It’s windy and oddly cold in Dallas. (Hardly even cool for ya’ll Yanks.) A very dear friend gave me the most amazing 5 foot long wind chimes and they swing at an amazing height from the trunk of an old tree above our hot tub. This fill my yard with churchyard tones. However, when Chris and I are relaxing in the tub o’love… gazing at the starry night… fierce wind freaks us out. LOL We are certain one of those huge metal rods is going to snap free from it’s string and then stab us dead… like a javelin from Gawd. Guess I am going to have my yard guy move the chimes. Yeah. Do you think my fat ass is going up on an extension ladder?

I can’t believe I didn’t gain any weight during the holidays, or at all last year, in fact. Inadverdently I did that suddenly-bony Margaret Cho’s EAT ANYTHING YOU DAMN WELL PLEASE diet all year, and it seems to be paying off. Heheheh. I knew I would soon start another effort to eat healthy, so here I am working on my cheeseburger sobriety. To kickstart, I’ve been eating healthy dishes that are delivered locally. It sounds expensive, but it’s really like less than five bucks a meal. Some of it is … well, certainly not what I would eat. (Ever.) But this knocks out all the planning and constant choices required to challenge my evil ways, plus it severs our habit of eating out most days. When I soon have that last long stare at couscous with unnamed red and green bumps, I hope to be inspired to get back to my pots and pans, sans butter and cream.

Upon stirring in the mornings, I am still surprised I cannot sense Wheezie’s lump of warmth next to me. When my half-open eyes spied her ridiculously tiny, fluffy, pink sweater hanging out my drawer, I was overcome with wracking sobs. Wheezie was just such a happy little thing, such a gift to my heart. I saved a scrap of her soft blankie I tucked around her warm body in a homemade shoebox coffin. Strange how life lives in the eyes. And I need to go pick up her ashes… but for what? Our little dog Chuy is inconsolable. We adopted his nuerotic little butt from a dog rescue. His sad, sad, sad tin cup has always been dented and half empty, but now the poor boy will hardly eat. He cries day and night. I understand. I miss my baby more than anyone could ever know.

Relatives of some friends have a Chihuahua who delivered a litter the very morning Wheezie died. They offered to give me a baby boy. Nothing makes a crusty ol’ Daddy’s heart smile more than puppy breath, but I am uncertain if I am ready to mix joy with sorrow and loss. Puppy/Death. Those don’t even belong in the same paragraph. Kismet or a straw vote?

I think I might have made a friend. An amazing friend I have been stalking for a long while. I have NO clue how to go about closing these deals. Usually friends pick me, and then it takes me awhile to figure out why they are following me around. This beautiful, elegant man’s world seems so different than mine, even though we have so much in common. My class stuff feels awkward. He came up behind me in a hushed, upscale art museum weeks ago and I hollered, “Well, HEY Motherfucker!!!!” LOL But he is a decorator! And hugely creative! And he has such great passion for life! And his house is like… a-a-a painting! And he is funny and sweet! And he has been with his husband for 25 years! And I adore him! Before we left his house yesterday, he turned around thoughtfully and said, “We should go to an auction sometime, Rhon” as he flitted his oh-so-queer hand toward Christine. “Without her.” (!!!) Soooo. What. Now I just call him and talk about the weather? Talk about fabric swatches? I am sure he kinda likes me, but gay boys are so damn aloof. And I am so… not.

Well. It is time. Time for me to start this remodel of the kitchen and back office. I have been planning it and putting it on hold for so long, now I can hardly visualize sledgehammers actually swinging. I have to finish crunching code on some $$$ related web sites before I begin the remodel. I sizzle with the initial vision and creative burst. That is the way I have always worked. And played. And dreamed. Beyond my own blueprint, I *really* have to chain myself to the invariable monotony of fruition. Hate the exhaustion it brings. The good news is… the project is marching home like a soldier. A soldier ankle deep in mud with walking papers. Heave-ho and back to work!

Cathartic for me to organize my thoughts, but bless you if you got this far.

Hope your day is sweet.

PS I have a faraway friend who is not well. If you are reading this, please know I have always treasured your warm eyes and gentle spirit. I WILL snatch time to know you more. So get well, little lamb. We are thinking of you.

Everyday Élan Vital | No Comments »

Donald Rumsfeld is giving the President his daily briefing. He concludes by saying: “Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed.”

“OH NO!” Bush exclaims. “That’s terrible!”

His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sits, head in hands.

Finally, the President looks up and asks, “How many is a brazillion?”

Satire & Silliness | No Comments »

• I had a job at a bait camp when I was 8 or 9, and I spent several summers pulling the heads off of shrimp while looking out over the Gulf of Mexico. (I loved it.)

• I practically broke a bone a year until I was about 13. My brothers did too,
  but we had pride in being hellions. I also hit my neighbor’s house with a sledgehammer and knocked half the bricks off one side.

• Favorite artists: Mark Tansey, Caravaggio, Joel-Peter Witkin

• I love ventriloquist dummies, especially old ones, and those were my favorite toys growing up. (I know they’re eerie, but that’s not why I love them.)

• I filter most of human history and the evolution of modern thinking through the influence of art and period styles.

• I could probably open my h.s yearbook right now and know the full name of almost
  every face in it, but I have scraps all over my desk because my short term memory is… gone.

• I can spend hours at the bookstore café alone with a stack of magazines, reading for
  free and jotting down things that inspire me.

• I have always had an interest in misfits: sideshow freaks, raging lost girls, criminals, suicidal poets, kooks and the like. Big surprise, eh.

• I love pre-40’s mundane mementos — things that weren’t meant to last but once held
  meaning for someone now forgotten: photographs, yearbooks, scrapbooks, church recipe books, old newspaper clippings and ads etc.

• As a documentary of my own history, I relish the depression-era photos from the Farm
  Security Administration and the WPA (Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn). My grandparents were sharecroppers who picked cotton.

The Saga of Swagger, Everyday Élan Vital | No Comments »

Everyday Élan Vital | No Comments »

Uhg. I am watching Maury Povich in the background and he is having a show about obese young children. They had the kids all come out one by one wearing no shirts and red shorts jerked under their bellies while their most of their parents cried and talked about them like they weren’t there. They ran a tape of this one cute little fat girl joyously running and playing in her yard at home. You could tell from looking at her eyes, the child was sensitive and smart, but she had this quiet insecure “please don’t hurt me” thing around other kids. So she comes down the steps onto the set wearing the big red shorts jerked down under her belly and a tiny sports bra bunched all under her arms. When the audience groaned, she put her head down and had to walk over to her Mom, who was bawling about the terrible situation they were dealing with. Then she looked around at all the other fat kids on the stage and realized she had been set up. That “fat” thing again. The little girl was mortified. She is six years old. That just broke my heart.

You know they have to pretend like there is some humanity behind all of this. A balding old guy with a beaked nose shakes his bony finger and sternly assures the parents: “This is not a lost cause. If they are begging you for food, take them to the ER and let them cry there!”

Are these parents going to tell their children, “Hey baby, remember when you were on tv? Let’s watch the video again!”

Everyday Élan Vital | No Comments »

Isn’t it weird how when someone dies, you have this horrible guilt with no justification?

When my dad was in a nursing home like 20 years ago, I clipped his toenails and gave him a haircut. A year later he lost his leg due to the terrible shape of the circulation in his lower extremities, and then went downhill quickly in the years that followed until he finally died. I just knew I had clipped one of his nails too short and killed the man. For years, every time my dad would cross my mind, I would feel a crushing guilt which kept me from remembering my dad when he was alive and healthy.

One morning not long ago, the thought entered my head as soon as I woke up. “I killed my dad.” Suddenly I realized how ridiculous that notion was and just told the voice in my head to SHUT THE FUCK UP. Forgive myself for the way the world works. It was not my fault.

Since my little dog Wheezie passed away last week, I have been having awful feelings of accountability. I know I took good care of her and always followed up on visits concerning her enlarged heart. Her heart ruptured suddenly, and I realize there was nothing I could have done to save her.

What is nagging me, however, is wondering if she could feel me in those last hours. She struggled with her dying all night. As hard as it was hard to watch, I laid with her and did all I could to comfort her through the night. At one point, I fell asleep next to her for about an hour. I felt her try to jump down from the bed, probably to go outside to pee, bless her heart. I jerked awake to hold her again because I wanted more than anything to be there for her, no matter how my heart was breaking, no matter the clock. About an hour and a half later, she finally died in my arms. I can’t stop questioning whether or not she was still conscious enough to know I was holding her the moment her heart stopped. Did I do all I could, or did she feel alone in her passing afterall? Did she feel abandoned by her daddy in that hour I slept while she lay suffering alone?

I realize it is irrational. Is it simply ego’s haunt? Guilt because, at the moment, I am still here?

I am sure in time I will work her death through my mind and be at peace with my memories. But I was wondering if I am the only who carries such personal remorse when someone dies? Man. I don’t want to carry this heavy heart pang every time Wheezie crosses my mind. I want to remember her tags jingling and her happy-happy tail wagging while she followed me around the house. How can a house suddenly seem so quiet with the absence of one four pound deaf Chihuahua?

And I am doing ok, since so many of my friends have asked. My other Chihuahua Chuy is a wreck, and I am findng solace in comforting the boy. I imagine he will now get two doses of daily love since my angel is gone.

Ah well. Back to work.

Everyday Élan Vital, Highlights | No Comments »

Does anyone remember the repulsing horror that was “goatse”? It is an infamous old internet shocker from waaaay, waaaay back showing a photo of some nasty mofo spreading his anus in a TRULY disgusting fashion. The photo became legendary and “goatse” became a insulting name old-school geeks call newbies.

WARNING: THE PHOTO IS *INCREDIBLY* DISTURBING AND SoooOOOoOOooO NOT WORK SAFE.

If you only like Care Bears and rainbow unicorns, NO CLICKY NO CLICKY!!

Old news: Here is the “goatse” photo, and don’t say you weren’t warned….
http://goatse.ca/
New news: This dood made a rude project of photographing the expressions on friend’s faces the first time they viewed goatse and posted it on Flickr…

BAHAHA! Even Ron Jeremy was disgusted~

Satire & Silliness, Linkage | No Comments »

HoLy rOseS, Batman!

I was just fucking exhausted with sadness as well as sleep deprived from staying up all night while my little dog passed away. So Chris and I napped a good part the day. I woke up amazed that *41* people had written condolences on my online LJ memorial about Wheezie. That brought us so much comfort. Then I went out my front door and discovered that while I was sleeping, delivery people were lining FLOWERS down the front porch! LOL No lie! They totally cover my buffet. This cheered me so much, I just laughed and laughed and am still smiling.

Good people, ya’ll fucking *rock*.

I was thinking… damn… some people don’t have as many folks at their funeral, yanno, much less that many beautiful flowers!!!

Thanks to sweet, caring friends for reaching out with words and flowers in honor my little one. Ya’ll made a sad day so incredibly bright here at the Love Shack.

Everyday Élan Vital | No Comments »

Little Wheezie died in my arms at dawn.

Thank you for all the blessings you showed me,
my sweet tiny angel.
Daddy will miss you always.

The Saga of Swagger, Everyday Élan Vital | 1 Comment »

Well, I stayed up most of the night with my very sick little dog and held her against my chest all this afternoon as she napped. I was certain every breath was surely her last. Wheeze is definitely gravely ill, but I be damned!… just when I sense her labored breathing has ended and her broken little heart has stopped galloping, that little one will stir and give me kisses! LOL Tried to eat Daddy’s chicken sammich, too. She’s kinda high on valium, but ain’t nothing wrong with feeling good while you are alive, I say. I don’t know what will happen tonight or tomorrow or whenever, but it sure has been a blessing spending time with my Wheezie today. Smellin’ her stinkie doggie-ness, kissing her cheek, feeling her warmth as we lay as close as we always have. Delight seeing those Dorito ears alert and those biggo eyes still looking at me with love. Such happiness and hope over a damned pinch of chicken! If only for the moment. I’ll take it.

Hope everyone is well.

Everyday Élan Vital | No Comments »