I’ve been off the rails

I just finished a wonderful book by Larry Brown. It’s the second book of his that I’ve read. The first one was Fay, a novel. Billy Ray’s Farm is a collection of essays and non fiction.

The writing is lyrical, smooth and graceful. Passages that are haunting, brutal, and overflowing with the author’s feelings cut into my heart and head.
Harry Crews has this effect on me, as does Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor.
What is it about the South that breeds such amazing artists?
I don’t think it’s the land itself but who knows. It’s as much a mystery as is the wealth of their talent.

I think about writing every day yet have been able to do so for some months now. Looking back I think maybe my father’s death contributed to my sliding off the rails a bit. My ‘coper’ broke and an inability to concentrate, take care of mundane daily tasks or find motivation for the things which made me sing died.
Note: The dust hasn’t settled over dad’s passing and as of two weeks ago I’m no longer speaking with my sister or my step-mother. More on that in another post.

My daughter arrived from southern California last night. She’s 14, 15 in August, and will be with me for a little over a month. I’m flying her back here again at Thanksgiving and again at the holidays. Then I’ll have to wait until next summer and hopefully three months then. If she doesn’t decide to stay here with me, which I doubt. She’s been with her father for a little over a year and seems settled there now.

Thus far I’ve seen Cate for about 20 minutes. Her friends here in Reno have consumed her time already. Several of them had taken a bus to the airport to meet her at the plane, unbeknownst to her or myself. Waiting for her plane to land a familiar gang of teens surround me, resplendent in their teen Goth glory. They had all taken a bus out to the airport.
I fed them pizza and cokes and her best friend spent the night.

This morning I took the two of them to Zephyr Books. Afterwards Cate announced that she was going to another friend’s house to have pink (or purple) streaks put in her hair and also have that friend use her ‘professional piercing kit’ to pierce another hole at the top of her ear.
I rolled my eyes and said “Okay. This should well.”

In 15 minutes I’m off to pick the little demons up at the Starbucks down by the Truckee River, across from the movie theater.
Then I’m taking best friend back to her house.

Cate wants to watch Shawn of the Dead tonight and eat popcorn and candy. Sounds like a plan.

Goddess only knows what tomorrow will bring but it’ll surely be interesting.
Hormonal Outsider Teenager + Angst = Rachael’s Interesting Summer.
If only I could put my thoughts into the kind of writing which lifts me up. Maybe my favorite authors will send a muse over in dreams tonight.
I can hope but better yet I can start writing again.

~Miss R

In the Night

I sat at the end of a pier in New York City, wrapped in the arms of a man who was making me smile. I felt wanted, safe and secure. We giggled at something which struck us as funny and I laid my head on his shoulder. His arms tightened about me making the warm blood flow to my cheeks and head.

There were others about as well, all gazing at the skies and the moon, a plane taking off into the few clouds wispy in the nighttime sky. Ordinary people laughing in small groups, nodding at shared thoughts and talking softly with a look of wonder upon them.

It was a night of lost time and felicity, and all of us out there. This man and myself, all of the strangers, we felt a bond with this sultry and moonlit evening. A bond with each other and life. I felt a joy which had been missing for so very very long.

I awoke from a lovely dream.

~Miss R

Sick. Twisted. Funny as all Hell.

Let’s see if friggin wordpress let’s me use an embed code.

Those bastards. It didn’t work.

Okay then try this….

The Keyboard Kid at 6th Grade Talent Show

1-2-3-4

These are a few of my favorite things

A vehicle that runs again
Clean sheets
Air Emergency on NGC
Direct TV for 30 days
Rent paid for 30 days
New client –quickie site design (praise jesus for the Christian websites)
Selling my REI tent and sleeping bag on CL
Wrenching my back while cleaning/throwing things away/packing and then finding a single Oxy while cleaning/throwing things away/packing

All of the above occurring in a twenty four hour period with only one instance of complete decompensation on my part

Checked out the Feist video 1234 (featured in the iPod Nano commercial).
The dancing is so cheesy it’s wonderful to watch but the amazing thing is that it was done in one take.

I’ve embedded the version from youtube, so the quality bites,  but WordPress doesn’t want to support a Flash player.

Those swine.

Good song for a Friday though no matter what.
Enjoy.

~Miss R

dammit the CL post

oops i pulled the aforementioned post and since it does not exist you’ll never know.

hell you’re better off that way anyway.

so here it is….

————————————

Are you a Musician?

Stay the hell away.
This goes especially for woodwind players, brass players, percussionists, string players and pianists.

Educated strangely attractive darkly humorous and peculiarly deranged SWF 45 seeks someone to laugh with while cruising cemeteries and guessing how the corpses met their demise.

Please send list of your ten favorite books.

I don’t really give a damn but want to know if there’s anything worth keeping when you leave me.

spiderman and procrastination

Today we’re gonna talk about my favorite topic to avoid. No it’s not death, as in the pic above which i happily took in Boston.

That’s right.
Spiderman.

Alright I love Spiderman but that’s not really it.
Procrastination. That’s the subject.

Wait minute, Lemme think about this first.
It could be a case of jumping the gun.

Woke up to the news on channel 8; think it’s been revealed that only two channels come in on my TV here in fabulous Reno.

After the shock of realizing
a) That vile shiny hurty yellow thingy is up in the sky
b) Fuckitall I’m still alive
c) I haven’t had sex (with another person) and am still sleeping alone after three weeks
d) The cat is happily shedding next to my face on a clean pillow and pillowcase. Okay formerly clean.

It occurred that maybe I should begin A Routine.

Yes kids, it’s that occasional horrific realization that maybe developing A Routine will acclimate the soul mind and body to Life.

LIFE - adjective–noun
1. The condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.
2. The condition that causes grief, lack of sleep, laughter, heartbreak weight gain and obsessive compulsive disorder. Oh yeah chocolate and coffee too.

So it came to be that I Got Some Shit Done today.
Was at the gym by 11:30 and am now in pain.
Combed the cat but she didn’t mind
Spoke with Tinfoil Hat Client (who is meeting with me tomorrow morning oh happy day)
Wrote a blog entry
Washed the car
Opened a bottle of chardonnay

Let us take two items shall we?

The gym is just a horrid piece of life that has to be reinstated.
As a matter of fact I have gained one pound for each week I have been, um, dumped.

Er, utterly single?

Uh, how about same as it ever was (insert image of david byrne doing a talking heads move).
Dammit. I lost one pound for every two weeks that I was in the last relationship and now it’s reappearing? What the hell is up with that? I thought a woman is supposed to lose weight upon the demise of a coupling.
Leave it to me.
Or leave it to beaver.
Same thing.

Oh yeah the car.
So I have to sell the Jeep. It’s either that voluntarily have it repossessed (no REALLY voluntarily) and lose even more money. I currently owe 4K more than the car is worth.
Don’t ask. I’m a chump and the salesman was a champ.
So the Credit Union told me to try and sell the car because I’ll get more for it than they will. Then I’ll only owe the difference between the balance of the loan and the sale price.
I say unto you…. Bwahahahahahahahahaha.

So Miss R will be making $20.00 a month payments until judgment day.
Isn’t that in a leap year anyway?

So I washed the car. Yes. It’s true.
Said Jeep has been unwashed for over two months, maybe more. It’s been camping in Clear Lake, sitting in TK’s tree-laden driveway, and sloshing through rain. The color of the Jeep was until today beige.
Turns out it is actually black.
Seriously. Who knew.

The best part: Stealth Car Washing.
Here at Chez Noir we do not pay for a car wash. Hell that $5.00 could ALMOST buy a pack of American Spirit Menthol Cigarettes.
My biggest fear was you guessed it, LittleOleMan.

I got back from the gym, supermarket and dollar store. After unloading the unholy purchases I filled a bucket with dishwashing soap, grabbed a few rags, pulled the Jeep over to the garden hose and… got busy by goddess.

No machete-wielding LittleOleMan cying “Ahhhhh get away from the water spigot biaaaaaaaatch. Your flowers are still alive but you shall die!”
No neighbors saying “hey I didn’t know we could wash our cars!” which of course they can’t because they’re not clandestine enough.
No “Goddammit Rachael you left the back window open.”
This last would have been said to myself by the way.

The car is clean. It is time to write the obituary. I mean ad.

On to part two. The chardonnay.
The reason I have not posted the car ad on Craigslist tonight is a direct result of Dollar Store inefficiency.

I purchased what I thought was a perfectly good corkscrew from the Dollar Store a month ago.
Who knew it would bow to the pressures of a bad wine.
Rachael’s Hint for the Day: Avoid –at all fucking cost- Pepperwood Grove Chardonnay.
Not only did it break off the cork screw but it could
take the polish off of my fingernails. Down the drain it went.
Sad sad sad.

Well I see by the clock on the wall that it is time to shut the hell up.
So my friends I leave you with these thoughts…

I wish I could dance in TK’s kitchen to Michael Buble’s Spiderman.
I wish I had more than just Tinfoil Hat Client as an income
I wish I would win Publishers Clearinghouse
But mostly I wish to just get on with it…..

“They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody?”

~miss r

the entropy of self-loathing

Through my own fault I am alone
Again
Again forgetting that there are things I am not fit to do
Especially to excess
Especially during times of stress
Especially when I am a bitch born

Life is tenuous and short
Though I try to forgive and forget quickly
To keep the brief time here in mind
It is always a struggle
Hard to practice
Impossible to preach

I open my mouth and words fall out of their own volition
Words that are inappropriate
Hurtful
Stupid
Senseless
Which makes me all of those things
You would have to agree

I would like to evaporate
Be a desiccated leaf on a pile of dirt
Finally disappearing
My emotions and mind are already brittle
There isn’t much further to go then

Being alone with this head is unbearable
Again
Again in the realm of darkness with the smoke and soot a perfect metaphor
For how I have scorched this life
Especially when I have inadvertantly scalded a loved one
Especially when it is difficult to go on each day
Especially when there is no real reason to do so

Without laughter
Without someone who understands that you are fucked up
Without the ups and downs and right and left
There is no reason
For anything
Again

~Miss R

Currently listening:
The Heart of Saturday Night
By: Tom Waits

i have a better idea

Fuck this. I have no sense of humor or wit today.

Perhaps it was the hour or so at the DMV that has helped
suck the soul from me.

Or, the 20 minutes waiting at the bank for their single customer service rep to close out my debit card.

Mercifully there was no activity on the debit card since it’s disappearance on Saturday night.

Of course, if the poor bastard who has my wallet had tried to order their gourmet repast at Sizzler they’d have been declined due to lack of funds.
Heh. Kinda sorry there wasn’t any attempt at activity. Would have made my black little heart smile for the first time in three days.

Just spent 30 minutes online trying to figure out how to get out of my Sprint contract. I’m the only person I know with Sprint, their service is awful, and to buy out my contract is $200.00

Every person I know is on ATT/Cingular. Argh.

Since the phone is lost/stolen/gone I am trying to figure a way out of the early termination fee and just divest from those imbeciles.

Read some fine ideas online in various forums but none of them are fool-proof and most seem out-dated or just dumb
“well be nice to the rep and they’ll surely help you!”
Yeah that’s always worked with a phone company in the past hasn’t it.

Have to go to Welfare tomorrow and apply for a new Medicaid card and cancel my daughter’s insurance and food stamps since she is now in California.

and now for your Irony du Jour!

I can’t buy a new wallet to replace the lost one because all of my money was in the missing one

 

Went to another noon meeting today. Free cognitive therapy but you do get what you pay for.
If I have to listen to another fucking flock of sheep (and I raaaaan so far away…. wrong flock ) recite The Lord’s Prayer at the end of a meeting I will surely force a drink down their collective throats.
Serenity thy name is Rachael.

I’m hurting badly this week in terms of mental anguish, guilt and just being alive, so sincere apologies for the angst.
You’ll get over it when I do.

If only I were a sociopath instead of simply neurotic.

I don’t like pain.
I don’t like to cause pain.
I never want to cause hurt.
I don’t want to feel hurt.
Right now I don’t want to feel.
Anything.
Ever.

Ta da!

~miss r

Currently listening:

The Singles 81>85

By: Depeche Mode
Release date: 19 January, 1999

Friggin’ hysterical….

I have no idea why I cannot get this player to run on wordpress. have tried repeatedly.
oh well. here’s a link…

The Landlord

My Child Was Student of the Week at West Hills!

So yeah, I haven’t been writing because the beloved demon seed goody-two shoes obnoxious goth child of the damned is in the hospital. I spent 9 hours at the emergency room at Washoe County Hospital on Tuesday afternoon and evening. Then drove across town to fill out admission paperwork for her to be transferred to West Hills at 10:30 that night.

No kidney stones this time though.

 

 

If you grew up in southern
California it was “you’re going to
Norwalk.” If you grew up in northern
California it was “you’re going to
Napa.”

Child of
Michigan? “You’re off to theState
Hospital at
Traverse City’” Lived in NYC? “Off to Bellvue!”

West Hills is the Reno Nevada version.

 

I’m thinking if you don’t have the picture by now you’d rather have a bottle in front of me….

 

In any case more to follow. No writing this week as I have been consumed with errands, trips to the hospital, total hostility from the fruit of my loins, and of guilt. Being a parent makes you this way.

Am alternating between crying, grief and anger.

 

She brought it on herself and this is a cold hard lesson in reality. I hate it. She hates it. My dad understands and applauds my decision (he’s a shrink) and my mother blames me.

 

TK has been taking care of me with home cooked meals and a place to stay kinda-sorta sane. If I was home alone during all of this it wouldn’t be a good thing for my own whacked out head.

The pause button on my recorder is broken and the same tapes keep playing over and over in my head.

 

She’s supposed to be released on Wednesday but we’ll see. Last night when I went to visit she’d shoved a safety pin through the top portion of her ear.

Nice.

 

Nothing says comfort like knowing your kid is in a supposedly secured supervised hospital environment but other kids (who really ARE bugfuck) are able to smuggle in sharp fucking objects.

 

West Hills Football Rules.

 

~miss r

Baby’s in Reno with the Vitamin D

So another night passed yielding little sleep. Insomnia rules the world in Reno. Insomnia ruled my world in SoCal, NYC and the frozen tundra of northern Michigan as well.

Perhaps it is Fate’s revenge for the years spent drinking and passing out early. I was a fun drunk, then suddenly I disappear from a party and quietly fall asleep in a quiet place.

Too bad my mind has a defect which makes it impossible to know when I am truly drunk. It could be worse, I could have been a mean drinker or born a sociopath with no conscience and an alcohol problem.

Back to the point: more realistically the insomnia is a result of a dark, curious and imaginative mind. I’d like to think so.

 

The shoulders and back are still killing me and feeling wretched this morning. Am thinking I may have to visit a real live masseuse in the next few days. Or grovel sufficiently to one of my friends who are good at this.

Last resort: get a friend’s rabid ankle biter and pay them $5.00 to walk on my back.

Kids will do any damned thing for money.
If I am dating a guy the first thing out of my daughter’s mouth is “do they have kids? Can I babysit?” Gimme your money and no one gets hurt.

 

There’s this machine at the gym which resembles some type of medieval torture device. I’ve seen people strap their feet into it and manipulate the controls. It turns them upside down and appears to stretch the body straight, with the weight held by the feet.

If I could figure out how to use that thing my back would feel a lot better. Or, I’ll have an embolism from being hung upside down and my back would feel a lot better.

 

I’ve a covert addiction to forensic shows. Sorry. That was an abrupt transition but it does tie into the insomnia thing.

The Court TV forensic based programs started to piss me off. After every commercial there is a re-cap of the previous 15 minutes of the show. Granted that my attention span by evening is not as acute as earlier in the day, but my brain is still bigger than kitty’s and lasts longer than 15 minutes. Usually. Hey! Is that a laser pointer you have there? No? A balled up cigarette package? Oh god please toss it across the floor.

Last night at 2:00 am I came across a new one (to me) on Spike called Post Mortem. Here’s what will suck me into the vacuous realm of television every time:

Black screen with white titles and an ominous voice-over ‘This program shows graphic images which some people may find disturbing etc etc etc’
Yeah baby. That’s the wholesome 30 minutes of gruesome goodness that I’m looking for.

 

By 2:45 I’m hungry since dinner was at 7:00 pm. Hell if I can figure out why keeping my weight down is an issue. As if eating while the metabolism is at hollandaise speed could have an impact.

I rummage in the pantry and find cashews. I eat a few and break the top off of my favorite tongue stud.
Dammit.
It was faceted, looked like a diamond and totally hot. Was being the operative word. At 3:00 am I’m in the bathroom trying to screw in a smooth end piece. If I had a boyfriend I’d actually wear that one not that I’m bitter.

Replacing the ball on a tongue piercing is a major undertaking. It is when you’re sleep deprived and organically spastic anyway. Do you have any idea of how small those screws pieces are? Now imagine trying to get the microscopic parts to connect, into your tongue, at 3:00 am.

Good times.

I’m tired and my muscles are aching. Wah.

Blasting from the kid’s room I’m mercifully hearing Fiona Apple instead of Slipknot and she has thoughtfully left 2 cups of coffee for me.

Another day. Another exciting adventure. Join me won’t you? There’s a sign post up ahead and it reads…. The Twilight Zone.

I’m going to ask the Demon seed to play some Beck now.
Feel like gettin’ crazy with the cheese-whiz.

Where’s Rod when you need him.

~Miss R

the last valentine’s day post swear to god

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.
Hard to believe I’ve posted only two rants this year. I’m slipping.

I’ll be home tomorrow night listening to Miles and watching a flick with the kid.

Well, lest you think I’m getting soft and complacent I have a little something to cheer you up.
Even others such as Druish philosophers can find the absurd with love and sentiment.

To honor this most joyful of occassions I’ve written an ode to this day of love, smiles and chirping little birdies that should only get shredded to hell in the propellers of a plane.

Confessions of a CraigsList Junkie

It’s been a long time since the craigslist addiction
has raised its ugly little head. Been close to a year since I perused the site every day.
It pulls you in though. Just when I thought that I was out.
Damned digression.

CL is a microcosm of the world at large and our local Reno version is just too weird and fun to avoid.
I place the current blame at the feet of living a life devoid of full-time 9 to 5 employment.

Here’s the cool stuff that I’ve found on Craigslist
over the last year and a half:

 

heaven

last night I dreamed
my life was heaven
and
heaven is a place

I Am Not a Godless Heathen

To paraphrase my friend Jack who may have parphrased me…

Forgive me father for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last blog…

Yesterday I found a FABULOUS list of intelligent folk who are self-professed atheists. Dear Readers in case you’ve been binge drinking and paying no attention I am among that atheistic number.
Since many of my heroes are listed among them I find a recent poll stating that the majority of Americans distrust and fear atheists to be depressing at best and unsurprising at worst.

To quote John Stuart Mill:
Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.

To quote Rachael C. Black:
Although it is not true that all religious types are stupid people, it is true that most stupid types are religious.

Eleven years of AA meetings has screwed with my head, but don’t they love it when I speak up and eschew the god thing. Heh. Burn her! She’s a Witch!

Please note the purposeful use of the word RELIGIOUS and not spiritual. Although some days I’m not sure of the latter either.