In Which I Am Moved to Tears -- AGAIN

Updated a couple of hours after originally posting, to change the post title to something a little less obnoxious but the rest is untouched..

Oh, my Great Good God of the Redwoods, or as I once said to somebody, by the bloody hands of Jesus!

Miss Midwesterly wrote an entire blog post about me that I had no idea existed.  Proving that I have been entirely too wrapped up in my narcissism and suffering to pay attention to what the fuck is going on around me.

I'm fucking crying AGAIN, only this time it's because I'm so unfuckingbelievably blown away.

I don't know what to say.

I just don't, except, wow, well, um, errr, jeez, um.

Thanks, 'eesh.

Off to cry some more now!

What I Did On My Mini-Vacation

You know we have come to a sad state of affairs in this country when people have to be told, "Don't shit in our swimming pool."

Ummmmm, these people probably shouldn't leave the house, much less go to a pool.

Fleurs. I love hydrangeas.

Miss Midwesterly and me, next to the pool, after trying to do handstands.  Apparently my center of gravity has shifted, even under water.  And yes, Miss M DOES have a tiny little blonde woman growing out of the top of her head.

When you go to Miss Midwesterly's apartment, you have to name one of the frogs.  I did.  Good luck finding mine.  Do you think I'm dumb enough to put Tom Hagen's name on the WEB?

Ace Rothstein and I rode the Cyclone. Twice. Without getting off in between.  Because you can do that.  Primal scream therapy, baby.  Primal scream.  I love this time of day. The light is so Hopper-esque.  And I'm not talkin' about Dennis.

Sunset over Keyspan Park, home of the Brooklyn Cyclones, aka the Brooklyn Mets. Watch a ballgame in a beautiful little ballpark, overlooking the ocean, with the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel in the distance.  Feel like you're in a movie. A really good one.

Ace and me, in (where else) Ruby's, post-Cyclone.  The great thing about vacations and old friends is  you don't need to put on makeup for either.

Just wondering who the Hole family is.

Ace at Beer Island. Yes, there is a bar called "Beer Island."  We like it there.

Wonderful

Throckey inadvertently started a meme with an offhanded comment on one of my posts about something being "easy like Sunday morning."

This got the song "Easy" going in an endless groove in my brain (children, that's a reference to vinyl record albums, which had grooves that the needle rode along in, creating the music we elders listened to in our youth. The double album covers made excellent trays for sorting the seeds from the weed. Open enough double albums in a used-record store and you could probably roll yourself a fine -- though stale -- joint. Though the pot from back then didn't have the most excellent quality that we can get today) and I had to get out the old Commodores CD (another antiquated music format from your parents' era, cutting-edge in the 80's and leading to the unwarranted popularity of Sting's "Dream of the Blue Turtles," not because it was great but because it was the only thing available on CD for three years. Then Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" came out and we all listened to that for another five years until "Achtung Baby" came out) to hear that old funk
classic. If only to hear that old familiar piano intro and sing along to "Why in the world would anybody put chains on me?/I paid my dues to make it/Ev'rybody wants me to be what they want me to be/I'm not happy when I try to fake it."

It also got the comments thread going on the Commodores, Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, and led to Paula posting about a single Lionel Richie song that had sad memories for her but doesn't affect her at all now.

Which got me thinking about "Wonderful," by Adam Ant. So I dug out that CD, too, and put it on. (Ok, "dug out" isn't really the right word, since my cd's are alphabetized by artist. I'm a little anal-retentive about that because when I want to hear a specific song, I want to hear it NOW and don't want to have to search through 800 cds for ten minutes until I find it. It also makes DJ nights at my house a whole lot easier.)

Without getting into the whole story, which features Matt deciding at the top of Pike's Peak on Tuesday that he had to get back to me as SOON as was humanly possible, driving like a bat out of hell to do it, and ringing my buzzer at 7am two days later, cut to a few months later to us dancing to the song and him saying, I miss you looking at me like that and I DO want to spend the rest of my life with you, cut again to present day and me playing the CD and thinking, wow, that was AWESOME what he did, and AWESOME what we had, and now I'm teaching myself to play that song, badly but with great enthusiasm, on my crappy Fender that I just restrung.

It's the one really great pop song on a mediocre and unmemorable album, with really great memories attached to it, and it makes me smile to remember them, and him.

But isn't that all life is, really? The occasional moment when someone misses you so much he'll drive all night to get to you, or a really great song that floats by on the sea of ordinary music that is our day-to-day existence? If we don't stop and listen, we might not hear it at all.

Coney Island Pun of the Evening That Keeps a 2-Day Riff Going

Ace: How is Big Al's Chicago Hot Dog Palace supposed to compete against Nathan's?

Aileen (gesturing at closed corrugated gate): Well, you can see it hasn't done so well.

Ace: I guess Big Al is defunct?

(Pause while we wait for light to change)

Aileen (with slow headturn and slower grin): Like Lionel Richie, baby.

Ace: (facepalm)

I'm Done With the Pity Party

Because I am tired of all this navel-gazing crap and honestly, being an absolute shithead.

In the last few weeks more people have been kinder to me than I've been to myself, which has been maybe the only thing that has carried me this far...the kindness of others, many of them strangers who have never even met me.

That has put paid to my snotty notions that it's impossible to be friends with people you only know online. It's only impossible to be friends with them after you meet them in person. KIDDING (sorry, I can't seem to control the urge to crack jokes, it's just what I doooo.)

So thanks. Thanks for recognizing and acknowledging how much pain I've been in.

I think I'm ready to let go of the suffering now.

My favorite zen teacher says, "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."

I seem to have forgotten that along the way. I don't know what it is that happened to me today to slap me upside the head one last time (I think).

I think I just got tired of suffering so much.

The Man Who Broke My Heart, broke my heart. It will heal.

Mambo is a very old cat and will die soon. I will be sad. But I will heal.

My mother is very old and riddled with dementia. I will be an orphan soon, and I will be very sad. But I will heal.

Life goes on, eh? In all its shitty, nutkicking, terrible, fantastic, amazing ways, it goes on.

Now I need to try and find out where my equanimity went.