It Hurts in a Bad Way

I've been in an abusive relationship for two and a half years. Not with a guy. With a TV show. ABC's once upon a time is well into it's 3rd year of mouth frothing lunacy and at this point, I can't stop. This show is what happens when you drug a toddler with too much cough syrup and then let him color a script with his crayons. It wasn't always this way. In the first season the characters actions and choices had genuine consequences and while there were several dud episodes, it was nothing I couldn't overlook.

Anything to do with this bitch was just terrible

Things started to go off the rails pretty fast in season two. They broke the curse that had been the whole point of the show and clearly had no idea where to go. They threw in so many plot hiccups (The evil queen has an EVILER MOTHER, Emma and Snow are trapped in fairytale land, the guy who played the evil king in the first season keeps glaring at people menacingly!) but they threw in something that made me stay anyway. They threw in an Irish pirate. It was like a cheesy fairy tale tinted version of Chocolat. I was helpless.

I'm caught in the tractor beam of his guyliner

And now it's a season later. And the plot gets worse every episode. And the kid who plays Henry makes me so angry that I have actually had fantasies about pushing him off the deck of the Titanic. He's 12. That makes me a sociopath, but by God he is just the most irritating preteen alive. 

His face just screams punch me repeatedly

But I watched the episode that aired two days ago, where nothing happened. And I'll watch the next episode, where I can just about promise you that nothing will happen. Except the characters will turn to each other and state their feelings in simple and poorly worded lines. Because it's my fault that it does this to me. I just have to learn to love it for who it is. 

This is What Meth Must Feel Like: One Woman's Attempt to Keep Up With a Caffeine Addicted Doctor

My father has the most acceptable addictions, he drinks coffee the way most people breathe air. So last week, on our first day of vacation, I attempted to keep up with him. This is my account.

11am. (Cups 1 & 2) After nearly nine hours of sleep, which is five hours more than I've logged in one go for the last week, my dad wakes me up and grunts at me that I should make coffee while he showers. I do so and slowly sip a cup while I'm getting ready to go. It is exactly the amount of caffeine I need to start my day. But my dad downs a cup and then as he fills his up again he fills mine. It's an instinctive move, he hates to see an empty coffee cup. I shrug off the voice in my head that says I don't need another cup and drink deep. We leave the room and walk towards the front desk of the resort.

12 noon (cup 3) Before we hit the front building of the complex we pass a Starbucks. My father automatically stops. He is singlehandedly keeping the Laramie location in business. He turns to me and asks what I want. I'm feeling the heart racing effect of the extra cup I had for breakfast so I ask for an iced tea. My fathers eyes betray his disappointment. It's the same look of disappointment I got when I told him I wanted to be a writer. I change my order to a latte and he grunts in approval. It occurs to me that this is going to happen several more times throughout the day. I mentally decide to turn this into a blog post and start taking notes.

We go into a meeting with the PR guy for the resort we are staying at. He is an older very conservative guy and he and my father talk mostly financial issues. I tune them out in favor of the 80s/90s radio station that plays in the background.  In my head I am Bonnie Tyler and I am holding out for a mother fucking hero. I am roughly pulled from my day dreams of big hair and nonsensical music videos by the PR guy asking me about my life in LA. He makes it clear he thinks LA is a land of godless heathens and I have to struggle not to lie and tell him I work as a bartender at a drag club that serves only sodomites and people with vaginas. My father is eying me suspiciously, probably because I am talking at about 800 words per minute. The meeting ends and we go to get lunch.

2:00pm (drink 4) We grab lunch at a little cafe on the resort property. I could feel my father try to steer us to the Starbucks again but I insisted it would be rude to carry one of their drinks into the restaurant. In the last hour the temperature has risen to at least 80 degrees and I am feeling it. I drink an iced tea as we eat and catch up. My father drinks tea as well. We decide that after lunch we should try to see the air museum in town that has the fully operational WWII planes. Dad says "as long as we can hit a Starbucks on the way" I smile and try not to think of the slight tremor that is forming in my hand. My notes are starting to look like I wrote them in middle school, or possible while drunk. The words are getting smaller and closer together.

4:00pm (drink 5) Starbucks As luck or Southern California zoning regulations would have it, there is a Starbucks less than three blocks from the museum. We stop and I let my father talk me into a "refresher" when I mention that I'm feeling dried out. "The great thing is, it has just as much kick as two shots of espresso" he tells me as he pays. I have already ordered a large. I sigh, knowing I will not be sleeping for the next year. The tremor in my hand had just started to die down, but I suspect this will make it come back much worse.

We get to the air museum to discover that it is closing in 20 minutes and the guy at the front desk looks affronted when we ask if it will really take longer than that to look at the planes. He swears it takes at least three hours to go through both the hangers of the museum and "fully appreciate the history we have here." He tells us they have a sandwich shop attached to one of the hangers in a tone that implies that we are god damn communists if we don't spend so much time there we have to stop to eat. My father thanks him and smiles (not with his eyes) and we leave. I take the short walk to the door to practice my impression of Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle. My father refuses to join in as Boris. He insists we should go to the mall we passed on our way to the air museum. The tremor in my hand is in fact back with a vengeance and I accidentally flash my high beams at two cars as I drive us to the mall.

7:00pm (drink 6) We spend an hour shopping, which is about my limit on a good day. Today has not been a good day. My attention span is that of goldfish on crack and what I find funny in the world has gone up in almost a perfect inverse of my fathers disappearing sense of humor. This only serves to make everything, from the child throwing up blue icee in the food court, to the way the cashier at the Vans store calls my father "pops", fucking hysterical. I have cried off all my eyeliner from laughing so hard. My notes from this period look like there were hastily scrawled by a third grader. I should have switched to crayon.

We stop for dinner. I'm starting to really ride the high. I want a coke, but ask for an iced tea, sensing instinctively that my father is weighing how much trouble he would really get into for slapping me upside the head now that I'm over 18. The waitress brings out what could charitably be called a bucket with iced tea in it. Under the table my legs are bouncing out morse code for "heart palpitation"

9:30pm (drink 7) After dinner my father insists that we should stop at Target. "It's so much nicer than the fucking Walmart we have." He isn't wrong. Right next to the entrance, in case anyone should feel fatigued while shopping, there is a Starbucks. My mind screams "NO" but the thought is replaced quickly as all my thoughts are. My mind is going fast enough that it occurs to me that I could probably solve world hunger if I could focus long enough to stay on a train of thought. I get a pumpkin latte. It's fucking fall, after all, and I think everything should be pumpkin flavored between October 1st and November 30th. My notes are no longer legible in any way, mostly because the writing has gotten so small and there are no spaces between words or punctuation. It is the writing Faulkner might have had if he had lived long enough to gain a ridilin habit. The whole world seems to be shaking slightly. I start to wonder if I am actually seeing sounds. While at target my father buys me an industrial sized coffee pot for the new place I just moved in to, but scoffs at my request for the pumpkin flavored coffee. My disappointment only lasts until I am distracted my the wide variety of gum at the checkout. 

10:45pm (drink 8) Back at the hotel room my father turns on the news and pulls two iced teas from the refrigerator. He hands me one and we settle in to the couch to listen to a story about a teenager who claims her school violated her first amendment rights by enforcing a dress code. My father asks why I am twitching spasmodically but I don't answer. As much focus as I can gather has gone into mentally decoding the last episode of season two of Sherlock. I will solve it I tell myself. I will know how he survived the fall if I just...

An hour later I am in bed. The lights in the room are off and I am staring at the ceiling. The dots make a pattern, I know it. In one spot they look like a map, but over there they look like blood splatter and wasn't the finale of Dexter just so disappointing but not as bad as the finale to Lost but at least those two got a finale. Supernatural just keeps marching on years after no one cared and I wonder what ever happened to the Care Bears. They've resurrected every other cartoon from my childhood and I wonder if they really run out of things if they could bring my old dog back, cuz I know Howie wasn't the brightest animal but I really miss him and the world is just so sad sometimes...

This never happens! And likely never will again

I know what you're probably not thinking: "Two posts in one day?" But then your eyes jumped down and you realized this one is short and kind of a cop out but I want it noted anyway. This is the text converstation I had with Bailey today.

Bailey: Found a note on the floor of the classroom today that says "It's hard to be glitzy. Sorry. Hope you understand"

Caitlin: You demand glitzy from you kids? Wow, way to be a hard-ass

Bailey: I found it on the floor. I want to know more about this friend spat. Who is demanding the glitzy? In what context? What is the reprocussions of being unable to handle it?

Caitlin: Maybe it's a gang thing... Has anyone gotten into snapping song-based fights in the hallways?

Bailey: Not yet, but I may have to instigate that.

Caitlin: Any students named Maria?

Bailey: No :(

Caitlin: In your Catholic school? How is that possible?

Bailey: I think one might have a sister named Maria but that makes him Tybalt, and I don't like that. Also, thank you. Nothing makes grading papers more enjoyable than a mashup of "when you're a jet" and "Maria" stuck in your head on repeat.


You're welcome B. You're welcome

There's a Difference Between Summer and Fall Music

For about two weeks at the end of September I got lost in Phospherescent's recent album Muchacho. It's an airy album. It reminds me a bit of the first Angel's and Airwaves album except it feels much more organic. Full of background organs that have no melody, but grind out notes more to provide mood. It's layered so deep that it will probably take me years to listen to it and catch everything that runs through the songs. The emotion compounds through the songs, especially Song for Zula where I can feel the lyrics running through my veins, becoming part of me for the minutes that it plays. This album is quintessential fall music for me.

Summer is all about style over substance in my musical experience. Summer is punk music and Warped Tour. Summer is blasting through a song too fast to be accurate and not caring if you get the melody right when you sing. It's too hot to think to deep about the sounds coming from the speakers as long as the songs are fast and the melody is catchy.

But fall is different. The free fall of summer leaves me flat on the floor and I want music thats soft and comforting so I can wrap myself up inside it and keep the demons at bay. I want to hear melodies that demand harmony. I want banjos and complex lyrics that I give up trying to understand because the story they hide is overshadowed by the emotion they give freely. It's a season for soul and folk and jazz. I want to challenge my mind and my soul.

That's the big part of the rant for now.

I'd also like to note that Johnny Flynn's new album is out. It's fucking brilliant and I'll have a full blown review of it up soon.

Also in things you should have in your life, Agents of SHIELD is on ABC every Tuesday night. It's geek-tastic and even though it's not what a lot of people were expecting I think it's a great way to explore the deeper parts of the universe that the Marvel comic movies have been working so hard to create. Also if it gets canceled because not enough people watch it, I swear to Joss I am moving to London where they will kill my characters but not my shows. 

"You've Heisted My Syrup" is now a thing

I was sitting at work today, innocently browsing the internet while stealthily avoiding doing what some people would describe as "my job" when I found it. Sony Pictures is making a film version of the Maple Syrup Heist. Not only that, but they ignored my PERFECT CASTING and have attached Jason Seigel to the project. This is an outrage. Bruce Willis should sue.

You know what this feels like? This feels like I mined a perfect idea, drilled it from the core of the tree of inspiration. I carefully collected that idea in a bucket or possibly a large barrel and then I took the idea and carefully distilled it down and then locked that idea in a warehouse out in the middle of the woods by placing it on a rarely visited blog on the internet. I figured the idea was safe (who steals ideas from warehouses after all) so I didn't really patrol the warehouse very often and I didn't put up any cameras or firewalls cuz that costs money. And then these tricky bastards at Sony snuck past my clever defenses (namely a fence) at the warehouse that held my distilled and sweet ideas and drilled into the idea barrels, collecting all my inspiration before stealing away into the cold black Canadian night. And for months now I believed my ideas were safe cuz, I mean fuck it, the barrels of idea were still there the few times I bothered to check. But then I went back with a plate of waffles, needing some idea topping and poof. All my mother fucking ideas are gone and probably sold on the black market.

God Damn It.

In lighter news my big sis Christy may start doing guest posts on here. She will slowly continue to post, both more frequently and with more wit than me until I abandon this whole project and cry in a corner. I've been working on my inferiority complex, but somehow I don't think it's working...

Adventures in Moving

I knew today was going to be a rough one when, at 7:45 in the morning, stuck in traffic next to a construction worker who was enthusiastically waving his little orange cone flashlight at me, my sister Christy said the word Fuck. Christy is the good sister. She doesn't drink, doesn't smoke and rarely curses outside of watching hockey or football when, like most Americans, four letter words become just another normal way of expressing frustration.

We really showed those Cocksuckers, didn't we Grandpa?

"For fuck's sake." She all but yells into the phone. She's not really mad at me but she is yelling into my ear, and I admit that at this point it doesn't matter. Two of my sisters and I decided that at the ages of 23-30 we should move in together. My parents cautioned against it and I happen to know theres a betting pool going on in the state of Colorado as to which of us breaks and kills the others first. The smart money at the moment is on me.

This is the second time in a week I have been yelled at by a nearly hysterical sister for pointing out that they forgot to do something. Last Friday it was my sister Coco who accidentally locked her boyfriend and the Ikea bed he was delivering outside of the apartment in Reseda while she was at work some 70 minutes away in Manhattan Beach. This time it was Christy who forgot to leave a check for the movers. It turned out not to matter as the moving company has recently instituted a cash only policy, but in the throws of brutal rush hour traffic, with mr cone yelling directions at me that we're clearly printed on large signs less than five feet from my windshield I confess I let the stress over take me and did the only thing I could think of. I started to cry.

When in doubt, regress

The next part of the saga was decidedly more awkward as I have never had movers before and may or may not have a small amount of trouble letting other people do work I think I'm capable of. Not that you can prove it. Upon reaching the house in Reseda and standing awkwardly around the living room pretending to arrange DVDs on a shelf while the guys lugged all of the furniture and boxes in from their truck, I started to do the only calming thing I could do in our new internetless house. I started to unpack and decide where I want shit to go. Mock all you want but the weird almost God like power of creating my own organization system in an empty space is soothing as shit. When I'm at my most over stimulated or stressed I always wonder where I rank on the autistic spectrum. Sometimes it makes me feel like if you dropped a box of matches on the floor I'd be able you count them before they hit the ground. 

I'm noticing as I unpack a frustrating amount of doubles. Any time you combine several lives together you're going to have multiples of something. We, for instance now have three different versions of the first season of Gilmore Girls. The issue is, that the multiples of our non DVD things are starting to give me a bit of an inferiority complex. We have close to a half dozen cans of tuna but the ones I moved over are neither organic or wild caught. The only rational(ish) solution I can think of is to eat them all before anyone notices. We also have enough refrigerator magnets to cover the fridge that we don't have yet, but the cute novelty ones from the exotic places outshine my frankly more practical colored clips for chip bags. They own things like wine glasses and a whole set of kitchen knives. I own a slightly over weight cat who is struggling with a cat nip addiction. Christy and I both packed the postcards we had on our fridge with the magnets we moved. Christy has postcards from six different countries on four different continents. I have a postcard with a Jane Austin quote provided by my English major best friend. Cool as I may find this, the quote is in English and there are no skyscrapers behind it, so I have to figure it doesn't exactly rank with Hong Kong or Columbia. 

I believe that's the Chinese symbol for "Inferiority complex"

It will all of course turn out ok. The movers this morning were tattooed and beautiful, my cat has finally come out from under the bed where she's been hiding for days, leaving only to eat and barf in protest on my shoes. I've managed to scrub the layer of film from christys blender that I'm fairly certain she's never used*, and tomorrow a nice man will come while I am at work to install cable so that for the first time in two years I can flip through TV channels when I'm bored. Keep tuned in though, Colorado folks. We have another person moving in at the end of the month.

*Came home today to discover someone had used the blender as a vase for flowers. It was sitting on the counter next to an actual vase. I am trying not to give up on these people...

**Second update. No one seems to be able to put anything in the kitchen back in the drawer where they found it. I may have a brilliant prank involving the can opener and a block of ice planned. "Where's the can opener?"  "Have you checked the freezer?"

Screw you too September

September is National Suicide Prevention month. Fitting since it does seem that other than a few weeks around Christmas, September is always a stressful and shitty shitty month.

I didn't ever talk about it much but I was severly depressed and suicidal in High School. Part of it was normal teenage bullshit amplified by a strained relationship with my parents but part of it was realizing that high school wouldn't have any meaning in my life once I hit college and still having to attend every damn day.

I'm better now than I was but especially in weeks like this one where I have a lot going on, I get stressed and I withdraw and then all I want to do is lock myself in my room with my guitar and play John Craigie songs to myself as I drink. A lil emo, perhaps, but oddly comforting.

So today I read that To Write Love on Her Arms is doing this promotional thing where they want people to tell them why they cannot be replaced and it kinda hit me. I'm pretty sure I could be replaced. Scary realization that I don't think that there is an aspect of my life, a singular pocket that I occupy, that couldn't be filled (Fairly easily) by another person. It's a feeling I've had for a long time. I just always assumed it was because I'm the youngest in my family. But maybe not.

I'm gonna let that hang there. Let the beautiful sounds of Widower play you out