The fog is lifting.

I have had one hell of a November. Nothing has gone wrong, yet I have skulked around all month waiting for some impending disaster to envelop me.
As the month draws to a close, the ghost of my former lover is finally evaporating.
In retrospect I imbued her with so many virtuous qualities that I began to miss them, even though they were rarely glimpsed.
Now with some space and time (and some fervent prayers that she leave my consciousness) I can see her in a clearer light.
She never compromised, she was insanely capricious and she would have driven me stark staring berserk had we ever cohabited.
I have a friend here in town who is in the same boat.
We have discussed loving women who are not emotionally available, and have helped illustrate to each other through our own foibles the absurdity of it.
Basically, if it doesn't feel reciprocal and loving, it's probably not.
If she seems to be doing all the taking and not much giving, she probably is.
If she doesn't make you feel like a priority, you probably aren't.
If she says she has unfinished business with her ex, believe her.
If she says she doesn't deserve you, she probably doesn't.
I adored my ex, but she said she wasn't good enough for me and it didn't matter whether I thought she was, what mattered was she was coming from a place where she believed she wasn't. Her actions reinforced that.
She may have been good enough for me, but her self doubt and self hatred made her not good for me. Ha! A fine distinction.
Anyway...it's over and it's not starting up again. So now all I have to do is figure out what to do with all the energy I have now that I am no longer perseverating about her.

Damn, That's One Crazy Chick

I know this blogger, and I won't mention names but hers kind of rhymes with Crazy.
I have been reading her blog on the sly and she's sort of coming unglued, right before my eyes.
It appears to be the manic side of manic depression, but now they call it bipolar, so let's just say her bipolar bear is wayyy out of hibernation.
I am sure she is a high functioning bipolar, she's certainly an intelligent woman, it's just remarkable to see how she writes with her brain's high beams on.
So now I am worried that I may come unglued one day and people will read my blog and think, "Sheesh, she's really flipping out."
Okay, I have no diagnosed mental illnesses, save for a little generic depression now and then, but one never knows when one may snap.
After a year of loving a borderline personality, I have to admit I have been pondering mental illness and why lunatics seem to like me so much.
I like to think it's because I am eccentric, iconoclastic and accepting toward other eccentrics, even the nutters. At least that's what I like to think.
But then I read a blog where I see someone wigging out and I think, "Damn, she needs some serious meds adjusting."
Should I say something? Nahhh. I am not a therapist, and for all I know she's perfectly sane.
But then I am no cinematographer, either, but I can tell when a movie looks dark.

Tattoo You

I don't have any tattoos.
I may have gotten one, but two things stopped me.
My father got one on each forearm during WWII when he was a drunk sailor.
They were the old, blue kind and they weren't very nice after 50 years. He always wore long sleeved shirts to hide them.
Cynthia Marshall was a beautiful girl I went to high school with. She had a full color peacock tattooed between her lower abdomen and upper thigh. Three children and 30 years later, I suspect that peacock looks more like a dead duck now.
I don't mind them on others, just not on me.

Daytrippin'

On AOL this morning there was a localized blurb on my welcome menu that touted great daytrips to take in and around San Antonio.
San Antonio is the tourism mecca for Texas, so I expected to find several great getaways.
Nope. They mentioned the toilet seat museum in Alamo Heights, a fancy suburb here in town. Then they mentioned Seguin, Texas, home of the second largest pecan in the world.
I have driven by the "museum". It's in an old geezer's garage, plastered with decorated toilet seats. I have never actually stopped to view his treasures.
The pecan I have seen. It's a big cement pecan, about the size of a prize hog at the county fair. Nothing to travel to see, that's for sure.
I take tourists to a grocery store near the toilet museum called Central Market. They are so specialized they sell baby corn, like you get in Chinese food, still in the shuck. They have an entire aisle of hot sauces, candy bars from England, and sodas from Central America. Now that's a tourist attraction.
On the way to Seguin, there's a windowless shack painted red with a crudely lettered sign that says, "HOT FISH." That's a place that would likely be better than seeing the world's second biggest pecan.

Ho Ho Ho!

It never fails.
The weekend after Thanksgiving, Margie, my neighbor across the street covers her house with lights and bows and Santa statues and all the crap she can pile on. Even her rooftop is lined with lights.
In a few days after her lights are settled in, Andy the guy next door to her will try to top her. He wraps his house in an enormous bow and backlights it, then he brings in a cherry picker and does the treetops. Then he does his whole wrought iron fence and sidewalk in chaser lights.
Margie sees it and gets pissed and brings in fence lights, more bows, chaser lights and lines her driveway in more lights. And she puts out big pots of pointsettias.

What I do for Christmas is far more classy.

I make tampon angels.
Here's how:

Take a Playtex tampon and soak it in water, then tie a string around the neck to make a head, and flare out the bottom to make a skirt. Let that dry, then paint the face flesh color and add little beads for eyes, and paint on a nose and lips. Use a darker pink to make blush.
Add dryer lint for hair, drizzle some glitter on the dress and glue on little golden paper wings.
Add a paperclip hook and use as a tree ornament. If you get a 24 pack of Playtex tampons, you can make two dozen beautiful keepsakes to give as gifts or to keep as heirloom treasures.
Happy Holidays!

Mazel Tov: A Wedding Story

You know the wedding is going to be good when a week before you are invited to a liquor shower. Yep, a bunch of us journalists types got together and festooned the happy couple with bottles of premium booze to use at their wedding reception. They raked in quite the stash, too.
The wedding itself will be performed at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, a place with a lively reputation for sponsoring the annual gay and lesbian film festival, art shows, controversial speakers, hot concerts and a very cool Conjunto Festival poster contest each year.
The "minister" was ordained on the internet. Close enough, I say.
After the wedding, we'll push back the chairs and let the mariachis in. Bottles will be cracked open and the mayhem will begin.
At the liquor shower, Jennifer the bride-to-be cornered me (after she was finished jumping fully clad into the swimming pool) and said, "I want you to wise up my aunts at the wedding."
"Wise them up? How?" I replied.
"Well, they are both lesbians."
"What do you want me to do, hit on them?"
"No. They are both really butch."
"Eeeuuwww," I said. "So what do you want me to do?"
"Well, they are closeted, at least they think they are."
"So you want me to out them?"
"No, I want you to show them it's comfortable to be out."
"How?"
"I don't know, but you seem comfortable to be out."
"I am."
"Okay, then show them how to be like that."
"Oh...umm, okay I'll see what I can do."
"Oh, and one more thing," she said.
"What's that?"
"I want you to talk to my mother."
"About what?"
"Tell her to get off my back."
"Jennifer, just how drunk are you tonight?"
"Very."
I've known Adrian, the husband-to-be, since he was 18. I was his college newspaper editor and forced his first story on him.
"Adrian, quick, there are camels across the street, go cover it!"
"Huh? Camels? Why are there camels?"
"How the fuck should I know? You tell me!"
"But..."
"But, nothing! Go, go, go! Take a photographer with you!"
His story made the front page, above the fold. I worked him like a plow horse all semester after that. He became an outstanding journalist.
It should be a great wedding.
Wait till I get my hands on the mother and the aunts.

The Day After Thanksgiving

I have so much to be thankful for.
I drove 85 miles to Austin yesterday morning to be with my biological family for the holiday. All well over 40, we get along just fine.
We have an hilarious matriarch, who at 89 can still tell a room why George Dubya is an imbecile. She was nursing little glasses of cassis and feeling no pain.
My sister's lover-in-law (that's her lesbian lover's mother) is also a lesbian who
co-founded the Human Rights Campaign. She was there with cutting edge political gossip and a total disregard for any semblance of pretending to be straight.
My adopted sister, another lesbian, was there practicing Oriental medicine on my big brother's headache. It worked like magic.
Everyone in my family appreciates a nice spread, so we had two kinds of turkey, a spiral cut ham, mashed potatoes and potato salad, yams with Grand Marnier, some kind of creamed corn from some snazzy restaurant, little puffy rolls, green peas, and the best part was the way the gravy was served. No little gravy boat for this crowd, my sister serves it in a giant soup tureen with a huge ladle.
There were three kinds of pies, pecan, pumpkin and apple, all homemade.
I had brought with me some Nouveau Beaujolais, a bottle of cassis and some Cuban cigars.
I got home around 7 and was too tired to do anything but futz around on the computer.
I met an interesting woman online and we shared one of those "My Dinner With Andre" kinds of conversations. It spilled over to the telephone and ended in the wee hours.
I woke up wondering what that was all about, but smiling as I wondered.
Tonight is a liberal Mexican wedding between two journalist friends of mine. That's another blog.

Oh My God.

I am going out to a bar tonight after I watch the Spurs game with friends.
I hate bars, but I am going to meet a friend there for a drink. Maybe 4 drinks.
It's a lesbian bar. I have been there once, when I had out of town company who insisted we go.
But I am going, and I plan to have fun and pretend it's not smokey and loud.
That's my plan.
I'll just take off my bar clothes in the driveway and let them air out overnight before I go inside my house.
Yep. Looking forward to the bar.
Here's me, at the bar. I am visualizing it. Yep, there I am. At the bar.

Good Morning, Officers

This morning I was awakened by the doorbell. Outside my bedroom window, I could hear men talking. They noticed the "NO SALES REPS-EVER!" sign on my door but they kept ringing the doorbell.
On the third ring I answered the door and angrily asked "What do you want?"
The guy was hemming and hawing, so I said, "You read the sign, I don't want to buy anything, so get off my property."
"But we aren't selling anything," he said.
"Then get the fuck outta here," I replied.
He and his two other jumpsuit-clad homeboys walked next door, up the driveway and toward the backyard. Looked to me like nobody was home.
I went out to see what was up.
They were milling around and I said, "Y'all need to get back in your truck and get out of this neighborhood." They said they were supposed to be there. I said I was going to call the cops.
So I did.
In two minutes, three squad cars arrived.
Turns out the jerks were supposed to be next door, doing some kind of grunt work.
Why they felt the need to wake me up remains a mystery.
The cops took a report and left.
All I can say is, I hope those guys like opera, because I intend to blast it from my stereo speakers until they leave.

Harry Potter and Women

I am glad the HP movie sold a record number of seats to it's weekend premier. It was a wonderful movie everyone should see.
We attended the late late 10:40 showing and the theater had only 10 filled seats. Naturally the three hulking teen boys in the audience sat behind us and yacked through the movie.
Finally the last vestige of connection to my former girlfriend has been exorcised. She turned me on to the Potter books (sent them to me, actually) and it had been a yearlong dream of ours to see the movie together.
That dreamed came crashing down last night, just like all the others.
She likely saw the movie with her reconciled ex girlfriend, a dimwitted cow named Ramona whose only apparent redeeming quality is being a substantially wide shield against the wind.
But I have seen the movie now without her, and there's nothing left to hold us together. No more dreams for her to ruin, no more lies, no more histrionics, no more Andrea, period.
Meanwhile, what exists in her wake are a small bevy of women, most of whom have an enduring connection to someone they cannot have. Tedious.
I met a woman a few weeks ago who is very bright, kind, decent, attractive, with many other attributes. Alas, her life is mired in lots of unfinished business online. She has strong feelings for a woman she's never met, and for another she's never met or even spoken to.
Hard to compete with all these www.women. So I've decided not to.
Women are a lot of work. So much, in fact, we should take some leave from them on occasion. I believe this week I'll do just that.
Oh my God.
I've finally succumbed to the Great Lesbian Cliche: I need some space.

Dubya's Farm

George Dubya's "ranch" in Crawford, Texas is not a ranch, it's a farm.
He doesn't even ride horses, he drives around the "ranch" in a white SUV that doesn't even have any dents in it.
I don't think he even has any cows or horses. Maybe some sheep.
He ain't really a Texan, he's an East Coast prep school boy pretending to be a Texan.
The wife is a Texan. The twins are Texans. But Dubya, he's a Yankee, born in New Haven, Connecticut. He spent high school at Phillips Academy and Andover.
After high school, he went to Yale.
Nothing Texas about him. He just thinks it makes him look butcher to call himself a Texan rather than a Connecticuddlian.
Besides, Texas ranchers don't wear Dockers and Sperry Topsiders to do ranchwork.

Sometimes things just fall into place.

It's pouring rain outside. My house is strewn with the wreckage of a three month old kitten. My hair is sticking out on the side like Ace Ventura. I have laundry to do.
Social plans are stacking up like cordwood. I have RSVPs to make, gifts to buy, mail to send out, work to do.
I was feeling overwhelmed.
Then she called last night and said she'd be here this weekend.
Driving in from Colorado, 1023 miles to Texas, she's coming to meet me.
Now that's what I call girlfriend potential.

Wednesday Ruminations

If television is the opiate of the masses, then the internet must be the crack cocaine of the masses.
I have seen people do all kinds of screwy things because of chatrooms.
I knew this woman from England who got involved with this woman couple from Coney Island. She was doing both of them, unbeknownst to each other.
She worked for a mobile telephone service in the UK and got free long distance as a perk. She ran up a £3000 phone bill in one month calling across the pond. They fired her.
So she took her scant savings and flew to NYC to meet these women. I am not judging anyone, but the three of them exceeded 1,000 pounds of weight. All were shocked at the details the other left out. So the two black women from Coney Island and the one white woman from London were stuck in a tiny three floor walk-up, looking at each other in bemused, disappointed wonder.
They lived out the whole drama in the UK Lesbian Bi Gay chatroom. One would get on and dis the others. Then she'd get off and another would get on and hear how she'd been dissed. Then the third would get on and hear how the other two had dissed her.
Then she'd dis them. It ended quite badly. Nobody emerged with a lover, rather, all emerged with two new enemies.
Like driving by a car accident and trying to see blood, chatrooms are a morbid curiosity for me.
They are the cesspool of the internet. They often breed suspicion, adultery, gossip, intrigue, dishonesty and melodrama. Some people live out their lives in them, addicted like crack whores.
Much safer to be a blogger whore.

Late Night Haiku
(after the Michael Jackson TV special & too much coffee)

Whitney Houston, yo
Saw her with Michael Jackson
Karen Carpenter

Luther Vandross, like
Oprah, he looks better fat
Eat some pie, Luther

This woman I like
Very complicated, she
Sort of like physics

This woman I like
I think she needs chocolate
I think we all do

Paula Poundstone is back in trouble.
Seems she violated her parole by taking a "non-prescribed medication."
Is she the Robert Downey Jr. of the dykes? Is that the best we can do?
Okay, I am a Public Relations practitioner and I have some free PR for her:
Lose the fucking tie. Look around, Paula. No dykes wear ties.
Get that hair tamed down. There are products, use them.
She's creeping me out.

Where do I register my complaints?

I think those internet ads that strobe flash in your eyes ought to be felonies. They make my stomach flip. I could have a seizure! Also, that ad where you pound the gopher with a hammer is wrong, too. You should be able to pound him without being transported to some lame website.
They need ads that blow the scent of coffee or chocolate or cinnamon rolls through our CD ports. I'd like that.
Once I visited a boat magazine site and they sent me a free T-shirt. And I entered an online "I Slept With Clinton, Too" essay contest and won a T-shirt from them.
Sure beat that dumb gopher.

testing reblogger testing 123

Has anyone noticed...

Has anyone noticed that George Dubya is back to being a dumbass?
After all the flagwaving and Chevy Truck ad-inspired Americana, what remains is a country facing economic crisis, anthrax coming through the mail and a billion dollar a day war habit.
The other day Dubya pronounded "nuclear" new-cue-ler. That ain't right.
Seems Afghanistan rebels are taking over the Taliban strongholds day by day. Still no bin Laden.
We have spy satellites that can see a Homberg hat on Saddam Hussein, yet we can't find one cave dwelling nitwit in a leveled out country? Sounds fishy to me.
We have an airbus drop out of the sky onto a Queens neighborhood and we say, "Oh good, it probably was not a terrorist attack, just acute mechanical failure."
When you use the words 'just' and 'acute' together in a phrase, that says something about how enured we've become to all this shit going on.
I am just hoping bin Laden doesn't get his hands on any newculer weapons.

"Insanity is when you keep doing the same things and expect a different outcome."

I don't know to whom I should attribute that quote, but it's one my best friend keeps using on me.
I think I might just number my behaviors and use the numbers to describe my latest dilemma. "Hey Anna, I am doing a 3," I could say. That way she'd know I was mixed up with someone who was mixed up with someone else.
Or I could say, "Oh, I am having a 5 day." That would mean I decided to leave the 3 person.
Or I could say, "Things are great, I am having a 7 today." A 7 might mean a reconciliation after the 5, with the 3.
Maybe what I need are more 0 days. That would mean nothing is going on and things are the same as they were yesterday.

I had a blog, then too many people I knew were reading it, then I had to watch what I said. So this is my new one. Here I go.
Oh hell, I have nothing to say yet.