Tough Girls Hold Hands Too

I just finished reading Into the Wild.  It's about a kid that took off after college, gave all his savings to a charity, gave up all his earthly tethers and disappeared from his family.  I dog eared the pages that hit home to me...like I do in all of my books.  "Chris was very much of the school that you should own nothing except what you can carry on your back at a dead run."  There was another...a letter that he wrote to an old guy he met somewhere on the road...its entirely too long to pass along but it told him to get out and live and do and see all the places and do all the things he regretted not doing.  "If you attempted to talk him out of something, he wouldn't argue.  He'd just nod politely and then do exactly what he wanted."  "I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt."   
Starting to see the similarities now aren't ya?  It's the second such book I've read.  This one instead of being penned by the adventurer/wanderer himself ended more tragically.  Imagine: A Vagabond Story was a similar scenario with a much happier ending.  With a couple hundred dollars he left the country and traveled all over Mexico and Central American...living in hostels and working odd jobs to get by.  I share a wander lust with them both.  All of my life I've been a rebel with no cause.  Throwing the middle finger to conformity and standing firmly by myself in my made up beliefs.  As I've aged the rebelliousness softened into odd and currently is probably teetering on eclectic.  Even though I've never had the balls to peace out of society and take to the road with a backpack I harbor jealously and a bit of penis envy for those that have. 

There is no secret that several times in my life I've completely lost my self.  Lost in normalcy.  Instead of being who I am, I was chipped away at until I became some hybrid version of what they expected.  The bad ass girl slipped out of sight after one too many flips of the Sunday morning omelet.  That in turn was the demise of the relationship(s).  Then of course I come out of the corner like a wet pissed off cat scratching and biting to reclaim myself. 

I feel good that I don't hide or modify who and what I am with Velcro.  I am an open book...there is no hidden agenda...no sneaky program behind the scenes.  I like that I can ask for an opinion other than my own but know that I don't need permission.  This being independent but holding a hand thing has been bouncing around in my head for sometime, then I read this and it really summed up a lot of how I feel.  Kinda wish I had written it.  I don't feel alone even though I'm by myself sometimes.  I rest beneath his smile and he's with me every minute.  It's a delicate balance being a tough girl in love...

Velcro told me that he sees the world differently than ever before since knowing me. That made me happy.  My ability to realign my thoughts is probably one of my best assets.  I doubt it's super hero enough to require a cape but it helps me on the rare occasions my head and ass get in close proximity. My happy lists get me back on track when my wayward mind takes off on me.  Here's my latest list

-Lightning Bugs
-Day Lillies
-A 3 Beer Buzz...I know alcohol does not solve any problems but neither does milk.

-Velcro's Dimple...it shows up with his happy smile

-Seagulls... minus the poop

-Foot pads...love feeling them touch each other

-The Shu's replacement...more pictures of her to come.

Bitter Sweet

Sunday morning 8:52 - Spaghetti w/ goat cheese and Season 2 of Weeds.  How can any one not want to be me??
Not sure if the entire world experiences odd planetary alignment at the exact same time or not but everyone close to me seems to share my schedule.  Saturn has been tilted and threatening to take out adjacent planets for the past week or so.  I have ramblings and thoughts that I've scribbled and none of them actually tie together but they warrant sharing. 

Why does hind sight seem to be my best light?  Not for me but for how people view me.  I've been trying hard lately to identify and break patterns.  The patterns that have governed my life.  The keep quiet and look fine when you're really not so much and then bailing before the unsuspecting have a clue of what's going on.  I blame no one.  I am the problem.  My non-confrontational side is damning.  I'm scarred from a childhood of "turn the other cheek" and it's made me less than honest about my feelings...whether they are the good  or the hurt ones in relationships.  My calm in the center of the storm self is a mask of what I'm dealing with on my own time.  So for the first time, as awkward as it feels to me, I actually talk about things and how I feel.  Don't worry I'm not becoming a softy and I will still kick the shit out of you. This new modified bad ass girl is only exposed to one Velcro... to everyone else, expect to see no difference.  Pretty sure after I wrote this I went to bed before dark...in a tourist town...obviously I am awesome.

Being A Badass Is Hard Work

A conversation between me and Velcro led me to Asking Jeeves "what causes dogs to get stuck together?"  Not for nothing it automatically populated the field so we're not the first to ponder to the point of research.  I guessed the lack of astroglide knowledge or the damn opposing thumb issue.  We decided the stray or unattended house pet population is obviously down since its not a common occurrence like it used to be.  I've personally never witnessed it but he tells me they wind up butt cheek to butt cheek. And when rocks are thrown at them one always get the "No I'M going first!" advantage...I imagine much like moving a couch.  Talk about a walk of shame...Jez.  Can you imagine getting dragged around the neighborhood backwards after a bad lay?  Hard denying that one.  I was hoping they would have a picture since it's something I haven't had the luck of seeing but not the case.  I'm sure I could have found one with a little more googling but was honestly concerned what kind of seedy underbelly sub culture of doggie porn I might uncover.  I don't need my house raided for hitting a crazy PETA trip wire some where in internet land.  These are the kinds of things we talk about...you see why I like him so much. 

I'm torn a lot of times to how much I filter when I go from paper to everyone seeing.  I am the bad ass rather emotionally distant person.  I have very few close friends and even fewer people ever get past this to see the girl inside the tough exterior.  The difference between the strong and the weak is the strong break down and fall apart only on their own time and outside the presence of any others. They wait until no one is looking to sit and cry on the steps by themselves.  Not trying to get a reaction or a fix from another.  Then they stand up and brush off their skunt knees before anyone sees them.  They know that all that can fix them is their own mind. The struggle of never wanting to be a burden to someone else but at the same time wanting to grab hold and feel someone stand you back up and kiss your forehead like you can't remember anyone doing when you fell off your bike as a kid.  The weak wear everything around on the cuff...they post every emotion and mushy I love you shits on facebook.  Pick up the phone and tell who you love that you love them.  I don't want to read that gay shit.  Really not so much different between the strong and the weak except I guess maybe pride and knowing that no one else is responsible for you.  As long as I'm standing I deserve to walk beside someone and hold their hand.  If I fall down I don't feel I deserve it...it's what gives me the power to stand back up.  Sometimes it sucks to be strong.  Strong doesn't always feel so much that way from the inside looking out.  And that's how I feel every once in a blue moon....all the other days...I feel like I have the world by the short hairs.
Save your strength for things that you can change.  Forget the one's you can't.  You've got to let it go. (Zac Brown)

Patterns

I've started realizing patterns.  It seems to be that weekends are when I forget the basics.  Like that food is kinda sorta required to live. And it seems that Sunday mornings are when the realization off needing food collides with the questionable grocery supply and odd breakfast choices come into play.  Today it's Tuna Miracle Charlie Brown and tostidos.  My calorie intake has probably surpassed the last two days collectively already and its not even 9:30.

Not sure if every body's mind works like mine and does the same shit to them, but mine is like constant endless rambling chatter.  If you think its hard to be around me sometimes then I would welcome you to a weekend inside my head.  It wears me the. fuck. out.  Most times I can keep it in check and pretty well harnessed then other times it bucks loose and runs rabid like a pent up horny jack russell that darts past you at the back door and terrorizes the neighborhood before you can get it back on a leash.  I think its directly proportionate to the amount of outside interaction I have or don't have.  I spend a lot of time alone so I'm pretty use to listening to the bee hive of thoughts buzzing around in there.  Patterns of me...I have always been the girl that's always ok.  No matter what my toast lands jelly side up if dropped.  There's a self preservation perimeter that I've always set up that's kept people a safe zone distance away...from me.  Let's just say someone on the late shift wasn't watching the screens and one snuck in under the radar.  It's probably the best feeling ever to be wide open honest with no reservations or walls or defenses.  And so completely against my pattern.  I know that you can't depend on someone else to maintain your happiness...that's a weight that no one can tractor pull through life.  The line is so fine between loving someone like crazy and still being independently happy even when schedules don't mesh and all you want is to see that smile that lights your world.  I always have epiphanies while dog walking.  Today's was that I don't have to pull back to establish a safe zone and go into repeat pattern mode.  I just have to change my little chatterbox mind to accept that in the wandering craziness of the inhabitants of this spinning ball...I managed to get lucky enough to cross paths with the one.  And that's all that matters. Crazy happy disease.

Bachelorette Breakfast

Sunday morning 8:13 I am cooking stir fry.  No not from scratch...from bag + extra broccoli and yes it required me to spray the shit out of it with the aerosol oil because I still do not have any real olive oil.  Pretty sure I almost completely forgot to eat yesterday.  Unless watermelon and peanut butter can be considered meals.  By the way, if all one eats in a day is watermelon ones body takes on the digestive ability that it shows with corn.  In case you needed to know. 

You may ask yourself...is that the same loaf of bread that was talked about in May??  Yep and as you can see its missing about 3 pieces-ish.  Thinkin about hooking it up in a topsy turvy planter on the balcony and growing some antibiotics...taking health care reform into my own hands. 

Happenings of late.  I painted my kitchen red....flame actually.  I dig it.  More painting to come.  Also I purchased myself a big ass TV.  Most asked question/statement so far...So you decided to get cable?  Um...no.  I stepped out of mainstream media some where about late March/early April when I decided trying to work television into my life just took more effort than I was willing to muster.  Now that I have a TV the size of Rhode Island I feel no differently.  I haven't missed it for one second but must admit I would consider this same behavior during football season a sin.  What I have been doing is watching the Sopranos box set.  Sopranos + me during tourist season = trouble and/or potential for disaster and everyone at work has pointed this out.  It is only a matter of time before I walk up to a table and ask "How YOU doing?" with my little southern accent then snatch one of them out of their seat and pummel the shit out of them all Tony Soprano like...then stand up, straighten my little shirt and ask the rest of the table what salad dressing they'll be having.  The warning has been laid out there...do not be the one.

Roger dog is back on his exercise program.  As with most Jenny Craigers he had fallen off the wagon.  Mainly because I suck but also because 3 moves in 8 months isn't really conducive to setting up routines and sticking to them.  Life has settled down and Velcro has settled me down to loving mornings and one dog is back on check mark track.  He has decided not to give up his peanut butter habit for sake of health...much like my choice with vodka.

Not feeling weird about Father's Day at all.  Time is an amazing healer.  Time takes care of everything but it takes everything away too.  It's your best friend and worst enemy rolled into one.  I love the reckless abandon of kids on the beach.  Absolutely nothing matters past the next 2 seconds to them.  Time turns us into grown ups... and we loose that... and keep waiting for happy to just happen to us. Then that beautiful healing Time sneaks up on us.  It's not as forgiving coming from the other direction.  I wish Daddy hadn't ran out of Time.



Happy Bad Idea Day

Just realized that today is my anniversary.  If I'd have stayed married to the porn addicted, high lighted hair metro sexual it would have been 7 years...add that to the 4 we spent "dating" and it adds up to what could have been a whole bunch of wasted life. Pretty awesomely happy that one didn't work out.  Narrowly escaped domestic captivity.

Where I live the average age is supposed to be something like 42 ish.  I find this ragingly hard to believe since everywhere I turn...the beach, gym, work...it looks like K&W spontaneously combusted and spewed old people all over the place.  Unless there are a whole damn bunch of 5 year olds I'm just not seeing the law of average landing us in the low 40's.  As I was working out and trying to ignore the geriatrics scattered all over the gym looking like my living room floor with the stuffing out of the dogs toys...I pondered...What if these are really just human turtles?  They have that pace and the head turn thing and all. Maybe they are really like 250 years old like the tortoises on Animal Planet. Except for one guy that looks like Rocky's trainer Mickey, just a little quicker.  He's always doing little darty boxer feet and dancing around people in there.  He did it to me today.  One of the real turtle look-a-likes has the ankle hang upside down thingys.  He may top out at about 110 pounds but his toupee of questionable fur origin accounts for at least 5 pounds of that.  I have no idea how he keeps it from falling off while he dangles upside down.  Holy shit ya'll I live in a terrarium.  Factor in today's pharmaceuticals and they are all getting laid.

The face book is pretty amazing sometimes.  I just found all of the kids that I went to 7th & 8th grade with.  Those were super tough years for me and the first time my inner rebel reeaaallly started to develop.  Kinda like tits but way feistier. I lived in a really poor county with only one public junior high and high school. The red headed freckled white girl was a major minority and an endangered one at that.  So the parents moved me into a private christian school. Cue the music...this is were the shit headed down hill.  Hind sight says I should have taken a white girl ass beatin' and lived a normal life.  I immediately fail Bible class because all they wanted you to do was memorize chapters at a time.  Now if you know me you probably know that this poses absolutely no challenge.  I can memorize and test like a full out sum bitch...if I am so inclined.  I was in the beginning stages of my now full blown "I don't fucking think so" disease.  So needless to say I were no so inclined.  And it just pissed me to no end that the others were playing sheep and doing it..  There was chapel...best I can recall 2 days a week.  2 days a week that you got out of class, which should have been a good thing. and herded into church where they talked about people they saw die very gross and descriptive mangled car wreck deaths and then burn in hell.  Sigh.  This actually worked on most of them and they would pile up at the altar to pledge their souls and virginity and first born or whatever.  They had bizarre rules.  We wore dresses and our knees could not show....cause you know the knee is a crazy seductive thing.  All the sports and PE were played in below the knee koolots.  The boys and the girls were not allowed to be within 6 inches of each other. The "6inch Rule". I wonder if the average junk size of the average male played into the choosing of distance?  Even if we were jammed in at the lunch tables there must be space...I think I actually remember a ruler being carried around.  Note-this may be where my stand offish to touching nature originated.  I'm not sure when I fell off the church wagon but it no doubt started somewhere around here.  Of the ones I found...every single one of them have a plethora of children...all thank god somewhere in their profiles and are my mothers absolute dream family.  I am the one and only of them all to suck severely at marriage...refuse to procreate and sit full on across the page as an agnostic.  My poor mother...she did all she could.  I don't think that the down the throat shoving of religion made me like I am.  I'm sure I would still believe like I believe.  It is after all pretty much all made up by me.  But that old soul part of me knows its right...for me.  It appears to have taken on all the others.  One causality  isn't so bad I guess.  Makes me think of a Buffett line "I was force fed my religion but some how saved my smile."


I have a new insurance guy.  Since I've ventured past the state line I've had to change out basically all my policies...pain. in. the. ass.  This new guy has worn me out.  The consensus is that he's sniffin and just wants to get an eye on me and see what I look like.  He's made about 3 attempts.  I got the application for my Jeep policy and under occupation it said Blue Collar.  BLUE-FUCKING-COLLAR.  I bartend.  That's service industry.  How does this mange to rate blue collar??  I kiss blue collar ass all summer in hopes of a 5 spot.  So I fill it all out and sign the 45 frickin required places.  Circle Blue Collar and write "wow...really" and mail it in.  To which I get another call (btw at this point he just says "hey" and starts talking...we've already interacted that much).  It was blamed on an antiquated system and lack of career choices.  Welcome to my world.  I told Velcro that Goober Punch had called again...he actually guessed who I was talking about. No idea where the name came from but I've laughed every time I've said it.  I am such an easy date.

The Ground I Can Cover In a Month

For the first time in a long time my life is settled again.  Every single tiny possession is tucked into its little place.  I have just enough to not look like I'm living in a communal college apartment but still teeter safely on the edge of minimalist.  I've been writing some...mostly just drunk scribblings.  I know the point would be to not edit out the bad but this is my world and you are visiting and I really choose not to lay my bare naked soul out in front of you.  My parental unit came to see my new digs and was less than proud and supportive...could just be the difference in personalities and my skewed perception but as I always say...perception is reality.  A few days after the visit I had some kind of fucked up self realization and actually questioned the core of who I am as my problem...and maybe it is.  I cried myself to sleep that night...But in the morning light I remembered that  I really like me.  I'm the happiest I've ever been.  What the fuck is with me questioning that.  I severely hate getting off of even keel. They told me at work that I'm like watching Monty Python...I'm ok in small doses but you just can't handle much of it.  I can't describe the amount of happy that I am for having someone who can take me in full doses.  I think the people who are around me feel sorry for Velcro and at the same time may question his sanity for choosing me.  He held my hand and brought me down from the ledge that I managed to perch myself on. 

A loaf of bread has been purchased.  Its the first one I've bought since September.  I picked it up after I figured out that every dirty dish in my sink was related to either alcohol or peanut butter...I am not kidding about this.  In my defense some belonged to the dog...the peanut butter not the alcohol.  My first week in the new place and I flood out the neighbors with my misbehaving dishwasher circa 1936 or some shit. They are so going to love me...I know how to win people over.  So needless to say I'm not using it anymore.  Its not that big of a deal but it makes you realize that you've just gone about 5 days (according to the number of dirty peanut butter laced spoons) and all that's missing from your suedo college existence is a pyramid of beer cans and some empty pizza boxes.  I have got to learn to feed myself again...not for nothing the pizza box would indicate at least one meal had been consumed.  Hence the loaf of bread.  I had grand intentions for it but as of yet all I've used it for was to hide a pepto so the dog would take it.  Odds are I'm going to finally land on the idea of a grilled cheese about the time that its been around long enough to be addressed by name and has quite the penicillin farm growing on it.  If I actually ate good and didn't drink my weight in whip cream vodka I could look like a frickin rock star.  Meh.

I saw a motorcycle wreck last week...it was one of the most disturbing things I've seen in a long time.  It didn't  make me nervous to ride or discourage me from wanting my own.  Your odds may get called and that really doesn't bother me. I may freak the f out at the thought of loosing Velcro but not so much myself. When you see someone die completely out of time and unsuspectingly it makes you think.  I've fretted in the past about a will and who would get my real estate and whatever but in hind sight who gives a fuck.  Outside of someone stepping up to handle my furry guys I have no worries.  There's never going to be a devastated husband and motherless off spring.  In the big picture I have not so much to loose...that's a very freeing discovery. 
There was a most awesome full moon this week.  The Rog and I walked all the way to the big field to get an unobstructed view.  Four months after the first one...still crazy in love.  Right now in my little girl grown up world I really couldn't ask for anything more.