I loaned Hattie some cash in Mount Pleasant because they wouldn’t take her Discover card, and she text messaged me yesterday to let me know she had my dough. We agreed to meet at Backroads.

I got home from a late and lazy trip to the grocery store around 9:30. Brett and I put groceries away and chatted, then I invited him to town for a cocktail. He declined. By 10:30 I was driving Hwy 34 again.

Bottomfeeders were playing when I arrived, and man were they loud. They’re a good band, loud and fun, but the Backroads is a cavernous barn and everything sounds like it’s in a giant tin can in there. I approached the bar and yelled at the bartender, “MAKE ME A COCKTAIL!” and she screamed, “A COCKTAIL? ALL RIGHT!” and proceeded to serve me something fruity in a martini glass. I never did find out what the hell it was, but I enjoyed it enough to have another.

It was so old school in there! Corby was there, Emo was there, WINK was there. (I didn’t even know Wink was in town.) Bo was there, Mazza was there, Noah was there, Farmer Doug (and his sidekick, Adam) were there. The ever-gorgeous Mr. J was even there, for the love of God, and he only goes out if there’s gonna be naked women. All kinds of old school folk were there, I absolutely loved it. And I got lots of hugs, which is nothing to shake a stick at.

I hung out mainly with Hattie, Chloe, and Jana. I took a picture of five naked feet, but it came out too dark to bother posting. Suffice it to say that at one point Adam, Hattie, Chloe, Jana, and I all had our right shoes off and I used my camera phone to snap a picture of our five feet. This is not significant in any way, but we thought it was amusing as fuck at the time.

The Reaction was good. I really enjoyed the (more danceable) first third of their set. The next two thirds got kinda jam-bandy, and you know that while I love being in jam bands, I don’t particularly love listening to them. This is entirely a style judgement; the band was actually pretty tight in most ways. (Personnel were Puffer, Joe, Jimmy Moore, and D. Murphy, who grew up just as sexy as I predicted he would when we were in Bye, Bye Birdie together when he was but a wee pup.)

Joe’s mom was there. (Apparently the one and only time she’s ever seen him play, and the man’s approaching his mid-thirties any minute now.) At one point, she approached me and indicated the band and smiling, asked, “So what do you think? Are they any good?”

I shrugged and said, “Eh, sure. Whatever.” I paused, squinting at the bandstand. “Yeah. I’d fuck ’em!”

She just blinked at me, half-smiling.

So to qualify I said, “Well, some of them, at any rate.”

Overall, though, it was a strong show. I danced a lot. In fact, I closed the bar, which is easy to do when you don’t arrive until eleven. And I did not get drunk, which shows that even late bloomers (read: total retards) like yours truly do eventually learn not to get fucked up every time they stay out past their bedtimes.

I love shit that explodes. I really do.

I came into town tonight at around eight, stopped at Walmart to buy a print cartridge for my HP printer, grabbed some drive-thru, and went to Christina’s to do seva stuff. (Amma‘ll be in Mount Pleasant Wednesday! WEDNESDAY!) Turned out we needed her son before we could do anything since he knew which of the three laptops I was supposed to install the printer on… we ended up going to see fireworks.

I saw Emo, Barbara, and Derby there! Yay! I also saw some sweet, colorful, loud shit blowing up. I love fireworks.

Miss Tahmi just showed up at my house yesterday unannounced, kidnapped me, and forced me at gunpoint to accompany her to Iowa City, where she lavished me with food and drink and a couple of books. The wench.

She needed to pick up a U-Haul truck for 1-Stop, because the ever-gorgeous Mr. J broke his toe last week (while wearing sandals at work, like a dumb ass) and was in no condition to be driving a crapped-out U-Haul anywhere under any circumstances. He’s so lucky his woman’s superhero name is Errand Girl.

I drove Tahmi to Iowa City in the Jeep and we talked about sex the entire way, with much squealing and throaty, raucous laughter. I’d tell you about some of her college trysts, but you’re probably not old enough to know about them. (Let’s just say she’s got one single story that trumps, like, five of my very best ones, even my rock star ones!) I nearly beat my poor steering wheel to death while screaming, “OH MY GOD! YOU ARE SUCH A WOMAN-HED!”

We picked up the target U-Haul, Arizona plates and all, and parked it at the hell mall. Then we ran around being girly for a few hours.

I actually bought myself some clothes. At Walmart, I bought an orange tank because it will make me look tan. It’s too big, but doubtless I’ll shrink it like I do damn near everything else. At a consignment shop, I bought a strappy zip-backed dress, a hippy skirt, and some sandals. At Barnes & Noble, I took two Guy Gavriel Kay books in lieu of gas money.

And then there was dinner at Olive Garden, where I ate entirely too much and practically limped out to the car in extreme gastronomic distress. Damn those delicious portabello mushroom ravioli and their enticing sun-dried-tomato-smoked-cheese sauce, anyway.

All in all, it was a damn fine day. I had fun. I also obtained a 100-count box of Otter Pops, which was probably the entire point.

NLW came over yesterday and we doused ourselves liberally with coconut suntan oil, sunbathed, and talked about sex. (And knitting, and spirituality, and travel, and relationships, and a host of other things. But somehow it seems more appropriate to talk about sex while covered in oil.) We had BLTs and cheesy poofs for lunch, followed by chocolate ice cream for dessert.

It was fun as hell. She’s got a great new hair cut – a cute long bob – and she went and lost at least twenty pounds and looks great (the bitch). Greater, now that she’s got herself some tan lines.

Last night was my Seventh Ray gig at Revelations. I thought it was going to be in the basement, so when I showed up a healthy half-hour late for sound check, I was a little disconcerted to find the basement stage empty. I ended up calling J’s cell phone to ask him where the hell the gig was. Turns out it was upstairs in a room I’d never even seen before.

The crowd was smaller than the last gig, but just as appreciative. Over half of them had already heard the CD at least once and they joined in on the chants. NLW came to see the show again, and C was there toward the end – it was her birthday, so I kissed her about five times after the performance was over while carolling, “Happy birthday!” J embarrassed her by making her come up on stage to have the birthday song sung to her. It was cute… but then, I was only a spectator. She may not have thought it was so damn cute. Tee-hee!

There was cake. Apparently, cake is a staple at J’s performances. I don’t really understand this, but I ate a piece anyway. This time it had frosting instead of whipped cream, and NLW kept her paws off it.

After much talking and chatting and schmoozing and networking and saying, “Thank you very much, I’m glad you enjoyed it,” I finally made my way through the milling crowd, out the damn door and down the stairs to my jeep. Where I had a damned cigarette already.

NLW and I ended up sitting on the sidewalk with adorable blue-eyed, braces-wearing Martou (the chef from Petit Paris) and L (one of the R girls) smoking cigarettes. Teenaged girls are so intense! L’s in love with a ninteen-year-old boy who has apparently made out with her but who is also, she says, a total asshole. I’m not entirely clear on the dynamics of their relationship, but they’re VERY complex. And intense. And painful. Or annoying. Or something. I’m not sure. But boys, as we all know, can be total assholes. Especially when they’re still teenagers.

L is Martou’s roommate and they live in J and Lu’s old apartment above the French restaurant. She goes to school and has two jobs. When I first met her, she was ten. She took me on tours around the farm while Bread and I were still thinking about buying it. She was really blonde and pudgy and she didn’t look like she was related to the rest of her brown-haired, willowy family. But now! Now she’s got an amazing, lithe body, a beautiful face, gorgeous long blonde hair, and she’s smart as hell.

World, consider yourself warned: she’s on her way. Look the hell out.

She already lives on her own! At fourteen! I guess this is the right town for it. If you’re gonna let your girls go off on their own at fourteen, it might as well be in Fairfield. Not that any parents could hold on to this child.

(The rest of this post is a long story about getting drunk, featuring people you don’t know. You probably shouldn’t read it.)

NLW and I broke away from the angst and went to find a cocktail. Martou was able to shepherd L back into the restaurant to, I assume, finish closing. We looked in the windows at Deja Vu but I was too afraid of the crowd to go in there. They were having – I shit you not – midget wrestling in there. Midget. Motherfucking. Wrestling, people! We ended up going to Red Rock. Gorgeous was bartending and was gorgeous, as always. AmmZon, who sat next to us, and I kept flirting with her. NLW said that if she still flirted with bartenders she’d flirt with Gorgeous too, but that she’d given up flirting with bartenders years ago. Heh!

AmmZon and NLW and I had great fun talking for a couple of hours. I originally met AmmZon through BoSe; they dated briefly and he brought her out to the farm for a BBQ when RP was in town. She’s tall and has really long, straight blond hair, a sweet face, and the softest skin you’ve ever felt – she informs me it’s a family trait, the incredibly soft skin – most importantly, she’s a massage therapist. And I’m going to hire her to give me a massage! And it will be wonderful!

I got drunk because Gorgeous kept bringing me drinks.

T came in at one point and showed us the ticket he’d just received for urinating in the alley. “This is the first ticket I’ve ever gotten that I’m proud of!” he exclaimed. There was some clamoring for a live re-enactment, but apparently he was more sober than the rest of the bar and tastefully declined. I saw Mary & Jesus; Mary was wearing an outrageously low-cut yellow dress that only a woman as utterly bodacious as herself could possibly pull off. I saw a few more people I recognized, but it’s clear that I’m old and out of the loop because the vast majority of the creatures in there were fresh meat to me. I made the bartender take his shirt off so I could see his ink – he was wearing a black wife beater and the edges of his tatt could be seen on his shoulderblades, and most people like to show off their ink anyway. Plus I’m looking a lot at stylized patterns for my plan for the rest of my lower back. Plus he was young and slender and cute and willing to take his fucking shirt off for drunk women, so what the fuck.

NLW went home eventually, and AmmZon and I closed the bar. After the crowd was gone we helped Gorgeous and the tattooed bartender bus all the tables, while the remaining crowd of about six people had an hysterical, screaming fit over AmmZon’s friend’s revelation that he did not go down on women, ever. AmmZon asked Mary if Jesus “did his duty,” and Mary went off: “Oh fuck YEAH he does! If he wants anything back, you better believe he fuckin’ does!” When word of the topic got to Jesus, he went up to the bewildered boy and said, in his fabulous Latin accent, “What, you having problems? What do you need to know, I’ll tell you all about it! You just open the house and you’ll find the key, it’s right there, man! You got to eat the pussy, man.” It was obnoxious and totally fucking hysterical, all these people running around cleaning the bar and screaming, YOU HAVE GOT TO LEARN TO EAT THE PUSSY! Bewildered Boy definitely took a beating; every man and woman in the place told him that he either needed to learn to go down on women or give up ever deserving a blowjob again, or admit that he was gay (“not that there’s anything wrong with that!”). Watching Jesus pat him on the back with drunken, fatherly reassurance was a fucking RIOT. I blew my voice out with all the screaming and laughing I did, and the bar got cleaned in a hurry.

AmmZon, Bewildered Boy, and I went next door to Torino’s. AmmZon was starving. We ordered a medium pizza and spent a loud, drunken time telling everyone who would listen – namely the boys in the booth next to us, whom AmmZon had gone to preschool with – that Bewildered Boy wouldn’t perform oral sex. I can’t even guesstimate how many times the word “pussy” was screamed from our general direction. The three of us were all solidly drunk and disorderly, and so was the large table across the room. AmmZon ended up having a few hysterical moments of posturing with these two guys; somehow our tables had caught each other’s attention and suddenly AmmZon and this guy were facing off in the middle of the restaurant, threatening to kill each other, hackles up and growling obscenities at each other… and then suddenly they were smiling and saying, “Oh, nice to meet you,” and going back to their tables.

AmmZon’s six feet tall and farm-raised. She could pretty much take most of the men in the world at one-on-one. Seeing her explode out of her booth and head at someone, snarling, is a treasure – I was laughing so hard!

The language in Torino’s at 2:30 in the morning is atrocious – all these drunk twenty-somethings screaming, “I’ll fuck you in the face! I’ll fuck your face off!” across the dining room to gales of drunken laughter is an experience, to say the least. Exausted twenty-five-year-old waitresses stood at the prep area and waited for us to finish our food already and get the fuck out of their stations so they could clean up and go home, and all we did was hork down pizza and scream obscenities. At one point I looked up from my slice of pizza to see that AmmZon had some buff little boy in front of her with his shirt off, posing into the mirror on the wall behind our booth. Blondes, especially Amazon blondes, apparently do have more fun! We were all so drunk and sodisorderly, and I probably needed that pizza more than I knew. Remembering now how crass I was I feel a little bit of that cringe-inducing drunkard’s remorse. As in, Oh my God, did I really scream ‘pussy’ at the top of my lungs repeatedly in a restaurant last night!?!

Eventually I wrote a check for the pizza and we went back to Red Rock. I helped sort the tip jar into $25 piles of singles, and $10 rows of quarters, and eventually Gorgeous and her tattooed, wife beater-wearing co-bartender were done for the night.

AmmZon and I went over to Gorgeous’s. The three of us sat and talked in Gorgeous’s front living room for a couple hours, until Gorgeous started fading hard. Then AmmZon and I took our leave, Gorgeous went to bed, and I didn’t get home until dawn.

Dawn!

I slept damn near all day. I got up to eat, to hydrate, to sunbathe (my priorities, even when hung over, remain unchanged), but I did not go to C’s to install Filemaker for her, nor did I do a single, solitary, useful goddamned thing all day.

Now it’s nearly ten and while I’ve seen Bread, I literally haven’t spoken to him at all. I can hear him downstairs playing video games. I might go check in with him on my way to liberating a Bomb Pop from the freezer. (I’m really into Bomb Pops lately. They have Disney/Pixar characters on the box, and they’re purple, blue, and white. Oh, and they’re frozen, of course, and full of sugar. I love them. Bomb Pops!) On the other hand, why start now?

We went to the shitty Mexican restaurant because it has booze and a smoking section. I ordered two bean tostadas, only they call them chalupas there. The food’s utterly mediocre.

My mother-in-law was having lunch with her boss, my lawyer, at the table next to the one at which we were seated. My lawyer leaned over and asked Joe, “So, how’s work going on the Courthouse?”

“That’s not Brett,” I told Wally. “That’s my other boyfriend.” Then I went to the bathroom, where I met Misty and hugged the hell out of her because she’s so hot.

Brett and Jimbo are remodelling a space in the court house this week, turning it into a storeroom. They were the first people to see the court house’s real ceiling in over sixty years. Apparently it’s hand-painted and gorgeous, hidden by not one but two drop-ceilings.

When I got back to the table I said, “I could have an affair with you and no one would even know. They’d all think you were Brett.”

Joe rolled his eyes. We didn’t need to have the we-really-don’t-look-anything-alike conversation again; I’ve had it a million times with each of them. I bet there are several people wandering around the area who have no idea I haven’t been with Joe in eight years; when they see me out with Brett they probably think it’s the same guy.

Other than having red beards and being male, they really don’t look anything alike. I just spent ten minutes looking for a picture I have of them side by side, but I can’t find it. So you’ll just have to take my word for it.

(Note: I found the pic. Here it is.)

Lunch itself was okay. I was having a panic attack, which sucked, and Joe’s depressed (or enraged, alternating), which sucks, so we made fine company. We crack ourselves the hell up, actually.

We chatted, we ate. Steve came and sat at our table to smoke a cigarette (Misty and Blaze were seated in non-smoking.). The waiter, bringing another drink, playfully called Joe something in Spanish that he said meant, “someone who robs your house out of spite and shits on the floor.” Even after Steve and I razzed him about it, he swore it was a real word.

Two guys I vaguely recognized, sitting in the booth behind us, invited us to their 4th of July blowout. Apparently they routinely buy a couple thousand dollars worth of fireworks and take them apart and reconfigure them into a big display, and they buy kegs of Amish beer from John’s Grocery to serve at the party. They mentioned maybe having some mushrooms lying around, too. (Not that I can do that shit anymore, but still. The thought is nice.) Brett probably won’t want to go, of course, but I love shit that explodes and I can always take Joe since no one can tell them apart. The fireworks guys asked me to bring all my cute single girlfriends and it’s a shame I don’t actually know any.

Pulling into the 1-Stop parking lot, Joe asked, “Have you downloaded that Nazz song, yet?”

“No,” I replied. “I found it, but I didn’t download it.”

“Come on, what the fuck! You’ve gotta listen to it!”

“I’m sure I’ve heard it. I used to have all the Nazz albums on vinyl—”

“I know that!” he retorted. “But when you listen to it knowing that I like it, it’s gonna kill you. DEAD. IT WILL KILL YOU DEAD. No panic or anything.”

By now I’m cracking up, giggling really hard. “That’s probably just what I need! Death by Nazz, knowing that you like it!”

He’s laughing too. He said, “Mush, come here, you cutie,” and as I leaned into his chest, laughing hard, he gave me a hug.

I don’t have a lot of old friends, but the ones I do have really rock.

Yesterday I really wanted to eat at Petit Paris, that cute little French restaurant, and I even called Joe to ask him to be my date but the power went out because of that huge storm. And it stayed out until late afternoon, which meant all restaurants in Fairfield were closed and I had to go to Hy-Vee to buy an Amy’s entree to nuke here at our generator-powered office.

The storm was awesome. In the literal sense of the word. It was such a huge storm that the NWS warning said to “proceed indoors immediately and avoid the windows.” LISCO had to run its data center on generator power for the better part of six hours. (Yes, I was one of the very few people in town who could surf the ‘net. Hah! I love working at the Internet!)

When I got home last night, the power was still out in Batavia. There was nothing for Brett and I to do but go to bed early… so naturally, we did. *nudge, nudge, wink, wink*

The dogs started barking at 1:30 am, so I got up and looked out the window and saw flashlights along the front of our property. The power guys were there. Soon after the power came back on for about ten minutes, then it went back out. They didn’t get it restored again until about five this morning, judging from the time display on the digital clock in our bedroom when I dressed this morning for work.

Lunch was fantastic. I had a brie sandwich (French bread, brie, avocado, mayo, tomato, sprouts, and greens – yum) and the soup of the day (a delicious triple-cream vegetable soup). Joe and I split a dessert. I don’t know what it was called since I didn’t hear him order it, but it was a crepe with vanilla ice cream and boozy bananas in it, topped with chocolate ganache, chopped walnuts, and whipped butter. So good.

Josus, btw, is an excellent luncheon date. Should you ever find yourself in need of one, just go pick him up at work and take him somewhere for food. It’s just that easy.

We ran into Eli Place outside the restaurant, another adorable redheaded boy. (Isn’t it cute how their spots come out in the summer? God, I love me some redheads.) Eli chatted with us for a bit, then I drove Joe back to work, and then stopped by Wally’s to turn in my signed form for the hospital.

I am still congested, and pretty tired of it. I wake up every morning utterly snot-locked, and it takes a large glass of water and about half an hour before I can breathe. C’est la vie, I suppose. Especially for a girl who insists on eating nothing but dairy for lunch when she’s congested!

I had lunch at Christina’s again today. She made pesto pizza and spinach salad. She even made me decaf chai because she’s superior. Tahmi got real chai, of course, since she’s still a grownup.

We chatted amiably while the kids chowed pizza and brownies.

Tahmi was wearing her Chevron tank (link is a PDF), which she just finished stitching up last night. (She started said tank about a year ago, I believe.) It’s awesome and I’m so proud of her… hopefully she’ll post the thing on I.C.K.

After lunch, I worked on the seva laptop and bent the thing to my will – now C. can open both this and last year’s seva databases simultaneously.

C. is going to give me an old pressure cooker! YES.
——–

I went to Christina’s for lunch.

She had set the table with a vase of flowers, which made me wish for the day that I, too, will live in a mostly remodeled house with amenities like dining rooms with tables to put vases of flowers upon!

She made chai – I only had half a cup, since caffeine and I aren’t necessarily getting along – and sushi. The sushi was delicious and I had lots of wasabi with it. I kept trying to get her daughter Prasada to eat a big spoonful of wasabi, but she wasn’t going for it. There were also turtles for dessert.

It was Christina and her wonderful kids, me, and Tahmi. A great time was had by all. Tahmi was late because she had to styptic a wound on Kaia’s ear from a dog fight, but apparently Kaia’s fine.

Lunch date! Whoo-hoo!

We discussed possibly seeing Amma in November. Maybe we can go together!
——–

My dad just called… FROM HY-VEE. He’s in Fairfield! Can’t remember how to get to my house! Needed directions, which I gave him.

Joe’s out at our place – Brett picked him up from jail this morning – playing GTA. I called the house phone and let it ring about a zillion times to tell him to hide all his {naked women/naked children/really dirty porn/whatever} but he didn’t answer. Since my dad will be driving in the back drive, parking at the top, and walking down to the house… well, I just hope Joe’s not, you know, touching himself or anything when my dad walks in. SNORT!

I called Brett to tell him he needs to go home and concoct some sort of water/power situation for my dad’s rig – he’s got the day off so by the time I get home this evening they should have the RV on the grid, as it were. I should probably stop for BBQ stuff on my way home tonight. Hell, maybe I’ll leave work at noon!

Guess what! Ron & Amy are getting married. Congrats to them both!

(Also, Ron’s dog Prana had nine healthy puppies this week. I know because Ron called Brett and said, “How long will this LAST?!” while Prana was in labor.)