may queen

back when we were kids, we used to talk about our favorite months and places as if those days were more magical than other days. some of my friends loved the summer months for lazy summer days at the shores, others loved the crisp autumn air and the new beginnings each school year brought -- before class work and social adventures hit full swing. we loved winter holidays and the start of the baseball season.

but me? i loved may and october, each one a transitional month to segue into harsher climates. in may, the last reminders of the winter chill are burned off in dewey morning sunlight and replaced with brilliant, cloudless skies drenching the world in golden light at dusk.

october holds just opposite for me. the chill finally returns to replace the sticky humid air that hangs heavy over us, like a wet, woolen blanket draped over us. this blanket which makes us move slower, act slower, think slower -- and wishing if only this blanket could be shaken off. now suddenly, we were renewed with energy as traded shorts and tanks for sweatshirts and jeans. a crisp, smoky air filled our lungs even as the golden light weakened, without ever losing her beauty.

in a perfect world, it would always be one of these two months. flowers bursting through the earth and then quickly ducking for cover. smells of firewood burning and freshly mowed grass, of apples and hyacynth blooms. i am sure i could find places with these temperatures and move there. part of me wishes that i could be more transient. others can move cross country or to a new city, travel more. but that's not my style.

my family, my friends, my culture -- we dig deep roots.

i missed my may this year. i stumbled from my nephew's first birthday in late april until now, in a distorted haze of obligation and sadness, of family and living, and longing and death. this isn't right. october is the killing season, even in this even-numbered year.

a hard rain cursed us, soaking our roots. but even though we needed the rain, i am ready to throw off the woolen blanket.

speechless

she sat, turned facing me in her car seat. one leg neatly tucked under the other. staring. watching me. quietly.

the sun was warm and bright as it washed over my jeans and tempered the wind that howled outside the car windows, trying to make its way inside.

i was thankful for the sunglasses i wore - to protect my eyes from the sun and her watchful eyes. my eyes, hidden behind the dark glasses, stay focused on the road and on the cars ahead of me.

an uncomfortable silence took hold and no amount of radio static could block out the noise of the howling winds adding to our unease. i don't believe we had been alone like that in years. most likely, for good reason. we don't argue. we don't fight. we just don't see eye to eye.

in the car, she tried to look into my eyes. i was thankful for the dark glasses i wore, keeping my soul safe from her. there is no mistaking that we are different people, i am just not yet ready to see how we are similar.

"you've must've had a hard life", she finally says to break the silence. how do you respond to question that is at both true and false without screaming. my life is no harder than others yet also uniquely complicated enough to warrant such a response. i want more information on why she would utter a statement i can't respond to. i need to know why before i can see her point or reason for it before i instinctively curl back my lips to snarl.

"i mean, you just always know what to do", she followed up with. i was thankful for the dark glasses i wore. she was trying to thank me for doing what comes natural to me, taking charge of the situation and juggling the details and persons involved.

for planning her husband's funeral. for helping her.

i tried to answer her. i mumbled something about having to work hard to get where i am today. how would she begin to understand a glass ceiling when she has never had to work and never looks up? she has lived her life under the protection of others -- going from her father's house to her husband's without stepping out into a doorway of her own. like a baby, dependent on them to feed her making her new independence at his death a rude and frightening awakening as to how sheltered her life has been. i think i rambled on about how either you find your inner strength or your inner strength finds you.

"i just wanted to thank you, is all. for everything you've done for me."

what i wanted to stay -- shaking her in both hands as i did -- you have two choices you can lie there and die along side him or you can choose life. you can choose to stand on your own two feet. discover how strong you really are and take control of your life, your destiny. determine who you are, not within the confines of someone else's idea, but of your own free will. educate yourself on things you don't know. ask questions. don't except just what others are willing to give you but demand what you are worth. just once, know the joy of being free to go, to be, to provide for your own needs. how sweet the fruit of one's labor truly is!

i am glad i wore dark glasses that day. my hands stayed firmly planted on the steering wheel, eyes forward watching this new destiny roll out before us as i sat speechless.

project blind-folded

as much as i love decorating and renovating my home, there is one task that i loathe.

shopping for window treatments.

if martha could see my struggle with picking out curtains, drapes, blinds, etc. she would design a much better selection of offerings than what is presently available. first, much of the selection is geared towards my mother's generation. there are not too many selections for hip, twenty-some... oops, thirty-somethings with actual taste in design on a budget. and please goddess, no fruit, lacey cut-outs, ivy or flouncy petticoat type curtains should ever grace a window.

oh sure tarshay markets itself as the design inspiration for those with caviar dreams on a bud light budget, but even their selection and prices aren't exactly high couture. for people with whom furniture is often shabby and not because its chic, designing a line of offerings for them to remind them that they are too poor to afford better stuff is just cruel. especially when the price points are still too pricey for them. ouch.

my family room has 14 fucking windows. yes, fucking windows. i say it every summer and spring when i clean the fuckers and change from the light and airy white curtains to the heavy-please-tell-me-the-sun-is-still-there drapes with thermal linings. a room with 14 windows gets mighty nipply.

but it is not for those windows why i am in the midst of my present shopping nightmare. this time i know what i don't want in my upstairs bathroom. nothing heavy to block the great light, but something that will prevent the peep show i've provided my neighbors in the next cul-de-sac behind me (for free!) the last few days. no frills, flowers, bright colors, pastel-ly colors, or anything expensive.

thank goddess the trees' leaves are filling in as nature's curtains to block my peep show to most of my neighbors. i am not usually an exhibitionist, but now that my bathroom renovation is complete (sans curtains, of course) i am going to use it.

the answer to my problem might just be a sewing machine away, but my recent attempts to sew a button on my pants (yup, it popped) reinforced the notion that despite my creative juices, there are some skills i just haven't mastered. or even entered into the shallow end of the pool with yet.

until then, i'll continue looking and hope my neighbors aren't.

it was the best of times...

...and it was the worst of times.

the box lied to us - this was neither fast nor easy. nor installed at this point.

i am referring to the last piece of our renovation project operation kill the pepto. our desire to remove the last remaining pepto bismol pink walls that coated our master bedroom and bath suite led to the last three and a half-months of painting, scraping and tearing out floors, fixing the closet so it can actually be used as a closet. (although it still can't hold all my shoes. crikey!)

we ripped up brown nasty carpet and replaced with new, puppy-approved carpet. we brought home two samples and let the girls choose -- of course they friggin' pick the expensive one.

we painted the walls a cool, silky ralph lauren metallic silver, which accentuated the room's size and contrasted nicely with our rich mahogany furniture and the velvety merlot hued-wall behind our bed. we painted the bathroom is slate blues, crisp whites and chose a brazilian cherry laminate floor for the closet, hallway and bathroom.

that's where it gets tricky.

neither of us are too shabby when it comes to the world of tools. my husband comes from a family of carpenters and skilled tradesmen, and even worked himself as an electrician after college and before he could step up into the white-collared world of eletrical engineer. i spent many years working in a frame shop where i learned to swing a hammer, work with sheets of glass and use tools like a pro.

so when this box of fake wood -- stick slot A into slot B -- fcuking refused to work for us, well, we had a problem with that. for a box with a total of 6 directions and directions in which both of us with our advanced degrees read numerous times, we could not fcukin figure out what we were doing wrong.

we got to the point were we almost decided to shave off the edges and nail the thing to the floor. we had reached a critical milestone -- our project could not proceed without a floor. we cursed, we screamed, we almost cried. we decided we needed to walk away.

when we came back the next night, we were inspired with a new vigor. it was going happen we could feel it. and it did. we missed the step where you unwrap the materials to allow them to acclimate to the room's temperature for at least 24 hours before attempting to install.

it seems my little habit of not unwrapping things has once again bit me in the ass.

i wish i thought of this...

if this is so wrong, what makes it right to do to a pet?

this movie clip was an advertisement produced by a canadian advertising firm for the spca.

i am not sure if it ever ran in the u.s. but i sincerely hope it would.

our house is a very very very fine house

the true measure of a couple's compatibility and the strength of their marriage can be gleaned by their response to this three-word phrase:

home improvement project

some shudder. some cry. some get angry and vow never again. some just laugh.

face it, with half of all marriages ending in divorce, someone at home depot needs to come up with a better slogan than "you can do it. we can help." unless they also plan to start offering couples therapy and cheap divorce lawyers.

maybe it's just because men and women are so different in their approach to life (and a project) that even having a store like home depot just deepens the line drawn in the sand between the sexes.

i spent a better part of my morning in home depot as you may have guessed. hubby and i had a reason to be in the store, we were picking up supplies to finish our master bedroom, bath and closet makeover. sadly, ty pennington and carter oosterhouse were not a part of this home makeover, although their presence would have certainly made things more enjoyable for me.

it started out routinely enough, we entered together pushing a cart with our list in hand. i'm not sure what evil force field lurks beyond those sliding doors but by the time we were ready to leave the store, we're ready to go aisle 9 to pick up a pick axe and finish each other off.

the funny thing is it's not just us that this strange phenomena happens to -- today, i witnessed at least 3 other couples who were ready to see judge judy for dissolution of their marriage. friends have told me similar stories of how they simply refuse to go into that store with their spouse. home depot has morphed into the great orange divide.

maybe its the way the store is divided between "contractor" and "home" that begins the tension. my husband left me in the paint department to just go check out a miterbox. it's not needed for our project today but i like walking through the kitchen cabinet section to dream about things i cannot have, so he have his few minutes alone to wonder how great life would be with this miterbox at his side.

with list in hand, i continued picking up items on it. when i got to the bottom of the list i realized wow, he's been gone quite awhile. my next thought is, this can only end badly.

as i whipped out my cell phone to use as a tracking device, i shuddered in panic. we had been in the store for almost two hours. i sincerely believe that the amount of frustration that a project absorbs is directly proportional to the amount of time spent procuring supplies in the pre-planning stages. we planned to be working in confined spaces for the next two days -- if he was pissed at me he'd go to taco bell and try to asphyxiate me while i painted the bathroom.

i dialed his number feverishly. no answer. oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. we were now entering into the "where the hell were you" stage of shopping. it didn't matter who went where...we both left the spots where we had last been seen. now it was just a matter of getting the words out first and with the proper finger point and exasperated facial expression.
in my journey to cover the monster warehouse aisle by aisle in search of him, i kept running into another couple deep in the throes of home depot-itis. they bickered as their anklebiters climbed all over their cart of plants and mulch. they traded snide remarks that i couldn't hear but could tell it wasn't pretty by the curled lips and bared teeth.

taking on a home improvement project just amplifies the normal human response to conflict. it has all the best elements to break a marriage:
+ to fights over the cost of the project (you spent how much over budget?),

+ to battles over who wins final say when a couple is in disagreement (sorry, we are not painting the kitchen yellow),

+ to struggles over work ethic (get up off yer ass and help me, would you?).

a home improvement project is like a soap opera -- c'mon, why do you think the steady surge of television programming in this genre? it's not because people are suddenly interested in paint colors and shag carpeting. it's for the conflict, silly.

a good project has all of this drama and a still has room for a pleasant result in the end. and for the couples who can eventually find humor during the process, well, they have the longest staying power there is.



before i got married, my husband and i had to take pre cana classes where a pregnant woman taught birth control and a priest talked about relationships. now either she didn't practice what she preached or her methods were suspect. regardless, i had volunteered at planned parenthood long enough to know what's what. but the single priest trying to tell me how to be a better partner? this is like me teaching a cooking class -- neither of us are qualified to give any advice in these areas.

but just think, instead of those wasted hours learning the rhythm method of birth control -- which has a failure rate somewhere near the rate of marriage survival -- what if there were field trips to home depot instead? what if that weekend was spent doing a home improvement project to test a couples' compatibility, to see if two people can work side by side, crammed into a tiny room, ripping up carpet, painting and installing new windows? finding misplaced tools, screaming for help when something lands on your foot? all of the homework could be completed for habitat for humanity and maybe some couples would learn a little more about each other than they originally thought they knew.

as for me, my hubby and i play the game so well. we both got the "where the hell were yous" out at the same time and we both had stinky lunches. thankfully, our bedroom - bath - closet home makeover is almost complete.

just as soon as that green cloud dissipates.

learning to juggle

as this 3-month project at work winds down to a close, i think my middle-of-the-night cold sweats will stop. the million moving parts that i have been responsible for delegating, reviewing, compiling, approving and finalizing are finally slowing down.

the blur that these last few weeks have been -- the sinking feeling of drowning -- of being pulled in more than one direction -- of feeling completely incompetent -- piles of paperwork -- post-its clinging for dear life on my monitor -- emails multiplying like rabbits in my inbox -- the long hours and late trains -- the incessant red blinking light on my phone signaling more questions, more comments, more requests for my time -- should end with it.

my boss emailed me today to tell me how proud she is of me and what a great job i did on managing this process. i thanked her for her compliment and told her it feels like i learned how to juggle knives blindfolded.

the jews killed jesus

please, please, please don't think i am an anti-semite. i am against all organized religions, actually.

after 12 years of brainwashing in a catholic school, they did all but pump subliminal messages into the drinking water and over public address system. *jesus died for your sins.* whoa -- jesus died because i got into a fight with my brother? holy shit! even in a 7-year-old's mind that seems like way too much power over someone.

dressed in our little blue uniforms and peter pan collar blouses, knee socks slouched to a certain level of coolness, we were pawns in the big, fat, religious conspiracy of catholicism. we were made to feel guilty for being girls, after all it was eve who fed adam the friggin apple and made it all go to shit supposedly. why? because adam was too friggin lazy to make his own dinner, dammit!

let's face it, our attendance was based more on a shitty public school system and not our parent's piety.

so when my friend talked about the moving religious service she attended, it was hard to see how this happened. what my head tuned out, it seems, is the fact that it was a jewish service she attended. my ears heard religion and automatically shut down. frankly, i am surprised i didn't go straight to my inner happy place.

well, that's surprising. its not that we were against the jewish faith, as i said before, we are just wary of any bully-pulpits. so that fact that she got some satisfaction from it really threw me for a loop.

instead of encouraging her experience, the rest of my friends cracked jokes. (deal with it. it's what we do.) we laughed how the nuns would have responded, "but the jews killed jesus."

of course, someone also pointed out the romans killed jesus but that doesn't justify any acts of persecution that have been heaped on the jewish people for all time. plus it doesn't look as good on a t-shirt.

only beckys and negroes are flammable

last night, as i walked out of my grad class with a few classmates, a few of us joked how the "bad kids" always gravitated towards one another in school.

normally, they would find each other outside puffing away as curls of cigarette smoke formed chains of solidarity around our necks. i was in fact very much a part of the bad girls smoking crew. like something straight out of an emily dickinson poem:

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

my undergrad years were very much like that. the crew of malcontents to which i belonged shared our poverty, our cynicism and our drugs the same way our opposites shared fashion tips. we were the 90s versions of hippies and radicals in torn jeans, flannel shirts listening to nirvana at all hours of the day and night. our beliefs were based on concepts shaped outside of pampered suburban childhoods or the virtues of having two parents. we clung to each other for our visions, truth and doc martins in the face of our vapid classmates.

but mostly we stuck together for the drugs.

despite our empty wallets, we quickly learned the basics of investing and good citizenship. by combining a few measly dollars, we could buy enough drugs to share the assets with all investors -- like a marijuana mutual fund.

oh we were frugal. our knowledge of dime bags only can take a college student so far when ramen noodles never quite satisfied the munchies we'd develop. still, most of us could never call home and ask for money to buy food even if it went to when taking into account we could again pool our finances to pay for the $6 dominos pizza special, we still always felt like we came up short on money.

what we were not short on was fun. yup, we were the kids who stole the bell from the library. we used it to ring it at parties and say,"yup shit's officially out of control."

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

we rather liked our no name status on campus. we partied by and for ourselves, sometimes letting friend-of-friends in our fun. it was one of those nights when we discovered the flammability of beckys and negroes.

it was a routine saturday night sitting in someone's dorm room on campus. we had yet to get kicked off or have the local cops come to arrest john fidelis. we had no clue who the fcuk was john fidelis. we were partying with eric.

who the fcuk is john fidelis?

we often said that ourselves. until of course, we discovered "eric" was john fidelis in three states and desperately wanted by the cops for something we didn't really care to learn what for exactly.

so it was a pretty routine night, nothing out of the ordinary. we were drinking and smoking, passing the pipe from person to person, until we smelled smoke.

a different type of smoke. not the sweet ahhhh scent of pot, and not the pinch of clove cigarettes and certainly not the black curtain of marlboro reds we chained smoked back then. it smelled worse.

becky or someone sitting next to her had dropped an ash from one of our lit smoking devices and instead of hitting the floor to burn us and the dorm into extinction, we were burning becky. the fringe of her torn jeans had caught the hot ash before it hit the grungy carpet. becky was on fire.

it took a moment for our drug and drink induced haze to clear enough to grasp what was happening. BECKY WAS ON FIRE.

and we laughed. oh god, how we laughed! BECKY WAS ON FIRE. hell, becky even laughed with us. after she realized the guy that pounced on her was not going for a cheap thrill.

thankfully someone had the good sense to dive on becky and pat the bottom of her legs down until we were sure we wouldn't lose her to the burn ward. aside from adding new scars to a ancient pair of jeans and some minor bruises from her overanxious savior, she emerged unscathed.

"ding! shit's officially OUT OF CONTROL," the bell captured the moment.

until a few moments later when fluffy, our lovable 6'5" massive black friend began to sweat after snuffing out the flames on becky. he managed to set himself on fire as he bent over becky, the fringe from his cut-off denim jacket was the next item to go up in flames.

the guy standing closest to him refused to touch him. he goes as a black man, "i am the next one to go up in flames, dammit. 'cause everybody knows only beckys and negroes are flammable."

ding!

the slant

i am a little disturbed. i decided to check out lisa's link that she left in her comment to not a colada.

(now don't immediately scramble to find the link, hear what i have to say first.)

first, the verbs
banging. hammering. attacking. punching. knocking out. ramming. ramming head against the wall. shooting. riding a bronco. spewing. beat the piss out of. push into a wall or table. sweep legs so as to incur falling. punch in the head.

now, the nouns
tramp. nasty wombat. big fat no-good worthless slob. whale. trollop. chick. girl.

every sex act involves a term referring violence. of one person dominating another. if you had seen the list of words without knowing their context, you could have easily thought i was referring to a fight or battle.

the nouns clearly depicted who its intended recipient was and exactly how it was meant to make her feel. to maintain control, to exert force or to manipulate. to demean her and make her feel used and worthless. dirty for a being a witness to his guilt and shame.

and the only thing i can think of is the slant by ani difranco:

... the sound of them strong
stalking talking about their prey
like the way hammer meets nail
pounding, they say
pounding out the rhythms of attraction
like a woman was a drum like a body was a weapon
like there was something more they wanted
than the journey
like it was owed to them
steel toed they walk
and i'm wondering why this fear of men?

all dogs go to heaven

and if they don't, i wanna go wherever they go.

it is never easy saying good-bye to a close friend or relative. if the family is lucky, they get their chance to say their good-byes in person to have the other person at least hear how he or she impacted your life in some way.

if the person is lucky, he or she would die knowing this already and pass quickly without pain and suffering.

perhaps the unluckiest person dies alone, unloved and without ever knowing how he or she mattered to someone. anyone. at all. to know you have not lived an empty existence.

+ + + + +

someone i met through majesty rottweiler rescue has had her heart broken today. brenda lee, one of her furkids, lost her battle with lymphoma. thanks to krissie, at the end, brenda lee knew how much she was loved.

brenda lee came from a shelter in nyc, a well-placed call from one of the shelter workers there alerted krissie to this wonderful girl, abandoned there a few days before. imagine taking your small child to the mall, and leaving him or her there with a stranger, knowing you were never coming back for him or her. imagine how frightened and alone your child would be in that situation. the unfamiliar sights and sounds, strangers poring over the anxious child - alone and afraid. it was no different for brenda lee.

like the child left behind, brenda lee couldn't tell us what happened or why she was there. she couldn't speak of missed meals or family members. of snuggling with her favorite person or walks in the park. of missing her favorite squeaky toy that both calms and entertains her. unfortunately, it is old scars and wounds healed over which often speak the loudest.

without saying a word.

at first krissie planned to foster her and until a family could be found for brenda lee. it was soon apparent that brenda lee had instead adopted krissie and her family. and so 6 months after bringing brenda lee home from the shelter, krissie "formally" adopted brenda lee.

a few weeks later, a small lump in brenda lee's mouth was diagnosed as cancerous, a tumor growing for some time and that now was making swallowing difficult. the vet's prognosis was bleak.

krissie was heartbroken but knew it was for the best. although still painful to krissie, no adopter wants to bond with a dog and lose him or her so quickly. it happens to be why it is so difficult to place older dogs into permanent homes -- everyone is looking for the "cute" puppy and no one wants to go through losing an older dog to illness and death.

for brenda lee, it was kismet. in the short 6 months, she knew love and tenderness, and for once, knew that she would be cared for and comforted. she impacted krissie's life as much as krissie impacted hers.

so with her passing, she has gone to the rainbow bridge where they say dogs wait for their families join them. if that's not heaven, then i'd much rather go to the rainbow bridge.

not a colada

for once, i wasn't involved in making this cooking mess. and we've discovered liz is never allowed to cook with milk again. first curdled custard and now curdled colada.

note to liz: what the hell was all the white powdery stuff you used to make the not-a-coladas? it looked like we were doing lines of coke on the bar when we were cleaning up the mess. mike had less flour in the kitchen and he was doing his dance of the pizza-making fairies again.

in trying to analyze the frothy, foaming not-a-colada left to separate into two distinct layers, we set off a round of dirty word associations as we tried to describe the contents of the blender.

"it's the cum used in a japanese porno." "the foamy beach jizz that's left behind after the waves crash on it".

all of which just titillated us even more. so a bunch of thirty-year-olds are trying to out-gross each other with sex terminology.

the shocker - two in the pink, one in the stink.

double pump jump - man's sorry excuse for an attempt at anal sex. as in sorry, i slipped. yup. sure ya did.

jelly donut - tasty treat for the guy not icked out by his girlfriend being on the rag.

cleveland steamer - my dogs leave steaming piles of this in the yard. why anyone would want to do this to another person, i just don't know. but if they ever need a fix, they can bring a bag or two and scoop some from my yard. no questions asked.

santorum - yum, the frothy mess of fecal matter, cum and lube left behind (no pun intended) after anal sex. term can also be used to refer to the republican, ass-sucking politician.

dirty sanchez - for my bridal shower, flug bought me a sombrero so i can have a proper dirty sanchez. try explaining to my grandmother and other older female relatives what a dirty sanchez is. i just kept saying he bought it for me because i like margaritas.

queen of fellatio - my nickname given to me by flug. for a gay man, flug is often involved with aspects of my sex-life.

of course, there's tons more we have yet to hear or know about. pretty soon, we'll all be dirty ol' folks, sitting around the old folks home discussing felching.

you be me for a while

"ouch! you're touching me. why are you touching me?"

"christina, i like you. i really do. but i grew up in a trailer park and i know how to kick your ass. and christina, i will kick your ass if you don't give dr. burke back his surgical cap."

+ + + + +

oh izzie! when my trailer-trash tv alter-ego said those words last night on grey's anatomy, my heart leapt. see, i grew up in the ghetto -- the urban equivalent to a trailer park -- and like dr. stevens, i grew up knowing how to fight.

no matter how hard i try to stuff the olney bitch posse (OBP) into my mental skeleton closet, it manages to pop out like the button on a pair of pants you desperately wish would still fit.

my personality fits the OBP well. at times, when i'm jazzed over an idea, or a project, i feel like i steamroll over people ("roll on" in OBP speak) not in a malacious way, but sort of like a beast who isn't aware of her size. or her intensity.

and awkward. like the big, orange hairy thing from a bugs bunny cartoon.

i feel like i need to slowdown because others around me aren't moving at the same speed. then i question what i am doing. are people staring at me like that because i am moving or talking too fast, because there's a booger hanging off of my face or are they scared i might eat them?

my worklife's mission so far has been to walk into a messy situation, observe the insanity, pull on my shit-waders and dive in to begin cleaning house. i organize, i create, i provide new methods and new thinking for old jobs. my resume should say simply say iSimplify to offer the newest product and creative services from me.

but trust me, i think i am learning to relish my "wonderwoman" role. look out, i have the lasso and i'm going use it. no excuses or lies when you get caught in it. my goldcuff bracelets riccochet the bitchy barbs of coworkers. "who the fuck does she think she is?"

then, after solving another problem and putting my clothes back on, people who see me walk down the street say, "oh my, she's such a lady, isn't she?"

if only i could find my wonderwoman underoos -- now, that would kick ass!

finally! porn for real women

wow! and just when we thought sunday nights with mcdreamy were really nice along comes this tasty morsel...

my bestest boyfriend flug sent me this link, i am in love. finally, a little something to make a real woman sweat. sorry, fellas, but this is what women really want. a guy built like matt damon on steriods and who cleans. purrrr, baby.

the cleaning hunk.

classic!

new form of procrastination

this may be a first. i am doing homework now to avoid doing "work" work.

yes, this seems like an alternate universe. this is what drives home the name multiplicity for my blog is this need to exist in two worlds. i have not 1, but 2 board memos to write by tomorrow. don't ask my about my progress on either. at least, on the more pressing of the two, i have written about 2 paragraphs. of a 13-page document.

tomorrow's gonna suck big, fat, donkey balls. where's martha's assistants to help me pull this souffle out of my ass? or in this case, where's martha's lawyers?

so how am i spending my time? i am working on my non-fiction book proposal for school. although it needs to be completed, my time would probably we better served working on that because a 7-hour day half-filled (or is it half-empty?) with meetings, doesn't allow for the concentration to pull this thing together.

but still, my inner calvin calls . . .

impulsive and imaginative

my buddy flug always includes these funny personality tests in his blog. his way of showing the world his true colors. today i decided to take his latest quiz the calvin or hobbes test to see whether i'm more mischievous or just a stuffed shirt.

Mostly Calvin

You are 70% Calvin and 30% Hobbes
Your inner Calvin often prevails, but, as in the image below, you have a significant Hobbesian component. I'm going to try to stretch the visual metaphor here: you have a good head on your shoulders, but when you don't use it, your crazy body gets you in trouble? Does that work? Odds are you're impulsive and imaginative, but it's possible you've collected just enough wisdom to hold your most anti-social urges in check. Most of the time. It's a precarious balance, like a boy on one foot with a tiger head.

the right attitude is everything

with less than 2 hours of being a twentysomething, i feel strangely wistful about the number of candles on my cake. on one hand i am thankful the decade is behind me. yet, being the goal-oriented person that i am, i feel i need to start back a level 0, evaluate where i've been and see what roads i need to travel this decade.

something that i wish i had done on my 20th birthday is write a list of what's floating around in my head at the time -- school, work, love, likes, dislikes, a mental "state of my union" address. so my friends, let's start with the 30-year plan:

things to do
visit italy
go to every art museum in europe
live in new england
live in north carolina
volunteer for an animal shelter
take part in a pro-choice rally
create one great masterpiece
go to grad school
have sex on a beach
sleep under the stars and not get eaten alive
inspire one woman to dream she can be more than a baby machine
smackdown a religious fanatic with a good ol'can of whoop ass
own a vacation home
destroy all credit cards!

things to learn
learn to be more tolerant of others (i know. it doesn't quite make sense seeing how i want to whoop up on a nun, but really, it's all about finding balance.)
learn to kiss these last fucking 20 lbs of fat cells goodbye
learn to love myself even if the fat cells stay (i am beginning to think my thighs are rent-controlled)
learn to be patient
learn to be a nicer goat
learn to save more, spend less
learn to find more joy and less complaints in the mundane
learn to become a better writer

things i value most
friends
family
creativity
fairness
pushing the envelope
personal growth/openness
animals as teachers

things i believe we would all be better off without
gw
dead-eye dick
religion
stupid people
south dakota's abortion laws

greatest loves in my life
my hubby
my sadie and chloe
my family
my friends
strong coffee
fiona apple
ani difranco
reading laurie notaro and laughing so hard i can't catch my breath
making something out of nothing
organizing
strengthening my writing voice

who knows what the next 10 years will bring but my very first goal is to love every moment of it.

the devil dog is in the details

if only they would use their powers for good, i would get to sleep later most mornings.

this morning, after our doggie breakfast, a trip to water and fertilize the lawn and bark to let the other dogs know, "hey, yo. where are you? sadie and chloe are in the yard", we continued with our routine. i went upstairs to shower. except the girls stayed behind to play downstairs. with sheldon.

sheldon is my mother's horny, old golden retriever. like the lecherous old men found in singles bars, he tries to hump anything with a pulse. considering i have two fine female doggies myself, sheldon always enjoys visiting our house.

really i'm not kidding with the analogy. sheldon at 10 years old is going on 70 in people years, while my girls each at 2 1/2 years old are barely legal beagles. pops is robbing the cradle.

but although much attempted sex was had . . . it wasn't the sexcapades this morning that caught my attention. the old coot really doesn't know what he's doing. (like some men out there. note to lisa: touch here. oops, now here. oops, no. now over there. here. there. strike up a bad grover imitation -- neeeaaarrr? farrr? ha ha ha ha ha!)

no, this morning, the three devil dogs somehow managed to work together to liberate one of the rawhide bones that was placed *supposedly* out of their reach so they would eat breakfast this morning. for people, this is like bringing out dessert and then asking you to eat brussel sprouts. dogs feel the same disappointment.

when i went upstairs to shower and feel/search for my pelvic bones, i could hear them yapping downstairs. yapping is good. it means sheldon is trying to hump chloe (sadie will kick his ass if he tries to hump her) and sadie is telling him to back off, she's my sister.

as i came back down the stairs, it was quiet. uh-oh. this was a bad sign. it could only mean 2 things -- they killed each other, or, they were getting into something they shouldn't be. either way, not something i wanted to deal with when i am literally running for the train.

sadie and sheldon casually sauntered into the kitchen, with their little, "hi ya, how ya doing?" type smile most commonly found on the face of used car salesmen and pickpockets right before they make off with your wallet. disarming. or at least an attempt to be.

now i was really worried. two dogs? what did they do with the third? are they covering for her like silly teenagers: "no mom. michael got in okay. he's been home sleeping for hours" when a pile of pillows under the comforter is meant to be the cover for your football-playing-sized brother sleeping soundly in his room.

i entered the family room the devils left seconds before and called the little shit-starter's name.

"chloe?"

up pops a head, laying alongside the sofa. standing there, head cocked to the side, quizzically looking back at me, rawhide bone dangling from her lips like a cigarette.

"what did i do?" she says. (and yes, dogs *talk* more than some people i know.) now the other two collaboraters come circling and panting at my knees, "he he he. we can explain," they say. guilty, guilty, guilty.

somehow, between the three of them, one of them managed to climb up to the top of the bar, put their snout over the edge of the bar, and grab one of the rawhides placed on top.

now if they could figure out how to unlock the backdoor and let themselves out to pee, we'd be all set. i would just need to get a combination lock on the cabinet where their food is kept.

the new taint collection

okay, i obviously need to do something tonight other than vent my frustration by boring all of you.

so i clicked off to smoke a little crack and barrel. it's almost springtime, you know. and that's when i knew i am a geek.

the splash page heralds the "new tate modern" collection across from a yummy, cream- and blue-colored bed quilt, tucked precisely into a low platform bed. except, i didn't read tate.

i read "taint" and scratched my head while i attempted to figure out exactly how crack and barrel has begun selling the small patch of skin behind a man's testicles and his asshole.

now for men everywhere, you too can own a new taint. hurry, offer valid only for a limited time.

drunk logic

i love the way a drunk person thinks and the stupid theories they come up with.

my husband, for example, came home pissed drunk tonight after heading out after work with coworkers. but mind you, he was not drunk.

nope. he was not drunk after having 3 margaritas from a joint that has a "3 margarita limit" sign on the wall.

nope. it was the house. our house that made him sick.

he was fine until he walked in the door, as if passing through our threshold increased the toxicity of the alcohol flowing through his veins and ran roughshod over his stomach.

silly drunk. i'm not sure which i am more amazed about -- him driving home "while he was fine" or the fact that my house has special powers to make alcohol more potent.

we definitely need to use that as a talking point if we ever decide to sell the house. now uses 40% less alcohol. parties are cheaper. drinks more potent.

what's not to love?