Lydia Valentine

Add injury to insult.Â

Last night I had a frozen dinner. Â Maybe not the healthiest option, but I absolutely hate cooking for One. It was something I’d had before- chicken and rice under the pretense of “Thai”.Â

20 minutes later my stomach began to feel crappy… heavy… iccky. Â I know these feelings. Â Some people are always catching colds– I seem to be overly susceptible to food poisoning.Â

When it was time to go to bed, I tried to read on my side, only feeling what I can imagine it would be like to have a baby in one’s belly. Â A baby or an anvil.

My neighbors probably thought a tickertape parade was in order, the way I groaned and made bad noises while rolling around in bed. Â It was like a scene out of Alien. Â I nearly crawled to the bathroom around 5am and sat near the toilet and prepared myself to do one of the things I like least in the world. Â

Didn’t happen.

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I looked at the time and realized that the men would be here to reglaze my bathtub in 2 & 1/2 hours. Â There was no way I could have people infesting my bathroom today. Â I called the porcelain place, thinking I could leave a message.. no voicemail.

I put a note on my front door saying “I have food poisoning, I can’t do the tub today, sorry”.

Then I went to bed and actually fell asleep for a few hours. I woke up, talked with S in Chicago, and called the porcelain place. Â The dickhead I got on the phone acted very snooty with me, but in truth, it took him about 10 minutes to grasp that I wanted to reschedule. Â Then he wanted to argue with me that they did indeed have an answering machine on their store system. Â Listen buddy, I may be a little older than the computer savvy tots who rule the world these days, but I know how to work a fucking answering machine.Â

Neighbor walked down and bought me some ginger ale, which I sucked on most the day, and Neighbor S wanted to argue with me that it wasn’t food poisoning, that it was something else because I hadn’t thrown up. Â I spent the day with chills, then fever, and Regis… wanting to be a millionaire. Â I actually texted with Aiden, briefly, who wanted to know if he could do anything for me. Â Finding him to be less than reliable, I told him no.Â

I ate some crackers, I sipped some 7-UP, I watched Ghost Hunters 3x into reruns.

NN is at the liquor store right now, getting me more 7-UP after yelling at me for buying diet.

My mom loves to say “We’re all dying, every day” when I say woe-is-me shit. Â But really.. this might be it. I will my 80’s CDs to Marissa. Â This was NOT the diet plan I was after. Â

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Oy. Â After NN brought me over some 7UP, water and more crackers, I laid woodenly on the couch, watching a movie that Big had been in, US Marshals. It was pretty much the only thing I could find besides reality crap. Ironically, it was shortly before Big’s cameo as a ship’s captain, saying “He went that’a way” with the acting prowess of a soap star, that I knew it was Time. Â I ran for the bathroom and was violently ill, inwardly laughing a little bit that I was puking to Big’s voice in the other room.

This morning I googled what had made me so sick, and came up with some interesting, albiet dated, news.

I phoned the grocery store where I had bought this lovely item from and got a manager and told her that she should consider taking this off the shelves so that no one else got sick. Â Happy Bastille Day.

This morning my darling M got on a plane headed to Europe. Â I’m not envious because I wish only good things for her. Â I’m pissed because I couldn’t fit into her luggage. Â

She is spending 3 days in Lucerne, 3 days in Paris, 3 days in Florence, 3 days in Rome, then Suitor # 1 arrives in Rome and takes her to Venice for a week, then she is possibly going with some friends to Amsterdam just because “it’s there”. Â

I’ll be honest with you– movies like Halloween and Friday the 13th are silly scary… but movies like Jaws, Titanic and, yes, Castaway, really fucked me up. Â I am a strong swimmer, yet the idea of being helpless in the water terrifies me to no end. Â That’s why I spent my transatlantic flight in the summer of 1995 highly medicated on Tangueray, singing Bob Dylan songs and yacking it up with whoever sat next to me– at least until I passed out. Â Jaws is the mother of all scary movies… and Titanic, though I LOVE Kate W, is really a horror movie to me… but it was Castaway that put all my fears onto celluloid.Â

If you’ve seen it, you know exactly what scared me enough to hide behind my hands. Â If you haven’t, you really should. Â At least the first half hour. Â Gotta tell you, the only thing that got me through that was personally knowing the man who Tom H buried on the island, the blond… saying “I saw him last week and he’s alive and well”. Â You’d think working in the movie biz would cause me to know all the tricks of the trade and not react this way… but I get suckered in just like the rest of you… and as my friend M is somewhere over the ocean right now, well, I’m not jealous of this leg of her journey whatsoever. Â In fact, I’m just happy that she’s bringing me home postcards from every major city she goes to. Â Some people collect dolls, or stamps… I love postcards. I love postcards so much that I request them of anyone going anywhere interesting (and even uninteresting places) and they line the inner cabinets in my kitchen. Â Whoa, thought you were just getting the Splenda outta the cabinet? Surprise! Â You’re also seeing views of Malorca, New Orleans and the Taj Mahal. Â Can’t wait to add more to them.Â

(This song makes its way onto nearly every 80’s mix CD I’ve ever made. Â I absolutely love it.)

Poetry day. Â I don’t have anything to say or give… so I’m borrowing from my favourite living poet, some food for thought.Â

Sharon Olds
“The Death of Marilyn Monroe”

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The ambulance men touched her cold

body, lifted it, heavy as iron,

onto the stretcher, tried to close the

mouth, closed the eyes, tied the

arms to the sides, moved a caught

strand of hair, as if it mattered,

saw the shape of her breasts, flattened by

gravity, under the sheet

carried her, as if it were she,

down the steps.

These men were never the same. They went out

afterwards, as they always did,

for a drink or two, but they could not meet

each other’s eyes.

Their lives took

a turn–one had nightmares, strange

pains, impotence, depression. One did not

like his work, his wife looked

different, his kids. Even death

seemed different to him–a place where she

would be waiting,

and one found himself standing at night

in the doorway to a room of sleep, listening to a

woman breathing, just an ordinary

woman

breathing.

I’ve been going through a little sumthin sumthin lately and haven’t felt like broadcasting it. Â I mean no offense to anyone, it’s just that sometimes things in life aren’t fit for the world wide web. Â Today I had fun with flickr. Â I went there and just snagged images (”found” art) from other people’s photostreams. Â I would hit refresh, and come up with new options. There’s some interesting photography out there. Â What do you think?

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