Mustard Bugs, Pineapple Upside Down Cake Shots, and Cows. Lots of Cows.

I've trekked out to the WI area more times than I can count now. I'm sure if I wanted to be technical I could revert back to my website schedule and count, but.... I'm too lazy. The first time I was in WI, a bartender offered me a Spotted Cow beer. Now? Every time I'm in WI? I make sure to have one.


Most people who know me, or have worked with me, know that if I have ANY driving at all to do? I will nurse ONE beer at a show and that's it. The older I get, the less I can tolerate alcohol and with the exception of ONE speeding ticket, my driving record is perfect. I do not desire to acquire a DUI at this stage in the game, ESPECIALLY out of state.


That said, I landed in Janesville WI on Thursday night. Great show. Got to meet a new comedian. Always happy to be booked with someone I know, but just as excited to work with someone I don't know.


Friday night I had no show. Call it a small snafu. I drove on Friday late morning to my next hotel in Beloit WI. My show Saturday night was in Orfordville, and the town is small enough they just don't HAVE hotels. So, I check into my hotel in Beloit but I'm too early. I knew this would happen. The receptionist (is that what the check in person at a hotel is called? It matters?) went ahead and gave me a room key and told me to just come back at two.


I went to Wendy's and ate while I read some Stephen King. Hey, if I'm going to be in the MIDDLE OF FUCKING NOWHERE, damn straight I'm going to creep myself out further by filling my brain with King-like scenarios. I was cherry picking stories out of "Nightmares and Dreamscapes" because I haven't touched the book since I bought and read it the first time almost 20 years ago. I could've puked when I realized I've owned that book THAT long, that it was THAT long ago I bought it but... puking on this trip would be saved for later.


My room number was 144. This hotel had doors that faced outside as well as in. When I saw room 141, around the corner from room 140, I assumed I'd found the correct hall outside to my room.


WRONG!


Room 141 gave way to the 130's. I found this out after loading myself down like a pack mule with all my stuff and had to turn around and head back to my car. Rather than reloading the hatch my lazy ass threw everything in the back seat. When I finally fount my room ---- all the way on the NEXT section of rooms, totally out of numerical order with anything (weird) I lugged my bathroom bag out of the car first, setting it behind me. In a blink I must've FORGOTTEN that I put it RIGHT THERE, because when I backed my ass out of the back seat with my other bag? Yes, I tripped over the Diva Dome Construction Luggage. I had time to think "My ass is going to connect with pavement" before my ass did, indeed, connect with the pavement. All that was hurt was my pride. I don't THINK anyone saw me. I didn't hear muffled laughter or outright chuckles. If I'd seen me fall? I'd have laughed. I did a nice two step shuffle stumble trying to prevent it from happening. I still haven't checked my back to see if I'm bruised. Fuck it, it was funny.


So I had, basically, a "free day" on the road..... In Beloit WI. Woo. Fucking. Hoo.


I read. I worked out. I walked around WalMart for something to do. Bought a cheap and ugly new purse because that's how I roll.


I went to "The Pub" that night --- the bar so nondescript that it merited such a nondescript name -- to grab up a Spotted Cow and people watch. It was Karaoke night. I listened to a blind man sing "Paradise By The Dashboard Light". Both parts. Went back to the room. Watched TV. Fell asleep. ROCK AND ROLL LIFE, BABY!



Saturday's show was awesome. I met another new comic who was, for all intent and purpose, my husband shrunken down about half a foot. I shit you not people he was so much like Pat in manner and look it was comical. And? Just talking with him made me a little home sick. Okay, a lot home sick. But we hit it off instantly --- one of those people who is never a stranger.


My heart hurt a little that Mikey was a guitar comic. It made me miss Drew. I've thought of Drew every trip since his passing but this was a little heavy. Mikey was funny. Drew would've loved the guy. Still, watching Mikey on stage made my heart hurt a little, and I felt Drew everywhere. More than I have the last few shows.


Me and Mikey hit "The Pub" again. I now had a Karaoke Partner and we sang "Paradise" as a DUO this night. When I approached the book to pick another song, I shit you not that book was open to Johnny Cash and my eyes zeroed in on "Folsom Prison Blues" in an instant. I had to bite back tears in that moment. I waited for my girlie fit to pass, sang some Green Day..... and knew.... I was drunk. My beer bottle was magically NEVER empty. Mikey and I did a shot for Drew and then the bartender told me I could zip up that birthday cake vodka with some pineapple juice. It's called a Pineapple Upside Down Cake shot. I don't know how many I had. I know it was one too many.


Some Cowboy named Wyatt who told me he was 57 but I know damn well had to be in his 60's kept talking about my cute ass and attempting to rub his cowboy parts on me while I sat at the bar. He was a wee bit more hands on than I prefer strangers to be, sure, but I'm a flirt and strung his yippe-kye-aye ass along for a while. What? I'm an attention whore. You people think that only happens online? Pffft.


I was outside smoking when that last shot hit me. I don't know what it is about me and drinking anymore. I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine and then HOLY FUCK I AM NO LONGER FINE. I know I have a good 20-30 minute window to GET TO A TOILET before things start fountaining out of my body.


Mikey was now not my comedic brother nor my karaoke partner but my body guard as he tore me away from Letchy Cowboy and walked me to my room like a gentleman.


Just in time.


What ever I ate that day had digested enough to make it to the bottom exit for another moment. In THIS moment what was in my stomach was taking the exit elevator UP and I sat on the cold tile hugging the toilet while sprays of Pineapple Upside Down Cake shots hit the toilet water like the venom of a snake shooting out in violent fashion. THREE times in my life, IN MY LIFE, I've puked from drinking. Two of those moments were after comedy shows. I need to just stop doing shots.



Drove home totally fine -- no hangover. Unless you count beer shits. Seriously, it was like I was skinning a skunk. I feel bad for the other women that chose to use those rest areas in that moment.


Oh, and I don't know WHAT the fuck kind of bugs inhabit IN that hit your windshield and leave MUSTARD YELLOW splats but..... they smear and leave nasty greasy spots when you try to off 'em with your wipers.

Ah, road life.....

2011: The Year Weakness Won A Round

If one would have to title a year in the mental biography of their life (and every performer has that mental biography, thinking they're SO DAMN INTERESTING that yes, people DO want to know EVERY fucking thing about their life....) I'd have to title 2011 the year "Weakness Won A Round".

I am happy to put 2011 to bed. As in, The Big Dirt Nap. As in, Kill This Fucking Year Off and Let It Die.

It started strong. I was strong. I turned 40 in March and damn it, NOTHING was gonna stop ME! The eternal Female Warrior with brass ovaries and the drive to match, I was out there in the world and I was grabbing it by the short hairs and WOOO HOOO let's fuckin' DO THIS THING!

I assumed I was past my own self-destructive ways of letting old demons haunt me, that I had learned a thing or two about a thing or two (obscure movie quote there, for anyone who picked up on it. No, I won't say what movie -- that's for you to figure out) and because I AM FORTY!! I know fuckin' EVERY damn THING about anything and don't get in MY way lest I push you to the side and keep going forward!

You know, like a 20 year old.
A stupid, clueless, doesn't know shit about anything, 20 year old.

Then I stopped working out, because that's what I DO, and the weight started to slowly creep back onto my ass, and rather than seeing it wrote it off that I could "pick back up the routine when ever I wanted". Apparently, I didn't wanna. I packed on 20 pounds in '11 that I worked so hard to shed in '09 and '10.
Dumbass.

Then? The boobs. Ah, the boobs. The Malformed Mammaries that I was determined to fix. Most of you know, the surgery didn't go well. I started tanking in strength even BEFORE the surgery when over the Summer I had to quit smoking FOR the surgery.

It was in THIS moment I realized what a weakling I am.
The "Mind over Matter" mentality failed me.

I became someone I did NOT know when I gave up the sticks. I had cold sweats and panic attacks. I had mood swings that even the most PMS-y bitch on earth could not rival. I cried. A LOT. I screamed. I crumbled. My family didn't recognize me. I holed up in my house, knowing the process would make me unpleasant, and very few people saw the mess I had become. I was never so thankful to have outdoor loving children who missed the large majority of me crumbling like a dried up cookie at the weight of giving up a habit that in my youth I totally despised.

To add insult to injury I had friends who were former smokers bragging how EASY it was for them to quit, that they never looked back, and blah blah blah, and it made me want to punch puppies up and down my street in frustration.

I managed to quit. (No, it didn't last. Shut up, fuckers. DO NOT judge me. You have your weaknesses, too....)

I had my surgery.

Then? It all went wrong. Two weeks post-op the incision on my left breast popped every stitch in spite of me following EVERY post-op rule and regulation. I "took it easy" and did next to nothing. In that inactivity was where even more of that weight crept back on. I couldn't work out, run, or do jack squat. At least now I had a REASON for failing myself physically.

It took FOREVER for the infection to clear and the large wound to close itself off. In this time sex was almost non-existent in my life. I wanted to. My husband wanted to. Having a boob that was a pus seeping open wound kinda kills the MOOD for a girl, and with the elimination of my sexual activity I really now was someone I DID NOT RECOGNIZE.

Once all that mess healed, I thought, "Cool..... NOW we can get back on track...."

except the whole breast was healing.... well.... WRONG.
The shape of said left boob wasn't boob-like at ALL. Why did my tit look like a triangle with the corners rounded off? What the FUCK was going on? Why, exactly, WAS the implant on my left side reaching my COLLAR BONE when I laid down?

Depression was gripping me. I waited MOST of my life to fix this and ended up with an entirely new box of hell that I willingly opened? FUCK ME.

Rather than taking this problem with the same gusto and Bitchy Fortitude I did everything else, it almost broke me. I withdrew from my husband. I did very little unless I was working. Even household chores and daily activity felt.... too big. I was sinking into a dark hole of a text book case of clinical depression. Jokes that I wrote with heart and meaning felt false to me as I delivered them on stage -- pride in who you are! Laugh life's troubles away! .... I was starting to feel like a fraud, and once I realized that MY BOOBS were a large part of my over-swing mood swing into anger and depression I felt like an even BIGGER fraud. And an asshole. Because I let my physical appearance shadow the woman I am on the INSIDE, and let myself become a "Typical Girl" that just because I didn't feel I LOOKED pretty I let it make me UGLY on the INSIDE.


I'm snapping out of it NOW.

I know I have one, if not two, more surgeries ahead of me. I also know this isn't going to kill me. I know that I let it get the best of me.

I woke up.

Just under the wire of '11 ending, I WOKE UP. And in that, I plan to take the lessons learned from '11 and then BURY the rest of it. Pat and I fought a lot this year over personal things. Sometimes it leaked on to Facebook. We've renewed our vows to one another in a sense of BOTH OF US opening our eyes to the life we have and respecting it rather than BOTH acting like pissy little children tossing hissy fits and temper tantrums over the things in life that shouldn't MATTER enough to bitch about.

I'm not belittling what I've gone through -- It has been hellish. But I made a CHOICE to have this surgery, and in that choice I knew that things MIGHT go wrong. So, something went VERY wrong. But I still have an amazing husband, beautiful children, and a career I love. I have a cute little home that deserves my attention and care, too. I have a LOT. So, I'll probably NEVER have matching tits. Fine. It'll have to just be enough, when they're fixed AGAIN, and I need to let go of some mental image that surgery can totally right what nature fucked up.

No one is gonna get me back into work-out mode but ME. And I will do it. And if I don't I need to make friends with the Me I am rather than hating who I am because I think I can be something else.

I'm getting my Brass Ovaries back in '12, and keeping them. I'm not letting the stresses of outside family drama, or the shitty business side of comedy, or back-stabbing two faced assholes who claim to be my friend, or even my funked up fun bags, take my inner strength from me EVER again.

So.... fine. 2011 was the year Weakness Won A Round.
So be it.

Fight ain't over.
Weakness got this round, but there are many left, and they're gonna belong to ME.


Happy New Year, friends. Make it a good one.....

Hovering in the gray.....

In my life, the times of greatest stress are in the times of the unknown -- when answers would give one direction, but no answers are being given.

I've known since October that things with The Boob Job are going WRONG to a depressing degree. I've also known a certain "hold time" was needed. In this surgery, it can take up to six months for things to 'settle' to their finished location. I'm only 4 months post-op now, but it's CLEAR the direction isn't going to get better. If anything, things are just going to continue to get worse. Even in knowing that, time was needed for answers to be given.

And in that time, I've been slowly going bat shit insane.

It took me a lot of debate, inner strength, courage, to even take part in the surgery. There was the constant battle of the risk versus just "being okay" with what nature did to me. I've always hated this part of my anatomy from the time the boobs started to sprout. Anyone who's heard me on stage knows it all already. I tried, as best as I could, to develop a sense of humor about it but ultimately I knew...... I can't live like this forever.

Taking the leap of faith to have it done was a GIGANTIC jump for me.
To have it go wrong, so horribly wrong, has been weighing on me like lead.

I look in the mirror and think, "This is worse. Nature was nature. I chose to do this to myself...."

.... but it's not what I chose. Things went wrong.

So you think, "Okay, let's fix it...." but logic and reason says, "You can't right now, so live in the gray area...."

and that is where I become unhinged.



For 10 years, I had a sibling missing. She literally disappeared. We didn't know if she was dead, alive and in hiding -- there were no answers. There were times we would scream for them, with nothing coming back but silence. She's alive and well. Against the odds we have found her, but in those 10 years that not knowing was more painful than grief. How do you mourn someone if you don't know if they're dead? How do you get angry at someone for leaving if they're dead and you don't know it?



For years I was told I'd never have children. I miscarried four times. In the time of not knowing I didn't know what to feel. Grieve for the possibility of never being a mother? Hold on to hope that the doctors were wrong?



These are the times in my life when I am not the strong woman people assume I am. The not knowing is what shakes me. I can KNOW a horrid truth and deal with it. I can KNOW something unpleasant and DEAL WITH IT..... if I know what I am to tackle, and what I am supposed to deal WITH.




Today, I'm headed to the doctors. Today I get answers: Will he be fixing my botched boobs at no expense to me, or after the first of the year do I start looking for good malpractice lawyers? Those are the two roads ahead, and having to sit and look at both has been driving me insane.

I've withdrawn a lot. I have had emotional outbursts that are uncharacteristic, even for me. I have been moody and sullen. I've lost a LOT of my sassy confidence as a woman, feeling very weighed down by such a part of me that defines "Woman" in the physical sense.

Another surgery will mean down-time. Work missed. A good month or so where I can't hug my children or make love to my husband without caution. Another surgery will involve more healing pain, more stitches, more drains, more discomfort. ALL OF THAT.... isn't pleasant, but I can HANDLE it.

Legal battles? Fuck, who wants to deal with THAT? But I will. With my head high. If that's the road this takes, I can HANDLE it.

Living in the unknown between the two scenarios has been eating away at me.

I know a lot of people think this is just about tits, but it's not. And honestly, shame on YOU if that's all you're hearing. It's not about The Perfect Rack. It's about feeling normal. It's about feeling comfortable in your own skin. It's about feeling HUMAN when so much of you your whole life has been evidence to the contrary. I've taken all of Nature's practical jokes against my physical self and made a LIVING out of laughing along with the joke.

But this surgery going wrong feels like a MEAN joke -- the mean spirited humor I don't take part in. There is a difference between humor that is honest yet heart-felt and humor out of spite and anger. I'm ANGRY at my BOOBS. I'm angry at the surgery. I'm angry that when I FINALLY opted to FIX THIS..... it went wrong.

Answers will be given today.
I'm ready for either side of it.
I just need to know WHAT side of it it's going to lean toward. The "not knowing" has gone on LONG ENOUGH.

An Ode to the Old Twins

I am 2+ weeks post-op, and the adventure to make me some new knockers has been exciting and at times worrisome. I'm dealing right now with the incision on my left breast being a pain in my ass. Or tit. Whatever. For no particular reason, the dissolveable stitches decided to let go a bit too early. Just *pop* goes the boo-boo on my boob. From the crest of my nipple down, at the nipple being the widest, I have a "V" shaped wound going on. Like a zipper taken half way down. It's just the surface skin. I'm on the road to mending. I also have the most raw, sensitive, painful "ouchie" I've ever had on my body butting against the most sensitive nipple to peak a breast since the dawn of TIME.

I'm only informing. I am most certainly not complaining.

Yes, this unfortunate freakish occurrence means I will probably have a thicker, less appealing scar than had it hadn't happened. To that I say, "Who the hell cares? I still have new boobs!"

I have to change the gauze on said troublesome ta-ta several times a day. This gives me a medical reason to open my sport's bra all the way and look at my new body in the mirror.

It's hard for me to explain the feeling of seeing something, or someone, in the mirror you never thought you'd see. I do believe I'm still in a small state of shock over the whole thing.

I recently emailed my "Before and After" collage to an online friend, and I paused to look at the "before" photograph, somewhere in my head thinking THAT is how I still MUST look. This "after" shot certainly can't be ME. When you grow used to your own body and then in a matter of 4 hours everything about it changes? It takes time to sink in.

I spent many hours researching breast augmentations. Different implant options. Different incision options -- nipple, breast, armpit, over the muscle, under the muscle, info info info. Gobbling it all down like a starving person at a buffet. I wanted to be sure I knew ALL the risks involved. I weighed the options. I debated over the years if I'd just have the bigger breast taken small and not put a foreign object in my body. There was no woman more medically informed than I was when I went in for surgery on August 16th.

I failed to even fathom the psychological impact this would have on me. Kinda stupid of me, really. My boobs have been fucking with my brain since they first sprouted.

I stand in front of the mirror thinking, "Who's rack is that? She's stacked!" and then I realize.... that's me. This is me now.

I'm almost, dare I say, uncomfortable with the idea and skin I'm in because it's .... normal. I don't know normal. Normal is foreign to me. Those who know me will laugh and say, "Katrina you will NEVER be normal" and I take that as a compliment, thank you very much.

Perhaps what I'm struggling with is being at peace with it after all these years. Twenty-five years (give or take) of having breasts I hated left a mark on me. I have been betrayed by my body in so many ways since puberty.

My girlie netherlands gave me grief most of my adult life. Four miscarriages and countless surgeries on my ovaries, laproscopic this and let's give you that medication and "You can't have babies" and then "You can get pregnant but you'll never carry a child to term". It weighed on me as a woman. Coupled with my mangled breasts, I felt like I existed in a shell bound to do me in.

I knew I was a girl.
I knew I was a woman.
But all my womanly parts were a friggin' MESS.

Over time? That can make you feel inhuman. Subhuman. LESS than your counterparts that share the "Girl" gender stamp. When you obsess over other woman's breasts not because you're gay but with constant envy and longing, it seeds in you. When you spend most of your adult life having anxiety attacks over attending baby showers and breaking out into cold sweats walking past racks of onesies and diapers in Wal-Mart, it fucks you up a bit.

My children validated my struggles and made me feel more like a female than anything else. By being here, they healed every wound I suffered to GET them here. The tears weren't useless. I cried many. After my sons were born I could set aside my anger at my body and what it did to me.

But that left the boobs. The mangled and malformed rack that nature threw at me. Oh, how I hated them. I resented getting dressed, daily, just trying to manipulate my bras so that when I put a shirt on "no one could tell".

Before my husband, in my wild single days, those stupid boobs didn't stop me from taking a new lover when I wanted to, but there was always a hint of hesitation in letting a man touch me "up there". Or see me. MOST of the time not a word was said. Several times though, I could sense the feeling of disappointment. Or being judged. Like I could help it?

I've always, in an odd way, identified with transgendered people. I hear ignorant people make fun of transexuals, and those who have gone through their transition from man to woman or vice versa. While I might be a straight female who's happy being a woman? I know what it's like to be trapped in a body that doesn't match with one's brain. Inside I felt sexy and alluring, I felt sensual and desirable. Then? I'd LOOK at myself -- those fucked up boobs, that inner plumbing that had a kink in the works, and what was going on in my head never matched the reflection in the mirror. It changed how I dressed. It changed how I carried myself. It changed how I TOOK CARE of myself. In times of depression and grand indifference, I stopped fighting my weight. Was the point of being thin, and fit, if my "crown jewels" were crappy and clouded cubic zarconia? Ironically my fake tits feel more real than my real ones did.

I don't know, over time, how this will change me. I'm still adjusting. I'm still in shock. I spent the better part of my adult life just WISHING for what I now have: A normal rack.

The other day I had to drive to the doctor's office, and then make a stop at the local Wally World for some groceries. Twice, in my driving around town, I habitually cupped my right breast to be sure I had grabbed my chicken cutlet to stuff my bra to make sure I looked normal. Both times, my brain paused a moment to remind me..... Katrina, you don't need that stuff any more. Old habits die hard, I guess.

I know I'm a lucky woman. I've bitched about my tits since I've had tits, but they were never riddled with cancer. They never tried to kill me in that way. But they were slowly killing the woman inside me. I knew when I hit 40 that it had to change. I knew when I hit 40 that it was time. Enough was Enough.

Now that this change has taken place, I feel like my brain is rejecting it. I feel like this incision opening is totally par for my course.

My boobs, for the first time in my life, are the same size.
My nipples, for the first time in my life, exist on the same plane.

I've spent the better part of my comedy finding the humor in the old pair, and wondered if by having the surgery.... was I betraying the comedic warrior in myself? But then?

This incision popped open. In that happening? They're STILL gonna be fraternal twins. My left breast will have a big ole scar. She will be my "Frankentitty" while the right side -- the former "little sister" -- is a perfect and ample "Stripper Boob".

Perhaps I was never supposed to have "Identical Twins". And I can live with the differences now. What I had? I could not live with. Not for another year. Not for another month. Not for another day.

I'll give my brain time to catch up to that reflection in the mirror, because I know that reflection ain't going anywhere. I'm sure over time I'll stop wondering if I remembered my right-side stuffing. Eventually I'll settle in to this new body and it will feel like 'this' is how it's always been.... but I'll know better. I carry with me the memories of "before". I owe it to myself to keep those memories -- those awkward moments with a new lover, the horror of locker rooms in school, the pain in finding a BRA for crying out loud. Those moments can't be erased with a surgery. They are as much a part of me as my New Girls are now.

So I say to my old boobs, that are still really STILL with me. (They didn't cut away breast tissue for crying out loud.....)

Good-Bye, "Depressed Emo Sister" boobie. You dangled down way too far. You filled with milk weeks AFTER my children were born, robbing from me the chance to breast-feed my sons. You jiggled way too much. You were often the breast of choice at the hands of someone else, but even then had to be LIFTED for the stupid misplaced nipple to be FOUND. You couldn't help how you were. I still hated you anyway.

Good-Bye, "Perky Cheerleader" boobie. You're still perky, but at least now you're the right shape. I didn't know that you were as fucked up as you were until the doctor told me about that internal tissue that almost choked you out of existence all together. You were the one I hated the most, feeling as though you were just too lazy to grow. I had no idea my body was basically producing weeds to prevent you from catching up. I won't miss your inadequate shape, volume, size. I know you're sitting on top of a BIG ole implant right now. Hope you like the view from up there.



I think I very well might print a copy of that "Before and After" shot. Take it to shows with me. I've always been Queen Of The Over-Share, even before I dubbed myself Queen Of The Mutants. I don't think the curiosity of people is a bad thing. I'm happy to say "This is how I was" now that "that" is no more. I'd have never shared pictures of my old boobs when that's all there was. Now? I can show what is gone. I can eventually learn to let go of the shame I had inside me over something I had no control over.

And maaaan I can't wait for this stuff to be totally healed. I have a Victoria's Secret shopping spree in my near future. I've never even set foot in one before. There was always too much envy and self hatred looking at things I thought would never belong to me. I can let all that go now though. .... when my brain catches up with the rest of me.

Team Edward! Team Jacob! Good Grief.

Even as a child I was fascinated with Vampire stories and the mythology surrounding Vampires. While I thought casting Keanu and Wynona in Bram Stoker's "Dracula" was a HORRIFIC Hollywood mistake, I still enjoyed that version. Let's face it - Dracula is THE greatest love story of ALL time. A man, so distraught he loses his ONE TRUE LOVE, renounces God to become a blood sucking monster? He'd rather be Damned To Hell than live without her?

Fuck, sometimes I can't even get The Yeti to pick up his friggin' socks!

Most friends know I was pretty deep into Buffy The Vampire Slayer when it was popular. I didn't continue my fixation with the comic books (I might lose some girl-geek points there) but I own all seasons of Buffy and Angel on DVD and still squee a bit when I catch a favorite episode on FX just so I don't have to dig out that specific disc.
For the record? Yeah.... Angel? Total puss. SPIKE was the TRUE "Vampire with a soul" Angel had to be INFECTED with his humanity. Spike FOUGHT for his. But I digress...

When Twilight started its own Vampire phenomenon, I ignored it. I saw posts about women going ape shit for Ed Cullen and Team Edward and Team Jacob and blah blah blah and I fought the whole thing, because I'd heard about the sparkling. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Vampires that GLITTER?? What the FUCK?? How bad ass could Spike have EVER looked either in Evil Form or Reformed Form if his skin looked like someone spritzed him with Stripper Glitter?

One night out of utter boredom and curiosity, we sat and watched the first movie in the Twilight series.

I was surprised it wasn't horrible. I can say "I'm wrong" if I feel I'm wrong. On the glittery bullshit I am NOT wrong. Edward goes off on educating Bella about what supreme killing machines Vampires are and yet looks like he was decorated by a bored 10 year old with a Bedazzler Obsession.

And the whole "Ancient Vampire falls in love with high school beauty" had been done already.... in Buffy, thank YOU vurry much. AND in the Buffy world it was done BETTER in my opinion. MUCH more of a conflict that the Vamp's lover is set to be THE ONE chick to KILL his kind.

Still, the movie didn't totally suck. (pun intended). The Vampires in Twilight are largely portrayed in physical form to remain human looking, albeit pale and in sunlight.... fucking GLITTERY. (grumble... glitter... what the hell?) There is no marked transformation when the demon inside surfaces to feed as in Buffy. There are no comical Bella Legosi fangs that spout.

It's my understanding the first movie had a very small budget, but the artistry within the film can't be balked at. The colors and mood and tone are very Artsy in their presentation.

I had zero desire to rush to the theaters when the next two movies were released. I have, however, just viewed the movies on Showtime and I'm pissed because I've totally gotten HOOKED into the storyline and mythology of the Twilight universe.

I AM curious though at what the allure of Bella IS to Edward and Jacob. She's miserable 99% of the time, and when she gazes upon each in her own love-lorn way? I'm sorry but the girl looks slightly cock-eyed. I know "Forks" (did I get that right?) is a small place, but not so small that this ONE chick should be able to upset centuries of monsters and wolves and their pacts and treaties and blah blah blah. Bella needs rescued as much as Buffy's little sister Dawn did, and most Buffy fans fucking hated Dawn.

The pull for Edward to want Bella to remain human speaks in part to a very abusive relationship: Hold the woman down, keep her frail, don't let her get too strong, so she will always need me. Control her. Yeah..... it sends a shitty subliminal message to young girls caught up in this shit that that is romantic. It's not. Edward might be fighting the idea of changing Bella over because he cares about her "soul" but as a grown woman all I can think is, "Control freak." If she is in trouble he will ALWAYS have to fight for her, never being able to defend herself.

I haven't read the books. I don't know how it all spins out, and I don't want to know. I'm fine for the next movie to hit a cable station to see it. I'm not spouting "Team Jacob!" statuses on Facebook (even if that's the side I lean toward.) Come ON friends, I might LOVE the Vampire legends and the spins that writers put on it, but I'm a Wolf Girl at heart. Always have been, always will be. The full moon is fascinating. I celebrate the release of my Werewhore about every month! And like Jacob said so bluntly to Edward, "I'm hotter than you." Furry Boy speaks the truth. *snicker*

I guess I just liken these movies to vegetables I have to FORCE my kids to eat:
"Try it, you might just like it!"

I will, however, NEVER NEVER NEVER get on board with blood sucking awesome creatures GLITTERING in the friggin' sunlight. HUGE mistake there. They couldn't have come up with ANYTHING ELSE to be the "tell" that these creatures are indeed vampires?? The sun turning all their veins visibly black, maybe? It would make them more bad ass. It would FIT the idea of them being horrible killers. Don't talk to me about irony either. "Oh but Katrina that's the point!! Something so deadly can be so..... beautiful....." Blah blah blah. Bullshit. Spike was beautiful without Glitter, damn it!

Now all I have to do to catch up on the other latest trendy Vampire universe is Netflix season one of True Blood.

Doesn't matter how great that one is though. NOTHING tops the Buffyverse for me. I'm a die-hard Sunnydale Girl when it comes to where my "favorites" reside. Until the casts of Twilight and True Blood whip out a Musical Episode, they can't touch Buffy!

.... glitter? REALLY?
Good grief.

Meet Me At The Parking Lot

Last night, my boys along with almost a dozen neighborhood kids, played a game of kick ball in our front yard. They weren't keeping score. Some kids kept floating from one team to the other. They laughed. They ran loopy around the bases just to see if they could make it or tag the other out. They SCREAMED like animals and worked up a sweat. When I took a jug of water and ice and plastic cups out for a break they greedily gulped and burped and slopped water all over the place. Then? Went right back to playing. They played until the mosquitoes brought dusk on in, and everyone had to go home.

I watched and hooted and hollered with them, caught between the moment at hand and memories of my own.

In my old neighborhood, none of us had too big a yard to play in, so we gathered in the parking lot beside Bethel Lutheran Church. The pastor's kids were our friends. Not all the kids in the neighborhood attended the church, but the lot was THE place to play. There was always a game of kick ball, base ball, base runner, freeze tag. We roller skated on that lot until our feet blistered. We rode our bikes in circles until we got dizzy. In the winter we'd make forts out of the plowed snow. The window wells would somehow catch toads after heavy rains, and Pastor would open the church so we could go to the basement level, crawl on through the windows, and grab up those toads and have races with them until we set them free.

We moved out of that neighborhood when I was 11, and I left the innocence of my childhood there. It was that "Stand By Me" age, when Summer lasted forever, no one went inside until the street lights came on, and your friends saw you FAR more than your family.

People lament that "those days are gone" and "kids don't play like they used to".

Watching my boys, and the kids on our street, my heart swelled so big with a feeling of nostalgia and gratitude for them to have these memories, these moments. Nights like last night are the stuff childhood is MADE OF.


We encountered this neighborhood from loss. We lost our house, and were forced to relocate. When we picked this duplex, we choose it because it had central air conditioning and a huge basement for a play room. We had NO IDEA this cul de sac was CRAWLING with families with children the same age or around the same age as our boys. We simply didn't know that an unfortunate financial turn in our lives would give to our sons something money can NOT buy. Our old neighborhood wasn't as safe. There weren't kids around. I'd have NEVER set my sons out to play four houses over in our old neighborhood. EVER. It was a bad end of town. On this street, there is little traffic. Families are in great abundance. Parents know the other children. Swingsets don't belong to any one family -- they are free rein for anyone if they're a kid.

I am so happy for my boys this Summer. They have spent 95% of it outdoors riding bikes, playing ball, wrestling in the yard, playing with the hose and squirt guns and silly kid pools with crappy water that gets dumped every other day for being nasty. There has been almost NO computer time, and very little video game play. (Rainy days excluded) They have friends every other house up and down the street.... just like I did when I was little.

I had friends in every direction when I was little. If one person left to visit grandma for the day? There was someone else to do something with.

As a mother I couldn't be more content to see the way they play. Kids today may very well be spoiled with gadgets and TV and things we NEVER dreamed of when I was small, but the heart of a child still beats for adventure and play -- honest to goodness, roll in the dirt, pick up a bug, skin your knee, PLAY. Technology can't breed being a kid out of children. Parents can LET it happen, but the Lost Boys of Neverland aren't gone. They just need the room to come out and crow.

High School: Does it EVER leave us?

I went to my High School reunion in 2009, and Pat's in 2010 more as a curiosity than anything else. I have, for the most part, kept in touch with the friends I've wanted in my life since graduation that I've wanted to keep in touch with. Yes, a few fell through the cracks of the busy nature of becoming an adult, so contact via this rite of passage was wonderful.

I had a love/hate relationship with High School. I've always enjoyed being a student of anything, and relished learning. The social aspect of school is where the "hate" came in. I got caught in the trappings of adolescence of simply wanting to be liked. Being popular mattered to me, although I wasn't destined to achieve it. I went to a High School that was zoned for more wealthy families. We were not one of those families. The labels on your clothes mattered. We shopped at K-Mart. I got ribbed for this. I was too immature to realize such things don't matter in life, and didn't see that I was living the monetary life that my parents could provide, as were the "rich kids". THEY didn't earn jack shit. They were given what they had, as I was, and as an adult we can reason and rationalize that these things shouldn't matter to teenagers. Still? They do. I felt it. I felt inferior because I never took skiing vacations and that the ONLY pair of "Guess" jeans I owned came from an "irregular" resale store. I wore those jeans until they, literally, fell off me in tattered shreds years later in college.

I was an artistic student, diving in to the creative side of my being. I took art classes, was on Speech Team, wrote for the News Staff and took part in Yearbook my Senior year. ANYTHING creative and I was there. That doesn't always mark one to be "cool". I never clicked with any clique. I had friends, but longed for more. I was the quintessential dork wishing secretly to be the Cheerleader. I pretended not to care, but at times my desire to be part of the "in" crowd led me to be rude and sometimes bitchy to people very much in the same boat I was in who were just trying to be my friend. I wasn't always kind to everyone.

I know now, at 40, there might be people who cringe at my name because of who I was or how I acted at 17. I can live with that, because it would be very valid. We want to think people will give us the chance to prove we've grown up, but we also have to be accepting that our actions affect people and that time doesn't always wash it away.

I can look back on my years in High School with cringing regret and laughter, a feeling of "Man I was such a dork!" and hope... people would just see past that version of me to the "Me" I have grown into.

I also know that even now, at 40, there are names and faces of people back then who still make me wince. The "Mean Girls" who saw fit to whisper behind my back at my 'generic' clothing left a mark. The boys who decided I wasn't of the right social class to bother to date or give me a chance? I still remember that shit. I would never hold it against someone now, if their approach was true and honest, and they showed me that they too were caught in the whirlwind of stupid that encompasses adolescence, and that they too have left it behind.

As a nurse aide, I came into contact with some of my old tormentors. I cared for the grandmother of several girls who were TOTAL BITCHES to me when we were kids. They berated me for being an art geek. They made fun of me. They laughed at me, at times in their coven of the Beautiful Ones as I walked down the halls or just in passing alone. And as adults? They saw me as the one wiping the ass of their dying loved one and were gracious to have me around. There was little to no hint of the high school bullshit that swirled around us all as children.

As a photographer, before comedy, I encountered a former classmate who didn't recognize me right away. I recognized her. She hadn't aged, and still had the air of privilege and poise she had carried so well at 16. She was gracious and kind and pleased with my work.... until I LITERALLY saw the light go off in her eyes. That, "I know this woman.... I know who she is!" recognition, and her entire demeanor changed around me. She got snooty, stuffy, and although moments before had been singing my praises as a photographer was now overly critical of my work. I felt bad for her. I pitied her in my mind that such levels of High School Hierarchy could still exist in her head all these years later. Somehow, me being a part-time working Mom at a portrait studio, made me "less" to her, just as I was to her when we were teenagers because I was the poor daughter of a waitress.

Still, it sticks with us. I know of two girls -- sisters -- that would have to do a mighty strong dance to prove to me they aren't the epitome of Evil. They tortured me in our teen years. They targeted me and were ruthless in their game of just being MEAN. They had the money (of their parents) and the beautiful home (of their parents) and saw fit to pick on me or at me when EVER the mood struck them. They targeted me in the 8th grade and kept their game of "Fuck with Katrina" running right up to Graduation. If I had to dissect it all now, I understand it: In spite of their head-start in genetics and breeding? They were ugly inside and out. Money couldn't buy them personality. It couldn't buy them beauty. Every time one of them would "crush" on some guy? Ironically that guy would be crushing on ME. I never did anything to make it happen. It was just horrific bad luck on all parts. It was fuel for them to start rumors about me starting rumors about others, and because of who they were -- the richy kids -- people believed them. Through their torment I almost got my ass kicked because of shit they started. Threatening phone calls. Stupid adolescent crap. I haven't seen them since we were 18. They didn't attend the reunion. I've never sought them out on social sites. I'd love to ask them, now, "What the FUCK was it about me that made you so damn angry?"

As I encounter people now who I knew then, I try VERY HARD not to project ANY opinion -- good or bad -- on the adult they are NOW from the kid they were through the trenches. I'm not the same. I'd LOVE the chance to get to know people I didn't back then. I want to give people the same chance I hope they'll give me.

Still?
Some people?
They are just shitheads. Doesn't matter how old they are. They were pieces of shit at 16 because that's just who they were destined to be their entire lives.

When some mean girl from "back then" recognizes my husband and I in public as former classmates and pushes me out of the way, LITERALLY pushes past me, to shove her breasts in my husband's face and flirt? Acting like the same little cunt she was 20 years ago? It's easy in that brief encounter to see some people just don't grow up. Might I BE a little super sensitive? Sure. That's the part I'll carry with me, wondering if people see past the geeky art student with the K-mart clothing who could never get herself quite right in the social scheme of things or if people see me NOW..... the geeky dork who takes pride in the fact that I don't pay full price for anything and shops at Wal-Mart because I don't give a fuck and know my $4 t-shirt doesn't say dick about what a wonderful friend, mother, wife, and human I am. *snicker*

People should realize though.... if you treated someone like a bag of dog shit 20 years ago? Chances are they never forgot it. And if you make a choice to act that way NOW, 20 years later? It's settled: You were born a douchebag and you will always BE a douchebag. At least to me. I'll give people a second chance. Maybe a 3rd or 4th one. But if your record shows you're just a pissy piece of shit to other humans? Don't be surprised if that's how people see you, if that's how people remember you then, and see you now.