Griffin House and magical thinking

500 Days of Summer captured the feeling I had last Thursday night better than I think I will be able to do here. If you've never seen the movie it's a love story for the way things usually work out which is not good but in a cosmic way, for the better. There is a scene with two screens, one with the way the protagonist imagines and hopes the way the night will unfold, and the other with the way the night actually unfolds.

Before last Sunday, I had never heard of Griffin House. I was poo-pooing around the house, streaming music on Pandora, moving stuff around but not really getting anything done and this song came on. I loved it instantly and stopped what I was doing to look him up. When I did, the first link was for his show. Enter magical thinking. Between the mood of the song and the happenstance of the link, I just knew it had to be a sign. I beat myself up from time to time for being a bit of a hermit, feeling like I need to be in the mix and bring myself more often to the places that I like so I'm more likely to meet someone like minded. But I really like my house and I wish he (whoever he is) would just come here and hang out with me. Then we can go somewhere zany and crazy or maybe just Target.

So anyway, it just seemed like an invitation from the universe and if I didn't go, I would never end up sitting next to that guy that was going to turn everything on its head and make everything make sense. I would finally know who I had been waiting for and would also know at long last if I was waiting for anyone at all. That's a lot of pressure for a small concert at a suburban coffee house, no? I know/knew it was a ridiculous thing to think but I just *love* a good story and wouldn't that be a pretty neat 'how we met' story? Girl who never leaves her house, randomly goes to show and meets her Mr. I know, I should be embarrassed. The cynics are the ones who want to believe the most, even though they have the most evidence that what they want to believe in doesn't exist.

But it got me out the door and parked just in time to sit on the floor behind a table of middle aged white women and 2 old white guys while eating a microwaved pretzel and drinking a crappy beer out of a plastic cup like I was at a frat party. I left during the first encore with a headache, likely the consequence of awkward body positioning as I readjusted each time one of my limbs fell asleep. My ticket said seated show but apparently that meant I could sit, not that I would have a chair. There were about 150 people there. Just like my adventure with Dan Aykroyd, I was amused that I pictured a sparsely attended event instead of a premium grab for the best floor space that allowed you to still see the concert.

Me and an old guy who looked like he wandered in from the VFW lodge were the only two black people there. I'm not sure if he was there for the show or was waiting for his family to find where he had wandered off to so they could pick him up. He just hung out by the door and didn't appear to be listening to the music. But that didn't bother me. Still holding on to hope, I was still the only *female* black person there which meant I would be easier for Mr. to spot. Ha. Even I am amused by myself sometimes.

It was a very diverse group age wise. Most of the crowd was solidly in their 20's but a third of them were at least 45 and still rocking their work blazers. There were at least two young white kids rocking the dreds and both of them made eye contact with me in what appeared to be a check to see if I would give them some sign of approval for their look. Didn't happen. Neither did anything magical. The show was fine, good even but the high point for me was when I got clever and left the club to use the bathroom at Petco (where the pets go and where smart concert goers who don't want to wait in the long-ass intermission line at the concert do as well). Even bought some doggie poo bags for Baloo. Score.

With Spanish subtitles and crappy video quality but the best I could find after looking for a full 3 minutes. Enjoy. :-)

Jungle Fever in Eastern Europe...aka how internet search terms bring weird people to your blog

Since the prologue to my sure to be best selling debut memoir/guidebook, The Black Person's Guide to Eastern Europe, I have been getting some weird traffic on my blog. Any traffic at all on my blog is happy-dance town to me but this traffic is particularly amusing because of how people arrive here. I'm not sure if I just noticed it or blogger has always done this but you can view stats on your blog and get a sense of how people find your blog if they aren't just entering your site directly through a bookmark or reader.

Particularly interesting are the Google search terms which I optimistically hope are an indication someone is more likely to assist me if I'm set upon by a pack of wild dogs and less likely to have set the pack of wild dogs upon me. For example, "black american girl in eastern europe" which I swear on a puppy paw is verbatim what someone in Croatia was looking for. Now maybe that was a black man or woman in Croatia looking for the other black people in Eastern Europe so we could get a support group going but maybe that was an English speaking local who is trying to find out where the sistas are. I can not divine intentions from Google queries and between us adults, that was probably an adult oriented search but it does appear the person lingered on my blog even though the only ebony beauty on the site is Baloo. Probably a function of how long it took them to figure out in their second language that this was not the site to find what they were looking for, but food for thought and amusement anyway.

Some random things I'm tired of on Facebook

Facebook postings on Fridays talking about Friday. It's Friday people. It comes every single week without fail, why do you post about it EVERY SINGLE WEEK?

Facebook status updates with one side of an emotional argument with an anonymous person.

Status updates on any social networking platform that discuss your attempts to conceive with details like ovulation or updates which convey your disappointment that your husband will be away when you're most fertile.

Updates inspired by something the poster read in The 7 Habits of People who Buy Books Like This admonishing or encouraging the masses to some level of greatness they may have never reached but for their status update.

It's been covered at length by so many people, all funnier and better known than me but for the love of all the kitten whiskers and puppy noses, please, please, PLEASE stop providing a blow by blow narrative of your day; e.g.

0810: The kids are up. Coffee time!

0820: Sara doesn't want to wear her warm sweater but she'll thank me later!

0830: God it's cold! Good thing I'm wearing gloves!

1000: I wonder what movie the kids will want to watch tonight. Maybe Finding Nemo.

And social network friends of this serial spammer, STOP LIKING AND/OR commenting on inane status updates.

And for our couples on Facebook; Facebook PDA is kind of weird. When you post on each other's wall how much you love each other, it makes me wonder if your relationship is in trouble. Maybe if I had love like yours, I would shout it from the top of the internet but I'm thinking that I would probably just call them at work, text them, or tell them since they are just downstairs in the basement paying bills. It's one thing to share with the world how you feel about someone, it's another to post to your feelings to their Facebook wall when you see them everyday.

A Black Person's guide to Eastern Europe

Last week as our class was wrapping up, I struck up a conversation with the professor of the incoming class. He is black, I am black so naturally we needed to talk. Why is the subject of another post. He asked me in Spanish how I was (not sure why since he teaches ESL to a Chinese woman), I responded in Spanish (mistake) and he naturally began asking me additional questions in Spanish that I started answering in a combination of English, Spanish, and the language I'm studying. He corrected my Spanish (unnecessary) and then we (finally) began chatting in English.

I told him I was heading to Eastern Europe. He laughed and said I was in for an education and warned me about the racism in Eastern Europe in a way that suggests I will long for the sublime discrimination of the United States. Then he gave me the brief which most older black professionals give to younger black professionals. It's hard to describe it but it's parts cautionary tales, part mentoring, and part pat on the back for still being one of few. But that was just for my job and the good old U.S. brand of discrimination he had observed at my employer over his decades of work with them. For the Eastern European brand of racism he would only hint at the delights in offense I was sure to experience.

I would ordinarily categorize him as an angry black intellectual. He had some over the top name like LaFontaine Higginsworth, greeted everyone in Spanish though it was clear we weren't studying Spanish, and had the social ineptitude to correct my Spanish when I was just playing along to be polite. Unfortunately, every guide book I have read about this country has a section on race and it's never a good news story. One in particular recounted a story about a stray dog that mortally attacked a foreigner. The natives sided with the dog. The author noted it was partly because their culture loved dogs but also partly due to racism. Wow. A dog living on their streets deserved more consideration than the visiting businessman? A dog *they* aren't even taking care of? Wow. Just wow.

Another noted that if you were black specifically, you can forget about dating anyone local because it was just too much. Well shit, then. Guess I'm going on a 2 year fast which in my dating world is nothing. Essentially it's situation normal. Still it's weird that total legit travel guides (e.g. Frommers, Lonely Planet) would make a note of race like they have. I'm skeptical. Just as it is in the U.S. I think gender matters. Minority women of all creeds move differently in society than their male counterparts. I also think in a foreign country as a representative of the U.S., being American matters. I'm American before I'm anything else which will make me wary on the local dating scene anyway. Women aren't the only ones running the seduction for green card schtick. Most importantly though, all of these guides have been penned by white people. I'm not sure if they ran a Soul Man experiment or just kept meeting random locals who talked about how much they hated black people and foreigners in general. Aside from the anecdote about how foreigners stack up against stray dogs, there wasn't much in the way of explanation.

So...I think while I'm out there, I shall pen a guide for the brown people who randomly have this area of the world on their bucket list of places to see because I'm confident I will have experience there that completely discredits the notion that not being from around there means that if I'm attacked by a mangy stray, the locals would be rooting for the dog. But if it does, after I heal, that shit is getting written down too and they will be off my Christmas list FOREVER.

Opening Act: I bought a ticket

I went today after class to buy a ticket to the next object of my Teen Beat affection. The venue is a coffee house in a strip mall between a Petco and a hardware store deep in the northern Virginia suburbs. The number of signs warning customers not to park at the Petco (towing strongly enforced-Petco is not effing around) may outnumber the number of actual band posters. Gotta feel like a rockstar when you're the headliner at this place. If I'm the traveling band man, maybe I look at the red/blue Petco sign and all the other signs on my venue door warning me about Petco and I think maybe I missed a turn somewhere on the way to my dream.

I was the only person in the place which was staffed by three college aged kids, predictably wearing all black. One of the guys was sporting the required obnoxious slouchy knit cap. The girl was wearing the small hoop nose piercing of a person who is straddling the gap between looking like someone who recycles, likes PBR, obscure bands, and Russian literature, and having something they can take out when they want to interview for a real job one day. Pretty sure there was some strong parental resistance with that nose ring and she has to take it out for church on Sunday. Didn't spot a tattoo on any of them which means their parents probably pull in at least 200K a year. I've been to the 930 club in D.C. and it's an intimate space but it feels like an authentic venue with authentic homeless people waiting to stab you after the show. It's amazing how quickly the neighborhood turns as you get within a half block of the club. It went from chit chat with my girlfriend to a quiet, brisk, situational-awareness stride. No signs about parking at the Petco at the 930 club and the staff is authentically alternative and not angling for that congressional internship anytime soon.

So we shall see.

Words, words, and more words

If nothing else is left of me, there will at least be this.  Hundreds, perhaps thousands of little letters to me, to you, to strangers, sharing my whiny angst, my rage, sorrow, joy, amusement.  I write because I need to, because I want to.  I like to know people laugh when I'm trying to be funny and intrigued when they laugh when I didn't think something was funny at all.  I write to connect. I write to be heard.  I write to create a community of like minded people and to attract the challenge of dissent; both kinds of discussions are enlightening.  I write to sort it out.  I write instead of talking but sometimes I talk instead of writing; the latter I do with very few because so few have that kind of time.  I write while stalling dog walks in unpleasant weather.  I write until I decide what to make for dinner.  I write instead of folding laundry.

I write because I want people to read.  I want people to read because I want to be known.  I'm not sure if I want to be known in a 'face on a bus' way or just known to enough strangers to believe that what I'm writing is good.  Not sure why I feel popularity would be validating in a culture where Snookie is a celebrity and I reluctantly know more about the Kardashians than I do about my own extended family.  Maybe everyone wants once in their lives to be celebrated for something; Gatorade cooler over the head, carried on someone's shoulders to bring them even closer to the sky.  Could just be me.

Sometimes I feel an urge to get my house in order.  It might just be that I've been watching too many Investigation Discovery spouse-murdering marathons but I'm reminded that I'm not going to be here forever and I don't know how much longer I've got.  It's a little macabre to consider but it's also healthy for a person like me-maybe people in general-to consider.  It's the frame of mind in which I'm considering going to a concert Thursday night.  It's a school night, it's winter, it might not be any good, it's not super close to the house, I'm getting over a nasty cold....  But I love music, I'm a sucker for a drippy white boy in a t-shirt and tousled hair singing his journal poetry about some girl he loves the way I wish someone would love and write about me.  Especially if my monthly event is taking place at the same time as his dirty hipster acoustic poetry about love and at least one war protest song (which only bugs me because I'm pretty sure none of these guys have ever even been in JR ROTC).

The other lameness that figures into my decision matrix is my tendency to pine after seeing t-shirt acoustic guitar boy.  It's one of my least favorite things about me.  I can't just admire their hooks, melodies, pick work, arrangements, vocals.  No, I want to have their children.  I want to leave everything and just be around people like that all day.  People trying to turn their inner visions into something accessible to them and relatable to the rest of the world.  So I'm miserable and inspired for weeks after I see someone I really like live.

Tickets are $15.  A steal for what is sure to be some kind of blog fodder.  I'll keep you posted.

In that kind of mood

This. Woman. is. a. ninja

This woman killed a professional killer.  With her bare hands.  She choked him out, grabbed the hammer he tried to kill her with and ran to a neighbor's house to get help AFTER he attacked her and hit her repeatedly with a hammer in the face and head.  I hope never to know how I would react if I were surprised in my home by an assailant but if I were I hope my story ends the same way.  This woman is a professional badass.  She actually said out loud that she wasn't going to be killed in her own home.  I love how her mind works.  I can just imagine her walking in, thinking 'hmm, darker than normal in here. Guess I didn't let up the shades....HOLY SHIT WHO THE FUCK IS THAT?  IS THAT A HAMMER? OMG HE JUST HIT ME IN THE FACE WITH A HAMMER, OH MY GOD HE IS TRYING TO KILL ME, WHAT. THA. FUCK?! I'VE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE. OH SHIT, I CAN'T GET AWAY (and then)....OH HELL NO. I WILL NOT BE KILLED IN MY OWN HOUSE.  I AM GOING TO KILL THIS MAN OR DIE TRYING.

And you know what?  She is so freaking amazing and lucky she actually tried to let him live.  She told him if he told her who sent him, she would stop choking him.  She let him breathe and he tried to flip her and resume the attack so she went back to choking him out with her arm until he stopped moving.  The first choking was with her hands.  Seriously, this woman is my hero.  Not only did she have the presence of mind to mount a defense to a surprise hammer attack, she went back to live in the house she was almost killed in.  Yea, she rolls hard, son.   She made herself work through the horror of having to end another person's life, of being attacked in your home.  Her husband went to jail for hiring the hitman and she got back into the ryhthm of life being an ER nurse and doing the occasional seminar on the importance of learning self defense.    Amazing.

In Memoriam

9 February 2011, SGT Patrick Ryan Carroll was killed in Afghanistan by an IED during patrol.  January 10th 2011, about 4 weeks before he was killed, he was stateside on home leave and serendipitously stranded for a few extra days in the U.S. because of a snow storm, and he commented on my blog.  He went by the screen name The Misguided Prodigy and when he was stateside and able to, he commented frequently on my blog.  I don't know how he found me but I was always glad to see his comments (as I am to see any at all).  He was an ardent fan and so encouraging and complimentary of whatever nonsense I had to say.  I wondered today if he was still down range and checked his blog and learned he had been killed.  God, what a world we live in.  I didn't even know your real name until today Patrick but I hope you have killer internet connection speeds up there and have some time now when you aren't helping your loved ones heal to tap out some of those posts you had bubbling up inside you.  Rest in peace blogger friend.  Thank you for your service, I so deeply regret your sacrifice.

Vignette

This is my favorite time of day.  The sun is streaming in through my crappy aluminum blinds and heating up the apartment.  Baloo's eyes are amber in the light and she alternates between resting her head on the window sill and napping in a sun pool on the carpet.  The end of the couch is bathed in light and when I lay my head there, it's like taking a nap on a quiet leather sunny beach.

What I would tell me

If you haven't seen it, the premise of this show is to go through a box of the guest's mementos from childhood.  It's interesting, sometimes insightful, and completely relatable as we've all been there.  Most times near the end of the interview the host hands the guest a childhood photo and asks what they would want to tell the kid or young adult in that photo.  I found the clip above to be particularly touching.

I would tell past me nothing.  That girl had to be who she was and struggle with life a little so I could be who I am today.  If you've got halfway decent parents with even an 'nth of perspective, they are telling you the same things the future you would tell you about how there will be other boys, new friends, bigger things, a bigger world than the one you occupy as a child and young adult.  That everything will be ok because everything you are worrying about then will be okay by the time you are 30.  A lot of those things will be ok 30-45 seconds after high school and/or college graduation. That's the moment when you are dipping your first toe into the current that will carry you so rapidly to 35 you'll feel like you were pining to be 25 so you could rent a car on your own the day before yesterday.

I'm not sure I would have made it if I told that girl what was in store.  That girl imagined the fairy tale as her destination; having children, making a home, going to church on Sunday, being a kick-ass mom, writing bad poetry.  What I'm doing now would not seem cool to her at all.  And it's not cool really.  It's just interesting enough to keep me showing up for a paycheck and give me something to care about to break up the time I would otherwise be completely absorbed in me.

I'd like to talk to future me instead.  I would tell her that I can't believe what we've made of this.  Whatever it is, I feel fairly certain it will exceed my current imagination since everything up until now has.  I'd like to tell her that I think that means good things but I guess there have been some incredibly bad and low times too I never imagined so I would congratulate her for weathering those storms.  It's good that we can remember but somehow still forget enough to not be in a constant state of terror or mourning.  I would tell her I think she should always have a dog and that I cried about Baloo 10 years before because I knew she wasn't forever and 10 years after.  Damn dog.

I hope future me still has Soul Twin and if we haven't bought that piece of land and settled into our non-lesbian lives together then I hope we still empty the dishwasher together from 2000 or 20 miles away, consult each other on random purchases, counsel each other though minor meltdowns due to poorly timed romantic comedy viewings or bad dates, and unscrew each other from the ceiling as needed.  Maybe we won't get our happy ending in love but at least we have something to look forward to if it doesn't work out.

I hope future me is an aunt and that my brother and sister find good souls to build lives with.  I hope my nieces and/or nephews really get to know their grandparents because those are some great people to know.  I hope to hold babies in my arms and then give them back to their parents.  I would tell me to keep investing in myself, whether it is a personal trainer or a monthly massage because I deserve a treat for putting up with myself 24/7.  I also hope future me gets to a HBCU to see one of these in person:



and one of these (go 'head Becky's! that routine was awesome)



and this



and isn't this adorable?



But seriously, none of those can top this.

Really?

What is it like to be asexual?

By Lucy WallisBBC News

Jenni is in a relationship with Tim, who is not asexual

Continue reading the main story

Twenty-one-year-old Jenni Goodchild does not experience sexual attraction, but in an increasingly sexualised society what is it like to be asexual?

If I were a stand up comedian, I would have a field day with this. This is group of self-identified people who define not having sex as something other than celibacy, chastity, whatever. They have a sub-categories, romantic and aromantic which means exactly what you think it does. They also have gay and lesbian asexuals. I can barely type for the number of times my eyes are rolling back up in my head with bemused annoyance. The young lady featured above is 21, barely old enough to pick a career and clearly not yet committed to a hair color but she's going on the record as asexual. I think she could safely describe herself as a virgin or celibate since "It is not known whether asexuality is something a person experiences for their entire life or for a period of time." I don't know, I'm guessing we don't know because being asexual is not a real thing. It's just called not having sex. But maybe I'm wrong. I just thought I just wasn't having sex but maybe I'm asexual. If there is some kind of additional sub-category of minority I can fit in by claiming that label, I'm in, at least long enough to get some scholarships or something.

Just to be clear, I don't have anything against people not having sex for whatever reason; faith, lack of interest, discipline, safety. But to make not having sex into a group of people akin to hetero and homosexuals, that's just horse squeeze to me. Rainbow Bright had this to say regarding how she could know she was asexual when she had never had sex: "Well if you're straight have you tried having sex with somebody you know of the same sex as you? How do you know you wouldn't enjoy that? You just know that if you're not interested in it, you're not interested in it, regardless of having tried it or not."

Fair enough, I feel the same way about brussel sprouts. But I wouldn't start or join a group of people who don't like brussel sprouts and create awareness of our community of people who are doing nothing but not eating brussel sprouts, being in relationships with people who do. This is a group of people NOT doing something. What. the. fuck.

But I'm all for the bandwagon. Let's catalog the human condition until everyone has a group, especially if you are a group of people who are *not* doing something. I think the following things should become defined groups with forums, lawyers on retainer to file discrimination suits, and advocacy/awareness activities.

*Kids and adults who don't do their homework (I suggest ADHD and non-ADHD chapters)

*People who insist on driving in the left lane with cruise control no more than 3 miles above the posted speed limit and very often at least five miles *under* the speed limit. Their voices must be heard and the discrimination, middle fingers, curses on their family, and abrupt cutting off to make them have to tap their breaks and reset their cruise control just has to stop.

*People who don't pick up after their dogs

*People who don't watch popular movies until at least a year after everyone stops talking about them and often not at all

*People who have never seen Casablanca and have no interest in doing so

*People who don't wear makeup

*People who don't like socializing but don't consider it a disorder and are perfectly ok with it

*People who don't collect stamps/beanie babies/antiques

*People who don't bathe (this is a group with possibilities, I've smelled them everywhere)

*People who don't kill other people (a silent majority whose time has come to have a voice)

A federal holiday wouldn't hurt either. We've got some room between March and May that could use some paid breaks. Also, here is my new dating profile:

I'm asexual because that is a thing you can be now. I want to get to know you and spend time cuddling and kissing you if the asexual chemistry is there. I think you people call it dating but look it up, it's a thing now.

PSA: Stay home if you have really bad gas

I think if you have terrible gas, you should be allowed to take a sick day.  You don't have to have food poisoning.  Everyone knows sometimes there's a disagreement, it's perfectly natural. But we can smell it and we're really conflicted about pretending we don't.  And to the person who lights up the elevator--that is some bold shit.  You make everyone who rides that elevator until the smell clears culpable for that smell to everyone that gets in the elevator after them.  Just wrong.

What is Love

I know I can't define it or even really describe it but I've been marinating in romantic comedies the last few days and with each formulaic ending, I get sucked deeper into the quicksand of thinking about what fantasy fuels the plots of all these movies and how it influences our expectations in relationships. I don't know anyone whose romance resembles any movie I've ever seen about love. When it does, we swoon. And you know what? Without exception the guys with swoon-y gestures and beautiful prose didn't work out. I don't know if that is a phase with guys where they see if they can be that guy or if they use it as a means to an end because women love living in love like the movies. The only woman I've seen on television whose romantic life I even remotely identify with is the Liz Lemon character on 30 Rock (*moment to non-lesbian girl crush on Tina Fey*)

What people need from love is less individual than fingerprints but more specific than one size fits most. There is something in most of us (men and women), deeply encoded and constantly running in the background, that wants to couple. Be it for sex, company, material wealth, most of us would like to get the best two out of three combo we can manage and get off the dating grid. I don't think people hate dating because dating is bad. Dating just takes a lot of energy and resources and for whatever you are in it for (sex, company, money...etc), it has a low return on investment. Locking it down with a nice guy/girl and not telling the story of your life for the 90th time makes sense for most people.

Sooo.....

We meet someone. Of all the random strangers we've both encountered, we forge some kind of connection. That counts for something with me because we beat the odds already. I can't help but find magic in the things that have to work in harmony for two people to meet and actually become a significant part of one another's life. I even feel that way about my friends. I am very sentimental about how and when we met. It's the part of the movie where you know these two people are going to be very important to one another but they don't know it yet.

We're dating, it's a bona fide relationship of some kind. Neither of us are scanning the horizon but at least one of us is end gaming the relationship, trying to figure out if they can identify the things that will bother them in 10 years and whether the things they love about you/us right now will offset those things. Fine, we all do that. The biggest mind screw to me when it doesn't work out though is 'I love you but I'm not in love with you.' Love can not even be defined but there is some nuance in our expectations that makes a distinction between loving someone and being in love with them. I think anyone who feels that way is really saying, "I love that you love me, that is my favorite thing about you. I do not feel the same way but I really love being loved. That is what I mean when I say I love you; I love you loving me." Any romantic comedy that uses this plot device (e.g. You've Got Mail) shows a perfectly normal and loving person who dagnabit, is just *boooring*.  The person they can't get out of their head is usually someone who is different, gets under their skin, brings upheaval but somehow *gets* them in a way their wonderful dependable boring significant other doesn't.  So according to the movies, I should go for a guy who deceives me, buys out my business, but really means well.

What is so unappealing about being with someone compatible?  What is wrong with the relationships where someone is more demonstrably emotionally invested than the other? Why do we tell the devote they deserve to be with someone as into them as they are into you? Why do we think that is true? Being loved is powerful and assuming there is physical attraction, why would that be a bad life?  Just like I don't believe you can sleep with the same person without some kind of emotion creeping in, I don't think you can be loved by someone and not be changed or affected by it.  You may think you aren't into them but if they cut you off...I can't figure out if it's worse or the same as losing love outright.  I think it feels worse.

I think part of the dilemma in relationships is figuring out how we want love to feel, what love should and should not do to us and for us. Even when to make a declaration of love is a milestone. The postmortem on failed relationships often leads to a conclusion that what we called was love was something else altogether. Kind of useless to conclude a relationship was lacking love or "real love" simply because it didn't work out.  A car doesn't stop being a car simply because it won't start.  Just because English only has one word for it (love) doesn't mean the concept doesn't have the range to include our attempts at happily ever after.  How we test and measure love changes over time I think, as discernment drives us to consider how love is demonstrated instead of how it is expressed.  The purest, most emotionally consistent, and sometimes overwhelming love I have experienced is for my dog. My heart swells at how simply she makes me happy. Love that unfiltered and heart swelling I think is only for babies* and animals. Everyone else is a challenge.  I've answered no questions, but I think I have cleansed my brain.  Rom-Com break for sure.




*(making a very deliberate distinction between babies and children.  Children are short people who can and do get on your nerves and can be very challenging to love as they age)

Watching too much TV

Wondering if I can get away with not walking the dog tonight.  The way she is eyeballing me suggests I will be shagging my ass out the door in the near term.

I've decided the next time I feel bad about myself to watch TLC.  Is is just me or is that network becoming trainwreck central?  And do these people understand that they are not part of the joke, they are the joke?  Hoarders is jaw dropping-ly amazingly awful.  I don't claim to be an expert on the show but it certainly seems that hoarding is to white women what serial killing is to white men.  What. the. hell.  I can not do it justice so here's a clip from the episode I watched last night.



It was awful.  She was a trash hoarder.

A. trash. hoarder.

She hoarded *trash*.

Sorry, I just can't get my head around not throwing away trash.  There was a foot-and-a-half pile of used sanitary napkins in the bathroom.  There were roaches behind the pictures on the wall and *in* the refrigerator which was described by the exterminator as an "incubator."  They had pets, two teenagers and that woman living in the house.  Feeling a bit overwhelmed because those dishes from Monday are still in the sink and you are behind on laundry?  Watch an episode and you will feel like the most together person.  You'll look at your turd-free floor, roach free walls, floors, ceiling, and appliances and think, yea, I can work with this.

But I wasn't done feeling superior so I tuned into an episode of Toddlers and Tiaras.  I do not understand the stunning lack of self-awarness in so many of the parents on the pageant circuit.  I can not believe they sign releases.  This mom was even breeding multiple personalities for her 6 year daughter by encouraging her to leave her 'real' self in the car and keep her pageant alter-ego on deck for the duration of the competition.  Ho-ly crap.



And this girl needs her own show.  And someone to start a college fund for her.



Well Baloo just assumed her station directly in my line of sight so she can begin staring at me until I take her out.  She is brutal.

Peek-a-boo

'I'm really too old for this game', I thought this morning in the shower.  Things don't go away simply because I close my eyes or hold my hands in front of my face.  My backslide pattern is familiar to me now; staying up late doing nothing, insomnia, dread of the morning, fervent prayers for time travel to absolve for all the lost time doing the above, bargaining with the morning light, borrowing all day from the future where the unaccomplished are rearranged but not addressed.  I'm officially freaking out.  This will be the ebb and flow of 2012 I predict.  Upheaval of moving, personal and professional preparations for the same, random moody stuff, life.  I know everything is better with a good night's rest and an early wake up.  I know this.  But I still slide into the funk and let the weight of the undone insulate me from happiness.  I don't want to leave my house.  But I must and I shall.  Soon I will not have the luxury of time to fret so I don't worry really that I will be in this place long.  Still, I'm really too old to hide under the covers and wish the world away.