Category: etc.

I got a lovely email from reader Mandy — a hilarious email, actually — where she talked about her Twilight issues. (I am proud to now be a sounding board here for anyone to express their interest, abashed or unabashed, in the Twilight series.) She said she’d recently purchased some mini buttons for her sister and herself that feature a stick woman yelling at a stick man: “Sparkle, you fool! Sparkle!”

So, of course, I Googled, and, I think I found the button Mandy referred to here.

We are all ripe with insanity.

MB: People think she’s smokin’ hot — I just think she’s smokin’ odd.

(Knowing who he’s talking about makes this even funnier …. uhm, to me.)

MB: Maybe the dingo got foreclosed on.

(Only comprehensible if one has seen a certain episode of Seinfeld, I imagine …. and reads this blog regularly.)

This is now my mantra, accent and all.

And I promise this won’t be about Edward’s butterscotch eyes. Although I do have to say, that these days, any time I go to my inbox and see an email from sarahk that’s about Twilight or, you know, Edward’s delicious butterscotch eyes, I am transported from the doldrums and despair of these days I’m in to an ecstatic, apparently alliterative trance. I’m losing my home, but there’s always Twilight.

Don’t judge me! The sheer escapism of it all is actually helping.

Okay. The fantasy.

Stop reading now if you’re currently reading the books or plan to. A wee spoiler coming up. Seriously.

So the fantasy is that one of my favorite jewelry designers, Deryn Mentock, would make the Bella bracelet from Eclipse. You know, the one with the silver links and the hand-carved wolf and the crystal — well, diamond heart.

Now I know there is already an official Twilight bracelet. Because I’m insane and I checked. BUT the wolf, apparently, is not wood. He’s copper or something because Stephenie Meyer didn’t think a wooden one could be mass produced. Maybe she’s right; what do I know? So that’s why I’d love to see someone like Deryn do a whole series of gorgeous handmade bracelets like only she can.

(Do not ask me how the wolf would be made. I am just the idea person. I just create questions, not answers. I thought we all knew that.)

So. There it is. Mucha moola to be made.

I get 10 percent.

I’ve been getting emails asking So what happened with Jersey Boy and Slutty Boots??

Please know that in the midst of, well, everything else, I am finishing up the rest of that post and hope to have it up this weekend.

Thank you to the people who’ve been asking!

The adorable sarahk and I have an ongoing email discussion about, oh, you know, Twilight and Edward’s butterscotch eyes and my pathetic life and how we both want to kick 2008 IN THE NADS. Hahahaha.

That is the phrase now:

I WANT TO KICK 2008 IN THE NADS!!

I truly appreciate, too, that sarahk would like to kick 2008 in the nads on my behalf. She’s quite a girl, that sarahk. And if anyone COULD kick 2008 in the nads, it would be sarahk.

You know, it occurs to me that if my family had just said THAT — WE WANT TO KICK 2008 IN THE NADS — there’d be no need for the post below.

It also occurs to me that they would never say that … um, because of “nads,” so, well, keep dreamin’, Trace.

Finally, it occurs to me that while I WANT TO KICK 2008 IN THE NADS, I DO, so far, it must be said that the first two weeks of my January have laid a really unpromising turd in the New Year’s punchbowl.

But, whatevs, I want this post to be about sharing the joy of kicking something in the nads.

So please feel free to share something you would like to KICK IN THE NADS right now!

It could be 2008.

I could be Katie Couric and her Peter Pan haircut.

It could be people obsessed with Twilight.

But it’d better not be ……

Proceed apace, nad kickers.

I meant to keep the comments closed on the post below, but I just forgot. They are closed now. (Although, thank you Cullen and sarahk for your comments.) I wrote that post not to put anyone in the awkward position of feeling they need to say something, but to help me remember, help me process. I have a strange kind of memory: I can remember the tiniest inconsequential occurrence in vivid detail and then completely blank out, black out, huge emotional events that have happened in my life. I repress a lot of …. unpleasantries that way. Remembering them too long after the fact takes monumental concentration for me, so the post below and the ones that will follow along this theme are to help me remember before it becomes a real strain to remember.

I write to remember. I write to write. Because I need to write.

So I’m living this weird double life right now: I’m losing my home and I’m obsessed with Twilight. And it’s strange — I feel like I need the one to survive the other. Maybe my blog will be all over the map the next few weeks, so for that, I apologize. I write here to be as honest as possible about my life, because, sadly, I don’t have that freedom with people who inhabit my 3-D life. Thank you for allowing me to be real. I don’t want to be a downer, but I need to remember these things. Please understand if I post things and leave comments closed. I know your good hearts and I can feel your kindness. You don’t need to say anything. Just letting me be me is enough.

Longest trip ever to the deep dark middle of nowhere.

I am now in Christmas recovery, rehab, detox, whatever you want to call it.

Stories to tell ….

Hope you all are having a lovely holiday season!

Oh, PS: Somehow the Chargers managed to make the playoffs beating the Broncos on Sunday, 52-21. Um, we finished 8-8. Hahahahaha. It’s a CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!!

MB and I head off tomorrow morning — Christmas Eve morning — for the deep dark middle of nowhere and the steady stream of people barging through unlocked doors and the looming snowy mountains and the room with the tortoise in the drawer.

(We may have to drive with these things called “chains.” God help us all.)

Merry Christmas, one and all! See you next week!

Christmas in San Diego.

The Ocean Beach Christmas tree, with beach ball ornaments and inflatable candy canes. Um, naturally.