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July, 2012

  1. Super Answer Lady Person and her Massive Sighs

    July 27, 2012 by kim

    Clearly some of my mail has been getting stuck in transit or eaten by dogs or opened “accidentally” by that dude who keeps rubbing himself with my trash. So I am going to answer some letters I KNOW have been written to me, I just haven’t received. Clearly people need my help and I’m not going to let a silly thing like not being asked for it stand in my way of going to their rescue. So here it is, another episode of Super Answer Lady Person – the Answers Only edition. (Names have been changed to protect the innocent.)

    Dear Married Dumbass Who Seriously Thinks We Wouldn’t Find Out You’re Screwing a Famous Girl Half Your Age,

    *massive sigh*

    Look. Twenty-two year old girls are as reliable as chipmunks and as steady as cotton balls. They get crushes. No big deal. We all get crushes. Since the moment I met my husband I’ve had two crushes. But the difference is… I knew they were crushes. I did not on any level believe that casual flirtation would or could lead to some undefined bliss that was clearly missing in my life. That’s the difference between me now, and me at twenty-two. And we’re talking about ME here. Super Answer Lady Person. I am a bastion of self-awareness. Yet at twenty-two I would have screwed a handsome forty-one year old father figure too. Possibly even believing I was in love. BUT I WOULD HAVE FIGURED IT OUT AND DUMPED HIS ASS SOONER OR LATER. It’s just what twenty-two year old girls do. Birds fly, fish swim, cute girls in their early twenties think their crushes are real.

    You are the dipshit here. You’re the idiot who actually thought it MEANT something to get her attention and affection. Maybe it made you feel virile and valuable. Let me tell ya something. A twenty-two year old girl as a barometer of value makes as much sense as a seagull as a barometer of something’s palatability. Whatever she did that made you think she meant it, it was all in her head. It had nothing whatsoever to do with you. You idiot. Young girls will do anything, say anything, even BE anything to make you love them. Then, when you do and they don’t immediately feel fulfilled and joyous, they move on to the next shiny dude. Yes, there are a few exceptions, but the exceptional twenty-two year old girls don’t tend to be drawn to married dudes two decades older than they.

    You really wanna feel like a man? Make your wife cum twice in ten minutes. THAT”S real value.

    Dipshit.

    Dear Important Rich Dude Who Hopes to Run a Large Corporation, er, Country:

    *head in hands, massive sigh*

    First lesson, just because someone speaks the same language does not mean all the words mean the same. I personally may not know that “backside” is a titter-inducing word in the UK, but I don’t intend to make international policy. Do some research. Listen. Don’t’ assume you know everything and that we all have the same life.

    For instance, maybe two per cent of the population is interested in dressage. Maybe fourteen per cent know about it. I’d say only fifty per cent, and that’s being generous, know how to SAY dressage. So please don’t use your love of horses as a way to connect with my inner seven-year old girl who wants a pony.

    Next, don’t assume we didn’t hear something you said just because you didn’t want us to. When I was in college, I did a scene and dropped a prop. I stared at it and then blindly went on with the scene. My instructor illustrated my imbecility afterwards by holding the prop high in the air and proclaiming, “This exists!” Then he dropped it on the floor. “Now, it DOESN’T exist!”

    Unless you moonlight at the Magic Castle doing really good magic, you can’t make that work. So when your brain starts screaming to itself, “Abort! Abort! Stop talking! Danger!” instead of letting a glassy stare come into your eyes and your perfect teeth hit the light for the camera, hows about you stop and say, “Woah. That shouldn’t have come out like that.”

    Because you know what would really be a change of pace and maybe get a vote or two? Admit your mistakes and apologize for them. That goes for the other guy too. ALL Important Rich Dudes Who Hope to Run a Large Country. Nothing deflates some kidney-piercing mockery like admission and a request for absolution. (ARE YOU LISTENING, MARRIED DUMBASS?)

    Dear Lady Reading Fifty Shades of Grey With the Huge Diamond Wedding Ring:

    *cold, dead stare, massive sigh*

    Don’t. Just don’t. Don’t tell me all of the time you devote to sex is with that book. I’ve been amazed at the number of women who feel so “liberated” finally reading a piece of erotica while at the same time refusing to touch their men. You have fantasies he’s not realizing? You have needs he’s not meeting? You have desires he’s not fulfilling? FUCKING ASK HIM!

    My husband is not on my side with this. He says there are always going to be men who are selfish, who won’t listen, and who see requests or attempts to communicate desires as a direct assault on their manhood. Okay fine. Maybe. But until I admit your own husband is one of them, I wanna know you’ve at least tried.

    According to some of my friends, a lot of husbands are so desperate to get laid that they are willing to do anything. You want fruit? He’s stopping at the next freeway off-ramp to buy everything on the little Mexican guy’s truck. You want leather? He’s killing a cow with his bare hands. You want a maid’s outfit? On him? I’m pretty sure he’ll find one in his size. Just don’t make him wear the high-heels, because it’s hard to fuck with a recently sprained ankle. Distracting.

    Any woman willing to read erotica in bed while she knows her husband has been in the bathroom for fifteen minutes NOT taking a pee is a woman who needs a talking to from the Super Answer Lady Person. If it REALLY ain’t working…. you deserve something or someone that is. Get it, girl. For real, not just in a book.

    You DESERVE that! You deserve to have, with a real, live sexual organ that is not yours, the kind of sex that people only write about in your world. It can be done. I’ve seen it done. I mean, like, not just in porn. I like to think I do it. But it will only start if you put down the book and look at the huge hard-on under the sheets next to you that belongs to the guy pretending to be asleep. Or, failing that, you decide you can live without that particular hard-on and go find fulfillment elsewhere. Easier said than done? ABSOLUTELY. But I’m just saying…. if the ONLY reason you’re not having that kind of sex is because it hasn’t occurred to you to ask for it, the fault lies with you, m’dear. If there’s other reasons, well, I’m glad the book is so widely published then.

    Category general musings, naughty bits | Tags: ,,,,,, | 9 Comments

  2. Dumbest. Thing. Ever.

    July 26, 2012 by kim

    I just did the dumbest thing ever. Well, second dumbest. The first might be right now, trying to write a blog with my thumbs on my phone. I scheduled TIME between my audition and picking up my kid, but I did not, however, bring any of the things I needed to FILL that time. Forgot the jeans I was supposed to return. Don’t have my laptop. You know. Stuff like that.

    I had a point to make.

    OH! Dumbest thing ever. Right. Thank God I titled this piece already.

    So I had an audition that required crying. Hysterical sobs for three straight pages. Now you may think, like my manager did, “Great! Should be easy for her right now! Good for her to get some of that out.”

    Yeah. No. You’d be wrong.

    (Warning: completely unsupported theory about to be espoused.) When the human body sustains a long period of intense negative emotion, it adapts and readjusts what it considers “normal” to now include this constant agony. This is why torture victims can start sympathizing with their captors. This is why you don’t see pictures of children crying in the Sudan. I have been under, while not QUITE the equivalent of torture or starvation, quite stressful negative feelings for a few weeks now. Soooooo my body thinks this is normal.

    Usually I can access my emotions easily by just pretending really really hard, but once in a while I have to cheat and listen to a song that makes me sad. I get sad because it is ALWAYS a song that makes me think of my Mother or Father being dead. (I know, dead baby or husband might work better, but that’s just masochism.) Today I had to cheat. I knew I would, sadness had become ordinary. Tears were hard to locate. I did not know it would be SUCH A PAINFUL FUCKING DUMB MOVE.

    I’m gonna share with you. Cuz I’m a giver. Any of you know this song?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LT8ynNwR8w&feature=youtube_gdata_playerwinter

    I downloaded it. Haven’t listened to it in fifteen years and it was like having my chest opened and my still-beating heart wrapped lovingly in a baby blanket and handed to me. The first time I heard it, I think I knew my father would kill himself.

    Mission accomplished, right? Nope. In the past, I used songs and scenarios that weren’t exactly real. I imagined and emoted and moved on. Today, however, I put on my headphones, sat down in the waiting room, and realized Daddy was dead. Not my father, mind you, but Daddy.

    It did not prove to be a wise auditioning technique. Compared to this revelation… Well, three pages of dialogue came out of my mouth. A few tears were shed. But I’d already devastated myself.

    Dealing with Dad has been a chore, at best. He left his life pretty much the way you’d think an alcoholic who puts a bullet in his head would leave his life. He didn’t pay his taxes or his bills, my name wasn’t on any of the accounts I now need to manage, I didn’t even know where his safe deposit box WAS, let alone if the titles to the cars and house were in there. His house was a mess. The yard was a mess. And it was alllllll mine to get in order.

    Then I played that fucking song. That goddamned song. That genius song. The man I started to mourn had nothing to do with the house and the bills and the crap I was dealing with. The man I started to mourn was silly and funny and strong enough to defend his princesses against every dragon but still believed we should wield the sword ourselves. He was brilliant and loving, he knew great songs and how to start a fire from scratch. He was so proud of me and wanted so badly for me to be proud of him.

    When I was little, I would ride on his back in a lake we would go to. He would swim all the way across with me clinging to him and it never even occurred to me I could drown.

    I can’t stop crying. Real tears. Not tears of anger or frustration, but sad tears of loss. I keep peeling away layers and they keep fucking hurting. Each one expands on what I cried over, each one burns a little bit more and today I did this to myself and it was fucking DUMB. I was fine in a holding pattern. I would have given a passable audition. Or why didn’t I go with Dead Mom? She’s a go-to for crying that I’m used to. I could easily recover from that.

    This slammed me. He’s really gone. And I didn’t get to say good-bye or tell him I was proud of him.

    And he probably couldn’t have heard me.

    I don’t know which is sadder.

    Category a bit more serious | Tags: | 26 Comments

  3. HOLY CRAP THAT’S HOW HER BRAIN WORKS?

    July 18, 2012 by kim

     

    A writer I admire greatly, Anne Lamott, advocates writing shitty first drafts. My blogs are, in effect, shitty first drafts. Honing something into a viable piece of readable material takes time I don’t really have. HOWEVER, if I’m going to allow myself the fantasies that somebody out there knows somebody who knows somebody that publishes quasi-celebrity written fantasy novels, I gotta step up my game. I don’t know how many people read this blog, but I do know some of my best friends pass through, so I’m going to process this like you’re all my best friends/Mommy who will put my successes up on her frige. Today I am going to edit what I wrote yesterday. This may turn out to be fun, if anything ever gets completed, so you will get to partake in the journey and see how long and winding it really is.

    Or you may get fed up with me and take me off your notification list. I don’t mind. I’m ultimately doing this for me so I don’t go crazy and can at least feel like I have SOME momentum in my life while I sit around waiting for an audition. (I HATE BEING AN ACTOR! JESUS CHRIST! WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET A JOB? I’M DOWN TO A SIZE FOUR AND ALL THE DUDES ARE GAY AND DON’T EVEN WANT ME TO BLOW THEM ANYWAY! WHAT MORE DO THEY WANT? IT IS NOT A GLAMOROUS, WEALTHY BUSINESS, IT HAS BECOME PATHETIC. ONE CASTING OFFICE NOW APPARENTLY WON’T EVEN LET US USE THEIR BATHROOM! Okay. I’m done.)

    So the original is in italic. My substitutions are in boldface and my rationale is whatever the word for non-italicized is. Let me know how it goes for you.

    OH! And yes, there is more to this. It exists in fits and starts in my grey matter and on my laptop, but it’s intended to ultimately be a full-length novel of the urban fantasy vein.

     

    ————————————————————————————————————

     

    The candle sputtered out with a fitful gasp that perfectly summarized how I was feeling. Too many words. That’s clunky. Don’t make readers work so hard right off the bat. The candle sputtered out, perfectly summing up my mood. I was tired. I was spent. I was hungry. The day had been too long and I was grateful to be nearly done.

    On the other hand, I had no clue how my client across the table was feeling. This doesn’t actually make sense if the protagonist is psychic. Sure, the audience doesn’t know that yet, but I do. No good. That’s how I felt.  However, across the table, my client’s face gave nothing away. This was probably due to the abundance of botox, collagen and wrinkle fillers that had robbed her of any expression. (Well, to be precise, robbed her of any expression beyond “moderately surprised” or, as I like to think of it, “ready to perform a blow job but will find it absolutely distasteful”.) Still, I assumed she was satisfied and it was time to wrap up the reading.

    “Any final questions ?” See explanation below. “Anything else?”

    The soon-to-be Mrs.Jadilyn smiled coyly and twisted the engagement ring on her finger. The word “coyly” is not really a word I think our heroine would use a lot. Still we need something that further illustrates who this client is, phrased in a way that further illustrates who our protagonist is. The diamond would have choked a Great Dane. “Are Roman and I going to have a baby?”

    Dammit. I was an idiot. I knew she’d want to know and I shouldn’t have given her the option to ask the question. Stall! “Do you have a date set? Maybe we should look at some numbers and find the most auspicious options.”

    She responded archly, “I’m not paying for another half hour. I know how you people  work.  I just want to know about having a baby.”

    Lie! Hello…. Melissa doesn’t lie! Come on, Kim, don’t get THAT sloppy!

    Don’t answer! Clunky. Evade! 

    “Uh, well, you know, anything is possible. Really, our time is up now.”

    “But are we pregnant? I have to know, so I can tell the gown designer. Or, you know, postpone the wedding.” She shuddered, “I can’t be a fat bride.”

    Of course she couldn’t. I flipped a couple of Tarot cards over. They mocked me and were of no help whatsoever. 

    This was not looking good, but sometimes I can get a little room to hedge my bets if the questions aren’t specific  I’m vague enough. “So, the question is…. are BOTH of you pregnant?” Using the word “question” two sentences in a row? That makes me feel sad for my brain. Don’t do that.

    The condescending look she shot back made it through her scaffolding of facial enhancements. That’s convoluted but I can’t think of anything better right now. Come back to it. She explained, “That’s how it’s phrased now  the evolved way of saying it. I love it when characters describe themselves exactly the opposite of who they are. It amuses me. WE are a couple. WE get pregnant. Roman. Daddy. Me. Mommy. What do you see?”

    This is the moment I hate. This is the moment that guarantees I won’t get a tip. I probably won’t get paid. Used probably too much. There’s a more evocative way of phrasing that. This is the moment that heralds another dinner of Ramen noodles and I can’t fucking let’s not indulge in potty mouth yet, shall we? avoid it. It’s a simple act to shut your stick with personal my mouth. I should try it sometime. I’d be a lot richer. Gods, Goddesses, Random Whatevers…. a little help?

    I gave the earth one last chance to open and swallow me. Nothing happened. It never does. So I took a deep breath and told her what had been sitting smugly in my consciousness since she walked in. “Well, in spite of the fact that you quit taking birth control six months ago without telling your fiancée, you are not pregnant. You will probably not become pregnant since the complaints you’ve been having about your air conditioning are actually hot flashes from the start of  that come with menopause. On the other hand, Roman, who’s real name is Jerry by the way, has been fucking boffing a twenty-six year old stripper for the last three months and is going to have a healthy baby girl. Congratulations.”

    I’ll give her plastic surgeon credit. Her face didn’t move an inch beyond the minutest that’s a weird word to read slightest squint as she leaned forward.

    “Melissa Rowan, fuck you.” Fine. Now I guess potty mouth is okay. It illustrates the true lack of class this rich bitch has. But let’s just use it judiciously, shall we?

    She grabbed her purse that probably cost more than my month’s rent and swept out the door. I knew she’d be back in one… two… three… two…

    The door popped back open, she snarled, “And I am leaving you SUCH a bad review on Yelp. You are the worst psychic in Los Angeles!” and slammed again.

    No, actually I’m the best psychic in Los Angeles. And I can’t lie. Which sucks like you wouldn’t believe.

    Category for realsies sort of | Tags: | 22 Comments

  4. Prologue

    July 17, 2012 by kim

    I’ve mentioned I have “storytelling aspirations”. So you’re my guinea pigs. I’m pretty sure if this gets stolen, some of you will come to my defense, so I’m not worried. Also, a lot of you are good writers and will have awesome feedback. Finally…. I couldn’t come up with any usual blog fodder. So here’s one of the things I’ve been toying with. Have at it.

    ;

    ————————————————————————————————————

    The candle sputtered out with a fitful gasp that perfectly summarized how I was feeling. I was tired. I was spent. I was hungry. The day had been too long and I was done.

    On the other hand, I had no clue how my client across the table was feeling. The abundance of botox, collagen and wrinkle fillers had robbed her of any expression beyond “moderately surprised”, (or, as I like to think of it, “ready to perform a blow job but will find it absolutely distasteful”).

    It was time to wrap up the reading. “Any final questions?”

    The soon-to-be Mrs.Jadilyn smiled coyly and twisted the engagement ring on her finger. “Are Roman and I going to have a baby?”

    I was an idiot. I knew she’d want to know and I shouldn’t have given her the option to ask the question. Stall! Lie! Don’t answer! Oh, dear Gods, Goddesses and any random Whatevers, get me out of this!

    “Uh, well, you know, anything is possible. Really, our time is up now.”

    “But are we pregnant? I have to know, so I can tell the gown designer. Or, you know, postpone the wedding.” She shuddered, “I can’t be a fat bride.”

    Of course she couldn’t. I flipped a couple of Tarot cards over. They mocked me and were no help whatsoever.

    This was not looking good, but sometimes I can get a little room to hedge my bets if the questions aren’t specific. “So, the question is…. are BOTH of you pregnant?”

    The condescending look she shot back made it through her scaffolding of facial enhancements. “That’s how it’s phrased now. WE are a couple. WE get pregnant. Roman. Daddy. Me. Mommy. What do you see?”

    This is the moment I hate. This is the moment that guarantees I won’t get a tip. I probably won’t get paid. And I can’t fucking avoid it. It’s a simple act to shut your mouth. I should try it sometime. I’d be a lot richer.

    “Well, in spite of the fact that you quit taking birth control six months ago without telling your fiancée, you are not pregnant. You will probably not become pregnant since the complaints you’ve been having about your air conditioning are actually hot flashes from the start of menopause. On the other hand, Roman, who’s real name is Jerry by the way, has been fucking a twenty-six year old stripper for the last three months and is going to have a healthy baby girl. Congratulations.”

    I’ll give her plastic surgeon credit. Her face didn’t move an inch beyond the minutest squint as she leaned forward.

    “Melissa Rowan, fuck you.”

    She grabbed her purse that probably cost more than my month’s rent and swept out the door. I knew she’d be back in one… two…

    The door popped back open, she snarled, “And I am leaving you SUCH a bad review on Yelp. You are the worst psychic in Los Angeles!” and slammed again.

    No, actually I’m the best psychic in Los Angeles. And I can’t lie. Which sucks like you wouldn’t believe.

    Category for realsies sort of | Tags: | 23 Comments

  5. Little Kindnesses

    July 13, 2012 by kim

    Okay. Let’s admit it. The chances of me getting an Oscar are slim. They are! Oh don’t be silly, I won’t. No, I won’t. No, come on, stop with the flattery… no, really… LOOK I’M NOT GONNA WIN AN OSCAR! Thank you for your feeble, if imaginary, attempts to argue that fact. However, and I am being totally truthful here, the only reason I want to get an Oscar is because I want to give a thank you speech. The Oscar itself is a political dildo and it doesn’t even take batteries. Meh. But to have a few moments when I can publicly say “thank you” before they shut my mic off and play orchestral medleys would be priceless.

    Today I saw a news article about a man who celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday with sixty five acts of kindness. He stood on the corner and gave out five-dollar bills. That inspired me and made me think of two people in my life that gave me spiritual five-dollar bills and never even knew it. They did it when five dollars was the exact amount I needed to buy my soul back from the devil. Those are the people I would thank in my Oscar speech, so right now, I’m gonna thank them in my blog. Which is a TOTAL close second to an Oscar speech, I know, but the mutha fuckas can’t start flashing signs telling me to “WRAP IT UP” after twenty seconds. So there’s my silver lining.

    My very first “big” show I booked when I got to Hollywood was “Star Trek: Voyager”. I played an alien. Big shocker there. But I was given an amazing through-line and emotional arc that I thought I understood really well. So I was preparing with the director for my first scene with Kate Mulgrew. I’m sorry, make that THE Kate Mulgrew. She’s fucking royalty and I was scared pant-less. She was not yet on set, but the director mentioned something I disagreed with about my character’s thought process. It just didn’t make sense and I said so. He tried to explain his point, I tried to explain mine, and a great deal of time was wasted. More would have been waisted except a door slammed and I suddenly heard a husky and enraged voice yelling, “My child has the chicken pox, I was supposed to be out of here half an hour ago, what’s the holdup?”

    Kate honed in on us. The director wasted no time pointing at me and saying, “She has a problem with the scene.”

    Thank God I was pant-less, so my piss went directly into my shoes. Kate Mulgrew is terrifying. That man sold me up the river. But it was his first time directing this particular show and Kate Mulgrew was HIGH QUEEN ALPHA. I could sympathize. I probably would have faked an epileptic seizure on the spot if I had thought it would keep her from being mad at me.

    The director explained his synopsis of the problem and then Ms.Mulgrew turned to me and said, “Well? What do you think?”

    I stammered what I had assumed to be my character’s point of view and motivation for the scene. She looked at me, looked at the director, and said, “Well she’s obviously right. We’ll shoot it both ways so you can see that she’s right and good for you, girl. You’re good.”

    No, I did not cry. But I wanted to. She apparently actually called the producers of the series as my time there progressed and suggested they find a way to use me on a more regular basis. She didn’t have to do that. She didn’t have to side with me. She didn’t have to go on to teach me about not setting props down on your lines but rather in the pauses so the sound department doesn’t want to throttle you. She didn’t have to stop taping during a moment I was so overwhelmed and couldn’t remember my lines I just needed a hug. She didn’t have to do anything but be the brilliant lead of a show I truly adored. But she did. She probably wouldn’t remember me if I sat down in her lap, but I wish I could thank her for her kindness.

    My other moment was much faster. Much simpler. But no less life-changing.

    I had finished a week on a show called “Becker” and was back to auditioning. It was brutal. I had come down to the final two actors on fourteen different projects. This didn’t make me feel happy I’d been close, this made me feel dismal I’d had my heart broken fourteen times. I was too fat. I was too young. I was too old. I was too quirky. I was too boring. And I still was so new to this town that I didn’t have a thick enough skin to let this shit slide off. So when I walked into a room for an audition on this particular day and there was no place to sit down because all the skinnier, prettier, better dressed other actresses wouldn’t move over, I was pretty damn near done.

    I went outside, sat down on the fucking ground, and looked at my material. While I was there, taking up as little space as possible on the Paramount lot, a woman who was on ‘Becker” walked past. “Becker”. The show I had worked on the week before. Yeah. I smiled and said hi. She stopped, stared at me and, with the expression on her face that perfectly suits this inquiry, she asked…

    “Do I know you?”

    I blushed furiously as she walked away. Then I started to cry. Fuck this job. Fuck this town. Fuck these people. Fuck it all.

    I wiped away my tears and looked up in time to make eye contact with David Hyde Pierce. Goddammit! I love David Hyde Pierce! I think he’s a genius! And here I am, sitting in the dirt, pathetically looking at a script I was never going to get to do. I was truly muck beneath his feet. It was too late to look away, so I readied myself for the barb that I knew was about to come. How could he NOT mock me?

    He winked at me and said, “Good luck.”

    I am still an actor today because of that wink. I wish I could win an Oscar so I could stand on stage and thank my agent and my manager and the producers and my husband and all the people who had faith in me, but then I would like to close with, “And David Hyde Pierce, who was kind to me when I was ready to quit.”

    Go be nice to someone. It might help make them who they want to be.

    Or be an asshole. And hope you don’t read about yourself on a blog someday when nobody remembers your name any more.

    Category general musings | Tags: ,,,,,,,,, | 11 Comments

  6. Random Shit You May Not Know

    July 11, 2012 by kim

    I try really hard to have a vague sense of a through line with my blogs. It’s good practice for my storytelling aspirations and it’s just good manners for those of you stalwart enough to read them. But today is going to be a laundry list of sorts. Sorry. I’m just realizing recently there’s a lot of shit “They” never tell you. Stuff that’s important. Stuff that makes a difference. Stuff that, had I been notified earlier, might have made my life more enjoyable or at least not as sucktastic at certain moments. So I’m going to share. A few of these points have possibly been brought up in other entries, but I’m old. My memory isn’t what it used to be and I don’t have the time to go read everything I’ve ever written to see if I’m repeating myself. I probably am. So skip those parts. Also, some of these things will have obvious reference points to recent events in my life. Some of them…. won’t.

    Thing 1. When you donate your body to a medical facility, you do NOT avoid the costs of a funeral. My Dad, in his infinite and ill-researched wisdom, decided his body was going to be donated to Oregon Health Sciences University because he thought paying for a funeral/cremation was bullshit. He informed my sister and I of this decision and we, quite frankly, didn’t give a shit. So that was that. Fast forward to me at the Medical Examiner’s office, less than twenty-four hours after my Dad has put a bullet in his head, trying to get a death certificate. The nice lady was very patient.

    ME: I need a copy of the death certificate.
    NICE LADY: The funeral home provides that.
    ME: But he’s not having a funeral.
    NICE LADY: It still has to go through the funeral home.
    ME: But he’s going to OHSU.
    NICE LADY: It still has to go through the funeral home.
    ME: How can it go through a funeral home? He’s going to be someone’s final exam! Possibly their doctoral dissertation!
    NICE LADY: The funeral home takes the body, stores the body, then returns the body. Then you have a funeral.

    Please hold.

    I called the funeral home and, you guessed it, it actually costs MORE to donate your body to science. Which is a shame, because my Dad’s liver would have been some educational shit. Oh! And most medical facilities won’t even take suicides, so there goes my Dad’s carefully planned easing of my burden. I had him cremated.

    Thing 2. The police can not act on your behalf, even when it’s obvious you would want them to. This is where squatter’s rights come from. If the police show up at my Dad’s house and some twitchy man with pupils that are drastically different sizes, pants wrapped around his head, and an obvious erection opens the door, the police cannot take him away when he says, “That old dude said I could stay here.” This baffled me at first, but I suppose it’s in the interest of not having a police state. Law enforcement officials must treat every citizen the same, unless they are actively breaking a law. So if you want the cops to be able to arrest the tweakers who break into your Dad’s house while you are gone, you need to go to the police station and fill out paperwork that officially gives the police the right to act on your behalf. Like a pre-emptive complaint. It’s good to know this. I’m very grateful I had a lot of police officers very very VERY eager to make sure the zombies my father had been funding did not gain access to his property again. (They also informed me that when constructing a fence, make sure it’s built with enough space between the slats so they can see through it while driving by. Otherwise someone could jump over it, duck, and effectively elude capture. Good to know. Good to know.)

    Thing 3. When a woman is about five months pregnant, the baby starts moving organs around. This will result in some discomfort as Mommy’s lung capacity decreases, her intestines get squished, and so on. HOWEVER, this also pushes that little elusive thing called the G-spot right down in front so you can basically blow on it and get her to come. Have lots of sex during the five to seven month period. As one friend of mine stated, “I thought I had to go buy a guitar, because suddenly I was a rock star!” (I TOLD you not all of this would make sense. I just consider this one of the very important things people should know that “They” never tell you. So I’m telling you. What, you want it ALL about Dead Dad Crap?)

    Thing 4. When you are shooting a scene and you are very close to your scene partner, maybe about to kiss or something, don’t try to look in BOTH eyes. This makes your eyes flit back and forth and you appear crazy. It also makes us dizzy to watch. Just pick one eye, preferably the one closest to where the camera is, and focus on that. Yes, apparently Michael Caine gives this information. I learned it from Daniel Baldwin. Whatever, so maybe “They” do tell you. But it’s important enough for me to reiterate because it DRIVES ME BATSHIT CRAZY when I see a scene in a movie where someone’s eyes are darting back and forth like they are watching the world’s tiniest tennis match.

    Thing 5. It is not required that you identify a body all the time. Sometimes the cops just know who it is and you don’t have to put that image in your mental file marked, “Now I’m a Little MORE Fucked”. I am grateful for this fact.

    Thing 6. Actors can’t get you hired. Actors can’t even get themselves hired. If you know an actor and want a job on their show, don’t ask them. Actors have surprisingly little power in the world of film and television, unless they also are one of the producers. Then they might possibly be able to get you an audition. Maybe. Personally, I always feel grateful when I get fed, and that’s supposedly a union requirement.

    Thing 7. If you let your hummingbird feeder go empty for more than a day, they will boycott it when you refill the damn thing. Take it down for a month or so, then try again. It’s a commitment.

    Thing 8. Chickens are not nice.

    Thing 9. Saving articles that belonged to someone you loved who has died will not save them. No matter how much you think it might. Books and glasses and coats may evoke memories, but are not the memories themselves. Let them go. Except for that one thing that smells the way it did when he hugged you. Keep that one.

    There. I hope you feel that your time spent reading has resulted in some vague illumination.

    Category general musings | Tags: ,,,,,,,,, | 15 Comments

  7. Old is Good

    July 9, 2012 by kim

    A few weeks ago, I was trying to explain how my life was threatened by a Garmin navigation system. See, I was in Boston for my sister’s wedding and, being the Maid of Honor, it was my job to provide transportation to visiting dignitaries. You ever driven in Boston? Ha! Yeah. So my husband, Travis, and I got a Garmin. We named her Jill. We had conversations that ran as follows.

    JILL: Turn left.
    TRAVIS: Okay, turning left.
    JILL: In two blocks, turn right on Oakdale.
    TRAVIS: But there’s a cement wall in my way.
    ME: Maybe we should have turned left into a different lane.
    JILL: Turn left on Oakdale
    TRAVIS: I can’t!
    JILL: Turn left.
    TRAVIS: THERE’S A WALL IN THE WAY!
    JILL: Recalculating.
    (And, by the way, “Recalculating,” is Garmin-speak for, “You’re a fucking moron.”)

    Another conversation we had:

    JILL: Drive forward.
    ME: I don’t think we should drive forward.
    TRAVIS: We shouldn’t drive forward.
    JILL: Drive forward.
    ME: Don’t drive forward.
    JILL: Drive forward.
    From the back of the car, our friend Nancy piped up.
    NANCY: Isn’t that the Boston Harbor in front of us?
    JILL: Deposit Garmin on dry land and drive forward.

    The Garmin was trying to kill us. Nancy and Dustin, our other friend, and Barb, who eventually joined us, spent a gloriously terrifying weekend in Boston getting trapped in Mobius strips that claim to be traffic circles and having to pay for the privilege of getting lost on toll roads. It was hilarious. The RETELLING of this time, on the other hand, was met with some sympathetic stares as I feebly trailed off into, “I guess you had to be there.”

    However, this conversation was taking place in my father’s back yard. We were taking a break from cleaning his house and two of my audience members were in stitches. Nancy and Dustin. Who had, in fact, been there.

    Many months ago, my undergrad friend Scot was at my house having a Drunken Wii Evening. During the course of our festivities, the woman supposedly taking care of my father called and told me he had disappeared. Scot stayed with me until two in the morning, filling my wine glass, holding my hand, and dancing to Sugarhill Gang. So last month when I got the call my father was dead and my husband was out of town, of course I called Scot and said, “I think I need you to go on a cigarette run for me. Can you bring cards?” He stayed with me again until two in the morning, playing gin rummy and making appropriately timed bad jokes. Scot has known me for more of my life than he has not known me. I didn’t have to bring him up to speed. I didn’t have to worry about taking care of him at a moment I couldn’t take care of myself. Scot is an Old Friend, and makes me feel safe.

    One of the benefits to getting old is that you get to have Old Friends. And one of the blessings of trauma is that they show up again. Or rather, I open myself to their presence again. I went to Portland the day after my father was an idiot, but then drove to Corvallis and hibernated at the home of my one of my best Old Friends, Becca. I stared at flowers, cuddled her baby, and let her make me tea. There wasn’t a lot of talking, since we have been talking since we were fourteen. She knew everything I would have said. Just her presence helped my heart. Throughout my life, she has driven countless miles to provide me with that presence and she is proof God puts himself on this planet in people.

    In Portland I didn’t stay at my Dad’s. I haven’t for a while, even when he was alive. I stay with my high school First Love, Erin, and his wife, Tuesdai, who has become one of the most precious people in the world to me. Also I encroach upon their teenage sons who I think I alternately terrify, fascinate and bore to tears. Erin removed the carpet with my father’s bloodstains so I didn’t have to see it. Tuesdai drove me to the police station and then insisted on a birthday dinner. They both left me alone when I needed to be alone and brought beer and perspective when I needed that. Their house is more “home” than where I grew up and being able to sleep there saved my sanity.

    My sister is in Philadelphia had a baby two weeks before my Dad put a gun up to his head. After I got back from Portland, I went out to help around the house, cook some food, remind her that everything is normal and good and yes, you will feel like tearing your husband’s jugular out with your teeth occasionally, but that’s just exhaustion and hormones… you know, the usual New Mom Pep Talk. My sister is my oldest Old Friend and is the only reason I have considered having another child, simply so my daughter has the chance at something like the gift I have with my sibling. I also took a few days and went up to New York, where more of my Old Friends live. There is my other best Old Friend Laura, who has salvaged the shreds of my broken heart on many occasions. She petted my hair the first Thanksgiving I ever spent away from home. She flew to Portland when my mother died to help me with the funeral. I love her child with a passion I thought I could only have for my own offspring. She is not shy about her affection and kisses me and lets me cry in her arms. My karma-twin Sheila voiced my pains in words that made me feel understood and yet somehow taught me more than I thought I could possibly comprehend. The genius Kevin stole an entire Broadway show from the rest of the cast and my pride for him completely eclipsed my own pain. Even my relatively new Old Friend, Bryant, spoke of things we shared almost a decade ago.

    Sheila and I were talking and it was said, “I guess by now, if you’re still friends, you know you’re friends. There may be rough patches or periods of absence, but at some point there has to be a cutoff when it’s official and you can stop worrying.”

    I am an orphan and my parents were both only children. Everyone is pretty much dead. My family consists of my husband, my daughter, my sister, her husband and her daughter. I have my Mother’s cousin somewhere out there, and my husband’s family is a sprawling and amazing group of people, but my “family”, in my definition, is miniscule. However my network of Old Friends…. people who have my heart and my back, people who don’t ask questions because they either already know the answer or figure the answer doesn’t matter, people who care profoundly but worry not at all… that incredible group of people astounds me. Some of those people I haven’t seen in, literally, twenty years. And yet they showed up and cheerfully sweated and strained, moving rocks and digging weeds. My friend Mysti has known me since I went to high school. She came to the cleaning party wearing a grass skirt with a plastic coconut shell bra in hand, because, “It’s impossible to be sad when you’re wearing a coconut bra.” One Old Friend brought boxes and laughed at the seconds it took for me to even recognize him. (The thought process ran thusly: He has boxes. He’s at my front door. He’s WAY too cute to be a tweaker. Wow. He’s cute. OH! IT’S RON!) My Old Friend who lives a life that would shock Marilyn Manson and wears his marshmallow heart on his sleeve gleefully stripped wallpaper. Cindy and Toni not only saved me hundreds of dollars in landscaping costs, but found a home for the stray dog I adopted. My church counsellor who never seemed remotely terrified of my black clothes and brooding nature brought a wheelbarrow, in spite of his own father’s death just days before. The guy who sold me my first computer moved heavy objects. The guy I snuck under mistletoe in…. what was it, middle school? He moved cinder blocks. I still have mixed tapes with Depeche Mode and Oingo Boingo that another friend made for me who showed up to help me clear out the basement. An Old Friend I wouldn’t have recognized on the street came with his son and co-worker to repay my presence for him when his wife had passed. Another friend I may not have spent ten minutes with in high school but our shared history and my newfound appreciation for his Facebook humor showed up and totally wore Old Friend status. I think I even made a new friend, thanks to my Old Friend.

    Are you kidding me? Yes, my Dad killed himself. That sucks. But he was just one source of broken, damaged, poorly expressed love. His actions, on the other hand, made me feel loved in a way I never thought possible.

    Category general musings | Tags: ,,,,,,,, | 10 Comments