My attempt at Katie's Dulce de Leche cake came out looking more like this:
Yet was quite delicious  Not a crumb remained the next morning, when I awoke from my drunken stupor.  Yes, I overindulged a bit in the vodka department, too much stress over too many commitments, a day spent cooking from dawn till dusk, washing sink after sink of dishes, the tension of entertaining when one must put on the bright face of happy house.  We are happy here, in the happy house, and it is true, we are.

But there are those moments when I drop my lipstick and take an extra Lorazepam just to make it through the party.  Perhaps we have been entertaining overmuch.  It is the mania, and it is the hypomania.  Bipolar disorder plays tricks, it plays the trick of , "I'm normal," and the trick of, 'If I take my pills I'm just like everyone else and everything will be normal."  And in many ways, on many levels, I act like and have the capacities of a normal 33 year old woman.  Who hasn't worked in three years.  And who hears voices on the north side of the apartment.  Who will clean the apartment loyally and not leave it until 3 pm each day.  Who thinks her mail is being stolen when it doesn't show up.  Who checks the mail seven times a day. Who takes five pills a day.  Who is a lesbian.  Who has paranoid delusions.  There are many reasons that I am and am not quite as others.

I am working on an novel and it is difficult as always.  Featherless is coming along more successfully.  We are quite excited for August's lineup of poets, which will be announced at the beginning of the month.  There is talk of a combined reality institute and featherless happening, a date has not yet been set for this, it is in the very nebulous planning stages.  I am finding that I really enjoy setting up and holding events.  It is exciting  to watch each one take shape, as we gather the writers and the bartender and door people and frantically run around the day off with veggie trays and then in a warm wash of light it all comes together, in Brenda's beautiful Wordspace.

 

It's the day of Katie's birthday party today.  I am preparing myself to make this cake.

Dulce de Leche with Caramel Buttercream, which, as I am more of a savory cook than a baking cook, will be a bit of an adventure, but I will do it for the wuzh.  Actual results will, assuredly, vary widely from this picture.

A week ago I stuck two Q-tips in my ears, trying to clean them....not, as I thought later might have been a subconscious motivation....to stop the little voices that I hear when on the north side of the house.  Either way, I was deaf for a few days.  My hearing has gradually come back, assisted by an "earwax removal kit" that I got at Walgreens.  This is all very gross and probably not blogworthy.  But I have been half-deaf lately, and fearing for my hearing.  This affects how loudly I speak, too.  I do not know if  I am whispering or shouting.

We had Mrs. Porters here at the Treehouse, it was lovely.  Eleven ladies, much writing, we had just enough chairs.  I had regrets only that I could not project my voice enough, or, more specifically, I could not gauge if I was speaking loud enough, and many could not hear me, when it was my turn to read.  It was a hot night, here in Echo Park, and we had not yet installed the a/c, so everyone was drooping, in their chairs, arrayed in our small living room, listening and talking, to the pring of the bingo call.  The other regret, that the a/c was not installed sooner.

Yes, the heat wave, yes, the air conditioner turkey circus. (turkey circus is my new phrase for clusterfuck).  The heat wave has passed for the moment, it's a kind 73 as I write this. But it went up to 97 degrees and we found ourselves in Best Buy overextending the finances.  It was to be delivered yesterday, and then it was out of stock, and then a series of contradictory phone calls, I got my "outraged consumer" face on and we marched down to that blinding blue monolith only to be told it would be delivered next Friday.  Next friday.  Well.  I certainly hope it is steamy, nay, scorching in August, or else I really am going to feel like a turkey.

 

So I had an amazing birthday.  A bunch of lovely people came, we ate Katie's delicious tiramisu (and Eric's cupcakes) I drank for the first time in a week, and everyone seemed to have a good time.  We tried to play Apples to Apples and that celebrity charades game, but it was a little too chaotic.

For some reason I woke up the next morning around 7-ish.  It's cold, finally, it's finally cold enough to wear sweater dresses (cuddle suits).

So, yesterday was my birthday.  Today is the party.  I awoke at 8:30 this morning, as I tend to do, I'm not sure why.  There is a knot of anxiety in my stomach - I hope it's fun, I hope people come.  It should be small, yet cute.

The anxiety is also due to stress about money, my former roommate is refusing to pay her share of the bills, so I have collections agencies calling me, and of course the student loan peeps.  My social security check is going to be late this month, and the motherfuckers at Wells Fargo won't let me advance any of it.  So I'm in the minus for however long, probably until the 14th.

This is what I hate - sanctimonious bank clerks who act as if it's my moral failing that I'm overdrawn.  You try living off of a disability check and see how well you fare.  For some reason the female ones tend to take a more bitchy-self-righteous attitude.  Did anyone see Drag Me to Hell?  A blonde self-righteous bank clerk wrongs the wrong gypsy.  It was soooo satisfying.

I even looked into monetizing the blog, but then - realized I wouldn't make any real money at that.

Someone, I believe it was Stephen's dad, said something about banks robbing the customers.

Anyway, rant over.

While I can't say how many people have died from excessive reading of Harry Potter, here is a list of people who have died from Lorazepam (Ativan).

• Michael Jackson
• Anna Nicole Smith
• DJ AM

Strangely I only know about famous peeps, as they don't release the lurid details of normal ODs to randoms like me.  But, of these three they each had a veritable pharmicopia of other things in their systems, not just this delicious white pill.

This revelation has led me to try and quit drinking, which is working out reasonably well.  Thanks, lamictal, for making my attempts at social drinking end up with me still sober and headachy, and everyone else loopy loos.

  However, today is my birthday - I'm 33, whee!  Jesus died at 33.  I certainly will not.  I'm feeling pretty good for a no-longer spring chicken.  I remember freaking out when I left my teens.  My thirtieth birthday was such fun, glossed over by calartiness, that I wasn't too upset.  However, today I'm facing adulthood full square in the face.  Yipes.

It's cool, though, really.  I'm enjoying where I'm at right now, if only I could kick the writer's block that steps in front of me, like a fierce Tyra Banks, and says, "what, you're thinking about writing?  how could you, you have nothing good to say!"  So then I blog about my personal life, and everything's ok until the next time I get the urge to write another novel, which I really want/need to do.

But the question, as ever, is what to write it about?  I could just do short pieces until something jells, I suppose?  I recently lost all the data in my external hard drive, I dropped the damn thing....urrrgh.  So unless I retype a bunch of shit, the old fragments I might have cannibalized are gone gone gone.  This makes it seem even weirder.  I looked back on the folder of stuff I'd printed out the last time I got all charged up, and so much of it was shite.

But in other news, I'm going to be reading in "A Day in LA: Washington Blvd Art Concert", on October 11th.  Katie and Omar and I just went driving through Culver City in search of the perfect spot(s) for our readings.  I found a great big blue-poles and glass building called, "Imperial & Wholesale Electric Supply."  It's right next to the river and the intersection of Washington Blvd and La Cienega.  I'll be there from 4:30 - 5:00 pm, with the reading starting at 4:45 pm.

I'm really excited about this.  I haven't read out in public since the Next Words reading when I graduated from CalArts, and that was at least a year ago.  Possibly two.  Time gets weird for me, y'know.

But Katie found an amazing spot, it's an old broken down church.  This spot is so cool that Katie has people asking to share it with her...I think the answer is no.  Katie Katie Katie my lovely girlfriend, yay for her, she's also started a blog, finally seduced by the blogger application.  It's called Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, which means the struggle to come to terms with the past.  That's also the name of her zine, which she will be handing out at this here church around 3:30 pm.

I'm sitting here waiting for darling K to come home from school, defrosting the birthday steaks, drinking coffee that is probably a bad idea.  Oh well, It's my birthday, dammit.