[Incredible VC/SOA auction today!]
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Here's where I tap my fingers, sip my coffee and consider which direction to go in. I stop for a moment to get the kids out of bed, wait a few minutes, flick the bedroom lights on and off and then yell again for them to get out of bed. I sit down at the computer. Again.
Had breakfast (ok, another cup of coffee), did laundry, took shower. All in a morning's work when you get up at 4:45 a.m. I fell asleep at 9:30 last night - passed out so hard I'm sure I was snoring and sputtering because when I woke up half an hour later my pillow was soaked with drool. Don't make those faces, you all drool when you sleep hard. Don't pretend you don't.
At ten I transferred myself from the couch to the bed. Kids were still up, husband was still painting. Not me. I had this overwhelming desire to sleep like a dead person.
Not to be. I woke up ever half hour or so. I couldn't get comfortable, the dreams were bad, my neighbor was gunning his motorcycle again. Always something. The fitful night finally ends and I wake up exhausted from chasing down an orphan girl in my dream - an orphan girl that turned out to be my daughter at an earlier age. Well, how could she be an orphan if I was still alive, my dream self wondered. And then she came and sat with me, next to a reflection pool that had been emptied of water, but whose cement floor was scattered with pennies and dimes turned blue from chlorine.
I almost wasn't here, you know, she says to me.
I know, I say. I'm glad you are.
And that was that. Orphan girl/daughter got up and walked away, stopping every few feet to pick up a faded coin.
I wake myself up thinking about that line, I almost wasn't here, you know. And that much is true. I had some complications late in the third month of my pregnancy with Nat. The problems were enough to warrant the fear that I was having a miscarraige. When I told my then husband about it, he immediately started making plans for the money we would save by not having a baby.
I remember this distinctly. Driving down Fifth Street, towards our apartment, in his yellow Subaru wagon he inhereted from his older brother. I was wearing loose black pants and a long t-shirt. Even at just three months, my belly had already started to swell. I had black Converse low-tops on my feet and those feet were rested on the passenger side dashboard, because I was supposed to keep the lower half of my body elevated, which seemed a bit ridiculous to me because if I was going to miscarraige, gravity wasn't going to make much of a difference.
It made my heart hurt just a bit to hear him treat our child-to-be with such indifference and I said so. It's not a child, he said. It's just a...thing. It's just a three month old thing.
That thing eventually healed itself and made its way out of my body and became our daughter and there were times when I was in that delivery room, pushing and sweating and cursing, that I wanted to remind him of the moment when he referred to this baby as a thing, but I couldn't, because he wasn't there. Wasn't his thing, is what he said. Not a delivery room kind of man.
So I was there alone when the monitors went crazy and the oxygen mask came out of nowhere and I had this absurd moment when I thought I was on a crashing plane and the masks were popping from the ceiling, but that was probably the Demerol speaking.
I had no idea what I was doing, I realized at some point. I wished I could rely on my Lamaze lessons, but the husband wouldn't go to those because he had better things to do and I couldn't go alone because, towards the end of the pregnancy, I didn't quite fit behind the wheel of my Mustang or his Subura and I depended on him to drive me everywhere, but everywhere did not include a few lessons designed to make childbirth easier. So I wasn't sure how to breathe and I wasn't sure how to find some comfort in this physical nightmare, and the nurses just wanted to pump me full of Demerol and give me way too much of that epidural.
Just a little, I want to be able to push, I told them. Two minutes later, I was numb from the pelvic area down. There would be no pushing.
You could today put me on an empty cruise ship in the middle of a vast ocean and I would feel less alone than I did in that hospital room.
The rest is a blur of motion and fear, soundtracked by a too-fast beeping monitor, a barking nurse and my puzzlement that my own OB/G had yet to show up. It was when I saw the forceps, oversized and ominous, and knew those forceps were headed for a space between my legs, that I nearly passed out. They threw an oxygen mask on my face and told me to shut up and calm down.
I asked them to please let my husband in the room. Not because I wanted his comfort, but because I wanted to rip his balls off for leaving me alone like this. The nurse shook her head disapprovingly when she realized my husband did not take his little course that would have allowed him in the room.
So there I was, alone, and they were using scissors or something very much like them to slice open my va-- well, they call it an episiotomy. Eventually, my baby girl, the thing, as my husband called her, decided she had enough and made her appearance kicking, screaming and red faced.
Later they wheeled me out to another room and my husband, whom my sisters had to go find to tell him that his daughter had introduced herself to the world, was holding the baby and while other new mothers might be overwhelmed with joy at this sight, all I wanted to do was crush his heart into tiny, bleeding pieces.
Which I did, six years later. Six years and another child too late, I know.
It wasn't really that particular day that warped and molded me into the person I am today, but the six years that passed from that day until October of 1996 when I finally realized that I had, indeed, given birth to a thing; a weird version of myself, that is. Like Frankenstein's monster or anything created out of a vulgar hatred for yourself, a mutated personality is born and it's not until someone performs an intervention of sorts and shows you a mental film clip of that monster that you realize what you created.
So now, almost eight years after that six year period of gestation, the monster has been slain and the place from which I got the body parts is mostly a distant planet, still viewable off in the far reaches of time, but a safe mileage away.
It's good to keep the telescope out, as I have done. It's good to look at that place every once in a while and remember the monster that existed there; the thing that walked the earth on its own accord, powered by anger and fueled by self-loathing and a hatred for most everything in its path.
Packing yesterday, I found a stack of some mix CDs I made. In my usual haphazard fashion, none of them were labeled. I grabbed a handful of discs so I could check them out on the way to work, to see what kind of music was on them.
The first disc struck me like the proverbial hammer. Damn, I was angry. There was one song - a slow, hard sludge-rock song - that acted like a zoom lens on that telescope and I saw it all so clearly, if from a safe distance. And I felt it, too. It's amazing what one simple song can do to bring back everything associated with it; every single feeling and emotion, every moment of the creeping death of who you were and the slow crawl to what you are.
If I've learned one thing over the years, its that anger at the world and anger at one specific person are two entirely different animals, and while neither one is particularly productive, at least you can act upon your anger at the world with productive action, while acting upon your anger at a person will only land you a restraining order.
As with most of my rambling reminiscences, this started out as something else - at first it was one of those dedication posts (Faith wanted me to write about the Michele that she knows, which is in some ways different from the Michele that most of you know, as she knows me outside this box), then it was going to answer some questions about blogging, and then it was supposed to be about abortion and the rally in D.C. yesterday, but it turns out its about all of that and more - you just have to read between the lines to get to it.
And there's a lot more to this story, if you want to know it. I'd be more than happy to write it down if you put it in the form of a request accompanied by a donation to SOA.
I'm not a whore, I just play one for charity
Lots of favorite episodes questions (though I think most of them came in one email). We'll start with this one though, rightfully, the correct answer is: almost all of them. These were the first three that came to mind.
71. Three favorite Simpsons episodes
Radioactive Man:
My eyes! The goggles do nothing!
Tomacco [E-I-E-I-Doh!]
Aw Daddy! This tastes like Grandma!
Contains the B-52's song Glove Slap, which I've graciously provided for you.
Homer the Heretic
Kids, let me tell you about another so-called wicked guy. He had long hair and some wild ideas. He didn't always do what other people thought was right. And that man's name was... I forget. But the point is... I forget that, too. Marge, you know what I'm talking about. He used to drive that blue car?
You know, I could do this all night. Unless you want to take over.
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Note: this post is part of what was the Spirit of America Ask a Blogger challenge, a challenge in which I am woefully behind.
All the previous questions are in one happy place.
Halfway there.
Trust me when I say that today is not the day you want to throw down with me. You will lose. Badly. Just ask the condesending receptionist from my doctor's office, who is probably in tears right now.
Let's get busy with the questions, shall we?
42. If you couldn't live on Long Island or the greater New York area, where would you live? Why?
Probably upstate New York (that's not the Greater New York area, is it?). We've been going up to Roscoe, New York every summer since I was about five. I love the peace, the slow pace and being surrounded by nature. I love the way the night sky upstate, where you can billions more stars than you can see here on the Island. I love the dirt roads and cool mornings and evenings. I could live like that. Definitely.
43.If you had to do it all over again in regards to blogging, would you?
Honestly, no. When I think of how much time I've spend blogging, it scares me. But if I knew then what I know now, I would definitely find other means to get my writing and opinions out there.
That's not to say that I don't love blogging, because I do. But had I known that it's a package deal complete with trolls and enemies, I might have just done it anonymously. Or not at all.
Hell, I think the answer to this is, I don't know.
44. How can I be as cool as Michele?? (you can't isn't an answer!)
Show your tits, dude.
45. How much time goes into administering a blog like yours, both in absolute terms and in comparison to the time spent creating content?
It runs different every day. Most of the content is created in my head, as I drive or shower or work. It's just a matter of opening up the innards of the blog and typing it in. Generally, I'll have a two or three sentence idea in my head when I sit down - it pretty much flows from there. I very rarely write in advance or prepare posts ahead of time. Everything here is pretty much off the cuff. I can type at an amazing speed, also. For argument's sake, take 
Today is the last day to get your donation in to Spirit of America in the name of Spirit of Team (which is the combined efforts of the original three coalitions). Our goal is no longer to beat each other, but to get our tally up to 50k before the night is through.
So fare we have raised a total of $45,068. That means we have until midnight tonight (PST) to raise $5000 dollars to reach our goal. I think we can do this, considering what we have to offer in return for your bucks.
The whole list of offers can be found at the 
Well, that was fun. Back to packing.
And if you can't figure it out, don't ask.
I swear. 
Some have come by email, some by comments - I'm going to do my best to get to them all, except for any questions that contained the words condom and ass in conjuction with each other. Yes, there were two. Two.
33. How long can a female blogger survive on caffeine, chardonnay fumes, and no sleep?
I'm not sure, but I did a similar study right after my divorce. For 32 days, I survived on a diet of coffee, 
I was about 13 years old when I first entered the Palace. I was a tag-a-long to an older friend who was going there just to score a nickel bag.
Pinball Palace was a small, almost hidden place, tucked between the Jerry Lewis Movie theater and a specialty bra shop. From the outside, it looked forbidden and dangerous, two things that combined to point a beckoning finger at me.
Gina opened the door and I followed, knowing that this was exactly the kind of place my parents warned me about.
As soon as we stepped inside my brain went into sensory overload. The smell hit me first; cigarettes and pot and teenage sweat swirling together in the dank heat of the Palace.
The noises. The clacking of pool bools as someone yelled break!; the dings and and whistles of the twenty or so pinball machines that lined the walls; the cursing of the bikers at the pool table; the jangling of quarters in the pockets of Levis; the fist banging on the glass as a machine cried out TILT! It was all underscored by Led Zeppelin's Trampled Under Foot shouting from the jukebox, and the combination of those sounds became my own Pied Piper, begging me to follow.
I was hesitant that first day and just hung in back of Gina while she made a deal with guy at the change counter. When she was done, we went behind the movie theater, smoked a joint, and then snuck in the back door of the theater. They were showing Shampoo. We watched Warren Beatty, naked on the floor and humping the daylights out the poor girl underneath him and all I remember is a person was watching them through a window and said something like "Now that's what I call fucking!" Gina sat gaping at the screen, taking in every word, every movement, probably taking notes in her head, and all I could think about was going back to Pinball Palace.
The next Saturday, Gina took me with her for another buy. This time, I brought quarters. While Gina flirted with her dealer, I made the walk towards the machine in the far corner. The 
This post brought to you by the 
Packing is awful. I will build upwards and outwards forty times on the new house before I ever move again.
Strolling through 
I ran out to Target this morning to get some packing supplies. On the way home, I was mulling over how I'm still so upset about the whole Pat Tillman episode(s) yesterday.
As I took the usual shortcut through 
700 soldiers have died and Tillman, for most of us, is a face on those sodliers. We know of him, we've read about him, many of us have seen him play football. For me at least, Tillman represents all the humanity and all the hearts and souls that were taken away from us while we struggle to make this world free and safe And that's why so many of us are crying today.
I am deeply saddened by the words I read both here and at Command Post today. The depth of the callousness really took me by suprise. I thought I was past that by now, that nothing the anti-war crowd and far left could do would ever surprise me. How I underestimated their cruelty. It is a gleeful moment for them and they are rallying around Tillman's death like flies on a carcass.
Pat Tillman and all the others who died before and with him in the war on terror knew no bounds in their bravery and dedication. They will be remembered for that.
Someone else says it better:
Sgt Tillman is a hero not because he walked away from the Cardinals, but because of where he walked to. He like all the rest of the Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen, and Coastguardsmen volunteered to put himself between the bad guys and our way of life and fight for its preservation. Rest In Peace Sgt Tillman, your service to our nation is an inspiration and you will not be forgotten. - 
The year is 1978. I'm in high school, beginning of junior year. There's me and three guys and we are best of friends. We go nowhere without each other, we make no convoluted plots to take over the world without all of us present. We move like stealth bombers in the night, all army jackets and dirty jeans and Genesis t shirts (before Phil Collins ruined the band, ok?) We are the cutting edge of a white-bred community, which really isn't saying much, but we think we are the coolest people on the face of the earth. We listen to prog rock and punk rock and never pop rock or disco or, god forbid, Journey or Bruce Springsteen. We think guitar solos are passe but drum solos rock the house. We think Peter Gabriel is a genius and bands like Styx and Fleetwood Mac need to be silenced. We secretly listen to Van Halen but no one tells the other until years later, when we can laugh at David Lee Roth from the safe distance of many years.
We don't hang out at the mall like the other kids. No, we hang out in Kevin's room with the black lights and Emerson Lake & Palmer posters, or we hang out in Paul's garage, with the drum set and the Ramones "Road to Ruin" playing over and over. Every once in a while though, we are drawn to the mall, because Record World owns us. It is the only reason to get on public transportation. It is the only reason to beg someone's older brother for a ride. To buy records and look through the stacks of vinyl and pray that you will find some obscure punk rock album in the cut out bin for 99 cents, but all you can find is Heart and Blue Oyster Cult, and a 45 of Nazareth's "Love Hurts" that you play 50 times in the next three days.
One of those weekends arrives when there's nothing to do because Kevin's mom won't let us hang out in the house and Paul's mother is having a garage sale so we can't hang out there. We decide to hop the bus and go to the mall, where we will pool our money together to buy an album, and have enough left over to ask Kevin's brother to buy us quarts of beer when we get home. Perfect day.
We get to the mall and the first thing we notice is there's more security guards than usual. This is suburbia. There's not much trouble at the mall. We figure there's some kind of protest going on. You know how those college kids are, always protesting the fur or the man or whatever gets them out of the dorms. So we make our way through the mall, wanting to just get to the record store and get the hell out of there without encountering any cheerleaders or football players or giddy junior high girls that always try to pick up Tim. We are about two feet from the record store when we are stopped by a short, fat security guard and a velvet rope going across the length of the mall.
"You cannot get through this way. You must go around the other entrance to the mall and wait on line." The guard stands with his hand in his pocket, as if he is believing his own lie that he's a real cop and there's a gun hidden away there.
"Wait for what?" I ask him. "What's the line for?" He rolls his eyes at me.
"The show. The concert." I can almost here the "Duh!" coming out of his mouth.
We look beyond the velvet ropes, past the throng of the most hideous looking group of middle aged women and giggling teenagers forming what looked like a huge conga line of patheticness. There's an amplifier set up on each corner of the square the ropes have formed. There's a makeshift stage in the middle, really just a few planks of wood. A concert. A show.
"So, who's playing?" Kevin asks the guard. He rolls his eyes again.
"Only Leo Sayer!" He says this with pride and arrogance. As if we should have known that the most untalented white boy to ever grace pop music was playing in our very mall today.
"Leo Sayer," I say.
"Leo Sayer," The other three say.
We look at each other in the way that only friends who have performed sinister acts of rebellion together in the past can do. The look. The glance. The unspoken words that pass between us. The guard senses something going on. He looks us up and down, sees the clothes and the hair and the patches on the jackets and you can just about see the light bulb go on over his head.
"Hey! You're not here to see Leo!"
"Duh," I say. "We're here to buy some records. Can we go in?"
"No. Come back tomorrow. And don't make any trouble. I know your kind."
"Sure," Tim says. "Sure. We'll be on our way now. You take care, ok?" His words were the equivalent of patting the guy on the head.
We walk around the other side of the mall. We stake the place out, eyeing the set up of the amps and the positioning of the security guards. We synchronize our watches and hatch our plan and wait. We wait patiently. Fifteen minutes until Leo Sayer bounces on to the stage, white boy afro and squeaky voice, ready to rock the world with "You Make me Feel Like Dancing." Wanna dance the night away? Nope. Not with you, Leo.
We must do this. In the name of good music. In the name of Peter Gabriel and Joey Ramone.
Five minutes til Leo.
Finally, we hear a squeal rise out from the crowd. The sound of 200 or more tone-deaf women swooning at the site of a guy who looks like the poster child for geeks. We assume our positions. We wish each other luck in our mission. It's time.
Leo is escorted on to the wooden plank stage by his manager and two mall security guards. The women swoon. The music cues (this is the 70's - he's going to lip sync) - and we run in four opposite directions. Within thirty seconds we have done it. We have unplugged all of Leo's speakers. The music stops. Leo is just about to "sing" the first words into the mic and everything goes dead. He's mouthing words to dead air. Silence.
The security guard who spoke to us earlier spies me as I am walking swiftly away from the northeast amp. "IT"S THEM!," he shouts, pointing in my direction, and then swinging around to see Kevin running the other way. He points at him, at me, yelling at the other security guards, his face red and sweaty and alarmed. I'm having fits of laughter while I'm running, thinking that the guard is acting as if we just killed the president. I keep thinking about book depositories and grassy knolls and this too fat mall cop running after me because some disco pop boy had his amp unplugged.
The four of us meet outside, at the bus shelter and we decide it's too risky to wait another ten minutes for the bus to come so we start the long walk home, stopping every once in a while to roll around on the sidewalks in fits of laughter.
We get home, tell Kevin's brother about our exploits and he buys us beer and let's us drink it in his room. This is the big time. The older brother's secret sanctuary. He holds up his quart of piss warm Miller and toasts to us. "To good music!" We toast back, drink our beer and it doesn't dawn on me until now, 20 something years later, that Genesis wasn't really good music, and that Leo never had a hit after that day.
I've said it before and I'll say it hundreds more times: bloggers and blog readers are incredibly generous.
I love him.
[Don't forget - scroll down and check out all the SOA/VC posts. Keep donating! Keep linking! And thank you to everyone who already did $5473 from the VC alone(!) and 16k overall. Yay, us!]
This whole "I'll post what you ask me to" thing works out well, as my mind is so bogged down with thoughts about closing costs, packing and turning the garage of the new house into a home theater that I can't think of anything to write about. Besides begging you for money.
So, dedication post number three goes out to 
Challenge 2: Red Sox fans: The first five Sox fans that 
Challenge 3: Mets fans: Oy. This is the hardest thing I've ever done. It hurts me to even say it, but I will make the sacrifice in the name of SOA. (Deep breath) - Ok, I have to up the ante here - for every Met fan who 
Remember:
Dave: Tip number one, kid. When they 
I hereby announce that the Yankees theme song has been changed to the Imperial Death March. Which is what some of the Yankee players will be doing if they don't shape up. Never forget Ed Whitson, boys. If the Yankees are the evil empire, then the Yankee fans are Red Five homing in on the Death Star.
This is Red Five, I'm going in! Die, Ed Whitson, Die!
Scene 25. My god, I know that's scene 25. I'm sick.
Anyhow, I was going to tell you all to blogroll Skillzy. But I cannot in good faith ask someone to link a blog whose owner makes images like this one:
Skillzy, this is war. And you shall be on the receiving end of my shock and awe. And I don't mean that in a good way, no matter how you may want to construe it.
You ready to throw down, dawg? 'Cause I am throwin' it. Nobody does that to Lenore and lives long enough to pat themselves on the back.
Wait for it.
Photo essay in 
