THE BUS: the good, the bad and the WAITING.

Okay, so I rode the bus. And it wasn’t that bad. Enough time has passed that I think I can safely say no one coughed Avian-flu onto me and, since no one actually coughed on me at all, I’m probably safe from T.B. as well. And I ate lunch without washing my hands first (although I wasn’t happy about it) and still seem to be free of any bacterial problems. I mean if I had a tapeworm I’d have seen some serious weight loss by now, right? So I survived unscathed. I haven’t been too ill to tell the rest of my bus tale, just too busy. I’m sorry if any of you were worried I had contracted brain fever and was no longer coherent enough to log onto the internet. My bad.

We had a simple plan: take a bus to the Haight, which would necessitate at least one transfer, shop for boots, eat lunch, take the bus back home. We also had a pocketful of quarters in case we were still in the Haight or between buses after our first transfer timed out. Although one useful thing I had already learned from the few times I road the train from the Sunset to the Castro is that most of the time no one actually checks for transfers – you can just get on and sit down. You could ride the bus for free until the unlucky day a cop checking transfers caught you and wrote you a ticket. I assume they make the penalty harsh enough that it isn’t cheaper to just employ this method full time. Okay, I tried to look that up but all I found was an anecdotal story that indicated a citation for not having a muni pass is $250. I did find THIS quote from an article on the subject,“Though statistics aren't available, MUNI (SF Transit) estimates put unpaid fares at five million dollars each year.”  And I’m already off-topic. Hard to believe I once got paid the medium-bucks for marketing, isn’t it? That I used to get paid for my ability to quickly and effectively get to the point? ANYWAY, heading out we were the only ones riding the bus that stops in front of our house (nine times out of ten when it passes us it is complete empty, except for the driver, and chugs on by without stopping) and the bus we transferred to was only mildly full (I think everyone onboard was seated) when it let us off in the Haight.

Right in front of Fluevog. So of course I have to digress and talk about boots. No surprise there. But this is not the story you think it is. This is a story… about JOHN. Yep. While I was picking up boots and putting them back down and frowning and trying to figure out what I exactly wanted out of the practical ankle boots I had come seeking I suggested John might kill time by trying on some boots of his own. So he did. And then something shocking and miraculous happened. For just a fleeting second John UNDERSTOOD how I feel about boots, or at least about the boots currently on his feet. He said, I swear to god, “Can I wear them out of the store?” Yes, not only had he found boots HE really liked (see picture) but he liked them so much, thought they were so great, he didn’t want to put his Converse back on. He was in boot love! An emotional state I have tried endlessly to explain to him. I had repeatedly gushed about how ridiculously amazing Fluevog’s Angel-Soled boots were (they resist alkali, water, acid, fatigue and Satan) but since I tend to gush about, well, lots of things, he didn’t really believe me that putting them on the first time was like “putting on your favorite boots you’ve already broken in” even though really, it is. I still actually marvel, when I lace up my knee-highs and stand up, how comfortable they are.

In the meantime I was having NO boot luck. They didn’t have either of the boots I liked in my size and I wasn’t going to get the exact same boots as John in a smaller size because: lame. The boots he picked out were similar to mine but different enough that we could wear them out together without feeling dorky. I finally decided (to the disapointment of the Fluevog sales associate) that I would just order boots online since I knew a 6 ½ of whatever I wanted would fit me. And later, that was exactly what I did and they arrived and made me quite happy. If they came in white I would order a pair to wear to work with my scrubs. I mean, if they resist alkali and acid they probably also resist dog-pee, right? Sadly the only white Fluevog shoes only come in MEN’S sizes, not women’s or unisex.

ANYWAY, I then discovered something else, which is you can totally get a contact high from someone else’s boot purchase. I was almost as happy that John had found boots (which yeah, I thought looked really yummy on him) as I would have been if we’d BOTH found boots. I still felt that warm “BOOTS” glow. Once the boot purchasing was done we had a quite tasty lunch (getting to eat really good BBQ ribs, while not as exciting as getting boots, is still pretty high on my list of happy-making-things) and then geared up for part two of our afternoon: Taking the bus back HOME.

This ended up being much more what I had expected from the bus riding thing. The two buses that were supposed to be half an hour apart were running, literally, right behind each other and when we got on (after 25 minutes of waiting, and not just random waiting, but “the bus should have been here at 2:00 and now it is 2:20 and it just went by the other way” kind of waiting. We got the last two seats. By the time we got off at the station to wait for the bus back to OUR neighborhood there were people onboard standing (and swaying) waiting to take our seats. So we got off, crossed the street and waited. And waited. And waited s’more. As bus after bus after bus that was not OUR bus pulled up, waited to see if we would get on and then pulled away again when we failed to move. Finally our bus came, we boarded with our just barely expired transfers and I got to experience the F.U.L.L. route (since we’d gotten on at practically the END of the route in front of our house) of OUR bus. It slowly ground up and down and around the hills of Twin Peaks. I’m pretty sure it did two circles, a capital cursiveR and a large figure eight before it finally lurched up our street. John opined that it would have been faster to just walk back up the mountain to our house from the station but, factoring in the 3 – 5 stops we would have had to make for me to have mini-asthma attacks (I wasn’t carrying my inhaler) I figure it would have timed out about the same. There was only one other couple on the bus, a cute little Asian couple that looked like they’d been married 50 years, and, unsurprisingly since our neighborhood is a residential area filled largely with retirees, they got off at our stop. And the empty bus chugged away.

Our mission was successfully completed! And for $3.00 we’d done in 3 ½ hours what we could have done for probably $0.41 cents in gas in less than two hours. Whoo!

Surprisingly (to me) what I ended up hating most about the bus was not that people were breathing germs on me. It was that these germ-infested people all have the ability and the right to YANK the damn cord and have the bus STOP where they want to get off. And since it is human nature (or at least American nature, which is why we all weigh an extra 20 – 100 pounds) to want to get off as close to where you are going as possible, the damn cord got yanked every couple blocks. I ended up thinking, “you could have gotten off two blocks ago the last time the cord was yanked and WALKED from there dammit!” about 27 times during our brief bus venture. The bus is SO freaking slow. Agonizingly slow. Between stopping at bus stops where people are waiting, stopping quite a bit in general SF traffic and then obligingly stopping every single time someone yanks the cord the bus is STOPPED more than it is in motion. As a control freak THIS, of course, bugs the CRAP out of me. If I have to be stopped in traffic I would SO rather be alone in my climate-controlled, doesn’t-smell like feet, comfy little Mini. But that’s okay, because I found a website that will calculate how many trees need to be planted to offset the damage you’re doing to the atmosphere and then you just pay them to go plant them for you.

A few days later, when John and I mapped out the route I would need to take after I was offered a job downtown and I realized I would have to take the bus, the TRAIN (which is notorious for being late and breaking down) and then ANOTHER bus I had to politely decline the offer. I also had to say no because the floors were dirty. It literally took all my restraint not to clean the exam room I was in while I was waiting to be interviewed. But even if it had been my dream* job, there was no way I was taking on that morning commute. I was trying to imagine it in the rain in the dark and I came up with a BIG OLD NO FREAKING WAY.

So I have to find a job with either PARKING or only one tranfer. Hopefully one that doesn't involve waiting for the train that sometimes never comes. Wish me luck.

*I am pretty confident my dream job will never include GROOMING cats. Sure, watching them blink bitterly into the gusting hairdryers that clip onto their kennels is pretty entertaining but that would certainly NOT make up for the scratches I would incur while trying to shove a feline into soapy water. I’ve learned this the hard way – Cats don’t like baths. At all. I have the scars to prove it.


- Related Link: http://www.fluevog.com

Laurel VS. Public Transportation

Tomorrow I am taking the bus somewhere. I haven’t figured out where yet. But I know the bus that stops literally right across from my house goes to a main stationy-thing (I should probably find out what that is called) and that from there you can get on MANY different buses that go many different places. So that’s what John and I are going to do. Get on the bus, get off the bus, get on another bus and then get off and walk to, well, maybe someplace that sells boots. And yes I know I need to know the number of the bus and of other buses and where they go and when they pick up and after I post this I plan to get online and figure all that out along with what, exactly, a transfer is, how it works, how long it is good for and why it looks like some people get on and off the bus without ever paying. I have many things to learn.

So why does this rate a blog entry? Because, with ONE exception about eight years ago when I came into the city to hang out with Joel and somehow he convinced me it would be easier to get wherever we were going on the bus, I have NEVER ridden the bus. In my memory there was an old lady with live chickens in her lap but I think my memory may have added that later for narrative amusement. I do remember it was gross and crowded and slow and I didn’t like it AT ALL. Because *I* am a SUBURBS girl.

Until we moved to the city last fall I had spent my entire life living in a variety of suburbs. The ugly suburbs of Northeast Bakersfield, the dorms surrounded by houses of UOP, the rolling hills of Marin county (I don’t actually think it gets more suburban than that), the Victorian houses of Old Petaluma (I could walk to the store and to the downtown shops but my little cottage was still totally in the ‘burbs part of it) and last but not least the delusions-of-grandeur-having suburbs of Folsom (once a nice little town with a famous prison and many oak trees -- now an ever-expanding parking lot covered with foreclosed houses that didn’t exist two years ago).

Yep – 36 years of suburb living. Not suburban living (which would mean more like city living which is weird but so is MUCH of the English language – growing up in the suburbs probably means that you are NOT suburban and now I’ve gotten to the point where neither even sounds like a real word in my head anymore so I am going to just leave it) but actual living in the suburbs. I’m not proud of it. But I grew up in Bakersfield where if you wanted to see something OTHER than tract houses and fog (winter) or tract houses and heat haze (summer) you had to walk at least ¾ of a mile. Which I did. As soon as I got old enough I walked to school and as a teenager I was willing to walk, in 100 degree weather, in full “summer” goth regalia (black boots, shorts, t-shirt and SPF 15 which is, I THINK, as high as it went back them) to get to my friend’s house or to Longs to buy an ice cream cone. But if you wanted to go any further than that you had to drive or be driven. So my parents drove me all over the place when I was little.

And pretty much from the MOMENT I got my drivers license I never walked anywhere again. Thus starting the pattern in my life of always being the friend who had a car. In high school, in college, I was the girl who had a car and would drive. Especially in high school when the car I was driving was a brand new Chrysler Laser Turbo which, after I wrecked it the first weekend I got it and then they put it all back together again, I drove everywhere. Sometimes with as many as six people crammed into it. That law they have now about how during the first six months teenagers have their licenses they can’t drive any OTHER teenagers without a grown up in the car? That’s because of me. Sorry teenagers. But I digress. The point is I liked driving, never minded having to drive, never even minded being the designated driver once that became an issue because being the driver means you are IN CONTROL. I love, both metaphorically and literally, being in the driver’s seat.

I like it to the point that, if possible, I will drive somewhere instead of fly. Or take the train. I hate AMTRACK. My parents thought it might be a good way of my getting back and forth from University to Bakersfield for holidays and so I tried it. Once. And I hated it. The train stopped in every single town and never got over 50mph. A drive I could have done in three hours and forty minutes took SIX hours on the train. SIX! Also, if you are driving you get to decide that, if you want to stop for Taco Bell two hours into the drive and then stop again at hour four to use a restroom and buy a Hershey bar, you can. I like that control. I like controlling the temperature of the car, what kind of music is playing and how loud it is. I pretty much like everything about driving. I like driving so much that for fifteen years I bought stick-shifts on purpose because it felt MORE like driving. I do NOT, however, like feeling like I need knee replacement surgery after being stuck in traffic for an hour and I REALLY do not like rolling BACKWARDS into the car behind me (which is always a Mercedes, don’t ask me why) after I get stuck on a steep hill. So once I knew we were moving to the city I knew it was time to trade my stick shift in for an automatic. Since that automatic engine was packaged in a brand new green Mini Cooper S, I didn’t mind at all. Now I giggle manically while accelerating up the mountain to my house.

So yeah, I love driving. I’m a control freak who is, incidentally, terrified of flying (but they make pills for that so I CAN fly when I need to go someplace I can’t really drive to, like New Jersey). But that isn’t the ONLY reason I dread the bus and have managed to avoid it for nearly ten months. I’m ALSO a bit of a germaphobe. Just running errands in the city I always try to remember to WASH MY HANDS before I eat something. I don’t fear CRIME, just bacteria. I don’t even like using shopping carts at the Safeway because I have seen the OTHER people who use them and while they are a HIGHLY diverse and entertaining bunch (I can’t imagine I will ever get tired of the street theater that goes on 24/7 here) I can tell some of them aren’t quite as obsessed with cleanliness as I am. Plus I saw that episode of Oprah where she had people go around and swab things in public for germs and all KINDS of nasty stuff was on everything.

So riding the bus is a bit like being trapped IN the germy shopping cart. A big germy shopping cart filled with germy people coughing TB on you that goes really slowly, stops all the time to let more germy people on and then doesn’t even go exactly where I want to go. I do not want to take the bus. Really.

But, I do want to get a job soon and I have no delusions whatsoever that whatever vet hires me is going to have employee parking. There IS no free parking. John has to pay some ridiculous price every month to park on the roof of his own building. If the vet I end up working for DOES actually have, say, four parking spaces in a teeny lot they will be for clients. And maybe the vet himself. But certainly not for smock-wearing me. And most likely what will surround the building I work in will be many other buildings and metered parking. And at $1.50 an HOUR I couldn’t really afford to keep the meter fed even if they WERE willing to let me stop working every HOUR to run outside and feed quarters into the meter.

So tomorrow I ride the bus. I’m taking John so that while I may have to battle germs I at least know I won’t get lost or get distracted by reading my book and look up and realize I’ve taken the bus to Bayview. Something I would so do. So we’re going to practice. Wish me luck! Hopefully we’ll get safely home and back without getting lost OR having someone cough bird flu onto me.

If I had a brother…

Most of the 37 years I’ve been on this planet I’ve really enjoyed being an only child. I tend to be quiet and bookish and don’t really like noise or games or, well, other children. I’ve never been sure if this was a chicken or the egg thing but it worked out. I was always the kid sneaking off to read. My parents, after they adopted me, fully intended to GET me a brother but they were told that, having GOTTEN one child, they now would go to the end of the list. Which was seven YEARS long. And back then they were already OLD for parents – my mom turned 31 a few weeks after they got me and my dad was closing in on 40. Another seven years would have made them REALLY old parents. They also had enough foresight to realize that a brother seven years younger than I was really wouldn’t do me any good. He wouldn’t be a play-mate, he’d be someone I’d have to baby-sit. So they decided to stick with the just the one which was, as I said, fine by me

Instead of having a fantasy that I had a twin sister out there I had a NIGHTMARE that I had a twin sister out there. I used to worry she’d show up and I’d have to change my hair color and style and get colored contacts so I wouldn’t look like her. I never had those “stay on your side” fights on car trips in the backseat. I had the WHOLE thing to myself. I could stretch all the way out and SLEEP. No one ever broke my toys or told my boyfriends embarrassing things. And when I was 16 I got a sports car. The ultimate symbol of being a spoiled only child.

BUT

There have been times, mostly as an adult, that I really wished I had a brother. A funny, supportive Waltons, Eight is Enough kind of brother to share the load, help out with my parents, visit them on holidays so I don’t have to feel guilty for every single one I miss. Someone who would give me that "hang in there -- only 5 more hours until Thanksgiving is over" look and refill my wine glass again without being asked. Somone for my husband to hide in the den with while my mother and I are fighting. But I have this feeling that if I actually HAD a brother it would suck. WHY? Well, lots of anecdotal evidence on other “State” adoptions that happened in Bakersfield the same decade I was adopted (as well as all the people I know who actually HAVE brothers). I was born of two smart teenage nerds* who were good at school but bad at birth control. My mother’s best friend’s daughter was born of a woman and one of five men; she couldn’t narrow it down any further than that. Her younger son was born of a teenager and a felon. I turned out to be a smart teenage nerd. Guess how THEY turned out? Yep. Slut and juvenile felon, respectively. My mom, after getting a baby and thinking she could mold and shape it to her will has, over the years, become a GREAT believer in the power of genetics. So taking into account the likely parentage of little bro (let’s give him a name shall we? The most popular baby name seven years after I was born was Michael so let’s call him Mike) and knowing my own parents I think it would have gone down like this:

• Mike would be my mom’s favorite
• Even though he’d been in jail
• She’d totally be in denial about the jail thing
• I’d still have all the responsibilities of visiting and caretaking even though Mike would still live in the same town
• My mom would have all kinds of excuses why it was easier for ME to drive 300 miles to do stuff than for Mike to do it, whatever IT was
• I totally would have had to baby-sit Mike all through my teenage years
• Mike would have read my diaries and listened in on my phone calls
• I would have gotten in trouble for hitting him after I caught him doing this
• After refusing to pay ME to get As because “that isn’t the way the world works” they would have rewarded Mike monetarily for getting Cs because he needed the encouragement.
• And since he’s the boy HE probably would have gotten the sports car
• By now he’d probably be married to some woman I couldn’t stand
• Some bitchy blond republican woman with a spray on tan and fake nails
• And have three bratty kids that aren’t nearly as cute or smart as my faux nieces and nephews
• Who I would have to buy presents for all the time
• And who would groan and complain if I got them books
• And who would never send thank you notes
• Not even after I gave up and just started sending money
• Every time I ever tried to talk to my mom about Mike or his bratty kids she’d defend him and make me want to kick things
• Even though he was a grown man with three kids Mike would still try and borrow money from me
• And then when I wouldn’t give him any he’d “borrow” it from my parents
• I would say “MAN I wish I was an only child” a lot.

*there is, of course, a part of me that is terrified that this was just state adoption agency propaganda and that they were white trash too. One of many reasons I have never been at all interested in trying to find my “real” parents is my DEEP ROOTED fear that I would find my mom sitting on the porch of her mobile home in Oildale, smoking and wearing thongs and a tube top that obscured half of the faded tattoo running down her left breast. She’d take a deep drag off her menthol cigarette and say, “Your father?  I haven’t seen that son of a bitch in years… so… you got any money?” At which point I would run away.

Another Crush Bites The Dust

Okay, so I always have a short list of celebrities that I fantasize about. And the list is always pretty short because I’m picky and if I don’t think I’d actually LIKE the person I can’t get hot and bothered over them. Silly but true. I don’t have to think they’d want to have sex with ME but I have to think that after being in a room with them for an hour I’d still want to have sex with them. I’ve met just enough famous people to know that just celebrity or just power by itself isn’t going to do the trick.

And the list changes, usually very abruptly. For example I (like I think 75% of the women and 35% of the men on the planet) had a HUGE crush on Legolas in Lord of the Rings. I loved his hot little elf self and usually I don’t even like blonds. Or guys with long hair. But the moment I saw pictures of his actual brown haired brown eyed (normally something I’d prefer) scrawny ass cavorting on a beach with that skinny blond girlfriend of his it was over. And I even really liked the first Pirates movie but Johnny Depp in Eyeliner still did it for me WAY more thanOrlando ever could. And Johnny Depp hasn’t done it for me since I discovered over a decade ago that he just doesn’t shower enough to meet my hygiene standards. Another example is Johnny Lee Miller known for (in no particular order) being Sick Boy in Trainspotting, Being Dade in Hackers and marrying Angelina Jolie (who was in Hackers with him). I saw Hackers without any of that other knowledge and loved it (shut up) and loved loved LOVED him. Huge crush. And then I found out that he was married to Angelina Jolie and that when they said their vows she was wearing, wait let me find the exact description online, “The bride wore black rubber pants and a white shirt with his name written on it, in her own blood.” And that was the end of that. Anyone who wants a wedding like that is too weird for me.

Other obstacles, like being dead (I love Cary Grant) being gay (see: Cary Grant) don’t really seem to bother me. But if you’re a jerk or you smell bad or you’re a true freak then, well, you’re off the list.

One name that’s been on the list for a while is Robbie Williams. Who I probably wouldn’t know about at all if one of my gay friends hadn’t persistently exposed me to his music and videos over the years. He was huge in England (in a boy band that makes the Backstreet Boys look like the Mormon Tabernacle choir – don’t believe me – look up TAKE THAT on youtube) went solo, had one semi-hit here (Millenium) but has pretty much remained a big deal only to English people and Gay people because, despite all his protests, he runs around acting totally gay. But he’s got a fabulous body, I like his songs and every interview I’ve ever seen of him made me totally like him and think he was funny and a bit of a goof. And gay, but that’s fine because well, anyone who knows my history knows that gay guys and I go fairly well together. As my friend Tommy used to put it, “Laurel, just one more part of the coming out process… Girls, Laurel, Boys.” And since it took me way too long to learn there were many reasons not to date guys prettier than you I couldn’t really argue with him.

So I’ve enjoyed my Robbie Williams crush and several songs off his new album (driving through the Castro with the windows down and Rudebox pumping from my stereo – very happy making) including one called “She’s Madonna”

Let’s examine the chorus shall we?

I love you baby
but face it she's Madonna
No man on earth
would say that he don't want her
It's me not you
I've got to move on
You're younger too
but she's got her groove on
I'm sorry love
Madonna's calling me

Okay, so my take on that was Madonna walking down the middle of a street and men pouring out of their houses to follow her. Of course what Robbie Williams didn’t know when he wrote this is that the song doesn’t really work because most straight guys are terrified of Madonna. Between the weird outfits and how sexually aggressive (and potentially kinky) she is your basic straight guy would run in the other direction. GAY guys, on the other hand, love her for exactly the same reasons. But whatever. It is a cute song. Robbie Williams loves her, he got the Pet Shop Boys to sing backup, more power to him.

And then today I saw the video on YouTube. I will post the link to the video at the end of my post because I really cannot do it justice with words.

Okay. So Robbie Willaims doesn’t want to be WITH Madonna he wants to BE Madonna. And that? Is so not hot. I think I actually might have been able to survive the video (I mean I survived the one where he strips down to nothing and then strips his freaking skin off) if there hadn’t been the FREAKYASS interview clips of him dressed up as a deranged and badly done Madonna-esque drag queen. (and WHY were the drag queens in the video so angry?) I saw that and it was over. Done. The video ended and all I felt was vaguely creeped out and pretty sure Alexis Arquette IS post-op now. Oh and that straight guys don’t know who Alexis Arquette IS much less have him/her and a ton of other drag queens in their videos. And just as much of it as I saw finding the link to paste in creeped me out again. Because THAT GUY? I don’t want to have sex with and, a bit like finding out you were sleeping with someone who was cheating or on drugs or whatever, I feel a bit dirty for EVER having had sex with him in my own head. If I could mop my brain and scour the corners and spray Lysol around I totally would.

Instead I am going to delete his songs off my ipod (until I get some distance and get over it) and try to find some new fabulous person to have the fake hots for. Maybe one of those boys from that movie The Covenant I just watched on PPV last week. Yummy.

Related Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2vHGL7GVcg

ALL CHANGE HAS TO START SOMEWHERE

I may need to, I don't know, start an organized formal protest about this one in the future but for now this will have to do. If you agree with me maybe together we can really cause some change for good. But we have to stick together as women and speak up.

Yesterday while wandering through the Bloomingdales mall waiting for Joel to finish his dental appointment and meet me for lunch I had the opportunity to stare in horror at pretty much every display window of every store.

I now deeply believe this needs to be said to the fashion industry:

You cannot make me BUY formal shorts and you certainly cannot make me WEAR formal shorts. Not only can you not make me wear them but you most certainly cannot make me wear them with a sleeveless turquoise blouse with gathering along every seam and gold lame 3 inch spike sandals. And I am not even going to start on the plastic bead necklaces.

You can make formal shorts in linen. You can make them in polka-dotted satin (and you have) you can pair them with sequined chemise tank tops and scrunchy boots or puffy jackets and knee socks. I am not wearing them. No one I know is wearing them. Even the mannequins look embarrassed and the guy manikins standing next to them (who are not wearing any deranged guy equivalent) look like they have no idea how they got stuck next to the girl wearing the crazy.

I am talking to you BEBE and ANN TAYLOR and ANNE KLEIN and BCBG and GUESS and DKNY. Stop it. I am tired of buying all my clothing from American Eagle Outfitters online. And also I want new boots but I hate wedge heels so knock that crap off too.

I’m asking nicely. Please don't make me organize. I  already know the GO FUG YOURSELF girls are with me on this.

Pillows are supposed to HELP you sleep, right?

This all started a LONG time ago. Like when I was a helpless infant and my parents read somewhere that sleeping with a pillow was bad for your back. So they never gave me a pillow. Which meant I never learned to sleep ON a pillow.

For a long time this wasn’t really a problem. Occasionally I might get teased at slumber parties when everyone else crawled into their sleeping bags and pulled out their pillows and I HAD no pillow but other than that it didn’t come up much.

In college the dorm mattresses were basically like a large version of a plastic seat cushion, and about as thick and soft, so I stole the world’s flattest pillow from a boyfriend and used that for years. It was, no joke, about an inch and a half thick. It basically just made that end of the bed soft enough to lay my head on.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to purchase pillows I could sleep on (the kind you can flatten to nothing in the middle) but according to John 90% of the time I shove them off the bed within an hour of falling asleep anyway.

Why is ANY of this important? Well, because when I jack up my neck (usually by doing something like spending 7 uninterrupted hours in front of the computer, which is what I did this last time creating a photo book on Shutterfly) it usually takes the shape of the natural curve of my neck being lost. Which is a problem. It causes backaches, headaches and general misery and requires many trips to the chiropractor to fix it.

When we got our new mattress last month and were getting things free to go along with it I got one of those tempurpedic pillows that are supposed to be so great. But it wasn’t comfortable. So I didn’t use it. I asked my chiropractor about it and he said, “This it away!” Because, apparently, they are only good for your neck if you are sleeping on your back with your head perfectly in the middle. If you slide down or roll over onto your side it is BAD for your neck. So I tossed it into the closet when I got home and was really glad I hadn’t paid the $100 or whatever regular price for it.

But this still left me with no pillow. Our new mattress is really comfy but I could tell I still needed something to support my neck. And supporting the curve in my neck my chiropractor is beating the hell out of me to put BACK seemed like a good idea. I noticed that the chiropractor had pillows for sale. They look like regular pillows except there is a rectangle stitched into the middle creating an indentation. I asked, he swore how fabulous they were for your neck and I gave him $40 (well, actually I gave the receptionist $40). So that night I tried to sleep on it and by the time John finished reading to me my neck was starting to hurt and I was deeply uncomfortable. So I flung it to the floor and John SIGHED and I was like “well, I think it would make a really nice cat bed” and he sighed a few more times and asked if I would please STOP buying pillows I don’t use.

So I told the chiropractor about this yesterday and he told me that it takes at least THREE WEEKS to get used to the pillow that I should start out just trying to lay on it for 15 minutes, then move up to half an hour, then an hour and EVENTUALLY I will be able to sleep on it. So I now am TRAINING to sleep on this damn pillow.

Last night: I managed to lay on it almost half an hour before hurling it across the room. YAY ME.

FICTION: excerpt: The Soul Eater

Jennalise opened her eyes. Something had awakened her. By the movement inside her tiny cottage she could tell that something had woken her animals as well. A sound? No. She had always had very acute hearing and over the years she had trained herself to open her ears and her mind further. To hear sounds whose resonance still hung in the air after it was past hearing. Nothing.
 She swung her feet over the side of the bed and enjoyed the cold delicious feel of the hardwood on her bare feet. Without bothering to light a lamp she brushed her long gray hair away from her face and made her way to the door, carefully stepping over the silent but alert mastiff that lay protectively across her doorstep. “It’s okay Bayou” she said to him. The moment she opened the door both her cats leapt silently over the dog’s hulking form and scampered out into the night.  She nodded once at the dog and then closed the door behind her. She stood in the grass, wet and dewy and let the mist wash over her. Her thin nightshirt slowly was becoming damp. God she loved it up here. The weather, the thickness of the air, was one of the main reasons she had chosen to live up on this hill surrounded by the dense and pulsating city below. The air was thicker and there was more energy in it. All those lives and thoughts and words seemed to become almost trapped in the foggy mists that blew perpetually over the city. Some nights you could pull whole sentences, whole emotions from it. Most of her kind preferred the tree-covered hills to the north. Of course most of her kind also preferred being part of a coven. Not Jennalise. Aside from the training she had received from the old woman she had always worked alone. She found that solitary practice allowed her to dispense with needless ceremony and focus on her work. She didn’t bow and scrape to ancient god and goddesses. She listened and learned.

Tonight there was something in the air. Again. In the last month she and her animals had been woken in the middle of the night several times. Slowly she walked to the base of the huge Redwood tree that grew in the middle of her yard. At least 100 years old, it was huge and gnarled and strong. Taking a deep breath, she slowly relaxed her body until it was pressed completely against the tree. Her cheek resting against the bark, she slowed her body and her mind and let herself feel nothing but the tree. There it was. Just for a second she picked it up. One transient thought.  Evil. And it was near enough that some of it had been caught in the branches of the tree. Evil on her mountain. She steadied herself, patted the bark of the tree appreciatively and walked forward towards the back door of the main house that lay 100 feet in front of her cottage.

She quickly punched in the 5-digit code that dismantled the burglar alarm and then opened the door. She reached for the light switch and the kitchen lit up. She looked around and made a mental note that she really needed to dust in here. She had purchased the house seven years before because she had wanted the cottage and the tree that stood between the two structures. The large front house was her screen and she tried to maintain it. It was furnished and decorated and looked, she hoped, like the house of a very Spartan person who just didn’t remember to dust very often. She had the lights in the rooms on a very elaborate timer system so that they went on and off as seemingly randomly as the lights in the other large expensive houses around her. She spent very little time here, preferring immensely the tiny cottage with its wood floors, piles of books, tiny wood burning stove and comfortable single bed beneath the window. A witch didn’t need all this space to fill with possessions and distractions.  The one thing she did keep in the main house was her computer. Unlike many of her kind, Jennalise didn’t shun technology. At 47 she could have justified technological ignorance with the “I’m too old to learn all that new fangled stuff” excuse but she hadn’t.  The Internet had opened up a whole new world of exploration to her. She walked down the hall to her study, a room with a desk, chair and computer, and turned the machine on.

Three hours later, as the sun was just beginning to color the sky, she turned it off again. She gathered up the files she had printed out and hugged the pages to her chest. Three dead bodies on her mountain. No determination to the cause of death on any of them. Jenna knew that all you had to do to kill someone was take his or her life. That tiny fragile flicker was all that kept people going. With a shiver she quickly made her way back to her cottage where Bayou, her ever-faithful guardian, was still waiting patiently. She smiled and squatted down to pet his silky coat. “Good boy” she said to him, “Go on outside and have a romp. I’m fine.” The dog looked at her questioningly for a second and then got to his feet and padded outside where he immediately began sniffing a bush. Jenna smiled for a second and then closed the door firmly. She had work to do.

Bayou sniffed again. He trotted over to where the edge of her garden backed into the woods and sniffed again. Lingering in the air above the smell of ragweed and dill he caught the faintest whiff. They had been there. He had seen them. Yellow eyes watching him from the trees. But no sound. No howl or bark. Just the watching hungry eyes. The eyes that were growing in numbers. He looked back at the cabin. She didn’t know about the silent eyes. He marked their territory again, his only spell, and then padded back to the cabin and scratched politely at the door. When she opened it he stepped inside and then waited for her to resume whatever task she had been about. As soon as she sat back down at the small table, piled to overflowing with books, he placed his giant head in her lap and looked at her. Hard and unblinking. A few times before he had been able to get a hazy thought across to her. Somehow he had to make her aware of the not-wolves.

“Bayou” Jennalise gave his head a playful shove, “I appreciate the adoration but I’m working right now. Go lay down.” The dog merely continued to stand his ground and look at her. He tilted his head up so that, with her seated, their heads were almost level. As she reached for another book he laid his paw over hers. Startled she looked back at the dog. “Bayou?” she laid a hand on his head and met the dog’s gaze. Rarely had he looked at her that intently. “Okay boy” she said quietly “Okay.” She took a deep breath and then let it slowly out, emptying her mind of all the thoughts that had been swirling around a moment before.  Jenna pressed her forehead against the dog’s brow and waited. A hazy image flickered in her mind.

Yellow eyes…

Bayou felt her eyes start open and sat back on his haunches to look at her. Her face was white and she was sweating. He licked her hand and then walked slowly over to his post by the door. She knew now and he was tired. Turning around three times he laid down and quickly fell asleep.

Jennalise sat at her kitchen table with Bayou lying across her feet. She nudged his heavy frame with one foot, “Where were you, you silly swamp mutt?” She hadn’t been able to find him all afternoon, and then she’d thought she’d heard the faint ring of the doorbell of the big house. But when she’d finally pulled herself out of the cottage, crossed the yard, and opened the front of the big house, there was no one there, though she could still faintly hear a doorbell ringing. When she’d shut it and turned around, there was Bayou. “How did you get in here?” She asked him. He’d been acting strangely lately. The house was curiously silent, even more silent than usual. She listened again. No doorbell. Jenna patted Bayou on the head and walked back out the back door, making sure he was following, set the alarm again and went back into her cottage. Bayou only stopped once, perking up his ears, and looking back at the big house. Jennalise stopped too, calling him, and then stopping in the middle of his name. She could almost swear that she heard a little boy talking, but then the sound was gone.

In the last few days she had spent many hours on the Internet and even more reading through her oldest texts. Last night she had laid awake all night with the windows open, trying to pinpoint the source of the evil. Bayou had disappeared several times in the last few days. She hadn’t worried about it too much, he was his own dog, but she wished she knew what his canine senses had detected. She wished they could compare notes. In the morning all she knew for sure was that it was close. She sighed and decided to make herself a cup of tea. Stoking the wood stove she put on the kettle and then opened the cupboard and pulled down a loaf of bread, cutting off a slice and munching as she waited for the water to boil. She thought again of Bayou’s absences. She wondered if they were looking for the same thing. Tonight she would take him for a walk. Hopefully, he would walk her.