Posted on

road trip snippets

~ California, she is big.

~ We rented a PT Cruiser, accidentally, because it seemed the lesser of the two evils presented to us at the time. And, you know, cross that baby off the list of potential cars to own. Yeccch. The seats are weirdly contoured and paralyzed MB’s left butt cheek and we both remain somewhat bitter about it.

~ The buttons that control the windows in the PT Cruiser are in the middle of the dashboard. Very counter-intuitive and annoying. You basically flail about as if on fire just to open the windows because you cannot remember where the buttons are.

~ Somehow, “alcoholic midsection” became a very popular phrase during our 52,379-hour road trip:

“She’s normal from the front, but sideways? Uh, there’s a real alcoholic midsection.”

“That minimart is just overrun with alcoholic midsections.”

“Uhm, where are we??”

“I think we are now in the alcoholic midsection of California.”

~ “Drunken slattern” also had a regular guest spot in our conversations. It did not matter if a person was actually a drunken slattern; anyone was potentially a drunken slattern. Really, the less likely it was that the person could have been a drunken slattern, the more likely it suddenly seemed to us that, yes, of course, they MUST have been a drunken slattern. That explained everything. Your beloved Gammie? Guess what? Drunken slattern. The only teacher who ever believed in you? Drunken slattern. That nun from your neighborhood? Drunken Slattern. Smoky, your beloved childhood kitty? Total drunken slattern.

~ Obviously, it’s really hard to predict just what will strike your fancy on a 63,591-hour road trip.

~ We did not discuss 50,000-hand piles, but we did discuss — at length, actually — the who’s, why’s, and how’s of the stand-alone mustache. On men, pippa! Don’t be silly. Ladies who have them are, clearly, drunken slatterns.

~ We drove past James Dean Memorial Junction. It was so desolate and empty. That poor guy died in the middle of the most yawning godforsaken nowhere I’ve ever seen. There were no other cars around in either direction but for about ten minutes after seeing that, I swear I was bracing myself for a head-on collision. It was that creepy.

~ Along one stretch of narrow highway, there seemed to be some kind of roadside cherry stand competition. Every hundred yards, on both sides of the road, a couple of rickety tables filled with baskets of overpriced cherries, a handmade sign, maybe an old man, maybe an old lady, waiting for someone to buy a basket of their obviously superior yet strangely identical cherries. Suddenly, we needed cherries, stat. We pulled up to a stand and this 50-something woman bounced up to our car, began rattling off descriptions of the various cherries — even though to me they seemed to be either “red” or “yellow” — and when she was done with that, she said, wiggling all around, “Ohh! This is my first day! I am SO excited!” Well, SOLD, Peaches! I mean, how can you not buy overpriced cherries from someone that excited to sell you overpriced cherries? She just made me happy and I loved that I could eat a cherry and think of how she had nothing but sheer joy about standing behind a rickety table on the side of a lonely highway selling baskets of overpriced cherries.

~ You know, after you’ve been on the road for 77,693 hours, it might be easy to become a real crankypants — or worse — and yell at your beloved. Although your beloved may well deserve it, ahem, it’s best to just avoid potential trap by taking your emotions out on random road signs, like so:

ROCK SLIDE AREA
USE CAUTION

“Shut UP! Don’t boss me!”

REDUCE SPEED
CONSTRUCTION ZONE

“Seriously, shut up. You are so controlling.”

REST AREA AHEAD

“Shut UP. I am fine. How dare you imply that I need rest.”

Ad nauseum, until it bored us, which it didn’t.

~ So “She’s a Bad Mamma Jamma” is basically on continuous play on every radio station we found across this humongous and bankrupt state. Do not even try to find another song. You will fail. You simply will. So you really have no choice but to surrender to its charms, you drunken slatterns, and just sing along. You must decide, within the suffocating confines of your rental car with the torturous seats and the stupid window buttons, that being a bad mamma jamma is now your only goal in life and you must be okay with that. You must believe, pippa, that you have now become foxy classy oh sexy sassy. Believe it, slatterns. You ARE a bad mamma jamma and that’s all there is to it. And the other person in the car with you will love you even more after your louder and louder renditions performed every 33.62 miles. Oh, that is a guaranTEE, Crackie.

~ Uhm, yes, there is more to tell than this. I have to gear up to tell it all and I’m just finding myself more exhausted than I thought I’d be. So expect the story of the trip to come out in parts, pieces, scraps, whatever measly-ness I’m capable of right now. So, woo-hoo, stay tuned for all THAT, peaches!

Posted on

back …..

100 hours later, 32 of them spent in the car — and not making out or having my clothes ripped off or, you know, anything fun like that, oh no, but just driving driving, oops, killed a bunny, driving, no, that was a small old man, driving driving, you’re going to kill us, driving driving, do you really have to sing “She’s a Bad Mamma Jamma,” driving driving, one of us has to die, driving driving, I think it should be you, driving driving, up into the sun, out into the abyss, whatever — I feel it only fair to tell you that my total psychotic break happened yesterday in the middle of Only God Knows Where at approximately 1530 hours and that blogging this week will come from a cold dark — yet oddly familiar– place of utter non compos mentis.

Also, I feel I need to inform you that the Denny’s in Morgan Hill, CA has horrible savage one-ply toilet paper whose very existence seemed to herald the arrival of Ye Olde Psychotik Breake that now has me in its suffocating grasp. MB, on the other hand, is sound asleep, the wiener. But don’t worry. I will do whatever I can to drive him insane. I have a contractual obligation to do so, you know. It’s my purpose in life.

But I’m back. I am WIPED OUT.

MUCH to tell …..

Some of you seemed to have an idea where you thought I was, based on the photo below. So I’m just curious — where was I?

Seriously. Please tell me. Where was I???

Posted on

i’ll be here

talps.jpg
Approximately. (That’s the biggest hint you get. Helpful, no? Hahahaha.)

Thanks so much for your prayers. I’m quaking in my boots a little bit.

I don’t know if I will or can post while I’m gone.

If not, see you all Monday!

Posted on

email question

Just in case anyone else has this same question that someone emailed me (email is in the lower part of the sidebar under “contact”):

I’m a new reader of your blog and I’m confused by some of the terms you use, like MB and pippa. Can you tell me what these are?

Absolutely, new reader, and welcome! I’ve tried to explain some things here, in my admittedly horrible, cringe-inducing “About” page.

Eh. It’s a work in progress.

To me that means, if any of you want to work on it for me, it will probably progress. I myself have flappy-armed anxiety about it and try not to look at it because — I’m not kidding — it causes me pain. I’ve worked on it off and on for months now and the more I fiddle, the worse it gets. I literally cannot write an About page. I just cannot.

But, thank you, new reader, and I hope that page helps answer some of your questions.

Posted on

el dukay

You know, the last few days, old customers of mine from little Boheme just keep running through my head in an endless loop. So many I need to write about, but I just haven’t really allowed myself to think about them all for over a year now. I guess I’ve just tucked Boheme away, feeling like a failure, feeling ashamed, not allowing myself to look at the other side of the coin — at things I actually did accomplish or learn. The business went belly up so, in my head, I label the whole experience a washout. I’m very apocalyptic in my thinking. But, through Boheme, I encountered so many amazing, real, funny, and, yes, frequently flat-out demented people, and all of that — the entire frenetic grab-bag — needs to be reprogrammed in my mind as a unique kind of treasure. Because, really, it is. I’m trying to gain a little perspective, rather than just bashing myself about the head for it all, and honestly, the people I met and still know from little Boheme have left real lasting imprints on my heart and mind. It’s not fair to lock them away, like I do so often with things. It’s time to unlock, let them free, acknowledge their impact, good or bad, even.

So, today, I’m thinking about El Dukay.

El Dukay was not a customer at Boheme. Oh, no. He was much more than that. He was my savior, no two ways about it. He serviced my espresso machine; he serviced my grinders; he serviced my water heater. He did everything. Once, he even showed me how “he” made a cappuccino, we debated about that for at least an hour, and, well, I still think I’m right on that one, which is neither here nor there. His last name was Duke, so I called him El Dukay and he seemed to revel in having a “title,” puffed out his skinny chest just a little more. Just knowing El Dukay was around made me feel much more secure about things. Come what may, I knew I could call him and say, “Wah! Help! I don’t know what’s wrong!” and that man would come running. There was no coffee-related emergency he couldn’t fix and there was no coffee-related emergency he would ever really charge me for, either. Or if he did charge me, it was always some ridiculously low figure. I’d protest and say, “Come on, El Dukay. You have to charge me for REAL.”

“Oh, well, I’ll just overcharge you next time, okay? Come on, pony up the ten bucks.”

For, you know, keeping my espresso machine from blowing up.

El Dukay was not handsome. Far from it. He was goofy-looking. He was skinny, tall, perhaps balding but he always wore a baseball cap so I never knew for sure. Tufts of red hair curled out from under his cap. His eyes were always huge, as if perpetually surprised. His face was pale and freckled in a Howdy Doody way but his smile, his laugh, were completely ingratiating. Kind of left a girl a little defenseless. And he was goofy looking, I tell you! Thing is, he was just one of those men whose sheer force of personality made him so much more attractive. The whole was definitely greater than the sum of the parts with that one. He always reminded of The Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz and I love The Scarecrow. Whenever something broke down, I was almost happy because that meant El Dukay would be coming and hilarity would ensue. I mean, he and I could banter for hours like warring siblings. Actually, we did banter for hours like warring siblings, because, well, he was basically impossible in your typical big brother way, and desperately needed my nosy goody-goody intervention in his life.

Because, you see, El Dukay lived his life like Hugh Hefner.

Almost immediately upon meeting him, I discovered my skinny scarecrow was a playah. A 56-year-old playah. He knew I was married and rolled his eyes at the very idea. Not that I couldn’t be married, no, but just that marriage in general made him roll his eyes. Actually, he rolled his eyes quite a lot and I would imitate him rolling his eyes and he’d just roll his eyes some more.

So no. No marriage for this scarecrow playah. And what kind of sucker was I, anyway? Married? Tsk, tsk, tsk.

He would date multiple girls at once. And when I say “girls,” I mean girls. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-five years old. If a woman was over thirty, ugh, he’d roll his eyes, wrinkle his nose. Blech. Disgust.

My Beloved would say, “El Dukay has a crush on you.”

And I’d say, “Ha. I’m too old for that man. Just ask him.”

He’d tell me, a great impish gleam in those green eyes, about taking these girls home to his hot tub, his “spa.” He’d speak in worshipful tones about his personal massage table in his “massage suite” at home. He’d start to tell me about things that happened after the “spa” and after the massage table and I’d hold up my hand, roll my eyes, and bark, “STOP!”

And he would. He’d stop. He just liked to see me blush.

Despite this, El Dukay was a truly decent fellow. He was not a pervert, even though I accused him of being one every time I saw him. Yes, he was a satyr and, yes, his whole life was one long Dionysian revel, but, still, he was the nicest sugar daddy a twenty-something girl could hope to have.

As time went on, I couldn’t keep track of his girls by name and, frankly, neither could he. I felt like Lucy Ricardo on that candy factory assembly line. I literally could not keep up. The girls! There were always more and more and more of them rushing by faster and faster and faster. In frustration, I simply began to label them Spa Girl 1, Spa Girl 2, Spa Girl 37, etc., ad nauseum, and our conversations would go like this:

“So how many Spa Girls are there now? Tell me the truth.”

“Well, uhm, there’s three.”

“Only three? Wow, you’re slipping, old man. You disappoint me. Okay. So we have Spa Girl 1, Spa Girl 2, and Spa Girl 3?

“Uh-huh.”

“You know, seriously, what is wrong with you? Do they know about each other? Do you tell them?

“No.”

“You’re a disaster.”

Laughing. “No, I’m not!

“No. You are, Rico Suave. Okay. How old is the oldest one again?”

“Twenty-six.”

“And — let’s review, again. You’re what? 93?”

Eye roll. “I’m 56.”

Eye roll. “Same thing.”

“And I’m going to Italy soon with one of them. One of them gets to be Italian Spa Girl!”

“Which one?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“I don’t even want to know what’s involved in that selection process.”

“Well ….”

“No, you perv. Shut up.”

“You married people.”

“Look, I’m sorry you’re defective — that you’re missing the commitment gene.”

“Ohh, I’m definitely not defective …..”

“Oh, hahaha, Hef. Mazeltov on all your working parts.”

“Just thought I’d clarify.”

“You know who’s a nice man?”

“Who?”

“Your brother, that’s who.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. He came out one day when you couldn’t make it and we talked all about your illness and how happily married he is.”

“Now that’s an illness.”

I’m telling you, we’d go on like this for hours. He’d stay, long past completing my repair, bantering like this with me, wasting time.

Finally, I’d say, “Don’t you need to go make money? I mean, you don’t charge me anything. How are you gonna afford to have ‘Italian Spa Girl’?”

“Oh. Don’t worry about me. Now, I’ll be gone to Italy for two weeks. Try not to break anything, okay?”

“Ha. I’ll just call the nice brother if I do.”

Two weeks later, my phone rang.

“Tracey, it’s El Dukay.”

“Hahaha. Hey, Hef. Are you back from Italy?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“How was it? How was ‘Italian Spa Girl’?”

Silence.

“Dukay?”

“Oh, Gawwwd.”

“What?”

“It was awwwful.”

“Hahahaha. I knew it, you dummy. What happened?”

“She drove me crazy.”

“Hahahahaha. I don’t feel sorry for you, but please continue.”

“Tracey …. I took her clothes shopping.”

“Most girls would like that.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“So?”

“Ughhhh ….. none of the Italian clothes fit her.”

“Oh, oops.”

“And she had this huge hissy fit right in the middle of the store.”

God forgive me, but I was howling at El Dukay’s pain. Crying tears of laughter at the anguish and horror in my scarecrow playah’s voice.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not.”

“It was horrible. She was freaking out. I couldn’t calm her down. She just kept wailing, ‘I’m fat in Italy, I’m fat in Italy!'”

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

“You’re mean.”

“I know.”

“I finally dragged her out of there and took her shoes shopping instead. I mean, how fat can feet be?”

“I … don’t know. Uhm, so how was the rest of the trip?”

“Torture. I couldn’t wait to bring her home.”

Still laughing. “Sorry, Dukay.”

“I kept thinking to myself, ‘Maybe Tracey was right. Maybe she’s right about everything.'”

“Well, obviously, I am.”

“Maybe. Maybe you are after all.”

Ah, El Dukay. My skinny scarecrow playah. Yes, I’m thinking of you today.

Actually, now that I think of it, I need to send you a harassing email, you pervert.

Posted on

overheard at the bookstore

The other morning, I had to nearly weep for this poor man who, through sheer bum luck of chair selection, became audience to the very lengthy monologue of the man next to him about chaos theory and how the world will end in 2012 according to the Mayan Calendar and aliens and angels and many other things …. many other inexplicable things.

Here’s some of what I could hear of his soliloquy. And these are not strung together. Where you see an entire comment, that’s what he said.

~ So if we’re all spirits when 2012 comes and it all goes to hell in a handbasket, I ask myself, should I still be planting trees?

~ But I do think the answer is horticulture.

(I swear I dated a guy who said that exact thing once. Uhm …. Jeff??)

~ Do you think demons are just another culture?

~ Those cosmic guys in the Bible who had sex with humans, they were aliens.

~ You know, when you look at pictograms, those might be angels.

~ When you look at the Indians, there are people who are angels so if something happened like a car accident they just walk off like Jesus.

(Stop stealing imploring glances at me, Listening Guy. I cannot save you. I am busy, very busy, eavesdropping here. Just getting this all down requires my utmost concentration and I cannot let it lapse for one teensy second. Alas, I do feel for you, if that helps, which it doesn’t.)

~ It’s a military conflict, like spying. It should be like eggs rolling down a mountain.

(Mmm, yes. I totally agree. Please tell me more. I’m spying on you right now and it is exactly like eggs rolling down a mountain.)

~ So what you’re talking about with these beings — they have a very cosmopolitan existence.

(Hahahahaha. They’re having sex with humans, getting in car accidents, spying and/or rolling eggs down mountains. Yes, it’s all very sophisticated. I can see that.)

~ We’re probably being watched. And I’m not someone who’s out there or anything.

(Well, you’re right about that. I am watching you. Creepy, huh?)

~ We’re turning but the other planets are rising.

(Hence, the explanation for global warming AND Lady Gaga.)

~ The removal of the water pressure ….. well, actually, rather than worry about nuclear war, we should be worrying about volcanoes.

~ If for some reason we all went away, there might be patron saints, whereas, the other pictures of astronomical change — that tells me there may be bad guys; I’m just reporting.

(Yes. I see. “Fair and balanced.”)

~ There are two different spheres here, two different levels. The top of the temple and the steps. I’m really glad to be talking to you.

(I’m glad you’re talking to him, too. He, however, is definitely not glad.)

~ Jedis aren’t in the Bible.

(I’m very sorry.)

~ Look at Las Vegas. They’re about washed away.

~ Guys that look like Darth Vader just show up now and then.

(And you know what, hon? That’s the truest thing you’ve said. The truest thing.)

Posted on

anxious

I leave in 48 hours on a trip that could change everything.

Gulp.

Pray for me.

Yes, no details yet. Please still love me.

Or start loving me if you don’t yet.

Or just pretend to love me because I’m a sucker and will totally believe you.