Of Life, Limbs and Logic

There’s a fine limbo line between control and acquiescence. I’m walking it with the insurance company of late. Half the time, I have no idea where the safety zone is, what ground I’m standing upon, or if it’s all a grand conspiracy or karmic payback for that time I rammed that unknowing jerkola from behind on the bumper cars in the amusement park. It was funny at the time, or so I thought.

Long, incredibly boring story short, they’ve decided to write-off our Odyssey as a total loss, for reasons having to do with the damages being worth more than 70% of what they deem the value of it to be.

But to be or not to be, that is the question. Safeco's (a misnomer if ever there was one) market comparables and mine don’t at all match. For instance, our Honda-installed trailer hitch, was $1,500.00. They chalk that up to a $77.00 additional value. Can you say, does not compute?

Our vehicle (long incredibly boring story longer here), apart from a couple of fine tooth comb scratches, was still in mint condition after all these years. The original carpet inside had never been exposed to wear and tear – the previous owner had custom carpet laid down inside such that it would always maintain a pristine condition. And we had religiously babied it with Honda servicing this past decade at monthly intervals. But that’s all blah blah blather to the insurance company. On paper, it’s worth a fraction of what we would have sold it for. And in reality, it’s just about the right size for the friendly neighbourhood junkyard dog now.

In any event, we’re now going between the two insurance companies in order to see whether our insurance company will designate a higher value. I don’t honestly expect them to – but part of that control thing is exhausting every avenue, how ever thin and tenuous.

So it appears we are now car shopping, which is an activity that ranks right up there with many other of my least favourite things to do, including but not limited to walking on hot coals. I’ve decided my minivan days are done, but only marginally because we’re now looking – in this day and age of anti-SUV – at a Honda Pilot. It seats 8 and pulls the trailer and is equally as gas gluttonous as its Odysseyian cousin, so it's a bit of a stalemate.

But what do you do? Bite the hand that supposedly feeds you – if near starvation might stand in for nourishment for a moment? Or do you feed the greedy system of oil companies, vehicle manufacturers, insurance companies and the like? It’s not merely a philosophical question: it’s the quintessential, middle-aged conundrum. You want to answer, screw them all, I’m outta here. This system ist sehr farocht and I want no part of it.

But owing to your city dweller status, you’re so entangled in the system, you couldn’t find your way out of the maze even if you were channeling a now grown-up Hansel and Gretel. Or so you think.

You want to think it’s all teleological when, in fact, the whole house of cards schema is ideological, which must and should always be confused with idiotlogical.

But still you hum and sing, because somewhere, somehow, someone told you there is a rhyme and there is a cadence to the entire affair. This is the vehicle that pulls the trailer, that becomes the house on camping escapes, that then parks in the garage like a giant square shape, which is adjacent to the door, of the house the Schmidts built.

Now if you’re a mathematician, you might, at this point, whip out your calculator in order to compute the number of times said trailer leaves said garage in a given year and then run some kind of impressive quadratic equation that factors in the cost of daily driving of said vehicle versus renting same said vehicle for three weekends a year instead. But you’re not, so you don’t.

Instead, you continue to sing, even though this, too, is not your strong suit. For this is the vehicle that hauls the kids all gloomy and glummy, to school and the pool, and then to dance, Scouts and sports with their chummy chum chummies, and gives them each space with a pillow and quilt, for long haul trips away from the house the Schmidts built.

Yes, those rare yet coveted trips away from the house. That’s what it’s all about. There is no price you dare put on the slim to nil escapes from the rat cage wheel of life. And so, you do your own simple balance sheet in your head, which is just like the kind you did on your college accounting exams (which is to say it never does ever balance, darnitalltohell, screw being a Certified Management Accountant – that’s a dumb career choice anyways and who wants to be pot bellied number cruncher in their 30s talking about financial statements at parties and sitting in a back room cubicle with a pocket protector?) And so, as then so now, you fudge the numbers, shed a tear or three in frustration at the ineffability of it all, and call it an even Stephen.

And then you paste a smile on your face and say things like, I’m just grateful we were all OK and not seriously injured (well OK, except that you're now sorely tempted to "give your right arm" for some coveted thing, because it's feeling pretty useless these days anyways). Or, I’m so glad the other guy had insurance ~ Thank! God! for that. Or, I’m glad we were able to salvage at least a week of getaway in our summer. Authentic statements, all of them, for you really do bow down to the god of vehicular collisions with respect to these things.

And then a big sigh builds up within you and you get all stoic and bodhisattva – a syncretism not entirely implausible given Alexander the Great’s oriental camel express train east way back in the day – but somewhere in that space between stoicism and Vibhajjavāda, you yield to a deep-seated jealousy that Alexander managed to eek out a helluva lot more than a week’s all-expense-paid getaway and to a far more exotic locale than a $27.00 dollar a night cabin on Camano Island.

But alas, when you are finally able to strike a yogic pose for a moment on account of your inability to breathe lately - and as you ponder the nature of all things – love, pain, the whole damn thing - in the best Texas twang and Scarlet O’Haran pose you can muster, such as whether meaning is (a) a priori; (b) a posteriori; (c) a freakin' pain in the posteriori or (d) all of the above ~ then and only then does momentary enlightenment come to you, such that you begin to spout the impermanence of all things ~ even, especially, vehicles. Which at a purely organic level, is just matter. And matter does not matter. But then you think to yourself, even your 11 year old son knows that positive one minus negative one equals two. Which might then mean that it doubly matters. And that spells double trouble, given that you come from a long line of worriers from way back. Well three lines actually, if you consider the not so small matters of marriage and adoption. All of which begins to make your head hurt, which then has you reading the fine print on the medical insurance forms the other insurance company sent you (paperwork that when subjected to purple infrared strobe lights, sports Please Do Not Sue! between the lines of the size 2 font text) to see if perhaps they'll cover headaches and brain strain. For it's all rather exhausting, all this meaning-making business, and it only serves to add to your lethargic laze of late, especially when you consider the anthropomorphism of the rain these past few days. Coincidence? You think not. The skies, they are a crying and that's not just a pathetic fallacy, it's real. Or is it? You no longer ascertain the acute differences between reality, unreality and surreality.

But you know it's pathetic, for you ken this in your bones. Most specifically, your clavicle, scapula, humerus, radius, ulna, scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate, metacarpal and phalange bones. So then you revert back to the old-school philosophy you used to spout in a hashish haze – life’s a bitch, and then you die. But your mind has been so addled lately that even in this, doubt plagues you. What if that’s wrong? What if you've transposed the logic? Maybe it's supposed to be, life’s a die (and boy did you roll a schmidty number), and then you bitch. And you realize you're onto something. Some little nugget of truth that at last, and at very least, you can latch onto. Because at least there, in that small place of lame life, limb and logic, you have a place upon which to stand.

Spring in my Step

Seasonal Affective Disorder
It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. The birds are chirping, will you be my friend? and the sun is lighting the canvas behind a pale, light gray/blue sky. I'll take it. January and early February were beyond miserable. All the mountain passes nearby have been closed several times because of avalanche danger.

Holy Son's weekly snowboarding school pilgrimage was great but he claimed there was almost too much snow, although he said he did manage to nail a back grab or whatever it's called. I wouldn't know because I don't speak Snowboard. I just nod my head and pretend I've understood what he's excitedly imparted to me. So apparently they were knee deep in powder and it was too much. What boarder complains of that? Especially on the West Coast where you take the rain and slush with the snow and pretend its a stellar run.

But enough about snow. With the longer days equating to brighter mornings when we drive to school, and the advent of winter and spring breaks upon us, I can't help but think spring.

Even our one superstar Venus Flytrap, John, thinks so. He's been stuck beneath a fluorescent bulb - lucky dog - light is one thing we lack in these parts, artificial and otherwise. So all that warmth and brightness had him sprouting a big tall flower. It will soon be time to move him outside, now that nicer weather is upon us and Holy Son's science experiment is almost over. Feeding John, Jake, Jim and Joe has been interesting though. I've learned mealworms don't fight as much as earthworms. And that you need to squeeze the cricket a bit and then hold it down firmly in the trap before it closes and even then, wait a few more seconds before attempting to extract the tweezers. Crickets are feisty and quick and they'll fight to the bitter end for life and limb, as necessary.

Of course the greatest irony is that all those disgusting giant house and callobious spiders that set up house and home downstairs this fall are nowhere to be found. Who can blame them though ~ I'd be making tracks to the Bahamas to escape gross Seattle winters, too, if I was able.

Yes, thoughts of spring have sprung in the Schmidthouse and so, too, a manic schedule. Let me qualify that - more manic than the already manic schedule.

The Comedy of Errors
Northrup Frye dubbed spring to be the season of comedy. I think he was onto something because running around with my head cut off will be nothing short of comedic to those who will be watching from the wings. Like my poor, long-lost friend, Cor, who is coming to visit the last week of February in what might prove to be the busiest, logistically speaking. I will take her to see Pike Place fish market and ride the Monorail. It will be her own week's version of Planes, Trains, Automobiles ~ because the rest of the week, she'll be riding shotgun while we ferry the kids all over hell's ten and a half acre.

That's because the kids have each been cast in spring community and school plays March/April/May, with rehearsals starting today.

That's a total of three plays, on top of the regularly scheduled weekly programming of Brownies, Scouts, Irish Dance, soccer and ballet. There might even have been two more spring church plays on Sundays had I not schemed to blow the UU-boat and Jonas the whaler up and off the schedule. I don't know much German but I do know how to say das ist verruckt, which sounds similar enough to what I might have said in English to convey the gist of my newfound mania.

The kids are tickled though. Holy Son landed a good size role in Romeo and Juliet as a Shakespeare in the Park sarcastic commentator. It's his biggest role yet - 25+ lines - and I'm tickled because he'll getting his first taste of Shakespeare. Or Marlowe. Or Francis Bacon. Or whoever he was. Or wasn't. That is the question.

Holy Daughter, not to be outdone, nailed a very funny line in her audition so they have decided, rather astutely I believe, to cast her as the punctuation punchline snail in Sleeping Beauty. So she'll get the last laugh in each of her scenes, which is perfect for her....she has a natural sense of comedic timing. She will also be doing a group performance role in her school production of Pinocchio as one of Geppetto's puppets.

So between juggling those three rehearsals, on top of her Irish dancing in prep for the Seattle St. Patrick's Day parade, and ballet and Brownie cookie sales deliveries and spring soccer; and his Scouts and winter/spring camping and cello lessons and soccer and four hours of homework a night, I'm thinking they won't have um....much time to get in trouble. Mind you, neither will Holy Hub and I.

It's all part of my master plan to have them fall into bed by 8pm each night, meek and spent. This plan will invariably backfire, of course. I'll be the one falling into bed by 8pm - they'll be like revved up thespians who stole the second wind from beneath Aladdin's carpet as they beg for time to 'unwind and relax'. Code word: Wii.

That's right we are now official members of the new millennium. Wii'ved joined the Wiivolution and even video-game phobic Holy Mom (OK, so what if the last game I played was Ms. Pac-man, at least I played that so there) has occasionally been known to get in on the action. Never mind that Holy Daughter kicks my petunias in bowling. She is wickedly good. She maneuvers her aim this way and that and then delivers a throw that would knock even good ole Freddy on his backside. I ended up doing what I think it a superbly-executed release that always turns out to be a backwards throw that hits all the animated Wii spectators. They point and laugh at me, as does Holy Daughter, and the whole thing is rather humiliating, in an cartoony and thus, unreal kind of way.

Even Holy Hub can't touch her score and he can Wii pitch at 90 miles an hour. It's pretty funny ~ this business of eight year olds being far more technologically-proficient than adults.

But that's not the end of the technology story. We also bought a couple of new Samsung flat panel TVs - one for the master bedroom and one for the kitchen/family room, where the hole in the wall has been fairly begging for us to place one. I ended up getting Best Buy to price match Amazon - they claim it's against their store policy nationwide and that Amazon is a dot.com not a store retailer, but Google Best Buy price match Amazon for sport, and you'll see it's happening everywhere. Even here, in Amazon land. That was one of the many arguments I wadded up in my tenacious little straw and spit back out at them. We ended up saving $400 which equates to a free Wii, games and controllers so it was all good.

OK, and since I'm feeling magnanimous today, I'll even admit to our last purchase. Two brand-new Toto toilets to replace our old ones. Is that fascinating blog reading or what? Judging by the kind of Google search queries of my new and unsuspecting visitors, I would have to say yeah - inquiring minds do want to know these things.

Lucky Charms
Anyways, back to the crazy schedule for a moment. If you're a regular lurker on this site or my old site, you may recall me blogging about my new gold parade dreams. Well, guess what, I may not be a Red Hot Mama yet, but I would bet even they had to start somewhere. Check this out - I actually get to be in the St. Patrick's Day parade too ~ showing off my Mighty Quinn roots. Never mind that I'm adopted and so, thus, not technically Irish. I happen to believe Irishness is not so much a nation state as it is a state of mind.

Or so I will be convinced after drinking a couple of pints of beer for courage that day. Speaking of Irish and drinks, there used to be a day and age when I thought people from Ireland were called Iris - I thought the sh was just the Guinness slur that was added for good measure and froth.

Harmless slurs aside, I may rope Holy Son into joining along in the festivities with some of his friends. We could all dress in green and go as Gang Green. Spectators will be green with envy or some other reaction, I'm sure. Holy Daughter will be decked out in her Irish dancing gear in prep for an afternoon dance performance following the parade. And yes, I'll take pictures and post them here for posterity. Actually Holy Hub will take pictures because I know he'll want no part of the parade, save the pre and post Guiness drinking, of course.

So now I need a new dream to add to my Top 10 dreams list. I think it will end up being journey related. I'm always scheming and dreaming about new places to go rather than things to do. Like spring break. We're busy planning a fam damily getaway to Vegas but I haven't officially booked it yet, mostly because I feel like Vegas is been there, done that. I haven't been in 15 years so it's changed wholesale, but still I'm less than enthusiastic. I'd much rather we hooked up our GPS and tent trailer and set our sights due southeastlyish enroute the great American whirlwind road trip. Like to Yosemite or to Zion National Park or Yellowstone or some equally wild, west locale. Not that Vegas isn't the wildest place in the west but it's urban and my brokeback heart is craving rural.

Speaking of brokeback and hearts, I had a quasi-interview with a pharmaceutical company a couple of weeks ago. Long story on how the hell I, hater of drug dealers, ended up making nice with them, but what I realized in that fatefully-aborted job prospect moment was that I really do not need to sell my integrity to become gainfully employed. And I certainly don't need to get dressed up to schmooze a pharma suit dudes when I should be working on the big kahuna headhunter instead. I've decided I'm going to scheme my dream part-time, lucrative, summer and school holidays off job and paste it on a four leaf clover on my bulletin board, or I'll put it in my universe in-box and then see what shows up. God only knows what will happen, right?

I do have a couple of prospects in my industry - fingers crossed, but both would entail a ton of work and probably too much travel. To say nothing of the kids' after school schedules.

If nothing materializes right away, so be it. I suspect 'll be too busy living and volunteering at the local theatre and lamenting, oh, home-o, home-o, wherefore art my home-o....to notice anyways.

Head Case

A funny thing happened to me on the way to moving into our new home. I lost my head.

It may still be in storage in the garage, mixed up in a box of miscellaneous apothecaries, gift decoration accessories and small hardware items from our kitchen junk drawer. Or perchance it popped off when I was packing up the bathroom cupboard and is now ensconced amongst vibrating toothbrushes, tampons, bath balms, lotions and sponges.

More than likely, however, it found kinship amongst our living and dining room ornaments and masks, and now sits precariously wedged in posed unblinking refinement in the mask box, all the while giving sidelong, squeamish glances at both the wooden brain picker utensil ornament from Fiji and my husband's cherished demon mask, which hails from Sri Lanka and enjoys only occasional exposure to human eyes from its permitted home on the back wall of our garage.

In any case, I have clearly misplaced my head, as evidenced by numerous recent, inexplicable decisions I have made in the past several weeks. Said mysterious choices are ranked below, in hierarchical order and direct accordance with their WTHWIT?! (what the hell was I thinking?!) significance.

Go, Dog, Go!
In the spirit of honest parenting, I will admit to having promised my children that we would consider getting a pet (of the non-cyber or igneous/obsidian variety) once we bought a house. We were still renting, after all. Now in the further spirit of dumb-ass moment admissions, I should also note that said statement was made with the teensiest bit of duplicity. At that moment in time, we had no plans to purchase a home. Hence therefore, it was an easy if rather empty promise.

What goes around comes around in karmic fashion or so sayeth grandparents who delight in such notions of parent/child payback. While we were busy praying for a healthy child with all fingers toes, limbs and sugar/spice faculties, they were fervently casting potions and spells to ensure we, their evil progeny of teen fame, spawned more of the same, in order that we, too, could enjoy the teenage fruits of our labors.

But OK, so here's the thing about promises to children. They may forget to make their bed and brush their teeth every day, despite having a good deed and chore chart posted on the fridge, being nagged sixteen times daily, and having to endure parents reading them nightly stories embedded with subliminal messages about good children who devote themselves to these and other altruistic daily regimes. Yes, it may be perfectly plausible that they could forget such important gestalt rituals, even though you might remind them that cleanliness and godliness are tight in finger-crossed fashion.

Heaven forbid, however, that you should murmur one lone, absent-minded and resigned someday promise, most often uttered in a state of duress after incessant and relentless badgering ("Mommy, Mommy, can we go to Disneyland someday? Please, please, please, please, please, pleaseplease pledeaseaeezzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!) ~ badgering, incidentally, that almost always transpires when one is engaged in an important long-distance business call or distracted by lost keys, a ringing cell phone and an empty wallet in the grocery store line-up.

Agreeing to such inconsequential, what-if, someday wishes is like giving your child a piece of treasure to lock in his or her memory chest. They.Never.Forget.These.Promises. Same child who has to be cattle-prodded each day to make his bed and brush his teeth because he somehow forgot these were his daily bread lots in life, will never forget the dog promise. Even after a frontal lobotomy.

Now speaking of forgetting and the need for psycho-surgery, I sometimes forget my brain has a different timeline than those of my pet-deprived offspring. When we move into our new home to me meant sometime in the decade thereafter, preferably near the latter part of said ten years, and most ideally in the penultimate days and months before both darling offspring move out on their own. How silly of me not to realize that my if/whens are actually taken in quite literal and immediate terms by my eager and tenacious children.

So no sooner did we pull up in the driveway, upon moving the last of the boxes, and what to my horrified ears should I hear but, now can we get a dog, Mom? You promissssssed!

In retrospect, I blame it all on Brenda. Had she not introduced me Webkinz, chances are good that my children wouldn't have taken to being pet owners with such enthusiasm. And chances are even better that they wouldn't have started harboring real pet attachments. And then none of this would have happened. It's her fault. Honest.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.
It doesn't help that we have moved into a neighborhood where all but three of us householders own a dog or cat. It literally rains cats and dogs here. So there's no getting away from the dog issue. Dogs barks at three minute intervals, sometimes in unison.

So, in quiet desperation, I resorted to my old retro parenting tricks. The bait and switch kind. You know the ones. Baby Johnny loved his noisy rattle and would bang and play with it ad nauseam until you finally got smart and switched the noisy toy out for a soft, stuffed one. He would then become transfixed with the new toy and forget about the old toy. There was a period of time that such manipulative parenting worked. I thought it would, could, should again. WTHWIT?!

I took them to the pet shop. The daily hound by the likes of my determined duo was beginning to take on the whine of the nauseating backyard beagles behind us.

Them: "We want a pet, Mom."
Me: "You have a pet, guys."
Them: "A goldfish isn't a pet. He's boring. All he does is swim around and eat. Bor...ing!"

So I took them to the pet store and introduced them to the concept of a plecostumus. This wasn't any boring old goldfish swimming around in a fishbowl. This fish is cool and looks gross - it sticks to the side of the tank and sucks algae. Bingo. Five dollars poorer and two kids happier, we headed home with Ted the plecostumus and to be safe, Rainbow, the red and blue beta fish in tow.

It worked like a charm. For all of about a week. And then the nagging started again.

Them: "Mom, can't we get a bunny/hamster/gerbil/chicken/dog/cat/....(insert miscellaneous animal name here - chances are good it was mentioned in the plea-bargain)?! We promise we'll take good care of it. We'll feed it, take it for walks, look after it, do all the work. We promise. Please please please please pleazzzze?!"

Me: "I dunno. We'll see."

Him (to Her): Yahoo! We'll see - that means Yes!!! Hurry, let's go wait in the van before she changes her mind again. Come on, Mom, are you coming?!"

After two aborted pet store visits, one in search of a hamster, the next on reconnaissance for a gerbil, we ultimately settled on a guinea pig. It seemed the best hybrid between his desire for a hamster and her hopes for a bunny. His name is Spud. We have owned him three days now and so far, Hubby and I seem to have done all the feeding. Promises, promises.

But perhaps it was inevitable, because Ted is now dead (found him upside down in the tank plant yesterday) and Phil our pugnacious goldfish is now an odd shade of blotched red and is clinging to life as I blog.


Circus McGurkus
It's really too bad that we haven't gotten around to unpacking all our boxes from the garage yet. Cuz if we had, then Friday night's scene could have been avoided entirely. I would have found my head in time, cancelled the festivities, and all would have been well in my world.

Sadly, this did not happen. Instead, four girls and one boy descended upon the Schmidt house for that ubiquitous world premiere occasion of High School Musical 2. On the offchance that you a) live in a cave; or b) do not have young children or c) do not have cable television and thus have not had the distinct pleasure of watching the Disney Channel, let me bring you up to speed on the pre-hype for this movie. Disney has been promoting the h,e, double toothpicks out of this movie for oh, I'm going to guess more than six months leading up to the premiere - August 17th, 2007. According to reports, Friday night's airing of HSM2 was the most watched telecast in history, with a reported 17.24 million viewers tuning in to watch.

Or suffer, as would be the case of the handful of us headless folks, who spent the better part of the movie fetching drink orders, picking up discarded napkins and remnants of chips and popcorn that were already quasi-embedded into the carpet, whilst deftly trying to thwart attempts by the more hyper of the bunch to dance and jump on the couches, sing the soundtrack off-key too loudly, fight over who got to sit where and with whom, and/or horde all of the available licorice, pillows and blankets for him or herself.

Of course, the real fun was having to phone three parents at 11:00 pm, in order to arrange pick-up of their freaked-out child. We managed to allay the concerns of one child such that she did still stay the night. She needed a telehug from mom and was fine once we surrounded her with Mickey, Minnie and untold amounts of other stuffed animals. The one boy bailed but he admitted, upon pick up, that this was his first sleepover so he was a bit unsure. Plus, he was used to staying up until 1am. Egads.

And so it was that after a breakfast of muffins, fruit, bacon and waffles, we were able to send the girls home to their parents with full bellies and last but not least, an obligatory treat bag filled with essential High School Musical paraphernalia.

I was relieved to see that according to television news reports thereafter, I am not the only headless mother in the Puget Sound area. Apparently there were countless HSM2 slumber parties going on. But I wonder how many parents dared brave the festivities sans alcohol? Apart from a few sips of a caffeinated soft drink, I actually survived the evening anesthetic-free. Remarkable really, considering that I didn't even dare brave childbirth without the epidural needle.

If I wasn't missing my head, I feel fairly certain I would have broken my martini virginity (yes I'm 41 and I'm a martini virgin). Gin of any kind, even lemon, would have smelled good Friday night. An entire pitcher might even have made the singing, dancing, bouncing, chip and popcorn crushing and licorice skarfing tolerable, or better yet, enjoyable. My one small thrill, was offering at strategic moments, to conduct disco dancing lessons. This threat would send my daughter into fits of horror (Oh Gawd, Mom! Please, don't embarrass me in front of my friends!!) and high-pitched screaming from the lot of them at the thought. Naturally, I always managed to get one John Travolta strut in before easing them off the torture rack. Parenthood should at least have some small pleasures.

But alas, I lost my head and thus, am prone to exhibiting apologetic tendencies of late. WTFWIT?! - which loosely translates as, "geegollygosh and oops, what ever was I was thinking? teehee."

I'd like to think the worst of my headless moments are over but I'm not so sure. Yesterday, my daughter somehow managed to talk me in to buying her teddy bear (who arrived at the mall sporting a teddy bear band-aid, cast and brace), a wheelchair. Uh huh. I'm serious. You can't make this stuff up.

So I have high hopes that with some diligent unpacking, I will soon locate my head and reattach it. In the meantime, I think I would do well to stay in, in case I start mistaking the backyard tree nests for those of the cuckoo variety and begin hearing my siren call approaching.

Whichever comes first. I'm gambling on the former. Only two more weeks until school. I'm scrawling giant X's on the calendar, as only a convict locked up for months that feel like years on end, can.

Godspeed me some sanity. Soon. Otherwise I'll have to go join the circus as a sideshow act.

Oops, silly me. I forgot. I already did join the circus. It just doesn't travel, is all.