Thanksgiving is not a happy day for turkeys.

I just made chocolate vegan cheesecake from heaven. Heaven and the angelic choir. And I restrained myself to licking the bowl, spatulas, countertops, etc. Now the Queen of Glory cake sits in the fridge waiting for the actual Thanksgiving day where there will be a drizzle of raspberry syrup.

I also made an African peanut stew, also divine and blessed by the finger of the baby Jesus. I did add additional peanut butter because, well, it needed it. My tenant brought me cookies so I'm gonna pay her back with a bowl of stew. We might as well get fat together. She's in love too so there's a lot of loud music at certain times so we won't, um, hear each other. TMI, probably.

Cold and crunchy on the back stairs. The cats haven't ventured out because they are essentially weenies.

My yard

Today at Firestone tires I learned these things:

1. On Days of Our Lives you can get married and keep the children, even the autistic one.

2. The older people in DOOL wear earphone things which probably are giving them line prompts.

3. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread when snow hits the highways and the fools have 4 wheel drive and think they can go REAL FAST and they and their big-ass cars flip over causing massive back-ups for all the other cars, especially the ones running out of gas with little kids in the back.

4. Sheesh.

5. The nice man at Firestone showed me how easy it is to install chains on my car except that when I am actually installing chains on my car, it will be 23 below zero and dark and I'll be kneeling in the slush while semis thunder by, making my little car vibrate and my hands are frozen blocks of ice and I'm cursing a long string of expletives and wondering why, o lord, why.

6. My brain is permanently in angelic time, time where laughter and chocolate and music and art live.

7. Howl is one of the most heavenly poems ever written. I read it when I was 15 and had no idea what I was holding in my hands. Bless you, Allen.

---I'm with you in Rockland

in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-

journey on the highway across America in tears

to the door of my cottage in the Western night

Allen Ginsberg

Because I am mad flattened with love sickness, my car has had ANOTHER flat tire. No more am I going to try to appease the car gods. Fuck the car gods. I'm gonna go over to Brenda and Pete's house, eat chips and salsa and watch purloined Dexter, my darling avenging angel.

It SNOWED in my yard. The cats came in sparkling with flakes on their fur.

Speaking of cats, my three (count 'em) love bundles ate through a bag of cat food I foolishly left out. They then drank all the water in the house, toilets, yard etc. and their bellies were huge balloon-y fur pockets. Serves them right. I have no sympathy. I feed them precise amounts of very expensive food and this is how they repay me. They act like such...animals sometimes. It's appalling.

Meanwhile, I'm unsafe at any speed. I can't walk or think or pay bills. My brain is bathed in oxytocin and endorphins and I'm stoopid. I don't care that my house is a mess or my hair or the food in the fridge is growing organisms. My thoughts are x-rated. Actually, I have no thoughts. None. I think all my brain cells have exploded. Now my head is a super nova.

memento

O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors: The north is thine; there hast thou build thy dark, Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs, Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car. 
William Blake

fast you approach

my heartsore

for this to bewilder

scrambled scatter

we huddle at the fences

you drag us under

wet slap

tongue swaggle

still

I wait for your talent

your long finger

while lights flicker and shush

where else can we pursue realms of virtue

when the herald carouses

amber and bend

time for a brimful stranger

a portion to harken

an amulet

pale cross stitch

pricked palm crease

hush

So this time when I heard how much my car was going to cost to repair, I didn't do a perfect Scarlett O'Hara imitation and fling my hand over my eyes and succumb to the vapors. I had a moment of clarity because I didn't do it. I didn't cause the smash. I was PARKED. The other person has to pay. For everything. And it's going to cost about five hundred thousand million more that my back window.

AND. I am driving a decent rental. It's red. I understand the dashboard. It's Japanese.

By the way, the adjuster guy and the repair guy and I are now best friends. He did suggest that I could be t-boned next but I think that's a bad idea all round. My car doesn't need to be repaired on every side. Really, it doesn't.

The dark season has come again. An anniversary I despair of. It doesn't get easier or better. We don't 'get over it'. When someone you love takes his life, the wound never heals. You forget it's there until the dark wakes up, this time of year when old wounds ache. And bleed. Again.

Geoffrey, I fear you are a hungry ghost.

Off to the collision shop ***again***. Just say no to Impalas. Impalas suck eggs. Ford, Chevy, Pontiac? Whatever. I'm insisting on a reasonable rental car. Is there such a thing? As a veteran of multiple car smash-ups, I want a red carpet, a driver and champagne in a silver bucket!

Her Highness, The Queen

Dear car gods,

As you know, I recently had a bit of a run-in with a school bus. I picked up my car from the collision place Friday afternoon, all washed, shiny and smelling like new car smell. It was wonderful to be reunited.

Then today I was parked in front of the house where we had a baby (you know, the midwife thing). One of the friends invited smashed into the FRONT of my car. Her foot slipped and she hit the accelerator. Oh, and I apparently parked under the thousand pigeon power lines so my car was also covered in pigeon shit when I came out to go home.

Have I done something to displease you? Do you want offerings of cracked corn (no, wait, that's for pigeons). Ok, offerings of motor oil, wax jobs, uh, high test gas? If you could let me know, I'd be eternally grateful.

Your faithful servant,

Beth

Waiting for another baby. Tonight in the Thai restaurant I saw a young family with a wee baby with no hat and bare feet. The grandma took them to dinner. They're exhausted and dazed. I almost got up to tell them to go back to their warm house with their babe and go to sleep, in a cave of blankets. Sometimes we're not intuitive. That's where I come in, all bossy and scold-y.

Sweet dreams, all you babies and your parents who have no idea what they're doing. No idea. And that's just the beginning.

Off to my bed where I'll pass out until the pager goes off again.

I will not blather about my new love interest. I'm just here to let you know that we have changed the weather. The sun and clear days are because of us. The sunrise the other morning-us. So when you think Seattle has gone mad with brilliant beautiful fall days, you have us to thank.

You're welcome.

Love, Beth

Chris Pureka-my obsession

While backing out of my driveway this AM, I apparently ran my back window into the big black mirror thingy sticking out at right angles from the front of a BIG YELLOW SCHOOL BUS which I didn't see????? WTF? My whole back window collapsed in an explosion of glass and crashing. At least I didn't run over any school children. Then I would have been on the evening news with my coat over my head. I wasn't even going that fast. And I was humming away, being all smug that I would arrive at clinic on time or even a wee bit early. Nope, a trip to the body shop, a rental car (an Antelope or Cheetah or some animal). A Cougar? The seat is electric. You can push a button and it goes ((brrrrrrr)) up and down and back and forwards. I still couldn't reach the gas pedal very easily.

Then they called to tell me about the bill. I almost fainted. Actually, my mouth formed a perfect 0 and I was rendered speechless. Even now I can't tell you how much a new window is going to cost. It's between 50 and a million dollars. Closer to a million. At least I can feel good that I am employing more people to work for me.

All because I am, ahem, falling for someone, a person. A human person. And I'm in a daze. I feel happy, which is a very weird feeling for me. And my evil twin is chattering that I'm delusional and it won't last and I'm just mental. So, anyway, I back my car into busses. What next, a building? Hey, I have an idea. I'll drive into an elementary school. After the kids have gone home, of course. So. I hope this new thang doesn't lead to any more property damage.

Sheesh.

It's a raw day, an unfinished day, a day of possible tribulation. Pumpkins rot on the porches, their faces folding in on themselves. I insist on a walk because I need to see what the geese and mallards are doing, rocking about in the lake. No turtles today. They line up on the logs and sun. So November is not promising for them.

I sat at my writing desk where I don't actually write. I prefer to sit on the couch hunched over my laptop to write. Then I wonder why I have a backache. But. I'm up here and noticed that the window was open a smidge. In order to close it, I had to kneel on the desk and push/pull in opposite directions while brushing away spider detritus. Obviously I don't spend much time in here.

I loathe turning on the heat. Loathe it. Heat should be free. So should water and garbage. My NYT told me this morning that the top 1% own 24% of the wealth. I don't really understand this in real numbers but I do understand that greed has no limitations, my little greed and some really huge greed. Greed=suffering. I have the great good fortune to employ several people in my midwifery practice. We don't make a lot but we do make enough. The business makes enough to support us, more or less. I still want free heat for everyone, however.

Tonight I'm going to a concert where I'm sure I'll be the oldest person there. I don't care. I have been listening to this artist obsessively since I discovered her. Tonight I get to see her move and sing. I might get her autograph. Gawd.

I'm learning to spit off the porch. The boys all learned it long ago. Not me. So I have some catching up to do. I'm gonna try peas, holding one in my mouth just so and ping! See how that works.

Took my shattered shirt to the cleaners. They said they could get the stains out. My peacock shirt. Please reincarnate.

If this is love, I want some more. Please.

I might be a hopeless shill. I read 'accessible ' poetry last night as a way to 'win them over' and 'please them' so I could slip in a few renegades, my darlings. Gag. Sometimes I don't know how to behave so I fake it. The wine and cheese table. The soft lighting. My writing partners. I'm an impostor in a gorilla suit.

Today is long walk in the sun day. Windy, leaves still falling. I made breakfast for James, my gay husband. We talked about the end of the world. Today, I'm not afraid to die. I think this is a good development considering that we will all die.

By the way, the best part of last night was that I put on my brand new shirt, accidentally splattered perfume all over it, had to go to #2 wardrobe selection but wore my new boots. I imagined myself fashion poetry queen. In my boots. With a swagger.

D-your response was perfect.

-little tomato

Tonight's the poetry reading and between my clogged wi snot head, my intermittent hearing problem and the omnipresent codeine cough syrup, I don't feel mentally well enough to face the public. And then there's the issue of what to read-accessible or 'other'. Maybe I'll mix it up. I have my horse poem.

My cough is IMPRESSIVE. When do you know you've moved on from a cold to bronchitis or pneumonia? Do I have to break a rib coughing?

Finally, there is the question of what to wear tonight...because I could be a credible tubercular Chopin, what with my symptoms and all. I'm pale and anorexic-there's that. So I could go with the white shirt with big cuffs and black everything else. I could waft up to the podium with a hanky, stained red, and cast my soulful glances about while I read. Then I could slide slowly to the floor, artistically crumpled while my pages float off.

Then there are the new boots. I could build my ensemble using them as the base. So many decisions.

It was freakishly warm here today in maroonland. I insisted on gardening while coughing and snorting. Now I sound like Linda Blair with many devils inside. I made Deb laugh. I had the good sense to return to the Group Health Constabulatory for codeine cough syrup. The label clearly says: Do not operate heavy machinery while taking this medicine. I asked the lady who gave me the bottle in an plain brown bag what heavy machinery they could mean. She said, "A car."

Oh, I replied, and got in my car and drove away.

I made it home safely too. Sheesh.

Lola is lying on my arm making typing impossible. Well, difficult.

I married a couple today and they gave me a bottle of special brandy made from apples. It's delicious, especially on top of the cough syrup.

Without night, we' d have no illicit activities. Illicit activities are just not as illicit in the daytime.

Yes, I'm a Buddhist. So?

While walking around Seward Park in the sunny sun, I'm smiling at babies, petting dogs and listening to this:

It's the day after our National Nightmare before Christmas elections. The sky and sea and leaves and grass are brilliant in the sun and I intend to go for a walk. And not think about politics and big business and corruption and greed and hatred. And lunacy. Peace reigns on my tiny patch of terra firma. Well, except for the usual cat battles. At least I didn't find any vomit on the furniture this morning although Lola climbed in with me at dawn and drooled on my arm. Drool I can deal with. Dino Rossi being a Senator I can't.

Even though I still have a dramatic cough that people back away from, I might walk for miles, with kleenix. I always wonder what 'resumption of normal activities' means. I usually overdo it and extend my illness for another week. I still can't hear out my left ear, except for a few minutes upon waking.

This Saturday is our reading. My writing group. I'm not sure I can find the location because it's a studio space on the water in Ballard, which from my house is about 437 miles from here. Not as the crows fly, but over train and light rail tracks, by the sporting arenas, and over the hills and through the woods to grandmother's house we go. So. And then there is the ticklish cough that signals the end of a cold when you try to suppress it and your eyes water and you eventually have to leave the room to hawk and spit. Not pretty but there it is. I'll be sucking lozenges and reading, attempting to be intelligible with a candy in my mouth. Although I have NEW BOOTS. From Ross. They were very cheap and they're not made of animal hide. My mother used to tell me I looked 'cheap' so I've been going for it ever since. Reverse psychology, right?

I figure no one will be able to understand what I'm saying while I read but they'll be looking at my boots and thinking, 'How does she pull it off, that classy look?' Shoes really do make the woman and I'm not saying that because I have purple Danskos with French writing all over them. It's just simply true.

I made nutloaf and mango salad with avocados and grapefruit and baked gingersnaps today. I couldn't taste any of it. I'm sure it was good. I remember liking all of it. I ate many cookies to try to find the flavor. I have a friend who has no taste buds. A tragedy.

My head is full of fuzz, the kind of fuzz when your ears are ringing and your nose is disconnected and you've been lying on the couch with a large ring of used kleenix around you. My left ear is aching which makes me worried since my right ear is already damaged. I hear in mono anyway. Which means that I don't have directional hearing anymore. I hear a sound and don't know where it's coming from. ***coyote howl*** Is it in the living room or in the garage? Is that my smoke detector or someone across the street? Then there are the ghosts. And they could be anywhere.

Plugged up, fuzzy, under water, phased out. It's darker now so I think it's night. You can't tell during the rainy season.

We. Live. In. A. Rain forest. So if you expected sun, ha! No, it rains here 4535 days a year. It doesn't get light out. You wake up from a nap and you don't know if it's 7PM or 7AM. That's how it is here, Your fur is always damp. So grow a thick coat. And bring lozenges to suck on. For comfort.