Review of 'Cruddy' by Lynda Barry

By "bio-mom"
(contact me for more information)

I love this book because it comes from the bottom of her feet. It's pulled up through her whole body; she's saying "this is everything I am from my toes to my kneecaps to my torso to my head this is all of it and I'm screaming it out to tell it to you."
(She said many more paragraphs than that but i couldnt tap the words into my shitty bberry curve qiuckly enough. anyway, if she rec's a book, you read it, because her taste in lit is a thousand time better than yours, you dad's, and your favorite prof's taste will ever be. accept it.)

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Song-writing with bio-mom

All we have so far is a pre-chorus, but it may work as a chorus. We're accepting verse suggestions.

"Please don't kill us,
Please don't kill us,
It'd be so much better
If we weren't dead.

Please don't kill us,
Please don't kill us,
And take that gun away
From my head."
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

part 5 of the comeback blog

i think ill finally be done catching up after this post.

here're some pics of me and Dog sleeping in the car:

and here's some pics my parents sent from their pacific dream vaca:

they really seem happy, and im so happy bc of that. they deserve some stress-free time to really enjoy each other and relax. look at that view!!

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heres Bmom's final present:

the antique box and spool of string i picked up from her favorite shop in her hometown, the blue bundle on top holds the necklace, and the bundles of sage hide the mug from famous moms' which holds a hand written mythology of sage and a glass bottle of red desert sand. she liked it and im very proud of it.

ok, mostly caught up.
i havent decided yet if i want to talk about the surgery i had yesterday.
so, for now, goodbye dear reader.
xxxo

part 4 of the comeback blog

at the end of our two weeks together we went back to the town where i left my car and got dinner at this place

the food was about what youd expect, but i got a great mug that says "famous mom's" for biomoms birthday on the 16th, so that was cool. then we got ice creams and walked around the little town, but when we were ready to leave and go camp for the night we noticed that my car wasnt where we left it. 

so i freaked out, but my mtn man stayed very calm (and calmed me as well), as we went to the sheriffs office, where we found it had been impounded after two days for 'abandonment.' we stayed the night in a trashy motel (i really do love trashy motels) and rescued it in the morning. he was incredibly patient and sweet about the whole ordeal. then we parted ways. he went on to do more research for his book, and i went back to get nelson and drive west to bio-mom's for our birthdays.

nelson was excited to see me.

it felt good to be back in the car with him. my car bed feels like home to me now. i like having him back.

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that night i ran out of windshield wiper fluid and i figured id have to take my car into a shop or something when i got to biomoms town. then when i stopped to get gas i noticed they sell the stuff on the cheap! so i bought some and taught myself to open the hood and fill up the fluid tank! 1st time!

i woke people up to brag about it because i was very proud of this experience. its like im becoming a grown up. :) 

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the next day was more driving, but i did firm up my idea of biomoms bday present. i collected more than a dozen cuttings of sage along the road, bundled them, and pinned them to roof of my car to dry. here's the view of the desert w some sage in the way, and a pic of the sage-drying op in my car.

i also stopped at a navajo crafts fair that i accidentally found myself driving through and got myself a couple rings and a necklace to add to Bmoms gift.

they were fascinated by nelson. he got LOTS of attn and free snacks.

part 3 of the comeback blog

ugh. while walking Dog last night i got some drunk texts from Mr 09 that just threw me off. just when you think youve finally put someone out of your life, when for the first time you know that your future wont include him and that youll be ok - that youll be better, even, he just appears on your phone with the same jokes and the same awful chemistry lights back up...

ANyway...

there's Mtn Man! he's taking pictures of an old ghost town structure - doin what he does. there were alot of interesting structures and foundations on that mountain face. i left the picture-taking to him bc he's better at it, so you'll have to buy his book to see the real photos of the things we saw. he knows so much about everything we saw and answered all my questions and when he didnt know the answers we looked it up together that night while the tea was heating up over the fire. i cant not smile thinking about it.
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when we left those mountains we moved farther south where the climate didnt allow for the alpines and flat-leaf trees of the previous nights; our new digs were much more desert-y. but up on the plateau, at that elevation, one morning when we unzipped the tent we still found nearly half a foot of snow waiting for us.
we spent a few nights at this site but we couldve spent weeks. the town here was enormous and had a reputation for being the drinking-est, whoring-est town in the west - along with having the richest mines. we found at least a dozen shafts that i very badly wanted to explore but Mtn Man wouldnt let me bc they probably wouldve collapsed on me or something awful.
i learned a lot about not being unnecessarily reckless.
he has guns though, for coyotes and bears and hunting bunnies for stews, and he finally taught me how to shoot 'em. this is me about to shoot a shotgun for the very first time. it kicked back a bit, but i didnt fall down or anything, and my aim was pretty ok.

check out that form! im basically a pro. i could totally be an assassin.
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we had to drive into a city to get his oil changed and re-up on supplies, so obviously we hit a dairy queen.  (my cone is the one on the right)

we share very strong feelings about ice cream; it should be consumed daily. it is the greatest food. usually we hit up gas station ice cream sandwiches or those pre-wrapped cones, so DQ day was a big day for us.
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This is Zion ntl park. we both tend to dislike ntl parks bc of the way they turn nature into a safe, approachable tourist-infested disneyland and take away all of its reality, but neither of us had been to this one and had heard impressive things, so we decided to check it out. i got this pic after we scrambled up a steep hill / cliff. we also share a love of scramble-climbing.

this is what we climbed. i took this pic after we climbed down. see the yellowish crevasse just to the left of center? thats where we climbed.

thats me posing on top of the cliff. it was a really fun climb.

and here's the bridge out of the park to the next ghost town. the next morning we took baths in the river under this bridge, event though it was super icy cold.

part 2 of the comeback blog

the last post i put up was a summary of my last three weeks and some preemptive tying-up of loose ends.
this one will tell as much of the important parts as it can - what shows up here is whatever pops up in my head as i write and look at photos and go through my phone and read my texts and go through the things in my pockets.
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so i just confirmed my dinner on saturday night in LA. my parents have an extra long delay there on their way back from their incredible pacific island vacation back home. they've been married 35 YEARS so i completely LOVE that they recognize how badly they owe themselves a vacation, and that the size of that debt warrants a fantastic, dream-island so far from everything that causes them stress. it's been great for us therapeutically as well, because my dad has this thing that compels him to have morning and evening contact with me daily, he makes my mom call in before and after she drives anywhere.... there's an anxiety level that i think their absence from cell range will help.
lets get into my updates.

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this is the picture i took while staying w a (temporarily homeless) jocelyn after i freaked out after a standard new york experience that i couldnt handle (bc i'd been away for too long and lost my thick skin) so i shoved joce in my car and drove us to a state park in NJ (because my car-bed is my comfort zone / home and i prefer it to any home available to me) where we slept for the day. 

that experience not only gave us a peaceful, lakeside morning, but this photo of the citizens of new jersey driving into the city for their morning commute. 

Were i an artist, i would blow up and publish this photo without commentary beyond its title (NJ Morning Commute) because i think this photo says a lot all by itself. 

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while driving to meet my mountain man for the most transformative, beautiful two weeks (if not) of my life (than that i can remember) i rounded a turn heading up into the mountains, found this cow across my lane(!), and had to stop abruptly (my right hand shot into the backseat to hold nelson back. im turning into a parent) because i wanted, obviously, to pet it. so after we passed this cow i pulled over, left nelson in the car, and got out and approached the cow with my palms toward her. when i got within three feet of her and was about to reach out to stroke the brow over the big liquid chocolate eye facing me, she backed away! and it made me so sad, bc i know she wasnt afraid of me. she's afraid of people. whatever had been to her to provoke  that reaction just broke my heart. so i left her alone and got back in my car, and gave nelson many dog treats. 

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this pic is of an introductory page of a book i found after a lot of things had happened. it was taken the night Mountain Man and I returned to the south-eastern utah town in which we met in order to board my superdog in an incredible doggie summer-camp (which i will recommend to you if you contact me), went to an incredible bookstore, and went out to dinner at an italian place.

we were seated/hidden on the second floor and celebrated our bookstore finds. his was excited about, among other treasures, an atlas that not only showed blm (bureau of land management) land but the deterioration of the roads. it shows roads as they decline from gravel to dirt to rock to grass to 3ft wide grades on the edge of a mtn - it will be incredibly useful for his research and daily life. 

my big find was a $40 first edition of Tristram Shandy; the Life and Opinions of a Gentleman - and i know it was an original printing because of this picture!!!

LOOK AT THAT!!!! I own the 894th copy of the first thousand copies of this extraordinary text to reach the US and i only paid 40 bucks for it!!! so at, what he pointed out, was our first real dinner-date, we mostly discussed bookstore finds (which is my favorite topic. <3)  

the next afternoon i booked nelson into the dream-doggie-digs and went to the pharmacy to pick up my subox. they didnt have it til 48 hrs later, so i met Mtn Man in a small town, parked my car in an area free of no-parking signs, got in his pick-up, and we set off off on our journey!!!

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i took this pic of a beautiful navajo sandstone extrusion on oct 4th as we drove to our first ghost town. it took about three, probably four or five days for Mtn Man and i to adapt to each other's systems and habits enough to get beyond that introductory strangeness and get used to each other enough to be able to be together every day. the beginning of our adventure presented a few obstacles - we were both used to our own systems of eating and setting up camp our own way, but i think i adapted to his routines as quickly as i could, and he accepted my presence more easily than he might have - he has been doing this all alone for over a year. i learned as quickly as i could the way he liked his bed set up, his kitchen arranged, his tent pitched - so we got along. i like to think he appreciated my efforts and i certainly appreciated his cooking - my Mtn Man is a GENIUS chef. every morning and night he created a meal even greater than the one before it - i cant tell you how delicious his food is. his goal was to fatten me up, and, my dear reader, im sorry to admit that he may have succeeded! his cooking is incredible. i wish i'd've photo'ed some of his stews... My God! I cant even think about them without my mouth watering!! 

I need to walk the dog, turn off all the lights at BM's house, and switch to bed-blogging now. I'll be back soon for further, juicer updates.....

(ps: including pictures of my Mtn Man himself!! :) .....) 

the start of my return to the blog

When i dont update for a long time i feel so overwhelmed by the amount of tales to tell and accompanying photos to post that i put off updating, and then, because i cant put off living, i end up with even more stories to post, and it gets increasingly difficult to know how to start.
the blog would be most readable if i started from where i left off, and told all the tales chronologically up to today, logical but slightly less easy to read if i told today's stories and went backward until i caught up with where i left off, but writing it would be easiest if i just start with what im thinking about right now and write todays stories, then tell tales from the past three weeks as i think of them.
obviously, because i doubt the existence of my "reader," i'm going to choose the last of those three options - why make life easier for someone who i doubt exists when i could do i what i want?

i just organized all the photos that went from my phone to my desktop, and there are four that dont really fit in with any of my other stories so this post will be about them.

this is the halloween costume bio-mom has selected for me. she's a character from yo gabba gabba, which is now on netflix (watch it ALL) and is my baby brother's (2.5 y/o) favorite show and the costume is NOT the sexy version of anything; its a big bag of stuffing that will make me look twice as heavy as nelson. my mom's going as dj lance and the baby is going to be brobee (who's green and has extra long arms and will be portrayed ADORABLY).
halloween has always been a big deal for me and my parents because it was the day my parents got me from the lawyer that negotiated my adoption, so they dubbed it my 'homecoming' and made it almost a secondary birthday for me. for bio-mom, however, its been a miserable day for the last 23 yrs bc its the anniversary of the day a lawyer took her baby away. so halloween '11 will be a big day because it will be the first halloween that biomom and i have ever spent together - we'll play it like its all about my little brothers, but it's going to be a big day for both of us and im very much looking forward to it. the last time i saw her on a halloween was early in the morning, yr 1988, when she handed me to a nurse who handed me to the lawyer who handed me to my parents. on halloween, yr 2011, no one will take me anywhere. i think it'll sink in for us and have a gradual emotional impact for us on that day. it really is a big deal if you think about it.
in rehab, my roommate was a girl about 2 yrs older than i am who'd become an addict to deal with giving away her baby - she'd fallen into the open arms of oxycotten after surrendering the product of an accidental pregnancy to the arms of a couple much like my parents 20 yrs ago. she and i obviously got close - which i think was the all-along plan of the rehab - so i learned alot about what my mom went through post-adoption.
all of this is by way of saying that this halloween will be the continuation of a cycle that started going 'round a long time ago, and im looking forward to halloween even more than i usually do this year.

this next one is my brothers in the waiting room at the pediatrician's office.

(L-R) T - 8 y/o, D - 2.5 y/o, L - 10 y/o, F - 5 y/o
L just sold a song he wrote to Cake, and signed on to star in the first single of their next record. He is unbelievably cool and takes it for granted, and thinks  everyone in the US has te opportunities he's had. orange county is a fucking crazy crazyass INSANE place. i cant get into it.

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this is my new signature look. my former look, as you may be or probably are not familiar with, was either a large T, with the sleeves torn out, no pants, and big pumps, a gogo look, or mens M tee with tights. the new look is the pillowcase dress. i like it paired with thigh highs and pumps or with bare legs and flat knee high boots.
this picture was taken my first night in NY for nyfw ss12, at a part djed/thrown by my very dear, very close friend mister brendan sullivan, my incredibly loyal and faithful and loving friend and the voice of my generation. a mentor in many ways.

this last pic is one joce sent me sometime in early september that i have yet to decipher. that girl. id giv e anything to be able to live the way she does, to keep up with her life. she's a miracle in boots on wheels.