flu season

I feel like I've been infected with other people's doubts and questions. It feels a bit like a virus. Cell by cell, my certainty about my relationship is being taken over by the questions and doubts of others. By two people mostly, my partner and my therapist, the two people with the greatest insight into my love life. Am I wrong to think that sometimes fights happen? Am I wrong to believe that hardships are inevitable and that sometimes sacrifice is required? Do I have some antiquated notion about love and relationships? I know that my faults, my problems, my baggage all play into OUR problems. I know that I probably couldn't date myself. I know that there are some things that won't change on his end. I know that he thinks he's trying as hard as he can. And for a long time, I still knew that it was all worth it. But now I'm not so sure, I don't KNOW any longer. I have more questions, more doubts, more uncertainty. I'm flailing about while the virus tries to take over, trying to find the emotional equivalent to emergen-c.

oddities

I'm not sure what happened but my computer is working again. I had taken some things out of quarantine because the last thing I did before the computer stopped working was run ad-aware. Then it seemed like it still wasn't working. But lo and behold, I come back from vacation and it is working again. Except that now I have a shit-ton of pop-ups!!!
I missed this place. There were several moments in the last few weeks where I felt like I really needed a safe-haven. A place to ramble and vent and a refuge for my blatherings. I am, fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective, a privately emotional person. Not too many people get invited into my emotional house. So I end up feeling like I burden those who are allowed the sit on my emotional couch and take a look at my emotional photoalbums and quite possibly sneak through my emotional medicine cabinet. And I don't want to burden anybody, so I keep a lot of it to myself...and sometimes that gets to be too much.
What that means here though is that I am going to start using this space as more of an outlet. More blathering, more pseudo-introspective bullshit, more annoying self-centered yakety yak. Hopefully it won't be too overwhelming for the one and a half people who read this!

bear necessity

I just came back from a great little weekend jaunt to British Columbia. But despite the fabulousness, karmic retribution is walking up my driveway with fist at the ready to knock on my door.
You see, after our all too brief stop in Vancouver to see the loveliest of ladies, Jessica and Anne, we drove the rest of the way up to Whistler where we were to spend the weekend with a group of awesome people and quite possibly the cutest little wee one (outside of my gene pool and therefore outside of my instinctual need to love them more than anybody else).
The drive wasn't particularly trecherous or onerous, and I guess cars and drivers aren't the only things to think so. Because on the drive, a black bear decided to walk onto the roadway and right in front of my car. Yes indeedy, I hit a bear...with my car.
I saw it up ahead and managed to slam on my breaks and slow down to about 10-15 mph (or 20-25 kmph since we were in Canada and they smartly do the whole metric thing), but I still hit it head on. It was probably a younger bear, an adolescent maybe.
It's a strange thing hitting a bear, I mean you can't exactly get out of the car to check on a pissed off and injured bear! But I don't think I hurt it too badly, it jumped up and ran back off into the woods. Then we pulled over and a bunch of Canadian kids came and checked on us. We were okay, just really shaken up (not stirred) and the car didn't seem too bad off, so we decided to finish driving. I spent most of the time about to cry because I HIT A BEAR.
For christ's sake, I have never even run over a squirrel and I lived in Kentucky and drove through the backwoods almost every day for two years. And we were on a busy part of the freeway. And....and....and....I feel terrible about it.

ok computer

Garrrrr, I did it again. I managed to screw up my computer somehow and I can't get connected to the internet. So my posting will be sporadic at best until I can get it back to the shop. But I will have fun stuff to talk about when I get the chance. Like how I broadsided a black bear on the highway this weekend.

camp jamboree

I went to the third or fourth or five hundrenth outdoor camping party thing of the summer this weekend. I had an okay time. I ended up getting indigestion really badly, so badly that I ended up throwing up...inside of my tent...again. I am slowly becoming THAT GIRL, the "Hey isn't that the girl who always throws up?" girl. At least is feels that way since I've thrown up publically twice in the space of eight days, though this latest time having nothing to do with telling my bartender friend to mix me drinks strong enough to make my future children stillborn and there was definitely a lot less fanfare this time around. One of the most obvious indications that my body is aging and my maturity level is not is the fact that I cannot hold my liquor anymore but I still try drinking too much too quickly. Somewhere between my first drink and my third or fourth drink, I get really messed up. The happy buzzed period no longer exists in my world of alcohol induced revelry.

one step forward, two steps back, jump to the left, stumble in a circle

The past two years have been really good for me in terms of personal growth. When I moved back to Washington, I decided that I needed to work on my ways of communicating with the world and people and most imporatantly myself. I knew that I had to do this work in order to be happier and to find more happiness. For the most part, I think I've done a lot of good things in those areas. For the most part, I'm proud of myself for having done so. But there is also a lot of stuff lingering in the corners and half-emptied boxes of my internal world. And I forget about them until they surprise me by making themselves all too visible. Then I remember how far from being done with working on myself I actually am. And I get sad because my ability to work on myself may not be as fast as is needed to be make certain things in my life work. But I guess I just need to wait-and-see, an attitude I'm still working on...

rocky mountain high

One of my favorite scenes in Parenthood is the one in which Grandma starts talking about rollercoasters vs. ferris wheels as a metaphor for life. Some people like the constant predictable revolutions of a ferris wheel and some people prefer the exciting ups and downs of a rollercoaster. I often think that I prefer the rollercoaster but that's clearly all very situational.
In my love life, the rollercoaster isn't quite the thrill that it is in other aspects of my life. And the past few days have been a rollercoaster. Over the weekend I started feeling the chuggy steady climb into an area of my relationship that creates a feeling of incredible vulnerability and true to a real rollercoaster I started to anticipate the drop ahead. But instead of waiting for the dip, waiting to see if it was going to be big or small, I preemptively started screaming and flailing around. And the consequences of my premature action to an expected reaction have been severe.
The boy and I almost broke up. I said some terrible things to him because I let myself feel more hurt about a situation than the situation actually warranted, a monster from the past that resurfaced with a great roar, an open mouth full of jagged but razor sharp teeth. I hurt him to vindicate the hurt in myself. As he correctly pointed out, I used my monster to try to re-exert some semblance of control when I felt that my feelings of security were not in my control.
But the insane thing is that because of my actions, I created an even worse situation. I tried to grab control and then ended up having almost none.

thank heaven for little boys

As I was walking past the Garfield Community Center, the wee-ones were outside playing. Most of the children were running amuck, sliding and swinging and twirling about. Except for one very adorable pair, a beautiful little girl and her little friend who I only saw from behind. And then I saw his behind. As he was standing there talking to his little friend, he pulled down his pants. All the way down to his ankles. And then he looked to be grabbing his wee crotch. His little cutie friend didn't seem the slightest bit concerned and kept talking to him while one of the adults yells over, "Nathan...what are you doing?" As I walked past, he still hadn't pulled his pants up and I smiled at the caretaker who had the look of somebody trying to be stern while holding in a big big laugh.

cops

On Saturday morning, after a hard night of partying, the boy and I got home and decided to walk the dogs. The sun had already risen so we were walking them in daylight. We start going on one of my usual treks, I thought it might be nice to walk towards the lake since it was turning out to be such a beautiful morning. As we're heading in that direction, we pass by some shady looking fellas. As a little reminder, I live in a very much gentrified neighborhood but there are still some vestiges of a part of the city that was crippled with a crack problem in the 80s and 90s. While we are passing them and a gas station, one of the duo yells to some other people at the gas station, "One ton coming!" And as he finishes yelling this, a cop pulls up. There are three-four more guys hanging out in the gas station and a couple of woman in a car...clearly having been in the middle of a drug deal. So the cop car sidles up and stops on the street outside of the gas station. The guys in the parking lot all split up and one of them each stands at the corner of the intersection that the boy, the dogs and myself are standing and where I am standing as still as I can and praying that the crosswalk light will change soon. There is this massive overwhelming feeling of tension in the air and that fucking street light takes forever to change, but eventually it does and we walk on as the cop is pulling away and the people at the gas station disperse.

houdini

I swear I posted something here last night. I'm positive that I wrote a paragraph, replete with complete sentences and then hit the publish button. But alas, it must have been a bunch of horse shit because the blog post opted not to post itself.
Ahhh well. I basically tried to recount my soggy weekend of not-so-glamorous camping where our tent ended up with a half an inch of rain in the bottom and everybody there had a good time because if they didn't, the nightmare of dampness might actually sink in.

breaking up

Social networking friends are like a really bad boyfriend. They come, they go, they leave without giving you a reason. I actually find myself getting annoyed when my friend catalog gets incrementally smaller from day to day. Mostly I'm annoyed because I spend a second or two wondering who deleted me...not that I care...no wait I DO care! Where did you go friend? Don't just delete a mofo...tell a sistah what's up, give a bitch a second chance, or at the very least...a comment break up. Come on now.

PS-In case it wasn't glaringly obvious...I kid. I don't care...THAT much. ;)

hanging on and letting go

I forget...is there an expiration date on feeling bad about something? I don't mean the feeling REALLY bad part, where your emotions become this possessing force that stun you and make you incapable of moving in any direction. What I mean are the lingering bad feelings. The ones that make take you by surprise and make you second guess yourself and your other. The ones that alter your perception, however minutely, so that those little things that flew right past you somehow end up becoming the gnat on the windshield. How long? A week, a month, a year, forever?

hard knock life

I've just had one of the hardest weeks I've had in a long time. I'd forgotten how difficult love and relationships can be. I'd forgotten about the BIG problems.
Boundaries are such a strange thing. It's funny that everybody just assumes that everybody else has the same boundaries, as if there is some complicit agreement that because you agreed to be with somebody, you agreed to accept everything about them. It's also funny how boundaries never get discussed until something "bad" happens, sometimes not until it's too late.
Luckily it wasn't too late for me and for us, but for a while it felt like the timer was winding down to the last few seconds. And during those moments, I thought that I just couldn't handle another break-up. Especially this time around, when I wouldn't be able to extricate myself from the other person's life and friends and inevitable witness to each other moving on as completely as I've been able to in the past.
But I don't have to worry about that now. We decided as couple that we would grow rather than grow apart. I'm surprisingly optimistic.

underemployed

I went on a job interview today. From the posting, it sounded pretty close to what I was looking for. The right hours, right number of days, close enough to where I live, blah blah blah. But as it turns out, it wasn't what I was looking for. I feel a little disappointed, I was excited by the prospect of not having to work weekends or holidays any longer. In the end though, I guess it's fine. I don't have it so bad at my current job. And it's nice to know that if things got desperate, there are other jobs places out there willing to pay too much for what you would actually be doing.

good morning sunshine

I've been waking up to clear blue skies for about a week. Summer is definitely here. But what do we do with summer as grown ups? As children it seemed pretty clear...wake up, go outside, play until you had to eat or go to the bathroom or you lost a digit. Then you went home for as short an amount of time as possible and went back outside to play and play and play until curfew. As adults, there is so much more possibility. So why did I stay home yesterday? I need a hobby. Anyone got one they can loan me?

that sh*t is bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s

On Saturday I decided to make banana bread, not to eat mind you, just to get rid of overly ripe bananas. I took the one loaf that didn't come out gross in to work. Before I actually got to work though, I decided that I had to go to Bartell's and buy a pair of tweezers and a headband. So there I am, standing in line with my random purchases and my loaf of banana bread when this older gentleman, probably in his 70s, get in line behind me and starts conversating.
Him: Are you gonna share whatever smells so good or are you keeping in for yourself?
Me: Oh, I'm sharing it all right.
Him: That's nice.
Me: Well the reason I'm sharing it is because I probably would eat it all to myself and I'd like to spend one less day at the gym.
Him: Well that's pretty smart. (Pause). But a smart man likes a chunky lady so don't go losing too much weight.
Me: Oh, I don't think that'll ever be a problem.

It was really cute and funny. Especially since he said chunky. I usually only reserve that word for toddlers and peanut butter.

what dreams may come

I just had the most wonderful wonderful vacation.
First we went to Hailey, Idaho...otherwise known as the town of Bruce Willis. It was really beautiful and really hot! I met the boy's family and enjoyed spending time with them. My nervousness was in vain, they were really cool. And apparently the feeling was mutual, I have been branded a keeper.
After family time, we returned to Boise and hung out for a quick minute before heading up to Twin Springs and attending quite possibly the best outdoor festival/party I have ever been to. Seriously, it was glorious. There is just something about being outdoors, being surrounded by the majesty of mountains, a river, and hot springs that just takes the joy of a party to a whole new level. And this year (much like last year) there was awesome music, beautiful people, art...and FIRE. One of the Idaho-burners built flame-throwers to attach to the main dome. They shot flames over ten feet long, maybe even up to twenty feet. And the flames were controlled by a switch kept by the DJs' side. There's something quite spectacular about a massive flame shooting out at the exact moment that a beat drops. And there was a beach party too...music, food, friends, bloody marys, topless and bottomless sunbathers, cliff diving. It was as close to heaven as I've ever gotten.

swimmer's ear

Swimming suit shopping should be listed as a method of torture in the Geneva Convention. I am completely demoralized.
And to whomever invented the Miracle-suit...you sir are an asshole! Why you would think that any woman would want the fat from their bellies displaced until it becomes a massive fat roll spilling over the back is beyond me! There is a very very very bad place in hell waiting for you!

mimicry

It was inevitable. Knowing so many djs, bedroom and otherwise...eventually I would feel compelled to try and mix a couple of records. And I did exactly that...TRIED to mix records. Nothing will give you respect for somebody's skills faster than a little perspective on how some things are not nearly as easy as people make them seem. I only tried for about thirty minutes before I made myself stop. My stubborn streak is more like a stubborn gash. I'm the kind of person that thinks that "Bloody Knuckles" is more than just the name of the game...it's the final destination, the ultimate goal. So it was good that I stopped before deciding that staying awake for three days trying to cue a record was the thing to do.

potato head

I am, yet again, heading to Idaho this week. This will be the third time in a year that I have travelled to the land o' potatoes and skinheads. Let me tell you, that's three more times than I would have expected to have gone.
This time around though there will be more family introductions. I've already met the boy's mother and step-father, separately and during short meals at restaraunts. But this time it'll be the whole family and it'll be on their turf. Meeting the family includes the sister who I am most nervous about meeting and her husband who apparently likes to push people's buttons, of which I have many and they are incredibly molestable.
It's funny how, though I am now a woman in her thirties and have done this whole family dance...it still makes me feel like an awkward teenager. I've even thought that maybe I should go buy some new clothes so I don't look slobby. If there was overnight lipo, I might consider that as well. And I need my hair dyed. And I should get a manicure. And I have NO SHOES!!! It's all very silly.