A Bummer for the Drummer.

No, We're Not Jewish, But Son....Today You Are a Man.

Luke is 13.

He told his teacher he'd be bringing "brownies" in for the class as a treat for his birthday. He did just that. The teacher expected a chocolate treat. She seems to have completely forgotten of what Luke is capable. He's far more literal than anyone gives him credit. Brown "E's." He printed out a brown-colored letter "E", cut them out, and handed one to each of his classmates. Only one boy had the balls to eat it. That's just pure genius.

Some families measure their kids' growth on a chart, or scribble a line in a doorway. Luke? We take his picture next to a giant print of (the now dearly departed) Larry Hagman.  Luke loves to go to TGIFriday's for his birthday dinner, which has been a bit of a tradition the last 3 years. An enjoyable time, as always. 

The cliche of time flying is really very true. I had been going through the baby pictures, the toddler and young school-age photos. He's grown at least 5" in stature in 3 years, and about 2000% in maturity.  Luke is my son first, the #1 man in my heart, my harshest critic and my greatest cheerleader. 

Sure, now we're at the stage where I embarrass him enough in the mall to the point where he acts like a jerk and I threaten to throw him into Victoria's Secret by physical force. But for every minute he spends with me, somehow he wishes that would stretch to an hour. I am fortunate at his age that he will even been in public with me. 

But in general, being a parent has been and is the greatest privilege in my whole life. I've screwed so many things up, but not this young man. Wise beyond his years and a hell of a kid, even though I'm biased.

My little, helpless baby grew into a teenager. I couldn't be any more astonishingly proud. 

2009

2010

2011

2013--THE TEENAGER.

Luke, being the first to poke fun at himself with a keen sense of humor, made his own birthday video. It's really rather excellent, with awesome edits and seamless transitions. And big coup? How many kids (I can't embed the video) get a personal birthday greeting video from one of the Flaming Lips' Steven Drozd?

It can be found here, though you may have to approve the app Telly...I don't think it's a download:

telly.com/0O86NR 

Luke's awesome birthday video. He IS his mother's child.

Hell, we could make a growth chart of how many times Luke's hung out with Flaming Lip Wayne Coyne:

2006--Lollapalooza Chicago

2010: Milwaukee, WI after a show:

Wayne & Luke, Aragon Ballroom, 2011

A Special Place in Hell.

Taken from "Stop Violence Against Women"'s page on Facebook, I offer the following, so true of domestic abusers. It's the least suspicious, most charming person who is the chronic domestic abuser.

Funny, talking about heaven & hell with an atheist. This man, who doesn't believe in any God, seems to think if there is indeed an afterlife, he will spend eternity in paradise because, of course, he's such a good person.  It's too kind to say he suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, yet no less true, from a psychological standpoint. He's also a violent, remorseless sociopath. But when The Almighty exacts His revenge, it'll be a sweet welcome in Hades for this motherfucker. His press bio neglects to mention the 17 counts of sexual harassment he bought his way out of working at Harrah's Casino in Kansas City, MO when he went to do the interview below about his present place of employment..

The line is getting as long as season ticket day at Wrigley Field...the vast expanse of individuals who'd like to take a crack at this guy with nunchucks, baseball bats, you name it. Hey, all of y'all who know the truth, fucking go for it.

That's the thing about the 1st Amendment, Chickie Babies. What's Chris going to do? Sue for defamation someone who is the equivalent of sucking blood out of a turnip? 17 minutes of watching a serial domestic abuser was quite enough after leaving him what, like 2 years ago? Thanks again for the PTSD!!!!

Guy Friend and I felt a little weird 2 years ago when we used a restaurant.com coupon to eat at this raw vegan place we eyed the night he met Best Male Friend. Hi, yeah, they'd both kind of like to cause Chris harm.

He might have money and power, but I experienced exactly what happened.  And Chris, you can rot in fucking hell.

Slatternly Looking? Oh My, Yes.

When the story broke about General Petraeus' affair with his smokin' hot biographer, I got a good look at the wife versus the mistress, and in a blog some time ago, did indeed imply that perhaps if Holly Petraeus wasn't such a dowdy, obese, horrific wreck, she'd have had a better chance of affair-proofing the General. The notion was somewhat, admittedly, in jest, but I did warn Holly and, um, other slatternly looking wives on this sphere something that is historically a truism: Men are visual, fickle creatures. Someone told me, and I'm paraphrasing, "Just because Holly isn't very attractive doesn't mean she deserves to be cheated on." A fair statement, and I agreed that no one really deserves to be cheated on, but Holly looking like a total mess certainly didn't help matters, while the General was spending countless hours intimately with the Harvard Hottie. Some people agreed with me; others thought I was being too superficially nasty. There's that old adage, "Opinions are like assholes: Everybody's got one."

I'm not even remotely naturally good looking, though I'm certainly the opposite of dumpy/frumpy, but on what the Annie Collective have all agreed: Lady GuyGuy took one look at me the scathing night I had to meet her & snap judged that, for starters, she was going to castrate Guy because apart from both having short hair (and I have a hairdo, she has a hair don't), we are the polar opposites on the attraction scale. She probably stomped her Keds-wearing feet down when they got home & forbade Guy from going out with me unsupervised again, which is why he's always clamoring for group activities and chastity guards. Point being, she doesn't trust him around me, as well she shouldn't. The road goes in two directions, though.

Evil right-wing televangelist Pat Robertson and I don't agree upon ANYTHING and he's a total douchebag. Yet recently, on his "700 Club" vomit-fest, he and his (not dog-like, but who in fuck would want THAT job?) co-host fielded a question they tore from the pages of men's Maxim Magazine, in which a 17-year old boy wrote in for advice because his dad played video games all the time & wasn't paying much attention to mom. Herein lies Problem #1 with this: No 17-year old boy is going to write to Maxim and ask for marital advice for his parents. A boy that age could either a) give a shit or b) not give a shit. The Offbeat Drummer completely thinks the letter to Maxim was written by Mom, which is all kind of an aside to Pat Robertson's revelation, which frighteningly, for once, is similar to something I iterated:

Marriages are on the decline because wives are AWFUL LOOKING. Now, stack that on top of some pancakes with a pat of butter drizzling down because not only are wives ghastly, distracting their husbands' attention, but men are uniformly breaking free from the veritable noose that is marriage by DRINKING HEAVILY, according to Robertson.

Robertson's suggestion? Mom and Dad need to go away on a weekend retreat together in order to rekindle their romance sans distraction. That's almost going to work, not, hello? Long-term partner relationships get like 56 times more tense and, while the fantasy-romance-novel worthy scenario of the husband once again sweeping the wife off her feet is lofty, realistically? Either or both partners are saying (by Saturday afternoon), "Jesus Christ, I have to listen to his/her yickety bullshit for another 24 hours and we have no wifi?   Wow, thank God I brought a book. Wow, thank God we escaped to wine country. Why yes, I pretty much have to be drunk..."

ROBERTSON: Maneuver something where you can get them out of the house; romantic resort for a couple days, assuming they can afford it. I mean, take a weekend and go somewhere, and just be alone with each other, see if they can’t rekindle that romance. The romance has obviously gone out of the marriage, there’s not as much excitement as there used to be.

The co-host chick is a bit taken aback. I'm sorry, but in general, you couldn't pay me enough to forcibly agree with Pat Robertson for a living. She asks Robertson how he can blame the mom for this whole thing.

ROBERTSON: It’s easy to blame the mother! You know, a woman came to a preacher that I love, it’s so funny, and she was awful-looking. Her hair was all torn up and she was overweight and looked terrible, clothes [unintelligible] and everything. And, um, she said, “Oh, Reverend. What can I do? My husband has started to drink.” And the preacher looked and her, he said, “Madam, if I was married to you I’d start to drink too.”

WOMAN: Oh, my…

ROBERTSON: We need to cultivate romance, darling! And it needs to be the men…have got to be cultivating romance, and the women…you’ve always got to keep that spark of love alive. It isn’t something that just lie there, “well I’m married to him, so he’s going to take me slatternly looking,” you’ve got to fix yourself up; look pretty, look alluring.

You think I'm making this shit up?

That's fucking awesome. In just over 2 minutes, Pat Robertson clears up any confusion as to why embers poof dead in modern marriages: stoking what's left of a fire when you behave like Nurse Ratchet or look like a beached whale at high tide will shoo any husband into the welcoming arms of a more interesting woman. Not ever having seen Robertson's wife of 58 years, I have a sneaking suspicion that she's probably less than hot, and while he may speak from the experience of marital bliss, he's still pretty much full of crap, this being a very rare exception. 

Feminist, angry wife, you're-so-jaded backlash on this topic could be devastatingly anti-Offbeat Drummer, but as per usual, I really don't give a fuck. 

Today, on my Tangled Interwebs.

OK, I hadn't heard the song above in probably close to 20 years. That whole "Father passing away" part makes me want to weep. Damn you, YouTube suggestions!

Today couldn't have been more craptastically yucky, as have the weeks prior to and during the holidays. NOT a good time for me, universally and historically. But alas, I managed not to commit suicide...again. 

To sum things up quickly, I took a screen capture of my longest, most vile Facebook status update I could think of: 

I looked at my Facebook page rather keenly today, and marveled at the morose tone my present "likes" have taken on especially in caring about Don Rickles' opinion about, well, anything!

Sums things up nicely: 

Hands down! The BEST 5 minutes of Luke's already epic life. Or maybe "Don't trust kids in the kitchen." Mind you, I was upstairs roaring with laughter the whole time. My mom steals the show:

Of course he did. He's Wayne Fucking Coyne. Call the "Whoops!" police. Oh wait. They're already there.

Received a very special set from Best Male Friend with a "Have a Great Semester" note with it. Peanuts' Lucy and her psychiatric booth (technically a salt & pepper shaker set, that attaches magnetically, but I'm just putting it on my desk for funzies):

The Doctor is Out. Cold.

Or, more bluntly:

Oui. Non. Special Feature: An Inanimate Object to Which I Object.

While my new feature, "Oui, Non" will typically involve harshly criticizing the appearances of attractive people with Yay or Nay spot decisions and residual gripes from the subjective discrimination of my own eyes, for no practical edification,  I am compelled to issue an official Oui/Non to an inanimate object.

I was pregnant back in the 20th century, and gave birth 16 days after the universe collective sighed in relief that absolutely nothing happened after the Y2K panic, people who stock-piled canned goods felt like dweebs, & GET THIS: The iPod wasn't yet on the market and the iPad wasn't even a zygote jewel of Steve Jobs' belly button. I know, right?

In the ensuing years, Craig and I changed literally thousands of diapers before our son (if memory serves) began potty training (I think) at age 2 (if you say so!). It was hit or miss (literally) and to be honest, we ended up sending him to Pre-Kindergarten when he was 3 years old, still wearing Pull-Ups, though he had the decency, sense and control not to soil himself during the half-days he was at school, which relieved his teacher.

Potty training is tough, y'all, and kids don't get it right away, both from a physical control standpoint as well as a mental/emotional view. Similar to training an animal pet, kids perform better at this task when there's some kind of reward involved, because otherwise, what incentive do little people have to schlep to the bathroom when it's way more convenient to wizz-and-go or poop-and-run from the friendly confines of their own clothing and protective undergarments?

Potty Training a'la 2002: Luke. Oui.

Kickin' it old school. Above, you find our son getting the gist of utilizing a training toilet. Perhaps we were too metaphorical when we said that "Poo(h) goes in the potty." While depicted in our living room, yes, we taught Luke to go in the bathroom, and if he wanted to spend an hour in there, he had books, or Spin, or Al Franken, you know, whatever by which to be entertained and distracted.

Color Luke confused, as he adjusts the padded seat (with handles) atop his beautiful blond curly ringlets. Color us ignorant for trying to teach him to use a toilet while wearing a zip-up one-piece pajama set instead of separate pants. Color it all immaterial, because eventually, we must have succeeded at our training mission because he'll be able to drive a car in a couple of years and defecates properly in the bathroom. Woot!

Potty Training a'la 2013: The iPotty. Non.

Moms and Dads, Moms and Moms and Dads and Dads!

Why entrust your child with, like, a board book or Highlights magazine, ya know, when you can whip out your goddamn iPad and place about $700 worth of electronics in front of a kid who can't even fucking aim waste into the little hole featured on this chair? 

Has anyone who's actually toilet trained a child SEEN the resulting mess a young child frequently makes during the experience of using a practice potty? If so, do you REALLY want your iPad in the same room, touched by the same toxic hands, and oh my God. No, no, no. And if your Wee One ruins your iPad (Oh, I don't know, with water, or piss, soap, crap, the douche you obviously left lying around or tossing it into the bathtub, just guessing), do you punish him/her or chalk it up as your own fucking fault for having this stupid fucking iPotty in the first place? I'd sooner hang myself.

You know I'm not (that) old and crotchety (Old? I'm only 40. The part of Crotchety today is being played by Guy Friend.) to the point of not welcoming new and innovative ways to bring up baby in a nouveaux fashion as I continue to age myself, count gray hairs and attempt to remember my parenting days of yore. 

Don't even get me started on the ridiculousness that is a Bugaboo stroller. Why don't you just drip your baby in diamonds, asshole?

As if it wasn't already obvious, I'm ticked off today.

Carry on, with the toilet seat on your head.

The Twelve Days of a Guy Friend Christmas: Epiphany

The Twelve Days of a Guy Friend Christmas ended over last weekend. I felt like a total schmuck having criticized the silliness of most of the other gifts, which made Guy Friend a little miffed, though it was mostly in jest, and he said the gifts leading up to the above were supposed to be useless/worthless/goofy to throw me off. Above is a beautiful, awesomely classy and feminine Bulova stainless steel watch. I was flabbergasted. He really, really put a lot of thought into the whole project, which I told him very thankfully when we talked last weekend.

I told him I didn't deserve such a beautiful gift, but then I thought back to all of the loving considerations and little nice surprises I've thought up for him for like the last 3 or 4 years, after which I didn't feel like such a douchebag. Guy emailed me that I'm his "literary punching bag," with regard to being snide about the other gifts via my blogs about them, when in reality, if he went through more blogs, he'd tire of the opposite--me declaring my (maybe foolishly) complimentary love and snaps towards at him, unless I get pissed, then the shit hits the fan and I have a short fuse. But Guy? Let's see. You took the time to arrange a dozen gifts, your wrapping skills are like off the charts good. I keep telling myself (and my friends corroborate) that you honestly do love me.  I was the envy of every female friend I have, I think, even more so than Best Male Friend's gift last year, which was intensely something beyond belief. It was as if Guy said, "I don't know what to get Annie, so I'll just give her a bunch of stuff & cap it off spectacularly." Way to go!!!

It's old-time Polish superstition that to receive a watch from a loved one, is symbolic of an end being near...that you won't have time enough to really LIVE. So you should never give a Polish girl.a watch. But hell, I love it a lot. (Chris gave me 2 watches that were ghastly and clunky and horrible about 3 years ago. for my birthday.  I donated them to the church rummage sale. Guy's watch is spectacularly pretty and suits me. The same superstitious Polish folklore says that you should never accept shoes from a man, for it means he will run away and you'll lose him. I'm not a superstitious person, but after Chris (the evil ex) bought me watches, he bought me like 5 different styles/kinds of shoes, which the Poles say "will make him run away." I ended up doing the running away, because I didn't want to be anyone's standby fuck who gets slapped regularly anymore, which was essentially the parting of company with regard to our relationship.

In any case, the watch was an overwhelmingly loving gift. He explained the theory of the gifts that would be a mysterious clusterfuck before I received and opened the final gift of the season. I spoke with Guy on the phone Saturday afternoon, and profusely thanked him for the whole shebang, and apologizing for thinking some of the gifts were lame. They all make perfect sense now that Epiphany has arrived, ironically. His "game" (for lack of a better term) was ingenious, perfectly planned & the man's got some mojo he's been suppressing for probably half of my life-span thus far on planet Earth. Like I said before, it really was all very sweet of him.

Had to take the watch to the jeweler...it was a little....huge on me. They took out 6 links, which sucked because the links are so pretty, leaving only 3 in. The jeweler said 3 of my wrists could fit into the watch band.  Conversely, the Rolling Stones t-shirt had to be exchanged because I couldn't even get it past my head. I went with a Fender Stratocaster sweatshirt as well as Lennon "Imagine" shirt. Luke and I saw the Yankee candle shelves at Kohl's and laughed at the image of Guy sniffing all the candles when he chose the candle I got, which my son absolutely loves. We smelled all the candles and couldn't figure out why Guy chose what he did, but we're getting a lot of use of it, especially Luke. (Luke really lucked out at Kohl's and scored a "The Office" daily calendar for half off.)

That man, I swear. He has a very selective memory, and seems to have forgotten that we had a big disagreement on the phone over the holidays, I don't even know WHY in the first place, but he sounded like absolutely nothing was amiss between us Saturday, with which I rolled along but sent me in a wail of tears after we got off the phone the night he called to yell at me, holed up in my room bawling because I figured he didn't love me and talked with Kate. Other than that, details of the fight are foggy, because Guy called me at 10pm, by which time, I'm an inarticulate space cadet. Even Guy said on the phone that he didn't try to upset me purposely. Kate and SuperJuls talked me off the ledge. When I asked him why he addressed himself as Dr. Guy Friend on the phone, he didn't elaborate as to why. I figured he was drunk, but he was on call, and said he hadn't been drinking. But his behavior was bizarre. He said he was just joking around....yet he was on call that night & perhaps wanted anyone overhearing at home to think he was calling the hospital. He was calling from home and the folks in the background, in another room I gather, came in and said they'd been waiting like an hour for Guy to come shoot pool with them. So that was "Good night" with Guy, ending on a negative note. :(

New Years came and went, and he was asleep by midnight CST, so he missed out on coming over to my house and having the opportunity to kiss me at midnight, er, at least that's what I was thinking would be a good idea. Too bad he wasn't actually AT work in the hospital on NYE, because I can completely see myself driving over there.

On the whole, our conversation last week was very relieving and reassuring. Hell, I even got a "love ya" at the end, and he hasn't said in ages!

Waiting for my weekly 8am (ugh) seminar to begin Wednesday morning, I was eating a horrible, dry tasteless, tooth-breaking gluten free granola bar. I texted Guy that it reminded me of him. (His mom just went gluten and dairy free.) No, it's not that he's tasteless and breaks teeth. Rather, it reminded me of his mom. After that text, he said he was up most of the night handling another doctor's call covering and thought about texting me at 4am, which in hindsight, he totally should have. Yes, because I'm a chick, I will cling to that statement for dear life and swoon over the fact that I actually popped into his head for once in a point of time, albeit briefly.

I wrote Guy this elaborate thank you/need to get off my chest email this week, which I'm guessing he hasn't read yet, because he worked tirelessly all week. My resident experts told me it was okay and endorsed the sending. Long story short, I laid out what I'm looking for with him (which I think I've told him 100 times before), and how (from my perspective anyway) I do NOT want to sleep with him. I'm nowhere emotionally ready, as I told him, for that act with anyone on earth, much less him. What do I want? Like the Snow Patrol song, "Chasing Cars," "If I lay here, if I lay just here, would you lie with me and just forget the world?" What is my fantasy? To lie on a blanket together some time when we can see a million stars in the sky and just cuddle. I realize this is probably an impossibility; included, but not limited to the fact it's the middle of winter. To be innocuously tight friends with a couple of miscellaneous benefits--that's my goal. I flat out admitted I was affection-starved.

He wants to do more things in groups? I told him how terrifying the idea is to me...to go out with a group of strangers only knowing the glue that held them all together, the host, who would be Guy. I intimated, and it's truthful, that I'd be a nervous wreck. I like doing things together alone as buddies and still fail to see what's wrong with that. It's a by-product of having panic disorder. Anything new and uncomfortable is pretty much terrifying. And he can't possibly view me as THAT frightening.

So that wraps up The Twelve Days of a Guy Friend Christmas...here's hoping we have a fabulous 2013!

Oui. Non: Eric Clapton

Tonight, we begin our series of harshly criticizing very attractive people's appearances, from the Discriminate Eyes of the Offbeat Drummer. Purely my opinion, and Lord knows I have no room to bitch. Yeah, kinda too bad.

Eric, really. Keep it short, cropped & totally do the facial hair deal. The Marlo Thomas "That Girl!" wisps lightened with highlighter but gray intermixed completely don't work on you, for your age, with your facial structure, and especially when you have a 30+ years younger wife & a bunch of new little daughters scampering around. If you insist on staying sober, for God's sake, with the jowl thing, since I assume you're too practical to go under the knife (which, yeah, don't ever do, unless you want to look like the plastic atrocity that is Gene Simmons)? Facial hair, brother. I know if *I* had really silly looking hair (not that you have any idea that I don't, necessarily) in public and I was pushing 70, it'd be a safe bet I was on the sauce.

Oui, Clapton:

Non, Clapton:

Lots and Lots of Bird Flipping.

Look, Chickie Babies, I realize my blog is a public entity, and I have no control over who sees what, and I do live a life completely devoid of apologies for the way I feel about pretty much everything. It's not like I shiver in worry about my public reputation, even when there's the threat of it coming back to bite me in the ass. That said, even on the best of days, I'm short-tempered and intolerant of Things and People That Annoy Me, a rather exhaustive list, I must say.

One of you who managed to hover far enough away from my omniscient radar has decided to snoop on me again, when either she a) never went away to begin with, and circumvented my tech savvy by using an IP proxy (though she's pretty dumb) for a long time or b) decided, after like 9 months, to see if I'm still alive and snippy.

Why, yes. The sabbatical after Balderdash & Verities was artistically prolific and battery-recharging. After 3 mind-numbing, body-destroying years in employment (the only positive outcome was in making a friend), I let my brain re-fire its synapses and neurons. Then my dim bulb was made all the brighter by enrolling in graduate school full-time. Graduate school is where smart people with bachelor's degrees go to get masters' degrees and then doctorates and shit. It's where people go when they don't want to spent almost 30 years in a go-nowhere-but-one-lateral-ladder-up-promotion at the same place of business, e.g. well, Balderdash & Verities. It's where my insanity is my greatest asset. Your job is to placate people and generate revenue for your bosses, which is only slightly more dignified and a moderate caste higher than your other job of babysitting people who are already dead.

So. Madame Former Supervisor. Really. Give it up. I understand. My life is sixty-times-more-awesome than yours and curiosity is a morbid attraction.

The Beatles would like you to fuck off.

Johnny Cash would like you to fuck off.

Frank Zappa would like you to fuck off.

Ike & Tina Turner would like you to fuck off. And believe me, Ike Turner is a massive motherfucker on whose bad side you really, really don't want to land.

Marlon Brando would like you to fuck off.

Bono and Paul McCartney teamed up and would like you to fuck off.

President Obama would like you to fuck off.

Jesus Christ would like you to fuck off.

Kate, especially, would like you to fuck off, as would her dog:

Mister Rogers would like you to doubly fuck off, with both hands!

Keith Richards would like you to fuck off.

Ozzy would like you to fuck off.

Cartoon Middle Finger Dude would like you to fuck off.

A famous, legendary Welsh punker I know would like you to fuck off.

Finally, an Overprotective Anarchist Walrus would like you to fuck off. I think, out of all these fuckers, he's the one you really should worry about angering. 

Not pictured, but Best Male Friend, Miss Thang II & I also want you to fuck off, as do the rest of the friends and fans who remain anonymous but whose fingers weren't available at press time.

Thanks bunches, sweetie!

XOXO,

The Offbeat Drummer

The Twelve Days of a Guy Friend Christmas: Day 10

Tag: Bought this for $3 in Boston. A gem. "Be a genuine samurai."

As much as I wish I had command of the martial and Eastern arts and defense, the only samurai characteristic I hold is my infamous roundhouse kick to anyone's ass crack (I have great aim, by the way). I'll have to delve into it after I finish Pete Townshend's autobiography. With half the courseload this semester, which starts Monday (nerves!) I figure I'll have more time to leisure read.

Pretty cool if I say so myself.

This is a work of fiction, and while I don't feel like much of a warrior lately, obviously there's something about this book that Guy thought I'd find enchanting, and he knows I'm a pretty discriminate reader in my spare time (and a massive critic).

So...yeah...no, I still haven't heard from him. My soul's in total flux.

Luke said, yesterday afternoon, that he'd grown tired of my Facebook cover shot of Yoko Ono with the "War is Over" logo behind her. He's all "You've had that up for months! Can't you change it?" Why yes, Luke, I can. I changed to a picture of someone, in such a pose, for whom I would renounce my pursuit of any other man on earth...if it were a) 1965 and b) he wasn't dead.

George Harrison on a couch with a bottle of champagne? As the samurai would say, "Sayonara, fellas!"

Damn psychotropic drugs. I love waking up to conversations in text or in print that I don't remember having the night before. Evidently last night, I had a toothache over which Steven said to chew an aspirin where it hurts, I perilously tried to converse with SuperJuls, who gave up on me, and I bought a bra. I did *not,* however, remember that my mom wanted to to clean the Luke scum out of the bathtub late last night, over which she's none too pleased this morning. Having just woken up, I'm kinda "Twenty Shades of Not Giving a Shit" & wasn't given the opportunity to clean it myself just now, which in all likelihood, I wouldn't clean to her rigid specifications in the first place. 

It's why I can't remember everything Guy was scolding me about Sunday night, my memory scant other than snippets, which he hasn't responded to explaining further. Generally, anything that enters my brain after 10pm, if I've taken my meds at 8:00ish, is bound to be totally forgotten or vaguely recalled the next day, which sucks. As much as I totally recall in hindsight last night was that my weaker Rx eyeglasses made things on my phone and computer slightly *less* blurry and that, at the rate I'm going, I'll be totally blind by the time I'm 45. Kate can't believe I've vainly held back from bifocals for as long as I have.  Ah hell. 

The Twelve Days of a Guy Friend Christmas: Day 9: The 400 lb Gorilla in the Room

Tag read: "Abbey Road was an XL, so squeeze into it!"

The Rolling Stones are celebrating their 50th anniversary this year as a band. They recently released a new "best-of" CD with a couple of new songs on it, and the above graphic is on the cover of said CD. It's totally bitchin'. I love it (the shirt, and the greatest hits compilation).

When Guy said to "squeeze into it," he wasn't kidding. I will exchange it (it's a Junior's small) for, most likely, an XL, which'll still accentuate my (legitimately disproportionate, but they're real) chest. I'm totally flattered that he thinks I'd fit into a small, which I would've when I was anorexic, & ecstatic that he doesn't think I'm fat, & must appreciate tight clothing, but the Offbeat Drummer needs to be able to a) breathe and b) not look any more like a porn star than I already do (sit down, gentlemen).

It's the second Rolling Stones shirt I received this holiday season. The first was from Best Male Friend, a redux of a shirt Keith Richards wore in the 70's:

I look pretty similar to Richards wearing it...stoned, smoking, eyes half shut and brimming with attitude. I'd wear it to school and not give a hoot.

Today is my Polish grandfather's birthday, my Jaja. (Pronounced exactly the way it's spelled, his companion being my Nana.) He was born in 1901, so that would've made him, what, 112 this year? He died a few days before my 9th birthday, if memory serves. He was the grandparent who could never remember my name, so he always just called me "The Little One," since I was the youngest in the family. Below: my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary--gasp--they were Catholic and both had been married previously! I was probably 6 or 7  in this picture. Hair courtesy of a bowl, clearly. Uncanny how much I look like my mom in my old age.

The Twelve Days of a Guy Friend Christmas: Day 8: A Lovely Mismatch

Day 8, the tag: To Bigfoot.

(No, I don't have radically disproportionate feet. They're a size 8/8.5 depending on the shoe, and I'm 5'8".)

Before I go on, can I just say how wonderfully humorous it is that my phone keeps autocorrecting "Irish" to "Krishna?" That sort of rules.

But I digress.

As one might guess, The Offbeat Drummer doesn't *always* match clothes-wise. In fact, the LESS I match, the happier I am. Lord knows I try, and I'm not colorblind, but I usually see no value in compiling an outfit where everything is perfectly coordinated. In that respect, yes, I'll admit to a bit of zaniness and take cues from my could-give-a-shit fabulous rock star friends. About as far as I'll go is, like for the last time I went out with Guy Friend, I matched my handbag with my belt with my boots, which left me panic-stricken and questioning my sanity (I mean, more so than usual.). It's not unlike me to walk out the door in color combinations that resemble something coughed up by someone who's had too much of Willy Wonka.

Guy's gift today literally SCREAMS "Annie." 2 pairs of very funky socks. They're awesome. I adore them. So excited when I opened them late last night (yes, I cheated again on EST), I had to text pictures of them to my friends, who uniformly agreed how incredibly awesome they are. I haven't said anything to Guy about them yet. I feel as if he'll view my genuine enthusiasm and gratefulness as feigned, which it's truly not. It's like how big a hole for a well have I dug myself into, and is Guy willing to throw me a rope and pull me back up to ground level by his side, or am I best left in solitude to ponder my wrongdoing? He's not typically a grudge-holder, and is guilty of the crime of douchebaggery himself, but dare I say, I was way more douchey.

Kate says I put too much stock into words, because I'm a writer, and that *I* mean what I say, whereas Guy Friend doesn't know *how* to use words to convey feelings, but I should, rather, look at his actions and beyond his insecurities to accurately frame a picture of how Guy feels. I wish it were that simple, but Guy is kind of Captain of the Conflicting Cruise liner with the helm aimed right at me, the Big, Frightening, Impenetrable Iceberg.  Kate, on the other hand, is never wrong, and I know how Kate sees the situation between Guy and myself.  I know how I would interpret Guy's actions, but then what if I'm wrong? I'm usually wrong. I'm probably wrong. Right?

I can be as randomly moody as Guy, which creates (needless) tension in our friendship. He would probably describe himself as very even keeled and patient, which is true to a certain extent, but he is easily agitated. Late New Year's Eve night, I was still in the middle of ripping him a new one, ignoring his random attempt to make up earlier in the day. In any event, he never did call me on New Year's Day, so I assume he's still stewing over either our argument a couple days ago or my mean texts, or just generally didn't want to deal with me, any of which case I'd totally understand. I knew he had to work yesterday, I believe, but otherwise probably had yet more family to contend with for the rest of the day.

New Year's Day was....colorful. We had my aunt & uncle over (my dad's older brother and his wife) and my brother over for dinner. My nephew passed, as he was really sick at home. Stories about the extended Miklasz clan and the generations who have preceded, are, to us younger folk, hysterical.

I never heard back from Guy after I sent him this text, minus my parenthetical back stories:

"It sucks that I'm not even sure who's mad at whom between us at this point, because you missed my dad's family, who went from the stripper aunt (My great-aunt Louise was an "exotic dancer" who married my big band clarinetist, relatively well known uncle Wally, my Nana's younger brother, who's real last name was Marynowski, but he used the less-Polish stage name of Moran. The family only found out she was a stripper after my aunt's mother passed a club that had, in front of it, a giant cardboard cutout of my great-aunt, as she was a featured performer and I can't remember what my uncle said her stage name was), to my uncle being stationed at Roswell in the 50's & alien conspiracy theories (Uncle Jerry is very...vague...about what he saw in Roswell, but claims the aliens were long gone by the time he was in service, which we all wonder about), to the guys in my family fucking around with people's prosthetic limbs (Which would get tossed around! Have they no shame?) to stealing people's dentures (Rumor has it one cousin stole another's dentures and made her sell lemonade on the corner to make the bedentured cousin earn back her teeth.)."

Yes, my dad's side of the family is pretty fuck nuts, which I love, but very artistic & musically gifted, and in general terms, quite literally everyone was perpetually fueled by booze, though the consensus is that the clan was, as a whole, a gaggle of happy drunks, and people still shake their heads and wonder how *I* could have ever developed a drinking problem and wound up a little fuck nuts myself. I can't imagine, with DNA such as mine. Am I ashamed of the stock from which I was conceived? Hardly. The law of averages would seem to indicate that I'd fit right in with the rest of the fuck nuts.

Tonight is dinner and merriment post-holidays with SuperJuls, and not a moment too soon!  I'd wear my Super Funky socks, but I'm sort of rocking the going-to-Houlihans-look in Earth-toned bland.

I'm trying to teach a friend how to make a mix CD for someone. It's harder to explain and compile than you might think. You have to have an amassed library inside your own head of lyrics-known-by-heart regardless of the flow of melodic content. It's all about what you're trying to say, not how you say it. Guy's always prided me as a relative savant at this task, and I'm happy to make suggestions to my friends when they're on their own, but I guess it's a skill I take for granted. I, of course, perfected my ability at throwing together a mix under the helm of Best Male Friend.