toothaches

This weekend was really, really awesome until yesterday at noon. The bad tooth/teeth that I have been avoiding getting taken care of finally won the battle and I spent 24 hours in howling pain, then mercifully found a dentist with holiday hours and had a root canal done and was prescribed antibiotics and vicodins for my broken wisdom tooth. I am suppossed to get it removed next Saturday. Through the power of Steve being home today, I go tto go to the doctor by myself while he was home with the kids.

So I might be away from the computer for a little bit here, but I'll be back soon as my pain and sleepiness and everything are more managed.

jinx jinx jinx

I really either need to shut down the blogs or start treating each entry to an Opposites-Day approach.

Everything I ever write about gets jinxed. I was thinking this even before the dishwasher flooded the floor just as Steve was out the door tonight. I was thinking this even before my pride and joy blue hair went byebye and now I look like a deep-fried lemon chicken wing from 1983. If you ever see any kind of entry entilted "Yippee" or "Im so happy", know in your heart that its a trick.

I am literally afraid to blog about anything I am happy about. Because then it gets a 24 second shot-clock for something bad to happen.

scary scary stuff

: (

no wait--here ill give the new approach a shot--

I hate money! I really want to get into this poverty thing! I hate hair and I hate 50'sfashion! I never want to be in a killer kick ass French indie garage techno band! I want to get much, much fatter! I hate hanging out with friends and I hate rock and roll evenings with Steve! I hate not being sick! My back doesnt hurt, isnt that lame??? I hope gas prices go way, way higher! I didnt like the dishwasher anyways, it was loud!

mew-zeek

Now that records are gone for the most part, and cassettes, too, we miss knowing what side of the album the various tracks were suppossed to be on; but since alot of the music we have been listening to lately was from that era, it is cool to really dig into why the artist put that track there and why. (We is me and Steve and we are listening to MP3s and such...this is what we do most evenings/into the wee hours/wasting the hours gladly that the little ones are asleep/I hope there are listening parties in the afterlife, but I worry/So I gladly skip on sleeping and try to live instead/clock be damned)

So, there is the opening track, track one. This is the one they want you to pop in, and go yeah, ok, sweet, here we go, I love this album.......then the second song is like the debut of their 'new sound' if it isnt a first album...seems like track three and four can often be where the radio single is buried, if applicable, and then you have some sort of meaningful 'last track of the side one' song--which may be a dying or already dead art form. Next to the lable, on purpose. (In recordville, where I still live)

Opening track, side 2. this sets off the whole 'feel' for exactly where this album is going. Where the band sees themselves now. Oftentimes a superjam, unless it is meant to be 'the slow/makeout side of the album. Side 2 is usually cool, more story-telling, sometimes more raw or experimental. Last track, side 2--a big shebang, a Purple Rain, a Diamond Sea, a 7-8 minute behemoth that you can easily skip by simply leaving it out, turning it off. Cheesy, classic, awesome. Sometimes. But sometimes, the trash tracks get buried here, the concept and feel of the album starts to get weaker, or they throw on the random effort by the guy or girl who "doesnt usually write the songs".

So this is what we do late at night. we sit and go "THIS is your opening track? THIS? Who do you think you are???" Its really fun. we have also been watching alot of concert footage and discussing what is up with bands and how they act onstage. What are these bands about, you know--producing recorded song, or jamming together, or creating masterpeices, soundtracks, or partying and entertaining? Some or all of the above?

albums to revisit and think about what was up with all that track placement:

In Utero-Nirvana

Life's Rich Pageant- REM

Fables of the Reconstruction-REM

Bizzare Ride II--the Pharcyde

Rubber Soul- the Beatles

Paranoid- Black Sabbath

Chocolate and Cheese-Ween

minty

It took two full bleach cycles and I was up until 2:45 but here is whats up with it now: Light blonde with some aqua.

damn.

Tonight I have to bleach out my blue hair and try to get a job passing as a regular girl. Comet Burger man was pretty mean when I called back today and said "Naw, we already got someone".

I bought 40 volume developer, the bleach powder, and toner. Like I can afford all this crap. I have to make some money for my family. If times get better I can have fun hair again.

So, tonight, I hope it all comes out.

To explain:

A little more information about this whole me-getting-a-job thingie:

My husband's job started paying him less and less and less, around February. We were initially able to shoulder the "hit" with our tax return, but the slippery slopes of quicksand have only gotten steeper. First it was not paying the utilities--only rent, food, and gas. Then we all got sick, and the 30 dollar co-pays, prescriptions, refills, and endless trips to Rite Aid for more sudafed, kleenex, motrin, tylenol, humidifiers, vicks vaporub, chapsticks, benadryl, claritin, nose sprays, robitussin, mentholated baby rubs, mentholated baby bath, 12 dollar rash creams for the hideous antibiotic-diaper rashes, cough drops...then I started in on Echinacea, Wellness Pills, and expensive acidophilus and other supplements for battles of the yeast that the antibiotics always seem to bring....soon we weren't able to even make the rent, and here is where we still are today. I buy a few groceries and put little 10 bucks here and there in the car and try not to go anywhere.

So.

Obviously things cannot continue in this manner. We need more money and we need it now!

So, seeing as we are not to the point where we are about to abandon homeschooling or any of that, (there is a small but convinced group of people who think it would be best if I put my 2 oldest children in public school, somehow accquire full time daycare for my 3 and 1 year olds before I even receive my first check and got myself a real lady job) either me or Steve needs to work a night and weekend job. The kids will still be homeschooled and raised by their own family, and childcare expenses will still not be an issue.

Now, even though I am up 3-5 times a night with baby Charlie, and Casey comes blasting down my door no later than 6:15am on a good day, and even though I alreadyhave a full time job, thank you very much, I do think that I should be the one to try and take a night position. The idea of getting semi-dolled up at 5pm and knowing I am going to be be-bopping out of here to my hopeful fun and interesting world of The Diner sounds way better than No Daddy Ever Again/single mother nightmare. Which would be my life if Steve was really gone all day and all evening, leaving me with no "break" whatsoever, bumping my hours up to 24 a day instead of about 10 with the just me and the kiddies. Uh-uh. I know better than to think that would be cool at all. I think any glue that is holding us all together would be gone, and in a marriage that runs on tons of love and reciprocity and egalitarian household duties as much as humanly possible, this could spell disaster, frustration, burn-out, resentment and utter and complete exhaustion, which in our lives seems to lead us right back down the path to getting sick again! Argggg! No.

So that's the deal. We are dead meat, kinda waiting for eviction or something, do not know what the hell else to do.

We looked at an adorable house this weekend with a rent payment that is $255 dollars less than we are paying (or not paying!) here. We would love to move there---the kids liked it better than we did, they were ecstatic about moving. (So there goes the theory that it is so sad and mean to shuffle them around) But how to go about it all?

Our lease here is officially not up until August, and if we broke it, I don't see how we could get our enormous deposit money back. But to move we need a deposit for the new place!

I need about 1 to 3 thousand dollars. Thats about what Steve's work has gouged from us out of the blue, and about what we would need to get into the cool new place I found us. It is another 3 bedroom house, with a giant backyard, really cheerful kitchen, attached garage, on the block of this amazing huge forest park with trails and paths and a creek. It is also 2 miles from Steve's LOVELY job, so he could still ride his bike on the days we might need the van. It is a real gem of a find, and the landlord was a cool laid back friendly normal guy.

So. Scary times for us right now, trying to be all positive and excited. Sitting here at 8pm with my eyes all bleary, my shoulders and neck burning from all the housework I did today, lifting, nursing, laundry etc -- on about 4 hours of broken sleep (hey it was Sopranos AND the Survivor finale I stayed up too late) and I think: How in the world could I be at some restaurant right now, be-bopping back and forth and attempting to charm the Harley guys out of their 3 bucks?

But you know, haven't all of us felt really tired around 6, 7, 8 pm and didn't wan't to go out at all, but then we do and we have this big sassy night out and party and socailize 'till 2:30? I'm hoping that whole thing kicks in.

So thats what the job thing is all about. Please wish us luck and don't be afraid to send me ideas, either here or in email. Oh and yes we are going to have a garage sale and try to ebay stuff while we can still afford internet.

Kiss kiss

Off to go watch Heros before dishes time. At least our water isn't shut off. Then I wouldnt be able to wash dishes and clothes and kids and cook all day....hmmmm JUST KIDDING!

Burger Queen

Omigod I just put in an application at a cool place. It is called Comet Burger and it is like a little 50's diner place on a strip of an extremely populated Main Street near us. They are looking for a waitress. I havent done this in 11 years.

Although I am a little afraid to leave the cocoon of not-gainfully-employed-mommyhood, I am also excited. It seems fun and easy and if they get busy, hey, I'll just go as fast as I can without getting flustered. Years of serving my own impatient oftentimes demanding and particular "customers" at home have gotten me some good training for being a rock-n-roll waitress.

I have fantasies that my uniform will involve pink, black, and a cursive J...but just the fact that the guy couldn't have cared less that I came in there with a bright blue high ponytail was tres cool to me. He asked me if I was in school, which could have meant anything but I felt young! WooHoo!

I hope it is cool. I hope I make some money. I hope I get hired. But I must admit, on some nights, just to get out of here with lipstick on and the car all to myself will be......awesome

dork

Billie B sprained her foot. Getting out of a chair.

Why do I have to be such a dork? When will I be normal? How am I going to rollerskate when apparantly I cant be trusted to walk or stand without crippling injury?

What a freak. It pisses me off.

why I am not going to color my hair green after all

I love the blue and I mixed in some purple and I love it.

My eyes are green and purpleish blue helps them look greener more than just matching them would.

At least 75% of my shirts are green I am realizing and then I would look too green.

I don't want to look like a Disease Ridden Sea Monster, I want to look like a Futuristic and/or Magical Atomic Candy Fairy. You know that would make a fantastic battle of the bands or something---DRSM versus FMACF.

I want my hair to kind of look like it would smell awesome, like how Strawberry Shortcake had that one friend Blueberry Muffin*?

Blue fades to light blue.

Green fades to gross.

and the real final reason: I can't get this blue hairdye to come out at all!


*my actual 1980's childhood toy not the new reissued crap

finally

I got two dresses! Real dresses! 50's dresses! They fit me! I am sooo happy!

Billie B.

I am a complete tough guy when it comes to some stuff--actually a lot of stuff--Billie Badass, I guess.
If I get hurt, like something bangs into me or I whack into something, I don't usually care. I'm clumsy sometimes. Like if I fell off my bike in front of people I would jump up and laugh even if I was like pouring blood. I would be glad to be pouring blood because it is lame when it hurts super bad but there is no mark. Plus I miss knee bandaids I think they are awesome with tube socks it looks like you actually are having a summer, you know?
I will light the stove (its old we have to use a lighter) with my hand-- my husband would never do this---he will use this big intricate stick or long wadded up piece of paper. I don't give a crap if I get a tiny bit burned. I unscrew lightbulbs right out of the hot socket. I bite stuff off with my teeth. I use my "eye" rather than any mamby pamby measuring devices, and I will and have and do hop rusty sharp fences. I open beers before I bother to read that it is not screw top. I strum my guitar with the back of my right index nail/cuticle and I prefer to throw stuff across the room such as dirty laundry, mail, loaves of bread (ok not loaves of bread) to try and sink imaginary shots, hoops, dunno--just to score I guess. I DESPISE instructions, directions, recipes, or suggested useage. I think duct tape belongs in any girls purse and I can take pills without a beverage.

I like maritinis--but the way I make them is like this: Some Gin. Some Vodka. Some pop or tonic. Some ice or fruit if times are good. I have been laughed at for years for making this concoction yet it tastes awesome and you will get drunk. Is that a problem? Perhaps I have a different idea of just exactly what it is that a martini is suppossed to do for a chick or a fella but helping to keep sane and sober aint one of em.

I like to nail stuff up with enourmous roofing nails WHAMWHAM right into the walls. I feel certain that kicking is a perfectly acceptable way to get somethings done. Like repairing tables. I like to get filthy and I like to write on myself. I HATE asking for help and I HATE being sick injured helpless needful incapable or really bad at something. I hate slow songs. I dont want a pastry, I want a sub. I dont drink diet pop or light beer. I dont go to Thai restaurants and ask if it is gonna be spicy.

Yes I want to play Street Fighter
Yes I want tickets to the game
Yes I can stay up super really extremely late-life's short ever heard of coffee?
Yes I want a beer
Yes I want some nachos
Yes I can reach that/lift that/get that through the door
Yes I want to do a fire
Yes I want to go camping
Yes I want a tattoo
Yes I want to draw hundreds of rude pictures all day(comic book style)
Yes I want to go to the concert and yes I want to stand up front.
Yes I want to drive
Yes I can totally play that
Yes I will mess up and yes it might suck but it might be awesome and it is worth it to find out
Yes I want to hit the road
Yes I want to do something way way weirder
Yes I would rather laugh than giggle
Yes I would rather scream than whisper
Yes I would rather break shit than keep the peace
Yes I want the squares to not get it
Yes you want to pick me for your team

best sox ever

http://www.skatersocks.com/

So, so awesome.

fresh air

Well its been awhile, huh?

I am no longer sick. It is no longer cold or drizzling or snowing. I am literally on cloud nine, in heaven, all cares are back to their rightful places in the background, major upsets are back to minutae, I can now re-relate to hallmark slogans such as dont sweat the small stuff and stop and smell the roses and enjoy the little things and live for today and bless this mess and....ok ill stop.

Although I do like the idea of fall and winter, the flash imagery of being covered in clothes (haha), cozy times, spicy drinks...the reality is it is messed up to be indoors all the time, to get to the point where crumbs and stains and where is my scotch tape are somehow something you should give one crap about, to just obsess and fret and stagnate, its really jacked.

So now we have opened up our windows, opened up our eyes, opened up our hearts and opened up our minds, as a people, or at least I have. It feels so damn good to have my self back, I feel as if my proper and rightful place as an upright citizen/homo sapien (sapienne?lol) to roam the good Earth has been reestablished and I like it. I am going to sit outside for a long long time tonight past sunset past dark and enjoy it all. Besides---no mosquitos yet :)

Dedice a la musique, les cheveux verts, et la future

It is such a gimmiky thing, and yet I fall for it EVERY time: lead vocals en Francais. Hip-Hop, trance, and scads of other electronica use this technique to marvelous effect. Especially if the singer is female, and french is not her native toungue. Perfection!
I want to do a bit of this in my band, and I am sort of coming to grips right now with how much studio and non-organic kinds of music I love and how it all works out with my garage and low-fi budget and sensibilities and roots and how, oh how, will I work in some gorgeous french stuff about les reves, and les bouches, and les nuages, and les bicyclettes and je veux te la donner mon couer, when I have no studio or money but I do know alot of french, and actually I am gonna say right here and now that godarnit there will be french and it will all work out and ummm yeah. Stuff like that. See? I am getting a little bit better. Cough cough sniff.

Bjork is on Saturday night Live Tonight! I hope she rocks.

missing out

I am too sick to blog
I will be back when I can
Trying to become healthier as a lifestyle...

: )

green hair

It is more than official.

After 6 months, which has really been 20 years, of searching, I have decided upon my final dream hair.

It is going to be deep green, like forest green. It is going to be long with bangs. I will curl it all beautiful in pink curlers or I will do braids. This will finalize all of the issues and displaced, misplaced asthetic problems I have run into since adoloescence. My love of punk and glamour, my not knowing if I wanted to be a skater boy or a screen siren, my desire to look super wierd and super pretty, to have grannies say "shed be cute if that horrible hair wasnt green" and to walk around and feel like myself!

So I am quite ecstatic. I need to bleach out all this blue and purple and faded lavender and get the green and maybe even a haircut at a place, just a trim on the bottom. Then I just need to keep on growin! It was a tiny bob at xmas time and now is to my shoulders in the back, so by next year, it should be super long. Too excited.

vrrrrrm

Over the weekend, two very cool girls were convinced that I was from Detroit Roller Derby. Convinced. This was the biggest image compliment I have received in I don't know how long, if ever. I feel like the ball is truly rolling now on my new look. Hooray!

Lady clothes

A topic near and dear to my heart: my interest in fashion and my deep vomitous aversion to lady clothes---and how I have been misjudged,mislabeled and misunderstood as a tomboy when in fact I am a girl girl girl.

When I was 10 years old, starting 6th grade, I was five foot three. By the end of that school year, I stood five foot eleven. I wonder if I even weighed 100 pounds.

So there I was, taller than all the women's clothing made in the world, barely eleven years old, size ten shoes, the largest size you could get in normal stores. Years before I was old enough for high heels, I was already too tall to wear them, and so, I never learned how to walk in 'em. This is how I started out! Way before I was even a teenager, I was severly limited in my options. I wore my school uniform by day, my field hockey, volleyball, and soccer uniforms after school, and on the weekends....ewwwww you don't wanna know. Wierd flood everything--and there was no "cropped", these were floods---hard to blame my mom when I grew 8 inches in 8 months---but there were flood pink pants, flood acid wash jeans, and flood black pants. Random sweaters from christmas,( ladies' medium, too wide and too short for the stalk of spaghetti that was me) and perhaps a pastel polo type of shirt from kmart or kresge.




Fast forward to when I "turned cool" --- I had a depeche mode Tshirt, a new order Tshirt, flood jeans and a jean mini skirt. Everything else has been forgotten. I had black chucks, black tights, and a few shirts from my boyfriend. Anything skirt or dress in my closet was so far out of the realm of what I considered even remotely attractive, modern, current, or wearable, that it soon became this thing that I was some kind of tomboy, masculine, manly, and my *family* liked to rub that in. but it wasnt really true! I had a CABOODLE (remember those, anyone??) of makeup, a zillion earrings, probably 8 perfumes, and --ahem-a decidedly not tomboyish underwear collection. Did my hate of FLATS and PUMPS and sickest of all--PANTYHOSE--really make me a mans man? I grape-sprunch sprayed my sun-in'ed bob while curling my eyelashes before dawn every single morning, blue eyeliner, turquoise eyeliner, peach gloss, pink gloss, dozens of nail polishes----black bikini, peach bikini----but no love for the LADY CLOTHES. Ever.


To me, since somehow, someway, there seemed to be no cool feminine clothes in my world, maybe Madonna or Bjork or the rich kids had awesome stuff like I would have liked---but in reality, the skirt or dress came to symbolize deeply irksome events ONLY. Family portrait, Church thingamabob, Holidays, forced visitations to Moms Work or Sisters Recital. I felt so ugly so itchy so gross gross gross gross, in the hand me downs and borrowed 40 year old womens stuff that vaguely fit me (with safety pins) that it wasnt until my first dance that I wore a dress and felt ok. But a dance doesnt count.






Fast forward a long way...to my first grown up job. Age 19. Corporatesville. Crap! Will I need lady clothes???? Im making $9.25 an hour---astounding money for me, minimum wage was 3.90 or maybe 4.15, but it was part time due to the fact that I was a full time college student, and so it was good money and yet not enough to get some sweet new wardrobe....so I kinda faked it. I wore black cotton tights. Black buckle Doc Martens. ($130 bucks in 1993 you better believe they were my only shoes!!) One little short black A-Line skirt from the "new store" Old Navy. Cardigans from the thrift store, and one white t shirt. oh--and a pink, purple and yellow swatch watch with a huge eyeball on it. Every single day. With a long silver necklace from contempo! hahahaha! Remember Contempo!!!?? Sheesh.

My older co-workers loved me, and said nice things like "you can get away with that", "youre so cute" and scarier things like "i dont know how you dont get written up", "that is bullshit"....and this was when NOBODY dressed the way they do at work now. It was 3 piece suits, power shoulder pads, hose, pumps, period. Except I did not.

I got married, loved my wedding dress. Duh. But beyond that it has been years and years of concert T's, jeans, chucks, with dreams of fun dresses, dreams of stripey tights, and kind of growing into the not working/wear what u want/but some image as a mom to work out stuff.......and well somehow here I am!

I still detest powder-smelling stinky stuffy itchy vile lady clothes, but now I know what it is exactly that I detest. It isnt anything about being a girl. I have never ever been happoier to be a girl. Its about being ME. Maybe I will never have enough money to own all the outfits I dream of, and maybe creating them will be my only option. But the world of fashion has become ALOT more accessible, I see what the magazines are calling "Work jeans" and i am so curious to see if this is really true or not...but for something as near and dear to my heart as outfit-imagining, I will never be sad if purple hair, cherry barrettes, chuck taylors wth tights or shirtdresses in psychotic fabrics turns popular. because I love that stuff, and I would relish the idea of it being easier to obtain.






Somedays I am a girl and somedays I am a woman---but I never, ever want to be a LADY. Unless we are playing tea party. (But even then I might fight ya for dibs on being the cat or the baby or maybe even the grampa.)

********************

boo hoo

I have only a few birthday scenarios and they play out again and again---

1)Me being sick

2)It snowing really hard

3)It being eerily, creepily warm and humid

Today is my birthday, and although I am very happy about it, I am also very sick. I think it is suppossed to be wierdly warm, too, like 74 and thundershowers. See?

Its crazy how many little blurred memeories I have of trying to sit up and be cheerful about the present, trying to taste cake or special meal without my tastebuds, head spinning, chest tight, throat clogged, ears stinging, face pounding.

Next year I will try with all my heart to remember to go on some secluded health-vigil the last week of March! But for today, I will try to savor the strong deja vu and look SO forward to my new year. 2007 has been extreme, and so to me, a-la Chinese New Year, TODAY marks the "new year". I am 32 now--lets let the good times roll.

they pay me to turn 32?!

My grandma sent me fifty bucks for my birthday and my mother and father in law sent me 30. i also had five bucks in my purse all smashed so that counts, too. So I have 85 bucks. I am trying to really not pitch this money in to "the family" as I have done with every single penny I have ever received as a Joy gift in ten years of marriage. I am also going to get a night job a couple of nights a week at this one cool beerhaus thing that seems non molesterish and up-beat and clean. I have no idea if they are hiring but I dont care. Maybe they will see my purple hair and think I will cheer up the joint.


I am trying to think of things I want to save up for and so far it is:

pink chucks
all the bumper stuckers i could ever dream of on cafepress.com
a little videocamera/dvd camera whatever those are that are little
a Fender Rhodes
a Mellotron
a mini Moog
a new guitar although that is so mean to my guitar...so maybe a bass. a yellow one.
a non raping bike seat
fountain pop machine
slurpee machine

send me ideas--maybe I am forgetting something I always wanted! My own hair coloring salon-dance club perhaps?