Sometimes, after a long long long night, you wake up the next morning and stuff comes out your mouth that you’d never say or do. Call it ‘still drunk’, or maybe just shaking off the last few drops of reckless abandon that had been gushing the night before. Maybe the sober you really doesn't mean all the crap coming out of your mouth, but sometimes, every once in a while, the sober you thinks that what that other girl did was pretty ballsy, and pretty sassy. Pretty freaking brilliant.

No, I didn’t send my now ex-boyfriend’s name and home phone number to the relentless sales folks at Great Expectations dating service. I didn’t plant the bug in those good people’s ears about how much he rages when he’s bothered with anything before getting out of bed at 10:00. Still, whoever it was that did, I want you to know that your little joke is very touching to me (sniffsniff). When he accused me of doing it, I cringed in disgust for not having thought of it myself. I dedicate this blog to you.

So, this afternoon we had plans to lunch. To break up the tension of arranging lunch hour logistics, I try opening the conversation in prank-call style like we used to do in the olden days.

In a voice I pulled from deep inside…from the pit of my being, I conjured up the perkiest southern voice I could muster up at 9:30 am after waking up on a dance floor.

“HA PETER!”
“hey,?”
“PE-TER, THIS IS SHE-RYL FROM GREAT EXPECTATIONS. HOWER YOO?”
“Fine. Uh…”
“I AYEM SO HAPPY TO HEAR THAT!”
“Uh... look someone else is on the other line…
“UH-HU?”
“…and I just clicked over, so.. uhm... can I call you back?”
“SURE!”

So, we hang up. I'm baffled. How did he know it was me? He calls me a minute later and we make plans to meet for lunch. Toward the end of our meal, I start complaining about how I can’t pull a prank call over on him. Even in my perkiest, brown nosing little voice. Well, it turns out, he did fall for it. I was then accused of setting up all the nasty Great Expectations torture calls.

The man I lived with for 6 months and then left. The one I said “I love you” to everyday of those six months and then dumped. I just prank called him like I was a dating service.

Heartless.
The sober me would never do such a shitty thing. Ever.

Totally worth it.

Of course, I knew it was going to be a strange day. I woke up this morning on a dance floor, and then wore my best friend's clothes to work for christssake.

As I mushed on toward the hospital, I heard a small cartoon voice in my head say "Why, with an UNLIMITED supply of food, I can finally fill that empty void I'm feeling." It may have come from the radio.

Then, when I pulled into the underground parking lot, I saw a kelly green bumper sticker on the back of a car that said "Proud Grandparents of a Lumberjack".

Meanwhile, my cell phone number formerly belonged to a business. People keep calling me saying "Moving is easy?" "Moving is E-Z?" "Uhm, is this..."

On top of the delerium tremors, I'm loosin' it.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Unless you're a girl.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Unless you're a girl.

I’m not a voter.
I’m not responsible enough to vote. I don’t think I’m educated in the truth enough to vote. I support some conspiracy theories regarding the workings of our government, but I support voting for the healthy democratic well-being of American citizens.
But I don’t vote. I feel pretty much the same about organ donation too, and I’m not quite sure how it’s related, but for some reason I think that it is. Maybe I’m secretly worried that my organs will be harvested before I’m legally dead and then they’ll be registered as voters to my cemetery address. Still, I can't be sure.

I almost registered to vote once out of blind rage and total lapse in reality when I read this article : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3570845.stm . But then, I shrugged it off as me probably not having a proper sense of humor, and he probably didn't mean it at all like it seemed. Out of context I bet.

So, that disclaimer set, let me also place in forward, a small antidote:

When Bowling for Columbine came out in the theater, I told my mother that I planned on going since it was a film that interested me more than most. She sternly suggested that I approach my media consumption with serious caution, after all “The film industry is flooded with liberals and political one-sidedness. Don’t you ever wonder why that is?”
“Because conservatives don’t raise artists and film makers, Mom. They raise CEOs and politicians, but never film makers."

After scrutinizing the presidential campaigns for many months now, trying to choose which team I’d hypothetically support if I were playing ‘vote for your president’, my conclusion is that the opposite also holds true.

Conservative Republicans raise CEOs and politicians, democrats do not. (At one time ‘Kennedy’ perhaps). It would be far too humiliating for them to mention at dinner parties where other people brag about their son the artist, the film maker, the TV journalist.

Wish I could’ve seen this place if Kerry had the chance of a tiny snowball. Would hardly recognize it, my eyes all blinking from the brightness of it all. No flu virus, no cripples, and we might have even still had Superman around to save us from the terrorists.

And another thing…I know people who have paid thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of their time trying to shake a hillbilly southern accent just for the sake of getting professional respect.

Oh yeah. I’m pissed.

So, I’ve been asked what I do with that time.
Whether I wouldn’t like to borrow some books on tape? some very good murder mysteries from books that are extremely popular on the Walmart bestsellers lists.
Do I not see the same cars with the same people everyday?
Do I have any bedsores forming on my ass and spine?
What am I going to do with my life to get out of that suburban nightmare? (Indeed, I looked down at my feet as I walked into the neighborhood Tom Thumb, and found I was wearing brand new white sneakers! The horror!)

Actually, I have no problem with being entertained on my commute. I listen to NPR most of the time. Peter says it makes my brain go like this:
_ _
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_ _ _ _ _ _
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But really what sends me into deep meditation, are all those folks with goofy crap hanging from their rearview mirror. Almost certainly it is one of the following:air freshner (tree shaped variety), mardi gras beads, or a dolphin.

Why Oh Great Mysterious One? Why? Who is the sort of person who does this? A means to convey identity. Personal taste. What do all of them have in common? Dirty rooms with laundry strewn about? Dog people? Interior decorators? What?

hms 

I’ve walked past the front desk of the hospital wanting ask my question for a good solid two weeks now. Twice a day at least, on my way to or back from the cafeteria, but they are always helping somebody find their way here or there. Yesterday, the clerk sat upright and looking vigilantly ahead like a little soldier ready for command but without purpose.
‘So, excuse me ma’am.”
‘Yes?’
‘Well, is it like the movies, I mean, you know how you can stand behind the glass and look at the new babies? I mean, I work in the hospital across the way…”
‘The seventh floor is where they’re at, and most of the time they’re in with their mommies…in their mommies rooms, but if you’re lucky, you might get to see one up there.’ Such big white teeth in her smile that said ‘Welcome!’
‘Thanks.’
So, today I took off up the elevators, riding with a very old man and his daughter. His daughter was saying something about how stubborn he was, as she carried his overnight bag and pointed at various places she thought he should stand. Before they got off at 6, she was saying that ‘he wasn’t done yet’. He said that he felt like he was ‘already done.’

I rode up to 7 where they’re just starting and walked in a circle seeming lost, looking for a long horizontal rectangular window down each of the four halls that radiated from the elevator. In the final hall to my left, the wall seemed to reflect the light a bit, and I walked toward it.

I approached the window slowly, and saw lots of cozy, twinkling heat lamps, and baby humans wrapped up in white cotton cocoons, but still squirming under color coded caplets that told their gender. They lay on their backs in clear plastic buckets, propped up adult waist high, by metal legs on wheels. In one of the buckets, the child lay stripped of clothes with a white tumor clamped at her belly, and she was slowly stretching her legs as far out as they would go and then pulling them back toward her much more quickly to test out her new range of motion. One of the attendants in white t-shirt, soft green pants, and smart shoes was swirling baby wipes over her; rinsing off the remnant vitamin sludge that had been keeping her alive all these months. The women behind the glass looked up at me and shuffled their feet protectively, and one even wheeled the baby out of my sight.

I suppose a single thirty year old childless woman dressed completely in black is a little scary near the nursery.

Every family has it’s secrets, no matter how candidly they seem to communicate. No matter how passionate or brave their conflicts may seem, there are things that nobody talks about. Things that nobody asks about. A ‘Code of Quo’ that prevents the very fabric of the cosmos from rippling. Nobody just comes out and asks if your boy has turned homo, or who your daughter’s shacking up with now.

But there is that uncle that has transcended space and time, and doesn’t give a damn much about the code anymore. Usually that uncle is a war Veteran and his ears are blown out and he’s too stubborn to wear a hearing aid. Usually he’ll take a glass of wine whenever one is offered to him. Usually he’s just been trapped in car with his wife for too damn many hours when he’d rather be home alone in his tool shed.

Usually, that uncle is your favorite because his eyes are sparkley and his stories roll on and on forever like the alfalfa fields behind his house you used to run through as a little girl.

So, last night we sat in the lamp lit living room in a circle amongst the cats with the TV turned mute. My dad and uncle Arlen took a lot of time playfully complaining about the neurosis of their wives, while my mother and her sister blushed and waved their hands as though swatting at flies, occasionally commenting in our family’s secret Yiddish language. ‘So, kinachi he is!’ There was a lot of complaining about injuries and ailments, countered with proven tribal cures like herbs and metals, and then resuming again the lists of physical traumas.

I am young and healthy and a quiet observer in this conversation.

And then Uncle Arlen sets it up.

‘I am writing a letter to the editor’, he begins ‘and I hope it does some good…well, it goes like this…’
He stares up to our ceiling and begins to account his work in progress. He stops himself, and begins again as he is repeating this letter to us verbatim and doesn’t want to make a mistake.

‘There is a lot of talk about the boys being killed today in Iraq, one thousand and seventeen in the past year. However, as bad as this may be, no one is talking about the 65,000 killed in automobile accidents each year. My question is, what are people doing about THIS tragedy taking place in our country year after year? Just like those soldiers dying, these victims leave behind widows and children and mothers and fathers…”

I am quiet. I imagine now that my eyebrows are even raised. This is because I cannot be sure that he is being perfectly serious. Only moments ago a story about his friend’s anniversary resulted in the guy wishing for his wife to be 30 years younger than him, and he turning instantly from 63 to 93. I cannot be sure.

And then he strikes. He pauses and looks up to me and says, “What do you think about all this, Heather.’

My face goes pale, but further more my parents laughing eyes have fallen flat against their cheeks. The room is quiet save for the sandpapery licking of the cats tongue against his fur coat and the goiter in my father’s throat flopping down into his stomach. They know my anti-SUV/full size van/pickup truck rant backwardsforwardsinsideoutandupsideout. The moment of embarassing truth is inevitable, and it will echo across copperwires along the countryside for weeks to come.

Their daughter is a liberal.

I was invited to sit at their table. To dip chips and sip margaritas that nicely held hands with smooth tequila shots passed freely from a girl with a skirt the size of a blind fold.

I am sitting at the divorced kids table, and my misery is oh-so-loving my new friends. Throughout the night, I have thoughts about how each of us deserves it; despite our sufferings: Patrick; indulgent with his mouth and his drinks, Seb; who has looked up twice from his biceps all night, and me, just a bottom line basket case that can cold a straight face long enough for things to really get dangerous.

Then there is Claude. She has brought us here together, but for what? But because. This is the bottom where things really get interesting and she wants to watch.