April 29th

I used to laugh at the Today show slogan. What a Difference Today Makes. Like my vote for the President, twice inconsequential, a single day in the life of any of us doesn't really seem to make that much of a difference, truthfully. It hasn't for me, and I have spent quite a few of them drinking wine, having exhorbitant highlights foiled to crispness, fighting with my mother, and braiding my cats' hair.

I will allow my skeptical self the acknowledgement that a 365 of them, bundled tightly together so none stands out from another, can represent an unbelievable hunk of change. Not even a little bit, like those morsels of brownie that the Jello people tout as having the same calories as a vat of their gelatin grossness, but a big bit - a colossal bit - like those bricks of Rice Krispie Treat that the Noodle Company pimps at their checkouts. Big like bull. Like this weekend.

Because this weekend was a whirl of friends, some more distant and some discovered through this very outlet. Of laughter and too much beer and a double header for a new softball team. Rolling my sleeves up so I could feel the heat and breaking out the SPF 55 long past the point of no burn. Laughing the real thing, not of the strained variety, with my mother, with whom I have a new and flourishing relationship. Watching the sun glisten off a 8.5 x 11 recipe card that prompted me to purchase lentils for the first time. The cats are healthy, one continuously shedding on the couch arm and the other strategizing just how he will torment me into his next meal. I have a road of plans to look forward to and a full TiVo to consume on the off days. I have not a place in the world I need to be. I am just here. And I am happy.

Life is good, party people. Today is good.

Emeffers.

Well, I’ve had to put the kibosh on comments from anonymous Interwebers. Sir Spamalot and his friends have virtually taken over my archives, and while it’s cool that they are inflating my comments, I find it sad to see that they all read

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roughly 30 of your Google searches that let me know i'm clearly not the sass attack i thought i was

headgear braces
wino blog thirtysomething cats
bowling with your bum
fannie packs
if i'm too good for him, how come i'm not with him?
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girls wearing maxi pads
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nightly wine weight
vibrator recomendations
hope for a broken heart post break-up, where's god in all of this?
spaghettios weight watchers points
i'm not so attractive
hpv insurance rejection
blogger diet
mom in pantyhose
anne geddes baby biscuit
picture of bea arthur in her 20s
ass smell girl
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girls and sausage pizza
i pick my thong wedgies
don't eat curry before a blowjob
fear of self flushing toilets
person farting jingle bells on the toilet video
cellulite on my calves
i put tampons in my bum

then again, at least I'm not this Google searcher:

im a girl and i want to know how to have sex with animals

who probably also wanted a bit of information about a topic I'll admit I go on about to excess:

unitard girls sex

ho hum. i guess i'll just stick with the stuff that keeps you guys coming back.

pictures of stretch marks after using emu oil adult acne like boil on tummy

Conundrum

So, you’re dating. And you are starting to meet people and extract cute Spring clothes from the back of the closet. You actually care what the heels of your feet look like and no longer forget to brush your teeth before bed. You’ve fielded enough invitations to share some ridiculous accounts, ones that make the married folk hold each other a little tighter and the single friends wish they’d married that semi-attractive childhood neighbor.

Like a girl does, you pull your circle of friends close, regaling them with tales from the dark side. You stay out late and giggle and do shots of whatever the bartender has on hand, toasting the loser who didn’t call or the one who’ll never know he was such a bad kisser. Only your circle of friends expands beyond San Fran and Seattle and Cincinnati and just happens to include a little thing called the Internet, and like any girl and her long-distance pals do, you find a way to share most everything with them: a bed of fire ants, a best friend’s pulmonary emboli, a trip to the Belize, the fact that you go to the grocery store once every three months, your father’s illness, kissing your cats on the mouth, not looking at the back of your hair in a mirror, cooing and kissing a date so long in a corner booth that you close the place. You indeed share most everything with them.

But you envision a time down the road, when one date turns to six and suddenly you and a man are coupled. And he knows about this little site that consumes more hours than he currently does and he’s curious. He asks politely and you want to share. So you do. And suddenly the period of Before Him emerges, resplendent with details about "Stephen" and the smooches and the Syrah that ultimately led you to this spot. The particulars that in reverse are purely hypotheticals are instead laid out for him, just as they were for the Internet, in 11-point font. Innocent and mildly entertaining tales of months (and sweet God and Oprah, hopefully not years) as a single city girl become the ever-present memory lane photo album a new partner’s mom leaves out for you to see. It’s all there, just as you once so deliberately intended it to be.

You can see the future. So do you put the present out there in the first place?

An old friend

has recontacted me. A smattering of voicemails and text messages, he makes me chuckle. And he reminds me of different paths. Of a life that might be, although not necessarily with him.

This man reminds me of who I was some time ago, the girl who intended to write for a living, a woman of popularity who thought college would be her ultimate moment, who thought a husband indeed waited who would bring worldwide travel and unquestionable devotion sometime long before now.

It wasn't to be. A collage of factors, of crippling depression many years ago and relationships that I could have forced to be the One, but ultimately did not by the grace of something unknown and to this point unacknowledgeable, have passed by the window. Regrets are one way to take stock of those bygones, but it seems senseless at this point, even without the aid of two glass of Pinot Grigio.

Things happened as they should have. I'm not to the point of a que sera, sera, like so many so-called well-evolved women who share my demographic. But I know where I have been, have catalogued my painful missteps, have acknowledged my faults. And yes, even a few moments of success.

It is the now that seems like that moment of choice.

now i’ll never be a teen model

The dentist informed me today that I’m grinding my teeth while sleeping. To which the small part of me that thinks I’m still semi-betrothed wants to yell, “My boyfriend says I’m not!” to somehow “I know you are but what am I?” the guy holding a wrench in my mouth. Insult is heaped onto injury when wrench doc signs me up for some newfangled mouth guard, which I know does not come in today’s trendiest colors (because I asked), and which shall henceforth be worn during my every sleep cycle. Which should do wonders for my sex life, because we all know a spittle-covered retainer removed during foreplay is every man’s sexual dream.

Missed Connection: m4w, Nats v. Braves game, 33

YOU: "Kris": 33-year-old blonde with large chin sitting in front of us at game last night, bundled up just like my 4 year old. I thought only hookers wore pantyhose under their jeans, but you seem like you have a real job. I'm strangely turned on that you brought a blanket with you, just like the other grandmas. My boner reached new heights while watching you clean stray peanut shells off of your boob shelf. Hot. Had I seen you picking them from your teeth I might have exploded. Maybe someday.

Seeing that you love to pound gallons of draft beer, would you like to come to my pig roast this weekend? My kid's mom will only be there for the first half and we'll have a keg of Natty Light. I won't have a 7-foot-tall president for you to dry hump or cigs for you to bum, but there will be Cheetos.

on not knowing what to say

I am a woman of many words, but I’ve found myself not having all of them within my grasp lately. When I try to explain situations to friends or write an account on this site, I’m often left without the right phrasing, or without any words at all. The descriptors are gone. The result, whether it be in my head or on the screen, is the retelling of a story akin to that of a five year old. This happened, then that. There is no color, no third dimension to any situation. Maybe I’m numb.

This is just how I feel today, about many things that are going on with me, but most specifically about the killings at Virginia Tech. I spent seven years of my adult life living in Virginia, and was only at Tech one time. The few hours that I do recall, those before and long after the tailgate at their Blacksburg football stadium, were a blast. Crisp fall air peppered with the smell of barbeque. Me inappropriately sockless in a breezy October. The roar of the crowd just exploding from the mouth of an intimidating stadium. I remember clearly that the campus looked exactly as you thought a college campus should: grey stone, ivy, towering buildings, trees, manicured lawns, students at work and at ease. Traditional harried serenity.

Although not at Virginia Tech, I recall attending 8 am classes, as I’m sure you do. I took an Honors Ethics class at that ungodly hour, and spent many a minute wondering if toothpicks really were an option for keeping your eyelids open. To this day I recall who sat to my left: a sweet Sigma Kappa who would dress to impress even though there were likely only 10 of us awake on campus. I sat in the middle row, the second seat back, in one of those small cafeteria-like righty desks that I’m not sure would accommodate my fuller figure of today. For that class we used blue books rather than composition notebooks and we had to sign an honor pledge. In the hallway joining that building to another, you could buy 50 cent fountain sodas from a machine, something I wish I’d stolen on a tipsy walk home via the railroad tracks. I remember just where I was, in the stairwell outside that classroom, when I lied to a sorority sister to get out of a drinking binge set for later that evening. All of these memories, vivid and intact, and I didn’t have to witness my teacher being shot in the head.

The media tagging things as never being the same for the students of Virginia Tech is a gross understatement, almost an insensitive dismissal of today’s events. I guess it’s like the difficulty people find in writing something on a sympathy card. Maybe they really don’t have the words, either.

It probably isn't a good sign

that my entire ass hurts after a night spent bowling. Exactly which of the bum muscles are involved in the achievement of successive gutter balls?

Dating ratings

I’ve spent a good bit of time spending money lately. Clothes, books, cat toys, a little wine. Online shopping has become my friend, mostly due to the convenience of sitting on my ass while computing and the help a sister out rating system so many of these sites now use. And then it hit me: what would stop us, single women of the world, from implementing a similar system for dating?

Just like on Match.com and the Dateline to Catch a Predator Registry, each man/boy would have his own page. To lure sweet young things like myself, he would post information about the sports he played (in high school) and exotic places he'd traveled to (online) to his little heart’s content. The catch? In my system, ex-girlfriends, female friends, mothers, scorned lovers, Eagle scouts and prostitutes from the 7-11 on 15th Street would leave testimonials for all to see. Like a Rotten Tomatoes for men.

For the basic and most important categories, like sexual and backrubbing and house cleaning prowess, I'd use a 1-100 rating scale on the following dimensions:

Originality,
Technique,
Function/working parts,
Capacity to adhere to clear and repeated instructions from wise woman,
Ability to execute said prowess while wise woman sleeps, and
Visual appeal and/or flavor.

I’m thinking we should use a more structured scale for the following types of statements:

Frequency with which he spouts really tired and out-of-date movie quotes.
Incidence of failing to stick up for girlfriend in spats with his family.
Regularity of standing women up for established dates with lame excuses about graduate school papers, hair shampooing, or emergency calls from baby’s mamas.

You know, a scale like:

Never does this, bring him home to Mom,
Sometimes, but at least he doesn't need to shave his back,
Neutered,
Frequently, or maybe lesbianism really can sometimes be a choice,
and Always, or yet one more sign that you’ll likely die alone.

No site of its kind would be complete without an open-ended section for the classic free-for-all respondent frenzy, which I’m picturing for any given male might look something like this:

Way to break my heart, Dom. Girls, I spent five long years with this man, paying for his tanning and his muscle tees, picking up the tab for the Bud pitchers at the dog races. And what does he do? He hooks up on my couch with my B Fri while I'm down the shore for the weekend. And just in case your mom is reading this - Mrs. Denunzio, we totally did it in the VFW bathroom at your 65th birthday! BOO-YAH!

NEXT.

Just like the advent of the dishwasher and the pool boy who also shaves your legs, I’m thinking this will free up a lot of wasted time, ladies. You know, hours you could spend on my ratings site griping about your exes.

how to make my head pop off, part II

A caller on DC101 this morning claimed that while Imus is an idiot, which of course is not up for debate by any means, Snoop et. al are not remotely culpable for similar idiocy because when they use the term "bitches and hos," they are not only degrading to black women, but also white women, hispanic women, and Chinese women, as said caller was pretty sure that Snoop is fond of the Chinese women.

Ah, all-inclusive degradation. That's where it's at.

The day's intended post will be published upon reattachment of my head.

adult content rawks

My sweet, sweet girl has nominated me for two blogging awards.


My popularity overwhelms me. This is just like that time I ran for Miss Hygiene New Jersey.

One sluggish egg

I am always amazed at just how exhausting it is to have fun. I know; this is the mark of an old woman and my ovaries are probably shriveling as we speak, which I’m pretty sure we all know wouldn’t really kill me. Keeping up an active social life just might.

Friday afternoon saw a cancellation that opened the door to a Friday evening spent with wine and a good friend as well as several failed attempts to convert her to a devotee of the Ghost Whisperer, which shall remain my guilty pleasure of the year, if not the decade. Although that title may already have gone to my sick-day consumption of all available episodes of the Real World: Denver as I certifiably cannot. Get. Enough. We giggled like schoolgirls and talked about you and watched the Office and dreamed of dating both Jim and Roy (post-thick neck loss and possible anger management and/or jail time). Our evening of good, clean fun ran until 1 am. I slept. Until sometime just before 6 o’clock, that is, when the Master of My Domain decided his very survival was in jeopardy and that this extreme need for kibble warranted him pulling my left nostril with an extended claw. I was none too pleased.

I spent a sleepy Saturday with my family as my sister was in town, and gorged myself on a cheesy cup of French onion soup in a Shirlington restaurant and a considerably larger bowl of laughter when my mother referred to Penelope Cruz’s recent movie Volver as a decidedly wrong, and loud, Vulva. It was worth my audible snort. The Likey foursome spent the afternoon in the movie theater, 75 percent of our clan awake, while my fatigued and apparently movie-challenged mother snoozed through 90 minutes of strikingly tanned and attractive Richard Gere moments. I was jealous.

Nighttime brought birthday festivities at a Logan Circle bar, and I apologize in advance to anyone with whom I rubbed backs with or made eyes at across the room in a tipsy effort to get myself one of those damned missed connection posts. I don’t know when I made it home, but I do recall my best friend drunk dialing her mother on the way to ask if she knew what the word vulva meant and my shock and awe that she was actually doing so. I slept soundly on the couch until Master of My Domain decided, sometime just before 5 o’clock, that his ability to thrive was clearly in danger, and that this extreme need for kibble warranted him pulling at my right tear duct with an extended claw. None. Too pleased.

Today was a flurry of punny Easter cards, flaming irritation on my part that I was not more promptly informed of the Peep diorama contest, and a family bonding exercise in which we began our memory book, filling journal pages with each of our individual responses to burning and embarrassing questions like, “How can you not remember [insert important life event here], even though you somehow recall useless pop culture facts like Little Richard marrying Demi and Bruce?” In three hours I found out more about my parents than I learned about them in the past five years. It was beautiful and exhausting and simultaneously comforting given that no confessions of adoption or affairs were at any time disclosed. And then there was good pie.

And now I lie on my couch, Master of My Domain at my side and Cricket Likey at my head, and contemplate just how much my eyes hurt. And how sleepy I am. And how I probably should get up and clean the thin film of Pinot Noir that still remains on the kitchen tile following the Full Bottle Falling from the Top of the Refrigerator Incident of this afternoon. I’m pretty sure there is wet laundry in the washer and I have not a clue as to what I have to do tomorrow. Or frankly, what day it is. I shall avoid all of this, of course, wisely choosing instead to plan my Peep diorama submission for ’08 until sleep finally consumes me.

Nightmare

I wake up in a sweat because I’ve had an awful dream, a function of my ridiculously cruel and indulgent brain. A nightmare in which some function or other brings us together again. He for all intents and purposes ignores me, a speck on the windshield of his newly-washed world. He, the center of the room and the man I always wanted, and always knew, god damnit, he was inside.

In my REM he flirts effortlessly with the women around him, commands the room, and treats me when I approach as if I hold no substance in his world. I ache and stifle an urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake until there’s recognition that I’m the woman he once thought was his One. I want to hide here, there, anywhere that has sufficient cover, so my humiliation doesn’t show. Again.

We always talked of being the same person. The same nap times, the chicken parmesan, the white wines, the ocean, the Dutch oils. How he wouldn’t hurt upon every instance of seeing me, in my dreams be caught dead in his tracks and almost unable to form words for a flocking harem, and in my days think a car-to-car exchange sufficient to come back into my world - even for a second - after treating me so coldly and so disrespectfully the months that we last knew each other, is unacceptable to me. Ironically, I’m the one ashamed of the absence of an apology or a farewell. It all doesn’t even register. I can’t allow it.

Because if I did, it would mean that years of this young life were wasted. That the pre-dawn talks and the plans and the laughter were all for naught and that he wasn’t really who he said he was. I refuse. I know myself. I trust myself. He was the man in core and intent closest to my father, the nearly-infallible one. I can’t comprehend that he’s gone, that he isn’t that person anymore, even if he’s not with me. He simply must be.

I wonder too when my mind will stop this search for answers, the diversion it allows itself each month since. When the finally intermittent disbelief and uncertainty will cease. Could you really not have me in your world and be your best self at the same time? It snowballs like this until I’m running downhill beside it, and I know if I don’t stop it soon the focus of this day will shift for good, the old friend of self doubt creeping in only somewhat uninvited. The swimmer, the truest friend, the man with the jokes. The You I knew was there. The man I encouraged. That’s all I ever wanted. All I really want in these moments upon waking is peace.

Unsolicited Advice #361

Men and boys, when trying to date a woman, never, ever use any variation of the word retarded in your correspondence, particularly retard, but most especially tard, lest she trash you to friends and post about it on her blog.

Opening Day

I love spring. I am almost a different person when I feel the sun’s warmth, a woman remarkably less temperamental when she can wear flip flops and stir a summer skirt from its hibernation in the back of her closet. A person who prefers most every day spent inside, I instead walk my neighborhood appreciating the smell of bulb flowers and my own envy as charcoal steams in front-yard grills. So transformed am I that witnesses report unprovoked smiling and cooing at babies. I love how cheerful I become, how I stroll rather than scamper, the possibilities seemingly limitless when what feel like endless months of sunshine lie ahead, and the warm blanket of nighttime humidity wraps itself around both me and those rowdy crickets.

Spring and summer mean open-toed shoes and the cutest of cotton and silk drinking wear, of course, but they also mean baseball, proof positive that I do not share all strands of my mother’s DNA. I am a football fan at heart, finding my interest in the speed and the strategy – and the pants, boys, oh, the pants – heightened, but the lazy, steamy months of summer warrant a slower activity in which the spectator can indulge. And so almost on a weekly basis, I trek to the stadium, sunglasses, ample beer money and Weight Watchers points in hand, to soak up the sunshine and quite possibly a ridiculously large and delectably salty soft pretzel with thousands of DC residents (and a smattering of VA and MD fans who stubbornly refuse to take Metro to the games, a gripe being filed away for an entirely different post.)

I find myself so completely intoxicated by the entire experience of being in the stadium that I often have to remind myself to focus on the main reason I paid 20 hard-earned dollars to be there. But the smell of beer and hot dogs on the drunk twenty-something’s breath, the disconcerting sight of women wearing pink Nationals’ paraphernalia from head to toe, the rumble in my chest when the crowd realizes that run may win the game, how could they not lead to beautiful, indulgent distraction? And it goes without saying that I love to study people, particularly the way in which fathers and their sons relate at these events, almost indescribable to witness and vastly different than the vigor with which they pair up to watch soccer or football. It’s rooting for the home team and eating more sugar than mom would allow, to be sure, but it’s also about dads explaining in hushed tones just why a play was as good as it was and just how low over the eyes you wear that rigid new baseball cap.

I think of my own father at these times, a man so unfairly punished by God and Oprah to be blessed with three sisters, two daughters, three female dogs, two lady cats, a female parakeet, several hermit crabs of indiscernible gender, and one chunky male Schnoodle that didn’t do much but eat Alpo and shirk away from our loving touch. When any team even tangentially related to Pittsburgh played any professional or college sport, Dad was relegated to the den with the ancient television, while the females sat in the main room and served high tea and talked about menstruation and Tom Selleck and jello molds. As long as I live I will never forget his spontaneous clapping and yelling during the best and worst of plays, and on occasion, animated yet unreciprocated conversations with the television.

I think it makes him happy that at least one of his many females now enjoys all of the games as he does, and that she’ll be standing tall for yet another season of softball, despite a clear tendency both to stand tall and strike out. He cares not that this year I’ll be playing on a DC bar’s team rather than for the CEO, or that I can only remember the names of the pro players who look best with a little sweat on 'em, or that I can drink my cats’ weight in Miller Light when our seats are located in the shade. I prefer Dad just think of me soaking up the sun as he probably once did, albeit with less understanding of the plays and even less of the strategy, and clapping at all the right times. I’ll tell him the lazy male hermit crabs drank all the beer.