I Speak With the Tongue of a Thousand White-Hot Lies!

My parents took the boyo this weekend and won't bring him back until later today, as none of them have work or school.

I have work. Scott would have school, but he has no Monday classes.

So yesterday was filled with the promise of Lots of Time to Do Stuff. I had plans: cleaning plans! Photo organizing plans! Bill-paying plans! Writing plans!

And then at noon a migraine hit, and everything turned into taking lots of Tylenol, mainlining soda, and sleeping for two hours before watching most of the Firefly marathon plans. (On the other hand, I also spent part of the day brainstorming the TV show about a rag-tag crew of criminals in a space ship that I'd really like to see with Jason and Scott, so it doesn't seem like a total waste.)

I felt a lot better by about 6pm, so I did yoga and cleaned up the house. I was, of course, awake as hell thanks to the nap and the caffeine, so I got to bed kind of late and am now this morning feeling slightly brain-sticky and sour-stomached. Hopefully food will help. And a lot of water. I want to be well-hydrated, because I have to pay the bills! (Fists in the air!)

On Thursday (I think?) I was driving to work, and on the sidewalk there was a person singing along and doing quite the rocking, fierce, arm-waving, head-bobbing runway strut to whatever was playing on his or her iPod.

1. Took a reluctant Zweeble to summer camp/school today. Met his new teacher. Got so involved in the transfer of sunblock, bug spray, and info on the pool schedule that I didn't say goodbye to the kid. D'oh! Luckily, Scott and I were tag-teaming it. As we left, Scott asked if I'd recognized any of the kids in the room, because he hadn't. Me, neither. Ack. A bit of mild, oh, man, I hope he has a good day today ensued as we headed back to the car. This was compounded by the fact that this week is Baseball Week, and today was Bring Baseball Items to School ... and the only baseball item we had was a padded bat.

Um. Well, we made him promise not to hit anyone with it.

2. Came home. Wrote some e-mail, looked at some stuff I needed to look at, did a bit of class prep, then got down to writing. Ah, there's nothing like the feeling you get when you realize you made a wrong turn two days ago and need to throw out 6-8 pages of story. On the other hand, I got notes for what should happen, and some dialogue figured out.

3. Went to pick up the kid. Since it's summer, we go into the room to get him. Z was super excited to see us, and the teacher assured us he had a great day. He colored a baseball player for us. I recognized some of the kids (whew!) and the teacher said Z. was fine once he saw some of his old classmates. Somehow I managed to take home some other kid's artwork, so I'll return that Weds.

4. Went to lunch. Uneventful.

5. Went to the post office to pick up a package. Used Scott's phone to figure out where we were going, discovered that this post office was not the main one. Used Google maps for directions, and they were super convoluted, but gave me enough info so I knew where we were going. Decided to test out the Baby Garmin program on the Droid. Baby Garmin was not pleased that we had decided not to follow her convoluted route.

Our route was drive to Street X, follow it to Street Y, turn, there we are! Hers involved backtracking, cross-country skiing, and the Valley of the Shadow of Death. (Okay, just backtracking.) Except that, just as we got to Street X, we were detoured and wound up having to take Baby Garmin's route.

She tried not to gloat, but you know ... (and the cross-country skiing was rather nice, actually. The Valley of the Shadow of Death was about what you'd expect this time of year, though: all flies and Beelzebub and Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here, blah blah blah.)

(Actually, the program was pretty sweet, and I will probably use the version on my phone in future.)

6. Hit a comic store to kill time. Bought Magic cards, a Darkwing Duck comic, and a Green Lantern pin that will probably end up being mine.

7. Went to the doctor's office for Z's ear re-check. Z cracked up the kids in the waiting room when he declared the bathroom "STINK-y!" Ears are clear! Boy looks great! He also doesn't meet the parameters for tubes, which was apparently a concern of Scott's.

8. Came home. Read some Captain Underpants. Gagged. The Bionic Booger Boy is possibly the grossest thing I have ever read about, and I am a Stephen King fan. I have also read Clive Barker's Books of Blood, and Clive has nothing on Dav Pilkey.

9. The less said about post-naptime the better, but my husband is a very good dad.

10. Went outside to play. In my summertime routine of checking for wasps on the playset, I found what I thought was a brown widow's nest in a 1-2 inch crevice between the deck part of the set and the rock wall. I told Z. to stand back, got a sturdy stick, and went to squish the spider.

I do try to leave most spiders alone. I like a lot of the ones we have down here--we have really pretty spiders in Florida. But I do not truck with widows. Brown widows' venom can cause nerve damage, from what I have read, and we get them a lot. They're very timid, and tend to run rather than defend themselves, but I don't take chances with the kid and his tendency to focus on, say, his stick collection and not notice anything crawling on him, under him, or what have you. Happily, brown widows have a distinctive egg sac, so they tend to be easy to find.

So I poke at the nest with my handy stick ... and the spider attacks the stick. What the? I pull the stick back a little, and the spider hangs on. This dislodges the spider and brings it into better view: shiny black body, bright red hourglass ... Holy cats and kittens, black widow!

A big one, too, compared to the black widows we've had before. But not tarantula-sized or anything. Still, this angle is not a good one, and the spider is still pissed at the stick and hasn't noticed me, so I tell Z. to run and tell Dad that I need spider spray, if we have any. He takes off, and he and Dad report back that we do not, in fact, have toxic chemicals for this particular bug (probably better that way, anyway), so ... I take a breath, change my grip, and squish the spider like I'm Stuttering Bill Denbrough in It (except I used a stick, and the spider was a lot smaller, and there wasn't some giant rain storm that took out half of the town, and, okay, not actually that similar at all. Whatever, I felt triumphant)!

Plus, my son was super impressed with me.

Then I had to squish the egg sacs (like Ben Hanscomb! Okay, not at all like that) while Scott crawled all around and under the play set looking for further spider nests. We found nothing.

When we came in, my son had to call his arachnophobic grandmother and tell her about it. "Now, Grammie, Mom killed a black widow. Don't. Freak. Out."

---

And now my son and husband are watching Annoying Orange. Tomorrow is their movie outing. I sit here, typing away, Killer of Spiders, alone as all mercenary stick-slingers are in the end. It's a lonely life, riding from town to town with my trusty stick, helping the poor and the hopeless defend against small, venomous arachnids. But I do it. Because it needs doing. Because I am the lone force for ...

... okay, I can't keep that up. I'm signing off before I get any sillier. Night, y'all.

Specifically, ordinal linguistic personification: Holy cats, that's me!

One and two are parents--one is mom and two is dad. Three and four are siblings. Three is a girl, four is a boy. Five is a bit of a loner, but he yearns toward six in an innocent, crush-like way. Six and seven are in love, and eight is always chasing after six, but she doesn't really like him at all. Nine is older, and she's above all of this. I think ten is a guy. After that, the rules don't really apply, though some numbers seem more feminine and some more masculine than others.

I have known this since I was a kid. It made learning the multiplication tables really complicated, because there was all this interpersonal stuff going on between the numbers--at least in my mind. But man, I know 7x6 and 6x8 off the top of my head. :)

Looking at other kinds of synesthesia, numbers, days of the week, months of the year, and years do all tend to have a specific place, in my head. The week is straight, then the weekend curves and links the days back together. Linked to that whole multiplication table thing above, different times tables have different locations. The threes are closer and easier to get to than the nines.

(This is the first time I've ever articulated this. It's just ... weird. I feel like a poseur or something. But it's just how numbers are, in my head. I always figured it was because I'm more verbal than mathematical--I was keeping myself entertained with stories because I hated math so much.)

Grapheme-color synesthesia, which has a tendency to go along with OLP, isn't anything I've ever really thought about, so I'm thinking that's not something I have. But certain things are colors for me. Some music--the Sisters of Mercy and Nine Inch Nails are dark colors, always--maybe with splashes of white or silver?--but Green Day depends on the song. The Futureheads version of Hounds of Love tends to be reddish-brown. Some smells have colors.

That's just so ... whacked out. There was a post on Robin McKinley's blog about it, and I found it interesting--I'd first heard of synesthesia in grad school, but I always thought it was sounds and colors, and more ... I dunno, intense or something. Not day to day. And not love stories about numbers. :)

This was a lot of fun, actually.

Instructions: Soundtrack of your life: Open up your music player and set it to shuffle. For each line/question hit the next/forward button. Say what song is playing for each line. No cheating.

1. Opening Credits: "The Long and Winding Road" - The Beatles (though I might, were it my movie, use the Danny and the Dickheads version)

2. Waking Up: "All Alone" - Gorillaz (I can see me in an early morning get-coffee-shower-brush-teeth montage to this, actually)

3. Falling in Love: "The Meaning of Love" - Depeche Mode (all of a sudden, my movie morphs into a low-grade 80s teen flick--I'm running through a park dressed in an oversized, primary-colored sweater, leggings, and leg warmers, a bright pink hairband in my frizzy perm, hand in hand with a guy in safe-80s-punk black with an aqua t-shirt and Nicholas Cage's hair from "Valley Girl.")

4. Fight scene: "I Want It All" - Depeche Mode (so apparently the fight scene is silent, slow, anguished, and filmed in black and white. It's also between me and my Nic Cage wannabe boyfriend, and not the all-out bar fight I was hoping for.)

5. Breaking up: "I Love A Man In Uniform" - Gang of Four (I'm thinking there's a quick, "Fuck off and get out!" bit, then I magically change my look completely--cut my hair, put on a pair of Docs--and head out on the town to find myself some trouble now that I'm free, free!)

6. Looking Back On Your Life: "Metal Postcard" - Siouxsie and the Banshees (Um ... I'm looking back on my life after a lot of wild debauchery, maybe? The Docs got me in more trouble than I bargained for, and I sit in a corner with disheveled hair and an empty bottle of something. There's a tasteful hint of drug use. Ah, for the lost days of pink hairbands and leg warmers! I have no idea what the lyrics are to this song, I'm just going by the guitar.)

7. Getting back together: "Ghost" - Indigo Girls (I don't think "I'm in love with your ghost" is a lyric that bodes well for this iteration of the relationship. But our boy has moved on from wanting to be Nicholas Cage to wanting to be Patrick Swayze in ... well, you know. I did cut my hair, after all. Crying ensues.)

8. Secret Love: "Love, Peace, and Grease" - BT (Finished with the punk phase, I have moved on to raves. Still in love with an Insubstantial Patrick Swayze, I fail to notice the DJ who has developed a crush on me, and who has begun to nonthreateningly stalk me. Since I really don't have any clue who to cast in this role, I'll go with John Cusack, since he's hot and he sort of DJed in "High Fidelity." Listening to this song, it sounds like the stalking is taking a slightly threatening turn, maybe.)

9. Life's okay: "The Line Begins to Blur" - Nine Inch Nails (Um. Yeah. I get in touch with my inner anger and find strength there?)

10. Mental breakdown: "Cat People" - David Bowie ("I've been putting out the fire with gasoline." I guess inner anger didn't work out so well, after all.)

11. Partying: "Enjoy the Silence" - Tori Amos (What the hell kind of partying is this? Okay. Again we go artistic, as the crazy chick that resulted from the last scene goes on yet another wild debauch, this one silent, in slo-mo, and filmed in black and white. This is nice; it bookends the giant fight with wannabe Nic/Patrick earlier. We flash back here and there to the men I've left behind, the fight scene, and John Cusack looking at me longingly. Still not sure if he's creepy or not, but he does hold my head while I puke.)

12. Long night alone: "Grey Street (Live)" - Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds (Back in color, candlelight, lots of me staring out the window at the rain-soaked streets. The song's about loneliness, holes in your soul, loss, and dealing with the results of your mistakes, so there's that, anyway. Tell you what, by the end of the song I've relalized that I have to move on from Insubstantial Patrick--I probably signal this by looking at his picture a lot, then placing it face-down on the table with a determined motion--and head out into the rain to find DJ John Cusack. We'll see how this ends up when I switch the song ...)

13. Final Battle: "Fortress Around Your Heart" - Sting (Apparently, instead of finding out that John Cusack is a killer robot from the future, like I was hoping, iTunes wants to stick with the realistic, "fighting your inner demons" movie ... so the final battle is me trying to break down the walls I have, through my constant rejection, built up around poor DJ John's heart and emotions. How silly. He really should be a killer robot from the future. Or the past. Or an alien planet. This is a waste of all our talents, and my huge-ass FX budget. So far all I've had to pay for is Insubstantial Patirck Swayze and some rain--I could totally afford a killer robot.)

14. Death Scene: "Sacrifice Yourself" - Tin Machine (Okay. I have it now. The killer death robots show up just as DJ John Cusack and I admit our luuve, and there's a giant chase scene until I finally, as the title suggests, shield him with my body from a death ray and am killed. I knew I could get robots in there somewhere. What do you mean, that doesn't make sense? It's Art, it doesn't have to make sense. Okay, fine. You want your cruddy little movie of self-discovery with ghosts. I can do that, too--okay, in celebration of our newly-found luuve, we head out to the club to pogo out our attraction, but all those years of hard living and tasteful drug references have done so much damage to my system that a stray punch in the mosh pit sends me flying. DJ John Cusack tearfully cradles me in his arms, shielding me from the flying combat boots, as my life slowly seeps away ... and I join Insubstantial Patrick Swayze in a giant tunnel of light. Considering my past, this tunnel is probably leading straight to hell, but that's not really alluded to.)

15. Ending Credits: "My Immortal" - Evanescence (I am not kidding. And all the teenage girls in the audience will cry and buy the soundtrack. I think this will run over black and white bits of me with I.P. and DJJC. And a giant robot will be the tag at the end of the credits.)