zomg!

zomg! zomg! zomg!
I posted yesterday about being sick, what is up with THAT?
Pretty soon BusySmartyPants'll be all backaches and sniffles and bitching about meds.
Sorry y'all. I had a weak moment.
It shan't happen again.
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So, what to talk about?
Erryday is a battle, can I just acknowledge that.
If it's a work day, it's a battle just to roll out of bed, put on running shoes, make the bus on time.
I don't start feeling human til 11am, aided by copious amounts of coffee and sullen staring at my computer monitor.
It's always a question of time. Enough time to write. Take a long walk. To talk to my man. Get something to eat. Work on my blog, send out stories, file rejections, edit, write, brainstorm, check Facebook and Gmail, think, cry maybe, maybe yell, listen to music, watch an old Southpark or a new Game of Thrones.
Enough time to see friends and the fam. To read a little. To warm a stool at the bar by my house.
To plan the next east African jaunt.
To dream a little, to think about my mom and Dusty and Dugie.
And then to not think.
Somehow in there, you have to live.

Two pix from my walk today, I'm loving the stencils.

can't shake it

I came down with the flu last week and still can't seem to shake it.
I lost whole days in a fog of Benadryl and Advil and cough syrup, achey and cold one minute, clammy with sweat the next. My drugstore thermometer registered 100.8, then 101.2. Seinfeld episodes played comfortingly on my laptop and I dreamed without remembering and when I was hungry, I closed the refrigerator door on beer and condiments and a nugget of dried-out cheese and bundled up to walk the five blocks to the market, tearfully wishing someone would bring me hot soup and hold me tight enough for the aches to go away.
Now I'm better, although a cold seems to be hanging on like that last drunk party guest that won't leave, talking too loudly and smelling of Jameson's and cigarettes.
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Also, this, from the amazing Kelly just one year ago:

rhymes

Lucky me I got to see Blackalicious last week, a Sunday night show at Neumo's, not even close to sold out but plenty of happy hip hop fans. The openers were 1 for 2--I only caught a bit of Gran Rapids' set but they felt solid. Theoretics though--what the hell? Nerds in collared shirts and one semi-okay MC, the other white guy MC not even half as good as he thought he was, the bass cranked up so high our hair vibrated. "Office Space--the band," my friend texted me, equally bemused. "They remind me of Limp Bizkit," another friend said. It was like hip hop for people who don't like hip hop. In any case, soon Gift of Gab took the stage and we had no more complaints.

photograph the night sky

The challenge: take a picture of the African night sky, on a muggy, gin-fueled, mosquito-heavy night.
With tiny white crabs skittering across the pale sands.
With the moon an eclipsing sliver in the sky.
It was night two at the Beach Crab, a beach-front tent hotel near Pangani, Tanzania, where the surf was a constant crashing background, the beach and the sea mere steps from where we slept and ate.
You can't take a picture of the moon, someone said.

superior

I took this picture on a particularly tough day last week. My sis and I sat together in a courtroom, not for the first time, certainly not for the last. We stared at our reflections in the Plexiglass and waited and tried not to hear the slurpy machine noises coming from the row ahead of us, where a big stringy-haired girl with smeary jailhouse tats sucked the snot out of her sick kid's nostrils with some kind of electric gadget.

Lawyers came and went--this little circus is all about the lawyers, there's a chunky guy with 80's feathered hair and too-tight double-breasted suits that we call Tonka Truck--anyway the lawyers did their lawyerly thang and we waited and the judge trained an eager-eyed up-and-comer in low murmurs and we waited and then it was over, continuance, continuing disappointment, more waiting. I just want it to be over, we kept saying, and then later, over coffee at the Vietnamese place down the street, we realized: it won't ever be -- over.
In America nobody is superior to anybody else, right?
Oh please, who am I kidding? We preach egalitarianism and meanwhile elections are bought and sold and VIPs shop exclusive after hours sales events and rich travelers float through time and space on a magic carpet of free booze and roasted mixed nuts and leg rests.
Anyway, our circumstances are horrific. Mostly, we are just trying to survive with our senses of humor intact.
We are trying to survive without losing our shit or our grip; without losing a most precious gift who is sometimes a sarcastic little cheating-at-cards shit but mainly right now all arms and legs and glittery eyeliner.
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Funniest fb post I saw today: Not true, Dad. BACON is bogus. Like!

disco disco good good

Today's guest post--well--more on that in a second. I spent the morning hanging out with talented artist and super cool friend and soon-to-be-ex-seattleite-Nate. We caffeinated ourselves and debated cynicism and parallel universes and I faffed on my laptop and he drew a cool design on the wall.
So that's a guest post of sorts yeah? Drop by whenev and have a look.
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The grinny gem above snapped from the wall in the ladies room at Roxy's.