I got a letter yesterday -- a bonafide snail-mail composition -- from my best girl on L.I. The long-awaited wedding-pictures were enclosed... I can't believe she'll be married a year come Memorial Day wknd. And it turns out she's accepted a promotion-relocation offer from the bank she works for/so she & her new not-quite-new husband & my 2 god-daughters are moving to Austin, TX this summer. The only parts of TX I've ever been to are Dallas & Corpus Christi. I think the SXSW festical is in Austin. And Sandra Bullock has a ranch or some shit there. But beyond that/I don't know squat abt the place. I'm kinda psyched for her becuz she's spent damn near her whole life on L.I. & it's time she picked up & moved someplace new/where she has no past & nobody knows her. I think she'll grow a lot from the experience. (Pls. her mother won't be around to stress her.) But her husband has a son from his previous marriage who lives on L.I. -- that's gonna make it tough for him to visit. My oldest god-child/the Hellion/is already counting the days til they move becuz she found out she can get a full-fledged drivers license in TX in Dec. when she turns 16. And the lil' Pumpkin is excited becuz she won't have to share a room w/the Hellion anymore. They've already ordered her bedroom set. Home prices are way lower in TX than they are anywhere in NY/so the move will mean my girl will eventually get to have a home of her own w/a big-ass yard & all that other shit families love. Which will make her very happy. And TX is a lot closer to FL than NY/so maybe she'll finally come down & visit me. But I don't know what the schools are like in Austin. Or how many blackfolks live there. Whether it's very segregated like L.I. How big a city is Austin? How far is it from Dallas or Houston? Anybody ever been there? And doesn't TX have those craxy-lax gun laws/like FL? If I go to see her & she's wearing cowboy boots & fringe I swear I'll whallop her! *sigh* Now I know how she felt when I moved to FL... But at least I stayed in the same timezone! Any input from anyone out there wd be appreciated.

Austin is a great town (I hear) with a very active art/music/literature sceniness to it, and a lot of high tech industry (software, hardware, my friend John was working for a company that made a complex sim program which user sophisticated AI). It's also a college town, with a big University which isn't a bad school, so your godbabies will have a relatively decent state school to attend should they so choose. There are black people there, I don't know what the race relations are like. My guess would be that they're better than most of the rest of Texas. But R.C., race relations mean something different in the SW than they do in the rest of the country. Here race relations refer to the racial tensions between anglos (blacks, btw, are anglos) and mexicans and indians. If you like mysteries, start reading some by Susan Wittig Albert. They have herb names, like Thyme of Death, and they're set in a fictional town in Texas' Hill Country (where Austin is). It won't give you any kind of accurate survey, but it will give you a little flavour. And you HAVE to go visit her. You haven't eaten good mexican food on that side of the Mississippi. And your beloved 'Ritas are the regional drink, dig?

I owuld say the problem with TX is having a Bush for governor, but R.C. already knows all about that...

li'l george is fixin' to be everybody's problem. but of course, it's futile to vote because of the electoral college and we're not really a democracy and all that. but we can form a posse and go out and git that varmint and hang 'im. austin also has a nice zoo. it's on land right next to my family's homestead, where my cousin lived until he drank himself to death earlier this month. every night at dusk the lions would start roaring, and every night clay would drunkenly call the zoo to tell them the lions were loose. (this is out in the country, and our and the zoo's land are adjacent, so the sound really travels.) and they would reassure him they weren't. when my aunt made a contribution to the zoo in clay's memory, she asked the woman who handled the funds what they were going to do with the money. the woman said, "i think i'll do something special for the lions." austin is something like 175 miles due south from the dallas/fort worth area.

I have heard austin is quite progressive compared to other Texas towns.

austin is an oasis of texas--- there is a huge film, art, and band scene there--- i know a few people here in portland from there who are very nice. from what i hear, if you have to live in texas, it might as well be austin...

for some reason, droopy, that little story about your cousin clay just made me really sad. i almost cried.

I found his story very funny -- I'd love to be able to drunkenly call up the zoo next door every night and tell em their lions were loose.

makes me laugh and cry. meet tush & uma. have you gotten my mail art yet, agatha?

Well, maybe they'll all be very happy there. S'good to know it's a college town -- she needs to get her degree & she can do it on the bank's dime. I imagine they must have decent public high schools if it's a college town. Personally/I'd chose a coastal city like Corpus Christi if I *had* to live in TX/becuz I hate being land-locked. But we'll see. Thanks for the 411. Speaking of 'Ritas/a strange thing happened to me last nite... Or at least/I think it happened. But I shd prolly start a new thread/ since this has nothing to do w/Austin.

you're too nice. since when has that ever stopped anybody.

Is that you Lawanda? I know I get on your nerves but I,m trying to correct it.I,m trying to learn this netiquite(come on give me a chance)Love J

no that isn't

hm. today was the anniversary of the death of the cousin i wrote about in the apr. 28 post up there. his father had built him a house on our land in austin, where he lived for about 13 years. he died of kidney failure brought on by acute alcohol and drug addiction at 38 after they buried him, clay's father finally went to the doctor about stomach problems he'd been having. his insides were riddled with cancer. he had an operation and they removed a pretty significant amount of his guts - pancreas, stomach, etc...at least as much as you can remove and still function without being hooked up to a machine. they gave him 2 years. with this going on, nobody ever go around to scattering clay's ashes over our homestead, which was his last request. one of my aunt's said, "poor clay, always on the back burner." i don't where the hell his ashes are now. went to see clay's parents tonight. there was sort of a gathering to at least acknowledge clay's death. or that he had existed. his father looks thin and a little frail, but he seems strong too. he'd just been in austin cleaning out clay's old house, which he calls "the cabin". they say the had to keep him from working too hard - he's running on borrowed time, so i guess he doesn't want to waste a moment. his last report from the doctor wasn't good, though. he might have to go back into the hospital. we tried to get his brother to come see him. his brother's name is don, but he goes by "soapy". last i had heard, soapy was living alone in a little condo by the university. i've been there once, the place was a mess...looked like a bomb had gone off in it. we finally tracked him down in las vegas. his ex-wife made the mistake of sending her 20 year old son brian there to go get him. of course, brian calls from las vegas saying "dad wants me to stay here with him in vegas." i was the only male there tonight to keep clay's dad company. so we talked sports and how things are in austin and about reality tv shows and whatever the hell else we could come up with. tonight was the first time i'd ever had a conversation with his wife millie, too. she's always been very standoffish with me. must be tough to be losing a son and a husband so close together.

At least you were there for them Droopy.

droopy is cold comfort indeed. but i think i'm going to make him an australian egg cup.

What the hell's an australian egg cup, droopy?

Please use a capital "A" when referring to your betters. Thank you. p.s. I don't know what an Australian egg cup is and suspect it's really a Taiwan egg cup relabelled to give it added class.

Cat, my first thought after seeing your post was to post something like "OK, Asshole" but I thought better of it. Just thought you'd like to know.

I'll pay that one Dougie.

had dougie not said anything, i probably would've just written a post in which i used "australiA" as many times as possible. i look forward to seeing dougie and cat spar verbally. an australian egg cup is an egg cup made in australia. for you young whipper-snappers out there who might not be familiar with this technology, it's sort of a small goblet in which you place a soft-boiled egg so that you can crack the top off and eat it out of the shell with a spoon. i neglected to mention that one of the things i talked to my relative up there about, whose name is morgan, is collections. they've bought a total of 397 things off e-bay. his wife, millie, collects anything and every thing - santas, angels, salt & pepper shakers, heart shaped stuff, animals, candlesticks, to name a fraction - and they're all over the house on tables, shelves, cabinets, etc. morgan collects one thing: egg cups. he showed them to me: it looked like there was about 18 of them ranging from simple to ornate to weird. it didn't occur to me to ask, "why the hell egg cups?" there's some probably an interesting story behind how a texan from a fairly poor background (though he became a rich lawyer) developed a fixation on egg cups. maybe he just likes eggs. so...he tells me the next egg cup he wants is an australian one he saw on e-bay. when he told me about it, i had a vision of what an australian egg cup might look like, and i decided to make one. there's a part of fort worth where two streets - old camp bowie and 7th - start at the same point and run parralel to each other past the museum district like a split river. there's all sorts of artsy gift shops, antiques, art supplies, and second-hand stores on it. i went down there and looked around for materials. this is what i'm thinking of doing: get a base - sort of a square wooden base like the ones at the bottom of little tourist statues with plastic eiffel towers or statues of liberty on them. then i'll get get a thin steel spike - wire thin - and drive it down the center. there's a place on 7th that sells eggs made out of plaster or something that look fairly real; i'll drill down the center of it with a needle bit, then slide it over the spike and trim the steel off. lastly, i'll gets me an egg cup and glue it to the top. maybe write "sydney, australia" on the base. i assume everybody gets the lame joke. a few days ago i heard a news story about the death of the founder of the "flat earth society". an american who apparently could argue pretty convincingly that the earth is a flat plane. his wife was australian, and she said that, in the whole time she lived there, she never got the impression that she was standing upside down. thus my egg cup vision. i believe the earth is a sphere; and i often look down at the ground and imagine seeing through the crust, the mantle, past the earth's core, all the way to australia and up cat's dress.

whuh? cat's a chick?

What ever gave you that idea, Nate?

It's a filthy lie. I just like to dress like one. But I'm going to wear nicer panties since it appears I have an audience. Bad Droopy. Bad Bad Droopy. *spank*

Oh and away from my genitalia and onto the egg cup thing, not that the two are completed unrelated, one being a container that holds eggs and the other being a container that holds eggs. But I digress. My father turned this cute little egg cup out of wood. I used to have it above my kitchen sink and it made a lovely little vase for the white flowers I would rape from the garden. Anyways, you know the long bits of cut up toast you dip into your egg? They're called "soldiers". Dipping soldiers makes breakfast more fun, that's what I always say. I say it often. Honest. I really need some sleep, don't I? But I don't feel like sleeping, so I'm going to share some other fascinating insights with you. I read a bit in the newspaper about those plastic key card thingies they give you in hotels now. Damn fine column it was too. My point is (yes there bloody is one) that it just seems dirty inserting a credit card to get into a place dominated by a bed. It would be phallic if the credit card was longer and thicker. Though not necessarily (Sean, bless your soul, you had such pretty eyes). And what about if you want to wander around a bar flashing your key so there would be a long line of unzippered men at your hotel room door? Not that I've ever done that, but I certainly couldn't do it with a souless anonymous plastic key thingo (my debt of gratitude to the columnist for suggesting this concept, it was not my original idea being a nice girl and all). So I'm blaming the lack of a real solid key for the lack of real solid sexual adventure in my life. Bad plastic key cards. Bad Bad plastic key cards *snap*

And now for my next thread-killing trick...

If there is one thing I've noticed about Sorabji threads, it is that they are often wounded, but seldom die. The can lie dormant for extended droughts, like mosquito larvae, only to burst to life at the first sign of rain. For example, the "cheese" thread today had an almost 2 year gap! So, rest assured, Cat, that someday someone somewhere may show renewed interest in room keys, egg cups, or your genitalia!

There is no doubt a reason why there's such a gap.

Travis Heights  3/1   Available 15 August   $1800 ______________________________________ Nestled under a canopy of live oak trees just east of South Congress Avenue (next to the Travis County Constable's office), 209 East Live Oak is a charming 1920's era 1300 square foot freestanding three bedroom/one bath house with a large private yard that includes native Texas plantings and off-street parking. The monthly rent is $1800 and includes water and landscaping service. The three bedroom / one bath house is about ten blocks south of the Capitol Building and a three block walk to Stacy swimming pool and park. The house features central heat and air conditioning, hardwood floors throughout, a dishwasher, and laundry connections. A prominent characteristic of the interior is exposed shiplap paneling on the walls and ceilings giving the whole house a warm and rustic feel similar to that of a prairie-style cabin. Also of note is a 1920's era Chambers gas stove, perfect for creative cooks or antique connoisseurs; naturally an updated appliance could be substituted if requested. Routine maintenance is provided by the landlord and suggestions for building improvements are always welcomed. The house will be shown by appointment only with respect for the current resident's privacy. Please contact Marianna Kohl at  xxx@aol.com or 512.474.xxxx for further information or to make an appointment to see the property, and please provide your name, telephone number and/or e-mail address and the best time to contact you. Thank you.

home, sweet home, sarah?

maybe. probably not. kev emails me all kinds of listings about every other day. it sounds pretty damn charming, but it's a little out of our price range. though you never know... to keep myself in good spirits, i'm in the middle of planning a surprise visit to austin from june 7-11th. his birthday is the 7th and i'm conspiring with his friends and his brother to get kev to meet them at the new tiki bar for a birthday drink that night, and i'll surprise him by showing up. then he and i can do some house hunting over the weekend.

actually, i've changed my mind. i think living together right away will be too much too fast. i'm going to get my own place, at least for 6 months. the universe and everything in it seem to respond much better to slow transitions. it feels like the real thing, and if it is, then it should be fine for us to take it slow. at all levels. i'm in no rush.

nico and i shacked up within a month and a half...since i bailed out of college, i needed a place to crash temporarily, she already had a room mate in a 2 bedroom joint....needless to say, he left after a month.

you're a dick patrick.

what the fuck are you talking about? its my one experience shacking with someone...that how it turned out for me....im not sure why that would make me a dick. settle down nate.

I lived with someone but I think it ruined our relationship. We were both so committed to that apartment but were we committed to each other? I felt we could never work out problems and I wonder if being married or engaged etc. would have made it so we could have really sorted things out. Maybe not! I often dreamed of moving out for just a week or 2, just to let myself think without all the home baggage in the way. I don't know if I'd live with someone again unless we had a plan to marry or other serious forever type commitment. It was too free floating. But then again, maybe we would not have worked out regardless it's hard to know. I'm happier now and I don't think he was the right person for me really. and I don't think Patrick is a dick.

you know dinner lady you're a dick for posting your personal anecdotal story.

I know. A very big dick. John Holmes sized. I'm a chick with dick.

They come in handy sometimes.

because of you, nico's roommate left. you forced someone out of his home.

i didnt force him. the guy walked out the day rent was due...and stuck us with the rent. it was nico's place...she called the shots. it should also be mentioned he had a buddy sleeping on the couch for about a month as well, rent free. but after two months, he was like "you guys need to be living alone, so Im moving in with my girlfriend". Other than dicking us with the rent the day of...and even then we didn't raise too much of a stink about that. It was an amiable situation. He was consulted before I moved in. Nico's one of the fairest people you will ever (possibly) meet.

OK. FUCK YOU. I WAS WRONG. OK? YOU'RE NOT A FUCKING ASSHOLE.

I just want to make sure I'm still a dick. Enough about Patrick. See here, I'm a dick. Dammit.

*laughs* ok

sarah, how's the midriff?

How about your lowriff? Patrick, you're a dick for taking Nate seriously. Nate is a dick on general purposes. I am a dick for reasons unknown to me.

i assumed i was being a dick for other reasons. we had our dicks crossed.

But of course

I've never had a problem with a big dick.

maybe you've never really had a big dick?

I can vouch for the fact that she has.

Can you provide photographic evidence?

I was just asking for Patrick, not for me. Honest.

what is your point of reference?

dave, the swelling is just now starting to go down, but my thighs and legs got flabby really fast, which is depressing as all hell. the scar is magnificent and deep and crooked and ugly. it goes from hip to hip; in fact, from behind each hip. my belly button is kinda screwed up. i used to have a nice little innie and now i have some sort of weird, lumpy half-outtie. and it's about 1/2 inch higher than my old belly button. though we've already talked about the probability of needing a touch-up, i don't think i got a hack job or anything - Nip did the best he could with the mess he had to deal with. i think it will be okay in a month or so. i will feel better once i'm back in the gym bench pressing and shit. until then i'm just annoyed. and tired. and smelly. all i do is sleep. how is your midriff?

please tell me his name isn't really nip. that's too hilarious. i'll bet you don't look half as bad as you think you do, but i guess that doesn't really matter... my midriff is poochy with stretch marks and a belly button ring, but i don't think you were talking to me. dave's midriff is rather rotund lately.

damn, sarah. where do you hide such big balls? i'm glad you're ok. can i have your apartment when you move?

his nurse's name is Tuck. no, just kidding about that part. yeah, Dr. Nip. his dad was a FACS too. i don't live in an apartment. i live in a small, old, beauitful 3/1 house with a view and 3 papaya trees and a mango tree and a plumeria tree and 2 cats and a huge lanai with a view of diamond head and the ocean. sorry, my room is already taken. how's this for trippy... my home girl who i met 8 years ago here, we went to grad school together. she moved to austin 4 years ago to get her ph.d. well, she's finishing up and she got a job offer at University of Hawaii. so... i'm going to move into her apartment in austin and she's going to move into my house. we're just going to switch. we're even going to leave each other the furniture and everything. makes life simple. i told kevin last night about wanting to get my own place and stuff. he understood where i was coming from and agreed with the logic behind it and agreed it would probably be the right thing to do, but he wasn't really happy about it. he wants us to live together. i'm just a little spooked out by that, seems like it might be over the top. i'm already freaking out about leaving here. 9 years. good friends and family and a solid foundation. mango trees. fuck. i'm breaking the hygeine strike in a few minutes here. i'm gonna go hop in the shower. i don't like to shower because i have to take the harness off and it makes my guts feel like they're going to fall out.

i once had some reconstructive surgery on me by a doctor named bumagin. everybody called him "dr. boo". and at least one nurse called him "boom boom".

at least she didn't call him "bam bam".

From: "james {v.0.3.}" <XXXX@hotmail.com> To: <syrup@syrup.org> Subject: syrup.org Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 13:31:20 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: i have wondered upon your site. your life i suppose. syrup.org i read what you are saying and feel it deep inside me. i can feel the deafening din of all that doesn't matter, all that consumes you that has no relevence, i can feel that silenced as i read. i cannot read fast enough to learn more about you. i see "the sand between your toes" and remember a time once when i laid beneath a tree in the summer... in south florida... feeling the wind and creation passing over my body and knowing exactly what i wanted to do with my life. i have lost that. i have been consumed by capitolism... i have lost who am somewhere along the way and i do not write... i do not act...i do not share and fall in love with ideas as i once did. i was in the process of remembering these things. you have helped. i wish you the absolute best in your recovery and i know that you will once again love your body. and smile when you see you in your mirror. thank you. james

that's so nice. i never get letters like that. drat.

stick with it, kel. keep doing it, keep being you, keep putting it out there. i very, very, very rarely get feedback of any kind, let alone the kind like this. people like to be anonymous. you make a difference, even if nobody tells you so. trust me.

kevin did not call me once the entire time i was in hawaii. just hours before he was to drive me to the airport, he blew a hissy fit about something inane, but really turned out to be a cover-up for his insecurity about me going back to hawaii without him (even though i begged him to come along and looked for airfares constantly) and also him being angry at me for not being happy in austin and being overtly thrilled about going back to hawaii to have a good time and re-establish my center and all that. so see friends and family. to be outside. to hike and bike and surf and frolick. which i did. all of that. so he has hissy fits. and i can never see it coming. but this one was different. usually i try to deal w/ his hissy fits with kindness, patience, and love, because i know he's just hurting and needs tenderness. but he fucked this one up big time, at the end of a really great evening, out last evening together before i left for hawaii. after a romantic dinner at a euro asian bistro and a drinks at a jazz club. out of the blue comes the hissy fit and he starts being mean and saying he's going to leave my apartment and go home because he's "stressed out". i tell him calmly to go if he feels he needs to but that i'd like him to stay if he can. he gets more and more agitated, creating trouble, picking a fight about something i cannot understand or fathom. and then he's about to walk out the door. and then i figured out what he was doing. he either consciously or subconsciously wanted us to part on bad terms to undermine me having a good time in hawaii without him. he wanted me to hurt like he was hurting. he was hurting because he thinks that i don't love him if i want so badly to go home and visit. so i lost it. i totally lost my shit. i got so pissed off i have never been that pissed off in my whole life i swear to god. it went a little like this: how dare you do this. how dare you try to ruin my trip. how dare you treat me like this and speak to me meanly, i said. and i began to throw things. large, heavy things. against the wall. and he got scared and ran into my bedroom and i kept throwing and yelling and throwing and yelling. and he said, okay okay you've made your point. and i said, i'm not trying to make a point, i'm fucking mad. i'm so fucking mad. how dare you. this is it. i'm sick and tired of your passive agressive bullshit. if you leave tonight, i'm not going to chase you this time. if you leave tonight, it's over between us. i swear to god it's over. this is it. i've had it. his eyes got wide. he turned pale. he didn't leave. i started to cry. oh christ, he said, don't cry, why are you crying. i'm heartbroken, i said. i'm so heartbroken. we "slept" in my bed for about 2 hours before having to get up to get me to the airport. we kissed goodbye and that was that. despite all of this, hawaii was great. i loved every second of it. i cherished it like never before. kevin picked me up at the airport and helped me fetch my kitties at the cargo terminal. he's been nothing but sweet as sugar since i've returned, promising to make a new start. i'm wary. but i'm happy. it's okay. i figured out a lot of stuff while i was back in hawaii. i re-gained myself in a lot of ways and realized that i'm not depressed, i've just been allowing myself to be poisoned by his codependence and passive aggressiveness and living under the burden of his fears and insecurities. if he can behave, then we have a relationship. if he can't behave, if there is even one more incident like that, i'm gone. by gone, i mean, i'm out of the relationship. i don't need it. you think your life will be terrible if you lose the part where someone who knows you, who knows the real you and sees past the physical into your soul and who loves you and tells you they love you all the time, who holds your hand in public and kisses you softly and makes love to you like you've never known. you think your life will be hell if you lose it. stay or quit? stay or quit? they say relationships are hard, that they are a lot work. stay or quit? keep trying, perservering? be steadfast? have faith? or run like hell? in spite of all of that bullshit, i actually missed kevin quite a bit my first few days in hawaii. but only for a few days. and then i realized i was going to be okay. either way, it'll be okay. i'm in austin for a reason. there's purpose to this. i adore my job, but it might be more than that. i've yet to know why, but i'm willing to stick around long enough to find out.

Sarah, I have a question about your job... Could you please email me... I have a question from a frined of mine, and you darlin are my source for info being that you are in austin with the job you have. Just email me and I'll ask...

You may be there to find out why being with someone like Kevin is a bad idea. Or a good one. Or just to find out how he moves you, and how you move him, so you can know more about yourself.

Yeah and about Kevin... I like the resolution Sarah, make sure its worth it and if its not leave it. Do what you must.

Hal, i've tried twice to email you. it bounced back both times.

Here try this addy... should work.

Did you get my watermelon salad recipe Sarha?