autobiography of memoir:

conveniently, hannah's phone just died in the middle of us yellwhispering at each other... she's learned this from me--akin, i suppose, to wild dogs who teach their offspring how to kill only to have the kid turn on them during those harsh winter months.

anyhoo, she calls yellwhispering from what i can only assume is some archival excavation with johnny depp in the basement of the UNCW library. blog! blog! blog!

it's like any marriage, really. the moment my aggression/bossiness/sarcasm subsides, here comes hannah swinging. and when she begins to yell, for no particular reason, "NO GOD" at me, i'm walking toward the hot air balloon holding cotton candy and dressed in one of those baby-t's that reads, "heck is where people go who don't believe in gosh." here's the pendulum: we are always either christopher hitchens or tepanga from boy meets world. just swinging back and forth like crazy people.



clearly, the craziest people in the world are the most seemingly balanced. nothing creeps me out more than sedated crazies with some vacant amanda bynes smile quivering on their faces...just one protein shake away from a tandem bike ride with kermit and piggy off a cliff. i kind of felt this numbness (no pun...jesus) last week and said to hannah, "i'm feeling--i don't know--very audrina from the hills today."



but here's where we consistently disagree: i hate therapy in a totally tom cruise sort of way.



case in point: hannah's therapist tells her to stop reading the newspaper (fine: CNN.com). therapist says hannah doesn't process news properly. just like that: "you know, some people don't process the news properly." as if, in some way, it might be the fault of hannah's condition.



ahem:

marine, eight months pregnant, disappears from base before she is to testify in court.
rwandan genocide moves into the congo.
bush predicts peace treaty.
iran releases video of warship incident.
gisele bundchen carries coconut around rio de janeiro.
mangled pit bulls thrown in trash.
4 tots tossed from bridge by spiteful father.
james gandolfini: engaged!
heidi montag talks about life after calling off the wedding.
u.s. border control going through hiring boom.
anthony kiedis names son "everly bear."
what is a caucus?
consumers dissatisfied with light bulb that saves 70% of energy say it makes their skin look "ghastly."

okay, i just don't see how this has anything to do with how we PROCESS information. i mean, if we read the news at all, we're going against the grain. but just because we pretend the bomb-throwing-dressed-in-drag elephant isn't there, isn't screaming "that's fierce!" or "agents of change" or "iran started it," doesn't mean it's not there in all it's drunken glory.

the converse of this form of "therapy:" dr. H, my shrink for five years before i got the hell outta there, served in nam, smoked pot every day for twenty years, and had one of those faux waterfalls to the right of his office door. each week until my sophomore year in college, i waited until the couple from my church left marriage counseling so i could pretend not to know them and go in. he asked things like:

why do you find it necessary to turn the volume dial/tuner only up on your car stereo? why do you listen to the voice that says, "if you wear brown eyeliner today instead of black, you will die?"

the answer is simple. as my student once said with a shrug while lining up her pens, "because if i didn't the world would end."

i mean, i could say anything (how 'bout them steelers? who knew stankonia would be such a hit?) and he'd immediately be on my case about not communicating enough with my family.

hell, i just like that in my family, if i call crying, my dad will answer with, "so how bad are you? on a scale of 1 to molly?" it's really that simple.

sorry. hannah says i have to end on a light note. see, there was this whole story about my best friend from high school getting her stomach pumped, but han thought that might send our 3 readers spiraling in the wrong come-lie-on-my-manipulation-couch direction.

we all take some comfort in being slightly less crazy than whoever's around us, and the way we communicate that makes the people around us inch even closer to the oven.

like, hannah will say, "i don't feel i'm in control of my own thoughts," and i'll say, "go buy a cantaloupe from the open market! get on that long jog through your gorgeous neighborhood!"

or, when one of us is broke, the other begins spouting off recent purchases, as if taken hostage by the tourette's: CAMPER BOOTS!

or, i feel totally normal going into the gym yesterday. i see carlyle's car in the parking lot but then never see him inside. later, he calls and says, humorlessly, "i was in yoga class. wanna have lunch in the park?"