Mom Does It Again...

text from my mother this morning...

'Had a dream the other night where the 4 of us were on a winding road in the van. Dad fell asleep at the wheel. I took the wheel and kicked his foot off the gas pedal. Mayzie and I was ok, you and dad were thrown from the van. Dad was sliding down the hill so I was hanging on to him. They took you to the hospital with two holes in your left thigh, and all the doctor had to say was, "really Karen, 2 tattoos of sesame street on your leg?"'

for the record, I have no muppets on my person, nor do I ever plan to, no matter how much i may like them. I promise.

Clearly, the Ridiculousness is Hereditary...

my mother: hey, i just saw those photos you posted yesterday. those are some really beautiful pictures of you.

me: thanks, mom!

mom: you know how everyone says you look like me? i had no idea i was so gorgeous...

me: good lord, woman. i'm hanging up on you now...

My Mother, Who Got Me Into This Business...

my mom called the other day to discuss this post, even though it had strict parental guidelines - as in, if you are my parent, you may not want to hear this stuff. convo went like this:

mom: so i read your entry-thingie you had posted on facebook, even though you said for me and rob not to...

me: it was just a "fair warning" kind of thing. i don't care if you read it.

mom: good, because i did. do you really feel this way?

me: which part?

mom: like you don't want a relationship at all?

me: absolutely. i'm am so beyond be able to trust someone and myself in that situation. can't do it.

mom: and you won't just sleep with someone... like one night stands or anything?

me: um, no. is this conversation going to make me uncomfortable soon?

mom: no, i'm just checking. you said you had morals. and you do. this is good, it means i raised you right. i'm glad you turned out that way - i did teach you something.

me: (starting to laugh) well, this IS all about you.

mom: of course it is! i don't want to have to say, "this is karen, my ho."

me: (snickering) well, i don't think you can call me your ho unless you're my pimp. in which case you'd be getting a percentage...

mom: nice. would it be enough to quit my job and live off you?

yep, we really have these conversations... :o)

Apparently My Fortune Cookie Wants Me To Be a Vegas Showgirl

fortune cookie say: "do not lose sight of your childhood dreams."

(true story: my mother's reaction to learning that her 5-year-old wanted to be a vegas showgirl went like this... mom: why is that? me: because i'd get to dance all day and wear sparkly costumes. mom: um, ok... i really can't argue with that. one of the many reasons why my mother rocks...)

I Am an EXCELLENT Influence!

my mom came to visit me this weekend (something that was very much appreciated given my current state of being), and we did a little bit of shopping. we headed to the outlets because mom was on a quest to find water-proof boots that she could use when slogging down the driveway and digging the car out and things. we went to a few places, checked out different types of shoes, and i opened her eyes to the simple irrefutable truth that cute shoes (and cute underwear too, actually) can make any icky day a little bit brighter. so mom went home with black and white houndstooth patterned rain boots, two very cute pairs of chucks, some sparkly sandals, and two pairs of fun flats. MAN, i'm good... spreading joy through fun footwear - that should be my new motto! hmmmmm...

addendum: since john is apparently "internetally challenged," he asked me to add his comments below:

A. You should never let driveway slogging dictate your choice of footwear.

B. Chucks?? Awesome. I love you both just a little bit more.

Someone Page Dr. House, Please!

seriously, would it kill a member of my family to have a nice, normal medical problem? the flu, say, or chicken pox, or any one of a thousand other maladies that are easily diagnosed and fixed... is that too much to ask for? we know about all my bizarro issues, from the fibro complications down to the random floating piece of bone in my right elbow that occasionally pinches a nerve. and my parents are no different. i blame all my medical issues on them, because they also cannot seem to have average every-day illnesses. my mother was admitted to the hospital today due to an infection in the cartilage of her ear. she's had pain since friday, it got consistently worse over the weekend, and didn't respond to any of the copious amounts of antibiotics they prescribed her. they admitted her so that they could pump even more ridiculously large amounts of drugs into her - because if they don't get the infection soon enough, it could disintegrate the cartilage of her ear. seriously? what the hell? can you think of a more random, potentially harmful thing? you may watch house on t.v. and think, "well, that's pretty far-fetched - who would that happen to?" the answer is us, my friend; my family - we're the freaks that these things happen to. oi. and keep mom in your thoughts, would ya? thanks.

It's a Sickness. Like Anorexia. Well, Kind Of.

my mother has this weird mental sickness about her hair. even though she has fabulous hair, she thinks it's dull and flat. emphasis on the flat. she will buy any product that promises her more volume, and then swear it doesn't really work. trust me when i say she doesn't need these products as her hair has awesome natural body. she doesn't see it. maybe it's because she's a product of the 60's and bouffant hairstyles, who knows? but just like an anorexic can weigh 67 pounds and still see a fat person in the mirror, my mother still sees flat listless hair even though it's bouncing around her shoulders with life.

i have a sickness too. it has to do with journals.

i collect them like it's my job. blank journals, with smooth lined pages and pretty covers... i can't resist them. there's something about all that potential, all those blank slates waiting to be filled with hopes or dreams or lists or creative thoughts. the problem with this is that i almost never use them. for anything. i make lists all the time, but beautifully bound journals are too lovely to waste on something i need for a few hours then can be thrown away. i don't keep a diary (that's what blogger is for), i rarely - if ever - journal, i do my creative writing mostly on computer, and i have at least 12 - 14 of these hanging around somewhere. oh, sometimes they get repurposed, as a gift, or if one of my teens needs encouragement to write down their thoughts somewhere.... but mostly? mostly i just seem to collect them. i had actually been doing quite well lately, largely due to the fact that i'd been poor... but i relapsed today. i bought a pretty journal with a raised design from a tiffany lamp, with a small magnetic strap that wraps from back to front to keep it closed. (i'm a sucker for Special Features.) it's really pretty. and i'm going to put it to use. probably tonight.

as soon as i figure out what to use it for...

Life Is a Mix Tape, Part 2: The Albums

"tonight, i feel like my whole body is made out of memories. i'm a mix tape, a cassette that's been rewound so many times you can hear the fingerprints smudged on the tape."

-rob sheffield

sometimes one song just isn’t enough; sometimes a whole album is tied to a memory. hearing any song from that album will bring me back, but it also works the other way, too. i may randomly think of something that happened and then really want to listen to the album that accompanies it. (the playlist at the bottom has selections from each of the albums.)
8 dark side of the moon – pink floyd: besides being an excellent album on its own, this cd is tied to my freshman year in college. we would often put this on at night, on repeat, to sleep to. funny side note: i recently re-bought this album because it had been lost or stolen long ago. i popped it into the cd player and about two songs in, i found myself getting sleepy. talk about your pavlovian responses.
8 sublime – sublime: college, theatre department parties, jono and greyton’s house. jono and greyton were roommates and theatre students a year ahead of me. they had the best house for parties – two stories, sprawling wrap-around porch, and neighbors who were either not very close to the house, or at every party anyway, so they didn’t mind the noise. it was also at the top of a hill (mountain, really) and though it sucked to get up there in the winter, it was a very zen-like area with woods on two sides of the house. every single party started the same way; once enough party-goers had arrived, the “circle of death” table was set up with a pitcher and a few decks of cards, a few joints were rolled, the keg tapped, and this album put on. usually there were a few discs in the changer that rotated around, but this album we listened to straight through, beginning to end, before switching the music. those were good times – i don’t have a single bad or even boring memories from those parties. (note to my mom, in case you’re reading this: i had nothing to do with the pot – that was all jono and greyton, i promise. i stuck to the drinking games and laughing at the fools that couldn't hold their liquor.)
8 when i woke – rusted root: senior year of high school and freshman year of college. rusted root is a folk-funk-hippie-accoustic-fusion band from pittsburgh. because morgantown was only a hour or so away, they used to play every thursday night at the nyabinghy dance hall. (memo to me: there needs to be an entire blog dedicated to the ‘binghy at some point…) because we knew a few of the bouncers – or, more accurately, because i knew a few people who knew a few bouncers – we were let in even though we were underage. we only ever came to see root, and we didn’t try to drink any alcohol while we were there, so mostly they let us get away with it. new year’s eve 1995 found john, dale, and i at the annual root show in pittsburgh, and then at a party at a friend of dale’s sister’s. it was a fun night, even though i spent large chunks of the party making sure the stoners weren’t feeding marijuana to the friend’s parents’ great dane.
8 discography – pet shop boys: i’m not sure why, but this album played non-stop throughout my sophomore year in college. it seemed like whenever john, dale, melinda, and i were in a car together, this album was playing. it didn’t matter whose car, because we all had a copy. it was the default bgm to our wanderings.
8 greatest hits – bob marley: i would like to preface this by saying i love bob marley – quite a lot, actually. however, since it was one of the very few cd’s we could agree on in adventure ocean (the kids' center) on the serenade, we listened to it a lot. incessantly. over and over and over. rob was the worst offender; he always put it on, and we always seemed to work together. it finally got to the point where i took it out of the cd changer and hid it for a couple of weeks.
8 fear – toad the wet sprocket: sophomore and junior year of college. ferruso and i listened to this all the time. it’s another cd that became default bgm. mostly, though, it reminds me of the puppeteers of america festival in ohio. this and an “awesome eighties” cd were in heavy rotation that weekend. we met famous artists and puppeteers, we got rave reviews for a performance we slapped together for a cabaret night, i sliced open my thumb with a stolen outback steak knife whilst carving a coconut out of a nerf ball, we got through some of the lamer performances by loading our travel mugs with zima and sour candy (we couldn’t find any jolly ranchers on short notice), and we met all kinds of fantastically random people just by playing uno in the downstairs lobby. excellent times.
8 play – moby: for a month and a half, while i worked at disney and lived in clermont, this cd was stuck in the player of my car. i couldn’t fish it out and i couldn’t afford to get it fixed. the player was stuck; i couldn’t turn it off, i couldn’t change the volume or the track, and i couldn’t switch it back to the radio. it’s a really, really good thing that this was the cd that got stuck. (and that it was at a decent volume, come to think of it.) it’s one of the (like 5) albums i have no trouble listening to straight through, and it’s a testament to the quality of this album that i never got sick of it and that it remains one of my all-time favorites.
8 elephunk - black eyed peas:splendour of the seas, the sob (that’s the staff and officer bar, thank you). there are many different types of people working on ships: people of different nationalities, from different walks of life, who speak many different languages. it’s no surprise, then, that there was some dispute over the music to be played in the sob at night. for whatever reason, this album was the one everyone agreed on, so it was played almost every night squished somewhere between the british punk rock, romanian trance, and morroccan pop music (most of which i quite liked, actually…).

8 the lion king soundtrack: this is pretty self-explanatory, unless you don’t know about my stint performing at disney. i did both lolk (legend of the lion king) and folk (festival of the…) from the summer of ‘98 till the summer of ’03. legend closed in 2002 (to make way for a 3-d movie – great planning, eisner; way to take away the most popular attraction in the park), but i continued doing shows at folk till i was (wrongly) fired in ’03. (i got my job back… eventually. that’ll have to be a blog at some point, too.) anyway, due to the fact that i heard the soundtrack on a daily basis (at least 9 shows a day at legend, 4 at festival) it is permanently ingrained in my head, along with all corresponding choreography. everytime i hear the songs, i see the choreography in my head; because i knew 5 tracks (roles) at legend, i participated in every scene at some point. i’m pretty sure, given a stage and the appropriate puppets, i could still do either show pretty well, including things i was never trained in. it’s also my curse; the lion king soundtrack follows me. wherever i go, it’ll pop up to annoy me. true stories: 1. we were in skagway, alaska, and headed into a shopping center to get lunch at one of the cafes. as we walked through, “can you feel the love tonight” by elton john came over the loud speakers. really? alaska? and 2. in vegas, rob and i walked into the first casino to “circle of life”. jeez, people, let me have a vacation! there are many more instances, but i’ve done my best to block them out.
8note: the quote at the beginning of this blog is from the book love is a mix tape by rob sheffield - a brilliant memoir of life and love by a contributing editor of rolling stone. it's lovely and sad and inspiring and funny and real, and i'm going to keep bugging you until you go read it.

new mix tape:

A Dog Named Mayzie, Part 2

my apartment complex has slowly but surely been turning from a stately stone color to obnoxious shades that could be found in the kitchen. it ranges from a lemon yellow, which is tolerable, to a mac-and-cheese orange, which isn't. now it's my section's turn to be painted. this sucks for the mayzie-dog, as she is a sit-outside-and-look-at-the-world-around-her kind of dog; she simply can't do that with paint fumes and ladders and construction workers about. so sadly, just two days after coming home with me, mayzie is going to live with rob's parents until the painting is completely over (or maybe till i move). they have a nice fenced-in yard, which she needs, so i'm sure she'll be very happy there. plus, of course i'll come visit whenever i can. maybe she really belongs to rob's parents, or to someone who will come over and meet her. i mentioned before how i felt that i had to take her home but she didn't necessarily belong to me. now she's being relocated... i hope this means she'll find her "true" home soon and be happy.

Trick or Treat

i went home last weekend and was promptly dragged to a community dinner in stewartstown. we used to go to these almost every month, and everyone came – although attendance has apparently dwindled quite a bit over the years. after the dinner, there was a town meeting. i was getting uncomfortable from sitting on the hard seats – and it’s not like anything that would be discussed would actually affect me – so i decided to go take a walk outside.

have you ever walked around a place and the memories seem so far away that it feels like a lifetime ago? i walked down the street where i used to trick or treat; past the fields where we would run and play when i visited my cousins; over to the house that used to be the mcgregors’. it really has been a long time since i’ve wandered in this area, but it seems even longer. i don’t know if it’s because the last year felt more like four or five, or what, but i felt kind of disconnected from the area and my memories of the place. i mean, it’s not like i’m eighty and have this vast life time of memories to pour over or anything…

anyway, there’s a house on a hill just down the road from where i was. i didn’t walk over that far, mostly because i didn’t feel like mountain climbing in cool weather and causing an asthma attack, but it was the best house to go to when trick-or-treating. not very many kids ever went up there because it was a hike – the house sat on the crest of the hill, the road in the valley below it. it didn’t matter how good of shape you were in, by the time you were halfway up, you’d be puffing and wheezing and cursing the godforsaken landscape. so why did we bother? the people who lived there understood the ridiculous amounts of effort involved, and made the trek worth our whiles; not only did they give out full-size candy bars, they packaged several of those candy bars together for each trick-or-treater who rang the bell. granted, we often had to stop and rest (and eat one of those bars) before heading back down to continue our candy culling, but it was totally worth it.

Grandma G's Homemade Applesauce

seriously, it’s one of the best. things. ever. she had just made a batch of it when i came in on saturday, and i sit here now, on the plane ride back, tupperware container full of tart apple-y goodness in one hand, the other hand alternatively typing and shoveling spoonfuls of it into my mouth. completely worth the entire trip home, as far as i’m concerned...

Fixing a Hole Where The Rain Gets In

i’ve always had crazy vivid dreams. crazy, vivid, lucid dreams which allow me to be aware of what’s happening around me and change it if need be. these dreams are so real, in fact, that i have memories of things that i’m not sure really happened – not in waking time anyway. i have told amusing anecdotes only to be corrected later that those things didn’t happen at all. or i might be half way through a story only to realize that it couldn’t have happened that way, even though it’s as clear as day in my head.

i also – and please skip this paragraph if you’re not used to the weird “psychic friends network” things that i do – visit a lot in my dreams. This means that i often “wander” past other people’s dreams, sometimes stopping for a while, sometimes not. This is something i think a lot of people do, but they aren’t aware of it and/or don’t remember it. lots of times i visit with friends, or they visit me. (my favorite ever was the time rob wandered into my dream. we “walked” back to his dream, where we stood at the edge and looked in. there were all kinds of odd things happening in there including, if i remember correctly, clowns, pineapples, and monkeys. “you want to go back?” i asked, gesturing at the madness. without taking his eyes off the clowns, rob shook his head. “no, it’s weird in there. i’ll just go back to yours.”) sometimes, though, i wander through the dreams of randoms – people i don’t know, or at least not yet. these dreams have gotten more vivid lately, and easier to remember. easier to navigate too… i can wander in and out as I want, stopping if there’s something interesting to watch or do.

the dream I had the other night started out as mine, but eventually i wandered elsewhere. it’s just amazing to me how detailed the dreams are now, and how many of those details i remember. i was in my old room in my parents’ house; my mom and i were discussing how the ceiling was weakening, and how dad was in the other room getting ready to fix it. the ceiling boards in my room creaked, and i moved mom away just before they fell. We both laughed about the timing and my dad came in to put it back up. later, i was in our little loft space, helping dad patch up a leak near the skylight. it started pouring and i ran to get a bucket to catch it. the funny thing is that none of us were upset about any of this – it didn’t seem like leaks and falling-down roofs were anything to worry about. and as I caught the rain in the bucket, i remember mentioning to dad that i needed to write a blog about this, and that i could title it “fixing a hole where the rain gets in.” then we put on a beatles record (clearly) and sang along while working.

they’re very random, my dreams, but at least they’re entertaining. it’s like having my own cineplex in my head every night. too bad it doesn’t come with free movie theatre popcorn…

Summer of Music

if you know me, you know that music is a constant in my life. i can't make it (well, i probably could, but i'll leave that to people who have actual talent there), but i can dance to it, sing along to it in the car, and just generally rock out to it. i do this as often as possible. and yes, i own hundreds of cds, and thousands of tracks, but my favorite way to listen to music is live and in person. i love it - i love the energy of the band, and the energy of the crowd, and how those energies flow back and forth. anyone can sound good on a studio recording after production wizards have done their stuff, but it takes true talent to create your own music and make it sound awesome on a stage in the middle of hundreds of people.

it has been an excellent summer for live music. well, for me anyway. i don't know what you've been doing, but i have been delighting in a smorgasbord of melodious pastiche. (okay, yes, that metaphor was completely ridiculous, but whatever.)

just after school let out - the day after, actually - john and i went out to tampa to see the cure. his sister denise joined us and we rocked out to a blissfully made-up robert smith and his current bandmates. rob and kristin joined me for some cowboy mouth shenanigans in july. (and, yes, i remembered the red spoons this time!) liberally sprinkled throughout the summer were shows by afterglow radio and junkierush. (incidentally, agr just released their first full-length cd, and you should definitely pick it up - awesome stuff!) but the best of the summer music extravaganza was at the (formerly star-lake) amphitheatre just outside of pittsburgh.

the police with elvis costello and the imposters.

i don't even think i have to mention how awesome this show was. i'm not sure i even have the words to describe its awesomeness, and i'm the girl who just used the phrase "delighting in a smorgasbord of melodious pastiche" earlier in this blog. it was my first time witnessing both these bands, and it was totally worth the ridiculous ticket price. (well worth the ticket i bought for dad as his birthday present, too) elvis costello is, of course, a musical

genius and he and the imposters are just plain fun on stage. the police, suffice it to say, were brilliant. it was so relaxed on stage - it was obvious they were having fun and enjoying themselves. i'm going to go out on a limb here and say it was probably better than the last tour they went on before they split. there were no egos, no tension... and since they've already stated that they have no plans to reform or recordany new music, there was no pressure of longevity. just three amazingly gifted musicians out there doing what they love. sting sounded better than ever - and the fact that i find a man old enough to be my father sexy is just a testament to his talent as a performer. he owns the stage and the audience. andy summers occasionally broke into mind-bending guitar solos, and steward copeland is simply amazing. he (with his nine-gazillion piece percussion kit) was as fun to watch as listen to.

so, yay, live music! may there be more on the horizon!

Raccoon - 5, Parents - 1

i went home to visit the parentals at the end of july. they picked me up in pittsburgh and we headed back to the house. as i carried in my stuff, i noticed a long metal cage sitting on the deck. "what's that for?" i asked. "the raccoon," my mother answered. "we have a raccoon?" "not on purpose." apparently the raccoon had been tearing up the yard and eating the votive candles out of mom's terra cotta luminaries. "candles?" "yes, he very carefully pulls them up out of the holders and i guess he thinks they might be food. he munches around the outside, realizes he can't eat it, and moves on." all this, and he's not so much as tipped over the breakable holders. the yard, however, is looking pretty rough, so my parents decided to trap him and take him up to cooper's rock (a local state park) and let him go up there.

they had tried to catch him the night before i arrived using hamburger as bait, but to no avail. in the morning, the hamburger was gone, and the trap was still set - and almost caught the cat, who is clearly not as clever as the raccoon. according to my uncle (who lent them the trap - why he had a raccoon trap, i'm sure i don't know), the best bait is sardines. um, ok. so that night, dad set the trap. in the morning the cage held... nothing. the sardines were gone, and this time the trap was closed, as if the raccoon wanted to show us that either a) he knew how this trick worked, or b) he was the houdini of the nocturnal world. raccoon 2, parents 0.

they tried again, this time with dad fashioning a cup to hold the sardines, which would be affixed to the cage. theoretically, the raccoon would have to climb into the trap in order to get the food. this time, the cup was intact and unmoved, the trap was opened, and the sardines were gone. raccoon 3, parents 0.

on the fourth attempt - with more rigging and wiring of sardine holders - a raccoon was caught. unfortunately, it wasn't the one they were after. this was a baby raccoon, who was all kinds of scared to be stuck in the cage. he was too young to have learned the finesse of the older raccoon, who was still free. my parents, animal-lovers both even though they were tired of the raccoon shenanigans, tried to calm the poor baby before dad took him up to cooper's rock to find distant relatives. so technically, raccoon 4, parents 0; but since they did catch a raccoon (though it wasn't the raccoon), i'll give them raccoon 4, parents 1.

a few days after i returned to orlando, my mother called to tell me they had tried a new tactic. you guessed it: this time the cup and the sardines made it out of the cage, without the trap ever catching. raccoon 5, parents 1. and the battle continues...

The Best Dream Ever

sunday morning, 7:42 am. text from my mother: dream that you were about to get married to a guy named spike. your dress was pretty but on your head holding the veil was a white guitar.

i'm sorry, what? i'm not even awake yet... i roll back over and fall back asleep for an hour or two. when i wake, i text her back: i don't think i've ever met a spike. was he at least a rock star?

she called me after she got back from church. i was on my way to wal-mart to buy a few things and i almost had to pull over to the side of the road because i was laughing so hard. before i divulge the dream in all its insane glory, i'd like to preface it. my mom rarely remembers her dreams. when she does, it's never in great detail. she was able to recall minute details and swears she can still see me turning slowly to face her. there must be some meaning to it, but i'm sure i don't understand what it would be. the dream is as follows (my comments and mom's explanations in parentheses):

i was getting married, and we were at my aunt's church. ("i was getting married in michigan?" "yeah, i don't know why.") father harvey was there. ("who's father harvey?" "your aunt's priest." "oh, clearly.") the church wasn't for normal church-y things like daily masses and things; it was kind of a wedding factory that did weddings every hour or half-hour. after the ceremonies, the wedding party walked over to various places for the receptions. ("so we were in vegas!" "um, no.") my mother was looking for my father, but couldn't find him. she called his cell phone, but i answered. ("why did i have dad's phone?" "i have no idea.") apparently there were two different ways to go - up one hill or up another. ("hills?" "i know, there aren't hills like that in michigan.") she wasn't sure which way dad had gone. she eventually found him and they got a ride to wherever i was. mom walked into a large room - not the alter room, but another room where i was. she wasn't sure it was me at first until i slowly turned to face her. aparently my dress was very pretty. it was a simple white dress, a little longer in back to sweep the floor. i'm guessing my dress was to offset the spectacular head piece i was sporting. on my head was a guitar. ("not an electric guitar, though." "an accoustic?" "yes." "are we talking a little guitar here?" "oh, no, full sized, neck and all. but it was white and shiny...") actually, on my head is not accurate. i guess around my head is better. my head was through the hole the strings would normally stretch across; i had an entire accoustic guitar on, around, and above my head. ("it was standing straight up?" "yep. there weren't any strings, though." "oh, well that's good, then.") the veil came down from the neck of the guitar and wrapped around the sides of it, then trailed down my back. ("were we ok with this guitar-veil-headpiece-thingie?" "well, i remember thinking, hmmm that's interesting. but you weren't upset or anything, and neither was i, so i guess it was alright.") "where's spike?" i asked. ("again, you weren't worried, it was just like you were checking to make sure everything was cool.") mom answered, "i don't know, but i found your dad."

then she woke up for good. mom usually wakes up a few times a night, and she said that even though she did this, she kept coming back to this same dream. just random. and funny. what's even odder is that after telling this to rob, we managed to sketch out a fairly detailed idea of a so-called "wedding factory" where the entire wedding day could be planned in just a meeting or two. it started to scare me a little - it was way too easy. anyway, that's mom's dream for your entertainment - it certainly entertained me.

but god help me if i ever meet anyone named spike. i'll probably fall on the floor laughing and he'll think i'm a complete lunatic...