come, take a walking-trip through happiness.

i just spent five bajillion dollars on tickets to see ray davies in a few weeks, because hello in case it is not apparent i am going through a bit of an obsession with him right now. he is my geriatric english dream husband. it is going to suck because i will be ten light years away from the stage and he will probably not play ‘have a cuppa tea’ or ‘big sky’ and it is at the chicago theater so it will be a proper lazy adult concert where you sit and don’t dance which will probably kill me. my boss just came in to brag that he has front row seats for tom petty ooooh big deal dude i would rather watch ray from seat 250ZZZ with binoculars than see tom petty up close. maybe after i see ray’s bald spot in all its shiny sixty three year old glory my crush will be history, leaving me to throw myself into my next 1960s rock star fixation, which will probably be gram parsons. at least he is dead though, and therefore in my mind will never exist without a beautiful mane of shiny brown hair hanging in his eyes.

sigh. english boys!

outside the door i see all these faces, wide eyed and curious peering inside. my hands are shaking, shaking like a blur and my heart is still pounding from running back and forth through the hallways. i fling the door open and with more rage than every before in my life i say, can i help you? there is nothing here of your concern. i wanted to say, GET THE FUCK OUT. you have no stake in these paramedics, my mother lying on the floor, her wrist limp and her eyes glazed over. i have never been so infuriated in my life. what is it that draws people to these things? the sensationalism of the paramedics, the oxygen tank, the stretcher. none of these are for you. turn your eyes away. there is no tragedy here, just the signs of a possibility, but it isn’t your mother or your friend and no one said a thing to me as i sprinted like a gazelle to the front desk to ask the clerk to dial nine one one. no one said anything as i clumsily doused a towel in cold drinking fountain water. in fact, some awful woman even had the gall to bitchily yell, EXCUSE ME, UM EXCUSE ME!! to get the desk clerk’s attention as she dialed the fucking ambulance for me and i tearily explained to the dispatcher what was going on. i keep thanking everyone. my hands again. i press them on the countertop, these plastic atoms that are part of some other world that doesn’t understand mortality. i hear myself say, i am the daughter. i am just the daughter. i was never meant to be the parent, i was not put on this earth to be in charge of any situation, ever, isn’t there always supposed to be someone here for me because i always feel helpless? why are there strangers in the hallway who are trying to get a piece of something for themselves? my anger is always manifested in tears, in sadness, never fury, but i could feel fireworks going off in my eyeballs and my blood pumping infuriation and i could have beat the hell out of them. don’t slow down, don’t crane your necks, don’t frown and furrow your brows with feigned concern. we are talking about my mother, and i will fucking cut a bitch.

last night we got a call from new zealand. i was listening to my ipod and my mom shoved the phone in my face saying: hannah wants to talk to you, and as soon as i said hello her voice came through so happy, the most grown up six year old ever, hi mandy! she told me she is learning a lot and i said, do you have a lot to read? and she replied, almost sheepishly, ‘well actually i like to read.’ i told her that is a good thing, and she explain the books she was going to get when they go to the big city. i could not help myself, she was telling me about the things she misses most about america: her friends, big city burrito, and mongolian barbecue, i started to cry, why are they so far away. she said, ‘would you like it if i sent you a letter?’ and if it was true that my next trip would be to come and see them. why don’t i have the money? i spent my whole lunch hour on airnewzealand.com. i might as well want to travel to the moon for what it costs to fly to dunedin, which is still a two hour drive from their farm. i have the time, the battery on my ipod charged, it is time to throw away my worries about my credit cards and renew my damn passport.

if i ever want to feel much better about my situation in life, i go to a bar in the suburbs and sit there for hours without drinking at all. i could have probably predicted the types of characters we would see there even if i had never been there before, it is the same everywhere. a few old people just sitting at the bar drinking quietly, a bunch of fake tanned striped shirt wearing dudes who probably have names like chet, girls with bad muffin tops who shamelessly flirt with these guys and any others that will devour the attention. i know i am ripping innocent people to shreds here, but it was all a tragic spectacle. they were all having fun, while i was sitting on the stool wearing my coat because i was cold and reading about ‘basic instinct 2′ (whole other story) on my blackberry whenever erin would leave me to go smoke a cig.

but wait, who is this? a mailman, sitting at the end of the bar? holy crap, it is the real life CLIFF CLAVIN. this guy kept staring at me and erin either because he was willing us to make eye contact with him so he could say something to us and we would invite him to join our conversation, or because he was totally wasted. probably a combination of the two. as he finished his last beer, he got up and when he walked past us (he was like two feet away the whole time, so) erin grabbed him and asked his name. because i knew it would be something appropriate. he told her and she shook his hand and told him her name and then said THIS IS MY FRIEND MANDY, thanks a lot dude i already had it planned out in my head that i was gonna tell him my name was connie or something. he went to shake my hand and i had them shoved in my coat pockets and i told him i didn’t want to take them out because it was cold. but really i didn’t want to touch him, what if his misery rubbed off on me? he told us to be good, then shuffled to the door where his coat was hanging and he was so drunk it took him fifteen minutes to put it on and leave. god, he was a wreck, he obviously had friends at the bar but they would come and go and there was some girl who had a tramp stamp that said ‘daisy’ who was doing her best sexy dances to the horrible jukebox music (although props to whoever played ‘fat bottomed girls’ and ‘mother’), throwing her arms over her head and shaking her blonde curls and fawning over some gawky blond kid and cliff clavin gazed at them like he would just die for that kind of attention. i really wish i did not have to scrutinize every person i encounter, life would be so easy if i never wanted to even remotely invest myself in any other human being. i guess i lose, because he probably went home sad because he was heartbroken, and i went home sad because his almost paralyzing loneliness had soaked into my own pores.

addendum: at one point during the night, erin was like ‘let’s have an intellectual conversation. who do you think is the greatest writer of all time?’ and it was like my brain completely shut down, i literally could not even answer it and i was like uhhh i don’t know, shakespeare? i am more interested in clipping my toenails than reading shakespeare. i know i am not that stupid, i can talk about literature, no in that bar though. this is why next weekend we are going to sit around smoking cigarettes with cigarette holders and drinking tea while discussing more cerebral topics.

i have only been to two weddings in my entire life. when i tell people this they usually are a little surprised like i should be bummed out about it, but i am okay with it. the first was in 1999, when my cousin and paul got married. they had a pretty awesome wedding, they rented out this whole giant lodge near estes park, colorado because there were so many people coming from far away (new zealand and australia). i don’t remember much about it except that it was in february so it was cold, the ceremony was really short, i was horrified at how much makeup the bride had on her face, and at the reception i danced with paul’s dad and he spoke german to me with his awesome accent. the next wedding was a couple years later, for another cousin. it was at some hotel downtown with a great view of chicago but the ceremony was in a catholic church and during the mass i realized i was definitely going to hell- everyone else knew exactly when to kneel and all the words to the hymns while my sister and i looked at each other in horro.

but erin and luke are getting married this summer and i am totally excited, i guarantee i am going to bawl tears of happiness like a fucking baby. mostly because i can cry when someone gets married on tv (god why am i admitting i am a cheesy idiot) but now some of my favorite people in the world are tying the knot i am going to have a complete breakdown before the ceremony even starts. i think weddings are generally awful excuses for people to show off how much money they are willing to spend for hundreds of people they never really get to see to eat subpar food and dance to horrible music. thankfully erin’s wedding is going to have a photobooth and i already have plans to bring my own records and force her dad to dance with me to the kinks. i asked erin if i could make a speech, totally just shooting my mouth off and she said okay so now i have to think of something to say. i asked her if i should do something sappy or funny and she said both but i’m sorry, as you can see on this blog i only can do one or the other. hopefully they let me do it before the food is served otherwise i am going to be passed out in a coma from eating 45 artichoke puffs and eight pieces of cake. oh man, this shit is going to rule. time for me to write up a  craigslist ad so i can find a date.

i suppose i can talk about how much i like valentine’s day. i don’t really know why, i am not into the typical valentine’s crap and never have a boyfriend so it doesn’t make sense. it could be because i am for the most part totally in love with everyone i know so it is an occasion to give everyone little pieces of paper that tell them so. maybe it is because i first met erin on valentine’s day three years ago at an awesome party thrown by me and janine at phil’s apartment. we had fucking awesome decorations and tons of people made valentines and i made guacamole and i got really drunk right away and ended up staying awake the whole night and the dude who would become my boyfriend a few months later sat next to me on the couch and flirted with me in the most bizarre way. oh yeah i met erin at this party BUT she only stayed awake until 11pm when she fell asleep on the floor in the front bedroom. the next year we lived together so of course we threw another party and i made two cakes and chocolate suckers out of my mom’s old heart mold trays and i’m pretty sure guacamole again. that party was great because tons of people showed up and i got to watch a friend shoot breastmilk into our bathroom sink and everything was great until my boyfriend decided to lose his mind and start angrily slamming my bedroom door (though he sort of redeemed himself when he presented me with an mc5 record on the actual vday). my whole life i never had a valentine and since i’m a sad bastard i always lamented that fact, but now that i’ve spent a couple valentine’s days as an attached girl, i realize that it doesn’t really matter, it can be the day when i celebrate my undying love for all the friends in my life who, unlike dudes, don’t come and go. it can be a reason for making people a mix cd of awesome love songs and wearing a button that has a close up photo of infected genitals. a day to eat my favorite candy in the history of all candies in the world. this year jessica is having a party and i can’t wait to give people my awesome valentines which are corny but the fact that i am a corny idiot is not really a secret.

on friday night i had the privilege of hanging out with the hugest fucking douchebag in the whole city of chicago. he was a (boy?)friend of my sister’s friend and erin and i were forced to spend like two hours with him but it was enough to make me start wishing i had never been born. i guess my sister kind of warned me about him before i met him, telling me he was vegan and sort of prissy and that he treats girls badly. whatever, i figured it could be entertaining at least but he pretty much made up his mind that he wasn’t going to talk to us even while we were having dinner in a relatively small and quiet restaurant. i don’t feel like cataloging all of his egregious remarks but i am sure i spend a lot of time talking about how good my salad with steak was and explained to him that jenn was going to eat balut that night so i probably didn’t endear myself to him. sorry buddy, but disparaging remarks about vegetarians are par for the course with me. i don’t give a shit if someone doesn’t eat meat but he was too apathetic to suggest a restaurant and when we finally made the decision only THEN did he ask if there were any vegan options. after dinner i pretended that i needed to go home (hahahaha it was 9:30) so i dropped my sister, her friend and this insufferable hipster jerk who thinks because he is a professional graduate student that he is better that everyone off at his apartment and then erin and i both exhaled great sighs of relief to be rid of him. later my sister’s friend told her, i don’t think he liked mandy and erin- and my sister was like, i think the feeling was mutual! later that evening he told my sister that he is currently sleeping with twelve different girls, he also has bookshelves of feminist literature. thank god erin and i were drinking amaretto stone sours at her apartment instead of listening to him brag about how he likes to sleep with nineteen year olds who are mentally deranged.

this stressful evening i think caused me to smoke a cigarette for the first time in my life. i was not even that drunk (right?) but for some reason i was compelled to try it even though i have never had that desire for over twenty six years. at first erin wouldn’t give it to me, i wish i would have listened to her because it was exactly as i imagined it would be, like putting my face into an ashtray and inhaling. i would have liked to see myself at that moment, i bet i looked more disgusted than ever so that totally defeats the purpose of smoking, i will never look cool smoking. maybe it was the fact that we went to the store and bought the current issue of cosmo because it said “YOUR VA-JAY-JAY” on the cover, and spent eight hours scrutinizing every page. god, is summer here yet? i would never end up earnestly reading articles about rihanna and finishing the in touch jamie foxx themed crossword puzzle if it was not fucking minus 5 degrees outside.

i am starting to come out of my sick-coma, and i am remembering things that happened before i got sick last week. i guess i am a huge loser because while walking home from the mutiny i declared that i was going to blog about white zombie t-shirt dude. white zombie shirt dude was pretty cute but seriously is it acceptable to wear a white zombie shirt in 2008? the answer: an emphatic NO. it probably has not been acceptable to wear a white zombie shirt in public since like 1994 at the q101 jamboree. do people still even listen to white zombie? do they still even make records? emily suggested that maybe he was wearing it ironically, i can’t even imagine that is a possibility. the only explanation is that this dude honestly likes them. we were at the mutiny though so it should not have surprised me, encountering such characters. i would rather have talked to white zombie shirt dude than the tubby long-haired jackass who came up to emily and me and apologized for his “cheese farts” (!) which was either an effort to get us to move so he could be free to make better shots during his pool game, or a bizarre new way of hitting on girls. luckily for me i was already mildly stuffed up and the mutiny pretty much smells like cheese and/or farts all the time now, what with the smoking ban, so didn’t get a whiff of what he warned us against. i guess i generally find people who are blunt and tactless pretty entertaining, and maybe any one of the crusty punk girls there that night for the show would have found cheese fart guy endearingly droll, i was left wondering what happened to chivalry, to gallant gestures? despite my cynical exterior and protestations to the contrary, i must really like romance because lately all i can think about is how i want to meet a dude who will kiss my hand like he’s from another century. we can save the cheese farts for later.

after having not been to work for a week i sort of have no concept of time, i am excited to rejoin the living because i can’t really remember my life when i wasn’t dealing with this endless arsenal of mucous coming out of my sinuses. however i have had time to finish ray davies’ autobiography (verdict: i am more in love with him and his gap-toothed cheshire cat grin than ever before), read my journals from when i was like 17-19 (summation: why do the boys i like never like me?), drink like twelve giant bottles of gatorade, watch a bunch of episodes of the simpsons, and be sad that no one writes me letters anymore, especially with cartoon drawings of myself with ‘crown books’ written on my shirt. that kind of genius could never happen in an email.

i am the biggest sick baby who ever lived, i have some kind of cold which is so annoying i have been laying in bed the last two days thinking about how wonderful it would be if i could just eviscerate my face. i took an antibiotic a few hours ago because i’m pretty sure it is a sinus infection but i feel like now i am getting sicker. i had to eat something with it so i had a couple slices of this bread with whole garlic cloves in it and i could taste them at all. being sick really brings out my petulant side, every so often i will be laying in bed and start kicking my legs under the covers out of frustration or blurt out a string of obscenities because my nose will. not. stop. fucking. running. my immunodeficiency is ruining my life, how can a human being get stay-in-bed-for-days sick like once a month? i mean i guess that is a bit hyperbolic but i take enough vitamins to fill each compartment of one of those giant seven day vitamins containers like old people use and i got a flu shot, at my mother’s behest- i argued, she prevailed, i’ve been sick three times this winter, i win. at least today she brought me a tiny box of fannie may that i ate, even the gross ones because i can’t distinguish between them anyhow. also tomorrow is my nicknamesake day and i won’t even be able to partake in the celebration. happy sick tuesday.