ow

i just got back from having an 8 year old tattoo on my back touched up and fuck me sideways with an anvil if that shit didn't hurt 3,000 times worse than the first time! fuuuuuuuuuuuuck. that is what i said over and over again in my head. trying to breathe, my nerves on fire, the pain deep deep down so intense shooting down my spine into my legs until i felt my insides shaking, praying for him to stop.

i was so tough tho. hahahahha no. no more back tattoos for me.. for now.

my 7 week stint in the psych ward is over, and i miss it. seriously. i knew the minute it started that this is what i should be doing. let's share a few moments of what it was like.

week 1
i walk over to the wide-eyed tall elderly man with the walker who is waving at me. he is pale and has red circles under his eyes.

me: hello,
him: I'VE GOT ARTHRITIS! -he has buck teeth and a voice almost identical to that of goofy, no lie-
me: oh..
him: I'VE GOT IT HERE, AND HERE, AND HERE, AND HERE! -he points to his knees and hips and various other body parts-
me: oh.. i'm sorry. are you seeing a doctor for that?
him: YEAH. the doctor gives me pills to take. he said to take one SO I TAKE 100 IS THAT BAD?! -he grabs my arm and stoops down, smiling at me-
me: you mean you take 100 milligrams?
him: NO.... he says take one SO I TAKE 100! IS THAT BAD?
me: well, i would think that if he said to take one then you should probably just take one pill, don't you think?
him: TODAY I TOOK 500! AND THEN I TOOK 1,000!
me: wow, that's an awful lot of medicine.
him: YUP!! -nodding and laughing-


week 2
i decide to go talk to the dude with the mustache sitting at the round table, staring into space.

me: hello, i'm [murl], ok if i sit down?
him: I CAN'T URINATE PROPERLY!
me: oh..
him: -slams his head down on the table-
me: ok, well, see you later.


AUGH FUCK i wrote like a fucking amazing novel here and it is gone gone gone it didn't save and computer died and FUCK BLARG.
oh well maybe i will try again another day- until then you will have to live in suspense.

my grandmother's journal

the woman i was named after died when i was about 12. i have only vague memories of her. i remember visiting her in florida. i remember thinking that that is where everybodys grandparents went when they got old.

i remember her favorite color was yellow. everything in her house was yellow. and i remember she had 2 best friends. one of them lived in a condo where everything was blue because that was her favorite color. the other one liked pink so everything in her condo was pink. i remember thinking that is what you are supposed to do when you get old- decorate your condo in florida according to your favorite color.

i also remember her telling me to chew my food up real good everytime i was eating around her, i guess she said it to instill non-choking skills in me. whenever we would come to visit i would see all of my drawings on her refrigerator. years and years worth- she never threw them away.

so last weekend my mother tells that my nana kept 2 journals. one written about the dark times and one about the good times. she started them when she was in the hospital after having heart surgery. it has been nearly 15 years and my mom tells me about these journals. so i read them and felt.... i don't know i guess kinda emotional? i copied some excepts from them down. here is a little:

As I was growing up I started roller skaiting and ice skating and used to race the boys on the ice pond and I used to ride my bike out on Jericho turnpike before it was paved. All the roads were dirt and when it rained it was all mud.
Growing up I liked to dance and I would only date boys that were good dancers and I went to Catillians and many wonderful places to dance, like the Aster hotel and saw Frank Sinatra when he was young and skinny.

My sister was 10 years younger and real cute always wanted me to take her shopping for clothes and things and one night she wanted to go roller skating and there was a place called Pavillion Royal in Valley Stream that had changed to a roller rink with a beautiful big organ and we started to skate to the music and I saw this handsome man and he tripped me (I think) and he picked me up and I felt a thrill from my head to my toes and I knew he was the one for me (Joe C, Oct 4, 1938). I was going with an other fellow who was a teller in the fire Dept (Gerry Haggarty) and they both gave me bracelets for Xmas, one was silver that was Joe's and the other was gold. They both wanted to take me out New Years but I took Joe C after and dropped the other one and we went together for four years.
When we met, Joe's father had a stroke and couldn't work so we had to wait, finally we planned our Wedding for Nov 26, 1942, it was a small one, not being Catholic we could not get married in church so we had the marriage in the Priest's Room and the reception with only the family in a lovely Restaraunt, it was Thanksgiving Day so of course we had turkey and my Uncle Frank played the Piano.

church sign sunday part 2

remember SILVER SPOONS?

here we are-
face to face
a couple of SILVER SPOONS!
hopin’ to find,
we’re two of a kind
making a go,
MAKING IT GROW!!

TOGETHEEERR!!!!
we’re going to find our waaaay
TOGETHEEEERR!!!!
taking the time each daaaay
to learn all about-
those
things
you
just
can’t
buuuuyy!!

it popped into my head a few weeks ago and i thought it was gone...

but i was sick this weekend. fever and everything. and i shit you not everytime i get a fever i remember the episode where ricky wanted to fake sick and stay home from school so he told his dad he had a fever and so he took the thermometer when his dad wasn't looking and held it up against the light bulb except he fucked it up because it went up to 104 or something.

so i remember i tried the same thing when i was a kid. i can't remember if it worked or not. so yeah, this is what springs into mind whenever i have a fever. funny the shit my brain holds onto all this time later.

enjoy the following blast from the past.





sorry kali i know you've heard enough about silver spoons. this is the last of it i promise.

church sign tuesday

i keep forgetting to keep up with my "church sign sunday" posts that i did that one time. so fuck it here is one for tuesday.

filth and dereliction

here is a haiku:

listen up here cat
i will be forced to shave you
please stop shedding now


the other day the disgustingness that i had let my apartment become was overwhelming me to the point that i had to do something. but first i decided to take some pictures because that was fun. i told myself that maybe by having the pictures to look at i would become motivated to actually clean. but then i took a nap because the idea of cleaning is very exhausting.


today i finally did it. it took everything i had, and i even did 300 loads of laundry. it was a productive day. i assure you tho, my sink is full AGAIN. it happened like 5 minutes after i did the dishes. i swear i just had a cup of coffee and the next thing i know, there was a monstrosity in my sink.


HIP HIP HOORAY for the pez dispenser collection, FINALLY back on display! if you count you will notice that there is the EXACT SAME NUMBER of pez guys on each shelf. also note: there can not be 2 of the same color standing next to each other anywhere. shit, at least i didn't group them into categories- I'M NOT THAT OBSESSIVE!

i am irritated that there is so much blank space in my stupid layout here.
<---------------- see? it makes my paragraphs take up a lot of space and this bothers me.

i do not know how to change this. i imagine it has to do with not having one of those custom blogger layouts but i do not know how to do fancy computer stuff. please point me in the right direction if you know how to do this.

you are the parking lot champion

you know what is funny? i was looking at these pictures thinking, oh my, i should certainly blur out this person's license plate if i am going to post this on the internet.

and then i realized, RICH PRICKS who ruin MY PARKING SPOT at 8am when i am going into work certainly deserve to be exposed on the internet.

also, i have found interesting ways to help pass the time at this job. camera manual-setting experimentation time!

let's pretend we go to art school

Church Sign Sunday part 1

hairless cat with a fucked up rash

do you know what it feels like to pet a hairless cat?make that a hairless cat with a fucked up rash. if you know what that is like then you know what it feels like to pet my arm.

so back to the whole purple thing, my friends are all, yeah, you should probably shave or nair your armhair so that the paint goes on and looks better. which for some reason made perfect sense to me at the time. i was like OH OF COURSE. because sometimes i am not very smart.

well it is just now growing back but i have a really FUCKED UP rash and i'm not sure if it's a result of the veet i used or the purple. i am rather self-conscious about my fucked up rash because i feel as tho it points out to the world, LOOK I SHAVED MY ARMHAIR. and i would rather that the whole world not think that i shaved my armhair (you would think that feeling this way would prevent me from forcing everyone to pet my arms but it doesn't). and it's not like if i were to explain to the whole world WHY i don't have armhair it would sound much better. oh well.

so i was going to write a whole post on what it was like to walk around a festival with thousands and thousands of people all over the place while wearing a bathing suit and being painted purple. but i dunno, the magic has kinda worn off by now and i'm not really feeling it. i will sum it up i guess.sometimes i felt ok in a this is kinda liberating/fun/out-of-body/artsy kind of surreal way and then every so often i would feel a surge of panic and realize what i was doing and think what the FUCK am i doing?? this is ridiculous and bizarre and EVERYONE IS STARING AT ME OH GOD EVERYONE IS STARING. and then after a few minutes i'd forget and be ok again. LISTEN this sort of thing for me is NOT easy to do sober. also without smoking. i wanted to smoke because then at least i would have had SOMETHING to do with myself.peoples' reactions were mixed. sometimes we'd walk by people and they'd say WOW AWESOME! and high five us and that was nice. other people would come up with crinkled up faces and say all snotty-like uh, why are you guys all painted?also people were constantly taking pictures. this is a weird thing for me. when it was just random drunks i would make ridiculous death-metal faces and strike insane poses. my signature was the mary katherine gallagher "SUPERSTAR."this one always went over very well.

however when photographer people wanted to get pictures of all us together i was like OH FUCK because i have no idea how to do that sort of shit. i blame my mom because she ONLY took posed pictures where my brothers and i would have to stand side by side for like 10 minutes in front of a certain bush outside or against a special wall or something that she felt would make a particularly perfect backdrop while she tried to figure out how to operate the camera. our faces always turned to stone so that is the only thing i know how to do in these situations. then people always say shit like what's wrong? you look ANGRY. i never understand why they would think that until i see the actual pictures.

also i cannot SMILE on demand. as soon as i realize that a camera is on me my face contorts into some horrible configuration that tyra banks would be ashamed of. my mom always called it "the smirk." year after year i would bring home my school pictures and my mom would freak out: OH NO [MURL] it's the SMIRK again!!! why can't you just SMILE like a NORMAL PERSON??

so the other girls were launching into these cute/sexy-type poses and i was standing there wanting to die. HELLO how much more OUT OF YOUR ELEMENT could you be murl? those were the moments that i realized i would never be america's next top model.

wow i wrote a lot more than i thought i would.