First of all, some TMI about my dogs. If you're a smidge fussy or easily grossed out, skip to the next paragraph. If you like sophomoric dog-related humor, read on. Ella Bean, my Basset, is a little mommy hound. She'd probably had a litter or two of puppies before she ended up at a shelter and came to live at my house. She's spayed now, but still has very mothering instincts, so she acts them out on Mugzy, the Boxer. She likes to lick his eyes and face and then licks his butt. It's insane, and of course, I just watch it. Boxers are somewhat well-known for their flatulent tendencies, and just a moment ago, Ella was tending to Mugzy's cornhole when he audibly pooted one. She yelped and jumped back. Mugzy can remind me of Cartman on "South Park" in that episode where he was afflicted with flaming farts. Was that when the aliens had the probe up his butt?
I haven't watched South Park in a long time, but I fondly remember the show where the boys went over to Afganistan, and the U.S. military thought that a goat was really Stevie Nicks. They believed that she'd come over to do a USO show. They were chasing after the goat yelling: "Oh, Miss Nicks! Oh Miss Nicks!" I have insisted for years that cocaine turned Stevie into a goat. There is yell-singing (Michael Bolton) and mumble singing (Tom Waits or Rickie Lee Jones, and I love them, BTW) and then there is bleating, and that is Stevie Nicks. For all you Stevie fans, sorry, she once had a beautiful, clear, bell-like voice, but that was a long-ass time ago. I'm shocked that sheep herding dogs don't come rushing after her when she starts singing. I better stop before the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Stevie Nicks comes after me.
I will update anyone who might still be reading this far, that my coworker is still addled by the smell of Snake Oil. He is convinced there are pure pheromones in it. I also had a woman nearly crawl out of a ticket-taker window at a parking garage, because when I rolled down my car window to pay for parking, she got a whiff of the Snake Oil. She was bug-eyed and yelling "WHAT IS THAT? I LOVE IT!" Good grief. Well, at least they aren't crying, the way that I get all misty-eyed when I sniff Dorian. Beth didn't call her business Black Phoenix Alchemy Laboratory for just any old reason. She brews up some powerful stuff.
I am especially fond of running across people in relatively odd get-ups. Outfits that are vaguely off rarely mean much to me; instead, I'm talking things that don't even fit in the fashion faux pas category because you don't know where to begin. Things that are almost mind-bendingly odd, because they are being worn by a person who is obviously not mentally ill. There is a very distinct difference between mixed-up clothing thrown on by some poor soul who has a lot of personal difficulties and by an otherwise functioning individual whose innate style compass has become seriously skewed.
It's one of those weird autumn days when you just don't know what to wear; it's sunny, but only about 62 degrees and it's windy. Days like today are always a good opportunity to find some weird clothing combos going on, and I saw one when I was walking back into the building after lunch. This woman was evidently out on a late-lunch stroll for a bit of exercise. She had on a long, almost ankle-length skirt that had a design on it that was a cross between a batik print and a tropical print. The background was black and the design was a bright blue. I like black and bright blue together, and it was a nice skirt. But on the top, she had on a casual, sporty, waist-length, zip-up, water-repellent material windbreaker. Some sort of Nike design/lettering on it; the colors were white with baby blue. She had short hair and she was wearing a blue and white visor. On her feet she had blue and white flip-flops. The pretty skirt drew me in and then the picture became oddly distorted.
But my favorite weird combination is one I saw about 4 or 5 years ago; it was again about this time of year, but it was a cool and rainy day. I was walking downtown on my lunch hour and looked across the street as I waited at a light. There was a woman in a sort of Laura Ashley-style skirt, long, fluttery, a cream-colored background with a tiny rosy flower print. Suntan-colored hosiery. (Arghblargh! Maybe that's what Andy Garcia caught sight of at the end of "Ocean's Eleven?") Cream-colored, 1980's style pumps that were looking a smidge rugged. But on top of all of this, she wore a black NASCAR pit crew jacket. And the jacket was boldly emblazoned with the team sponsor logos, most prominently, Tide detergent soap. I think there was at least one beer logo, and maybe Slim Jims jerky snacks. I know all of this in detail, because the woman had her head down as she walked into the wind and misty rain, so she didn't see me when I stared at her as I walked by, and then when I turned around and walked backwards to check out the back of the jacket. I mean, wow. It's my favorite of all time. If she'd had on black leather pants and biker boots, the jacket would have been fine. If she'd had on a huge Irish sweater, I would have forgiven the '80's pumps. (Suntan colored hosiery is something that I never forgive. White legs are a far, far better thing, and actually make sense with a Laura Ashley theme.) The combination was, and still remains, unprecedented.
So, the guy at Meadowlark who always tells me he loves me, the one who said his name means "Wandering Gypsy" in Czech and calls me "gypsy girl?" He just put out an album. I am serious; it's a small local recording company. They're selling his CD at Meadowlark and he saw me this morning and cajoled me into buying one. Here is something from his liner notes: "A special thanks to all the girls I have known, starting with my Mother, for giving me such great material for my songs. And to all the guys, remember that you need more than a good line and a lure to get the girl of your dreams. I love you all." And amazingly, his CD isn't bad at all. So if you've read this far and you're the first reader to respond, I'll send you his CD. Not my copy, I'll buy another one! There may be a lot of you thinking, oh my hell, I am so NOT responding until someone else reads halfway through the blog and decides to respond about bad clothing combinations! So really, if you don't want his CD, just say so, because I do want to hear about bad clothing combos that you have seen in your life and time. I love you all.
Hey there everyone... Given the somewhat decadent image I tend to craft for myself on the forum, I really do more than check my manicure and pedicure, fuss with my hair and peruse shoe departments and Victoria's Secret catalogs. (Although those are some of my favorite things to do.)
I also go up to the gym and ride cardio machines and I lift weights. I've become fond of doing lunges holding a 12-lb. medicine ball all the way around the indoor track. That would be approximately a block long. It's good for the legs and the bum, and at my age, I need all the help that I can get to keep the bum suspended somewhere above the back of my knees.
And I take vitamins, mainly out of habit, because when I was going into high school, I'd apparently had a bit of a rapid growth spurt that caused me to become really anemic. I had to take slugs of vitamins until that was remedied, and then I just kept up the habit.
I drink, but it seems that I've always tended to either get full (if drinking beer) or fall asleep before I get really drunk. I also had a formative experience on my 20th birthday that perhaps altered any tendency to drink a lot. I was living in a resort town for the summer and some girlfriends took me to a bar for birthday drinks. Various tourists hanging in bar kept sending me drinks. The notion of the lascivious geezers who were sending my innocent 20-year-old self tequila makes my current self shudder and thank the powers of the universe that I had several friends who didn't ditch me. Anyway, my friends deposited me on the front door of where I was staying, I crawled in and made my way to the shower. My roomie and her boyfriend kept waiting for me to scream and I didn't. I happily showered for about 15 minutes, puked and fell into bed. It seems the hot water heater had died and I took an ice-cold shower without knowing it. The hell that I felt the next day is something I still remember.
And I don't smoke, and I never have. I tried, but was hopelessly incompetent at it. I guess that was my good luck. And now I'm going to sound like a harpy old lady, but if you smoke, do think about quitting sooner rather than later. A guy who worked in my office up until a year ago, when he took a different job in the same building, was diagnosed with lung cancer about 2 months after he started his new job. He'd stopped smoking a year earlier. But he smoked entirely too long and didn't quit soon enough. I don't think he's going to make it. This sucks. He used to have a gorgeous head of thick wavy hair and now he's bald from chemo and he's holding onto the walls to keep his balance when he walks down the hall. When he stopped working in my office last year, I took a photo of him, copied it a number of times and "Andy Warhol-ized" it by coloring over it with pastels. I modified his hair, put glasses on him, turned him into all sorts of things. He loved it and took it with him to put away as a keepsake. I really don't want to see it hanging up on one of the memory posterboards that you see at a funeral, but shit, I think that may be what's going to happen.
Weird thing is, this guy was the king of kvetchers when he was well. If his lips were moving, he was probably bitching, albeit in a likable, often funny sort of way. After his diagnosis, he developed a shockingly good attitude. It's amazing. He's tried to work and stay social and even go on his powerwalks when he had the energy. And he never complains about being sick or losing his hair, and he flat adored his hair. It makes me really sad.
And my blog has recently sounded like the old lady in the retirement center with her endless stories of people dying, and seriously guys, this has been an unusual stretch. Lest you think I'm not myself, let me tell you this: I went down to my ailing former coworker's current office to say hi to him one day in late August. I wanted to give him a hard time about something or other, because he loves to be harassed and treated like nothing is the matter. I had on one of my summery wrap dresses that can dip kind of low in the front. Normally I'm pretty careful to keep the foundation garments out of the public eye, so I'd frequently check what the neckline was doing. So I was sitting there talking to him, and I knew my bra was showing a little, and I just let it. I know he noticed because he called a mutual friend and told him all about it. And I didn't care. So there. Vaguely naughty is a good, good thing.
Yeah, well, hey... I haven't written here in a while. I had to really buckle down to work at my job and something had to go, so meandering around on the internet was one of them. In addition, my winter solstice mood has been coming on, and that's not really a bad thing. When the days get shorter, I start getting quieter and more contemplative. I think it's reasonable behavior for a North American mammal. I see so much really bad behavior this time of the year that reminds me a lot of how animals in captivity act if you jam them into too small a space and don't give them enough food. Seriously -- you can go to a mall and see that sort behavior being acted out all over. I haven't seen anyone chewing on another shopper's ear, literally, but I've seen figurative versions of it in the tiny little forays that I've made out into the retail realm.
So no, I haven't been spending my time at the mall. I just completed some shopping online on Saturday. The internet is quite the blessing for the semi-hibernating North American shopping mammal. Except don't try eBay; you get into online captive behavior there.
Have any of you experienced what could be called clairsentience? It's the perception of energy fields through physical sensations. Scientific-rational types consider it hooey, because it's not a regularly occurring measurable phenomenon, but since our nervous systems send out energetic impulses are measured all the time with machines, I can't really understand why they think the human body isn't able to detect external impulses on its own. Any everyone has this ability, it just depends on how open or closed off to it we happen to be.
I'm just asking because it happens to me, and I think there's a lot of cool stories out there that most people won't talk about, lest they be considered "weird." And what I think is weird that that we can't acknowledge or talk about it without being seen as spooky. I was reading the New York Times yesterday, and being the incurable romantic that I am, I was looking at the weekly Sunday feature about a couple who had just gotten married. The woman in the couple featured yesterday said that during their second or third date, she felt a strong pang in her chest and she knew that something very special was happening between the two of them. How cool! There are so many people who would say she just had indigestion or an anxiety attack, and I get so tired of that "it's only..." blow-off to any mystical or emotional reading of a physical clue.
I do know that there are people who get those responses and then cut and run from whatever made them feel that way, because they find it scary and it makes them feel insecure. There is nothing spooky about it to me, it's a part of being human and having fully-functioning senses. There's a lot of mystery to it, but that's what makes it so remarkable. And because you never know when it's going to happen, you can't sit around and watch for it, which makes it even better.
So if you have stories, tell them... I'm listening!
I need to get my booty in gear and do something that has a time deadline on it, but I wanted to say thank you again for all the words of encouragement about my presenation. And I'd like to report that my presentation went just fine yesterday. No non sequiturs, just lots of good questions and good discussion. I was happy. It took a long time because there were several people learning how the process works, but that was fine. I don't mind that.
What I did mind was how management of my office tried to deliberately frighten staff into believing that this was going to be the second ring of hell, and unlike anything we've previously experienced. They are so out of touch with what their staff are able to do, and they always assume we're the most incompetent boobs on the planet. I believe what's going on here is what the psychologists call "projection."
My boss, in fact, informed me yesterday morning that he was tired and frazzled and wouldn't be able to help me much at all during the presentation. The reason? A pipe had frozen at his house the day before. It was unfrozen and all was well, but his wife was upset that they'd had to drill a hole in the new basement drywall and her anxiety had ruined his life. Now really, WTF? And just because his wife is high maintenance does not mean that he should return the favor with his staff! If I had walked in and swooned over my basement drywall, and said I couldn't possibly do my presentation, he would have told me to put on my big girl panties and get busy. So when my presentation was going well, he kept jumping in trying to participate and get attention. I do forget, it is All About Him.
And the cold hard fact that I forget over every interim, is one that I have to relearn every year: If you're a female in the environment where I work, and you're not a needy wreck who requires propping up, and you're reasonably decent to look at, you will be run down at every possible opportunity. Insecure men love strong men, insecure men hate competent women. This fact is true all over the place, and it's just a matter of degree. I know there are many places that are much worse, if only because my bosses are too lazy to really make trouble for me -- they just try to run me down in subtle ways. They manage by fear, and that's a game that cowards play.
I listened to T-Rex on the way to work. I'm wearing Snake Oil and my burgundy patent leather boots. The assholes don't get me down, because underneath it all, I'm entirely too weird for this place and they'll never figure me out.
For everyone who has at some time felt what I'm describing today, and that would be most of you, here's one of my favorite quotes, from E.E. Cummings:
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
What color, dahlings, is your underwear today? I'm wearing a tangerine-colored bra. Very sassy. And I have on a tangerine and yellow mesh bikini that ties on the sides.
And underneath the underwear, I'm wearing a combination of Tunisian Patchouli (from DSH) with O over the top. Damn, that is a fine combination. I think O is great alone, but I love it as a mixer.
Now this might be an interesting thing to track... I normally put my BPAL on prior to wearing underwear. Does the BPAL that I pick for that day affect the type of underwear that I pick? Ah, I have found a purpose for this blog... I'm going to track the influence of BPAL application upon my choice of lingerie.
My serious, Kinsey Report-like analysis has begun...
When you're out shopping for the lingerie with your man-thing or woman-thing or another girlfriend or a gay guy-friend, here's something to get a good laugh, or at the very least, a stunned look:
So you pick up the item -- the bustier, the panties, the bra, the frou-frou nightie, whatever floats your boat, and you hold it up in front of you and say: "Gee, I wonder how this will look?" The person you're with is going to mumble some sort of response. Then you take the garment and rather insouciantly toss it somewhere. I know the staff at most places might get a little fussy if you toss it on the floor, so toss it on a lower display rack or a countertop. Then you lean over, look down at it and say: "Oh, it's going to look divine laying on the floor!"
I know, I know, a lot of the underthingies that I buy are very functional and I want them to fit well to hold the girls in line and avoid VPL on the bottom, but it's a fun thing to do with an unsuspecting companion.
Speaking of underthings, I was at Victoria's Secret the other day and saw, on the sale rack, a bustier with a pin-up girl design on it. It was a size small, and there's no way that I'm a small. I have the shoulders and ribcage of a Soviet bloc swimmer. Well, maybe not quite that wide, but wide enough. I'm broad from the front, but narrow from the side. I know a woman who's built like me, but she's a bit thicker from the side. Not fat, she just has more volume than me. And her boobs aren't as big as mine, but she looks like she has two missiles jutting from her chest. They remind me of a horizontal version of the Grand Teton mountain range. She causes car wrecks.
I was at a party last night, end of the legislature. OK kids, I'm on the dark side of my 40's, but I'm well-preserved. I can pass for about 10 years younger than my chronological age. So one of my coworkers bought me a shot of tequila, because that's what I wanted. I decided a bit later to get some water, and went back to the bar. A really young guy who works down the hall from me came up and started giving me crap for getting water. I told him that I'd had a shot and I needed water. He thought it was so fucking cool that I'd had a shot, that he got a shot for himself and a shot for me. Somehow he made reference to younger men-older women. I told him to call me Mrs. Robinson. I asked him if he'd seen "The Graduate" and he told me that he hadn't, but he'd probably rent it on his way home.
So you know what my take is on this guy? He's probably gay. I mean, there are boatloads of gorgeous young women in their 20's in this building. As a guy in my office says, they're just smokin' hot. What is this guy doing, saying that crap to me when there's eye candy all around? And it's not like he's a total zero -- in fact, he's outgoing and kind of cute, but he's always pinged my gay-dar and now I'm even more convinced.
But he bought me a shot of tequila, so who am I to bitch??
I think I must have lost dog karma. Or maybe some lost dogs have valentina karma. Anyway, I got up this morning and looked out the window, and there was a German Shepherd-type dog running loose across the street. No collar, looking very lost. I went out and called it, but it was scared and ran off. I called animal control and told them to go looking for it. I don't live that near to a main street, but if the dog went about 6 or 7 blocks, it would encounter a busy street.
This afternoon after I went to lunch with my friend, I decided to drive back down to my office, because I'd left something there that I wanted to take home. I was kind of in a state yesterday when I left, and would have forgotten my head if it wasn't attached to me. So I'm crossing the intersection of a really busy street, and there's a smallish, German Shepherd type dog, running around the intersection. I turned and watched as people drove around it or slowed down, but didn't help it. I flipped a "u" turn and went back, pulled over, got out and got the dog. A man was right behind me trying to do the same thing, and we took turns hold the pooch as we waited for animal control. This dog was a young fella, collar but no tags, just been neutered, a sweet handsome pooch.
So was that my lost dog karma in action? And is it me, or was it a little weird that I saw two lost German Shepherd-type dogs in one day? They just wandered into my path. It seemed really symbolic, and considering my mood of the last couple of days, it really makes me wonder what that was all about.
I have a book on animal totems, and dogs are commonly associated with the various goddesses, especially huntress goddesses such as Artemis/Diana, Sarama (Vedic mother of the Dogs of Yama) and the Hounds of Annwn, the Celtic goddess. Dogs are seen as symbols of dependability, loyalty and faithfulness and my book says whenever the spirit helper is near, you will feel strong emanations of love surrounding you.
Lost dog karma or a spirit messenger, I'm glad I was able to help at least one avoid death by a 50-MPH SUV. I do loves the poochies!!
Woooot! I went to coffee at noon with some friends who don't go to my customary coffeehouse (a much more bohemian place). The place where we meet is an in-state franchise, kind of a Starbucks-for-people-who-don't-want-to-go-to-Starbucks place. Not a lot of soul, but it's clean and well-lit and in a converted old department store. Right across the hall is a funky little store called The Uncommon Market. It sells used clothing and some new clothing, plus the owner of the store makes her own creations. It's fun.
I had to wander over there, just 'cause, and found a long-sleeved Custo Barcelona shirt. It was pristine and looked almost unworn. The colors are a bit like darkitysnark's walls, that is, bright , and the design is a bunch of big ol' samari/sumo wrestler guys. It cracked me up. And it was $7! I bought it. I know the snobby fashionistas would say that Custos are so passe, but I am always amused by them. Especially for $7. The bitches cost around $175 if you purchase them new.
It's supposed to be cool tomorrow, only in the low 60's, I may have to wear it to work. My favorite way to dress, if I can get away with it, is to wear something funky with something rather sober. Juxtapositions like that can be rather entertaining.
So has anyone else looked at/tried on an Ed Hardy shirt? I love his retro tattoo artwork and even went so far to try on a few t-shirts, but holy hell, they cost around $70 or $80. I just couldn't. And anyway, I'll find one at The Uncommon Market in a year or two for $7.
I think "satiate" is a great word to say out loud repeatedly. It's difficult to say it out loud a number of times without putting a bit of an inflection into it, but that's part of the fun. Let's head off to the dictionary:
Pronunciation: [v]'seyshee`eyt, 'seyshi`eyt
Etymology: satiate (v.) c.1440 (implied in pp. adj. satiate), from L. satiatus, pp. of satiare "fill full, satisfy," from satis "enough," from PIE base *sa- "to satisfy"
Satiate is the root of "insatiable" and while I also love that word, it takes on a harder edge when said out loud. However, if Beth ever made a LE called "Insatiable," it would rank right up there (at least in my own private universe) with Smut and Monster in the Panties. I would buy it even it had jasmine and gardenia and rose and leather and everything that amps up and doesn't smell good on me. I'd decant it into imps and keep the bottle.
My tendency to talk about words that I like to say out loud, repeatedly, comes from a character in a short story called "The Smoker" by David Schickler. That story ran in the new fiction edition of The New Yorker in 2000, and as legend has it, Schickler had a book deal by noon on the day the story was published. You can find the story as a chapter in his book "Kissing in Manhattan," but I prefer to read the story as it stands on its own. It's a funny, mysterious little fantasy about a young man who's an English teacher at an all-girls private school in Manhattan and his most extraordinary student. The student, whose name is Nicole, likes to point out that certain words are nice to say out loud, repeatedly. I think "rinse" is one of them. "Trauma" is another.
But I like satiate the best.
There's a guy I know here at work who tends to use what I consider rather quaint and old-fashioned terms to express outrage, like "What in the Sam Hill?" and "Son of a buck!" I never hear anyone else use those terms, unless I would happened to head down to a senior center. Apparently "Sam Hill" somehow got started as a way to avoid saying "hell," but whenever I hear that term, I always picture the cartoon character Yosemite Sam.
I also used to know a guy from work who would say: "Well cheese and crackers!" when he was trying to not swear, which was on very rare occasions. I have never heard anyone else use that term in my life. I always found it really hilarious, because it was so odd and because this guy would normally use f**k like most people say "uh."
Then there was the guy who was seemingly the basis for Ignatius J. Reilly in the book "A Confederacy of Dunces." Seriously, he was a big, fat, extremely high-IQ person who lived in his own little la-la land most of the time. He made his living as a software tech support specialist. He used to go sit outside the building that he worked in and chain-smoke and hold court of the topic of the day. The bench that he sat on was made of some sort of industrial-strength recycled plastic and he warped the bench because he was probably 6'4" and around 400 pounds. His name was Jerry, but somehow I came to call him The Prophet Raoul, a term that amused him greatly. Two of his favorite terms were: "Well Christ on a bicycle!" and "I don't give a flying f**k at a rolling donut." The last comment always produced visions of this gargantuan man throwing himself at a huge rolling donut, trying to leap through the hole the way dogs jump through hoops.
Anyway, The Prophet Raoul shuffled off this mortal coil (another one of his favorite sayings, courtesy of Will Shakespeare) a few years ago. Anyone who has read "A Confederacy of Dunces" would probably agree that Ignatius was not a role model for health and long life. The Prophet was a huge football fan and he died laying around in bed while watching the Super Bowl on the day of the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction. It is my hope that he said to himself: "I've just seen a tit during Super Bowl halftime, I can die a happy man," and did just that.
Calling someone's mouth their "pie hole" has always amused me considerably. As in: "Shut your pie hole." It's even better when said with a Andy Griffith/Mayberry accent, as in: "Shuhut yer pah hawl, Barney. Ima thankin' 'bout sumthin.'"
I work with someone who is apparently a monument to oral fixations. If she isn't talking at a very high volume, she's eating at a high volume. This person likes to hear herself smack, schlurp and snort as she eats. She is a professional person, but she is a grotesque eater. She also makes little murmuring and yummy sounds as she eats. And she feeds her pie hole all the time. Often she has food smeared on her face when she's eating because she virtually sticks her face in it and slops like a hog. Astonishing. Disgusting table manners are truly one of my pet peeves. If she had french manicured toenails, I would probably lose my mind.
And have a look at this, I pull this site up and play it every now and then. It's good for a titter.
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/piehole.php
I was at the health club, riding the cardio cross-trainer (I've nicknamed it the sadiomaster), but I'm having a fine time because I'm reading "Insatiable" by Gael Green, the escapades of an unabashed sensualist food critic who had lots and lots of fun in the 1970's, eating and screwing her way around New York City. And while I was reading and riding (the sadiomaster, remember!) I was listening to Billie Holiday.
I finished a chapter and looked up at a TV, and there was Andy Garcia on screen. What a fine man he is. Could I take much more? Of course, because then the scene switched to George Clooney. ("Ocean's 11" was on TV.) In a brief aside, I think Andy and George make Brad Pitt look plain, but I'm a sucker for dark-haired men.
Could I take much more? Yeah, the guy at the club that I mentally refer to as "Scenery" (I don't know his name) was walking around the track, cooling down from his weight training. He has dark hair too, plus he's classically handsome and he doesn't realize it. I think that men who aren't especially handsome, but act like they are, are really appealing, as are handsome men who don't understand just how good looking they are.
But after that flurry of man-watching, I was content to return to reading Gael and listening to Billie. It certainly did make the sadiomaster session much more worthwhile.
My brother is about 12 years older than I am, and thus, I'm right in between his age and his oldest daughter's age. So once when I was about 19 and Lori was about 7, Lori decided she wanted to send my dad a letter, and she wanted to dictate it to me. It was really quite hilarious and I think my dad saved it for a long time. It started out: "Hi Grandpa. How are you? I am fine. The house hasn't burned down yet."
And therefore, the title of today's entry. For whatever reason, the firework lunacy around my town seemed to occur on the evening of July 3, rather than July 4. The next door neighbors have been out of town for over a week, leaving their 17-year-old daughter to care for the household. She was having an allegedly wholesome teen gathering at the house, complete with fireworks. Then, about 2 a.m., I was awakened from my slumbers because someone was frantically ringing the doorbell over and over. I got to the door and yelled "WHO IS IT?" and the response was: "YOUR FENCE IS ON FIRE!"
Great. I ran out the back door, turned on the hose and for whatever reason, ran to the right part of the yard. My DH was left standing confused and didn't even know where I went. But the time I got around the corner, the fire was almost out, for the neighbor's daughter had also turned out their hose and was spraying down the fence.
The explanation: although there were about 4 carloads of kids hanging around, they just all happened to be driving past, and hadn't been spending time there. They claim they stopped and rang the doorbell, couldn't wake us up, and went to her house and got her to come out and put out the fire. Yeah, right. I'm a light sleeper and one doorbell ding is all it takes to rouse me from horizontal slumber to a sitting-straight- up, wide awake state.
And the fire was really caused by a plastic gas can that was set on fire. The fence was scorched due to its proximity to the gas can. The kdis, of course, had no idea who had started it, or where the gas can came from, but it was a random act of arson.
Once the kids heard my DH has finally come to his senses and called the fire department, everyone who just happened to be driving by got in their cars and promptly left. This included the friend who was supposed to be staying with the neighbor's daughter. The neighbor girl's eyes popped out of her head when she heard the firemen were arriving, and that they would probably call the police. She yelped: "But the fire is OUT!" Apparently the two guys who knocked on our door felt it was a good idea to let us know the fence was on fire, while the others didn't want us to figure it out. Our neighbor's daughter feigned great innocence to the fireman and the cops and claimed she'd been indoors watching movies when the act of arson occurred.
The cops took forever to arrive, so we were up until almost 5 in the morning. The police just rolled their eyes at her story. By light of day, you could see where the gas can was on fire in their driveway, and someone kicked it (probably to get it away from her car, not a bad idea), it rolled down an incline toward our fence, and then it scorched the fence.
This is the daughter of people who have a patio chimnea in the the back and like to burn tree branches in it, but if the branches are too green to burn well, they dump charcoal lighter on it and get flames jumping 3 or 4 feet out of the chimnea. I am sure they will also take no responsibility for anything, because she's obviously copping to nothing. The firemen did take pains to point out to her how the fire could have really damaged her house a lot, because if it had continued, it would have gone up into a tree and hopped over to the roof her her house first.
And crap, just last week I had commented that she's very good at playing the wholesome cheerleader, fine Christian girl routine, but she's obviously a bit more of a handful than her older sister. But the parents don't seem to get it, because they're too busy acting like they're socially superior to their neighbors, while they guzzle beer and burn scrap lumber in their chimnea.
So why is it that when people act either superior or have to wear their wholesomeness on their sleeves, it's usually to cover up something else?
I was bopping around Zappo's and came upon a company called "Pleaser USA," and then I recalled that evanesce provided a link to their shoes earlier this spring. I came across this pair of shoes and was sufficiently provoked to take a closer look. Then I had to look at the customer comments. Read the third customer comment from B.Y in Seattle. WTF? I sent this to my friend Ron (a shoe fetishist if there ever was one) and asked him if it could help him find religion. His response:
"There’s high church and low church. Then there’s high heel church. I know which I prefer!"
http://www.zappos.com/n/p/dp/15599613/c/1141.html
Being as busy as I am at work is a good thing, to a certain extent, but here I am, in at work on Sunday. And what am I doing? Writing in my BPAL blog? ARGH BLARG! Actually, I'm basically finished with what I arrived to do, but I'm considering cleaning off my desk just a bit and then leaving.
And what am I doing here on Sunday? I am the lead-off batter in the entire staff presentation process on Tuesday. This happens every year that there's a new and/or difficult committee to work with -- I get to go in first and be raked over the coals. I get to have everyone who doesn't really understand how the process works ask me 50 trillion questions and generally bitch about how they can't find out what's going on. Never mind that they want me to know more than most of the people who run the agencies I'll be talking about. It's the general naive nature of newly-elected legislative officials who think they're going to change the world. There's term limits in my state and almost half the legislature turned over last year, so experienced folks are few and far between. And my boss picks me to twist slowly in the wind, every year.
I know it's because I'm somewhat less (externally) sensitive than other people in the office, I don't pout, whine and mince around about thing, I tend to not be as pedantic in my presentations as some of the other staff, and I'm no Angelina Jolie, but I'm probably more into presentation of my entire self than some of the other staff. I also think my boss really gets off on putting me through the mill, so he can tell everyone else how horribly my presentation went. So I'm in trying to prepare as best as possible, but I know I'll get asked a lot of non sequitur questions that I can't answer. I detest this part of my job.
Last week one of the fatcat lobbyists came in and asked me to go to lunch with him, I still can't figure out what he wanted, he claimed it was just social in nature. He is fun to talk to and I get a giggle out of his observations. I was getting somewhat disconcerted that he'd take pains to walk behind me and then he confessed that he liked to smell my perfume. And what was I wearing? Snake Oil, of course! You don't go to lunch with a lobbyist and not wear Snake Oil. It may become my signature scent for the session, although the one day that I wore Mme. Moriarty, she got an extreme reaction from someone. Since they're in the same "family," I'm not sure most people can tell them apart. I love them equally.
I went a little batshit on the update and ordered way more than I intended. What did I get? Bakeneko, Svadhinaopatika, Vasakasajja, Chintamani-Dhupa and Smut. I know Smut will work, but I already have a bottle-and-a-half of Smut 2006, but how could I not order another bottle? And the others... well, we'll see. They sound lovely. I love Lupercalia, but then my forum name is valentina, after all.
I'm going to shovel off my desk. I hope all of you are well, and staying warm if you're somewhere where it's cold.
Yes, today I am in a tank top and a skort. The tank top is one with a retro Wonder Woman design on it, but it's distressed-faded looking, so the image of the Amazon doesn't jump right out at you. Most of my coworkers are used to my Wonder Woman fixation, although there are plenty of people who don't know me, who look upon my shirt with great curiosity. Or maybe it's just stupid men who will use anything as an excuse to look at a woman's chest, even one equipped with my middlers.
When I went into Meadowlark coffee this morning, the only people sitting outside were three relatively normal young women. No mullets. Maybe Wednesdays are Mullet Mornings at Meadowlark? You show up with a mullet and get your lattes at half-price? I'll have to ask them if that's the case.
I must now discuss a particularly annoying word pronunciation idiosyncrasy. I tend to wince at most odd pronunciations/mispronunciations, but some just drive me batty. One is when the word Buddha is pronounced "Beyoo-dah." I always think of "zippity-do-dah!" Then I get into associations with Zippy the Pinhead and the Buddha. I can just see a cartoon frame of Zippy saying: "Zippity-do-dah, I'm the Be-yoo-dah!"
And then there's the word emu, denoting the large, flightless ostrich-like bird. It can be pronounced either e-mou or e-meu, but whenever I hear e-meu, it annoys me. This is no doubt due to my provincial preference for the e-mou version, because at times, my accent comes dangerously close to bordering upon the Scandinavian/German influenced "Fargo" accent, as in: "Ya, fer sure, that was an e-meu runnin' across the road, Margie. Where'd ya think he was goin'?"
I'm sure that somehow I could weave together an idea about a Coen Brothers movie that would include emus, Zippy the Pinhead, Buddha, mullets and Wonder Woman. But it's lunchtime and I don't want to. However, I'll close with the thought that I'm pretty sure if he were around today, the Buddha would just call himself "The Dude."
Divas! The empress of this blogdom is going to fall under the spell of darkitysnark's third person Bob Dole-certified writing style tonight, since valentina wishes to disassociate herself with this sort of mood as much as possible.
valentina is terribly wistful, and almost sad. She may have to go sit around and cry to see if that helps. It was an emotional day at work, a long story that valentina doesn't care to recount, since it would turn into a detailed politics and government lecture and 'tina does know how deathly boring that becomes. Long story short, it was a day of goodbyes to people that valentina has known and worked with a lot of years, because they're leaving. Some of them 'tina knew longer and liked more than others, and a couple of them tugged very hard at the heartstrings.
It was an ending and it was bittersweet. Goodbyes are never easy, but valentina has to be thankful that she was able to forge such relationships. And there's also a beginning. The beginning is a little scary, maybe. Beginnings bring mystery and uncertainty, and like anything in life, there will be joy and sadness in what lies ahead.
valentina also realizes that she can be such an empath, but she normally assumes it's her imagination speaking. Several things in recent days have shown her that she should get out of her own way more often. 'tina has a bad habit of ignoring her inner voice, and her left brain and right brain spend a lot of time arguing with each other. Usually the left brain will overthink what the right brain is channeling out of her heart. Then the left brain realizes that the right brain was correct, and her right brain and her heart in unison say, hahaha, we knew it all along.
And even in the middle of all of this, there's a part of 'tina that is so fucking happy, she can't believe it. The empress of this blogdom wishes to inform you that tomorrow she has the day off of work and will resume her breezy first-person lingerie and shoe and BPAL chatter.
Do you like bubble baths? I luuuurve bubble baths. And I am a damn picky bitch about my bubble bath. I used to like the Kiss My Face Peaceful Patchouli bubble bath, but they changed the formula and the bubbles leave much to be desired. I went to Victoria's Secret last week (big shock there...) and got some of their bubble bath, and it's not bad. I got the Strawberries and Champagne scent, which is rather unlike me, but that scent combo has prurient associations (in my head only, not based on any actual experience) and I couldn't resist.
I actually enjoy the V'Tae bath salts in the Sacred Fire scent. That is a really, really sexy scent that is also very comforting. Their verbiage on the package always gets me -- "Anoint. Intoxicate. Enchant. Goddess. Ritual. Magic." Ah, it evokes a web-spinner to me. I just wish they made it in a bubble bath.
And I am a bit of a web-spinner. I don't mind spiders one little bit. I don't pick them up and play with them, but I tend to give them their space and I never want to hurt them. I once got rather upset with a secretary in my office who recounted screaming and running around her kitchen at the sight of a spider before beating it to death with a broom so hard that her kids couldn't even find the carcass when she was finished. The story kind of gave me a pain through the heart. I know we all have our phobias, but holy crap, show some restraint.
Now how the hell did I get here from where I started, on bubble baths? Well let me tell you, if there's a spider in my tub and I want to take a bath, I get a magazine and respectfully move it to a secluded corner of the bathroom. They aren't stupid -- they'll stay away from hot water and bubbles.
Off to my ritual and magic in bubbleland...
I was listening to Lucinda Williams song "Essence" on the way into work, and while it's an amazing song in its own twisted way, and I have to admit that I really like it because it just throbs sexual energy, the male reaction to it has always mystified me.
I don't know if many of you listen to Lu, but I think of her as a southern gothic rock/folk/blues/alt country singer. She's just difficult to categorize. Her voice isn't very pretty, but her lyrics are so raw and real that they bleed. Her dad is Miller Williams, a nationally-known poet who read a poem at William Jefferson Clinton's* first inaguration. Lucinda hasn't exactly led a simple and idyllic life. Jesus Christ she has terrible taste in men, and I'm not sure that being happy and just a little bit content doesn't make her really really nervous, she's obsessive-compulsive about her music and apparently can be a real bitch to work with. But there's no one quite like her.
She also has a certain physical appeal, in this hot mama biker chick sort of way. (She's even older than me, but I've seen some pretty young guys get worked up over her, so go figure.) Lots of sulky surly attitude with a distinct vulnerability. Gets 'em every time.
So her song "Essence" is about a really obsessive stalker chick who wants her man and follows him all over the fucking place. And she wants him now, forever, and all the time, in a very twisted and addicted sort of way. ("shoot your love into my veins," "please come find me and help me get fucked up....") Printing the lyrics does not do justice to the song -- you have to listen to it. Her vocals, the guitars, the drums, the throb.
I've seen Lu in concert twice, both times in a smallish theater/club, because Lu likes it that way. When the guitars kick into the opening bars of "Essence," men rush the stage like bull elephants chasing cows in heat, bellowing "LU! LU! YEAH! LU!!"
I was aghast. I've always thought that the attraction to sick assholes who would make your life a living hell was a primarily female trait. Silly, silly me! I saw a small herd of goofballs who apparently have a fantasy that it would be cool to be stalked by a woman as hot as Lucinda Williams. Yeah, right fellows. Maybe it might be kind of cool to have it happen once. But that sort of shit doesn't happen once, and the boys would get mighty tired of it. Besides, women like Lu don't need to stalk men; they're too busy hiding from their stalkers and feeling miserable because they're in love with the one man in the world who doesn't know that they're alive.
We humans, we're such perverse, perverse creatures!
*It made me happy just to write out his whole name. It made me feel better just to think about him. You may have been an old poon-hound, Bill, but I miss you as President. A lot.
There's a line of thunderstorms blowing through out here on the prairie tonight, here in the land of Willa Cather, and I do love a nice rumbly thunderstorm. Nothing severe or tornadic, mind you, just a garden-variety thunderstorm. Rain, a bit of wind, thunder rolling in the distance. It's just so great.
The most utterly gorgeous drive I've had in some years was about 4 years ago, heading east out of Ft. Collins, Colorado. If you head east, you drive directly away from the Rockies and into a rolling grassland. It was about 1 in the afternoon and thunderstorms were moving across the area. You could look to the north and see blue-black clouds in the distance with sheets of rain whipping out of them. Occasional flashes of lightning, rolls of thunder. It was an incredible contrast to the rolling yellow-green grassland and the lonesome, winding road. I put on the Cowboy Junkies and sailed along. By the time I got to Nebraska, it was blue skies and clear sailing across the state. That was a great drive. I had soundtrack music for each part of the drive... I started out with the Cowboy Junkies and by the time I pulled into my home city, I was listening to cool jazz by Patricia Barber.
That was probably boring. You just had to be there. I was in a zone during that drive, I was so in love with so many things on that drive. There's a Buddhist nun named Pema Chodron (she's American, that's her dharma name) who said she became a Buddhist nun because she wanted to fall in love with not just one person, but the entire world. In a very pure sense, of course. My passionate nature doesn't allow me to forego the ways of the flesh, but I do, at times, truly understand what she's saying.
By the way, my favorite song by The Doors isn't "Riders on the Storm," it's "L.A. Woman." There's another driving song for you!
Happy Mother's Day (in advance) to everyone out there who's a mom to a human kid, and also to everyone else who has pets, since they certainly do become our babies!
So here's my kidz... Mugzy and Ella Bean. Mugzy's a Boxer and Ella Bean is a Basset. Mugzy and Ella were both abandoned dogs found during cold, snowy winters.
Mugzy was found wandering down a country road by a farm family, who located his then owner. The owner said to shoot him. Thankfully, they knew they had a sweet, sweet dog on their hands and turned him over to Boxer Rescue. The poor little guy had pneumonia, but he recovered nicely and came to live at my house 5 years ago. The Mug-Bug is the sweetest man on the planet. He is utterly devoted to me and he follows me everywhere. Now that he's getting to be an older guy, I cherish every day that he's still here.
Ella Bean was sighted wandering near the Interstate in a rural area. Her rescuers had quite a time catching her, because she'd probably lived on her own for a while. She was eventually captured and turned over to a shelter. She was a wreck when she came to live at my house; she was stressed, skinny and extremely distrustful of humans. She has a big lump on her ribcage, the probable result of being kicked. But two years later, she's a squishy, happy, devoted little soul. Basset feet are the cutest things on the planet. I never knew I could be so endlessly charmed by dog's tooties!
We all work out our maternal instincts one way or the other, don't we??
This morning I set the alarm for 7:45 (way, way early for me on a Sunday) and went out to my back yard and bailed out all the old water in my two small garden ponds. They're pre-shaped plastic liners and a once-a-year emptying and refilling is a nice idea. So I was bailing out all the stinky old water and sludge and slime and it made me thing of the LJ wank. Generally, I consider that sort of behavior to be stinky and slimy.
While we relish our freedom of speech, the institutions that help give us freedom of speech (unless the current administration gets its way), like legislative bodies and courts, have very structured rules of debate. The procedures are there for a reason -- if it's a free-for-all, discussions can drop to the lowest common denominator and nothing constructive occurs. I consider the anonymous wank to be a free-for-all and the resulting discussion is generally worthless. While there may be nuggets of a legitimate discussion here and there, the presentation does not lend itself to anything but discord.
And that's all I'm going to say about this topic, because I think the more we just ignore the behavior and refuse to give the wankers the attention that they want, the sooner they will pick up their toys and move to another playground or simply go home and pout.
But damn it, I do adore that asshattery word. And I did know who Ron Jeremy was, pervy old bag that I am!
Oh yeah, for those of you who are old enough, do you remember an INXS song where he's reciting words, like appreciate, dedicate, ect? They should have had satiate in that song!
It's summer! I know the solstice isn't until a week from today, but I had one marker last night and another one this morning. It's official in my world.
Last night I went outside at dusk and the fireflies are out! I'd seen one or two fireflies in the garden over the weekend, but it was during the daytime and I didn't notice them at night. Last night, at dusk, they were rising up out of the garden and twirling all over. The first sight of hundreds of fireflies waking up for the night always stops me in my tracks, because it is so gorgeous and amazing, especially living here on the prairie. We go through the harsh and barren winter, the mercurical spring, and it's hot and dry a great deal of the time in the summer, but you can go outside on summer nights and watch the stars rise in the sky and watch the fireflies repeat the act as they rise up out of the garden. It's just a miracle.
And when I walked out to check the baby cardinals in their nest this morning, I discovered that the first day lily of the year is blooming in my garden! Day lilies are named appropriately, since each lily lasts but one day, but fortunately they produce a lot of blossoms. The one that's blooming is a pink-peach color and it literally yells "summertime!"
