Dear Beth in Houston,

It used to make me really mad when someone would plagiarize my blog. That someone could change the name of a restaurant, a city, a few friends and pass off what I had written as their own, well, I found it absolutely unfathomable.

It’s still unfathomable. But I’m not angry... so much as confused and really, really sad for you.

Your friends on myspace are really touched by your latest post, Azure and Coincidence. They should be touched. That post came right from the heart. My heart. In 2003. You didn't even change the title of the post. Ballsy. Anyway, one of your friends was so touched he ratted you out. That guy has class. You should keep him around, spend more time with him and maybe pick up a few things. Like, a moral compass.

Seriously, borrowing a stranger’s emotional experiences and using it as your own is kinda pathetic. And icky. It’s like, wearing someone else’s underwear. Gross and twisted. But hey, I’d really rather send you a few pairs of panties from my laundry basket and feed your sick need that way. Sure beats watching you take credit for my writing.

You know, I guess I am still a little mad. But at least these days, I have fancy lawyers on my side. I knew selling out would come in handy.

Be well (and I mean that),

Heather

P.S. Same to you, Lauren in Tennessee. And Dawn in Belfast. And Mandy in North Carolina. And Juddita in Prague.

"No matter what, in three or four weeks, you have to tell me I’ve lost weight."

“Okay.” Ari laughed. “Like I would say anything to the opposite.”

“No, I know you wouldn’t. But even if it’s not true, you have to tell me I look skinny and ask if I’ve lost weight. Otherwise, I’ll give up.”

“You’re insane.”

“I know.”

I may be insane, but the countdown has begun.

My brother is getting married in a little less than 11 weeks and there is no way in Jenny Craig hell I’m fitting into any wedding-appropriate dresses in my current state. If my closet weren’t filled with nice dresses and I weren’t on a delicately thin shoe string budget, I’d just buy something new and more forgiving. Like say, a muumuu.

I don’t have a lot of self-discipline. What I do have, though, is the ability to get totally, freakishly obsessed with something. And so, using neurosis usually reserved for boys, I’ve begun channeling this sometimes self-destructive power toward the pursuit of lost rolls and thunderless thighs.

I’ve made a food diary. I’ve volleyed dozens of emails with my mother about protein and fiber and seriously, egg whites may be boring, but boring beats fat. I’ve called my sister to kvetch.

“I’ve stuck to my diet for three whole days!”

“Good for you!”

“Right? But you know what’s weird? I’m still not skinny.”

“What? After three whole days? Are you sure? Look again.”

I looked again. Then laid down on the bed, where gravity does kinder things to tummies and hip bones and looked one more time. Nada.

It’s going to be a long 11 weeks.

Yesterday I had the kind of day that reminds me why there is such a thing as recreational drug use.

I’m not really much of an escapist in that sense. Of course, after a hard day at work, I’ll be the first to say, “God, I could really use a drink.” But it’s rare that I follow up. It's just not my thing. When I want to escape, I’m more inclined to do it physically. As a kid, when I was fed up with parents and siblings and next door neighbor kids, I used to crawl to the top shelf in my closet, lie down, and listen to the world go on around me. Or sometimes I’d drag a large piece of plywood into the alfalfa field across the street and eat chocolate chip cookies that I’d filched from the kitchen counter. Leave me alone. In a hectic, stressed-out house, sometimes that was a big request.

As an adult, I’m not much different. I still use physical distance to separate myself from emotional difficulty or stress. I’ve stayed in my apartment for entire weekends, putting around, reading, talking to no one but the cat. I’ve moved all the way across the country to keep family issues at arm’s length. Which, really, I’d be kidding myself if I believed that was actually any sort of escape.

Sort of like the drug thing, I suppose.

If I didn’t love my family, the geographical distance between us would solve everything. But as it turns out, I kind of like them. A lot. I love them to frustration, agony and distraction. And when something hard happens, I find myself closing in that distance with telephone lines and “reply to all.”

My dad’s mental illness never fails to shock us kids. Every new departure from reality has us in stunned disbelief. Are you kidding? really means, Please tell me you are because this scares me.

Last night I sat on the phone with my father for a half hour, trying to repair the day’s damage. He’d been hurt again because his version of what is real and true does not match, no matter which way you turn it, with anyone else’s.

“I don’t want to talk about what happened today, Dad. That won’t make either of us feel any better. I just called to tell you that I love you.”

“I love you, too, kiddo. So much.”

I should be used to the breakdowns by now. The crying he’s trying so hard to keep down, to keep from translating over the phone. It’s gotten worse lately. Worse when I think time should have been making it better. He wants so much to please us. But in the world his brain chemistry has made, his efforts only seem to produce frightening, heart-breaking results.

After a half hour, I hung up and made my getaway. I retreated across the street where, had I wanted to, I could have indulged in some herbal escapism. But it wasn’t necessary. By the time I settled onto the couch with a drooling puppy, a wise-ass friend and a baseball game, I was doing alright.

Sometimes being with people who just let you be, is an escape all of its own.

Between Saturday and Wednesday of this week, I didn't do a whole lot of sleeping.

Which is why I've been a bit absent. And cranky and spacey and tired and really, really cranky. And, did I mention cranky?

See, where I work, there is no air conditioning. I know, right? That has to be illegal, but it’s not. Ten hours a day, sweating my ta-tas off, choking down rotting garbage smell just to catch a breeze – if that’s not a testament to how much I love those bratty little kids, I don’t know what is.

The only relief comes when at the end of a hot, sweaty workday, I get to go home to my climate control(ish) apartment. Ish. I mean, it’s a window unit. It has its limitations. And on Saturday, it became apparent that my little window air conditioner’s limit was about… 79 degrees. Once it hit 80, the poor old thing couldn’t keep up. And I couldn’t sleep.

Every night, I camped out on the living room couch, which is closer to the coolest air. With Sir Hal stretched out next to me on his back (dude was desperate to get some relief for that furry belly), I wiggled and fidgeted and sweated myself into a frustrated half-sleep. It went on this way for several nights.

Apparently, in my sleepless delirium one night, I did a little online shopping. I say ‘apparently’ because it was only after I got a Your item has shipped! email from Amazon that I even vaguely remember it happening. Sweet god, am I glad I don’t drink heavily. I’m uncomfortable enough with the idea that I don’t remember buying books. I can’t imagine what torment I’d go through if I couldn’t remember how I got home or who this snoring, hairy-backed dude was sleeping next to me.

So, why not buy a new air conditioner? Well, there’s the cost. Which, frankly, became much less of an issue after a few days on the couch. I missed my bed. I missed it a couple hundred bucks worth, at least. Then there was the issue of getting it home and getting it into the window. Those buggers are heavy! And two things I have very little faith in are my physical strength and my aptitude for things which require common sense and simple mechanics. I’m more of an ideas girl.

But after days and nights of being sweaty and exhausted…. Well, see this cut on my finger? That’s the battle wound I got installing my brand new, kick-ass AC unit last night. All. By. Myself.

That’s right. I just watched the entire sixth season of MacGyver. There’s nothing I can’t do.

(Except save Pete from Glaucoma. Because even Mac couldn't do that.)

It’s been hanging on the wall in the guest bathroom for as long as I can remember: a needlepoint picture of a sailboat (made by my grandmother long before I was even an accidental twinkle in my mother’s worried eye) and a silly poem, stitched in bright green floss.

The only difference between men and boys
Is the price of their toys

I’m not even quite sure where I’m going with this, or why exactly I felt compelled to share it, except that ever since my conversation with my father on Sunday evening, the rhyme been going through my mind over and over. The only difference between men and boys…

When I was about six or seven, I asked my mother about poem. What did that mean, the only difference? I could count plenty of differences between my brother and my father. Plenty more than who has more expensive hobbies. Mostly, it was a joke, she’d explained, but even my grandfather was a little boy at heart.

No one ever really grows up.

That’s what she should have said.

On Sunday, I’d flopped onto the couch, sweaty and tired. What little energy left unexhausted by the day’s heat and frustration had just been sapped away through the phone lines. Another phone call turned into a painful therapy session. I propped my feet up on the ottoman, and without thinking, sighed, The only difference...

It was Father’s Day.

I felt as though I’d just been talking to a child.

It’s so easy to become frustrated with my father – to get angry as our talk digresses and yet again, I’m forced to avoid, placate and wrangle. To manipulate the conversation and redirect it lest we end up in Crazy Town. Again. It’s a continuous battle between my love for him, for the expectations I have of him and what, in reality, he is capable of.

Why the sailboat and the silly poem?

I don’t have a clue as to why it decided to resurface in response to that phone call.

It’d be one hell of a stretch to try to connect the two and craft a metaphor that wasn’t totally affected and… lame. I mean, toys schmoys. I know that the only real difference between a child and their grown-up self is the complexity of their coping mechanisms. And my father’s been reduced to some pretty juvenile ones. And I know that the emotions are all the same; we’re all still afraid, and excitable and foolish and vain and vulnerable. No one really ever really does grow up in that sense, I guess.

Okay. I’m going to stop before I accidentally make a metaphor. That wasn’t what I was trying to accomplish. I just think it’s interesting, is all.

More stories about my father
Early Mourning
Horace Stories
Delicate
Gently Down the Stream

Note: Do not use the comments box to give advice or diagnoses regarding my father. Just don’t. Because I promise I will crawl through the internet and cut you.

Alternatively titled: The Beginnings of My Prison Hope Chest

Ari: Can we work on my plan to kill the Geezer?

Heather: Yes. But we have to figure out how to do it without getting caught. Jail is dirty and scary.

Ari: Yeah - unless it's a Lifetime Prison for Women, in which case Tyne Daly will SO have our backs

Heather: True! But then one of us will inevitably get forced into the prison prostitution ring, end up pregnant, black and blue, and a mere shadow of our former Remington Steele selves.

Ari: Connie Selleca's going to be there too?! Say Kristy McNichol and I'm so there!!

Heather: Not Connie Selleca, silly. Stephanie Zimbalist. Prison of Secrets. Lifetime TV. 1997. But we could totally get Connie and Kristie. I mean, what else would they be doing?

Ari: Crap - so close... yet so far. You are totally right though - they are so free. And for the record I spend an awful lot of time considering my future incarceration.

Heather: Well, obvs. Like how we used to plan for the prom. Or our weddings. Sigh.

East Harlem is foul this morning. A nauseating blend of rotting garbage and diesel fuel burns into my nostrils the moment I step off the bus on 120th street. When my feet hit the pavement, I bluster, forcing the air out of my nostrils and shake my head. I remind myself of a horse.

The air is thick with moisture and stink. The city, jonesing for rain that seems eternally delayed, stands braced and anxious, like a man staring into the sun waiting sneeze that won’t come. I feel claustrophobic in this humidity.

The sidewalk between me and school is dotted with smeared dog droppings and miscellaneous waste. Food wrappers. A plastic hanger. A used condom halfway down the block. The community clinic’s bright green dumpster, in a corner formed by the joint of chain link fences, its lid slightly ajar, sits directly upwind. I breathe into my shirtsleeve and hurry to work.

Large black flies swarm an invisible beacon just inside the building’s heavy outer doors. Something spilled, left unmopped. Enormous flies like bumblebees -- but without a bee's brightness or natural purpose. Flies do not pollinate; they spread filth. A shiver passes through me as I wave off the flies and duck into the lobby. My skin, fresh from the shower only a half hour before, feels coated with imaginary grime. And though I know it’s just errant hairs, I can’t shake the sensation of flies around my face. I shiver again, pull my hair back tighter and settle in at my desk.

The office windows are open to allow for a breeze. I think maybe it won’t be so bad indoors. But then the breeze shifts and I’m again downwind from the green dumpster. A thick-bodied fly darts around the room, an invader.

“This is foul,” I say to no one and then go about my work day.

Every Monday morning, I print out my Outlook calendar.

I know. Who’s all but defeating the purpose of technology? That’d be me. Whatever. I have my reasons. One of them being that I find electronic calendars way too abstract and I need to write down my appointments to remember them.

I also still need that little song to remember how many days hath September. But nobody’s perfect.

Anyway, the first thing I do (even before I ever figure out where I need to be for which meeting or who I’ve got to call and for what reason) is ink-in the week’s social events in red at the top of every day. You know, because a girl has got to have something to look forward to, lest she stab herself to death with a number two pencil during one of those aforementioned meetings. So this morning, I got out my red pen and started markin’ away. And now I’m tired.

I’m tired and I haven’t even gone out yet.

I’m tired and I haven’t gone out straight from work, had too many cocktails, stumbled home drunk, filled the cat’s water dish with science diet, fallen asleep face down in my pillow, awakened in a smudge of drool and mascara and hit the snooze button seven times. Yet.

But that’s what’s in store for me.

Sarah says this means I am the most popular girl in school. With four exclamation points. But I think what it really means is that, like me, all of my friends are solar powered. A change of the season, a tilt of the earth on its axis and suddenly we all can’t wait to stay out too late on a school night drinking, making plans we may very well never keep and inside jokes that were probably never funny, and not regretting it one bit the next morning.

I am so there.

Except on Thursday. Because I’m already like, totally double booked.

I’m so frustrated today.

I'm so frustrated and pissed off and AARGH! about life that I want to make a list of people to karate chop in the throat, exact my revenge in a throat-punching spree, and then get back to my regularly scheduled programming. But I won’t.

Mostly because I can’t.

Today, I am mad at my computer, or the server, or whatever is causing this problem with my school’s website that I can’t seem to fix even with Biscuit’s expert help. Also, I’m mad at me, for various reasons, and karate chopping myself in the throat doesn’t sound like a good idea at all.

So I sit here and pound out emails with too many exclamation points (My mother does this, too. It’s genetic.), with eyes narrowed and my face all scrunched up so that my eyebrows nearly touch each other in unibrow solidarity. Like Frida Kahlo. Or Bert.

And I will keep my eyes glued to the computer screen. Othewise, they will get me in trouble.

Newman told me once that it didn’t matter what came out of my mouth because I did all my talking “from here on up.” When he said “here,” he flattened his hand and made a sawing motion across the bridge of his nose.

“So, what you’re saying is I’m a terrible liar?”

He nodded. I drank. And I considered how many times I’d been given away and not even known it.

Like that time my (ex)boss said, “You’re angry with me.” And I said, “No, of course not,” in a tone that was as even and as pleasant as a Gerber baby’s ass cheek. But of course I was angry. Furious, even. And my eyes said everything.

Boss: You’re angry with me.

Heather: No, of course not.

Heather’s Eyes: Oh, yes she is. She’s consumed with anger. And if she could do that Darth Vader thing and crush your throat with her mind, she wouldn’t hesitate. That shit doesn’t leave prints! But as she is currently without The Force (and hates the thought of unemployment), she’s going to have to settle for thinking mean thoughts and pounding out emails with excessive punctuation. Oh, and those shoes? Really horrible.

So as I sit here and smolder and silently scream “Why, god, why!” I give a thankful pause that no one has invented laser beam contact lenses. ‘Cause after a day like today, I’d have a lot of death and destruction to make up for.

I know this will shock you. But I have not always been the paragon of kindness and grace that you see before you. No, I know it’s hard to believe. But it’s true.

When I was a kid, I used to lean over and spit on my sister from the top bunk. Nightly. I’d taunt her for a while, spitting a long, gooey stream, sucking it back in, giving her a false sense of safety and finally, let it go. I aimed for the pillow. And when she got moved to the nursery? I’d leave salt in her sheets.

I teased my brother for being fat. I rolled my eyes at my mother and made fun of her purple wind suit. I stole gum from the Texaco. I refused to participate in family discussions of any kind where feelings were shared (unless maybe there were cookies involved). I slapped my best friend Angie in the face. I drew dirty pictures (and got caught). I lied. A lot.

Even in high school and college, I had a pretty sharp edge. “Sarcastic to a fault.” That was the reason Jon gave for breaking up with me my senior year of college. My wit was biting, my tolerance for weakness, nil and I was perpetually annoyed.

I was not exactly a nice girl.

But something happened, and somewhere along the line, I turned into a complete chump.

I cry when I read the news. I can’t stand the thought of anyone getting their feelings hurt. Or being alone or scared. Even Iraqi dictators. I looooove talking about feelings and I call my sister four or more times a week to do so. I have not spit on anyone in years. Years, I tell you.

I am a changed woman. A nice girl.

Okay, fine. I still lie. But at least now I have the heart to feel guilty about it.

Sometimes.

A few nights ago, I had a dream that I was pregnant. Which is totally not unusual – I have them all the time. I freak out for a few minutes and then not only do I get used to the idea, but because my subconscious (under the heavy influence of biological imperative) is in charge, but I often wake up disappointed that I’m not really in the family way. And so it goes. Only, this time, the dream was disconcerting – at best. In this week’s So You’re Knocked Up, Do You Have Any Idea Who the Father Is? dream, the blessed discovery came when I was five months pregnant. Five months. Five months of margaritas and random cigarettes and the occasional puff-puff-pass. I was beside myself.

“I ruined the baby!”

Dream had turned nightmare. Low birth weight! Fetal alcohol syndrome! Extra limbs! Waking up to the realization that I was still barren – and that I had not indeed ruined the baby – was such a relief. Guilt and shame had defeated biology! Though, I’m sure there will be a rematch.

Fast forward to Wednesday night when Biscuit organized an outing to see An Inconvenient Truth. It’s no secret that I’m not exactly environmentally conscious. I recycle only because it’s the law. I love (love!) paper towels. And I used enough Aqua Net in the 80’s to cause those Ozone Layer guys a substantial setback. But I didn’t have any conflicting plans and I wanted to see my friends, so I went.

And Al Gore scared the ever-loving shit out of me.

“I’ve ruined the planet!”

Okay, not me exactly. I mean, it turns out that my carbon dioxide emissions are way, way below average (even with my love for paper products). Yes, thank you. I try. But in general, we’ve done some pretty destructive stuff and polar bears are drowning. Sure, all that other stuff sunk in, too. Worse things are happening, but it’s the polar bears I can’t seem to get over. Al Gore, you clever marketing beast, you.

It’s all I can think about. The polar bears and the ocean swallowing up millions of people when Antarctica melts because American car companies are lazy and selfish and those beetles destroying forests because we haven’t had a proper freeze. The worst part is, this isn’t something I get to wake up from and say, “Phew! I haven’t ruined the baby! Pour me another.” And I find this very upsetting.

The truth is that I try to avoid caring about anything that I can’t fix all by myself, right this second. Emotionally, I’m just not cut out for having a cause. I guess I lack the practicality to see the small things I can do to impact the larger problem and I get overwhelmed. You know, that whole, think globally, act locally thing. But who says I can’t change? So here’s my first attempt: I am going to switch my energy supplier to a green source and I am going to say, Go see this movie.

Do it for the polar bears.