Three Dog Life

A sister of one of the preschoolers named her new Barbie after me. I told my daughter, thinking this would impress her.

"Mom, she's two," said my daughter.

Well, so? Today she's two, tomorrow she's accepting a Pulitzer and thanking her sister's preschool teacher. Or maybe her Barbie, but still, she named the Barbie after me.

Back in the Olden Days I taught eighth grade English for a year. Back in the Olden Days we still called it "English." One of my students went on to become a journalist for a major national magazine, I forget which one. But I had her writing slam-dunk poetry when she was fourteen. All about War and Death and Rainbows and shit. Now she has bylines. To my bygones.

Speaking of which.

I can measure my life in students. Dogs. Boyfriends. Cats. Drugs. Jobs. Shoulder pads. Also, apartments. Houses. Cars. Weight. There's a good one. For instance, the U-of-M-Screaming-Yellow-Zonkers-Harvard-Market- Cookies phase, which preceded the Three-in-the-Morning-Bridgeman's- Barge-I've-Got-the-Dorm-Room-Blues phase, which preceded the Panama-Red-Acapulco-Gold- I've-Got-the-Major-Munchies phase, which preceded the College-Dropout-Starter-Marriage-Marrakech-Express- First-Dog phase.

Now I'm in Third Dog. But back to that last part.

I got stoned, dropped out of college, got married, went to Morocco and got a dog. Not in Morocco, when I came back. I stepped out onto the tarmac (in the Olden Days we still stepped out onto the tarmac), took one look at the person I'd accidentally married (I was stoned), and drove to the Humane Society. And left him there.

Just kidding.

The things we people leave behind. Other people. Places. Furniture. Parking tickets. Our hearts.

I didn't leave my heart in Morocco, but I left something as significant. My naivete. Like a snake shedding its skin. Bumping through the night with the soldiers and goats on the Marrakech Express as it wound down the coast of Africa from Casablanca to the desert while the ocean crashed and the unrecognizable universe exploded with stars proved a pivotal moment in my heretofore smallass smalltown American life.

Well, duh.

I hadn't yet wandered the souks or bargained for a djellabah over a smoky hookah or met a Blueman or a water carrier or discovered kohl or tasted green tea or smelled camel shit, all that exotica was still to come. But I sensed it was coming. I could feel my skin loosening around me like a girdle coming off, to be thrown onto the pyre alongside my bra.

That's another one. I can measure my life in underwear.

Speaking of which.

I'll bet Barbie never burned her bra. For one thing, she doesn't need one, not with those steel-belted knockers. Besides, she isn't the bra-burner type. I wonder if she considers herself a feminist. I mean, just look at all she's accomplished. Flight attendant. Librarian. Teacher. Doctor. CEO of major pharmaceutical company. Governor of Alaska. Not to mention the accompanying fabulous wardrobe, which to my recollection has never included underwear. What a ho.

Now there's a Barbie out there with my name on it. And she can't even stand on her own two feet, let alone fill my shoes. She has to lean up against things to remain upright. Turns out we have more in common than I'd thought.

(1975)

Palintology

Shoveling shit this morning, I started thinking about the Rapture. What if Sarah (One-Coronary-Away-From-Leader-of-the-Free-World!) Palin pushed the Little Red Button just to speed things up? What's a little nuclear holocaust between friends? Especially friends who will be rising momentarily toward Heaven?

I think about Sarah Palin all the time. I can't help myself. I see her everywhere. On billboards. At the drive-thru. In the HumVee passing me on the bridge (the Bridge to Nowhere). She looks like my mail carrier. Like one of my ex-boyfriends. Like my dog. She looks like my 15-year-old plecostamous, for godsakes, who would no doubt end up taxidermied on some outhouse wall if SP ever got wind of its miraculous longevity.

Does anyone out there have a pleco older than 15? In fact, is anyone out there?

It's been two weeks since my last panic attack and I'm skating on thin ice. Like a polar bear. I can't rid myself of this deep feeling of dread. Like something's getting closer, something sinister, and it's coming for me and I don't know what it is and there's nothing I can do about it.

Must be how a moose feels when the Guv's in the hood.

The dishwasher whispers her name. The vacuum cleaner laughs behind my back. The coffee grinder grinds, baby, grinds. In fact, I think I caught a glimpse of her behind the counter down at Dan's Feed Bin, doling out the oats and hay. Is it just me, or does she sound like that Sheriff in Fargo? What's that broad's name?

Oh, yah. Marge.

But the real question remains: did Sarah Palin cause my speeding ticket?

Got it yesterday, Nascaring the kid to school. Doesn't matter the kid had to hose down her bangs and mine licorice out of her braces and choose one more in an unending diatribe of fashion statements and make sure I knew exactly whose fault this was, whose fault everything was, why can't I just relax, why can't I be like other mothers, why can't I be like..... Doesn't matter the kid didn't say the one name that came to mind, she might as well have. Doesn't matter we were eleven minutes late and the attitude was flying as was my blood pressure as was the Jeep as were the pretty swirling red and yellow leaves and then those pretty swirling red and blue lights in the rearview mirror and it doesn't matter, it's all her fault.

Sarah (If-My-Daughter-Has-Twins-We'll-Name-'Em-Double-Aught!) Palin's, that is. In case you missed my point.

But speaking of shoveling. My dog has learned not to shit where she eats. Though she shits pretty much everywhere else. Maybe she should run for office. She is a good runner, I'll give her that. One qualification being the norm these days. Alas, she's not human. Human being the one indisputable qualification Mrs. Palin brings to the table.

Au Revoir, but not Goodbye

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I had a panic attack last week. Not a panicky moment, or a panicky thought. A Panic Attack. My third in a lifetime of lowgrade panic. I was probably born panic-stricken, though I can't remember. My mother, who was as prone to lying as the next mother, always denied my congenitally-anxious state.

"You're just Sensitive," she'd say, with a capital S, as if this were a gift.

Let's get something straight, bub. Sensitivity is not a gift, not in my book (which has been banned in fifty states, including the state of unrest, where I live). All you sensitives out there know of what I speak. There is nothing remotely special about skulking through life at the mercy of...everything.

Your average asshole walks down the street and doesn't think twice (this is evident from our current political situation, but that's a whole other thang). Your average sensitive asshole walks down the street and thinks 247 times about anything and everything vaguely connected to that street, meanwhile kicking herself in the ovaries for having chosen to embark on this particular walk down this particular street in the first place.

I'm an ex-pat in my own life.

The first time I had a panic attack, I was sure I was dying. This was followed by four hours in Emergency, followed by a crash course in PA 101 administered by a young -- and I must admit stalwart -- intern. I was sent on my way with a prescription for horse tranquilizers, which, not being particularly equine, I stuffed into the murky recesses of the third-floor medicine cabinet and soldiered on. There they remain to this day, a cautionary tail. Er, tale.

A whole other thang.

When I first met my husband, in an attempt to warn him about what he was getting into, I waxed metaphoric. I told him I "had no skin." Twenty-five skinless years later, he gets it. Unlike John McCain.

At one point mid-marriage, he (my husband, not John McCain) presented me with one of those coffee-table psychology books, "HSP: The Highly Sensitive Person." I rolled my eyes and sucked my gums and thanked him. A few weeks later, stranded in a blizzard, I picked the thing up. My hands shook. My heart palpitated. My brow dampened. I couldn't put it down. And that was just the Foreword. I fortified myself with a barrel of whiskey -- those were the Jack days, jack -- and read on. Later I rolled the barrel out to the end of the driveway and planted lemons. Er, geraniums.

So. I'm not alone. Like that helps.

At the onset of a panic attack, things feel slightly surreal. Not the "I must be fucking dreaming!!!" kind of surreal Sarah Palin has visited upon the thinking population. More a kind of feathery acid-flashback surreal, like if you look too closely at the toaster, it might begin to speak. Possibly in tongues. Possibly in French tongues. Which, having been to France for eight days three months earlier, you miraculously understand. This is followed by a floaty honeymoon period of vague discontent before the real fun begins.

Wanna learn more? Wiki it. I did. After lowering myself from the ceiling fan where I'd been circling for the better part of an afternoon. Possibly a lifetime.

Occupational hazard.

But the real question remains: did Sarah Palin cause my panic attack?

(Good ole rootin', tootin', huntin', shootin', rapin', pillagin', Palin'?)

In a word, yew-betcha.

In this house built of straws we call Modern Life, she's the last one. My house, your house, there goes the neighborhood. The whole fucking world. It's all coming down around us. What's going on? Who are these people? Why isn't anyone stopping them? WHAT'S HAPPENING TO US???

Make that US, with a capital U.S. Does anybody even remember what that "U" stands for? If these people win this election, I am no longer US. I relinquish US status. I'm officially UN. As in UNheard, UNseen, UNdone, UNinterested, UNdertaken, UNderground. As in no more politics, no more news media, no more NPR or PBS or BBC, no more pollin', no more votin', no more countin', no more carin', no more nothin'. I'm finished. Vamoosed. Outta the building. Gone drinkin'.

I'm gettin' that surreal feelin' again, just writin' this.

Sting operation.

There's a movement afoot (UNderfoot): Women Against Sarah Palin. WASP. Has a certain ironic ring to it, don't-chew-thank?

Guess that makes me HS WASP. Which sounds kinda like a ship. Well, I'm certainly adrift. Woman without a country, and all that. But not without a state. Even if it's only the state of UNrest.



http://womenagainstsarahpalin.blogspot.com
http://youtube.com/watch?v=2O3Xk3iTLgI

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