tallnlucky: blog

Whipped Cream

Hey, Vancouver area bloggers.  Do you wanna go to a holiday party thing?  We're going to try to find a very cool locale, there will possibly be free food and drink, if we can make it happen - and we'll be putting out heads together to raise some spirits over the holidays via food donation or other charitable collaboration.

If you're remotely interested, DM or @ me on Twitter or leave a comment here.

Woosy, Boot Camp, Chafing and Poop

Nolan's been sick with what has been going around in concentric circles here: my Mom thinks we've all been variously afflicted with swine flu, and I'm not convinced either way but I've been making a lot of pumpkin soup, giving multiple leg rubs, and keeping the fireplace well stocked with crackling firelogs.

A few things:

1)A little story about humiliation on the Grade 5 basketball court

2) Why I want to meet my ex's new girlfriend

And a plea for your thoughts.

Corey and I are running our first ever half marathon next weekend, on Sunday.  We have been running like demons and we are ready, we think, except for 2 major issues.

3) Corey is getting severe chafing on his leg from the rubbing of his, uh, male appendage, I guess, over very long distances.  The result is red and raw skin and not pretty and I can only imagine how much it will suck to have that much friction over 20+ km.  I tried buying him lycra underwear to no avail.

4) I am terrified of the potential of crapping my pants.  Or of feeling like I'm going to.  I don't want to have to frantically ponder the possibility of hovering desperately behind a random juniper bush, especially in front of Corey, oh my god. I am deciding between not eating before the marathon for a day (not good for energy stores) taking Metamucil a few days before (debatable?) -- and just crossing my fingers and praying (not good enough) 

Any suggestions on the above?  Googling "chafe and crap prevention during half marathons" is not helping me. 

Also, a little sweetness to combat the gross:

Riding the bus

I've never been in the Seattle airport before: it takes a few hours to fly there from my home, after Customs and hop-scotching around people with plaid luggage standing yawning on the moving sidewalks.  Driving has always seemed the more efficient mode of transport.

This terminal is grey, with soaring ceilings and random birds and we stand outside to garner strength for our next leg.  His t-shirt, light green, still holds the evidence of the day previous: black mascara lines on the shoulders where I'd buried my head and cried.  Two cowlicks export from his head, but he's still so damned handsome.  He holds my hand tighter than usual, grips my waist: there is a frantic electricity between us; the kind that comes with the fear of loss.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the shadowed window near the bus terminals and my eyes are puffy, nearly screwed shut with water and my entire person is rumpled and matronly: I could easily pass for 47.

We buy tickets at the Greyhound Terminal and show the bus Corey's driver's license.

"We're Canadian,"we explain,"his passport got stolen in San Francisco."

"Dunno if they'll let you in!" he replies cheerily,"You might be stuck here!"

 He is tall with a red fringe circling the perimeter of his head: he limps and tosses suitcases into the bus, cracks jokes about Your Mother and 2 Guys at the Bar.  Corey and I glance at each other; I touch the small of his back and wonder if immediate forgiveness is the right path.  He rubs my forefinger and his eyes spell regret.

***

The side of the bus advertises Free Wifi, Inside!  And I open my laptop and try to send an email and fail. There is nothing but the smell of blue pee pellet in the dank toilet in the back, the jowls of rows of seniors in front of us.  We are broken and dirty and my prettiest lingerie and Corey's new jeans and sparkly new passport are in a bin somewhere off Van Ness.  The facade of perfect synchronization has shifted, ebbed and I stare at an Indian man several rows up front, chewing the ends of his tattered fingers. 

I can't work: no email, no Internet and so I scroll through pictures on my iPhoto: pictures from when my son and I moved to Vancouver, almost two and a half years ago.  He was so small, I was so broken, we were so intent on our path along the beach, by the waves, even though we didn't know where it would take us.

Corey sighs and leans into my shoulder and I close my eyes and smell his smell: it's soap and spicy sweetness and an undercurrent of something that always makes me crazy, stirs butterflies deep in my stomach.  

The bus driver is talking about Mt. Baker on our right, and I am now coming up to the pictures from the last year: New Year's drinking wine in a plastic cup in the garage with my brother, snowboarding lessons solo, lonely nights and then a burst of unexpected, some time around May.  There is suddenly so much laughter, so much shocked hope, we morph into 3. Tears prick my eyes, again.  I've been handed this love on a silver plate: undeservedly.  I'm going to do whatever it takes to keep it here.

"It totally smells like shit back here,"I say and open up the photo booth in my laptop.

"This is the worst road trip ever,"he says from beside me and someone nearby in this be-shitted bus farts and we both start laughing.

We're in it.

God.

That last post was a little heavy and dreary for a black November morning.  I'm going to post tonight a picture I found from the Worst Day in My Fucking Life, ever, and the accompanying story.  In the meantime, if you want, come visit me here and tell me why you do it anyway, even though it totally hurts.

I don't believe in marriage

I don't think.

Truths, Lies and Kanye West

So first off, thanks.  I felt like writing on Saturday night for the first time in weeks.  Corey went to bed early and I sat in front of my computer and just let my brain tumble out of my sockets, fast and spurting, and it felt really, really good.  There was stuff I wanted to say.

But I didn't want to say it outright - I needed it to be a little shadowed.  At this point, this blog is pretty much completely devoid of any sort of anonymity.  I want to be careful what I say, which is why I wrote the last post the way I wrote it.  I figured I could express myself, fully, without admitting everything in full.  I hope that doesn't make you want to stick sharp objects in my ear.

Four things I can tell you:

1) I'm not remotely pregnant.   And, really, though maybe one day it would be fantastic to have another baby, that day is not now. 

2) Clowns are the fucking scariest things in the world:

Well, maybe second after screaming bloody heads entrapped in bubble gum pink...vaginas?  I don't know, but if you're Vancouverite and have the chance, go check out  this freaky house on Dunbar and you will never dream normally again.

3. This weekend I met Sha.  She was perhaps the first reader of my blog, the original incarnation of tallnlucky, way back in 2003.  We met virtually in the days I first started dating Nolan's father, when I was still totally debaucherous and disheveled.  I followed her when she was into some non-PG stuff.  It was rad, and it was totally stellar to finally meet her.  There was insta-comfort, followed by laughter and inappropriate discussion topics.   I won't post pictures because I think she's more careful about internet identity now, but if you're my facebook friend you can see them.  We had fun.

4. Come see me at Aqufit.  Corey is doing a bunch of 3D stuff in the background and while he makes the site completely cool and pimped out, I am going to blather about houselady fitness and Kanye West, come rescue me from my current music mix!

2 True, 1 Not

The rain is sluicing down sideways over the cracked window of my Dad's blue minivan; dry heat is blasting through the air ducts. My brother is driving and the long black extensions of his girlfriend's hair trail over the back of the seat and I think about tarantula legs, skittering.

We're going to a wedding, my brother and his girlfriend and Corey and I, and the four of us are a strange concoction of genetics and a sketchy internet dating site.  My son sits engrossed in the very back seat, enamoured with WallE and Eva through the ting of my battered white macbook. 

Over the whir of the heater and the hum of staticky radio, we're talking about Corey's apartment.  He and I spend every waking moment together and it makes no sense to have two places, and besides, we just want to be together.  We're talking about sub-letting his apartment, until his lease is over.

"I know someone who could rent it to film porn,"says my brother's face from behind his giant hair and I know he does not know anyone in porn and so I say,"Who?" and he looks meaningfully at his girlfriend and I can see her cool blue eyes even though she doesn't turn around.   I look at her black spider hair and she says: "We could get it rented, no problem."

Corey looks at me and shrugs and I stare at him blankly and all I can think of to ask is wildly useless:"What kind of porn?"

"Oh, hardcore,"she says and Corey and nod, feigning nonchalance. He and I spend the next two days discussing the definition of hardcore porn and whether I am more judgmental than I like to think.

The next day he gives her the keys and we contemplate sending a warning note to his neighbour but we do not.  Corey's apartment is the featured locale in some hardcare porno, coming to a shelf near you.

***

I stand in the kitchen, hands on hips, inspecting the top of my pan drawer which always has blackened chards of oven shrapnel: petrified potato bits and spilled over casserole and god I'm so clean on the outside and jumbled and scattered on the inside, a human replica of my kitchen.  I take a step back and I bump into him and I laugh, nearly falling over.

He's just woke, and his eyes are cat-like, green and with sleep in the corners.  His hair is spiked in little-boy cowlicks on either side of his head and he is wearing a shirt that has pre-schooler remnants on it: could be chocolate or dirt, likely a little bit of both.  He looks like a wildly handsome suburban housedad, rumpled and affable and I love him so much I want  to cry.

I back into him and his arms fold around me and this is tangible proof of the power of a year.  I close my eyes and see the scars on his arms and I see the people who trampled him and stole from him and I will the clear liquid bottles and white crystalline balls away into a dream.  I see him wavering on the cement balcony in the pouring rain, contemplating, what would it be like, just to jump, just to do it and this was his life and I almost didn't meet him. I bite my lip and taste blood and stare at the crumbs on my oven floor.

***

My heart is racing so hard I can feel it in the back of my throat, against my uvula, urging vomit.  This is deja vu but there is more adrenaline and even more at stake and I buy just one and go out to my Jeep, sit shuddering with the door closed and shallow breathe to avoid the smell of crumbled goldfish and apple cores. 

I sit with the double bag in my lap and suddenly, overwhelmingly crave a cigarette but instead I stash the plastic bag on the passenger seat and run back into the drug store and stand in the same aisle, looking over the blues and pinks, plusses and minuses, and I buy another one, a different brand.  I don't make eye contact with the high school cashier with wire rimmed glasses and apologetic lips. 

It wouldn't be bad, I reason with myself as my car drives itself, on instinct, autopilot engaged.  The autumn has rolled in and the slate grey cove below is covered in a layer of mist and the DJ on the radio is talking about Chris Brown being a douchebag and I marvel about the banalities of life that we focus on in order to take emphasis off the dire.

My brother's yellow truck is still missing a sideview mirror from the accident last Christmas, and there's a little girl's bike in the front yard and one of my son's shoes in the garden out front.  My neighbour with the limp and the frizzy grey curls ambles by and nods affably; I smile.  Her dog lifts its leg to pee on my Jeep tire and I run into the house and shut the door behind me.  No one is home, but I close the door to the bathroom anyway and take the first kit out of its bag and hope for one blue line.

Things I'd be Writing About if My Throat Wasn't So White and Pustuled

Gus!  I'd be writing all about Gus. 

We adopted him from a local kitty orphan organization, it was Corey's idea because I read once that cats eat you after you die, and also: they're too smart.  I like slobbery, dirty love, the kind that dogs have in droves.

But Gus has a penchant for sleeping on my neck and curling in a round orange ball on my lap when I type and I kind of like him.  Nolan has been asking for a brother lately, and this is a much easier substitute.

I have 3 boys in my life now, one orange, one muscled, one small and laughter-filled.  God, they're all so cute. 

(I'm en route to LA for meetings today, with a super sore throat.  At the moment I am sweating through my dress and I am pretty sure I smell like Flu. Hopefully not the pig kind.)

(I know writing has been sporadic here, thanks for hanging in with me.  I have so much more to tell you.)

I do not know Millbrae

The glass was smashed in a thousand different shards, covering the front seat and the sidewalk and we stared blankly at each other.  He slowly sank down into the driver's side and ran his hands slowly over the seat, plucking glass on to the sidewalk.  

"My new jeans are gone.  Your yoga pants.  My passport, god."

The passport was new and shiny: a badge of restored citizenry and responsibility after years of bleary irresponsibility and wound licking.  I looked at him: felt my eyes watery, teary and I wanted to hug him and punch him and I pushed the buttons of my smeared blackberry and called the Canadian consulate.  I listened to the recording.

"They're closed," I mouthed,"They will not reopen until Tuesday."

"I'm here till at least Tuesday." he slumped against the wounded car.

"I think a lot longer than that.  It might take a week to get an emergency passport issued."

I contemplated leaving there, flying home to my bed solo, retreating into the forest with my son where we could make giant red Maple Leaf forts and race to the beach to find scuttling crabs in the swirling grey, just the two of us again.

 It wasn't an option I could contemplate.

***

In the end, we canceled our 7PM tickets home and bought new ones for the morning, to Seattle, where we would take a bus to Vancouver and attempt to cross the border with insufficient ID.  It was sketchy as all fuck, and we were both beyond chainsmoked and charred but there weren't a lot of options.

At the Comfort Inn they charged us $ 158.00 for the Shittiest Room in the History of Mankind. Normally, Sandhu apologized, Normally is 60 dollars, yes, but tonight is busy because of Oracle conference.  So rate is higher! Sorry!

We nodded wearily.

The bathroom stank like mushrooms in paper baggies, forgotten in a vegetable tray and slumber was impossible amidst the swishing, tumbling emotion but at around 1AM it came, finally.

At 1:07 AM the shitty hotel phone rang.  I startled up blearily,  puffy eyed, wondering with alarm who was calling our hotel room in the middle of the night.  The bandit with the passport, wanting cash?  A talking squirrel, the goddamned devil himself?  All possibilities seemed equal.

"Are you having a shower?" the stern voice inquired.

"What?  WHA?  It's 1:07 AM. No."

"Yes, well, there is a leak under your room."

I looked at Corey, who hadn't yet closed his eyes, and he looked at me and we started laughing, uncontrollably, until our sides hurt.  Then we moved toward each other, inching, and then the shitty painting behind us fell off from behind the bed and crashed into Corey's butt, shattering glass around the room.

"Awesome," I stared at him through the half dark and traced his face with my finger.

"I love you."

"I know."

***

There is work to be done.  There is trust to be gained and forgiveness to be sealed and strength to be built but there will be no bridges burned, thank you Leah and Simon

Thank you for your emails, Internet, I'm not sure I've ever received so many amazing notes of support and encouragement.  I appreciate you so much. I am good. Things are OK.  We'll be fine, I think.

Smash and Grab.

I should have been slack-shouldered,  eyes absorbing the misty green hills and the undulating highway, the heat blasting dry on my feet and the radio low on Sunday morning Talk.

I should have been thinking about the lavender-infused shortbread cookies, perfect bangs, orange towels, earnest laughter and truly kind, brilliant women, and I guess I was, but there was an underpinning of worry.  I kept biting my lip, fidgeting, glancing to the right at my Blackberry sticking out of my purse.  I left without saying my proper goodbyes, partially because I didn't want to disrupt Gwen's yoga session, and partially because I knew.  Something is wrong, something is wrong.

***

It took forever to get to the rust orange bridge.  There were airplanes and a sporting event and so logically there were snaking lines of eager American families, inching toward the city.  I glanced anxiously at the GPS estimated time to arrival, inched over the bridge.  There were yellow protest signs and a man with a six inch mohawk, and actually, no, that's a woman, awesome and please, please traffic hurry.

***

I think I knew for sure as soon as I pulled up.  He was late, they'd been at brunch, and I'd been circling Stockton for nearly half an hour.  His blue jacket was zippered shut and god he's so handsome and he leaned in to kiss me, hey baby, but I could already see something terrifying. 

I couldn't drive, the ugly cry bubbled, reared and wracked my body in sobs and I pulled over on a perilous 90 degree hill and put my head on the steering wheel.  I think we were there for an hour, maybe two, not talking, wiping snot and tears with hands because who the fuck cares now, anyway?  I thought: I should text our friends and tell them we can't make lunch.  I thought nothing and silently panicked in a wave of emotion.  How can you do this to me, how can you do this to us?

***

We stopped for coffee on Van Ness.  My face was puffy and my eyes nearly fused shut with emotion and he was bloodshot, but our only other option was SFO, for four hours, and coffee shop angst seemed vaguely superior to airport angst.   

***

We were gone twenty minutes, twenty five max, and when we came back, the passenger window of our rental car had been smashed. Shards of glass splattered on the sidewalk.  I put the GPS under the seat but they found it, and they took Corey's carry-on too, with his new jeans and my bra and yoga pants.  And his passport, the ticket home.

***

After that we learned that the Canadian embassy was closed for the Thanksgiving holiday - Corey wouldn't be able to get back to Canada for at least several days.  I had to get my son.  I couldn't see through the knives that kept stabbing my irises. 

Things went further and further south: there was a shitty, corrupt cab driver and a full hotel that politely informed us to move on, try again elsewhere, but we had no where else to go.   Travelocity put me on hold for almost an hour and a half just to cancel our flight.   The GPS was $ 500.00 to replace.  Shortbread cookies and misty vineyards were a world away.

***

He looks at me, for the fifteenth time that day, the small black flecks in his green eyes so familiar, so perfect.

"Baby, I need you to forgive this one thing. Please. Please."

I look at him and I love him more than I have ever loved a man, and imagining a life without him is imagining life without a giant chunk of my heart.  I look away so I don't start crying again. 

I still don't know how we're getting home.