After some good wine and a few light beers, I promised to write here about my tormentors. On the eve before flying out of town again, I reverted quite thoroughly back to when I had lived in the rocking burg known as Braintree fulltime.

Apparently, homecoming or coming home, since there was no football game, means last call at Chili’s with the beers being served by a mouthy waitress who knows one of your companions well. It could have been 1984. I could have been 20.

Steve, Donna (who has no last name), Deb and Liz, thanks for reminding me that I actually have grown up. A little.

Technorati Tags: Christmas, Christmas, family, drinking

I guess it’s like Boxing Day squared. Or doubled. Or something math like. And, being a chick, math is of course something I don’t understand. It’s all numbery and shit.

M. is back in Cali, and back in his workaday office, eating lunch with the coworkers. The part of me that shows up for work every day, which is the same part that would make me fucking excel at occupational therapy in an asylum, I mean seriously, I could ace that shit, that part of me is jealous. I’m not good at sitting around somebody else’s house idle.

Or, more accurately, I’m less comfortable being my self and tooling around with computers and whatnot in front of people. That gets a mite ratcheted up in the bosom of my family. That crowd of folks that spent a chunk of my childhood trying to convince me I was adopted, because I was so alien. I think one can imagine that maybe a couple of folks in my bloodline might be hip to ‘puters and the interwebs, and another section might be OK with creative shit, but combined, I’m a bit out of the loop. Or out to lunch or off the beaten path or left field.

Pick a cliche that equals abnormal.

The rational part of my all grown up brain realizes that possibly ever human being feels that kind of alienation with their bosom and kin now and again. Human condition, self-reflection, nature of the beast. But, fuck that rational shit, I am an artiste, I am so super sensitive. These people cannot know how I feel, how I ache, I yearn, I long to communicate.

Goddamnit, I’m special.

Actually, I’m pretty comfortable at my bro’s house. M. is a bit too comfortable. I spent some decades leaving the suburban oasis life behind and sucking some more exotic marrow from the universe. M.’s pretty much willing to embrace the ‘burbs. Ah well. In my head, I will imagine another world, like many a 50s housewife. Only I won’t have the uppers to enjoy.

In my comfort, though, I’m painfully aware of my own fucked up internal churnings. One might say I am either blessed or cursed with a certain level of self-awareness. I try really hard to imagine what the other side is hearing when I speak. Another of the expanding clan is blissfully not so wrought. Nope, not a lot of inward/outward reflection I think.

My discomfort is I spend way too much time, then, in those conversations trying to understand the other side and simultaneously biting my tongue as bitchier versions of “I can’t fucking believe you just said that” are repressed. Some day maybe I’ll let it lose. Or not. Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure the other side of the conversation, the one in which I’m frothing and churning, searching for the right words, goes internally on that other side something more like, “When will she finish speaking? I have more to say about me.”

Thankfully, Christmas comes but once a year.

I’m mostly busy just living kind of regular-like without writing. Or actually thinking much. Here’s the photographic evidence:

The Comedy Studio Christmas Show and Party on December 23, 2007

Home for the Holidays with the fam.

Merry whatever to whoever you are.

The local news is featuring warnings on a silent killer that claims more lives than murder — cold, fucking cold. Not just freezing cold, but the kind of cold you get around here. Apparently, folks are expiring all over San Francisco. For a city with no snow, no mountains, no glaciers, SF is plenty fucking cold, though. Just not in a macho kind oflumberjack cold way. More wilting pansy, really.

Truth is California is pretty wussy on weather. Probably more so up here in the north, where sure there are microclimates up the ass, like varying 30 degrees in as many miles, but still in all it’s what you would call mild by non-wusses everywhere. Some days I’m leaving the house thinking shit I might actually need a scarf or an extra layer. Oh no.

Imagine then the horror I’m feeling, the gut-knotting clench of anxiety, imaging snow. Imagining ice. Imagining below freezing temperatures. How do people live like that? How did I live like that essentially for four decades?

My coworkers have been taunting me of late about my immersion and assimilation into the lifestyle, because, face it, California ain’t just a state it’s a life style. Stupid me for leaving the organic black tea with cardamom pods and other chai spices purchased from the farmers’ market on my desk. Pretty much outed myself at that juncture.

And, then there’s the large scarves and shawls in which all Bay Area women seem to wrap themselves throughout the pussy non-winter winter. I’ve been scene rocking those glad rags myself.

If my DNA is mutating. If I am becoming one with the local climate. If I am now a full-time California resident. How in fucking holy snowball hell will I survive a week with a white Christmas? That’ll be me swaddled in polar fleece with nary a pimple peaking out from the layers.

Technorati Tags: cold, Christmas, mortality, California, New England, snow, family

A certain someone who knew the man in the flesh and blood of his life and witnessed his parenting in the first years of my life, pointed out the questionable nature of conflating my own dad and perps in one sentence.

Thankfully, I was not born of the Phelps family, and I have no reason to doubt at all, one bit, the great things I’ve heard about Earl M. In memory of my father, consider him separately from the post below. And, consider him missed.

Technorati Tags: abuse, family, father

Things are so getting done around the house, easing my mind so that I could doze off a bit on the couch. My head isn’t racing with the panicked feeling of undone. I think partially because I finally got my stupid self-eval done for work.

Here’s my report, now give me that spare percentage point or so of extra dough. That’s the dance, in this job as in all the rest as with all jobs in the history of mankind. Somewhere before the combustion engine a young apprentice farrier took a thick grease pencil and checked off whether he had met or exceeded expectations. And, then, he pondered hammering a hob nail through his brain pan.

Anywho. I dozed off which means I didn’t read Howard Dully’s book, which I’ve started. Fascinating local guy and the poster child survivor for lobotomies. Now, if my stepmom signed me up for the ice pick through my eye hole and on to the good stuff of whatever lobe could get poked, I’d be bullshit. I’d be unrepentantly angry. Fucking hell, I was peeved when I realized M. had thrown away my mini marshmallows. But, to lobotomize me and make it so I’d spend a good lot of years bouncing in and out of institutions? Colossally ripshit. Nothing less.

Howard Dully, though, is thoughtful and searching. Calm, evenhanded and reflective about a childhood that included regular beatings. (Maybe it’s a placidness thanks to the procedure). You have to wonder what kind of man, what kind of thoughtful, reflective man, he might have been without modern surgery.

Instead of reading, M. put “Fall from Grace,” a documentary about the Westborough Baptist Church and Fred Phelps and his family, on the TV. Also known as the “God Hates Fags” crew. (Google it, since I ain’t linking.)

A couple of the Reverend Phelps’ offspring, now estranged, were interviewed by phone about their earliest recollections of his utter assholishness. Raging, violent crazy lawyer dad turned preacher and protester and overall fucked up, erroneous agent of the lord, dad. Must have been some kind of fun kiddiehood.

In my dozing, with the familiest of holidays almost upon us, I can’t help but think, “Damn, there’s some shitty parenting out there in the world.” I’m not saying my own dad, about whom I have only heard wonderful tributes, would be a perpetrator. But, maybe it’s not so bad growing up with just the one parent, Pat, whose protection knew no end.

Technorati Tags: family, happiness, abuse, lobotomy, Fred Phelps, relationships, Howard Dully, work, review

Happy Winterval, Festivus, Chrismahanukwanzakah.

Now that I’ve mailed out this year’s model in the old, polluting card style, and in the new-fangled electronic, green model, I feel I can add it here. Happy holidays to anyone I’ve missed. (Thanks to the walloping of New England snow, this virtual greeting might proceed some of the through snow, sleet, dark of night delivery kind.)

Also, if you want to be added to my card-giving list, just let me know.

Finally, a big thanks to the folks out there in the cybering land, a handful of whom seem to be emailing this old chestnut.

You might also like this gem from 2006.

One more week of work in 2007. It’s not even really a week, since we fly out on Friday. But, flying is fucking work.

I have about 30 work things to do before it all ends, not least of which is figuring out my last year’s goals, next year’s goals and wrapping it all up in an online bow and a meeting with the boss. A complicated pursuit for a pretty average next year of salary.

At least, shopping is pretty much well and done. ‘Cept for a couple of things for a couple of friends, to whom I just want to say “Hey, Christmas. Happy. Joy.” Nothing major, no big outlay of cash, but that shit’s the hardest. That kind of gift has to have a little personal recognition.

But the big shit is done. Well, except for how the hell am I going to haul it across the fucking country. And, the terrorists are so cramping my holiday flow. Obvious youle joy to buy and bring “home” would be a couple of bottles of notable Cali grape juice. Can’t carry it, though, so I’d have to pack it, and risk broken glass at 30,000 feet. Fuck me. And, fuck Al Qaeda.

Fa la la la fucking la.

I haven’t been writing here, because all of my meager, measly gray matter was going to one line. I was trying to think of something, anything, anything beyond the seasonal “Fuck you, I’m tired,” to slap on a Christmas card.

Of course, clever fuck that I am, I likes to make my own cards. So, in addition to hauling out the holly, I was busting out the Photoshop. Here are my lead rejects. My original “vision,” and by vision I mean self-important, self-appointed artistic bullshit, was to have annual frolicking antics with M. and me. But, M. in an empty room is in some pseudo-intellectual statement really is a portrait with me. Who else would be shooting the camera.

Draft 2 was me trying to add myself back in somehow. Numbero three-o was an arsty thing. They all lost the contest in my head.

I do really think I will never top the beautiful, simple, resonating greeting of “Merry Christmas by any means necessary.”

If you want a real live postcard off of the printer du dee-rob, and you don’t think I have your mail addy, drop me a line. If you want the soon to be released digital postcard, let me know your email. If you don’t give a shit, and really who would blame you, don’t do nothing at all.

Other than seasonal greeting agony, work has been crazy busy in a very frustrating end of the year gotta get it done now way. One result, though, is that it appears some time in 2008 I might be doing a business trip to Kenya. In Africa. Like, African Kenya. In Africa. How fucking cool with that be?

I spent a part of the work day explaining my bitch-red acrylic nails. They were part of the gussying up I did for M.’s party on Saturday. I clean up OK, but it ain’t come natural-like. Nope, drag queens take to it more naturally. Even the boys who only dress up like girls for Halloween.

But, check out my swanky dress and shawl thingie. (Thanks to Photoshop, I largely de-Ted Kennedy-ed my bloated looking, cherry red face.) Then, there’s me and M. all coupley. I think we look kind of two kinds of vapid in the pic. Lastly, there are my two favorite shots of both of us. His is subtitled, “Bond, Jih Ming Bond,” the international man of mystery.