.. then they go and post one of those stupid and pathetic cries for attention (not that this blog isn't a stupid and pathetic cry for attention...damn. Self-awareness blows) on Facebook. Helllooooo? Have you met me, oldest friend? (literally-since, like, birth!) So of course if you post, "Who actually reads my posts? Let's see who reads this fully, leave me a one word comment that best describes me. Also make sure to copy this to your wall so I can leave a word about you. Don't just post a word and not copy, that's no fun!!!", I am contractually obligated to write something snarky. Plus I come from a long line of snark-mongers; it's in my DNA. So, I wrote "Annoying". Is that so wrong? Lucky for me Julie has a sense of humor. I guess if you are a gay woman of color in this effed up world you kinda gotta have one. Or have a good left hook. I sure hope she doesn't have the left hook, too. I like my face the way it is, Jules! Well sort of. If your left hook could add a little collagen to my lips and lift a sagging jawline, and maybe do something about these crow's feet, that'd be cool. (I am the Rodney Dangerfield of half-breed Native women. My old roommates Beth and Niceto (bitchez!) used to call me 'Kate, Chief of the Crow's Feet Nation'. No respect.)
Julie and I don't remember not knowing each other. Her dad Don and my mom's bro also named Don...were BEST FRIENDS in high school. Then her darling daddy went and married the most wonderful, beautiful woman on the planet (besides my mom) and married her, and low and behold, Julie was born. So my mom and dad and Julie's mom (also named Julie) and dad hung out together a lot in the old days in Tacoma. Julie and I had the prettiest and youngest and hippest and nicest moms at Lowell School, and all the other kids wanted to sit on their laps during field trips. And they would let them! Julie and I were left to sit together, seething and finding cold comfort in our schemes of vengence. We were dark little kids, very dark. Aaaanywayyyy, our families spent every 4th of July together growing up. Tacoma is: The. Best. Place. Ever. For the 4th of July. I mean, Fort Lewis? McChord Air Force Base? Unlimited ordnance? Blue collar citizens? Beer? Air shows up the wazoo? What more can a red-blooded, workin' class American ask for? (I mean besides Universal Healthcare, a fair tax structure, presidential candidates that aren't straight-up, bat-shit crazy lunatics...) I went to grade school and high school with Julie. Her handsome and uber cool uncle Julien (I'm sensing a theme here in that families' naming protocol) was my very first crush! My mom died on the 4th of July, 2010, right when the fireworks started. I was holding her hand, and the music for the fireworks began on the radio in her room and she slipped away to watch them. That's how I picture it, anyway. She was unconscious. Then she died. Those are the facts. I make it sweet and angelic in my head, to soften the blow. A girl's gotta cope, right? Julie's mom and dad came to my mom's funeral, of course. That's the last time I saw her dad. He died a few days after that. Now we imagine them having 4th of July keggers up in heaven together:-) Julie is family. I guess that's what I'm sayin'.
Speaking of family, just talked to my sister Sheila, who called me up to laugh about my "annoying" post and another post I made about our niece falling down. Our adorable and talented 12 year old niece Deven is on crutches because she fell down a hill. Sheila, ever the sensitive one, wrote that she was going to watch 'Legends of the Fall' and go to bed. I thought that was hilarious!!! I posted, "Good one, Sheila! 'Legends of the Fall'!!! Hahahaha!" She called to tell me that she wasn't trying to be funny, she really was watching that movie. Oops. My bad. I guess one lame-ass comedian in the family is enough...
Sheila needs to write a blog hereself. She has been "writing a story" in installments with her husband, Scott, for years. It's the ongoing saga of "Fawnrunningdeeralloneword". (She came up with that as a response to wanna-be indians who irritate the shit out of us.) Right now Fawnrunningdeeralloneword is going thru menopause. Yeah, the laughs never stop in my family. Like the time I wrote in a big group email (this was in 1999, before Social Networking. We had to communicate the old-fashioned way: Email.) about my mom's fall over in Italy. I was living there and 'working' as a TA for an architecture professor in Rome, and we were on a field trip to Tuscany. My mom, aunt Sally and cousins Katie and Betsy all flew over to traipse around the countryside taste-testing beer and wine and ogling handsome Italian men (we are a classy bunch) and they met up with me and the marauding band of thugs I euphemistically referred to as "students" in a little hill town, and mom did one of her famous, patented 'Chicane Jane Face Plants', SPLAT! right on the sidewalk, which was littered with, I shit you not, rusty nails. So, I had to let the friends and family know of mom's latest escapade, and of course I gave it a slightly humorous slant. My sister Sheila was safely at home in her palatial estate in Spokane, and was reading my account of 'The Fall' and laughing so hard she was crying. Her son Nick came into the room, saw her cracking up and asked her what she was reading. She replied, "Aunt Kate's email. Your grandma fell down again! In Italy!!!" and then continued laughing hysterically, to which her son, who apparently DOESN'T share our DNA, said, "You two are horrible" and walked away. Well, if you put it like that...
Oh my, what a friend we have in Cheeses! Look at the time! I gotta get ready for bed. That eye cream isn't going to apply itself!
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