So, okay, yes.

It's 2013. Which is quite a bit after 2008.

I'm hoping fervently that no one still has me in their RSS feed, because it would be nice to start this thing fresh, which I suppose I could do by starting a different blog on a different platform and pretending that all this never happened, but I'm not going to do that, because I'm too much of a hoarder by nature and I can't bear the idea of giving up all these little gems of wisdom that I've placed here so lovingly and then abandoned to the elements.

Some things are different and some things are the same, and all shall be revealed in time.


Seriously, though, I did strongly consider beginning again elsewhere, if for no other reason than that privacy is a bit more of an issue to me than it used to be. I have online identities that are quite different from my daily life and never the twain shall meet and all that, and I'd like to be able to talk a little about that without the people that I know in real life reading all my fanfiction. I hope that sounded funny and not a little shrill like it did in my head.

Really, that's the issue: what I can talk about on this blog. When I set this thing up in 2006, I knew I wanted a transparent identity, that I wasn't going to have the patience for remembering to refer to myself by some other name, and then creating the identities of "Long Suffering Spouse" and "Best Friend Part One: Maine Edition" etc. It just seemed too cumbersome. People on my blog have always been named by their real names and often pictured in compromising positions. No. Well. Okay.

And it isn't that that hasn't caused me an enormous amount of grief heretofore. Three times I wrote things on this blog that had serious real life consequences. One post caused hurt feelings I didn't intend. One caused a local business owner to tell my husband to "put a muzzle on your wife." One ended a friendship forever. Go ahead, try to find that post. You won't--because sometimes (I learned the hard way) just documenting your life will create problems. I've never ever been rude or mean to anyone here; I would never do that in a public space. Ever. And yet.

And this is very much a public space. It's one of my other laments about having a transparent identity blog. There are things I'll never be able to write about here, things that are far too personal or hurtful, and things that are simply not my story to tell when the identity of the people involved could be deduced by knowing who I am. But sometimes it would be nice to write about those things. I see dead spaces in this blog (ha ha! No! I mean when it was active) in which huge things were going on that I couldn't share. And that's a bit weird when you've grown close enough to your readers to tell them all about your nose whistles and deepest fears, that suddenly you run up against these walls. I wish I didn't have to have that.

Also, my parents were reading. And that shouldn't make a difference. I'm 35 years old. But suddenly I felt strange about swearing with abandon or telling off color jokes. I'm going to try not to let that bother me this time (no promises). But Mom, if you're reading this, please don't tell me that you are.

So, some basics, now that we're catching up:
I'm still teaching, though a much younger age group.
Gert the wonder-Beagle died last year at the ripe old age of 19. She had and beat cancer in the dead years of this blog, and she was amazing right up to the end. I still miss her.
We now have Ella the wonder-Beagle. She is three and a holy terror and I adore her with every single cell of me.
Gonzo is 15 now and it's hard to watch him get old. But he is just as ornery as ever.
We bought a lovely old house that I'm sure I'll talk about way too much.
I'm still constantly embarrassing myself in every available way.
I have learned to make a kookaburra noise.
That is all.

Spidey

Recently, I was emailing with a friend about those gigantic spiders that you see around these here parts. Some people call them writing spiders and some people call them banana spiders, but I just call them really scary. I hate how they aggressively bounce up and down on their webs when you come near. Anyway, it reminded me of this story:

Long, long ago, in a land far away, Thomas and I used to live in a big old converted Victorian. In a closet beneath the stairs, there lived a small boy with a lightning shaped--no wait. This was before I met that guy. In a closet beneath the stairs was the smallest bathroom in the land, and in the bathroom, beneath the foot of the sink, there lived a monstrous spider. He was very large, and very black. He never moved from beneath the foot of the sink, though I eyed him suspiciously whenever I had to pee. Finally, I mentioned him to Thomas, whose house it had been before I rather noisily and abruptly moved in with all my stuff and two unruly dogs.

Me: Did you know there's a monstrous black spider living in the smallest bathroom in the land?
Thomas: Oh, yeah. That's spidey. He's ok.
Me: Yeah, he doesn't move much.
Thomas: That's because he knows the rules.

Somehow, I was calmed by this, and I grew to love Spidey as I would a pet. He just looked at me blackly while I peed, and ate mosquitos and took up all the real estate. He was a fine, fine spider.

One day, we came home from the bar and Spidey was in the hallway.

"It's Spidey!!" I shrieked. "He's escaped the smallest bathroom in the land!"

I bent down to inspect him and to enquire after his health, when suddenly Thomas's foot came down and smashed my monstrous black spider.

Me: Thomas! What the fuck? That was Spidey!!!
Thomas: He knew the rules.

I still miss him.

The Oil is No More

So, there's been one upside to the incredible wave of cold sweeping Wilmington...

The oil froze.

The oil froze!!!

And it is has now been removed from the porch and from the life of my beagle, Gertrude. And also from the lives of the stray cats that have been hanging around it. I kind of feel like we just demolished the neighborhood bar or something. The bar of oil.

It is a good day.

Reason #328 That I Suck

is that I forgot Poem Sunday. Which I've been saving up poems for... well, forever. And so, I now decree that it is Poem Monday. Yes! Poem Monday! Bigger, better, and... on Monday.

Adam and Eve
by Tony Hoagland



I wanted to punch her right in the mouth and that's the truth.


After all, we had gotten from the station of the flickering glances
to the station of the hungry mouths,
from the shoreline of skirts and faded jeans
to the ocean of unencumbered skin,
from the perilous mountaintop of the apartment steps
to the sanctified valley of the bed--


the candle fluttering upon the dresser top, its little yellow blade
sending up its whiff of waxy smoke,
and I could smell her readiness
like a dank cloud above a field,
when at the crucial moment, the all-important moment,
the moment standing at attention,
she held her milk white hand agitatedly
over the entrance to her body and said No,


and my brain burst into flame.


If I couldn't sink myself in her like a dark spur
or dissolve into her like a clod thrown in a river,


can I go all the way in the saying, and say
I wanted to punch her right in the face?
Am I allowed to say that,
that I wanted to punch her right in her soft face?


Or is the saying just another instance of rapaciousness,
just another way of doing what I wanted then,
by saying it?


Is a man just an animal, and is a woman not an animal?
Is the name of the animal power?
Is it true that the man wishes to see the woman
hurt with her own pleasure


and the woman wishes to see the expression on the man's face
of someone falling from great height,
that the woman thrills with the power of her weakness
and the man is astonished by the weakness of his power?


Is the sexual chase a hunt where the animal inside
drags the human down
into a jungle made of vowels,
hormonal undergrowth of sweat and hair,


or is this an obsolte idea
lodged like a fossil
in the brain of the ape
who lives inside the man?


Can the fossile be surgically removed
or dissolved, or redesigned
so the man can be a human being, like a woman?


Does the woman see the man as a house
where she might live in safety,
and does the man see the woman as a door
through which he might escape
the hated prison of himself,
and when the door is locked,
does he hate the door instead?
Does he learn to hate all doors?


I've seen rain turn into snow then back to rain,
and I've seen making love turn into fucking
then back to making love,
and no one covered up their faces out of shame,
no one rose and walked into the lonely maw of night.


But where was there, in fact, to go?
Are some things better left unsaid?
Shall I tell you her name?
Can I say it again,
that I wanted to punch her right in the face?


Until we say the truth, there can be no tenderness.
As long as there is desire, we will not be safe.

Still Learning

So, I'm back to starting all my posts with 'so.'

Lessons learned in the last 24 hours: I am the only person who thinks lion peen is funny. It is ok to mix paper and plastic recycling in New Hanover County. I should have said hi to that girl I saw in Subway who looked like someone I went to high school with, because it really was her and not my self-centered tendency to think everyone is someone I know.

Regarding recycling:

I was still dormant during the great election post extravaganza of 2008, so I did not get to share in the collective joy of the blogosphere, though I wish very much that I had gotten myself together in time to take part. Anything I say now is pretty much a rehash of the tears and tentative stirrings of hope supplied by those bloggers more talented than I, though I shared those feelings, and because of them, I made a promise.

I promised God (or whomever) that if America could elect Obama, I could start recycling. The problem with posting this is that I now have to admit that, heretofore, I did not recycle. Erm. Yes. Meg is very bad. This is now corrected.

But now I am constantly calling my sister and plaguing her with questions that everyone else has known the answer to for ages, like, Do I have to take the caps off my plastic bottles? What if the tin can doesn't have the symbol on it? Can I still recycle it? Should I rinse? Crush? Good God, this is complicated!! Seriously, I have attempted to recycle everything that has crossed my path this week.

But seriously, this is my way of saying that I am committed to a changing future, that I am committed to doing my part in it, and that I am willing to put my money where my mouth is.

It's All Happening At the Zoo

So, Thomas and I went to the zoo on Sunday.

There's this zoo here in Wilmington--it used to be called the Tote-Em-In Zoo (which I never understood. The name always made it sound to me like some good samaritans found a giraffe in the woods and just toted it in!) but is now called Tregembo Animal Reserve or something like that.

I'd never gone there before because I'd always heard that it was sad--that the animals were miserable, etc. But then on Friday night we ran into some friends at the bar, and they said that it was fun and that there was a porcupine there that would dance for peanuts.

Hold the phone, I said. You can feed the animals?

Yeah, we were so there. Frankly, I had hoped to touch things, but that was not to be.

I did see this awesome cockatoo that spoke as if it were possessed by the devil, and I'm pretty sure said, "Fuck," to me:

See the evil glint in his dark, dark eyes???

And then I took pictures of animal porn. Some intentional, some unintentional.

Intentional Porn:
Hahahaha! The bearded dragons are on top of each other!! Because it's like they're having sex!!!

Unintentional Porn:
Umm. Yeah. Not the best angle for this lion.

I had fun throwing peanuts to the monkeys and speaking to everything as if it were my new best friend, because the proximity was such that I felt as if everything WAS my new best friend.

And here is the porcupine of awesomeness, who started the whole thing. I did not feed it any peanuts because the sign did not say that it was ok to feed him peanuts. And I have very strict morals about these things. Which is why I take pictures of lion bits.

Is Unkind to Animals

And a most happy birthday to my 16 year old Gertie today!