Things that could go wrong at our wedding:

1. S.S. shows up, objects during ceremony
2. Andrea decides to arrange all flowers herself
3. S.C. dies of acute ganache overdose
4. Dads collectively get mad at not being able to give away daughters, go bowling together
5. Rings lost by Nevada, ring bearer cat
6. Giblets poops on everyone in flower bunny promenade
7. Andrea's dress splits across the ass while walking down the aisle
8. Andrea gets her period, stains the dress
9. Andrea runs out of ativan 3 days before the wedding
10. Dad insists upon slideshow of naked baby pictures of A
11. Aunt Joan
12. Tsunami
13. Heat stroke attack during ceremony, death count: 5
14. Stephen doesn't show up because he went on a date
15. Katie contracts rabies, tries to eat Andrea
16. Omar & Gabe sneak off to hook up
17. Between Omar, Stephen, Matt & Gabe, major altercations in type of attire.  Stephen insists upon wearing shorts, Matt wants a cummerbund, Gabe prefers a bow tie, Matt vetoes, Omar wants to wear green and bring his dog Darla
18. Katie pre-orders tuxedo, upon arrival it is lavender and tent-sized.
19. Pregnancy
20. Andrea's heels are too tall, she falls into cake.  S.C. cries.
21. Bridesmaids organize bachelerette party involving Lynn Breedlove jumping out of a cake and us getting matching tattoos of each other's faces.
22. Jai and Vinnie Greenpeace show up demanding their Victoria's Secret catalogs
23. Caterer screws up,  makes only vegan food.
24. The only location we're able to book is cowshwitz
25. Bouquet is thrown, caught by Stephen's father
26. Caterer screws up, serves ez-shatter plastic utensils, someone gets shanked.
27. Ipod death, no dancing
28. Location screws up, thought we were the clown theme wedding
29. Performance art act hired by Stephen offends all guests over 35
30. Our mother decide to do a celebratory dance wearing seashell bras.
31. Our parents get along a little too well - swappage.
32. Awkward inter-familial drunkenness
33. Single guests hook up after too much champagne
34. Nobody dances
35. Everybody dances, party goes overtime, costs $2,000 extra.
36. Honeymoon switcharoo ends us in Tahoe Inn

Blogger's block?  Really?  This is part and parcel of over-thinking things, methinks.  Last night I regretfully missed the Mommy Mommy reading, but ended the evening making cinammon buns.  Trying to write as usual, amid a flurry of time-wasting activities.  I started a livejournal on Katie's urgings, but after the initial fun of setup I've returned to the good old faithful blog.

Ways in which I waste time:

1. pacing
2. arguing about things on my support group website
3. dithering about format vs. generating content
4. watching charm school reruns
5. housework (this is not actually a waste, more of a distraction)
6. looking at trashy gossip blogs like dlisted.
7. staring into space

Wow, this list could really go on for quite a while. Filling in units of space with letters, numbers.  The heat is on finally, filling the room with soft buzzing.

{takes nap}

(returns)

In sleep, projects take shape.  I wake up and they are gone.  Outside the freeway runs, the lake shimmers, palm trees wait.

So we just got back from the urgent care, where the wuzh got her ear looked at.  For some reason it took three hours, so here we are back at home with the rain pouring down, about to make linguine carbonara.  All I can say is YUM.

All there is in my stomach is coffee, fudgy grahams, and a lot of rain. 

One of the techniques I've been thinking about was in The Other Hollywood: The uncensored oral history of the porn film industry, and involved using different oral testimonies to tell increasingly interlocking and compelling stories.  I stayed up till 6 am one night reading it, simply fascinated by the fact that it was all true, and primary source material.  Paragraphs from different voices, layering together to tell the stories.

Katie and I experimented a little bit with taking a story she had written about the two of us, and me adding in my viewpoint in alternating paragraphs.  It was a fun exercise, and I should really finish my portion.

I think the Ocho Y Media project, for which (other to do list) I have to fill out an interview, is projected to form a similar oral history formatted narrative.

To do lists, aie.  I saw Stephen Van Dyck perform at Sea and Space the other day, and he read from his worry list.  I'm fascinated by lists, making them, reading them, the different types of lists, etc...

What would my worry list be:

• getting mugged walking around echo park
• never leaving the house as I have no car now
• slipping on wet steps and losing my front teeth
• running out of ativan and not being able to get more
• the car eating the bunny
• the rats dying of depression

Hmmm...that's about it.

A few things I am excited about right now:

1. these tumblers with bees that were an engagement gift, now filled with sweet tea vodka.
2. the fact that Katie just said, "Nevada, stop giving yourself cattilingus in front of everyone."
3. The book  The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored oral history of the porn film industry by Legs McNeil and Jennifer Osbourne.
4. Katie and Nikki's thesis reading, which was tonight, and which was really really good
5. Kara Murphy's new blog, I Love it, SF.
6. The fact that not having a car will force me to get lots of exercise and hopefully become that lithe little minx I used to be.

Well, tequila is a harsh mistress, apparently.  And drunkblogging not exactly the best method of articulation.  Things found behind monitor: kitten, earring.

Today my car has a flat tire, Katie is at school all day, and I am stuck at home.  Perhaps this is a good opportunity to force myself to write.  Or to cheer up.  It's 9:30 am and I've already had pills and two cups of coffee, so this is about as good as it gets moodwise.

How about a list of funny blogs that I look at:

• texts from last night
• postcards from yo mamma
• regretsy
• unhappy hipsters
• vice do's and don't's

 Le sigh.   The day wears on, I carry glasses to the sink, shower, take out the trash.  The world moves beyond the window, I watch it, slowly, slowly.  Listen to old music and consider.

This post is brought to you by margaritas, thanks to Myke.  I am trying an experiment in, well, not drunkblogging, but tipsyblogging.  Katie is finishing up her homework, and I am bemoaning the fact that the Washington Blvd Concert blog seems to have been eaten by spam and shut down by the blogger gods.  While this is perhaps a tempest in an innertubes teapot, the concert long-over, it just seems a pity that all of that interesting documentation is erased.

The negative factors currently at play

1. I have a flat tire
2. I really can't put off the food stamp office any longer
3. I have to make an appointment at the free clinic to find out if I have face cancer.  wheee!!!
4. My grandmother told me she didn't approve of gay marriage....I'm engaged to a lady.

The positive factors:

1.  Katie is amazingly beautiful
2. Vanessa Place reviewed the poetic duo in The Constant Critic
3.  Hot glue-gunned myself some new typewriter-key earrings
4. Omar is back from London
5. Disability check arrives tomorrow
6. Don't have to do taxes this year

And the other most up and down factor is that I seem to have put on quite a few extra pounds in the last few months.  I'm considering going back on wellbutrin (as opposed to lexapro, my current anti-depressant), as it made me super-thin.  Curses to these beauty standards and all that, but, really, I can't help remembering little cocaine-addled size zero me, and considering that I'm now a size 12.  I would like a healthy avenue to being somewhere in between there.

I am bearing the consequences of yesterday's manic burst.  Not in receipts and expenditures, but is having whacked my back out in moving.  So enthusiastic I get when something needs to be done.  Katie asked me why I was rushing things - I said, "Our lease starts today, it's 9 am, I'm moving things in!"  After one car load, up the winding hills to our sweet cul-de-sac, I came back, took half an ativan, and crashed out in bed next to her.

But it was not over yet.  I got up, three-ish, loaded the car again, and set off.  This time it was mostly clothes in trash bags, pillows, light enough.  The challenge was is figuring out the curtain rods - I think I broke one in the process.  Screwed in the crystal knobs we had bought for the hutch in the breakfast nook...library cards works as a screwdriver in a pinch.  As the sunset faded over Echo Park lake, the shimmering lights of downtown to clear beyond the window, I was seduced by the light and stayed.  Fiddling with what I could put away, fiddling with the shower curtain, emptying trash cans.

I love being domestic.  I think this comes from periods in my late twenties and early thirties where I either lived in crackden filthy apartments, with my parents, in the dorms, basically places that weren't mine to tend.  Since Katie and I have been living together, our dual domesticity meshes and encourages each other.  Call it nesting.  I want to cook her beautiful meals, and have our shared space be clean and full of light.  Hanging the white eyelet curtains in the living room, so that the rooftop (Mary-Poppinsish) was concealed in a lacy blur, I was happy.

When I really could not fiddle any more, I went looking for my car.  Up and down the unfamiliar streets with voices behind barred windows, barking, the afterglow of purple on the horizon, barking dogs.  I pulled the little suitcase full of plastic bags, dorky glasses on, like some sort of lost tourist.

When I finally got home, Katie answered the door in my plaid smock.  "Where were you?  We have Mrs. Porters."

Aie.  I wanted to go, it is this literary salon put on by Les Figues Press, an evening gathering of women. I lay on the couch in a stupor, wrapped in a quilt.  Worn out like a dishrag.  "Let's do it, come on."  "Ok."

So we primped and went, and it ended up well worth it.  I am really grateful to the Les Figues ladies for organizing and propagating women's writing.  I brought the poetic duo, and Katie brought an ekphrastic piece she was doing, also, for valeveil.

What I remember most, this next morning, as my bones pop and crack and I wish I had not carried quite so many boxes so enthusiastically, was the discussion of lists.  I have been working in the list format for quite some time, mostly as a humorous exercise, a fun, silly thing, but the post-sharing discussion scrutinized the form and made me see it in a more serious light. The authoritative voice that a list lends the reader, the possibility of reordering the points and it still being valid, the possibility that every list is a story, a narrative, but perhaps a non-linear one.  From Matias Viegener's 25 Random Things About Me series I remember the emphasis on on opposition of each line from the next. From the lists the zine "General Wuzhery", there is more an emphasis on building, one point to the next, variations upon the same beginning....but then a numbered line that diverts the narrative elsewhere.

The list is a form that both frees and limits.  How long can the the list be, and still be interesting.  It is a self-limiting form.  But the process of randomness eliminates the narrative demand for defined connections between each line, and opens up the structure for shock and wonder.

It's 2010 y'all!!!  And I suppose it's time for new years resolutions, although I have already failed at my first and most drastic.  New years eve involved absinthe, new gallery openings, kisses and the obligatory *secret someone* barfing out of the car window.  We won't say who.

Either way, it was jolly good fun, and now for the resolutions.  So tidy they seemed on the 31st, and now on the third so frayed.

1. Master Cleanse:  Obvs, this lasted about a day.  The lemonade drink was not bad, but the shitstorm was unpleasant, as was the freak bitchiness that ensued between us.  K and I are usually about as cuddly as it gets, but upon eating nothing but lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne, whole personalities shifted.  I ended up deciding it might unbalance my meds, and ate a steak.
2. Make some headway on my book: As it's the third, this has not happened yet, but here's hoping.
   
3. Get fewer parking tickets.
4. Find fabulous new apartment with my love: I am making good progress on this one.  We looked  at a nice, roomy one bedroom on sunset, near Cafe Tropical and it had the added bonus of wall-painting encouraged.  We really have not made enough trips to Home Depot, methinks. Now's the time.  This morning we're looking at a place with a study (!!!) the veritable room of one's own, also very encouraging.

That was it, I only had four.  They say (and who's they?  the intarwebz?)  Apparently that's where I get my information.  They say make the resolutions small and achievable, so that you don't feel horrible by valentine's day.

Back in Los Angeles after a whirlwind trip to San Diego and Reno. Whirlwind makes it sound a bit more fabulous than it was, though it was what is was, and very nice.  On the plane back, I made a list of points of interest noticed during the trip.  It is as follows:

1. Planes, trains and automobiles - all taken in five day span.
   
2. Father, age 64, is amusingly bemused by technology, i.e. has an iphone yet struggles with making it perform basic apps, dropped his blackberry in the loo, currently takes as long to focus the digital camera as he used to in Christmases past, when he would line us up in little rows and then squint and fiddle for several minutes per shot..
   
3. Family is just as alcoholic as I remembered.  I had a resolution to not get blazingly wasted as I had on the last two Christmases, and to accomplish this by drinking only Pelligrino.  Mums had brought bottles of it in an effort of support.  However, after a 12 hour drive, screaming yet adorable children, and the simple fact that my family ties it on around the holidays, I moderated the resolution to just drink less than everyone else.  This worked.
   
4. Cousin L has smoked weed with her parents.
5. Cousin L's boyfriend has a red beard and talks very little, except after a few beers.
6. Cousin L took me to a fun dive bar after Christmas dinner.
   
7. Mother micromanages her sister the same way she micromanages me.  Watching the two of them in the kitchen, I really realized that it's not that something is at fault with me, it's just the way she is.
8. Cousin L and I have both considered moving back to Reno if family properties were available.
9. Little nephew is very well-behaved for four.  Best moment - when he exclaimed on Christmas morning, "this is very cool!"
10. Grandma came to Christmas dinner in a pink angora sweater with beads, and lots of baubles and rings.  She borrowed my lipgloss. She is adorable.
11. Yorkshire pudding = not so good
12. Prime rib = real good, y'all
13. Cousin L attributes her weight gain to Seroquel and other medications, I concur with mine.   Dammit Lamictal.
14. Mother called me overweight, then denied it when I brought it up later.  She may have been right.  But I was irate, at the time, which I regret now, I don't like to yell at my mother.
15. Skymall has a device where you can make phonecalls underwater.
16. The best gift I recieved was a new computer monitor to replace my decade-old-one.
17. The "worst" - paper clips, although I will use them quite often.

And, that's all she wrote.

Lists! Lists! Insufferably compulsive lists!

I got this one from Miss K, who is sleeping angelically in the other room

A - Age: 32
B - Bed size: double extra-creaky, belonging to my dearly departed grandmother.
C - Chore you hate: cockroach slaying and dead cockroach picker-upping
D - Dog's name: no dog, only rats
E - Essential start your day item: pills!
F - Favorite color(s): black and red
G - Gold or Silver: Gold
H - Height: 5'4"
I - Instruments you play: keyboards now, formerly guitar, drums, piano, flute
J - Job title: writer, shiftless layabout, self-indulgent alcoholic, disabled veteran of the MFA riots of '08
K - Kid(s): not responsible enough to deal. Between rabies, scabies, or babies, I pick the second.
L - Living arrangements: two-bedroom in NoHo Arts District with awesome roommate
M - Mom's name: Ellen
N - Nicknames: Angie, Bunny, Wuzh
O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: psych ward 2x
P - Pet Peeves: Costco, ativan withdrawals, having a PC from 2000 that can't do all the fun tricks, poverty, eggnog vomit
Q - Quote from a movie: "I kicked pills, booze, and the funny farm, I don't need anybody or anything." Patty Duke, Valley of the Dolls
R - Right or left handed: right
S - Siblings: sister in Portland, brother/cousin in Manhattan
T - Time you wake up: Anywhere from 5 to 9 am. I like writing in the early morning when it's quiet and there are no distractions. Distractions like list memes, which I suppose are up there with those facebook 25 things things in pointless narcissism.
"My narcissism is like an igloo, it warms me from the inside," Sarah Scott.
U - Underwear: On the floor at the moment.
V - Vegetable you dislike: rhubarb
W - Workout style: nonexistent
X - X-rays you've had: teeth, feet
Y - Yesterday's best moment: Christine Wertheim's reading
Z - Zoo favorite: oranguatangs

That felt really good. Really good. I was looking back over this and realized that a few entries ago I was on bliss farm. It's called Ativan. It's a great medication. Every month I run out of it, and the real weight (I can't bring myself to say weight of the world, It's the CalArts talking) I don't know, I crash really badly and hear voices for a bit and get really cranky. This time I accidentally took too many when I was going to my grandmother's funeral, which involved a lot of extended parent time, including a 10 hour car ride with them on the way back home.

Here's a few others for the list, it's really satisfying to complain right now, and I'm awake, so why not. These are more trivial. They are also less obvious. Wow, that's obvious.

1. Blogs with ads all over the sidebars.

2. The fact that my mental health office is so overwhelmed that they have 400 people and two psychiatrists, so I see him for 10 minutes every 2-4 months. During which time he throws pills at me (thanks!!!) and is notably absent if they backfire.

3. The fact that I'm so overwhelmed by living (and the clutter in my apartment, which is getting really gross) and a number of other things that it's immobilizing, and instead I pop pills and complain.

4. Lights going out in my apartment. Wow, it's darker. And I wonder why I can't/don't read books anymore and instead read internettery obsessively.

5. I was thinking about all of this overwhelmed feeling, my difficulty with cleaning or sometimes leaving my apartment, and traced some of it back to my parent's impossibly high expectations of me. From youth through high school, I excelled, gifted program, lala, straight As, won awards, driven, all that, blew it out early, and then I went to college and had a nervous breakdown. All that schizophrenia and bipolar in the family, that has popped up all over since, came bursting out. Now, a decade later, I've actually accomplished some of the big things I wanted to do, but somehow for them it's not enough.

My father's father (schizophrenic) used to sit him on his knee and say, "don't end up like me, get an education, get ahead in life." And so he'll sit down and check off how many children of our generation have doctorates. It was his big dream to have his daughters get married, have kids, get PhDs, have great jobs, etc.. etc...

Well, I'm never going to do those things. There would be absolutely no point to me getting in more student loan debt. I'm fundamentally unemployable. I don't play well in groups. The economy is in free-fall. I barely made it through my masters. I'm done.

Anyway, he projects onto me his wishes and expectations for the life he wanted me to have, and he's a good and kind man and all that, but...it's so unrealistic. My mother, too, she's great, but she has this whole idea for how I was supposed to turn out, and I didn't. And they love reminding me of how I'm failing.

Anyway, Ativan is great. It really helped me get through that car ride. Thinking about my parents expectations is really depressing. I should probably save it for therapy. But wait...I'm not in therapy.

For some reason I've had a lot of trouble getting myself to sit down and write. Anything. To the point that I feel ridiculous calling myself a writer. It feels so pretentious, really, but it's a nicer catch-all identity than eccentric deadbeat who has given up on life and needs a kick in the ass to... to... do any number of things. Finally today I sat down and made a list of things that had been bothering me that felt so obvious they were not recognizable to someone.

WTF???

1. Obviously...Scientology is a creepy cult! I went walking in Hollywood today, and, like anywhere else in LA, there was a giant, ridiculously opulent Scientology building.

2. O...hai, i'z in yr list.

3. Obviously...private student loans, I'm the wrong person to prop up your collapsing economy, I have a degenerative brain disorder. I'm mentally ill. I don't know where that money is going to come from. This one because I realize now that it's become my hobby, getting mouthy and overly personal with student loan people, namely those that call about the ridiculously desperate private loan I took out to go to CalArts. The federal people, bless-em, have this wonderful ability to defer endlessly, but this bank...wow, you only have a year's deferment...wow, I have to fill out a form that explains how it's all going to change in a year...I owe you ungodly thousands of dollars...DEGENERATIVE BRAIN DISORDER!!! It makes me feel like one of those lonely elderly people that get all excited when someone calls them, and then get all chatty with the telemarketers. It's in fact, very much the same. But, in a sense, I don't know what else to say. This brings up all these issues of making bipolar disorder my identity...my mother would say "leaning on it." But, then again, I'm on disability, I'm living on a very tight budget right now, and, really, I feel amazingly lucky that I still have my apartment, I will live on crackers to keep it, but, WTF CITIBANK???

Oh, by the way, thanks for the amazing education. I now plan to sit on it and let my brain turn to slush.

4. Obviously...website + rats (does not equal) small business. It used to be amusing when I got these sales calls. It's not anymore. No, I don't want to promote my small business. No, my employees don't need anything. They eat birdseed. Okay.

5. Obviously...guy that chased us off that mall-ish courtyard by the Kodak theatre today. No, I'm not impressed by you sticking your face in the fountain. Please stop chasing me. This sort of shenanigans makes me so glad that I'm the sort of orderly mentally ill person that does not harass strangers on the street. Take away my funding and the vault of pills...might get there. I love making idle threats to the internet.

6. Obviously...Seagrams has all the gross vodka flavors. Wild grape? Espresso? (this is sort of like caffeinated Cisco...danger) Blackberry? Is Nyquil far behind? Did you play tennis with the guy from Smirnoff and lose?

7. Obviously...Tegretol is not helpful. I'm not making foolish manic decisions, but it's yet another Faustian bargain, of taking it before I go to bed and waking up in cold sweats of four foot tall cockroaches chasing me as I vomit sardines and wake up in a sweater dress caked with my own feces, only to wake up again and realize...yes, this happens every time I take it before bed... Or, alternately, taking it in the midafternoon and feeling like I've been lobotomized and being socially retarded for the rest of the evening, only to realize, well, it's an anticonvulsant, so if I go off of it, I'll have seizures. Fantastic.

8. Obviously...cockroach problem is not eliminated.

things they might have been filming last night

• rock of love
• alcohol commercial
• straight to DVD movie starring David Hasselhoff
• low-budget porn
• tourism ad for neighborhood boosting committee
• educational anti-drunk driving video
• advertisement for American Apparel's "black T"

fashions I regret wearing

• pants so low they reveal panties
• thongs
• severely assymmetrical bobs
• bizarre ear-like hairdos
• shoulder pads
• slouch socks
• wearing star stickers on my face
• drawing a star on my hand every day
  
• star tattoos
• grandmother's petticoats
• pants with hangy straps
• scarf around head
• bra-strap headband
• piles of spikes
• bracelets up arm
• emo boys as accessories

Halloween costumes expected this year

• all manner of slutty animals
• flappers
• conceptual art concepts
• boll weevil
• unicorn
• two-person horse
• Sarah Palin
• fried egg a la Gwen Stephani
• more Sarah Palin

okay, enough lists for now.

taking suggestions for other ways to occupy time.

please don't actually email me.

oh, and it's wizard rock, a.k.a wrock. the wizardcore thing. ain't the internet grand?

today I will blog more lists. just because.

things that might have happened at the party after we left:

• S got dry-humped
• more women showed up
• more drawing
• actual teachers
• R forced to leave due to cat
• punch overruled by guests
• makeout party?
• mysterious naked guest
• people got more booze
• someone had a flashback
• people brought actual giraffes
• more penises were drawn/illustrated/shown
• chuck norris showed up and denied accusations
• actual preschoolers showed up and ate the sandwiches
• preshooler alcohol poisoning due to punch
• adult guests poisoned by kool-aid
• someone shows up with I [heart] lord buddha punch, subsequent group psychosis

slang that we're glad is gone

• let's bounce
• rad
• calling oneself a punk name...i.e. johnny waistcoat
• indie meaning anything at all
• bicurious
• fo shizzle
• that's wack
• dope
• hype
• doh
• bad
• collect my pee
• sick
• wizardcore
• j-lo nicknames

things that will be gone soon (?):

• blogs
• skinny jeans
• indie
• irony
• hipsters
• vice magazine
• american apparel
• crocs
• uggs
• croc-uggs (ugh!)
  
• bicuriousness
• tiny dogs

off to google wizardcore, more later (brb lolz!)

Euphemisms for clothes-changing disorder

• narcissism
• indecisiveness
• desire to be utmost prepared for any given situation

whimsical disorders

• clothes-changing
• circular logic
• making everything self-referential
• compulsive need to alphabetize things
• inadvertent lowercasing
  

things we've thrown away that we wish we hadn't

• tapes
• clothing
• love - esp, wtf of dumping guy who gave me stuffed animal from carnival when I was 18.
• zine box
• my ego
• hope!
• my innocence!
• a chance at a normal life

evil/friendly yet still nefarious plots

• put on haunted house record at random times
• let rats loose with mate...rat summer of love
• nasty rumors
• mcgyver-esque machinery
• surprise haircut
• surprise laundry throwing
• squawk. with box
• make someone think they are shrinking
• chemistry experiment gone "wrong"
• stealing punchlines relentlessly
• inconvenient dyslexia
• convince someone they are turning emo
• fake prom queen, with or without pigs blood
• gigantic Disney phantasmical show aimed at pointing out someone's flaws
• taking hostages
• taking the three of clubs, the seven of spades, and blackjack!
• stealing all of someone's shoes
• serving someone a meal that is not what you say it is, but is actually poison, something they're allergic to, and/or human.
• making someone play soccer