One of those days

I'm staring at the stoic profile of my waiting dog and wishing I could just take my carbohydrate filled belly to bed instead of putting on pants to take her for a walk. Sometimes I imagine I would do all sorts of things with the time I spend walking her like going to the gym, taking in a movie, getting to work on time. Of course that is all horse poo. I had to be cajoled to happy hour yesterday, and it had nothing to do with needing to get home to walk my dog. Truth is, she is the single best decision I've made in the last 7 years. She's opened my world. Almost everyone I know has a Baloo related genesis of contact and I've met some tremendous people in the last 7 years and seen some great things walking through the forests, beaches, and sidewalks with her.

So I guess I'll put on some pants and get going.

Recycling; it's not just for bottles and cans aka Old posts from the first blog

From a previous blog, devoid of patrons, I am retelling the story of Mr. Coffee. I have been meaning to get the old blog, created on Apple's unfriendly iWeb app, archived with this blog so tonight when my head is full of competing streams of thought, I thought I would resume the archival process by documenting more of my encounters with strange men. Sigh.



Original post date: 7 Jan 2008

About a Boy

I met a cute guy today and it was great. We had been flirting on the phone the week before and today he stopped by. His pretext in doing so was plausible but fairly transparent. He wanted to check me out and it looks like we might go out for coffee later this week. I’m pretty excited about it but trying sorta hard not to be. It just so happens that I’m going out of town for a few days and can’t even begin to think about coffee with him until Friday. What fortuitous timing. I’m going to have a great distraction and perhaps by Friday I can count on being a little less spastic. He’s got great eyes and warm, soft hands. I’m so happy that he’s cute! When he was flirting with me last week, I thought, oh great, some guy with a face for radio is coming on to me over the phone. There’s no way he’s cute and even if he is, I don’t like making a connection with people that can’t see me. I need them to know what they are getting into. No one needs the ‘oh’ face when someone sees you and isn’t attracted to the in-person you. I totally hope we at least hang out long enough to kiss. How twelve am I?

The best part of this all is that I’m happy. Having a little flirt, having the potential for something fun and light to come into my life--it feeds my soul. And if my good fortune continues and there’s at least enough contact for there to be contact, that’s some pretty great stuff too. Intoxicating and addictive stuff but pretty great all the same.

**I'll be posting this thread in its entirety over the next week, with one archival post a day.**

The problem with penance

1 July 2009

I've been feeling guilty about this stupid purse for days. I've been trolling the internet, looking for prices, hoping that if I find I got a tremendous deal on it, it would help assuage the veil that comes over my eyes whenever I look at it. I've even identified a shop to take it to that might buy it from me. Everyone within earshot has heard of my angst over my purchase of this purse. I titled this post the way I did because I felt I needed to make up for my lapse in judgement by withholding something from myself. Like a quicker and more comfortable 10 minute cab ride home instead of 2 hours on trains and buses. The problem with penance isn't paying for your sins, it's not knowing how much they cost. For some people, it works out in their favor as they have a tendency to lowball. For people inclined to round up (yours truly), it never ends.

At the center of this knot producing silliness are two things. One, I'm not the girl who carries this purse. The purse matches nothing about my personality or dress. Sure it's brown and brown goes with everything but it is stylish in a way I'm just not, no matter what I have on. When I get dressed in the morning my goal is to leave the house with clothing on. On rare days, my hair, clothes and suggestion of make-up come together for the best version of me that I know how to be. That purse barely goes with that girl, much less the one who is normally falling out the door. The purse is lipstick on the the otherwise slovenly presentation that is me most days.

The second thing, and both things are simply scratching at the surface of stuff I just need to grow into or out of, is that I can't give myself permission to purchase things like that or go places that aren't attached to an obligation or do anything really, without permission or external influence. I read something in a short story* over the weekend that nearly knocked the wind out of me, it convicted me so. "After that night, I thought a lot about why he never went out to Arizona and finally decided it was fear-of having the experience fall short, of realizing too late that he should have made a different choice. For him it was better to not know for sure what the Grand Canyon looked like, to retain the splendor of his dreams."

Not only do I retain the splendor of my dreams, I retain the terror of my fears by letting them go unchallenged and unsubstantiated. I'm afraid of the real thing. I don't like making mistakes. One of the things I treasure in many of the people I love is the ability to disagree and voice their needs. I'm not very good at reciprocating but I love that they can be so much less agreeable than me and still accept and expect love. Another line from the same story, "He lets me do what I know best: acquiesce, accommodate, allow my desires to melt like wax around someone else's life." I'm light years different in countless ways from the woman I was 10 years ago at 24, but I can still read my journals from when I was 13/14 and see fundamental me. Many of my habits, attitudes, and behaviors have changed but I really haven't. I still keep looking for a pat on the head, a boy to like me, and a place I fit in.

*Laura van den Berg, Where We Must Be.

If I should die before I wake

I do pray the Lord my soul to take but I also hope that people will tell the truth about my life. Perhaps I have a black heart but I found the parts of the Michael Jackson memorial service that I did catch to be schmaltzy and subtly self-promoting. MJ who spent his life getting lighter and lighter and purposely sought to have children by a fair white woman because he sought those features in his kids, was given credit for breaking down racial barriers. Magic Johnson gave MJ credit for his and Kobe's ability to become household names in their career as basketball players. Really? And the "greatest entertainer/musician in the world" titles being thrown around just emptied those proclamations of their meaning. Sure he was beset on all sides with notoriety and flat out weirdness but to those who actually knew and loved him, you would think they would have more to say than something a random person off the street would have or could have said about him. But that is hardly my point and I don't speak ill of the dead, I speak ill of the living who spoke of the dead. One more thing...Al Sharpton? Really?

When I die, I want those who are around to remember me to remember ME. Not some airbrushed deified version of me that softens all my edges, makes my blemishes and foibles all part of the charm. I want something between a memorial and a roast. I want funny. I want people to laugh and sometimes grimace at some of the pain in the ass things I did. I want the friend whose healthy lifestyle all but guarantees she'll outlive me to tell everyone about the time I uninvited her to my house. I want my brother to tell everyone about the time I locked him out of the house to contend with the wasps he was deathly afraid of because I had been asking him all day to take out the trash. I want that guy who tried to kiss me in 7th grade to tell everyone that as he was leaning in, I told him his breath smelled like Doritos. Okay, he won't be there but I totally love that story because I can usually come up with something inappropriate to say when a guy is trying to make his move, not because I want to cut him down but because I'm extremely socially impaired. I don't want people kicking my coffin but I'd like anyone in attendance to think at least once during the service:

'God, she could be a bonehead.'

'Crap, she was SO neurotic.'

'Boy did she have a way with words.'

I'm out

Closely on the heels of my disappointing conversation with Down Low, I got an e-mail from another guy. I should know better by now not to answer an e-mail when all a guy has to say is 'hi' or 'what's up.' But I did. I responded with a short 'hi yourself' and he responded by asking me if I liked his pictures. What? Who the hell asks someone a question like that? I responded that I felt that was a pretty random question and he could assume if I was writing him back, I thought he was a nice looking guy. Another short message followed, 5-10 words max and I started to wonder what the point of this was when I got this message (note: what follows is the ENTIRE message):

"Family party yesterday...just relaxin today...naked in bed right now,lol"

Oh brother...

So, I think I've given it the old college try and then some. I'm completely over internet dating. The next person who tells me their best friend/guy at church/neighbor/co-worker, met their spouse on the internet is going to get a dirty look and possibly a punch in the crotch.

Oh the pressure of a beautiful day

The weekend has been absolutely awesome weather-wise. It is the perfect mix of warm and cool, a day you can spend entirely outside and never really get gross and sweaty. The pooch and I spent a few hours out yesterday to watch the parade which made me predictably sappy about how awesome America is. I loved how many creeds and colors were represented in the parade, how there was a black guy on the drum of the Japanese float, how there was a little black girl performing with the Irish dancers. The pup ate various things off the ground and got plenty of love from fellow parade watchers. I sort of wish it would rain so I wouldn't feel like such a dork for being inside watching Extreme Forensics and putting off some much needed housework.

In the "this is why I'm single" file, I got a nice note from a guy on the dating site about a two weeks ago. He seemed like a nice guy through our several e-mail exchanges. In the minus column, he is divorced with three kids. His kids stay with him through the week and with his ex on the weekend. I told him that I was concerned about talking to him because I didn't want to flake on him after getting to know him better because I really didn't want any baby's mama drama and all the other complications of joining a family in progress. I'm at the point however, when I'm trying harder not to throw out the baby with the bathwater so I decided to press on and see where this might go. So we talked on the phone a few nights ago and I was underwhellmed but still feeling like I shouldn't rush to judgement. Last night we talked and he mentioned he was working on second book. Naturally, I was intrigued. Then he told me what the book was about. It's about a "strong black woman" who is secretly insecure and "experiences things she never thought she would." The tags from the website where it is listed include "lesbian" and "down low", which for the uninitiated is engaging in homosexual activities while maintaining a heterosexual lifestyle. The people doing this usually insist they aren't gay or bi-sexual. That's just weird enough to tip the scales for me.

Fun

I've decided that people rarely ask you if you are having fun unless they suspect you are not.