Look at all the pretty colors

Not sure how or when it happened but I have become a purse girl. Behold:

Arg

I fucking hate tiny dogs. Just because your outside shitting barking cat weighs 10 pounds doesn't mean you don't have to train it or keep it under control on a leash. I am 2 Aleve into what promises to be a fun ride of discomfort after wiping out beautifully on the street trying to keep my dog from murdering a punk ass little dog that was not under control by the idiot walking them.

Warping the halo

Oh how it sucks to be left behind. It's like selling your house but hanging around to watch folks throw out your shit and comment on the handyman things you didn't get done.

Some other things a coat of paint won't do (vignettes from apartment hunting in the ghetto)

Remove mouse droppings from your freshly painted would-be apartment. Also won't remove dismissive landlord comment about 'well look where we are' about the downstairs neighbor's mouse sighting.

Remove ominous smokestacks from foreground of your center city view or make a feral cat colony count as evidence of a pet friendly neighborhood.

Shuffle up the ratio of pit bulls to any other kind of dog.

The witching hour

I can't sleep. I'm restless like I remember being as a child. Itchy, too warm, not tired but a tad irritable. Unlike a child, I know I should be sleeping but it won't come. So I'm up and writing because nothing puts me to sleep faster than my own words. Laundry is done for the weekend though not completely folded and put away just yet. Today when it's actually daylight I may fix some clothing too dear to part with and fix a meal that will make me feel less bad for having the remainder of a obscene slice of red velvet cheesecake for dinner. Maybe I'll even prepare some more for this move, the stress of which is probably responsible for this restlessness. Ashley is looking for apartments in earnest now. We went to a horrible place today that was an object lesson in what a fresh coat of paint won't do. It's a place that would worry my mother. Then we went to a place where the saddest woman in Philadelphia sat on her stoop and smoked a cigarette. We brainstormed what manner of circumstance would convey despair that rolled of a person like that. We settled on 'fresh out of crack' but if Ashley, determined always to do the opposite of what makes the most sense has her way, she will be able to report back from her new digs right across the street if our sad woman ever finds happiness. Or crack. I don't think I can handle watching a kid piss away every advantage I worked to give them in life. She's my sister and I sometimes just want to clock her with an anvil (wherever they make those outside of Warner Brother's cartoons).

But in happier news, I am sublimating all the stress I'm not eating or writing on shopping. I started to feel bad tonight about my shopping bug but then reminded myself my version of a shopping spree is buying a new hallway runner and some flip flops at Ross (I totally bought more than that, but it was still at Ross). With the exception of the the excessive amount of purses I've purchased over the last month, everything else has been reasonable and on crazy sale, like 4 dollars for a bracelet sale. And the purses I *just* bought, also on crazy sale.

Every now and then when I'm inclined to be disappointed with how well I'm not holding it all together, I try to give myself some grace. It's been quite a spring. We seem to be so far from where we were it is hard to process that I was preparing myself for my mother to die, the government was being furloughed, I was cleaning my mother up after she used the bathroom and holding a bucket for her to spit in while acting like it was the most normal thing in the world. It was for me in that moment. That was my normal. Now I call the house and talk to my mom like I wondered if I ever would again. Then the shit baton was passed from family to work, and I had a terrible month at work in June. Really shitty. And work appears to have designs on making July shitty too.

I cracked sometime in June, driving for the nth time towards Washington D.C. and cursing a blue streak over the shitty work situation on the phone with my soul twin. I surprised myself with the words that came out of me. I was done. I was ready to die, I had/have no expectation that life was ever going to be any different than it was now. I will always be without a significant other, I will always grieving the stupid stubbornness of someone in my family (or myself), I will never be 'that girl' for anyone, nothing I ever try to accomplish at work will ever actually happen. I was done. I had seen enough and I wanted to be done. Soul Twin said she had been waiting for me to crack for some time and had not understood how I could just keep going, keep absorbing the little shit storm life had become and be so seemingly okay with it. I might be wrong but I could swear she was even a little delighted she was there when it happened. I was completely over it though. The only thing keeping me from the single car accident that would release me was a sidewalk snacking Labrador who I decided just wouldn't understand and wouldn't be taken care of as well without me. It was weird to hear myself say those things. It was an out of body experience. I wasn't upset or crying, just completely over it. Light a match and walk away over it. I can't make good happen in this world, I don't want to stick around and watch it be bad.

I don't have the time to give that episode the consideration I think I ought to so in the interim, I shall buy purses, write when I can't sleep, and eat red velvet cheesecake for dinner when I need to.

Bemoaning the long distance friendship

It's very early on the west coast but I can see my old boss (OB) is up. I want to ping him--and I just did and now I'm horrified because his status went from green to away. It doesn't matter really, if he's not really up then he will ignore me. But it bothers me. It takes a while to get comfortable in a relationship. There is a settling period and in that settling period your relationship norms are set. Those norms are reset every time there is a big change; getting married, moving away, having children. With the exception of moving, those big changes haven't happened in my life so I don't really understand where I fit when the dust settles on those other things or even how it works when those situations are present when I meet someone. With age, the demographics are really starting to work against me. We all have less time for everything and most of the people I know are married with kids AND moving every few years. There is a churn of new people in their lives that move them further and further away from the things we used to have in common and further and further away from our history and shared experiences with one another. It's hard to manage long distance relationships of any kind and most don't survive. OB may be my most favorite boss/friend since my first boss out of college (still the best person I have EVER worked for) but there will be others for both of us.

I'm always prepared to be left behind or dropped because there is only so much room and time in anyone's life. You simply can not take everyone with you and I don't understand why 9/10 of the people who talk to me would even call me their friend. I say this without an ounce of self hatred but I really don't understand what most people get out of being friends with me or what they even consider me to be. I don't understand invitations to visit and I am always, always nervous whenever I accept them that this will be the time I failed to understand it was not an invitation they ever expected to be accepted. That is a terrible feeling and I want to avoid that feeling. I basically have to be begged to visit. Not because I'm awesome but because people say things they don't really mean because they are polite and well meaning. If you have a wife/husband, kids, family, etc, I'm not sure what I'm adding to the mix that you aren't getting somewhere else and I don't want to add to the chaos in your life. Maybe one day I'll get over that and not fear that feeling of 'wow, I totally called that invitation wrong' but until then...

I think that's why I cried so much when OB left. I was absolutely crushed to break up our small team but I was also grieving the loss of him in my life. I don't think we'll survive. Being friends with married people is the worst, and especially married men because I am mindful/wary/careful about how my relationship may be perceived by their spouse. I've had issues with husbands being jealous of the time their wives want to spend with me too and that sucks just as much as a wife being wary of my relationship with her husband. I believe in both cases, I'm a catalyst for something bigger in their relationship but I'm not interested in being a catalyst or a lightening rod for some bigger discussion a couple needs to have. Most people aren't interested in digging past the 'why am I jealous of your relationship with Ava' to whatever the bigger issue is. It's easier to let me be the issue. And maybe I am the issue and their lives would be without strife were it not for me. This is why it sucks to be friends with married people. I'm in my mid-30's so almost everyone I know is married. I have one very close single friend. Thank God for her. She is the person I can call with all the insignificant minutiae of life that is the fabric of intimacy in a relationship. No one chasing toddlers or eating breakfast with the Mrs./Mr has time to hang out on the phone for 45 minutes trading notes on the individual threads that compose the fabric of my life. Further, it's actually not that interesting. We're both just really bored.

I have to make a note of the couple that is the exception to this general rule, not only because she's a faithful reader who calls me with comments when she objects to something or finds something particularly funny but because they really are unique. I can hang out with both of them. Her husband and I like a lot of the same shows, have similar senses of humor, I don't feel like we need to talk when we have nothing to talk about just to make conversation. We can hang out, watch tv, talk about whatever, and it's all good. I am not afraid that I need or like them more than they like me, I'm not afraid of any weird opposite sex vibe, they have stayed at my house without me even being there, and I treasure their unique place in my weird little universe. It may not stay that way but I do treasure what it is now. I know you're going to call me anyway but at least you're going to call to say you were going to call me to set me straight and then you got to the end of this and are now calling to say you are glad I am not "ridiculous" as it concerns you.

Happy Birthday America; My love letter to Philadelphia

I love this place. This is America. Macy's Day parade is a very white celebration with cameos of diversity, at least the way they broadcast it. Philly is a sweaty messy melting pot, no cameo needed. A crowd shot gives you everything. White next to black, next to old, next to Asian, next to everything. Our parade is step team followed by Falun Gong, followed by the Mummers, followed by a military color guard, followed by the Philadelphia Eagles mascot on a 4-wheeler. We celebrate for 11 days, we eat, we party in the smallest big city I've ever lived in. I love you Philly. I love you for your pretzels and pizza crusts strewn on the sidewalks. I love you for being so very real. For being what I love about being American, where I can't tell who is visiting and who lives here when they aren't traveling in groups of 20 with the same color t-shirt. As I prepare to live abroad, I will miss this about you. I will miss fitting in because absolutely nowhere in the world I've been is as beautifully diverse as our amazing country and Philly you are America. You are hipster (which can strike any creed), and African, and Black, and White, and Jewish, Hispanic, Asian, East Asian, Jersey, Irish Catholic. I can easily run into all these folks on my 10 minute walk to work, not to mention a 30 strong group of 6th graders visiting the Liberty Bell. For this one evening, we'll let how far we've left to go to improve on this great experiment go and just enjoy and celebrate what great thing we are.