beyond the pale

My birthday is tomorrow, so naturally, I will be donning black and scooping out ashes from the fireplace and rolling around in them, coating myself and sobbing.

This seems the best way to celebrate.

Unless MB takes me out for pie. I don’t mean any pie. I mean apple pie. And I mean apple pie you drive an hour for — to a tiny hamlet in the mountains called Julian, where all they do, from what I can tell, is make people happy by making awesome pie. That’s it. That’s the sole reason they exist. They’re like Disneyland for pie. The North Pole of Pie. I’m pretty sure — and I’m very knowledgeable about this place seeing as how I live as close as an hour to it and visit it LOTS, like three times a year — that every business there is a pie company. That’s what it seems like to me. Or if they actually do something else, they offer pie on the side. Locksmith with pie on the side. Plumber with pie on the side. Bank with a piece of pie with your deposit. (If that’s true, and why wouldn’t it be, I am totally switching banks.)

Also, I’m now going to jam things down my toilet just so I can have a plumber show up with some plunge-y things and PIE.

Please don’t be jealous that I just might be having apple pie tomorrow and opening a new bank account. Oh, and here’s the piece de resistance about it all: You order the warm apple pie …… with cinnamon ice cream …. and I’m not sure if it’s a religious experience or a sexual one, but yamahama, Crackie, something in you is changed forever.

I know. Take a moment to let that sink in. Warm apple pie with cinnamon ice cream. It’s astonishing.

You know, if I died tomorrow, it would be okay with me. Just call me home after the pie, okay, Lord? Also, don’t let MB try to kill me by taking me on a glider ride like he did a few years ago. I still have post-traumatic claustrophobia from that experience. Amen.

Uhm, what is the post even about? (Drunk, see? I’m telling you, pippa. Every post like this is a searing cry for help.)

Oh, yeah. Random facts about little Tracey who is now a withered crone.

But I prefer to remember the good ol’ days, when I was two.

Here we go:

~ When I was a toddler, apparently, I liked to pile ribbons of every kind on my head and announce, “Can’t see me! Can’t see me!” Mom and dad would say, “Oops! Can’t see you!” And I’d look at them and whisper, “Shhhhh …. shhhhhh …..” Yeah, you know, mom and dad, you’re ruining the illusion, do shut up. I shush you. There are waay too many pictures of me in this state of “invisibility” with various piles of ribbons — and sometimes, what looks like trash, frankly — teetering atop my blinding white hair. And if my scanner weren’t broken, I’d show you, but alas, you are forced to imagine. So I was, at the age of two, obsessed with my own perceived invisibility.

And now, when I go to church and want to be seen — uh, sorta — Ta DAAA! Can’t see me! I was prophetic.

~ I walked very late. Embarrassingly late. Like uhm, is something wrong with your daughter late. Actually, truth be told, I still can’t. I talked very early, mom said, so I didn’t need to walk. I would just inform people what was up, what I wanted, what I expected of them. Little Tyrant Tracey.

~ I didn’t crawl like a normal child either. Nope. I dragged my entire body around by my right arm. You know, as if my other three limbs were totally paralyzed. What is that?? I dragged my entire body around by my right arm. This, I did not believe for years. No way, I’d say. That is bogus. I did NOT do that. Why are you trying to hurt me? Blahdie blah. Then, years later, when my niece Piper was a baby, the whole family witnessed her drag her entire body across the floor with her right arm. My mom gasped. “Oh, my gosh! Just like Tracey!” I stared, dumbfounded, watching my niece do what little me had done, the thing I’d refused to believe. Seeing it didn’t exactly sweeten the pot, either. It looks retarded, basically, but there you have it.

~ Mom had a hard time potty training me. For some unfathomable reason, she thought putting pretty underwear on me would stop the inevitable, you know, flow of nature. Why, Mom, why would you think that? I’m, like, two. I don’t care about underwear. I care about putting trash on my head and being invisible. She’s told me, “Yeah, I had all these ruffle-y little pairs of underwear and I’d put them on you, thinking you wouldn’t want to ruin those (again, Mom, what??? You are nuts) and moments later, I’d find you in the closet with soiled underwear. You’d just hide in the closet and poop right in them.” Obviously, I did not give a tiny rat’s bottom about this frilly underwear. Mom, I’m sorry, but this is so lame. I was two! I’m kind of howling right now, picturing my mom’s frustration at finding me in the closet — weird child — sporting the latest pair of ruined underwear. Hahahahaha. If it makes you feel any better, Mom, I don’t do that anymore. At least not very often.

~ My older sister tried to suffocate me when I was a baby. Perhaps to spare my mother the coming pain of all that ruined underwear.

~ The Christmas I was three, I was given this …. thing ….. called Timmy the Clock. Timmy the Clock was whack, I tell you, WHACK. It was this walking, talking, ringing, buzzing toy clock. His eyes rolled around like he was on drugs. He had arms that would flail about menacingly. So it’s Christmas and Dad winds Timmy up for me for the first time …. and he starts walking and clanging towards me and it is completely freaky and wrong, just wrong, and I am overcome by the sheer terror of Timmy the Clock and run shrieking from the room in my feety pajamas to hole up in the bathroom. It’s Christmas, mind you, and there are other toys to play with, but I’m so traumatized by that horrible clock that my parents spend about ten minutes coaxing me out of the bathroom to, you know, enjoy Christmas again. Somewhere, there is a picture of me posed next to Timmy (again, why, Mom and Dad, did you make me pose with Timmy after that) with my eyes bugging out and my mouth a perfect O of horror.

I had nightmares about stupid Timmy the Clock for many years.

Hopefully, there will be no Timmy the Clock tomorrow.

The vile thing.

Shiver.