It’s time to talk tattoos, Pranksters!
In the eleventy-billion years I’ve been blogging, I don’t think I’ve ever taken a couple of days off. See, I’m too compulsive to do that. By noon, if I haven’t gotten something completely mediocre pecked out and posted here, I’m practically banging my head into the wall, yelling, “NOT WITHOUT MY BLOG.”
I took Monday and Tuesday off, not because I was frolicking around, doing awesome things with my Cabana Boy, Raphael, but because *flings hand against head dramatically* I was very close to death.
Well, no, I was probably not near death, but I wanted to be.
See, Pranksters, I had *cue Imperial Death March* The Stomach Flu.
I hate the stomach flu more than I hate cream-based condiments, smoove jazz and decaffeinated coffee (what’s the fucking point?).
I was the last one standing against it, too. Everyone else in my house had been felled by it and I was all LOOKIT ME, ALL EYE OF THE MOTHERFUCKING TIGER ON YOU, GASTROENTERITIS. IMMA MAKE YOU MY BITCH.
Three hours later, I was laying on the hideous tile in our upstairs bathroom, praying to the porcelain gods that they would spare me this agony and just let me die.
My cats, very helpfully, I should add in my most sarcastic tone, circled around me, trying to lick me back to health. Or, perhaps, decide where would be best to start gnawing on my corpse. I love my cats, but I don’t trust them not to chomp their way into my dead body to make a nice cozy home.
Monday morning found me in the ER for a couple of bags of fluids. I had dehydrated myself so thoroughly over the previous twelve hours that I couldn’t even produce tears. I hate going to the ER, but I was all, “I’M *wheeze* ALL *horks* EYE OF THE *splat* TIGER,” and then I passed out.
(I’m always pissed about going to the ER for things because, hell, I could give MYSELF a bag of Normal Saline or Ringers Lactate if I had the proper equipment.)
The following thirty-six hours were spent in a feverish haze, where I alternated between moaning on the couch and moaning in bed. The highlight? Drinking the most delicious blue-flavored slurpee in the world. Nothing, Pranksters, has ever tasted so good.
I also fulfilling one of my OCD dreams: I bought a carpet steamer. The excitement I feel over this is pathetic. I mean, who knows how to party, Pranksters? (answer: I do)
So this is Your Aunt Becky, telling you that I’m back. In black.
What did I miss while I was gone?
Before I get into the meat-n-butter of anything, I have to fling some confetti and bacon around. While the rest of the world was watching a very intoxicated James Franco (um, I’ll have what he’s having thankyouverymuch) on the Oscars last night, The 11th Annual Bloggie Winners were quietly announced.
Mommy Wants Vodka didn’t win. That? Was fine by me. Because Band Back Together did.
I’d started Mommy Wants Vodka in 2007 precisely because I’d so desperately craved the community I’d seen on other blogs and what I found was so much greater than I’d ever imagined. I’m the first person to mock blogging as narcissistic and self-absorbed but I’m also it’s number one fan. I’d totally wear a BLOGGING IS NUMBER ONE shirt while waving one of those NUMBER ONE fingers around in the air.
(mental note: pack NUMBER ONE finger for next conference)
Band Back Together represents all of the best bits of the blogging world: the community, the empathy, the story-telling, the feeling of same-ness, the support, the love and the compassion. A win for The Band is so much more important than anything else. Including bacon and sprinkles.
(I fully expect to be struck by a bolt of lightning from the bacon gods now)
So congrats and a big thank to everyone (and I do mean everyone. It’s not my site anymore. It belongs to The Band) who has worked to make the site what it is.
And watch out, World. The Band is just getting warmed up.
———-
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I want to do next and I’ve realized that what I really need to do is to get some perspective. I need to blow the cobwebs and dust out of my brain and give my mind a chance to really wander.
It’s been so many years since I’ve really given myself a chance to do that. My choices have all been made with regard to the common good for so long that I don’t even know what I want anymore. I don’t even know how to begin to process what I want.
That means that I need to get out for a little bit. Live a little. Take a chance. Be brave; really brave. Do something different before I stagnate myself into actually believing that I do give a shit if my floors are clean enough to eat off of them.
I need to dust off my disco boots, fill my iPod until it’s bursting with new music, pack a bag and I need to go. I need to wander for awhile. Just me and the open road.
Someone mentioned in the comments that perhaps I wasn’t actually interested in self-publishing a book; that maybe I’d rather just take a “book tour” type of adventure, and I think that’s spot on. Shit, I’d love to write a book, but first, I’d rather know exactly what kind of book it is that I want to publish.
I need to go on an adventure, in search of My Happy. My Happy is out there somewhere, I know it. Perhaps it’s in a diner in New Mexico or a bar in Arizona or on a deserted street in Louisiana. I simply don’t know. But I intend to find out.
I’m tired of waking up and feeling bored by the drudgery of daily life. I’m tired of waiting for things to happen. I’m tired of praying that I’ll find my way; hoping that I’ll see a sign somewhere in the tea leaves. It’s time to make my OWN way.
It’s time find My Happy.
————–
I don’t have any timetable or route or any of those other “details” worked out yet. Hell, I still a laptop (and possibly a car) and a real, live companion to make this happen. In fact, I spent quite awhile convinced that Kansas City was actually a state (it is not a state)(nor is Las Vegas).
But I wanted to know where-ish you guys lived. Because if I’m taking a trip, it’s to visit with my Pranksters. You know how I’m always threatening to show up at your house drunk and warble “God Saves The Queen?” The time for that is soon.
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