't share the same tasted in music, but be doubly sure that it drives me batshit when I can't hear you because some crappy top-40 song is blaring into the phone speaker.
* If you call me on a regular basis, please don't tell me who you are in relation to me in time and space, and repeat your number and company name twice in the message. If I sent you a Christmas gift, I know who you are. If you call me complaining at least three times a week, you can be assured I fucking know who you are, and I think you're annoying.

Just Trying to Make It Through the Ever-Loving Day,
Salome

Dear Incredibly Large Spider I Saw In My Backyard This Sunday:

Dude, SERIOUSLY. You stay outside and I promise not to kill you. But if you ever dart out of a small crevice very near my head again, all bets are off.

Heebying,
Salome

Clothes on the Freeway

Today on the freeway I passed several piles of clothes.
They were men's clothing, flannels and knitted hats - socks and other items.
I wondered about the story.

A badly-packed moving van, a pickup; items thrown carelessly and tied haphazardly with too-little rope?
What of the story?

Bad breakup - last minute preparations - idiocy.
What?

Or a young woman, having been dumped by one of the first of many worthless lovers, being driven around town by an understanding and sympathetically angry friend, eyes red from crying for hours, deeply pulling on cigarette after cigarette while a song they love that says everything so exactly right plays on a continuous loop - stabbed by the index finger of the girl at the closing swell of music. The friend drives while looking over and agreeing with all the aspects of the loser boyfriend that the friend wants her to know.

You Know? she'll say. And the friend will nod, understanding, or say, Fuck yeah.

YouKnowYouKnowYouKnowYouKnowYouKnow? And the friend will know. Over and over again while they drive with the small items he left in her house. Items he doesn't want, which is why they've stayed at the girlfriend's house this whole time.

And they'll be on the freeway, and the girl's heart will break in a crashing wave larger than all the crashing waves she's felt since he told her, and she'll turn to her friend and tell her she's going to throw his shit out, and the friend will look over and her heart will twist, the girl's red rimmed eyes and phlegmy sniffling - the byproduct of furious tears that rise and fall in the crescendos of the song, and she'll say, absolutely.

And she'll grab armfuls of his clothes and she'll toss them out the window and they'll howl at this, and turn the music up louder, and she'll feel better for a minute, light a new cigarette and nod her head vigorously like she's shaking the ache off, and then they'll fall silent and continue driving, and the tears will break again like waves against the shore.

And this will be the first of so many men that will twist her heart and break her places, but she'll always have this story.

She will always have this story.

My Darling Fabric

Last night, I lovingly curled around my cat in bed.
"Ruuuuucy...." I crooned.

I layed very still, how I do, to make sure that Lucy wasn't disrupted enough to get up and leave.

I'm not sure why I do this, since to get her off my lap when I'm on the couch I have to stand up, tip her sideways, and dump her screeching nest of claws off of me.

But anyway, when I'm going to sleep I need her and so I am very careful not to offend.

So there I was, lovingly curled around her, when she jumped up next to my face.

Which means that for the preceeding 20 minutes I had been lovingly nestled around the wadded up bedsheet.

Sigh.

Hello, my name is Salome, and this is the Pope.

Virginia Tech Massacre

Totally unlike how I felt when the Columbine tragedy occured, I am filled with sadness for the Virginia Tech shooter.
An immigrant - painfully isolated and unable to relate. Attending a school with the over-privileged.

I myself have issues with the over-privileged. You think, I work so hard, I work SO HARD and still I am scraping by.
And this kid invents (by all accounts thus far) a romance with a completely unrequiting girl, and then loses it and kills everyone in sight.

I'm still interested in seeing what his possible motive could have been, but far less am I sorry for the innocent bystanders.
I am sorry for this poor kid's rage and unhappiness and what would have caused him to violently self-destruct like this.

I know what it is like to feel isolated and completely out of touch with people. I also remember well being ridiculed in grade school and even to an extent in college.

I escaped, but I think there were moments when I was an insult or sly glance away from climbing the tower with an UZI and making my fatal point.

I am still writing nasty letters because they bleed off the pressure of living in a society that so focused on the wrong things.
No one gives an inch to anyone else, because everyone's leverage is so hard come by.

This world, this life, it is all so hard, and it just gets harder and more complicated, and as I get older there are just more disappointments and more difficult things to grasp.

I feel for everyone who has just HAD ENOUGH OF IT ALREADY.

I do, I really do, I understand.

I'm finding writing anything to be very difficult lately. I don't even type well, I'm clumsy on the keyboard which is unlike me.
I'm not depressed, but I am disappointed. There are too many people living just for themselves. 9 out of every 10 I meet are doing this. It makes it almost impossible to be kind and try to effect some change. Because the first through 8th person you will try this with will take advantage of you, because they can. Because you asked them to. Because you didn't just assume they would screw you, and so you didn't protect yourself and watch out for it.

Okay, can anyone help me with the fucking MAC? Is there anyway to be typing on a document with a font larger than 5 point? I'm going to go fucking blind already.

I practically need magnifying glasses to read what I'm typing. And the internet? Fucking forget about it.
Everything you pull up to read would fit in my wallet. On the head of a pin. What good is the ability to be working on several windows at a time when I can't see anything on any of them?

I love the new computer and all, but FOR THE LOVE OF FUCKING GOD, you're a MAC, you're supposed to be intuitive to learn, and YOU'RE NOT. All those commercials? Bullshit. Making the transition from a PC to a MAC has been agony.

Nothing works the way you think it should. Applications don't make sense and printing off of the internet requires an advanced computer technology degree.

Sigh.

See? Even the good things in life are so fucking complicated.

Plus I'm fat and dieting only makes me crave the things I should not have. They scream in my head all day long. Plus I have a pain in my kidney area and today my pee was orangey-pink and smelled like buttered popcorn. That can't be good.

College Junior Takes a Typesetting Class!

Correspondence File: April 2007

Dear Minivan Woman on Phone Stopped at the Green Light for 10 Minutes:

Bitch, PLEASE. I've been waiting patiently back here, but if you don't act soon I'm going to miss this light. And if I miss this light, then I'm going to miss the next light, and eventually you will have screwed up my entire commute into work.

And for that? I will follow you to wherever you are going and beat the shit out of you with that phone.

Move Your Ass,

Salome


Dear Guy at the Mac Store:

Hey, listen. We came here to buy tonight. I don't know if you were pissed that I turned down all the "add-ons" you guys are supposed to upsell, or what, but taking our order for the PC we wanted and then letting it sit in the corner of the store while you helped three different people and then flirted with that man and his daughter? HIGHLY ANNOYING.

You so don't let customers cut in front of other customers. You so so so don't want to do that with me.

Clearly you have not heard of me, but I guarantee you I will beat your ass with my new computer.

Fuming,

Salome


Dear Husband Away on A Business Trip:

Honey, I miss you. The cats and I are just knocking around this big empty house waiting for your return. I need you to come home and say things to me like that thing you said to me last night that was so special to me that I'm going to keep it private forever. I am trying to write my nasty letters but it is difficult because all that I am is suffused with the joy from you.
Come home soon, but I hope you sell your teeth out in New Orleans. Get it? Dental Convention? Teeth Out?

Yeah, I know, but you love me anyway.

My heart grows fonder,

Salome

I tried to write a poem about my divorce.

The WHY. Everyone always wanted to know the why. And I think better in metaphors, and the one that started this poem is the metaphor that I came back to every single time I tried to understand why my marriage failed.

So here it is, and it is a wayback poem. I'm not terribly happy with this one - but I haven't tried to revise it in a while.

Divers (written 7/2/03 - revised on 7/16/03 and hasn't been touched since)

DIVERS


A cool night
spanning years at a time
in a minute

we were chin-up from the water’s surface
taking great gasping gulps of crisp frigid air

I can still see you smile at me
falling short of full lungs in your exultation
and those great blue eyes full of sweetness and hope

I had no hope to return to you.

I sucked the night sky
dry of oxygen.

I couldn't see anything

no land
no clear view of the water below
or what swam down there
waiting

And I guess I never take real deep breaths anymore
I don’t think I’m meant to go down that far.

That was a free dive
Into uncharted territory

And as soon as I headed down
With my big wet hand clutched tightly in yours
And my big wet heart....

Going down with all your hopes riding shotgun,

I realized
There isn’t enough air
To live through this.

And you might as well have been
A bleeding diver in a great white’s path
Poised for a destruction
Astonishing in violence and speed.

Down several fathoms
Farther than rational thought:

I KNEW

we were dying.

You held me so tightly
like you thought I was drowning
like you alone could save me.

We were dead weight
Trailing loosely into abysmal currents
And I was hyperventilating
Choking desperately with asthmatic lungs

lack of air
space
of breath.

So I reached down
To the diver’s knife at my belt

I cut you free of me

And the flood of bubbles
From your shocked and shattered face
Breaks my heart a thousand times a second
Every time I think of it

Every single time I think of it.

You spiraled up like a shot from an underwater flare
Kicking feebly
trying to reach down and grab me

Like you thought you could save me
Like you thought I needed saving

I dove out of your grasp
into the dark and murky depths below
where I have some idea
of what to expect
prowling around me.

I am not prone to drowning.
But you were.

You would have died and stayed at my side

And it would have been dangerous, as frailty always is.

I washed up on the shore,
long after this battle gasped its last and let go

I stayed there
striking the rocks on a cyclic tidal rhythm

Just to make sure you got out.

I need you to know that I would have gone back in
To the depth of a realm I fear more than anything else

To get you
bring you to safety.

But one of the things I’ve learned
in all these esoteric, watery lessons,
is you can help someone only so much
then they’ve got to plunge in
fight for themselves.

So you have to WANT to walk out of that water.

I am still here
Standing now on the shore
I’m leaving,
you know that
But I walk slowly
backwards
eye toward the sea
In case you call me
like you need my help.

But don’t fuck around
And call me just to swim
Because you will eventually drown
And there is nothing that I can do about it.

You know I’m like an angler fish

You don’t get what you see
You get what I give you

and I’m short on that
just now.

Still Loving the iSight Camera.....

This was after I discovered the effects buttons.
What you can't tell from this shot is that I was laughing hysterically - I had tears in my eyes and was gasping for air.



Okay, I've got funnier ones, but it seems to want to upload the same photo everytime - no matter how many times I choose a different one.

Blogger on Macs acts different, and is really kind of pissy. I can no longer change my text font - but the good news is that I always want to write in Trebuchet - and my preset HTML didn't always take in the Windows Blogger.

So anyway, off to my hair appointment!

Hee

Well, we did it.
Because I am actually only 5 years old.
We bought the computer tonight! TONIGHT!

Didn't have as great of a time at the Mac store tonight as we did last night - but I will update you all on that later, I have a couple of letters to the world that I've been working on. I'll compose and post in a bit.

We then decided to go to Johnny Rockets at Tukwila Southcenter to grab a quick bite.
I did try to stay on my diet, but they were out of what I was going to try to eat healthily and so I ordered a chili dog.

Because, if thwarted, I'm THWARTED. ;)

Anyway, here is me after I spent 25 minutes looking for how to operate the camera that comes included in the iMAC.




I'm only posting this one photo because in every single other photo my nose is the size of Cleveland.

We're making the jump......

From my old creaky Dell PC to

THIS

We're very excited.

I am still price comparing at the moment - so no purchase date as of yet, but we went to the Mac store tonight and I can't even tell you the number of times our mouths dropped open and we said wow.

WOW.

All I have to say.

WOW.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

Tah Dah!!

The New And Improved: CARCHARODONNA.

Hope you like it! My back aches and I'm drunk from all the red wine I drank.
I learned a lot. I screwed up a lot, which taught me many things.

Mostly that drinking red wine while trying to figure out basic HTML is a no-win situation.

I posted a poem.
A couple of you may know that I used to like to write poems.
I used to write them constantly, actually. I always had a notebook (or two) with me that I would scribble in. It was actually pretty annoying for people around me.
I have over 500 poems in about 20 notebooks. And about 10 of them don't suck!

I won't bore you too much with them, I promise.
But I'm going to be posting some from the wayback days just to flex my muscles a bit.

You see, my life is lacking something.
I used to define myself by my writing and other artistic pursuits I was heavily engaged in.
That is what I DID, that was who I WAS.
I knew exactly where I was going in my personal pursuit of art.

I lost that some time ago and it has been bothering me.
A lot. Lately. I've been really bothered lately.

I used to think that there was something special about me.
Something that set me apart, something that I had of my own.
A gift, or an affinity (or an ego, HELLO?) something that made me think I wasn't just a complete hack with this writing stuff.

However deluded I may have been, I was much happier then.
I need a little bit of that happiness in my life lately.

I laid in bed all weekend (avec flu) wondering how I got to be this person that I am now.
Some of this 32 year old me is okay, but most of it is lazy, bitchy, and full of unrequited ambition.

So for what it is worth, I'm going to try to make an effort to remember just a bit of that wild, endlessly creative 20 year old I was.

What do you think of the new site?

Poetry Contest Submission #1

Angler

Swim fast, little fish
Dive deep
dark sea

plunge hapless until dangered be.

Why seek I the witch?
Why taunt the sharks with blood?

Do I desire the purity of sea foam,
knowing that it wastes into mud?

I'm going to get bitten

I'm going to die
down here

someday.


(1994)

Woof

Tonight on a brief, rant-filled conversation with my parents I said something about how my cats have had to defend their territory against invading neighbor cats.

(It's true, there are a couple new cats in the 'hood, and our door flap broke, so we're OPEN all the time over here at Chez Pope N' Sal. The cats have the nerve to actually come in the door and walk all nonchalant into the house. Sends Lucy into a caterwauling fit, she makes sounds that could probably bend metal. Finny goes apeshit and careens off everything in his path on his way to the door - he does this, you see, because he's running while turned sideways and that is really hard to do)

So I mention this to my parents and my dad says,

"Do they know that Finny is the size of a goddamned dog??"

And the answer to that is:

They do now.

Hooray for Me

I have successfully removed all the hair from my left upper arm.

In other news, the Pope had the flu for 45 seconds and then gave it to me.
I expect to be out for a month.

I didn't wash my hair this morning and by about 3pm I could have fried doughnuts in it.

Inexplicable facial breakout refuses to be subdued.
Correspondingly thick makeup continues.

All three cats were complete jerks this morning.
They typically can't stand each other long enough to team up - but something was bugging them this morning.
Probably something dead that will stink soon.

Yoo Hoo.

An Okay Day

I had an ok day.

• Worked out HARD and erased all aggression from my spirit. (Which is good, considering I honked viciously at an absolute moron right before going to gym. Unfortunately, they were going almost my entire way there, so by the the time I turned into the gym's driveway, I'd totally freaked them out like I was going to follow them and beat the snot out of them for that totally bullshit turn on red they took. Which, come to think of it, I was pretty heavily debating. They pulled into an alley and waited for me to pass. HAW. Dorks.)
• Put my Italian Lessons on my iPOD. Because sitting on the desk untouched? Not really working.
• Watered all plants. (sorry plants I'll be better, thanks for not dying)
• Ate pretty well today.
• Was generally congenial and productive at work.
• DID NOT SMOKE EVEN THOUGH I'M FUCKIN' DYIN OVAH HEAH.

The Pope loved his first day of work, and promptly came down with the flu tonight. Chills and frogs in throats to beat the band. This poor guy. He marries me and all he gets is my luck.

I had a very withdrawn weekend. We attended a birthday party, and after I took an hour to get home (seriously, what the fuck Seattle? Is it POSSIBLE to not have traffic. Once?) I crawled into bed and stayed there for about 28 hours straight.

I'd go on, but I'm developing a bad case of ennui.

NOSMO KING

Today was my first day without a cigarette in a very long time.
That is, of course, unless I was so sick I was coughing up blood and I sounded like a stalled car when breathing.

It has actually been about 24 hours without one, now.

Which is HUGE. HAYOOOOGE. Big.

I am wearing the patch. I started wearing the patch (from a pack I bought about 6 months ago and never used) approximately two weeks ago. I immediately noticed a significant decrease in my irritation level, something I think the four or five of you reading this will raise your eyebrows at, because what is Salome if she is not irritated???? And the answer to that is, of course: BITCHY.)

I wore the patch and occasionally smoked until the patches ran out. Then I went to get more patches. My smoking hadn't stopped, but it had significantly decreased, enough to make me want more patches. And at the store I discovered an ASTOUNDING thing.

I bought the wrong patches the first time. I bought Step 3! I tried to cut in line!
The first time I opened the right patch (Step 1, I'm doing it right this time...) I about gagged.

Step 3's patch is tiny and cute and fits discreetly on my upper arm, where I would painfully rip out seemingly endless hairs each morning while removing it. I alternated between arms and rarely was bothered by it, in fact, almost always was able to forget about it completely.

Step 1's patch is not fucking around. It has about 3x more nicotine than Step 3 and is about 20x times the size. It is almost just exactly kind of like stepping into a body-sized flypaper. It covers the width of my arm and extends further than a really bad tattoo. I can't help but notice it, because it wrinkles when I move and is visible in a Tshirt. It also rips out all kinds of new seemingly endless hairs, on a much larger scale.

And seriously, when am I going to rip out all the hairs? I can't possible have this much hair on my upper arm. Gross!

The increased nicotine made the skin around the patch (in bleedy, veiny patterns) bright red, almost immediately. I saw it and was alarmed at first, and then thought, "lung cancer is probably way grosser," so I left it alone. The red is gone now, except for a perfect, patch-sized square that remains no matter how long it has been since I forcibly ripped it off, wincing and dancing every morning in the shower.

And I like it. I'm not freaking out or anything, this high level of nicotine isn't making me loopy or weird like the Zyban generics do, meaning I don't sit and drool vacantly in front of my computer anymore, and I really don't feel a tremendous urge to smoke. I finished out the pack (of course) when I first started wearing them and smoking was nasty, something I had to do, but really wanted to get over as soon as possible.

The only thing that freaks me out about these patches is the dreaming.
I'm dreaming in vivid technicolor, and soooooooo detailed. I'm detailed down the hairs on a dog in a farm in Ireland where I've set up a complicated business of creating paper from words spoken by druids that survived all these years by eating the DNA off of roots of the hairs plucked from Scottish beards. I could probably sit down right now and write you my business plan.

I've thought that I should write these down, because they are WAY weird. I mean, no one would believe this stuff. I think my REM cycle treats nicotine like coffee, and is finally like, "Now is MY turn to talk!"

And Brain?
You're fucking strange.
I mean, all along I've thought I was a bit off. But THIS?

This is INSANE.

Last night I dreamt that my brother and I were taking some sort of seminar together, in an area that my entire family was vacationing (because what better time to go to a SEMINAR??).
Each morning a buffet was laid out in my parents' hotel and my brother and I would go there to scavenge it. They had some dish that had cottage cheese and fruit all mixed together like a salad, and it was good, it was really good, and I woke up thinking I needed to write it down so I could make it. They also had a runny, bean-dip kind of salad that had tortilla chips in it and my Dad yelled at me that I was taking too long in line trying to get one single tortilla chip to sop up all the goop with. Looked like it had a bunch of chips mixed in, but every scoop was just more and more bean dip. I ended up somehow with my cousin Ricky and some other person in my tiny apartment in the heart of a city and while I thought we all went out and had a great time, I woke up in the dream and everyone told me I had fallen asleep early and just dreamt that I was a good hostess and they were all annoyed with me. There was a lot more, but I'll move on....

The night before I went to a Bible Study Class and it was cool. Which surprised me after I woke up (of course nothing fazes me in the dreams, except for the night before, which I'll tell you about in a sec) because I've always been reticent to attend Bible Studies Classes because I think I'll end up in a circle of overweight women who don't wear makeup and don't color out the gray in their hair, and they'll wear dresses with anklet socks and scrunchies in their hair. These people (men and women) were hip and cool and funky and real. And later John Paul and I returned there and they hooked me up to a heart monitor for hours, and let me sleep and then fed me a chocolate dessert plate with something lemon on it and I remembered thinking, "I should be on a diet, but honestly I'm on a fucking heart monitor here, so fat can't be the worst of my problems" and then we were driving over big hilly roads and I looked out the window and thought, "these would be a bitch to walk up." and then we were antique shopping with the cool people from Bible Study. (This is about 1/100th of the detail and length of the dream. I kid you not).

The kick-off (I've been on the patches for three days) was dreaming about some book being published on the architectural history of the Paris city of Nantes (CLP!!) and at the last minute it was changed to some other city which I remembered the whole next day but now I forget and I was working with the researchers who were really well respected and somehow in the middle of this I had to run to my hotel to get my stuff out of the room, only when I arrived there I didn't just have enough stuff in the room for a hotel stay, but I had apparently lived there for a many years and my entire life collection of crap was there. So I compromised and took three pillows and a cloth purse (because, of course!), and folded them neatly into my suitcase. But to get to my tiny bungalow hotel, I had to go through some ancient but well preserved 4 star hotel, and the whole thing was a mess of weird hallways and elevators and marble sloped floors that I slapped along running like a primate and I was really stressed and pressed for time, and the whole time I'm learning about this architectural city switching and how the researchers are pissed off because they've been working for months and have to redo everything in two days, and then I'm in class telling everybody what I had just learned (so clearly it was really important to my real brain to listen to it) and then the researchers complimented me as we walked outside and I was walking in a ditch next to them, and I handed them my card and felt really hopeful like they were going to make me famous, and then they walked away and the sun was shining and I walked into the cathedral entryway of what was apparently my college and a man walking with his girlfriend stopped me and said, "you know who they were, don't you? Those professors?" I said no, and he said, "They were two of the 11. The Tina Steenson 11. They were two of them." And I gasped like I really knew what the hell he was talking about and the girl he was with pulled at his arm and said, "Let's just go," and the guy walked away and I heard a BUM BUM BAH! in my head like I was a TV detective and my new case had just been revealed for myself and the viewers.

Needless to say, I'm absolutely exhausted every morning.

Worse.

What's worse than finding little dead rodents every so often on your living room, dining room, bedroom, hallway floors?

What's worse?

WHAT'S WORSE?

Feathers.

Lots and lots of feathers.

Covering the hallway.

And then a teensy bird wing, separated at the joint.

And...

Nothing else.

Even though you searched the entire goddamned house looking for a bird carcass.

Sigh.

Dear Eensy Baby Bird,

I'm so sorry. I swear to God I'm going to get that little guy a bell.

Love,

Finny's Mom

p.s. Please, if you are dead and under the bed or something, send your ghost or stink early.

Thoughtful

Today in the mail I received a bubble-pack from Potterchick.
She had called and asked for my zip code, so I knew something was coming.
I asked what and she said, "It's for you. You'll know what it is."

I opened the bubble pack and there was a card and an envelope from her bank.
I opened the envelope first, because I'm really five years old at heart.

Inside was a dried, pressed red rose.
I stood there and looked at it, mystified for a second and then it hit me.
And I welled up with tears, and felt such gratitude for her, for her thoughfulness, and for the fact that she knew I would want this, that she pressed it and found it again and sent it to me.

My beloved grandfather died December 7th.
At the funeral in Ohio, Potterchick came immediately and stayed with me the whole time. She drove in the funeral procession and listened to me alternately cry my eyes out and bitch at my loser cousins.

She took care of me when I drank two bourbons and a huge shot of Jamieson's on an empty stomach. She drove me all over town. She let me smoke a hundred cigarettes and dash away from her whenever I saw someone I wanted to say something to.

She deflected my increasingly strange aunt from talking to me too much.

She was sympathetic when my stomach went apeshit and sent me to the restroom every 13.4 miliseconds for four days. (What on earth was that? Stress?)

She was, in short, my absolute rock the whole time. She was the one person who I consistently looked for when I felt sad, the one I knew was there for me, and would let me cry without feeling like a huge baby. She let me hug her in her gorgeous suits.

At the cemetary, each family member stepped up and took a single red rose from the arrangement on my grandfather's casket. When we got to the wake, I set the rose on her car seat so I wouldn't mush it up when we were inside. After the bourbons and the whiskey, I didn't recall what happened to that rose.

My mother and sister-in-law and my brother kept their roses and put them in a vase on the kitchen table. I remember feeling like a jerk because I'd gotten too drunk and couldn't find mine. (I also felt slightly reminiscent, because getting drunk and not being able to find things isn't exactly new for me. Where's my car? Dude?)

I just pressed the rose into a beloved picture of my grandfather and I.

Thank you so much for your extreme thoughtfulness. It is appreciated beyond anything I can ever say to you.

Recent events have overcome the grief over the loss of my grandpa. But the loss of him is a palpable one. You would have to had known him to know what he meant to me, and to everyone that ever met him. You would have to know my family and I very closely to know that he will be remembered and missed frequently, all the days of our lives.

It is just every so often that someone comes into your life and makes it better just by the fact of them. My grandfather was one such person, and I had the priviledge to have him for 32 years.

Potterchick, you are another one.

Love you.

In the Weeds

It's been a while, I know.

Work has sucked lately. It has sucked, I have sucked at it, and life sucked thusly.

I've finally decided that I'm fat enough to really get motivated about getting UNfat.

Three times working out at the gym this week. Still get done and skip crunches or ab-work, because, honestly? I don't know what I'm doing there and always feel stupid. I saw this teeny woman doing a series of serious ab work and I was floored. I decided right then and there to have six banana splits when I got home. Just to temper the disappointment in my own shape. Ya know.

We don't really have the fixings for banana splits at home.
I know this because if we did I would have stress-eaten them all, separately, this week.

I got a lot of sleep last night and came in this morning to work, refreshed and enervated.
It was a full 30 minutes before I said, "I totally fucking HATE my job."

Which is excellent, this past week considered.

I have fun things planned for this weekend, Baby Brody turns 1!!!
For those of you who don't know who he is, let me just tell you, he is the most precious little guy you've ever met. He is the kind of cute that makes your ovaries release eggs and your pheromones go crazy, pumping out enough scent to attract all the dogs in Wisconsin.

Yes, honestly, he's that cute. Holding him makes my husband want a baby.
Holding him makes me want a baby. Actually, a baby like him. Because holding him kind of makes me worried that there's no way my temperament could ever produce a child this mellow and happy. Mine will be screaming constantly and will smoke at the age of 6 months.

I am sure of this.

Thinking about all of this has made me want to pull my husband into the bedroom and try to convince him to have a baby 6 months earlier than we've been planning to try to have one.

Excuse me.

More Letters Because I Keep Thinking of New Ones

Dear Asshole in the Mercedes SUV:

You're an asshole. Flooring it alongside me in the merge lane for the 5 Freeway was a dumbass thing to do. You might have realized that when I threw myself on the horn for a full 2 minutes after you forced me to slam on the brakes in a busy merge situation.

Listen, DICK, nasty women struggling with anger issues always have the right of way.

One more thing, congratulations on driving a Mercedes. The second I saw your pallid, thin face I knew you worked in Systems Programming at Microsoft. And before you puff up your boyish chest with pride, IT IS NOT A COMPLIMENT.

No matter what you do, no matter what you drive, you will always look like you're on your way to Nerdapalooza. And any hot woman that sleeps with you is only doing it for the money. And you'll know this deep down in your conceited heart, and it will eat at you for the rest of your life.

Enjoy the car,

Salome

Dear Darling Little Girl At Target Today:

I walked past an overstuffed rack of boy clothes and caught your movement below. I looked down, and there you were, peeking out from under the clearance rack of winter boys clothes. You were so mischevious and just about the cutest thing I've seen in days. I smiled at you and you beamed back at me, a smile so sincere and bright that it lit you up like a roman candle. You made my day, sweetie.

Keep on Keeping on,

Salome

Catching up on my correspondence....

Dear Man in Seat 12C:

Thank you for reclining your seat as far back as possible on this 2 hour flight from Colorado to Seattle. I appreciate your consideration, especially since United has the least amount of leg room I've ever flown with. Further, thank you for not believing you were reclined all the way, and repeatedly throwing yourself backward in your chair, and crashing into my knees with each throw. I couldn't appreciate that more.

The next time I fly with you, sir, I intend to purchase the seat in front of YOU, and batter your knees bloody as often as I can.

Sincerely,
Salome

Dear Middle-Aged Couple at TCBY in Denver Airport:

Listen, folks, it doesn't take 20 minutes to order frozen yogurt. I appreciate that you think of each other as "cute," and let me tell you, repeating it for the entire 20 minutes while the line behind you grew 15 people deep, well, that was CUTE. Totally cute. So cute that my teeth hurt, and sugar poured out of my tear ducts. I could have invented yogurt in less time than it took you to order one large Old-Fashioned Vanilla swirled with Juicy Orange Sorbet. Yes, that's right, two spoons. No, two spoons. See, there are two of us, and we're so CUTE. Hey, we got our yogurt, honey! I'm going to rearrange my wallet right here, right now, while the angry young lady behind me is trying to pay. Because I'm cute.

Sincerely,
Salome (the angry young lady who sighed loudly at the contents of your wallet)

Dear Lady Behind Me On The Plane With the Really Annoying Laugh:

You're not funny. Whoever you were sitting next to? Not funny. Nothing could possibly be so funny that you had to laugh that godawful laugh where you trilled up to a closing, "Ha Ha HAAAAAAA!" every thirteen seconds for a two hour flight. I appreciate your general sense of good humor, trust me, I do. If you've read my correspondence file, you'll see that I could use a bit of good humor, in the general sense, in my life. But while I appreciate that you are FUN! and you really think things are FUNNY! I was in agony listening to you. I hated you so much that I sat in my seat, knees bloodied, and thought of ways to cut out your vocal cords with the items commonly found on airplanes. I sincerely regretted the fact that you can't bring explosives on board, because I wanted nothing more than to stuff you full of bombs and set you off. I fell asleep and dreamt of leaping over the three rows that separated us and ripping out your tongue with my bare hands.

Happy Travels,
Salome

Dear Contact in My Left Eye:

I have no idea what I've ever done to you that makes you want to hurt constantly for two days straight. I'm merely trying to see, and go about my life supressing an extraordinary amount of anger. Your tiny little pain spot in the left arc of yourself is present upon every blink. You have travelled up into my eyelid 15 times since I put you in one short month ago. I would throw you out and replace you, but your right eye counterpart is fine, and I am cheap. Please have the courtesy to get your fucking act together.

Sincerely,
Salome

Dear Inexplicable Facial Breakout:

What the fuck?
I mean, seriously, what the fuck?
I'm serious. What the Fuck?

I Hate You,
Salome