Where Am I?

I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that I'm only in NYC for about 36 more hours before I scramble for Chicago and Portland, and all I have managed to do in my jetlagged state is drink coffee and unzip my suitcase and stare at the clothes I need to wash between now and tomorrow night.

I should be going into the office, but part of me says, nahhhh, do that tomorrow.

I'm going to meet Roni for pizza at the place on Bedford Avenue that we love. I always love real New York pizza when I come back from a trip, and the best is in Brooklyn, my friends. We have all those Napolitanos and Sicilianos you see, and they make the best pizza. Though I'm not a fan of the Sicilian pizza -- too bready. Gimme a nice thin-crust cooked in a wood-fired oven, with mozzarella that was made this morning, and I'm the happiest girl in the world.

We're having.regular summer here, too, which means that with the blinds closed and a fan blowing, my room feels all cool and cozy. I could lay around in here all day with the little miss and be perfectly happy to read and nap for the next day. She'd probably like it, too, seeing as she's happily thrown herself down next to me and is contentedly upside-down with that half-inch of tongue sticking out and her paws kneading the air. Now that her rather doglike "You're back! You're back! Oh my GOD, I thought you were gone forever!" frenzy has passed, she's perfectly content to just be Aileen-adjacent again with just the occasional pat with a paw. "Still there? Okay, snore."

I was going to call the SNF while I'm here in town, but decided, again, nahhh. Honestly, I just don't feel like shaving my legs right now. Plus, the afterglow of the redheaded pressman hasn't worn off yet, and I think I'll wallow in that for awhile.

Confession: while the actual grown-up rumpusing is oodles of fun, and I mean rolling around, changing positions, let's try this, ow that hurt, okay that's good, whoop-em-up OODLES OF FUN, I love the making-out-like-horny-teenagers part just as much. And the Woodpecker is a great maker-outer. Head-spinning, devastating kisses, of the hand on the small of the back, pull you in close like it's a slow dance at the prom variety. Savory.

I think marriages would be better if couples just made out more, don't you? If, instead of having sex appointments ("Well, honey, it's 10 o'clock on Saturday night, should we get it on?), they just randomly started grabbing each other and making out whenever the urge hits.

Now, I may be unqualified to make this statement, having never been married nor having had children myself, but I think it would be a nice thing for kids to see their parents are still hot for each other. I'll bet lots of couples had noisy, enthusiastic sex before the kids came along, only to turn into those couples having silent, furtive sex only when the kids were asleep. Maybe that's why so many married women get all fake-orgasmic and "Ohhhh, my gawwwwd," when they eat a rich dessert in a restaurant -- they can't make those faces and noises at home anymore.

Me? I certainly enjoy a great dessert, but I'm not transferring any sex noises to the creme brulee unless the creme brulee is being licked off my thighs.

Root beer. I want a root beer with my pizza.

Home Sweet Hovel

I love my funny little apartment, I do I do I do I do I DO!

I'm back in New York, and so happy to be home. I always get that jazzy, grinny feeling as we start to descend into home-ish airspace. I had an aisle seat this leg, so I didn't get to press my face against the window and say, "Hi, Coney Island Cyclone, hi, Brooklyn, hi New York, my love," as we came in for our landing, but I thought it, oh, yes I did.

Now I have 48 hours to wash out my gutchies and get ready to do it all over again next week in Chicago and Portland, OR.

Miss Madison Kitty has adhered herself to me like gum on a shoe, and I am pouring myself a finger of Maker's to take the airplane stink out of my head and try to erase the image of the truly bizarre-looking feet of the woman sitting next to me from my brain. Her toenails were so odd that I couldn't stop staring at them. I can't even describe them, except that her toes were like mushroom buttons and her toenails were really, really narrow and tiny and quite disturbing to look at.

So another LA trip is put to bed, and I have to go into the office tomorrow to sort out other work stuff.

So happy to be home.

Oh, and the heatwave appears to have broken! Yay!

The Big Doughnut, The Redheaded Pressman, and Other Musings About L.A.

Hi everyone, it's your favorite Lost Angel, writing from the city of Lost Angels.

Oh, my word, the sun finally made an appearance here.

We found a big doughnut yesterday afternoon after gorging ourselves on sashimi at our favorite hole-in-the-wall place in Gardena.  I don't know if it was the big doughnut, but it was a big doughnut.

Judy made me drink a giant sake at lunch because I was stressing mightily about a couple of my jobs back in NYC. I didn't feel they were being covered properly in my absence.

This I expressed, quite eloquently, I thought, in the car going to lunch. Well, eloquent might be an overstatement.  Scorsese-worthy, Tarantino-esque, expletive-laden tirade is more like it. But I do have to admit, I was impressive in my creative and multi-layered uses of the word "fuck." 

After a couple of sake belts, I realized I wasn't stressing about the actual work, but about the fact that I wasn't there to rub my greasy fingers all over it.  Totally out of my head, I know.  I am here, the jobs are there, and someone else is covering for me.  There is only so much I can do, right? 

This thought, as well as the dry sake, calmed me a bit, and I settled in to enjoy my ebi and uni.  God, do I love uni sushi.  My sister had a Japanese-American friend who described it as "baby poop on rice," but I can't get enough of it.  Eating uni isn't really eating animal flesh so much as it's ingesting the essence of the sea. When you let it roll over your tongue, and the aroma fills the back of your head and you feel its tendrils creeping up into your nasal passages, you almost feel like a sea creature yourself.  Mermaidy, if I may say so.  If someone sat me down with a plate of a dozen uni sushi, I would happily schlurp them down and hold out my plate for more.

We came back and I had a couple of ridiculously easy approvals (which we totally earned after fighting with the color on one shoe -- ONE SHOE! -- and one fur purse -- ONE HANDBAG! -- all morning. Please refrain from making dirty jokes about fur purses. I thought of all of them.)  It took us, literally, hours to get the color matched to the proofs.  Such a fight, but we were all too stubborn to break down and say, "Lift it, and make new plates." Okay, after about a dozen pulls, I was ready to lift it and make new plates.  But Chuck and Frank, the pressmen, were convinced they could get there.  And after many, many hours and finally, a couple of counterintuitive genius color moves, we got there.  In my business, that's a victory.)

And a final note, on the redheaded pressman, my hot little Viking with the body like a statue, all I have to say after not seeing him for a year is, "Oh my lord. Oh my sweet baby Jesus lord. Praise God! Puh-raise God! Thank ya, jesus, thank ya."

The Shade

It's cool and rainy where I am, and frankly, I like it.  Even though I didn't even bring a jacket (who would think you'd need a jacket in July in this place?), I'm sitting here with the sliding door to the balcony wide open. After the stifling heat of New York City in the past month, this sixty-something degree weather feels awesome. Now, if it were sunny and 65, I'd be happy as a pup who just discovered the chocolatey treats in the litterbox. (Sorry, that's gross, but why DO dogs eat poops out of the litterbox?)

Usually I stay at a hotel in Hermosa Beach, called the Beach House. I adore the Beach House, because it's quietly luxurious and a little funky.  They have all the nice amenities -- the fluffy robes, the big down comforters and pillows, beds so big you could plant an acre of corn on them, Aveda products in the bathrooms. And every room has a balcony that looks out onto the beach and the Pacific.  It's heaven, and I sleep the sleep of the just and true when I'm there.

So this trip, the travel agent flaked, and I ended up at this place called The Shade, further north on the Strand, up in Manhattan Beach.  It's nice, but a little too too, if you know what I mean.

The lobby is this ultra-modern room dominated by the bar with low, leathery divans all around (the better to drink your $14 cosmoramostini or some other such nightmare drink that because it's served in a wedge-shaped glass, they append "-tini" to the name. I'm a purist about these things. Ya can't call a drink a "something-tini" if it doesn't consist of gin/vodka-vermouth-and a twist-of-lemon rind-olive-onion. It's just not right.)  Anyhow, they have dance music playing all the time, and jarringly, sports on the televisions behind the bar.

I got onto the elevator, which is painted gray, and the lights in the elevator are BLUE. No one looks good in blue light. So I rode to the 2nd floor bathed in this light that makes me look like a consumptive.

I guess the room is "nice," whatever "nice" means in modern hoteliery (is that a made-up word? Probably.)  Maybe if "twenty-first century porno set" is considered nice.  Once I figured out the console of buttons inside the door, mainly through random stabbing at the buttons to see what I could make them do (god knows I couldn't READ the buttons, because they're all about 1/4" to a side and printed with tasteful, tiny Helvetica type saying things like "Chroma Therapy" and "Fire Cycling") I threw my suitcase on its little rack.

I decided to take a bath to unwind. The bathtub is actually one of those jacuzzi tubs, and to add to the ambience of the red strip lights around the bathroom ceiling, the tub has a built-in light that changes colors while you whirlpool. So I flipped around in this giant tub like a baby dolphin while watching myself change from blue...to green...to gold....to pink underwater.  Trippy. And oh so very, very Ron Burgundy.  I suddenly wanted to hear some jazz flute and drink white zinfandel.  Stay classy, San Diego!

But at least I was now relaxed enough to go to sleep.  I padded happily over to the nice big bed and flipped back the comforter, dropped the towel I had wrapped around my body, and threw myself down with real glee.

Oh, shit.  They have Tempur-pedic mattresses here.  Gaaaahhhhhh!  And Tempur-pedic pillows!  Double-gaaaaahhhh!

There ensued a night of tossing and turning and sweating -- those Tempur-pedic sponge mattresses are fucking convection ovens -- punctuated by terrible totalitarian dreams of jackbooted, no-faced regiments of brownshirts. I swear it was that fucking foam mattress and those fucking foam pillows, and the awful oh-so-moderne decor in its hideous shades of puce and slate.

I awoke at 6, completely unrested and cranky, to find that the overhead light fixtures in the bathroom had what could only be 25-watt bulbs in them, so I am sure I'm walking around so garishly painted that I look like I stepped out of a remake of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane."

After the car service driver nearly killed me on the 405 by chatting merrily away on his cell phone while changing lanes without checking his rearview mirror, I arrived at the plant in a state.

Judy asked, "How was the Shade?"

"That," I said, "was the worst night's sleep I've ever had in my life."

Needless to say, she was on the phone immediately with the travel agent, begging her to find me a room at the Beach House. Unhappy, unrested Aileen means unhappy press okays and lots and lots of remade plates, which is the printing equivalent of standing on Crenshaw Boulevard and setting handsful of $100 bills on fire.

Somehow, despite some volleyball tourney, a room was found for me in Hermosa, at the Beach House.  And not just any room.  An ocean front room.

When I checked in, all I could say to the girl at the desk was, "Oh, thank god you guys had a room for me. I've never been so happy to be here in my life."

And when I opened the door of room 314, and saw the sweet little suite, with its giant fluffy white king-sized bed with its giant fluffy white goose down pillows, and its slatted doors to the balcony overlooking the ocean, I actually said, out loud, "Hello, Beach House! I'm home!"

While all this was going on, the redheaded pressman was texting me to see if I had arrived, was I jet-lagged, where was I staying, and was I going to, well, see him later? I will admit to feeling the teensiest bit excited that I am going to see him.

After I checked in at the BH and Judy and I ate burgers at Hennessey's on the pier, we got back to the plant just after shift change, and there, on the first press as I walked in, was the Woodpecker.  I said hi, he said hi, both of us all professional and shit, and as I walked past, he gave me just the tiniest wink and half-smile. 

Naughty, naughty boy.

And five minutes after I walked past him and came upstairs to the client lounge, my phone kadunked with a text sent from the pressroom floor: "Damn! You look great."

And for that, I have to say, "Thank you, MWBMH(tm).  Makes it all totally worth it. "

I am so getting laid tonight.

Placeholder Post

Just an excuse to post a photo of the little boy Sidney Crosby and announce, "74 days to first puck drop of the 2010-2011 season! Woo hoo!"

Sidney, you got a purdy mouth.  Now come on over here and let's break Rule 23.

Sorry for being a dirty old lady. He's just so cute.

I may fit right into the cougar scene at The Shade, after all.

Freedom and Narrow Escapes

Oh, the cool things you can do to set yourself free:

1) Set your email account(s) to filter emails from specific people so they are deleted before you ever see them.  This way, you won't even have the temptation to read, ponder, savor, or worse, respond to anything that may find its way to you.  Because nothing will find its way to you.

2) Install a nice little IP Blocker on your site, so someone can't see YOU, either.

3) Stop acting like your blog is a tailgate kegger at Beaver Stadium, come-one, come-all.  Be selective who gets in the door, and make sure your bouncer is a big, mean guy with tattoos on his face, a Taser in his pocket, and don't ask if he might possibly be strapped.

In a way, you can make it as if that person never existed. 

And trust me, after the hateful and paranoid and pompous things he wrote to me and about me in that last, bitter email exchange, I wished he never did exist, at least in my life.  There's no Dr. Seuss "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened," gakky finger-down-the-throat thing to be gotten from this.  This was a disaster of epic proportions and I am lucky, thankful, fall-on-the-floor-and-kiss-the-ground thankful, that in this case, that I didn't get what I wanted.

Shit, what if this dude had said, "I will leave my wife for you?"  Christ alfuckingmighty, then I would have been stuck with a mean, hyper-verbal asshole with a hairtrigger temper and paranoid tendencies (in retrospect, those characteristics were always there, but I was in luuuuuuuuve, and even when I saw them -- he once made me cry with an email and that was when things were GOOD --  I brushed them off).  Someone who can be so abusive with the written word is probably no picnic to live with.  Shoo! Shoo! Begone back to your wife, little man!

(Wipes back of hand across brow)  That was a close one, people.

Not only that, I'll bet he couldn't even name the first lead singer of AC/DC, or the drummer from Led Zeppelin, or how many yards are in a down, or who was the winningest coach in college football, or who is nicknamed "The Great One," or "The Next One," or any of the silly things that I like.  I can just see me holding up a common household tool and saying in my Miss Nancy voice, "And this is called a screwdriver."

It was doomed from the start.  People would have seen us walking down the street together and I know they would have been thinking, "Boy, he must be rich."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you close a door.

(bowing left, bowing right)

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Yaggh!

So this is what "real" agency work feels like.  We've been insanely busy here, people here until 9 or 10 o'clock every night for the last few weeks.  I've been coming in on weekends, as have several other people.

And now, I will be traveling for the next eight business days.  LA next week, then I get home at 8:00 on Friday night, in time to wash my gutchies and pack it all up again and head off to Chicago and Portland the following Monday.  I have to admit, I threw a wee little Principessa-client hissy when I saw that on my Portland flights I was assigned the "E" seat both ways.  I called my sales rep and absolutely begged, please no "E" seat.  He actually did handstands and cartwheels to get me a window seat.

My LA rep has me waitlisted for a courtesy upgrade to Business Class, which is suh-weet.  I love Business Class.  Nice blankets, not those flammable 2 x 2 scraps of polyester, and big pillows.  Champagne as soon as you sit down and warm nuts.  I always miss the warm chocolate chip cookies and milk at the end of the flight, though, because at that point I'm reclined and zonked.  Dammit.  I've even seen a celebrity or two (well, Evan Lysacek was a celebrity to me, even before he was on "Dancing With the Stars."  Then again, I'm a figure-skating geek.)

I have to admit, having flown BC to LA for the last few years, I'm quite spoiled.  I don't mind coach for the short trips, but Judy has ruined me for these coast-to-coast trips.

Another sad, the Beach House in Hermosa is sold out, Snooki-wahh!  I have to stay in Manhattan Beach, which I like just fine, at the Shade.  I've heard the bar there is cougar central, so it will be amusing at least to watch all the botoxed LA ladies hitting on the volleyball and surfer dudes.  Their faces may be taut, but nothing can hide the desperation in their eyes.

Who's Been Invited to This Cocktail Party?

When I started this blog (as The Bigger Boat) back in 2006, I opened it with a post called "Welcome to my Tiki Lounge," in which I laid out the "rules" here.  For the most part, everything's been okay, and I no longer moderate comments. Some shit went down recently that made me feel that it was safer to pull everything off the public blogs (there was also a blog called Jane's Comic Book World which was an experiment in venting and brokeheart ranting) and just post a picture of my dead cat on the homepages of both.  I've imported all of the posts from both blogs here, which took freakin' hours to do, so anyone who wants to know what happened, well, it's all here.

I know a guy who, when he is sober, and even when he's fairly drunk, is a really great guy. I like him a great deal, in fact. He's a talented musician, and super-funny. I'm even friends with him on the Faceblech (though I've deactivated my account for the time being, huge waste of time). But a bartender friend of mine described him thusly:  "Oh, so-and-so, he's just one beer away from being an asshole."  And I learned to watch his eyes carefully when we were having a few beers, because I could see the moment when the asshole would emerge, and knew that was when it was time for me to go.  Thing is, this happened in bars, not in my living room, so I knew that if the drunk asshole showed up, I couldn't make him leave. So I did the leaving instead.  That was fine.

But, this is my cocktail party, and I find that ultimately I do better with a limited invitee list.  Some people have been gently escorted to the door with the instruction that maybe they should go home and sleep it off.

So who's left?

A very, very carefully-edited selection of folks.  I've broken bread or lifted a glass or two with everyone who's been invited, except a handful (literally, I can count you on one hand).  One is even an old, old, old friend who started out as an email flame way back in 1997 (god, that was a long time ago), who never knew I had a blog in the first place. I got a really lovely offline note from him today after I sent my invitation to him. I hope he comes around and reads me.  I don't know if he ever knew how much I love writing.

Some of my friends here, I haven't met in person, some of you I may meet soon, some of you I may meet someday, and a couple I may never meet at all, but you were introduced as "a friend of ours," so don't do a Donnie Brasco on me, 'mkay?  You maybe understood something basic about me, my point of view, or my situation, and you got it enough to offer funny, thoughtful comments. You maybe didn't agree with my point of view on things, but you were always civil.  I appreciate civility.

Maybe I overlooked a few people?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

Today is Pi Approximation Day!

NERD ALERT!

Today is Pi Approximation Day, so named because, well, who cares why?  It's all in the link.

I guess it's exciting to mathemeticians and people who live in their mothers' basements and people who perhaps, have never had sex in their lives except maybe with that Lara Croft lookalike avatar in their Second Life life.

So to all you guys with crusty tube socks on your bedside tables, I say, "Happy Pi Approximation Day!"

Welcome to The Bigger Boat II -- Witness Protection

I will start blogging again, I promise.  I don't know when.

Updated at 7:45pm:  I have just spent a long time going through the posts from Comic Book World and posting them here, basically merging the two blogs.  Damn, that's time consuming. And sometimes I cross-posted and accidentally posted both.

But I gotta tell you, reading those CBW posts, and reflecting on the email I got from That Asshole (aka Deadtome) yesterday, I honestly think he was reading a different blog than the one I was writing.  People, did I write anything even remotely threatening to him in those posts?  They're all here.  He sent me this bullshit email yesterday intimating that I threatened to physically harm him, with all my talk of claws and stilettos and gangsters and guns.

Tell me honestly, did I do that?  Did I write anything actually threatening?  No, seriously, you can be honest with me.

Okay, in that last post on TBB, I did offer to give him the ass-kicking of his life. I'll admit that.

I do believe, ladies and gentlemen, that a guilty conscience reduced the man to a quivering mass of paranoia.

Updated at 8:17pm: And speaking of assholes I've encountered on the internet, I just checked, and despite my polite request, that idiot still has my picture on his blog.  He's one of those internet trolly-types who seems to think because he can hide behind a proxy server the hateful, racist things he says are super-clever and funny.  Yeah, he's just hilarious. Not that it really matters, since he's linking to a dead blog, but still, if someone asks you, politely, to do something as simple as unlink, shouldn't you just do it?  I've halfassedly followed this noxious idiot's antics on the web for the last four years, mainly through being disgusted by his comments on someone else's blog, but every now and then I would go over to his blog, kinda with my hands in my pockets, whistling into the air, "Poo-tee-wheet, I wonder what the Klan is doing tonight over here in this field? Why, look! Is that a burning cross!  It is! Better beatfeet it outta here before he sees my not-white ass!"  What the hell is wrong with people? Human beings respect others' polite requests, Internet bullies just hide behind proxy servers.  Plus, he's using my photo without permission.  Dick.

I Wish Someone Could Explain This To Me

Can someone please explain why is it that I have had a lovely, placid affair with the same guy since 2006, with no bullshit, no craziness, not a hint of unrest or silliness, and then some other guy comes along and fucks me up so bad?

I mean, seriously, folks, in all of my life, I have never felt so bad about myself after something went bad, the way I felt after this one.  Even after the ones that nearly ended in marriage, I didn't feel this bad about myself. No one has ever made me behave this way, EVER.  I dunno.

I am going to be examining this one from a million angles for a long time.

Reading Assignment

"Against Love"
Laura Kipnis
2003, Pantheon Books

I was, and am, highly amused by this book, but that could be because I'm in the "adultery is good for marriage" camp on the grounds that a well-fucked husband makes for a happy home. (Um, guys, a quarterly resigned sigh of "well, go ahead, hop on," does not constitute being well-fucked, no matter what your wife says. She knows this, and no matter what you may tell yourself, you know it, too.)

It's snappy and hilarious, and very, very smart.

So, buy it, borrow it, read it, and we'll reconvene here in a few weeks to discuss.

Gentlemen, if your wife controls the household finances and makes you account for every dime you spend, ask for an advance on your allowance and say you really, really need that Luke Skywalker battery-powered lightsaber with sound effects. I'll phony up a receipt for you, you big pussy.

Hindsight

In hindsight, I maybe should have gone back and re-read this book BEFORE I stepped into the abyss screaming, "Matteau! Matteau! Matteau!" (That was the moment folks, do you believe it? Watching a hockey game on April 23rd and emailing with someone who thinks sports are the dumbest things ever -- he's wrong about that, by the way -- and I make a naughty comment having to do with Stephane Matteau. Yes, I can even make hockey dirty. I have a talent, what can I say?) Unfortunately, as I've written before, my ass lost its glasses somewhere.

"So are you the type who hadn't realized how unhappy you'd been until you found yourself in the midst of a serious life-shattering affair, diving headlong into this new person's arms to escape the rising tide of emotional deadness at home and in some ridiculously short space of time risking things you never thought you'd risk, without a clue how you've gotten yourself into this whole thing or what disaster might be waiting around the next corner? If not, please use your imagination: imagine that every moronic love song is drilling a pathway directly to your deepest self, imagine being hurtled up and down the entire gamut of emotions from one hour to the next, consuming Tums like Raisinets, but what if it's a million times more compelling than anything else in your life? Even if home life wasn't *totally* terrible, even if there were (and are) good times plus all the comforts of familiarity and history and even affection -- when not squeezed out by an
accretion of disappointments and injuries or that low-hanging cloud of overfamiliarity which means knowing in advance the shape of every argument before it even happens, and everything you once liked best about yourself getting buried under the avalanche of routine. Let's say there's even sex -- reliably satisfying, gets-the-job-done sex (and what's wrong with that?) -- but how can that compare to the feeling of being *reinvented*? Of being *desired*? Of feeling *fascinating*?

"Or maybe you're the type who dived headlong into this love affair as a rickety lifeboat from an entirely familiar unhappiness that you can't bring yourself to do anything about, and whose bittersweet romance with your own melancholia or extended penance for imagined sins will be your new lover's real competition, not that mate waiting at home. But even having made your bed you'd still prefer a little company in it now and then, plus the occasional rush of possibility all the while knowing that eventually the sackcloth will come out and there you'll be, as penitent as the day is long, slinking back to the familiar emotional deep freeze that you can't (or won't) forsake.

"Or maybe you weren't unhappy at all, and things were just fine at home, and you were just unlucky enough to fall in love."

Laura Kipnis
2003

The Comfort of Strangers

Sitting here on a Saturday night, just being all sweaty and reading a book and listening to music.

I don't really mind being sweaty that much -- as long as I have lots of frozen half-bottles of water to top off and fans pointed at me, I'm okay. Lots of cool showers, too. I only turn on the air conditioner to sleep, and even then I run it at 78 degrees a couple of hours before bed, then turn it off and sleep with the fan blowing on me. Okay, I do turn it on for rumpusing, and even then things still get sweaty. They're supposed to be sweaty, for the love of god. Sweaty is good. Sweaty is sexy. Sweaty is hot. If you're rumpusing and there isn't any sweaty you're doing it all wrong. Or maybe you're a shitty lay.

Oh, sorry. Where was I? Oh, yes. Sitting here being quiet and blamelessly reading Laura Kipnis and listening to Julia Fordham, when my Kberry makes its text message "kadunk" sound. At this hour I figure it's probably the Scot in yet another drunken, fruitless attempt to get me to travel into Manhattan (for some reason he hasn't yet grasped that if he wants me, he will have to come to me. Tough noogies, dude, as the 8-ball says, try again later!)

I check it and it's not the Scot, but a number I don't recognize. Weird. Then I read the message. Lo and behold, it's the redheaded pressman. He sees that there's a job on the schedule for my company on Monday and wants to know if I'm coming out to LA. (Alas, it's not my job, but one of my coworker's.)

Thing to know about the RHP, he and I always kind of sniffed around each other when he was with Company A, but never did anything about it. Then he went over to Company B, which was also one of our vendors, and we started messing around whenever I was in LA. Then Company B transferred him to Baltimore, which was great for him, since his kid got called up to the Show. We lost touch.

I heard a while back that Company B closed their plant in Baltimore, and that the RHP was back in LA with Company A. But I'm pretty surprised -- he only ever had my number on his Company B-issued phone, so I'm pretty psyched he kept my number now that he's back at Company A. I just figured we'd see each other when we saw each other, no big.

We'll see each other when I'm out there week after next, then in August, and probably in October, too. Beach House rumpusing on those acres of bed with my little surfer-dude Viking is always loads of good fun.

I'd better get current on my baseball, though, so we can have at least one conversation.

Share Your Bananas, Don't Be An Asshole

I am working on another post, but in the meantime, I'm at the office doing some work I neglected yesterday afternoon.  I opted to pull a Don Draper at lunch with a vendor, well, I guess he's a friend, too, and I figured it was probably better not to return to the office than to show up completely wrecked on a slow Friday afternoon. Perhaps I should have eaten the whole lobster roll instead of just picking out the lobster and only eating that.  The bread might have been a good idea, I suppose. Okay, maybe the fourth glass of wine was a questionable decision, too.

So then I inflicted my late, babbling, drunken self on my friend Emily, who plugged my piehole with fried bar food before toting me off to Governor's Island to see some concert or other.

My feet hurt from stomping around in espadrilles all day yesterday.

And right now I'm too brainfried to gather my thoughts into writing a simple production schedule, much less a blog post.

I did manage to pick up my suitcase from Harry over at Lexington Luggage, where they did an absolutely miraculous job repairing the zipper on my Samsonite.  Those fuckers at the TSA did a number on it, and the last time I used it I had to hold my breath in JFK, as I was certain I would see my wheelie come down the conveyor in a bin, with my underpants and a dozen hotel-sized bottles of Aveda shampoo and conditioner scattered around it.

*****

And for the record, something on PostSecret TOTALLY made me cry this week.

UPDATE:  Oh, fuck it. After an afternoon nap that involved totally weird crap like my sister getting married in a church with Dad there in attendance (her husband died in a motorcycle accident in 2006, Dad in 2007), and me in trying to find the right dress to wear and putting things on and tearing things off in a frenzy, and waking up in a sweat wondering why Dad has showed up in two dreams in the last month after having kept silent for the last nearly two years, then immediately thinking of that damned PostSecret card, I'll just put the fucking thing up. (I can't figure out what the 1970's-era T-top white Corvette meant, either, other than that one of my brothers used to have one.)

Here's what I found on PostSecret.  So it's a fantasy. Who cares? It meant something to me:

Friday

Ahhh, there's nothing like waking up at 5:00 in the morning and reading on a friend's blog something that makes you vibrate like a big brass gong.  Really gets the blood flowing, I have to say.  So, thanks, T-Babe!

Anyhow, Tsaphanbabe wrote a really heartfelt post on a subject that is near and dear to my heart.  I commented briefly, with a promise to come back and elaborate, and realized as I was pounding away on my Kberry on the subway this morning that a mere comment is insufficient for me.  Narcissist that I am.  I think it merits its own post, given that I myself have recently emerged from some sort of dark forest of suffering and delusion myself.

Total aside:  while I was thrashing about like a trapped animal in a pen for all those weeks, I remember thinking Mambo was ready to die, and when I had first called the vet to inquire about euthanizing him, he seemed to reach deep into his peanut-sized brain and find his ninth life. I joked about him doing his Monty Python routine, "I'm not dead yet!" and then sternly told him, "Well, if you're not going to die now, at least have the good manners to stick with me until I am through with all of this shit."  Interestingly enough, as I walked out of the woods and back into the sunshine and sanity, it felt like he listened to me, and within 24 hours he was dead. 

So, thanks, Mambo.  You done good, old man.

And while I am working on my own post about letting go, here. Have a look at my shoes.  Try to ignore the broken table in the background, which gave up the ghost when I was rearranging my bedroom last week. Have to drill out the pegs on that piece and replace them.  Oh, and that snowy shit all over this pic? DUST on my full-length mirror.  So now you know, my housekeeping skills are a little sketchy these days.

Fuck You, You Fucking Whiny Christians!

And hooray for Amanda Marcotte. Every day, hooray for Amanda Marcotte.  If I have to listen to white people and Christians complain about being "oppressed" once more I'm gonna start shooting.

Oh, and on an even happier note, there are only 84 days until the NHL regular season and the Pittsburgh Penguins home opener on October 7th!

Pittsburgh Penguins Fun Fact:  Mario Lemieux is 366 days younger than your Aileen.  He also earns about 366 times what I do, probably every day, just for being Mario Lemieux.

Tall Men With Useful Skills

I just finished reading Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into The Value Of Work.


Without getting all Pirsig about it, it's a treatise on the value of the manual trades.


Finally, someone is able to explain, in plain and simple language,why I like "tall men with useful skills."  (It's right there in my profile, folks.) I always had a hard time explaining to my smarty-pants friends just what made carpenters, electricians, mechanics, redheaded pressmen, attractive to me. (Besides the oh-so-sexy plumber's butt, natch).    Maybe I like them because I come from them (my brothers are auto mechanics), and it may explain why I get a little prickly when asked about my family, and people tend to fall silent or get that "oh, that's nice," false smile when I tell them my background.


Let's put it this way, when you're driving down the highway, and your car breaks down, who are you going to call?  Your friend the college professor?  Your toilet breaks, that person you spend hours nattering away about the meaning of life with probably isn't able to stop the backflow of shit into your bathroom.  If you need bookshelves, waving your credentials at the empty space in the corner of your living room isn't going to get them built.


Okay, so I tend to be a little bit of a reverse snob about these things when it comes to men, sorry.  If I like a guy and his first response to something breaking is "Let me see who I can call," rather than, "Let me see what I can do," I maybe like him just a teeny, tiny, little bit less.  I look at a guy's hands to see if there's any imprint of some skill on them, maybe a scar or two, some calluses, or a broken or deformed nail from some mishap with a tool.  Plump, soft, pink hands that look like they've never done anything more than turn the pages of a book or dial a phone, well, they won't get much past first base with me. If you think I'm shallow, well, too bad for you.


For me, it's not about what a guy can earn. It's about what a guy can do.


Matthew B. Crawford pretty much nails it in one here.  He's the complete package:  Philosopher (not the crude uneducated kind that overfed, overeducated intellectuals claim to esteem, but has a Ph.D. in philosophy) and motorcycle mechanic, with his own repair shop in Virginia.


Oh, and he's really, really hot.

Mambo, 1991-2010

It's like he knew I needed him to stay, just exactly this long.

Bye, old friend.

Randomalia -- 7/12/10

Chicago again. 6am flight, LGA an absolute ratfuck at 5.  It's not usually like that, so I don't know where all these people were going.  I scored an exit row seat, but unfortunately it was the dreaded "E" seat.  Oh, well.  Sometime next week it's LA, then back to Chicago, then Portland, then LA again, and back to Lyndhurst, NJ.  Man, Jersey lands like a thunk at the end of that, doesn't  it?


Okay, just some random thoughts for a Monday morning:

1) Why kitten heels? It's not a stiletto, but we will ask you to balance on the bottom inch of a stiletto! Was there ever a stupider fashion invention? Just spring for the high heels already. I finally threw out the one pair of kitten heels I ever bought because I twisted my ankle every time I wore them.

2) Where did all these fat 25-year olds come from, and what will they look like when they're 35? I'll bet their boyfriends are thinking the same thing, too, which goes a long way toward explaining the cougar trend.

3) Fashion Trend My Mother Would Frown At: Shorts with heels as work attire. I stood back and watched this one with skepticism, because I always thought this look was hookerish. Then realized I do it all the time on weekends with my cutoffs and platform wedgies. And the women at work, I had to admit, were pulling it off. The key is proportions, ladies, which means NO SHORT SHORTS with high heels. THAT looks like you're selling it. But a clean-lined, flat-front short with at least a 4" inseam and a nice pair of stacked-heel sandals looks quite cute, summery, and right on the money for this fashion moment.

4) Do guys who walk funny know they walk funny? Or do they think they look just fine?

5) What happened to good posture? Whenever I see someone with terrible posture, it makes me jerk my shoulders backward as if my mother is standing behind me, poking me with her finger and saying, "Stand up straight, Ai!" Plus, bad posture makes every outfit look bad.

6) Just what does Miss Madison Kitty get up to when I'm not around? Every night I come home and the blanket which I left neatly folded at the foot of the bed is wadded up into a ball or on the floor, and I find cat toys in strange places (fur mouse in the litterbox). Sometimes the furniture has been rearranged. I suspect she may be entertainin' gentlemen callers while I'm out. She does have questionable morals, we know, since she had her kittens when she was less than a year old.

7) What is up with people who travel with their own, full-sized pillows, with flowery pillowcases and all? What are you, eight years old and going to a slumber party? Do you have a copy of "Twilight" in your carry-on, Justin Bieber on your iPod, and a Bonne Bell Lipsmacker in your purse?

8) Some of you may know that I've been htting the Allman Brothers pipe pretty hard lately. I listened to "Whipping Post" four times before I left the house this morning at 4:30. This song is such ridiculous brilliance that I don't know how to explain it. Okay, I'll try: a blues-rock song written in alternating 11/8 and 12/8 time signatures. One doesn't dance to such a thing (well, one really can't, can one?), one merely wails along with Greg Allman as he tears it UP. (Does anyone remember Bo Bice? His cover of "WP" was one of the few truly memorable moments on American Idol. Most of America was befuddled. He shoulda won, not that prom queen Carrie Underwood.)

9) And let's talk some more about the Allmans. Poor dead Duane, to be specific. Or rather, the only song that poor dead Duane wrote all by hisself: "Little Martha." America, let me put it this way: If a handsome stranger I'd never met came into my apartment, sat down with my guitar, and played "Little Martha" for me, I would cleave to his side forever, only asking him to play "Little Martha" for me each night. We would rob banks by day and he would play "Little Martha" for me in cheap motels by night.

10) Then again, if kd lang showed up and said, "I will sing you to sleep every night," I would learn to love eating pussy so fast it would make your head spin.

Sunday Toss-Offs

A few things I've learned in life:

1)  Make sure you aren't allergic to anything in your cake.

2)  It's a pretty good idea to make sure the mattress isn't lumpy before you make your bed.

3)  The grass is just as dry and brown over there.

What Did We See In Each Other Anyway?

I mean, I'm not exactly the deepest thinker in the world, and he was all, "oooh look I'm so smahhhrt," and I'm all, "here's why hockey is the greatest sport EVER," and he's all, "oooh, sports are dumb and so are the people who like them," and I'm all, "That is the greatest hamburger I ever ate in my LIFE," and he's all, "I grilled swordfish steaks over mesquite with a side of broccoli rabe and drank a slightly oaky chardonnay," and I'm all, "I'm wearing Payless shoes," and he's all, "look at my fancy French cuffs," and I'm all, "Look at that hot Camaro!" and he's all, "My Volvo has 200,000 miles on it," and I'm all, "Did you read Vanity Fair this month?" and he's all, "I'm going to read À la recherche du temps perdu on my summer vacation," and I'm all, "I went to Coney Island," and he's all, "I winter in Gstaad," and I'm all, "so are we gonna fuck or what?" and he's all, "no, dear, and anyway, we call it making luuuuurve."

Truth? I know exactly what he saw in me.

I'm an easy lay.

The perspicacious reader will notice that I've deleted the posts in Jane's Comic Book World.

I have my reasons. And my beast. And my stiletto. And my magic bracelets and invisible car.

There was a mini-meme happening a while back on other blogs with women sharing their rape or near-rape stories.  JCBW was my rape story, but I don't need to tell it any more.

A very limited selection of posts from over there will be sailing on over here.

So There I Was...

All week at work, chugging along like The Little Engine That Could, and at a certain point of super-busyness, I stopped, took a breath, and examined my psyche from head to toe.

I was happy.

Not giddy, over-the-moon, "somebody loves me!" silly, but quite peaceful, and happy.

It was a warm and familiar feeling, knowing that I was once again up to my own life.

Oh, yes, I said to myself. There you are. You got a little lost, didn't you? Well, come on. You're safe now. (I resolve to only speak kindly to myself from here on in)

Realizing that I spent most of April and May in a state that could easily be mistaken for happiness, but was in fact much closer to how a little kid whose babysitter gave her candy after dinner spins and spins and spins and gets more and more wired and is bouncing off of walls and is *this close* to melting down. Wired to the tits, my friend, the whole time. I wonder if that's how cokeheads feel (I've only tried it once, didn't like it, move along, nothing to see here.)

It feels good to get my feet back under me.

And I'll be damned if I let someone do another sweeping leg kick on me ever again.

Then Again...

He could be one of those crafty emailing Lothario types who's all over the intertubes giving dozens of women the old razzle-dazzle. (If so, they all must have been sitting around from April 23rd through the 26th, staring at their empty inboxes and thinking, "where the hell is he?")

Who knows?

And, oh my, the next thought that just occured to me --

Who cares? I was sitting this morning and out of curiosity I opened myself up to the "bad" feeling to see what would happen. And I realized that...it was just a feeling, and like all feelings, it arose...and then it passed. I didn't need to do anything about it, because I knew it would pass.

Enlightenment moment! Been a while since I had one of those.

So sitting in meditation for hours on end DOES work.

Gassho, Cheri Huber!

Coming up in future posts: How we choose our beliefs over our experience, why believing in human hardwiring is delusion, and if self-improvement worked, wouldn't it have already? (More ideas from my favorite zen teacher that I have been exploring lately)

Zucchini Humor

I want to open a store that sells nothing but sex toys, and call it FAO Schvants.

It's been a hard week, folks, and maybe I'm a little punchy.

What Woman Doesn't Love A Gigantic Zucchini?

I'm just sayin'.

Spotted

I was coming home tonight, and hopped into the Bedford Avenue station. Just missed a train going in my direction. On the subway platform, as usual, were buskers. (Don't you love that word? It has such a medieval sound to it. Buskers. Busss-kerrrrs.)

One guy with a baritone sax, another guy tuning his guitar. The guitar guy glanced up at me -- and it was a guy I dated back in 2002, right after I first came back to New York from Colorado.

I dumped him rather unceremoniously as he started to live up to his last name, which is the word to describe what Saran Wrap does to a glass bowl.

I was working at the internet company and met a friend for lunch on Lispenard Street, at one of those old man bar, burger and beer places. He brought along his friend Aaron.

Aaron was a Texan by birth, and a musician as well. Son of a Lutheran Minister. Sweet and soft-spoken, two things that have never been particularly magnetic for me.

Well, somehow, lunch was over, Will had to leave, and three hours later Aaron and I were still yakking away in that bar. I got yelled at when I returned to the office. Didn't care.

We were inseparable for a couple of months, then I started to feel all, oh I don't know, all elbowey. It was a little too much togetherness. You know what I mean -- when you're completely into someone, there's no such thing as too much, right? But when one person is much more into it, the other person starts to feel a little suffocated.

True story of one of the nails in his coffin:

I don't remember if we were at my place or his. We were in bed, and I had just given him a very nice blow job, and we were just hanging out, talking. Easy-like. Then he decided to break out the confession.

"That's only the 2nd time that's ever happened."

Couldn't hide my surprise. Guy was 35, after all. And he was a musician who had only gotten two blow jobs IN HIS LIFE? One of them just a minute ago?

"Really? How come?"

"Well, where I come from, I didn't really know those kinds of girls."

Enter the Avenging Angel.

"THOSE kinds of GIRLS?"

Was this guy fucking kidding me? I was "those kinds of GIRLS?".Stupid motherfucker.

Cold and black-eyed now.

"And I suppose I'm one of those kinds of girls?"

"Well no...I didn't mean YOU...it's just..."

Let's just say, folks, there wasn't much time left in Dorothy's hourglass after that. I led him a merry chase, shit all over him, then dumped his pathetic Texas ass cold a couple of weeks later.

When we saw each other tonight, I saw him start to recognize me.

I turned my head and kept walking.

Six Weeks

So, yeah, the denouement was ugly, and there was vomiting and crying and lots and lots of rage, which is now more of a "boy, am I ever still kinda really a little pissed at That Guy," alternating with, "Gaaaaahhhh, I wish I could talk to him again, shit we had such a great email rapport, and I wish we could do the fun emails without all the romantic bullshit, fuuuuck he said he wanted to be friends, but maybe because it was email it was really one of those throw-me-a-bone bullshit things," and oh, yeah, throw in a beastly-roaring I WILL DESTROY HIS LIFE revenge fantasy in which I totally Hulk out, and which still nudges me with its nose now and then before I come to my senses (alas, it's just not my style, hon, not my style. I figure people do a pretty good job of punishing themselves, and they do a fine and admirable job of fucking up their own lives. They most certainly don't need any help from me.).

But then (little sigh), I fell into some emails last night, and remembered with a big smile on my face (I know, no crying, how weird is that?) --

"Oh, yeah, it was pretty fucking fun for awhile. It wasn't all suck and looking thoughtfully at the number 6 as it pulled into Union Square thinking I wonder if that would hurt and wanting to die."  Oh shush, I'm being melodramatic for effect. Do you really think I'm the kind of person who kills herself over some guy?

I originally had written this post with excerpts from some of the emails I received from MWBMH(tm) in one 4-day sprint where things went from friendly and mildly flirtatious to stepping bodaciously over a line that neither of us should have crossed (ah, hindsight).

But on reflection (god love the draft function), I've decided, no.  Those are mine.  And, well, his. For a short, really sweet time, ours.

So, on reflection, on reading the emails from that weekend at the end of April, I know I'm not crazy.  There was some good shit happening.  And this was a guy who was really, really into me.  And tell me, what kind of girl doesn't respond to that?

Especially a crusty, dried up half-dead petunia like me -- when someone throws some sunshine and water at me, I fucking bloom.

I just mean that maybe I'm not a perennial. Some flowers only bloom once a century.

Why not me?

Voice Mail From Anonymous Caller

Here's what I have to say about technology: 

Just 'cause you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD.  Left a voice mail a little while ago for a vendor, and she sent me this:

From: Shawna
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2010 4:49 PM
To: Aileen (US)
Subject: Voice Mail from Anonymous Caller (49 seconds)

Aileen,

We are in the midst of having a new voice mail system installed, so our vm has been sketchy at best. But I just rec’d this nifty mystery e-mail which ‘apparently’ turns talk to text!

See how it interpreted your v-mail below (hee hee).

On a serious note – we are working on getting a new die line showing the trim from the head & foot for you. We’ll get it over asap.

Shawna

From: Microsoft Outlook On Behalf Of Anonymous Caller
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2010 1:19 PM
To: Shawna
Subject: Voice Mail from Anonymous Caller (49 seconds)

Voice Mail Preview:

Hi easier I'm leaving Shawna if you give me a call I just wanna make sure you got my emails earlier about to die line I think I understand we Shawna Air little nervous and we found the you know five discrepancy in even though you guys told me that it was correct I would need to see something that shows.

Be correct trend because the way the dialing currently look it makes it looks like the train is -- is been 9 inches and so I just need to see something that shows the actual final tram on that timeline so cause so once a moving ahead with it and we're running out of time on this so give me a call -- .

And let's chat thanks bye.

On the one hand, it took me almost a minute to leave this brief message, so I know I was speaking slowly and clearly.  On the other hand, this "translation" did exactly what it needed to do, which was to make me laugh so uproariously that my office mate asked, "Are you looking at that cake website again?" and it sure did oxygenate things in my whole body and blow away some of the blues.

Plus I found a $120,000 error on a vendor estimate, which is always a happy moment for me.

Cheers Ya Right Up

Have a case of the soul-deep blues as I do today?  (tell ya 'bout it later)

Look at these guys:

GOD they're hot. That's Nacho in the middle.

Nadir

If we must cheat ourselves with any dream,
Then let it be a dream of nobleness:
Since it is necessary to express
Gall from black grapes--to sew an endless seam
With a rusty needle--chase a spurious gleam
Narrowing to the nothing through the less--
Since life's no better than a bitter guess,
And love's a stranger--let us change the theme.

Let us at least pretend--it may be true--
That we can close our lips on poisonous
Dark wine diluted by the Stygean wave;
And let me dream sublimity in you,
And courage, liberal for the two of us:
Let us at least pretend we can be brave.


Elinor Wylie


I don't know why I'm digging out the poetry. Just feelin' it, I guess, and that almost never happens, so I figured I'd better go with it while the feeling's there. Poetic bitterness is just so much tastier than my own right now.

You have to understand that my heart is still saaaad.

I tripped, and fell into some emails. Yes, I still have some of them.  There was that one weekend, early on, while I was still being all together'n'shit and being kind of cautious, and that one weekend, well, I asked him if he was "wooing me" and he admitted he was doing it. And after that, well, I just sort of let myself go with it, and I let him do it to me. He was very, very skilled at it, too.  And looking back on it, well, all I can say is, "How cruel. And oh, how very, very stupid I am."

My dad never prepared me for shit like this, and goddamn if it doesn't catch me off guard every fucking time.

Assholes I can deal with, but something like this, man, it's mean, and it hurts my heart.

I hope no one ever does this to his daughter. Or yours, for that matter.

You think I exaggerate? Come on over to my house some time. I'll let you read every page.

It's Too Hot And I'm Feeling Lazy, So Will You Write My okCupid Profile?

My profile at okCupid seems to attract men of a certain age, generally in the 25-31 age range. What's up with these kids? I mean, actually, I know what's up with them. I ride the subway with their female contemporaries, so if I were them, I'd want to date me, too.  Most of these young women, frankly, look like shit.

This does not mean I want to go out with guys who were in diapers when I was dressing for the prom.

So, clearly, my profile needs a re-write.  I showed it to my office mate, and it was all TRUE, the classic-rock-and-Motown-loving thing, the book-reading thing, the loving-hockey thing, the I-play-guitar-badly-but-with-enthusiasm thing, and her response was (in a kind of unflattering way), "Wow, Aileen, you sound like the perfect woman."  Well, thanks.  I think.

So I took everything down a few weeks ago, except for some snark about wanting to meet a hot Brazilian who could teach me to samba.  I DO want that, but I think I should probably have something else up besides that single sentence. Kind of limits the audience, know what I mean?

So here are the fields that need to be filled in on my profile, and I'm asking my tiny little audience of readers to contribute what they know about me.  You can do it in the comments.  I'm also taking this show on the road with the people who know me in person.  I'm going to interview them about me. Like an obituary writer.

Have fun. You don't even have to be nice.

1)  My Self-Summary -- this is the place where I'm supposed to say things like, "I'm as comfortable in jeans as at a black-tie affair. I love going out on the town AND staying home renting a movie. I want to take advantage of everything New York has to offer." You see that a lot in the shitty, boring profiles. I want to tap-dance like Liza Minelli on speed in this paragraph, people.  Wire me up like her mama Judy.

2)  I'm Really Good At -- it might be a little too much information to include my world-class fellatio skills here.  As every writing teacher will tell you, write what you KNOW, people.

3)  The First Things People Notice About Me -- There has to be something that you noticed that made you take a second look and that keeps you coming back. Even if it's only to stare at the wreckage and wonder, "How did she get through every day alive?"

4)  My Favorite Books, Movie, Food -- I can fill this one out myself, but the perspicacious reader might have some ideas. Paula even quizzed me about my favorite writers a few years back.

5)  The Six Things I Could Never Do Without -- ditto #4.  Though I have some ideas. Garlic is high on the list. Keeps away the vampires.

6)  I Spend A Lot of Time Thinking About -- Come ON, this one's easy.  Just don't be trite.

7)  On a Typical Friday Night I Am -- not having as much wild fun as I used to, clearly. I think I should probably do this one myself. But if anyone has any ideas of what I should be doing on a typical Friday, as long as it doesn't involve playing World of Warcraft or furry games (I will consider the Princess Leia steel bikini for the right person), please provide your ideas. One of your ideas might be my next first date.

8) The Most Private Thing I Am Willing to Admit -- um, you guys DO know what color underwear I have on today, right? Oh, all right. I ate asparagus for lunch, but if you were in the next stall, you knew that.

9)  I'm Looking For -- ooh, now this one is challenging.  Is there any way to tell from all of my skull-cracking, dude-bashing, frankly contemptuous stance what it is I'm looking for? World peace? A two-state solution in the Middle East?  No nukes? Equal pay for equal work?

10) You Should Message Me If -- what are the traits of the guy who isn't going to get a smackdown? Who will meet my challenging stare and I-see-your-bullshit gaze head-on?

Go on, will someone write my profile, PLEASE?

I don't have the energy anymore.

There's Something Seriously Wrong With This

When John Fucking Steinbeck's personal effects and papers go up for auction and only draw 75 grand.

Then again, I'll bet if you went up to 100 people in Times Square on a Friday night and asked them who John Steinbeck was, they'd say, "Isn't he that guy on The Daily Show?"

I'll tell you what, if I ever DO find The Guy, I'd want him to present me with Steinbeck's manuscripts and letters instead of a giant diamond.

Seriously.

The Steinbeck stuff will be worth more in the divorce.

Quote of the Day: OK Cupid Profile

The first things people usually notice about me:

Most people seem to think I'm funny... but there was one woman who I was fixed up on a blind date with who found me decidedly unfunny and demanded that I live up to the expectations set by the person who fixed us up.
 
It was then I discovered that trying to establish your sense of humor by arguing is.... also not funny.
 

Ok, I liked the fact that this guy was willing to talk about a date that was an utter failure.  This guy is RIDICULOUSLY handsome, but that's offset by the fact that he's only 5'8."  (tell me, why is having a preference for tall men considered shallow?)
 
Also, he's not looking for cougie-love, dammit, otherwise I'd send him a message.

COMMENTS ON BLOGGER

Just FYI -- some people are having an issue with comments not showing up.

Went to report it and found lots of other folks with the same problem:

Sonnet 34

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak
That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace:
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:
The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence's cross.

Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.

W. Shakespeare

Random Crappy Photos From My Kberry

Yum. Do you think the back feet taste even better?

Just in case you were wondering what went into all those hot dogs you fed your kids.  Actually, this looks a little...Bobbitty, doesn't it? (as every man reading this crosses his legs and cups his member protectively)

The MTA, hurting for money. Now branding entire subway trains. This was the uptown #6 I rode this morning. Every ad INSIDE the train was a Target ad. Sad.  Transit note: It's actually illegal to take photos in the subway. Something to do with interfering with subway operations.

"Mommy, stop running around and cleaning and moving furniture. It makes me hot just looking at you."  This cat was practically feral when I got her. Now, as a result of me basically forcing myself on her, "You WILL love me," she's the biggest in-your-face,  pain in the ass cat you will ever meet. (This occasionally works with people, but not all the time)  An insecure cat doesn't show tum like this.

Moving Into The 2nd Half Of 2010, Scraping My Shoes On The Curb, And Leaving A Bunch Of Shit Behind Me

(Or as they say, we now return to our regularly-scheduled programming.)

First half of 2010, well 2nd Quarter at least, was beyond fucked up. You have to give me that, at least. Was Mercury retrograde or something?

So now Independence Day has passed, and I'm going back to being In-dee-pen-dent (just like Rudolph and Hermie).

Already outed myself on this blog and the other one, too. I'll be opening that one up pretty soon, because why have one public pool and one restricted pool? What do I think I am, some kind of country club? Come on in, the more the merrier. Let's get wet together.

Ignore the U-Haul filled with 2000 pounds of fertilizer that's parked at the end of your driveway. Needs other chemicals and a detonator to blow. So it's just landscaping stuff. Harmless.

Gotta buckle back down at work because I have let shit seriously slide, and for a little while and now I know how some of my coworkers feel ALL THE TIME.

Been working on some kind of balance between spending time out in the world with people and spending enough time alone to replenish. I've come to remember that this is imperative for me. Some people have to be out dancing through the crowds all the time, and I like that too, but sometimes I need to just shut DOWN and not talk to a soul for a couple of days. (You may have heard me call this "crawling under the porch.") I won't feel bad for doing this.

Standing back with ironic amusement, waiting with a Wanda Sykes neck swivel and my arms crossed for someone to step up to his own words, while I say, "MMMMM-hm. Yeah, I'll believe THAT when I see it." (Surprise me. I dare you. You might have a little wicked fun for once.)

Time to put away the Pocket Rocket and get back to basics, by which I mean my cracked-open and then glued-back-together watch-out-there-are-still-some-sharp-edges heart, my oh-so-filthy mind, and my own two capable hands.

I'll let you watch. Because I know you like that.

Come on, don't be scared.

Handle me, fondle me, but don't finger me -- unless specifically invited to do so. Oh, and when you're invited, keep your eyes on mine. The entire universe is right -- there. And right there. And yes, oh, there.

You ready? I am. Feel that.

Me love you lonnnng time

Get Nakeder, She Said

Everybody into the pool!

But as the sign says, no urination, defecation, or expectoration.

Bill (Part 2)

I worked for a tiny design studio in Breckenridge, whose offices were in an old wooden house just off Main Street. The graphic designers were on the first floor, and the rest of us were upstairs. My desk was next to the front windows and looked out onto the Ten Mile Range and Peak Nine.

About a week after the attacks, the office intercom blooped at me.

"Aileen? I have a Bill Hannigan* on the phone for you?"

I snatched the phone to my ear.

"Bill? Oh, Bill, you're alive." I put my head down on my desk and started to cry.

"Hey, I'm sorry I didn't call you back sooner, it's been a little crazy here." Understatement of the decade, and so typical of Bill that he would apologize for not returning a phone call in the middle of the biggest disaster any of us had ever seen.

He told me he couldn't stay on the phone too long, that he had gone to his home on Long Island to check on his house and his tenants after spending days and nights at the site, digging, and that he was going back to keep digging.

He had been off-duty that day -- and as the Department issued its recall order (calling all members into active duty who were off-duty that day), he had rushed to the firehouse, grabbed his bunker gear, and they had commandeered an M104 bus on 8th Avenue.

"Everybody off. This bus is now going to the World Trade Center."

He had pretty much been down there ever since.

Who? I asked, and started naming names.

Gone.
Gone.
Gone.

The list was a grim yearbook of my first years in New York City. Strangely, many of the more senior members with whom I had drank coffee in the firehouse kitchen, or who had bought me beers across the street at Michael's, somehow spared.

His best friend Carlo?

Gone.

The whole first day and night, he kept thinking he would see Carlo. Carlo was driving the Chief that day. When you see those red and white Battalion SUV's racing through the streets in front of the firetrucks, those are the Battalion Chiefs, and they are driven by an on-duty firefighter. That first day, as everyone was frantically digging through the rubble, Bill kept seeing the Chief, and assuming that Carlo was somewhere nearby. Sometime close to midnight, they mustered for a roll call at the pit to see who was there, and Bill told me he looked around for Carlo, and that's when he realized he was gone.

All those people you saw on the news with their sad "Missing" posters? They were engaged in magical thinking. They looked at the rubble of these two 102-story buildings that had collapsed in on themselves and concocted fairy tales in which their loved ones were the ones who miraculously survived. They heard the random tale or two of the handful who were found alive at the fringes of the site, or huddled in a stairwell that remained intact in the collapse, the already-burgeoning urban legend of the guy who surfed his way to the bottom, and tried to tell themselves that their loved one would be one of the lucky ones. It became a national delusion as days and weeks went on, that this was a *rescue* operation. I think the ones who were there from the start, they knew there was no one to rescue, only remains and body parts to be put into buckets and body bags and carried off to the ME's makeshift tent.

Remains still turn up around the site or are finally identified by the ME's office. They no longer get headlines, just a paragraph in the gutter of the Daily News on page 8. "More WTC Remains Identified."

Bill had to get off the phone and get back to the city, so he could continue to look for the bodies of his friends.

"Is it okay if I call you again?" He asked, with that endearing diffidence of his.

Of course. Of course.

*Not his real name, but Irish enough and close enough.

Dreams

Just woke up from a nap and I have been having the most crazedy-assed dreams lately.

My DAD was alive in this one (I have never, not once since he died, been visited by him in a dream) and my sister was playing 12-bar blues in E on my guitar, and my younger brother couldn't untangle the 3-rope strap on my guitar, and one of my blogpals was there, visiting me but at the house where I grew up, and he had a voice like the face of El Capitan dropping into the Yosemite Valley. I wonder if he sounds like Sam Elliott in real life. I kept introducing him to my family, even though I had just introduced him a few minutes before. He shook hands politely every time.

Don't even get me started about the "Glee" dream I had the other night, which also took place in that house and also featured my entire family in prominent roles.

Both dreams, it was about the front door of that damned house, getting it opened and then struggling to close it.

Rushing for the dream dictionary...

Trimming the Fat

In the last month or so, I've lost a good amount of weight. I don't know how much, because I don't own a scale. More on that later.

All I know is that the new jeans that I bought in April and called "aspirational" are now all saggy in the ass and I'm wondering with a mixture of irritation and glee if I am going to have to get another pair in a smaller size.

People have asked me how I did it, and my answer is usually simplistic and frustrating to them: I ate less.

Recent studies have come out stating that eating less has more impact on weight loss than exercising. I'm sure next month another new study will come out showing exactly the opposite to be true, but eating less has worked for me so far.

This can be irritating to the "I get up at 5 am and get on the treadmill for an hour" and "I go to the gym religiously after work" crowd, who never seem to lose the poochy spots on their thighs or the basketball they carry in their shirtfronts. So sue me. Through some spin of the genetic roulette wheel, eating less works for me. If I decided to suddenly start working out fanatically, like I did in my 20's, I'd have that scary mountain range of muscles on my back once again and a pair of truly terrifying thighs like I got from doing squats on the Smith machine. I'd be able to do pullups with a 25-pound plate strapped around my waist like I did back then. But that's not me anymore. Maybe later.

Everyone wants to know the "how," but what no one ever asks me is the "why." Why did I start to lose weight?

It started out, frankly, as plain old heartbroken disordered eating. My heart was broken, and I lost my appetite. Simple as that. Some people get a hole in their heart and start assault-eating to try and fill it. Me? I got the hole in my heart and I just let stuff drain out.

But a funny thing happened along the way. I started listening to my body, and eating when it told me to eat, and not eating when it wasn't hungry. I would actually ask myself, "Am I hungry?" "Yeah, a little bit." "Okay." Anne Lamott writes about this much better than I ever will in her essay "Hunger," in "Traveling Mercies."

Doing this "eat when you're hungry, drink when you're thirsty" routine is nothing new to me. I learned it on the bike, when NOT paying attention to such bodily signals can result in the energy crash known as "bonking," which can leave you standing at the bottom of Closter Dock Road shoveling Gu down your gullet and washing it down with undiluted Gatorade just so you have enough juice to get up the hill and back to the GW Bridge, where a subway ride home awaits.

So I re-taught myself to eat when I was hungry and drink when I was thirsty.

I was also aware that in the midst of hating myself for not being pretty enough, smart enough, clever enough, sexy enough, *something* enough for the man I had fallen in love with to love me back -- see, it was all *my* fault, I thought, that I wasn't *enough* enough -- I needed to be very, very gentle and loving to my actual physical self.

So instead of indulging every thwarted child whim of my taste-buds, I was careful to put things into my body that were kind to it. I always ate breakfast anyway, so that wasn't an issue for me. I began stopping at the fruit cart every morning on my way into the office, so there was always fresh fruit and a bag of carrots on my desk. I would nosh on these throughout the day. I became less dependent on the big sandwich at lunch, and thus, less dependent on grazing at the bowl of M&M's that resides on every reception desk in the company at 3 in the afternoon. At first I would have to physically avert my eyes from that bowl of M&M's as I walked past it on my way to a meeting. Now I don't have to do that, and sometimes I'll even have a piece of candy or two. But I'm not standing there gossiping with the receptionist anymore while I pick out a dozen or more of the blue peanut ones. I just don't get that urge anymore.

None of this feels like denial, or deprivation. It feels like nourishment.

I realize that carrying a few extra pounds was my protection, a layer between me and the world. Not that I ever stopped looking at myself with cold germanic eyes, thinking, "GOD, you are disgusting and must be terminated," but I also never did anything that was nice to my body, like eat a piece of fruit or a vegetable more than every now and then. As long as I had that little layer of chub between me and the world, I was protected and safe.

Then, the Awful Thing happened to me, and something, some wise little voice, told me, "Stay naked. Get nakeder."

So I have tried to stay naked. Gotten nakeder, too. Remember Jane Doe? She died. She *had* to die.
See, someone who thought he was meeting Jane actually met Aileen, and Aileen is a real live woman, not some manipulatable sexbot avatar from the internet. I think having me turn out to be more real than some velveteen rabbit may have been a shock to his system. Wouldn't you turn tail and run if one of YOUR imaginary playthings suddenly came to life? "I want my Cherry 2000!" sez he.

So yeah, it's been a process of maybe learning to be loving towards myself, from the outside-in, which for most people is backwards, but I've never been one to do things the way everyone else does.

This morning as I was getting changed, I stood in front of the mirror and admired myself, naked. It's been ages since I've done that. I stood and looked at how my body has all the good inny-outy curves, and how my legs are well-muscled and powerful, and yes, I should probably do about a hundred thousand situps before I put on a bikini but I won't, since most of the 25-year-olds on the beach are fatter than I am, and my boobs are a little smaller than they were two months ago, but they are still more than handfuls and that's for a guy with big hands, and I liked what I was seeing there. A woman's body. A womanly body.

Oh, and why I don't own a scale? Because I have one of those bodies that carries a lot of density -- it looks smaller than it weighs. I think it has something to do with muscle weighing more than fat. Let's put it this way: when I was a gym rat and wearing size 2 and size 4 clothing, I weighed 135 pounds. The guess-yer-weight guy at Great Adventure guessed 110 and I won the prize. So I don't put any trust in the number on the scale.

My clothes fit, I look great, and my knees don't hurt anymore. That's enough for me.

Bill (part 1)

I didn't expect to be celebrating my birthday that year with the smell of death surrounding everything and a pall of gray dust coating the entire city.

I had moved to Breckenridge in March of 2001, giving the back of my hand to the city that had started to feel like an abusive boyfriend. I love you, come here, let me smack you, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I do it because I love you, why do you make me hit you? One December day, I decided I'd had enough and two and a half months later I was gone.

Breckenridge was good. I loved it there. The scenery was beyond beautiful, the people were nice, the men were all handsome and outdoorsy and had hands that looked as if they could actually do things -- callused and scarred, as if they could do more than dial a phone when something needed to be done.

I got a little part-time job in a clothing store, then found a full-time job doing something similar enough to what I had done in New York that it wasn't so much learning a new job as transferring my skills to a different vernacular.

I was starting to thrive there, and so I started looking to put down some real roots. I spent the summer driving around Summit County with Tony C, the nice real estate guy with East Coast roots who had been living there since Main Street (yes, it was called Main Street) was barely paved and you could stop and have a conversation out your truck window for minutes at a time and no one was behind you honking impatiently. I liked him because there were still traces of the East Coast in his speech.

Nothing I looked at seemed right until late one afternoon when Tony called me about a townhouse that had just been listed. After work, he drove me up Boreas Pass Road, then turned onto Baldy Road, and we continued up, up, up, and he swung his SUV onto a gravel road and we parked in a driveway with the sign "Silver King Lode." It had a good sound to it. It was a tiny row of townhouses, stepping down the side of the mountain, so you had to walk down about 50 steps to get to number 4.

We walked in, and as soon as we were past the mudroom (every house in the mountains has a mudroom; mountain people are like the Japanese about removing their shoes as soon as they walk into the house), I turned to Tony and said, "This is it."

I put it under contract immediately; it had been on the market for about an hour and a half.

Two weeks later, on August 28th, I was handed the key, and I was a homeowner. I moved in with the cats, Mambo and Zack (Dr. Zachary Smith, of the Boston Smiths!), and started moving my belongings "up the hill" from my storage unit in Denver.

One September morning, I came downstairs at 7 o'clock, as usual, and flipped on the "Today" show, as usual, and I was arrested by the sight of one of the towers of the World Trade Center with a gaping hole in the side and black smoke pouring out. It was 9 o'clock in New York.

In the hours that followed, I remember the dozens of phone calls.

To my sister, whose husband is a pilot for American Airlines.

"Is Mark flying today? Where? WHERE? What the fuck is happening to us?"

To my friend Kathy, who lived over the hill from me, as we watched the north tower collapse, and the long silence before she said, "Aileen, I'm so, so sorry," as I began sobbing.

To my friend Frank, who worked for the Federal Reserve and said, with wonder in his voice, "They were like little rag dolls, Aileen. Just like rag dolls, and I could see their clothes fluttering."

And to Bill, or rather, to Bill's answering machine, and it was more like a prayer than a message, "Please tell me you aren't down there. Please call me and tell me you are okay. Please. Please."

The next day, when I hadn't heard anything, sending a dread-filled email to my friend Pat, who owned a bar on 8th Avenue: "Please walk up the street to the firehouse and see if they have any information." and getting a terse email later that day: "14 men missing. No names yet."

I remember falling out of my chair in my office, keening, while my co-workers gathered around me, not knowing what to do.

My boss finally sent me home. I don't remember the drive up the mountain.

Breakfast -- The Big Lie

At some point in every Shadow Relationship, there comes a point where the guy will say, "I would love to make you breakfast."

In hindsight, I realize now, this is the point where every sane woman should hold up her hand like a traffic cop and say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Stop right there, buddy. There'll be none of THAT kind of talk!"

For some reason, men love to talk about making you breakfast. The implication is, of course, that they have spent the last eight hours fucking you silly and in every orifice of your body, and now they want to continue proving their manliness, their all-around what-a-guyness -- with a plate of eggs.

They will brag about their egg-making skills. They will interrogate you about what type of knivery and cookware you possess, to make sure it's all up to their world-class egg-making prowess. They will go into reveries and musings about what kind of spices and cheeses they will put into these ambrosial eggs.

I tell you, ladies, at the first mention of eggs, flee. Run as if all the hounds of hell are at your heels! Because breakfast is where it all turns into a lie.

When they start talking about eggs, or French toast, or pancakes, that's when they've gone *completely* over the edge from getting a little piece of tail on the side and into the world of full-blown fantasy, and I mean, "now I'm just makin' shit up to keep you on the line" stuff. To them, it's the most UNlikely thing that's ever going to happen, as much a flight of imagination as them having a threesome with you and your super-hot best friend. They *know* it ain't ever happening, and so it's safe for them to fantasize about it.

What these men don't understand is that "breakfast" is a code word to us. In this code, "breakfast" says to us, "I am looking forward to doing the everyday, the quotidian, with you. I am planning to be the person who wakes up next to you and kisses your warm, sleepy neck, and brings you coffee in bed, and shares the Sunday Times with you." We get the gooshies when we think of these things, and we hug ourselves secretly and whisper, "Oh, he's really *mine* if he's talking like that!"

Maybe I overstate myself. Maybe "breakfast" isn't a lie so much as it's a *huge* miscommunication. I dunno.
But I do know one thing.

Unless the man is standing in my kitchen in his boxer shorts wielding a spatula, calling into the bedroom where I am awakening from a sex coma with bite marks on my shoulders and thighs like overstretched rubberbands, I won't ever let him utter the word "breakfast" to me again.

Email Trail: 5/31/10, 9:40pm

Cleaning out emails, and here's one from the beginning of the end. He was trying to extricate himself, and "let me down easy," (meaning, he said he was going away, but then kept sniffing around, and wouldn't actually go away, which in hindsight makes me a little pissy) and I decided to give him reasons to get the fuck away from me.

I'll make it easy for you.

Herewith, the list of things that make me wrong:

I'm a woman of a certain age who has never been married. So that must mean there is *something* wrong with me, right? My intellect is self-acquired and shaky. On the other hand, I'm never afraid to say, "I don't know what that is." I am funny. (I don't think men actually like this quality, no matter what they say) I am extricating myself from money problems of my own making. I know a little bit about a lot of things. I have opinions. I have a hard time asking for help; I fall to pieces if I have to do it. I forget birthdays. I cry at those Sarah MacLachlan ASPCA comercials. I do the NYTimes Sunday puzzle on the subway, in pen. Not because I can get every answer right, but because I am secretly showing off. I have a bottomless appreciation for pop music. I don't like fights. If someone attacks me, I go into a fetal curl; if someone attacks my friends, I turn into a wild animal. I can't hold a grudge no matter how hard I try. I don't get mad when people cancel plans. I don't believe in god. I hate having too many plans. I am impolitic and blurty. I am so easygoing about some things that people think I don't care. I have abnormally large thumbs. I hate the first half hour of exercising so much that I rarely do it at all. I love hockey. I love being by myself. I don't like to speak for the first two hours I am awake. I drink the same cup of coffee all day long. I like to fix things. I sing when I'm walking down the street. I hate to shop. My favorite boots are as old as my cat. I talk to strangers wherever I go. I am painfully shy. I hate the way people here look at me when I tell them my brothers are auto mechanics. I laugh too loudly. I think fat people *can* help it. I don't care if people like me or not. I am always looking for the funny. I made jokes at my father's funeral. If you asked me what superpower I'd choose to have for one day, I'd answer "being beautiful." When someone hurts my feelings, I tell them they hurt my feelings. When I screw up I always admit it (this is un-American). In my secret heart, I wish I could inspire devotion in someone. I am unable to hide it when my bullshit detector needle hits red. I don't suffer fools -- at all. I have kept my heart on lockdown for so long that I don't have enough sense to snatch it back when someone jimmies their way in and starts to steal it.

Is that enough to make it easier for you to walk away?

Actually, now that I read through that, I realize that instead of making myself sound "wrong," I actually made myself sound kind of awesome. If someone used those words to describe a stranger to me, I'd ask for her phone number and try to date her.