All Aboard The Snake Dance To Sanity

There is nothing like spending all day in a beer tent watching an endless parade of people you knew as a child, people you knew in high school, people you dated in high school, people you try to deny you dated after high school. It's an eye-opening (and narrowing) experience.

It's also so weird to smile and talk and say hi when inside you want to just lie down in the grass, stare up and beg someone to pour a drink in your mouth every so often. But, then you suck it up and buy more tickets and another beer so people don't start to hug you and shit. It's a creepy medium. To be having a great time, then you go to tell a story about someone and sort of freeze... not knowing if they're in your life anymore. Then you remember you maybe shouldn't be having a good time. Then you think that all you really have right now is the idea of having a good time. Then you float somewhere between "oh well, fuck it." and "I can't wait one more second until this is resolved because half the shit and people I care about just disappeared like they were covered in an avalanche of insanity".

Then you stand there spiraling down, down, down, wondering if anyone else even cares or worries about the same things as you. Then you look up as your ex-boyfriend slams his hand on the table and he's walking with a cane because a few months ago he fell and broke like, umpteen bones and almost died. Then you wonder if it was karma. Then you take the high-speed train toFearville because you wonder if it was karma, is something even worse coming for you? (fuck!) Then you realize YOU are the one that is now swimming in a nice, cool pond of insanity. Without floaties.

Then you see someone who babysat you. And they tell you they are so happy to see you and that they are so glad you are healthy. You hug them. And then you remember sitting in that hospital bed. Day after day after day and not knowing when you were leaving, what you would be like when you left, if you would leave. And you turn and see a table full of people laughing. One's parents refused to accept she was gay for years. One had to tell her fiance that she loved that she wasn't going to marry him. One recently broke up with her boyfriend, lost her mother as a little girl and now has a sick father. There's the sick father. There with his current wife and they are getting up to get more beers laughing at all of us. Then there's your best friend. Who you dated, who you cheated on, who took you back, then you rebelled against, then broke up with and is still your best friend. Handing you money because your home town ATM's are refusing your good Ohio card.

Then next thing you know you're stealing bites of corn dogs. Your searching every pocket you ever thought of having for more beer tickets. You are organizing a transport called a Snake Dance to a bar about 40 feet away. Your best friend leads said Snake Dance, pulling you, a farmer, 2 teachers, a nurse, and a husband and wife insurance team down main street, through Carnie booths and a dirt parking lot (off the path) toward the bar because "why just walk?". You are winded and laughing. You decide "this bar is for babies" and is really just too crowded, so you and your lesbian friends head back to their farm. You put on chore boots, you wander around, head pointed at the sky, marveling that you can actually see stars. You fall asleep covered in a Jack Russell Terrier while a Kenny Rogers documentary plays in the background. You wake up to a mini-horse loose in the yard. You put your chore boots back on while still in your sun dress from yesterday, wander out and make friends with the 3-legged dog that usually wants to bite everyone. You help pick veggies out of 2 gardens. While those veggies are being cooked for your breakfast, you feed chickens and watch butterflies. You eat said breakfast of all things from the farm where you just slept. You cruise around in a truck in the sunshine all day long looking at fields and waving at lake-dwellers.

You have to head back to Ohio at some point. You say your good byes and thank yous and you get on the toll road. You are going along at the normal pace, erasing voicemails. You decide you make your usual long drive calls to your favorites, and you are suddenly back at the beginning of this circle. But there is no beer tent. There is no table of wonderful people. There is no Snake Dance. (which is good because my arms hurt) There is just the road ahead to home where the basement pump has leaked and the carpet has filled with water.

Man, these blogs are getting pretty fucked up. I need to "Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'" because walking the line between is FOR BABIES.

Forrest Benjamin Gump Button

I sometimes wonder what life would have been like if I had never gotten sick.

What if I had gone on, burly as all get along, outgoing, a chubby little smiling strawberry blond bully. My doctors figure I would've been about 5'8" roughly. Would I have ever learned to sit still? To make due with what I have? Would I have studied as hard or read as much? If I looked different, would I have been as smart? Would I have developed the same sense of humor? If I had my health from the beginning, would I take it for granted now? Would I ever force myself to get up and live even when tired and in pain or would I just sit and complain about it? Would I have spent as much time with my Grandparents? Would my sister have not felt so isolated?

I sometimes wonder what life would be like had my parents stayed together.

Would they be happy together now? Would they fake being happy together now? Would they still argue or would they be resigned? Would they tell the truth or would they put on show for me? Would I know the difference? Would my sister not have rebelled so much? Would I have learned about the good and bad and risks of relationships? Would they have stayed faithful? Would my Dad have kept his mustache? Would my Mom have let her hair go grey? Would they have given me any room to make mistakes? Would they have praised me for my accolades more? Would they be one or separate people living in the same house? Would I have been less sick? Would I have prayed as much?

I sometimes wonder what life would be like if Adam H Newman wouldn't have come into it.

Would I have kept dying my hair blond? Would I have gotten more tattoos? Would I have stayed in that dark place after losing my Grandma? Would I have gone even darker? Would I have learned how to show people respect in relationships? Would I have ever tried seafood again? Would I have ever watched a Lord of the Rings movie? Would I know it's ok to feel pain and feel happiness too? Would I have ever taken responsibility for things? Would I have ever known how to give or receive unconditional love? Would I have seen another person kill a seagull with a rock? Would I have had faith in people? Would I have cared about self-reflection or self-improvement? Would I have ever learned to truly not judge a book by it's cover? Or it's library? Would I have ever moved away from Michigan?

I sometimes wonder what life would be like if I had never moved to California.

Would I have ever met a Jew? Would I have ever seen the desert at sunrise? The Pacific at sunset? Would I have finished college? Would I be a teacher now? Would I have ever crossed paths with anyone I know from there now? Would I still think there was a Wizard behind the curtain? Would I want there to be? Would I have ever missed Adam or called him up? Would I be married? Would I have kids? Would I feel like there was something missing? Would I have learned to let go of things I can't change? Would I have learned a work ethic? Would I have an open mind? Would I appreciate differences? Would I find beauty in the same things?

Would I change any of it if I could? No. We are all SO small and insignificant. Because the real answer for me to any "what if" is to have and consider and use what I gained from all of this. Perspective. I'm not getting off this planet alive. And there is no way to know how long I get to stay. So, while I'm here, it's important to take care of myself. To cherish my health. To support and joke with my Mom. To pet her many cats and puppies. To talk to my Dad at least once out of the 5 times a week he calls. To tell him to tell my stepmother and siblings hi. To laugh with Adam as much as I can. Thank God for him every day. Call him a nerd. To give and receive unconditional love even when it's hard. To forgive and move forward. To keep in touch with my LA peeps. To smile when I think of the desert and the ocean. To name drop. To think about or appreciate how something was shot and the work it took to make it come to life. To smile at strangers. To not badmouth the little guy, he could be your boss very soon. To know I'm always either going to be a winner or a loser, but if I don't play a hand at all, I'm going to feel like a coward.

To look at the big picture. And appreciate the beauty in absolutely everything. Even the fact that the hair on my toes right now is disturbingly long. Oh well, at least I have toes, right?

The Animal Happening

This morning I was awakened by The Baby Muffin calling my phone. Her Mom seems to think this was because I was the last person she called yesterday, but this is not the first time this has happened. It's because she can't wait to talk to me and see me. I just know it.

Anyhoo, after said phone wake up, I decided to get with it and join the living so I could Skype with that Muffin. When I come out to the kitchen to feed my fish, thye are both chillin on the rocks behind their plant. Normal. But, when I sprinkled their breakfast flakes into the bowl, the big one (Missy) did not move at all. And normally that greedy bitch is up there with "dude, I was STARVING eyes at me" immediately. The small one (Sam) looked at me with quiet anxiety. This wasn't good.

I tapped on the bowl by Missy, which I heard you're not supposed to do, but she looked pretty spaced out. She didn't move at first. Then I did that again and she shot around the bowl like a maniac banging into the rocks then the glass and finally, lodging herself into the middle of the plant where she again went totally still except for breathing. I started to panic a little at this point.

I moved the plant and dipped their net in in an attempt to get her to swim away from her plastic fortress and eat. She did swim out, but she did the crazy shoot around thing again and returned to her original still self behind the plant on the rocks. I decided she was either playing games with me or was dying a violent mental death so I put a few more flakes of food in and began to Skype with Muffin, who after careful consideration, I had deemed more important than the fish at this moment. Maybe the fish just wanted some more sleep and I was making her furious.

*Aside: My friend just recently had a fish die in Michigan and in my head, I was totally thinking "Holy shit, what if this is like that movie The Happening, but for animals? And my fish is about to start swimming backward and just shred itself on that plastic plant until it's dead as shit!?"

About 10 minutes later while Skyping, I glance over, and this asshole fish is acting totally normal and swimming around and gobbling food off the top of the water or anywhere else it thinks a flake may be. Missy really gave me, and Sam who would not leave it's side while it was acting all stroked out, a real scare. This is just not the kind of thing I need after the strong emotions of the So You Think You Can Dance finale!

In other news: I clearly need to get a grip.

Question of the Day

Whoever invented the Shake Weight was at least kind of joking, right?