You can have your civil union at the back of the bus.
~ Julie Goldman

Simple

k.d. sings to me tonight.

And love, as a philosophy
Is simple

And I choose to believe her.

(Almost) 5 reasons

Maria asked for 5 reasons why I blog. First, I should apologize to Maria for taking so long to get to this little assignment. Better late than never? I hope so. Here goes...

1. I started the blog as a virtual corkboard of sorts. I wanted to hang an actual corkboard in my room. I felt like I needed a place to stick great poetry (mostly song lyrics, as I have no time to actually read poetry) and my own thoughts.

But, last summer, using several hours and most of my roommates office supplies, I hung this big fabric thingy in the corner of my room. I say thingy not because I can't think of a better word, but because if you saw it, you would say, "Oh, look, it's some sort of fabric thingy." Anyway, it hangs there as a constant reminder of what happens when I decide I'm going to HGTV up the joint. So, staring at this one night and thinking about hanging a corkboard, I decided instead to just start a blog.


So, that's why I started this blog. The other 4 out of 5 will be about why I continue to blog. They're not likely to make as much sense as the first point. I wrote #1 sober. Numbers 2 through 5 will be soaked in red wine. (Unless, of course, the migraine I will inevitably get from drinking these sulfites knocks me on my ass before I finish.)

2. I'm a very private person. No one I go to school with knows a damn thing about me. With the exception of Lolita, everyone thinks I've got it all together all the time. They tell me so. They think this because I don't share my personal life with them. If I were to share, I may say, "I suffered through 5 years of a terrible marriage. I'm not over that. I'm still terrified of him. When I hear things go bump in the night, I wake up expecting to find him over top of me with a hand gun. I'm not dating because I secretly suspect that every man who's interested in me is just angling for a chance to be that bump in the night."

And that, friends, is just not much of a conversation starter. So, instead, I rely on my sense of humor and my sarcasm to interact with the world. I don't share.

Except here. Here, I sometimes share. In fact, if you read this, you know more about me than my family and most of my friends.

3. I share because I've been able to carve out a rather safe space for myself here. One of the great things about blogging is that you don't have to see people walk away. There are probably many people who stumble upon this verbal diarrhea every day, roll their eyes, and never return. But, I don't have to watch any of that.

4. That brings me to those who don't just walk away. This has been the most surprising thing to me about blogging--the stranger-friends who comment. I have met the most amazing people here. When I blogged about my court date, for example, and then everyone commented with such generous support, I cried. And I'm not a crier. It was just so amazing, and humbling, and empowering.

On a lighter note, while a few of you expressed shock and horror at my confessed crush on Richard Gere, no one questioned my lust for k.d. lang. That's what I love about you people. You are so unlike everyone in the hilljack town where I'm currently serving time. Your comments are always a breath of fresh air.


That's it. I guess I don't have 5 reasons why I blog, so I'm just going to stick with those 4. I don't even have 4 reasons for most of the stuff I do, so really, I feel like I'm doing pretty well here.

Too drunk to tag too many, I'll just pass this one on to Proxima.
P, why do you blog?

All good things...

must come to an end.

Just two days left at the beach.
Ahh...I'm going to miss it.

The weather report

I just got off the beach. It was a little chilly, a little gray, and very windy. And it was gorgeous.

The wind blows in kiteboarders. Dozens of them. Men skidding over the waves at great speeds, sometimes taking off into the air.

Dozens of tan, athletic men.

I looked up at all of them and thought, It's raining men.
Hallelujah.
It's raining men.
Amen.

For Madame...

I am so sorry to hear about your dad. I once read in Adelaide that Australians love orchids, so I offer you these with my love. You have been navigating some rough waters the last few weeks with the passing of your mother-in-law and your nephew's illness. When I look at the orchids growing here today, I will think of you and hope that you are getting some rest in the midst of all this. And, again, I am very sorry about your dad's passing. I know that it is hard to lose him, even if you believe it may be for the best.

No news.
Just studying.
Lots and lots of studying.
In one of the small chunks of Florida that isn't on fire.
Which is good.
Cause my review books haven't been fire-proofed.

Off now.
To make some tea.
And review antibiotics.

Sorry so boring.
Promise to try to write actual sentences next time.

Andrea moves on

Tropical storm Andrea is making her way towards the Carolinas. She left us with a very calm ocean yesterday. It almost looked like it was worn out from two days of thrashing and hurling pieces of wooden boats onto the shore. Speaking of which, when I see those pieces, I can't help but wonder how old they are. Do people really still go out on the open seas in wooden dingeys, only to have them smashed to bits in storms, or are these chunks of boats destroyed many years ago? My guess is the later of the two. Today, the beach was riddled with them.

The beach looked like a skating rink today. Huge and perfectly smooth. It was covered in waves for two days with Andrea's high tide. She left sand that looked like glass. As I kneeled down to pet a local's dog, he said, "Doesn't even look like the same beach, does it?" I agreed. It didn't.

The inventor of the ocean

I was walking the beach the other day, and an older gentleman came over to chat. First words out of his mouth, "Have you ever seen anything like this before?" as he pointed to the ocean. He said almost like he came up with the whole large body of water-waves-sand-shore schematic himself. I looked at him the same way Tipper must have looked at Al when he first dialed up AOL and then said, "Have you ever seen anything like this before? It's a whole new way to get porn. I invented it."

He went on to ask me what I did for a living and what I was doing in Florida. Between every question, he looked me over as if I were for sale. He never quite made it up to my face, or he would have noticed that I was looking at him like he was delusional. I explained that I was vacationing and was really very happy just to be spending some time alone (hint, hint).

Since he wasn't leaving, I said, "This must be a nice place to be retired." (Translation: I can see that you are of retirement age.)

He said, "No, I'm just a bum."

I said, "Yeah. A retired bum."

He said, "Oh, no. Just a bum. Just hanging out."

Okay, first of all, there are no bums in the town where I'm staying. This is a very wealthy area. Second, the guy was standing there in his swim trunks. I was looking right at his wrinkly old man boobs, and those suckers were telling all the ladies on the beach, "Either this guy is old, or he sells his collagen for a living."

As I was walking away, he said, "Hey, you ought to give me a call and we'll go play."

We'll go play? Did he pluck that line right out of Creepy Shit to Say to Women for Dummies? I looked at him and finally just said it. "Sir, you are way too old for me." And that was the end of our brief romance. He left me. I turned up my iPod and walked away to grieve.

When I walked back toward the pier an hour later, he was talking to a woman twice my age. She was giving him her phone number. She'll be able to go home and say that while on vacation, she went out with the inventor of the ocean. That's one lucky lady.

Greetings from Florida

I've moved on from a very brief stay in my parents' home. I'm now in Florida for the next few weeks studying for my board exam and walking on the beach. I'm not sure how often I'll get to post. I have a couple thousand online practice questions to get through. Unfortunately, none of them are about blogging. I promise that when I do write, though, I'll try to talk more about the ocean than I do about studying.

So...the ocean today was loud. Very, very loud. There were a few storms out over the water. None of them made it to land, but the resulting wind and huge waves did. I decided to brave the elements and walk the beach anyway. It was actually really beautiful to watch the huge white-capped waves breaking as far away as my little eyes could see. And, it was fascinating to watch the storms over the water. It somehow made the earth seem immense to see weather happening in front of me but too far away to be on my head.

The only other people on the beach were young guys. They spent most of their time body-surfing and woo-hooing in my general direction. Not because I'm all that. But because they could tell from my pastiness that I'm not a local, and all the local women have already told them where to stick it. Today they learned that even visitors sometimes tell them where to stick it.

Despite the Don Juans, my walk was fabulous. A great distraction from the studying I promised to try not to talk about.

And you?
How was your day?

No place like home

I'm etching this post onto stone tablets at my parent's house. "Why the stone?" you ask. Because it is actually faster than using their computer. I am in my childhood home for the first time in over 4 months, and it's a little surreal. I am the oldest of 5 children--me, 2 boys, and 2 girls.

My sisters still live here. They share a room on the top floor of this tiny house. Their room looks like Bagdhad would if we had attacked Iraq with Abercrombie clothes. The two of them plan to move out together this summer. As one of them said, "It's not that we like living together so much. It's just that we already share so many clothes, and we don't want to split them up." So, yeah, they're staying together for the sake of the low-rise jeans. Which is, after all, what that crack-pot James Dobson really meant when he talked about family values.

My brothers have both moved out. The 22 year old is living with a bunch of guys. You can follow your nose to their place. That sweet stuff you smell ain't cookies, it's he and his roommates prophylactically treating glaucoma. You can never be too careful with your eyes.

The 25 year old brother is living with his new wife about 20 minutes away. That's about as far away as the two of them will ever get from here. His wife is very into family. It is fascinating to me. It's like when I see people in National Geographic with those huge rings in their lips and think, "Isn't that just a bit much? Wouldn't it be easier to do, well, just about everything, without that thing in?" That's kind of how I feel about spending as much time as she does with her kin. But, it works for her. And I'm all about whatever works for you. As long as your not sticking rings in my lips or making me spend that much time with people I'm related to. The sister-in-law is great, though. You would love her. Sweet, bubbly, kind, good with children and animals, cute, funny, nice to my brother. All that stuff I make a half-assed attempt at being (until the inevitable migraine sets in).

All that said, it's a little weird to be here. Everything that comes out of my mouth sounds ridiculously lame because my internal editor is deleting half the subjects and all the verbs from each sentence that passes my lips. I'm the one these people worry about. The one who may not end up married, may just adopt a kid, and then raise it by herself, when she's like 40, as a single woman, in a big city, in an apartment, without a private yard, far away from her family, surrounded by friends who her family would think are misguided at best, who will help her when she's in a bind, or on call, because she'll be working, full-time. (My mother is having a series of mini strokes as I write this. Even without reading it, she senses the inevitable fall of civilization at the hands of her oldest daughter.)

My family thinks that the woman I just described shouldn't be allowed to take in a stray dog, let alone a stray kid. So, when I'm home, I try to not to mention much about anything I may want to do with any of the rest of my life. As long as we don't talk about that, or anything I'm thinking or feeling now, it all goes very smoothly.

Scrub-a-dub-dub...Terroni and Lolita in the tub

I emailed my favorite soapmaker, Melanie, a few days ago and asked her if I could write about my experience with her soap. She said, "Sure" (or something that sounded like "sure"). So, here goes...Soap ad--take 1.

Lolita and I ordered 3 bars of Just Soap from Melanie. I was a natural soaps virgin, and didn't know what to expect. Lolita had been using natural soaps for years. Her favorite soapmaker seems to have fallen into a hole in the earth, though, so she was looking for someone new. We have been using Mel's masterpiece for about a week now, and we both love it. We both had skin that was dry in some spots and oily, red, and inflamed (sexy, huh?) in others. It seems to have taken care of all of this.

Despite the rather suggestive post title, Lolita and I don't actually shower together, so I can only speak specifically about my own routine here. I use the soap everywhere. Head to toe. Including my face. I follow with some of Mel's fragrance free Hemp Avocado Olive Skin Oil on my damp skin. Again, everywhere. Including a dab on my face.

My skin has never looked better. I was a little hesitant to try the oil on my face, thinking I was going to break out, but it's been great! Lolita has had a similarly enjoyable experience with the Mel's goodies. We plan to order a whole 2 lb. loaf of Just Soap next time.

Mel has all sorts of fabulous skin care products, all of them reasonably priced. She tries all of her products on her own fickle skin, so they are great for people with allergies and sensitivities.

Before you go back to thinking about girl on girl tub scrubbing, check out her shop, Althaea, and treat yourself to some fabulous soap.

Meet Lolita

After the last post, Maria asked if we could give my roommate a blog name. I consulted said roommate. She rolled her eyes. When I told her that if she didn't come up with something I was going to name her myself, she was suddenly much more helpful. She said, "Well, I spent a brief time in college trying to get people to call me Lolita. But, it never stuck."

"Lolita it is," I said.

She likes it because if you say it in a low, sexy voice, it sounds a little dirty. She's really an old married woman. But you'd never know it with that name.

So...the roommate shall henceforth be known as Lolita.

10 interesting things...

I was tagged by Maria, and we are defining interesting very loosely here.

I started by asking my roommate, "Can you think of 10 interesting things about me?"
She said, "Ten!?! That's a lot." After thinking about it for awhile, she came up with number 1.

1. The most interesting thing about me is my roommate.

2. I was voted Most Opinionated in high school.
(I just heard the crowd gasp in shock.)
Actually, I think that they confused opinionated with sarcastic. In my opinion, they should have created a new category called Most Sarcastic and then voted for me. I may have even suggested that.

3. I once had amniotic fluid in my crotch. And I've never been pregnant.
Yeah, that was a fun day at work (see...more sarcasm).

4. I once went to a Backstreet Boys concert.
Not when they were popular. Oh, no. It's so much more pathetic than that. I went during their comeback tour. I didn't (and still don't) even know their names. My friend, J, a woman who just turned 50 this year, wanted to go. We spent all day camped out because J insisted on being in the very front row for this open admission musical masterpiece. While we waited, she taught me to knit. We made scarves for the Boys.

An hour before the show, these two little bitches came and sat down in the line in front of everyone. So, everyone stood up and rushed the door. Backstreet fans do not tolerate cutting in line. The bitches remained seated Indian style facing each other, trying to ignore the rioting crowd that was gathering rocks to stone them. I didn't even care about the Backstreet Boys, but when one of the bitches rolled her eyes at J, I lost it. I stood right in between the two of them, leaned over, and said in a real low growling voice, "Look, you little bitch, you can sit there as long as you want. But if you roll your eyes one more time, I'm going to gouge them out of your head with this knitting needle."

Apparently...I had what they refer to as Backstreet fever. I thought that meant you liked the band. Turns out, it means the band makes you want to blind people.

When we finally got in there, we were in the front row. The blond Boy reached out his hand to me, like they do for all the girls in the front. I just looked at him and shook my head no. You know how many people he'd already touched? Gross. He laughed. I'm not sure that had ever happened to him before.

5. People with large vocabularies turn me on. Vocabulary is not being used as the world's lamest euphemism here. I am acutally referring to people who know lots of words and can use them in sentences.

6. It took me 4 tries to get euphemism spelled correctly. I'm a terrible speller.

7. I had to go off of the Pill because of migraines. That's not the interesting part. The interesting part is that my booby parts fell off when I did it. I think my nose grew, though, so that makes up for it. When you ask the fellas what they look for in a date, they often say, "I'd really like a woman who's well-endowed. You know, with a huge schnoz."

8. I love vacuuming. I bought myself a new vacuum for my birthday. That's how much I love it.

9. I'm also in love with my MacBook. Madly, passionately in love with my MacBook. Love it even more than the vacuum. You know what they say, "Once you go Mac, you never go back."

10. I'm a dog person, but this summer, I bonded with a cat. An old, fat, smelly cat with bad breath and dissociative litter disease (that's a technical term for poops on the carpet).

I never, ever thought I could like a cat. I prefer my animals big, and stupid, and wagging. She is small, stupid, and scratching. But, she was my only companion, and we sweated out the summer together in the 90 degree heat in a ghetto apartment. She'd wrap herself around the back of the toilet (the coolest spot in the house) and I'd sit on the side of the bathtub and talk to her about how she was almost as good as a dog.


Susan, Ryan...consider yourselves tagged.

A severe weather warning is in effect...

Straight from the mouth of our local weather guy:
Stay away from the windows.
Because if a tornado comes, it could hit you in the head,
and cut your face, and whatnot.

I'm hiding in the bathroom.
With my pepper spray.
We'll see how tough that funnel cloud really is when I blind his ass, and kick him in the balls, and whatnot.

When you can't get your hands on some Advil

Any of you work with this woman?

Actually, I should probably ask, "Which one of you made this postcard?"

Cramps

Update

Case you don't make it to the update at the end of the It's over (the test, not the divorce) post, I'll tell you here--no court for me today. Last minute continuance filed by Ex's lawyer yesterday afternoon. I didn't even know that was possible. Sucks. But, I'm okay.

In fact, I'm having a pretty great day. It must be those good vibes you're all sending me thinking I'm in court.