The world is a better place with you in it

My former supervisor's ex-boyfriend's dad invented the Pop-O-Matic button.

Baby Mama's grandfather, or an uncle's grandfather or something, invented the machines that line up bowling pins so we can knock them down again.

Someone I know (Dr. Cheese?) dated the guy whose mother invented Jazzercise, allowing him a life of arty ease.

To make this blog more socially relevant, more currently bloggish, I should ask what Paris Hilton has ever invented. Why is she so famous when school children don't know the name of the founder of Jazzercise? In fact, I'm not even sure which friend of mine dated the son of the lady who invented Jazzercise.

The more I type the word Jazzercise the more I think I dreamt the whole thing anyway. Plus, I think Paris Hilton invented a new kind pocket vagina which is currently available exclusively in Japan.
It's crazy snowing here in Chicago. The falling snow is consistent but it's fast, then slow, right now it's teeny flakes of sideways wet snow, when about 30 minutes ago it was lazily dropping snowflakes the size of ATM receipts.

Insufficient funds, God says.

I received the official offer letter from Kid Prison and everything is copacetic--except that I'm receiving exactly 12 cents less a year than originally promised--but that should be offset by the available profit sharing. I don't know that I want to share in the dividends of children in correctional institutions. Do I have to take a kid home, or is the profit sharing just a misdemeanor committed against my person or property? A pair of big earrings?

I saw the Slits on Wednesday and it was bananas. While I don't feel pregnant, there was such pagan lesbo lunatic crusty punk good time vibes there that I wonder about giving birth to a unicorn in a couple of weeks. Cuddles gave a brilliant drunken speech about Ari Up's Right to Be Totally Insane outside of the Continental, and if you've ever been to the Continental, you know that was the single smartest thing ever said there. Ended with: "You never see David Bowie and think, Oh, that's a fashion mistake."

After my annual St. Patrick's Day thought cycle about the English, mostly hating the arrogance and colonialism but loving their musicians, it was just plain bizarre to walk back into 1977 with all the white Brit love of Jamaican sensimilla and reggae; absolutely unironic but not without palpably creepy sense of, you know, Race and Stuff. Ari Up, as a unicorn, may be exempt from self-reflection. Perhaps this is why she wears such shiny golden pants.

Kid Prison

He kept saying "This is a prison." A prison full of children. I did some advance research (mostly from the Juvenile Justice Initiative) where they have an Alex Kotlowitz quote on the home page. A social worker has 19-20 days with these children, so any kind of deep trauma work is impossible...oh, and also? Trauma work is predicated on safety. And these children are not safe. They are in prison. It took a half second for the truth of this to hit my heart region and by then I had started to cry. Strings around my heart broke, but it's not heartbreak, it's that true, deep compassion that feels like a emotional muscle ache. This sensation got me locked into social work. I haven't felt it in a year of office politics and data entry. There was that delicious feeling, plus abject terror in the face of a challenge. My head is racing with possibilities but I do have to sleep, sometimes, and sing a lot. I'll focus on what I have versus what I want: I got a tour; honest answers to difficult questions; got to feel social worky again. So worth it. But believe you me: I want the whole thing.

I'm cooking with gas!

There is a lot of action in my email today regarding the political unrest in Armenia. Here is a short article that doesn't cover much from the New York Times. I have little to say on this topic, except: please don't hurt the grandmas. It's a cruel trick, offering them a way to complain en mass, in the central square! Usually they can only protest in tiny clusters at the market or on the bus. Life is hard. People are always bringing shame upon their nation, families, Grandmas. They want us to know about it! They find joy in telling each other. You can no more punish them for protesting than you can refuse their tasty soup.

The action in Armenia provoked a wave of check-in emails from far away friends that actually read this blog, and have been left with the impression that life is rough for me right now. The sweetness of that is killer, but it also begs clarification, the same clarification I've been working on the last week. Imagine.

In fact, I was recently informed that I am "cooking with gas!" There are good things happening, changes aplenty in store for scrappy St. Renegade, and it is the very nature of how good everything is, quiet and growing, that makes me see myself as a drinking, compulsively eating, complaining, and grouchy mess.

Some of the time. Mostly, I'm still a golden delight to be around. I think my brain is just having trouble transitioning from the Quest to Figure Out What is Wrong With Me and Fix It to this hippie life of love and acceptance. Last week, after a series of book, people, and wine-related crisis of illumination, I decided that meditation may help. Sitting quietly. Calming down. Being silent. Trusting myself, doing some breathing, not trying to find something wrong with me all the time. As much as I like talking and writing and talking some more, it's in me to listen, so I'm gonna do that.

Also note how the 'cooking with gas' thing works on multiple levels, as it conveys how hot I am while also prompting the brain to think warm thoughts in these sluggish last months of winter. You're welcome.