You Talkin'a Me, Bitch?

So I'm at my new job... things are going well. I really get along with my manager, and the other lady in our room. Manager and I go to the deli nearby to get a sandwich (they're really great sandwiches, and really cheap!). We come back, go to the empty lunchroom, which has three long tables with chairs, and we sit down to eat.

I open my sandwich up, spread out the paper, and pour my plantain chips on the paper. I open my cranberry juice, and start to eat while having a conversation with Manager. Suddenly, I'm interrupted by the staff nurse, who just walked into the room.

Her: "You're in my seat."

Me: "Are you kidding?" (There are at least seven empty chairs in the room.)

Her: "No. Manager, didn't you tell her that THIS is MY seat?"

Manager: (tries to hide under his sandwich paper, concentrates very hard on a speck of pepper)

Me: "Do you want me to move?"

Her: "Yes."

So I moved. Very out of character for me - but I'm new there, and wasn't sure of the pecking order. But the fact that she was being a bitch to me for no reason irked me. And it irked me even more that I got out of that chair. So I wrapped up the rest of my lunch, and got up from the table, and took it into my office where I finished it at my desk.

My father is married to the woman who owns this business. My father works down the hall, running his own business. I told him about this little saga, and he went out that night and brought in a cafe table, set it up in the lunchroom with four chairs around it and a huge "RESERVED" sign on it.

Unfortunately, she didn't get that the joke was on her. She thought I had put it there as a reserved table for myself. At least that's what I hear. I'm not eating lunch anywhere near her again.

I'm tempted, just once, to go back and sit in "her seat"... and if she says anything, to invite her to try and get me to move. Bitch.

I found a picture that will most likely come in handy there...

The Adventures of Mudpuppy in Quicksandville

So what can you really do when you are at a new job, and no one is there to train you? What can you do when you come back to work and someone has changed the user settings on your desktop so that you can now no longer access your setup? What can you do when you make a pot of coffee, but the exterminator shows up to spread poison around - and you hurry to get at least one good cuppa, and the milk floats up to the top in big sour chunks? What can you do when you are the newest person in the office, and everyone else is coming to you with emergencies and problems that you have no resources to solve?

I'll let you know when I figure it out.

Angelina's Shoes: Chapter 6 (The End)

I didn’t hear her come up behind me, barefoot as she was. But then she touched my hair - softly, like a spider touching her web. I went completely still, afraid that if I moved I would startle her. That she might bolt like a deer if I breathed. So I didn’t breathe. Again, I felt her hand on my hair, feather-light and stroking, making my scalp tingle.

Finally, unable to hold my breath any longer, I exhaled and turned slowly to face her. I leaned back against the kitchenette counter, partially because my shaky knees needed the added support, and partially to keep myself from leaning toward her.

She moved so slowly, a mermaid suspended in the sea of my disbelief. Her eyes never left mine. Luminous, they shone and grew darker at the same time. Her lips parted slightly as she drew closer. I could smell her perfume again, and felt the heat of her body through my clothing.

She reached and found the belt loops of my jeans. Her thumbs hung lightly there, her hands suspended from my hip bones like delicate marionettes. Each particle of time seemed separated, time itself seemed to have slowed to the point of stopping.

At the last second, she smiled a knowing half-smile. The Mona Lisa, come to life again, more beautiful than before. She leaned against me, the length of her touching the length of me, lightly, all at the same time. Our knees, our hips, our torsos, our breasts.... and our lips.

Ripples of sensation spread through me. Softness like I’d never imagined. Softness, and sweetness. I closed my eyes, adjusting to the exhilarating strangeness and wonder of feeling a body shaped like my own pressed close to me. Lips that had known a lifetime of glossy softeners, skin that had been pampered and lotioned, hair that held the fragrance of flowers.

It almost felt like I was kissing a mirror image of myself, honoring the goddess in me, the child I had been, and the future self that had yet to emerge. I kissed her the way I wanted to be kissed. She responded in kind. The taste of her mouth was indescribable – unique and wonderful, flavored with the smoky memory of Merlot.

There was an undeniable pulse of sexual tension beneath our skin, but also something near reverence - an almost holy calm that radiated from the places where our bodies touched. There was no selfish grasping in our embrace. There was no greed, no groping, neither of us trying to steal from the other more than was offered. This was not a free-for-all smorgasbord of lust – it was a gift, an offering from the soul of one wild woman to another. It was a giving and receiving of respect, an affirmation of each other’s worth, regardless of our life circumstances.

The kiss lasted until it was through – I have no concept of the time that passed, nor would I want to know even if someone could tell me – and when it ended, we both smiled. It was Angie’s turn to be shy, now that it was done. She put a hand to her mouth, fingers catching at her lips. “So – how was it?”

She looked at me as if she really thought I might have some sort of criticism to offer. As if I wasn’t completely blown away by this whole damn day. As if I wasn’t ready to flap my arms and take off flying, swooping low over the catering trucks and circling above the crowds of people behind the wooden barricades, screaming “She kissed me!” at the top of my lungs.

I just smiled, shook my head, and said, “Whoosh.” My eyes were a little misty suddenly. I just shrugged and shook my head again. Someone went by the trailer, banged on the door and laughed loudly as they walked away. I smiled at her and started for the door, stopping to slip my shoes on and pick up my purse.

She walked around the coffee table and bent to pick up her sandals. They were buff colored leather with an embroidered design on the white sole. They were a little scuffed around the heel, and had smudgy toe-marks where her bare feet had been. She handed them to me, grinning.

“Now you have a pair of shoes worn by Angelina Jolie.”

Angelina's Shoes: Chapter 5

We sat on the couch again, and Angie said, “So. The story of my shoes.”

Enjoying myself immensely, I settled into my storytelling role. “It all started on a remote island resort...”

“You bought my shoes from a resort?”

“Not exactly... have patience, grasshoppah, and all will be revealed.” She smiled at this – I could tell she was hooked. She was getting impatient. “I have a search saved on ‘My Ebay’ which looks up your name, minus photographs, trading cards, and other assorted bullshit. In other words, it only searches for items that might be out of the ordinary, say, paintings of you, or props that you used in movies, things like that.

“So, one day I came across this item title, ‘Shoes worn by Angelina Jolie’. We wear the same shoe size, so of course, I had to check it out.”

Her eyebrows nearly disappeared over the top of her head, and I could hear the thoughts running through her mind as if they were spoken out loud. This chick knows what shoe size I wear. She collects my used footwear. She could be a complete lunatic. No, she probably is a complete lunatic.

I plowed ahead. “The seller was this girl who claimed to work at the island resort I mentioned. She said she had the pair of shoes that you wore as a bridesmaid in the wedding of your assistant, Holly Goline.”

Angie leaned back on the sofa and made a whooshing sound, letting all the air in her lungs rush out at once. She shook her head and smiled vaguely, but said nothing.

“Of course, I was very skeptical of all this, and I sent her an email asking her a ton of detailed questions. I looked up the name brand of the shoe, and was suspicious because they didn’t cost a whole lot – maybe $40. She responded with answers that seemed logical, and true, but I still wasn’t sure. She said the bride picked out the shoes for everyone, so it wasn’t your choice.

“So I asked her for verification of her employment at the resort. She responded by giving me the email address of one of the clerks at the hotel, as well as the URL of the hotel’s website. At this point in the game, there was a $99 bid on the shoes. No way in hell was I going to bid a hundred bucks on some $40 shoes unless I could prove beyond reasonable doubt that they were, in fact, worn by you.

“I checked the hotel website out, and sent a very short email, just asking them to verify her employment there, and whether you had really been a guest. I received an affirmative reply about her employment – they wouldn’t say whether or not you’d been there, but I confirmed that later with a magazine article – and so I happily went back to ebay to bid on the shoes. They were gone! I couldn’t believe it. The auction had been closed down, no winners, no sale – just gone. I was really pissed off, so I emailed the seller to ask what happened.

“Was I in for a story! Apparently, the clerk who receives and replies to email inquiries for the hotel was a rampaging biotch. He wasn’t working during the time you were staying at the hotel, and was pissed because he never got any of the signed photographs you gave out to the other staff members. He complained to the management of the hotel, and got the girl fired! They told her she had to take the shoes off ebay, too.

“In the mean time, a friend of mine who works for a television news station in the city had come up with a magazine article that had a picture of you actually wearing the shoes... or at least shoes that looked exactly like the ones I was going to bid on. It gave the name of the resort, and completely backed up the girl’s whole story. I was so excited, I had sent the picture to her so she could put that on her ebay auction site. But now it didn’t matter.

“I felt horrible. I had only done what she gave me permission to do - I didn’t mean to get her fired! I offered to pay her the amount of the last bid for the shoes on ebay, if she decided to sell them after all. She’s a single mom, and the holidays were coming up, and she’s trying to go back to school. She decided to sell me the shoes. I gave her fifty bucks more than the bid on the shoes. She said she and her daughter had a great Thanksgiving dinner on that money, which I was really glad to hear.

“When I received the package, I opened the cardboard box and found a beautiful, beaded rattan box inside. Inside that were The Shoes, carefully wrapped in gold tissue paper. There was also a pillowcase, a washcloth, a crumpled page torn from a library book, and the toiletries from the hotel room. And this earring.” I pointed to the partnerless chandelier earring in my left ear.

She looked at me, expressionless. I went on. “I know this must seem really freaky to you. But you can get in touch with anyone you want – you can just pick up a phone and call them, and they’ll see you, or at least take your call. It’s different from this side. Besides, that’s not the strangest thing I have...”.

Again her eyebrows traveled heavenward. I seemed to be giving them a real workout today. “Oh? What else?”

“Well.... I have your face.”

“My face.” It wasn’t a question – it just hung out there like a flag on a still day.

“Yep, your face. I bought a life mask of your face. I draped it in black velvet, like you’re wearing a hooded cape, and put a silver brooch with an amethyst stone under your chin, and framed the whole thing in a shadowbox frame. It’s hanging in my living room.”

She laughed this time, shaking her head, and then looked at me through her eyelashes. “Did you do anything naughty with my face before you put it in the frame?”

I blushed again, but answered her honestly. “Well, I don’t know if it was naughty, but I did kiss you on the mouth. I figured it was the closest I was ever going to be to you. What did I know – hell, I’m not a psychic.” I took another sip of my wine, sensing this conversation was going places it hadn’t been yet.

“Have you ever kissed a girl before?” The gleam was back in her eyes. She was on the offensive again - in control, like a big cat tracking its prey. The tip of her tongue flicked to the corner of her mouth, completing the illusion. I was a goner.

In for a penny, in for a pound – I let the words come rushing out, tumbling over each other as if they were glad to finally be free. “No, I never have. I never really wanted to, until I saw you in the first 'Tomb Raider' movie. I guess I sort of had a girl crush on Julia for a while during her ‘Pretty Woman’ phase, but that was nothing compared to the way I felt when I first saw you. It was kind of like getting sucker punched in the gut. Completely unfamiliar, but also completely unmistakable. After I saw a couple of your interviews, heard the way you explained your ability to be attracted to people regardless of their gender, I felt much less weird about it – it’s just part of who I am, and that’s okay with me.”

She nodded sagely, her eyes gone dark. “Exactly. And now that you’re in the same room with me, do you still feel the same way, or was it one of those fantasies that you don’t really want to deal with in real life? There are things like that, you know. Things you just want to keep as a dream. Things that lose their shine if you get them out in the light of day.”

I didn’t know where she was going with this line of questioning. I didn’t want to put myself out there just to have her say, “Well, it’s been nice chatting with you, gotta get back on set!”...but a part of me felt reckless, too. I wasn’t ever going to be here again, so whatever I said or did would have to be the truth – even if I was embarrassed, even if it didn’t make for a Hallmark moment or memories wreathed in mist and flower petals. I took a deep breath, and looked directly into her eyes.

“Okay, I’m scared shitless. I’m scared to tell you what this feels like, being so close to you. I’m scared of what would happen if you leaned over and kissed me right now. I’m scared that you won’t – that you’ll walk out of here and I’ll never see you again, never get another chance. That’s the honest truth.” My hands were shaking. I felt like my soul had been stripped naked and flogged in public. I was miserable, but happy at the same time. I had the feeling that I was lost in exactly the right place.

She smiled and blinked twice, squinting her eyes as if thinking of something pleasant from her past. I’d seen her do that to talk show hosts and photographers. I didn’t know if it signaled her going to hide inside herself, putting on a canned expression to cover feelings of discomfort, or if she really did appreciate what had just been laid bare before her.

I’d had about all the bravery and face-to-face honesty I could handle for one day. I was a little done-in by my fall on the pavement, the ensuing excitement, and my confession. I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees and contemplated my interlaced fingers closely for any clues as to what to do next.

We both jumped out of our skin as someone pounded loudly on the trailer door. “Angie! We’ll need you on set in fifteen.” Shit. There it was. I knew that this afternoon couldn’t really go on forever. Now the other shoe had hit the floor. There was no rewind, no pause button. I could go over every second of this day in my mind for the rest of my life, but I could not make this moment last. I took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh as I got to my feet.

Without looking at her, I reached down and picked up our wine glasses. The condensation from each had run together into one puddle on the coffee table. Like our lives, which had run together for one afternoon.

I walked to the tiny sink and ran water into the glasses.

Angelina's Shoes: Chapter 4

I had been sitting sideways on the sofa, facing her, mirroring her posture. Now I turned, giving her my profile, and slouched down on the sofa. I stretched my legs out and kicked off my own shoes, as she had done minutes before. “I don’t know if anybody ever really knows anyone. But I do. Know you.” I sat up again slowly, looking across the room and through the wall. This time it was my turn. I snapped my head to the left, so that my eyes were dead level with hers – just the way she had done it minutes before.

She looked at me - into me - for a moment, then changed the subject. “What about you? What is one thing you want to do before you die?”

Here it was. My chance. I could chicken out and regret it the rest of my life, but live with the thought that it might have happened. Or I could go for it. I ended up doing a little of both - but started by jumping in with both feet. First I took a big breath, and a healthy swallow of Merlot.

“I want to kiss you on the mouth. Okay, that came out all wrong. I mean, I do want to kiss you on the mouth, but it’s not like it sounded... what I mean is, I would like to save the world and end hunger and find a cure for everything, and maybe after I do all that, you’d want to kiss me because you’d think I was so selfless and great... or maybe I could invent the first functional “bullshit-o-meter”, so girls at bars would know right away which guys to avoid, or I could do something that would be just so wild that you would be completely amazed and you’d just have to...”

I was interrupted by a snorting sound. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. She was laughing at me. I started laughing too, but only because I was too embarrassed to do anything else. My face was so hot it was wilting the flowers on the coffee table, and my knees had become rubber bands. I laughed harder. She snorted again, and we both rolled around, holding our stomachs in pain while we howled like a couple of lunatic hyenas. I fell off the couch. She screamed and pointed, still laughing, and I could see tears starting to form at the corners of her eyes. My own eyes were already streaming. Tears and laughter have been closely linked experiences for me as far back as I can remember.

I didn’t want it to end. Our laughter, our shared moment of hilarity. I wanted to laugh and laugh until my eyes popped out of my head and rolled across the floor. I wanted us to keep laughing forever. But, as with all perfect moments, time marched right over us and we eventually found our way back from laughter to ragged breath and eye-wiping, and finally back to some semblance of normalcy.

I was sitting on the floor, leaning against the couch, my head thrown back on the seat cushions, my knees bent and leaning against each other for support. Angie had crawled back up onto the sofa.

I looked up at her and said, “I have a pair of your shoes.”

“Oh? I hadn’t noticed any missing from my closet.” She was still catching her breath, and her voice was husky.

“Very funny. I got them on ebay. It’s a long story... which I’d be happy to tell you, if you like.”

She jumped up, grabbed the two now-empty glasses, and went back to the kitchenette to refill them. As she did so, I wondered if she would be careful to return each glass to its original drinker. If she wasn’t careful, then I could possibly be touching my lips to the glass that she drank from. That would kinda-sorta be like kissing her, in a very roundabout way. I had to try very hard not to think about that, so that I could tell the story that she wanted to hear. Well, I could think about it a few seconds more - until she came back to the sofa, at least...

When she did come back, I thanked her and took the proffered glass. I made a joke of grabbing her fingers as well as the glass, for just a second. Grinning, I let her go, and took a sip, touching my tongue to the edge of the glass while I drank.

I don’t think she noticed, but then she doesn’t miss much - I’ll never know for sure.

Angelina's Shoes: Chapter 3

I suppose you could say I’m her “number one fan”, although I cringe at the phrase. It’s so tacky. It doesn’t begin to explain the way I feel about her. Sure, I collect her pictures, her movies. I memorize her movements, and her pronunciation of certain words. I know her predilection for a pseudo-British accent. But I don’t do these things so much because I admire her as because I feel a connection to her, an understanding born of similarity of soul. The wildness that runs under my skin, mostly unseen by the outside world, springs from the same well as hers. And now I was sitting on her couch. Holy shit, what a journal entry this was going to make.

She didn’t move for a few seconds after my comment about being caged. Then her head turned toward me in one quick movement, her eyes dead level with mine. She said, “You think about things like that?” Her face was carefully impassive, her voice low. I took a breath and forced myself to look away for at least a couple of seconds.

“Sure, all the time. There’s always a war going on in my head of some kind or other. I want to be happy with what I have, be at peace with my life in a Zen kind of way. On the other hand, I want more, too. A lot more. I think about what it would be like to live a life like yours, to have your advantages, but I have to consider the drawbacks too. It’s the only way I can come back to center and go on doing the nine-to-five grind without completely losing my mind, you know?”
She kept looking at me, levelly, considering. I had to talk again, or I felt like I might disappear into the bottomless well of her eyes.

“What, you think all your fans mindlessly gobble whatever bullshit the press dishes out? You think we believe everything we see in gossip rags and on ‘entertaintment television’?”

Then she smiled. “I guess we’re both victims of the hype... they tell you that our lives are perfect, they tell us that you believe it.”

I nodded, trying to pull my eyes away from her, so as not to make her feel like a specimen under the microscope. Trying, and failing miserably. I just couldn’t stop looking at her. “It’s like we’re on opposite sides of a one-way mirror. There are a million ways I can see you physically, but never get to know you. And you – well, you never see me at all.”

I looked at her profile, so familiar and suddenly so unbelievably close. Her hair was tousled, full of hair spray, falling all around her shoulders in movie-perfect disarray. I wanted to reach out and touch it. My hands stayed safely wrapped around my bottle of water, which was now lukewarm. She wore a scoop-necked grey tee shirt and faded jeans. I wondered if she was on break, wearing her own clothing, or if that was part of her character’s wardrobe. I was so afraid that she would be called away to work at any second, but she didn’t seem to be in any kind of rush.

She spoke again, reaching out to pick up her half empty bottle of Evian off the arm of the sofa. I caught a whiff of her perfume - musky and warm, with just a hint of spice. “So, what is it that you would do if you had everything you wanted? What could you do then that you can’t do now?”

This was getting more surreal by the second - as if that was possible. Playing “what if” games with the person I wanted to meet more than anyone in the world. Chance in a million that I was sitting here with her in the first place. One of my dearest wishes had already come true, and now here we were, discussing my dreams. Suddenly I could hear Mike Tyson’s voice in my head, saying “Thith ith LUDICRITHH!”. I couldn’t agree more.

“Can I skip the obvious ‘What I Would Do For Other People’ list? It’s a long one.”

“Sure.”

“I’d travel the world. Go to places that aren’t on any holiday brochures. I’d get a piano, so I could play and write again. Hell, I guess I’d have to start with a house that a piano would fit in. I’d ride in a fighter jet. I’d get my Harley back, too.”

One of her finely arched eyebrows shot up. “You had a bike?”

“Yeah. A 1983 Harley Sportster. No ‘girlie bike’ Hugger, either – it was a real bike, a thousand cc’s. Black and chrome, stock. Sweet.”

“What happened to it?” She seemed genuinely interested. I happened to know she recently purchased an Agusta Brutale, and could afford as many Harleys as she could line her English estate’s driveway with. I sighed.

“I moved to Nashville to become a famous songwriter – ha -, and had to sell it because I couldn’t pay the rent, and because I didn’t have a garage to keep it in. It would have walked. To spare myself that particular pain, I sold it to my mother’s husband, with the condition that I’d have first dibs on buying it back if I was ever able to. How do you like your Brutale?”

The eyebrow went up again. “It’s ripping fun. Not that I have all that much free time, but when I do, I love getting out and just going.” I could tell by the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about it that she had gotten the bug badly.

“Yeah. My favorite is getting out in the country on a summer evening, on a nice smooth-paved two lane road. The best is when you ride in and out of the trees, or up and down hills, and you can feel the air temperature change on your skin.”

She nodded, smiling. “Absolutely the best. Do you want something to drink?”

I looked pointedly at my tepid bottle of Evian and back at her again, raising an eyebrow of my own. She grinned in response and shrugged as if to say “Well...???”. I said, “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

Still grinning, she said, “Like living on the edge? Okay....”. She got up and sauntered over to the kitchen, where she grabbed something from the fridge, and then opened the cabinet just next to it. All I could see of her was her denim covered, nearly-not-there ass, and her bare feet, on tiptoe to help her reach whatever she was going for on the top shelf. I heard a cork pop, and the sound of liquid being poured. She came back with two glass goblets of chilled Merlot. I thought I was the only one who liked it cold.

I thanked her as she handed me the glass, and watched as she gracefully tucked one foot underneath her and sat sideways on the couch, facing me. I took the initiative. “So, what about you? What would you do if you were completely un-famous? Something that you can’t do now.”

She made that humming sound again, and looked off into the middle distance. Before she answered, she took a sip of wine. “I would take Mad to the movies. I would go grocery shopping by myself, with no glasses or scarves or hats. I would... I don’t know, just be, without worrying about being recognized or followed or stalked or whatever. I would go wherever I wanted to go without having to make a huge plan beforehand. I would live without security guards hovering around.”

I nodded, then pressed one level further. “Okay, scrap the whole issue of famous or not. What is one thing you want to do before you die – something you’ve never done before but you might actually be able to do?”

She didn’t hesitate. She said, “I want to fly around the world. By myself.”

“Would you have to buy a special kind of plane for that, or would you just rent one?”

She looked at me again. I loved it when she did that. Every time her eyes met mine, it felt like a jolt of electricity. I was surprised my hair wasn’t standing on end from it. “So that doesn’t surprise you. Even a little bit.”

It was a statement, not a question. I answered anyway, to keep my mind off the fact that our kneecaps were less than six inches apart. “No, it would take a lot more than that to surprise me about you.” I took a sip of my drink, loving the way the flavor of the cooled wine turned into a warmth that traveled down into the depths of my interior. My eyes stayed locked on hers as I drank. The effect of that little move - on me, at least - was like doubling the alcohol content of the wine. Then I looked at her mouth. Wow, shouldn’t have done that. Back to her eyes.

“You say that like you know me.” One eyebrow again soared skyward, a slender brown seagull alone in a pale sky. She did not smile, but there was a glint in her eye.

I decided to call her bluff.

Angelina's Shoes: Chapter 2

I don’t know what I thought the inside of an actor’s on-set trailer would look like, but it was nothing like opulent. It was well equipped, but plain – functional was the word that came to mind. The closest thing to glamour was a flat screen TV on the wall across from a leather sofa. It was probably chosen more for its space-saving qualities than its glitz factor. My eyes scanned the trailer, trying to take everything in at once, not wanting to miss a single detail. Pictures of a be-mohawked Maddox were stuck to the refrigerator with magnets. What I assumed was the movie script – a thick sheaf of dog-eared papers in a light blue cover – sat on the counter nearby. Some fresh flowers were huddled close together in a vase on the coffee table, looking vaguely uncomfortable. My eyes went back to Angie – partly to see what she was doing, partly to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating this whole thing.

She pointed to the sofa with one willowy, manicured finger. I sat. She handed me one of the bottles of Evian, which I opened and sipped, grateful for both the cool wetness of the water on my dry throat and the fact that the trailer was air conditioned. Although I was still feeling euphoric, like I was in a movie about someone else’s life – someone really, really lucky - my shoulder really was starting to throb.

Angie was hunched over an open drawer by the refrigerator, rummaging around and muttering to herself. She found what she was looking for, grabbed a roll of paper towels off the counter, and started walking toward me across the trailer. I was struck by how incredibly slender, tall, and fine-boned she was. I’d heard the old “camera puts on ten pounds” story before, but I was still unprepared for the reality of her. Come to think of it, I was supremely unprepared for this whole day, so this was just one more thing.

When she stopped in front of me, it became painfully apparent to both of us that I was staring at her like a drooling imbecile. We both laughed and looked away, and then back again, quickly, sizing each other up. I shrugged, feeling my face heat up. So I was smitten – sue me. I could hear my heart beating in my ears.

She opened the other bottle of Evian, pouring a little water into a wadded paper towel. Sitting next to me on the couch, she carefully wiped the blood from my injured shoulder, pressing just hard enough to remove the drops that had already begun to dry. I sat perfectly still, aware that this surreal moment was fleeting – that before I knew it, I would be back on the train heading east, hearing the garbled voice on the loudspeaker squawking, “Next stahp RahnKAHNkamah.”

But now, right now, I was sitting in Angelina’s trailer, and she was biting her lower lip as she concentrated on cleaning the scratches on my shoulder. Her mood-stone eyes, today a mysterious mix of grey and green, flicked to my face, to see how I was taking it. I handle pain fairly well, and in the current situation, I would have sat just as still if she’d had razorblades in her hand instead of paper towels. I smiled and said, “Thanks.”

She made a humming sound in her throat – the same one I’d heard her make each one of the million times I watched “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”, and then she spoke. “Looks like you’re having a rough day.”

“Actually, it’s turning out better than I thought it would.”

She tossed the bloody paper towels into the wastebasket across the trailer. Two points. I thought fleetingly of the amulets of blood she and Billy-Bob Thornton exchanged. I wondered if she thought about them, too. If she did, she gave no outward sign. She held up a spray can of Bactine for my approval, and I nodded and turned my head to avoid the fumes as she spritzed my wounded shoulder. The antibacterial was cool and took away the sting immediately, funny smell notwithstanding.

Her role as Florence Nightingale done for the moment, Angie turned and kicked her sandals off, putting her long, bare feet up on the coffee table as she leaned back on the sofa. She was staring at the opposite wall, perhaps looking right through it. I felt as though I might be disappearing, like Christopher Reeves’ character in “Somewhere in Time”, or waking from a dream. I fought the panic with words and opened my mouth, praying that something intelligent would come out.

“I used to think that being rich and famous made you free to do anything you wanted, but sometimes I wonder if it’s not more like being in a cage.”

Of course, my reference to a cage was intentional – I know her tattoos by heart. There’s one on the inside of her left arm that says, “A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages”. Tennessee Williams. I know every inch of the outside of her – nearly, anyway – having spent who knows how many hours in front of my TV, the DVD player set to the frame-by-frame setting, watching the way her hands move, the turn of her head, the curl of her lips when she shouts, the way her teeth sit in her mouth. I’ve made mental note of the exact shade of her skin, the shape of her nose in profile, the awkward but endearing angle of her bare feet in love scenes. I have a map in my head of the constellation of her freckles. I’ve memorized the way she cuts her eyes at someone when she’s pissed off or being provocative, the way she puts her fingers to her lips to draw someone’s eyes there. I am as aware of her as a person can be who has only ever had access to photographs and film – until today, that is.

Angelina's Shoes: Chapter 1

“Hey! Angie! Over here!” I felt foolish. Here I was, a thirty-something woman, screaming like a kid. But it was now or never. I might never get this chance again. My ribs ached from the insistent, jabbing elbows of the other fans. Everyone was pressed tightly together, all jostling for a better view. The crowd shifted, swaying right and left, taking me with it like a leaf on the surface of the ocean.

Sensing a momentary window of opportunity, I surged forward and got the buttons of my 501’s up against the sawhorse barricade. To keep my position, I clamped my hands down tightly on the rough, crudely painted wood. The crowd was insane - electric and frenzied. I was part of it. Two of NYPD’s finest had their arms up, trying to keep the crazed fans from spilling over and storming the street where Angelina Jolie was filming a scene from her new action blockbuster, which was due out sometime next summer.

Well, it was summer now, and I was sticky and uncomfortable. My long, dark hair, which I had resisted cutting despite current fashion trends and the heat, was clinging to my forehead, neck, and back. Sweat was sneaking down my spine past my black tank top, tickling the spot just below the waistband of my jeans. If I had been waiting to see anybody but Angie, I’d have retreated to the sweet shade of a pub for a cold one long ago. Ah, but it was Angie.

She was somewhere beyond this barricade, and I was determined to at least catch a glimpse of her – maybe even snap a digital picture, if the gods were smiling. The screams around me suddenly became a deafening wall of earsplitting shrieks, and the crowd surged forward. I ducked my head just in time to keep from getting clocked by a cop’s elbow. I still hadn’t seen Angie, but apparently someone had, and things were definitely getting out of hand.

At this point, survival seemed like the most important thing to concern myself with. My legs felt like they were in danger of being amputated by the press of people crushing forward, pushing me against the barricade. I was bent over the sawhorse between two cops, like an amateur porn queen waiting for her close up. Anyone who says I don’t live an interesting life just isn’t paying attention.

The sound of wood scraping across concrete was a surprise, but hardly a blip on the screen compared to the feeling of being launched headfirst into the street. The barricade had given way, falling apart under the mad pressure. I managed to yank the wrist that held my digital camera up and out of harm’s way, twisting my body and landing on my left arm. Shit. That hurt. As the cops moved to close the breach made by the sudden lack of barricade, I sat up to inspect the road rash on my left shoulder. Didn’t look too bad, but it stung like a son of a...

“That looks like it hurts.”

I looked up, squinting into the late afternoon sun. My eyes strained to adjust – and succeeded. The universe ground to a halt for a few seconds, and then sped up again, leaving me feeling slightly nauseous. Angelina Jolie stood in front of me, in all her... Angelina Jolie-ness. She stuck her hand out toward me. Unable to speak, I reached up and grabbed it. It was long and delicate – I could feel each bone under the smooth skin – but surprisingly strong. I knew she usually wore her nails short, like mine, but today she had French manicured tips on for her role as whatever man-chomping, ass-kicking character she was playing this time around.

She helped me to my feet, a half smile on her face, and then she frowned as she looked more closely at my shoulder. My whole body was numb. I was feeling no pain whatsoever. That blood running down my arm? Just a flesh wound. Angelina Jolie had just spoken directly to me, touched me, of her own volition. Nothing as minor as bloodshed was going to ruin this moment for me.

A couple of the larger, scarier looking members of her security crew were making their way toward us, but she waved them away, grinning as she took hold of my good elbow and steered me toward the catering truck. She grabbed a couple of bottles of Evian out of an ice filled cooler and maneuvered me around the corner, toward her trailer.

I tried feebly to argue. “You don’t have to do this, really...”, but I might as well have saved my breath. She was in charge and, if truth be known, I was happier to be there than anyone would believe.

Wanna Hear A Story?

Okay, so maybe I'm not really asking if you want to hear a story. It's my blog. I wrote a story, and I'm going to post it.

I guess what I want to know is, would you prefer to read it all at once, in one long post, or would you prefer that I release it in segments, so that you can be strung along like soap opera addicts?

It's a short story - this is no "Gone With the Wind" epic or anything - but even so, it would make one helluva long blog entry. No skin off my nose, just a copy and paste thing, but I don't want to blast your eyeballs. Sometimes I just zone out trying to read someone's really long blog entry, even if I like what I'm reading.

Maybe I'll go with the chapter by chapter thing, now that I think of it.

I've just done to you what T always says I do to him - I've asked you a question and then talked myself through to an answer, without even giving you a chance to reply. How rude is that?!?

If you feel overly offended by my complete lack of patience and my indifference to your opinion, just hold your breath 'till you get over it. 8-) I'm feeling a little "Jerky Boys meets Roadhouse" tonight...

Aliens, angels, and other news

Proof That
ALIENS & ANGELS
Really DO Exist!

Bear and I have been absent for a while due to the fact that our computer room was completely disassembled, our computers disconnected, and we just recently were able to reconstruct it (partially) enough to once again access the 'Net.

All this because I found a lovely antique dresser on the side of the road and just HAD to have it. In order to get it into rotation, I had to throw out my old, broken computer desk, and my old, nasty, laminated dresser. It still took us about seven hours of moving stuff around in different configurations before we finally arrived at something that would work.

I'm still not sure where my underwear is.... but at least I can blog again!

Thanks, Bear.

(Wait - maybe he HID my underwear! Hmm........)

Swinging dicks and swinging doors...

Right, so there I was, sitting at my desk. I just got back from lunch, and Boss Asshat comes strolling in, and asks Sales Manager if he could speak with him for a minute. The two of them leave the room, headed back across to the other side of the building.

Behind me, I hear a flurry of activity. I turn around, and EVERYONE in the office (even some folks from the other side of the building) was buzzing around like worker bees, taking apart Sales Manager's desk and computers.

Before I could ask what the hell was going on, Perky Vegan Chick approaches me and says, "I'm not very good at hanging things - do you think you could do this for me?", and hands me a rectangular piece of silver metal with sticky adhesive strips on it.

I'm still clueless. I flip the silver rectangle over, and I see Sales Manager's name and job title in big black letters on the metal sign. It's a door sign. To go on the door of the private office recently vacated by our VP, who is now working in a different office. I look back at the worker bees, and see that they are disassembling Sales Manager's setup... and moving it into the corner office.

Suddenly it all comes clear. I am the Central Office Manager. I have been with the company since it started up almost a year and a half ago. I used to do Sales Manager's job before his position existed. He was hired six months ago. When he was hired, I helped him get oriented and facilitated his job continuously up until the present. He spends at least half of every working day drooling down Perky Vegan Chick's cleavage, and helping her decide on what condo/car/dog/plant to buy. He was also hired over my head (I was promised the chance to advance in the company, but was never offered an opportunity to apply for that position) and according to the IT guy (who knows what everyone gets paid), he was paid a much higher salary than I. We are both managers, and I am the senior employee. He gets the private corner office with his name on the door.

Why? (At this point all people concerned with ingesting only politically correct content should log off.)

BECAUSE HE HAS A DICK.

I sat there completely stunned. Then I got up, and stuck the silver name plate on the door. Then I got my purse, and went next door to the drug store and stared at the magazine rack for about twenty minutes while I went from being incredulous to being really insulted, to being so mad that tears were forming in my eyes.

I went back to the office when I thought it was safe, but no - as I walked into the room, Boss Asshat was just walking Sales Manager around the corner to present him with his nice new office. I ducked into the conference room, went to the closet in the back where we keep the refrigerator and supplies, and just stood there biting my tongue to clear the tears out of my eyes. I really really hate that I cry when I'm mad. It makes me look weak, and I detest that.

Once the little ceremony was over, I walked back to my desk, sat down, and started working. I didn't look right or left, and I didn't say anything to anyone - I just worked.

Within five minutes, I got three emails. One from Perky Vegan Chick, one from IT guy, and one from Boss Asshat (who hadn't even looked my way when he was talking to Sales Manager). They all said the same exact thing.

"Are you okay?"

Oh, sure, I'm just fucking fine - thanks for asking. I just work my ass off here for a year and a half, and you hire some guy who gets paid three times what I get paid, give him the corner office, and stick my desk out slap in the middle of the most chaotic room in the building. No problems here, why do you ask?

I wrote back that my allergies were acting up and I had a bitch of a headache - which was quite true, if incomplete. They all wrote back in unison, "Hope you feel better, have a nice weekend." Sure - my feelings weren't at all hurt by being completely ignored and passed over like a peon. Salve your stupid conscience with my headache story.

Thing is, if they all didn't know how that would make me feel, they wouldn't have told everyone BUT me about the surprise. Also, if Boss Asshat would have come to me beforehand and said, "Hey, I'm thinking about giving Sales Mgr. the corner office... would you like to move your desk to his old spot (which was, of course, the best) in the room?", I think I would have felt very differently about everything. But I was completely left out of it, as if I didn't exist.

I got angrier and angrier as the afternoon wore on - I could barely think straight enough to pretend to be working. My brain just kept going over it and over it... I was trying to think of some valid reason, other than complete chauvinism, that this was happening. I couldn't come up with anything.

My job requires peace and quiet and concentration, which I get little enough of because I also answer the phones. For me, the private office would have meant an increase in productivity, and the ability to complete a thought process without being interrupted by sales personnel standing behind my chair while yelling into their cell phones, or asking me why their email doesn't work (not my area of responsibility) or eight million other things.

His job requires him to monitor and train the sales staff, making sure the new ones are doing and saying the right things on the phone when talking with their clients. How he's supposed to hear what's going on on the sales floor while sequestered behind a closed door is beyond me.

But you see, it's not about what makes sense. It's not about who is the senior employee. It's not about who really needs the private office. It's about the Good Old Boys network, and at that moment I felt the universe shift around me. I knew it was a door opening. I knew it was time to go. No matter what I did, no matter what blood, sweat, and tears I shed to make that company a success, I would always be looking on from the sidelines while the next new stallion pranced by me into the nicer office, the juicier paycheck, the cushy position. And I would be expected to clap and smile as they ascended the ladder of success. Well, shit on that.

I made a phone call to my dad, and as it turns out he knew someone who needed an employee RIGHT NOW. They offered me six thousand more a year than I was making, and I only work Mon-Thurs, slightly longer days - Fridays off! Of course the commute is about an hour each way, but so what?

I said YES!!! And started yesterday. I didn't give notice, I didn't explain anything to anyone, I just did it.

Now I'm working in a business owned by a woman, and almost completely staffed by women. (There's one guy, and he's gay.) Yay!

I haven't even gotten a phone call or an email from Boss Asshat. I wonder how long it will take him to figure out all the things that I really did for that company. And where to find someone else that will be able to figure out how to do it. And what he lost by not treating me fairly.

Actually, I don't even really care about that now. I'm learning something completely new, and I'm making more money, and I'm helping a company that helps people in need, and they really need ME. It's a good feeling.

Simplicity vs. Big Brother

There is nothing quite so satisfying as foiling technology with simplicity. My boss has decided to upgrade the level of super-secret-spyness in our office by installing a keystroke logging program on our computers at work. It's freeware - so that makes it a shoe-in as far as he's concerned. But instead of paying the IT guy a couple of extra bucks to stay overtime and install it, he had them (IT guy and his intern) sneak around during our lunchbreaks.

Firstly, we don't all take lunch at the same time - so people saw them sneaking around. Secondly, SOME of us have passwords on our PCs (ha) so they had to come back and ask me to get up so they could install "something" after I got back from lunch. Even though Perky Vegan Chick had already traced back the "run" function on her PC and found the keylogger program very easily, and was nice enough to tell me about it, I asked the IT guy what he was putting on my PC. He pointed to the name of the program on the screen.

It royally pisses me off, to say the least. What does boss man really expect to find? That the financial secretary is secretly a terrorist? That the lawyer is plotting arson? WHAT THE FUCK?!? Okay, so we check our personal email, or visit the entertainment sites to see the latest awful pictures of Shitney Spears' ongoing descent into breederhood.... is that really worth spying on us for? Of course, now that I know I'm being "Big Brothered", I'm sure as hell not typing my passwords anymore - this just royally sucks, and as far as my secret blogging technique goes (saving it onto my portable flash drive), it just blows that right out of the water. I can't even do it in code or a foreign language, since the recorded keystrokes would show the time spent typing it (ie: not doing work). Argh.

However, since it IS freeware, and thus cheesy, I'm wondering if erasing/editing the notepad function (where it displays the recorded keystrokes) actually changes the record. I'm going to have to do some internet research at home to find out. How irksome. If any of you know a way to foil this evil plot, please do chime in and let me know.

Happily, my at work writing endeavours are not completely foiled. I wrote this entire post at work - on a piece of good old-fashioned paper.

HAH! Take that, Big Brother!

P.S. In other news, our upstairs tenant has informed us that his union is now on strike, and he will not be able to pay the rent this month, either. My mom is visiting for the week, and helping us work on the apartment downstairs, which no prospective tenants have even been shown yet. There is still one room uncarpeted due to installer's error, and we are almost done laying the floor down in the kitchen. The plumber is coming today to remove the bathroom and kitchen faucet sets, which were welded on, and then we start reflooring the bathroom. The saga continues as we inch our way closer to the poorhouse....

Respect

When someone I know shows me their new car, I always throw some loose change in it. I'm not Italian, but hey - some people are, and you have to respect that.

***

Helpless

A while ago, I wrote a post about not having any girlfriends to share time with. Included in the litany of lost friendships was my "best friend" of thirty years. I don't feel we're really best friends any more, but since she apologized for her mistreatment of me, we have been in touch casually. The occasional phone call, the occasional email.

The thing is, even though I don't feel that our friendship qualifies as a "best", I still care about what happens to her. And it is driving me crazy.

Basically, she is married to an abusive husband, and they have a young son together. I won't go into an hour long rant about all the things he's done and said to her that are beyond unacceptable, but I will just mention a few.

* When her husband starts acting out (screaming, threatening to kill her, etc.) her little boy comes and asks her if she's all right. Even he knows it's just a matter of time until she's not all right.

* Last time he had a fit of rage, he ended the tirade by washing down pain medication with beer. This is a self professed "born again" bible banger, folks. Woo hoo. Bet he didn't learn that little trick from Billy Graham...

* When I asked her why she didn't take her son and leave the house when her husband gets "like that", her answer was that if she stays, she can make sure he doesn't break any of her things. He's got her brainwashed - trained like a dog. He wants her to stay there so he has someone to torment, so he breaks her things if she leaves, guaranteeing him a constantly present punching bag.

Now, we've all heard of codependency, and battered women who make excuses for their spouses, and all that. So I'm not going to try and reason out why she has no sense of self worth, why she's willing to risk her life and the life of her son for that asshole, and the rest.

What I am having a hard time dealing with, however, are my own feelings of rage against this person she calls her husband. I don't understand a universe in which it's okay to allow a big strong guy to beat up on a 4'11" woman, and threaten his child. She is not emotionally capable of making a good decision (like, say, calling the cops) and so it just goes on, and on, and on....

I can't help going over scenarios in my head where a couple of my closest, largest male friends take a little trip to visit him and let him know how it feels to be on the receiving end of that kind of treatment. I know, I know, that's "not the way to handle things"... but what is? Letting this go on? If I called the cops where she lives and told them what was happening, there's not a damn thing they could do unless she was willing to press charges. And so far, she's not.

To me, it seems that expecting her to call the cops, her lawyer, and a taxi is like expecting a person with ADD to walk through the mall looking for a bobby pin. It just isn't going to happen. However, I don't see why this means that asshole has a free and endless reign of terror, a funhouse of tantrums and threats, at his disposal. HE'S the one who's wrong, why is it up to HER to stop it?

I am frustrated to the point of distraction. I just know that there will be a phone call.... either he will hurt or kill her, their son, maybe himself, but this story is not going to have a happy ending. How will I feel when that phone call comes, knowing that I've known about what's going on the whole time? Her husband recently commented, "I hope this house burns down with us in it." Yeah. Happy endings, indeed.

I wish that Batman really existed - or any of the super heros, who would just show up and exact justice - pure, raw justice - without all the legal red tape attached. The red tape that draws things out until they get worse and worse, and people die while waiting for justice. I wish someone or something would just take that bastard out of the picture, make sure he never came home to abuse her again.

He is a diseased soul, and needs to be put away somewhere where he can't hurt anyone any more. Whether he figures out that he's gay (my first guess), or that his parents abused him when he was small, or that he's just a sick fuck... I don't really care what happens to him. As far as I'm concerned, he's forfeited his status as a person who deserves any leeway from me.

When this line of thinking brings me to the inevitable brick wall of reality, I realize something else. My friend has consistently chosen abusive men in her life - she divorced her first husband because he was abusive. I'm pretty certain that if I could press a magic button that would send her current tormentor to planet Xenon, she would turn right around and hook up with the first abusive loser she could find.

So I sit, trying not to think about what is happening at her house tonight, and wait for the phone to ring.

I just need a little lay-down....

Feeling a bit under the weather the last few days. Maybe it's the stress of the whole no tenant/no incoming rent money situation. Maybe it's the credit card bill I'm racking up to fix up the apartment in the wake of the disaster the former tenants left behind. Maybe it's the coxsackie virus that the Perky Vegan Chick at work contracted... egads, I hope not.

She said she started feeling under the weather for a few days, then she'd feel better, and her glands were swollen. So far, sounds exactly like what I feel like. Then one day she couldn't get out of bed, and she was out of work for a week with it. Since it's a virus, you can't take any meds that make you better. Man, I hope this is just a summer cold... my sinuses are all honky and snorty, and my throat is hurting so badly that it pains me to answer the phone at work.

T took pity on me and told me to stay home while he finishes painting the kitchen over in the apartment tonight... I feel so bad, because I want to help him, but I really feel so crappy and weak that I can barely open a tube of toothpaste. Lucky for me we don't use tubes anymore, just those little flip-toppy things that you can leave upside down for better on-the-spot toothbrushing action.

My mother is coming to visit for the weekend, and it's T's birthday this Saturday, too - so I really don't want to be sick over the weekend! Argh.

Everybody give a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY shout out to Bear next time you visit his blog! He's so great, I wish I could afford to get him something really cool for his birthday. As it is, I amassed a small collection of pretty neat gifts for him - but my dad is gonna give him a really mondo gift, which I can't tell you about because duh, he reads this! I'll let him tell all about it once he gets it.

As long as I'm whinging and whining and discussing all sorts of personal ailments, I might as well add that I started taking Prilosec today - I've had this acid reflux thing creeping up on me for some time now, and I decided that while it will definitely suck ass to not be able to drink at the party on the weekend (you have to take the stuff for 14 days and they recommend no coffee and no alcohol... waaaah!), but I really need to do something about it before my esophagus gets permanently damaged and the acid in my stomach eats holes in my interior. Sounds like a B horror movie.

On other disgusting personal detail fronts, I'm trying to overcome motion sickness. One of our illustrious lunatic friends - you know, the ones who like to leave all their entertainment sources at our house? - has been bitten by the online gaming bug and his XBox was just sitting in the corner doing nothing... so he brought it here for us to try out. I love the "first person shooter" games, am a fairly decent shot (ask T - I nearly beat him the other night!), and all, but damn, it makes me seasick after playing it for just twenty minutes or so! Even after I stop playing, if I've let it go too far, I feel nauseous and my head hurts for up to 45 minutes afterwards!

I was voted "Person Least Likely to Get Motion Sickness" in my graduating class. I have been on every spinning, upside-down rollercoaster on the planet, I read books in moving cars (as long as someone else is driving), I have been out on the high seas in small vessels, and I've watched thirty consecutive minutes of "Being Bobby Brown", and never had a problem! (Well, okay, that last one did make me want to puke, but I don't think it was motion sickness...). What is it with playing a stupid game on my TV screen that is so much worse than any of those things? Whatever it is, I'm trying to combat it by playing in small doses but increasing the duration a little each time. If that fails, I'm going to have to spring for one of those pressure point wrist bands - they claim to overcome motion sickness from all the various stimulii.

If I don't feel any better than I do right now, my house may very well be a complete wreck when my mother comes to visit - and that's something that just doesn't happen. Ever.

Practice what you preach or shut the hell up

I was driving home from work today and I realized something I never thought about before. If I get cut off, or held up, or treated discourteously by another driver on the road, I might be miffed, but if that person has religious or political bumper stickers or other insignia on their vehicle, I get irate.

Face it, religious and political people who broadcast their opinions to everyone regardless of the receptiveness of their audience (ie: bumper stickers, tee shirts, etc.) are not doing it to change our minds or convince us to switch over to their point of view. They're doing it to say, "Look at me! I'm more holy/powerful/aware/right/on the inside track/together than you are!"

Okay - so this is America, and that gives every roaming idiot the right to broadcast his or her religious dogma and political blather to the masses as they choose. All I'm saying is, if you are going to wear the trappings, and flaunt your rhetoric in our faces, then you better be walking the walk!

I don't want to see any little silver Jesus Fish on the back of your Lexus while you're parked in the handicapped zone as you frolick into the store "for just a minute" to pick up a card for your friend's baby shower. Jesus always looked out for the lame folks, and he'd hit you on the back of your fat head with a bass if he caught you taking their parking space.

I don't want to see your yarmulke bobbing above the headrest as you blab on your cell phone and sit in front of me at a green light, completely oblivious to the world going on around you (happened to me today). If that little discus is too tight, maybe you should get a bigger one and let some circulation into your cranium. God would approve, I think.

I don't want to see your "God Chooses Life" bumper sticker up close and personal as you cut in front of me to gain one car length in heavy traffic. I thought your professed rule book stated that God actually chooses people who are kind and patient - isn't that right?

Furthermore, I don't care who you voted for, or that your kid is better than everyone else's kid at Puke University, or what you think I should or shouldn't do with my body. (Actually, I'm against using abortion - for myself - as a form of "oopsie" birth control, but it irks the shit out of me that some twinkie-sucking bleach-blonde Baptist asshole thinks they have the right to TELL me to feel that way!)

It's not that I hate bumper stickers per se, although it may seem that way - bumper stickers with humorous sayings, places where people have vacationed (or dream about), military/USA support stickers, bands, things that THEY like, are cool. They're not telling anyone what to do, they're just sharing their favorite things - putting a smile on people's faces instead of pissing them off.

If I see a car with a Grateful Dead bumper sticker, I smile - even though I personally can't stand that band. The colorful little pothead bears are funny, and I can appreciate them for their rainbow colors even if I can't "bear" to listen to the music they represent. If I see a sticker for Bolivia, I start to wonder what Bolivia looks like, what month their winter comes in, whether the people driving the car are here alone and their family is back in Bolivia... things like that. If I see a sticker that says "Visualise Whirled Peas", I laugh - even though it's the oldest one in the book.

If you're displaying a sticker that says, "It's hard to stumble when you're on your knees" (yes, that's an actual religious bumper sticker, folks) I want to ram a carrot up each of your nostrils and remind you about Monica Lewinsky. If you've got a sticker that says, "If you're ready to die--- you're ready to live!" (another real one) I want to beat you with a wiffleball bat and remind you that Jim Jones said the same thing as he passed out his poisoned Kool Aid.

I hereby give a shout out to all of you drivers out there who allow your vehicles be what they were meant to be - a way to get places - instead of turning them into pulpits. If you cut me off, I'll still give you the finger and call you an asshole, but at least you won't have falsely represented yourself and created an expectation of anything else.

If I was going to rebel against all of this bumper sticker oppression by putting one on my own vehicle (which I'm not, because that would be hypocritical) (and seeing it here doesn't count because you choose to read it, it's not in your face at a red light), this would be it:

A...A..Action!

As completely crappy as I was feeling when I wrote that last post, I managed to pull out of it without throwing myself off a bridge. The answer, as it almost always is with me, is action.

T worked from 7am to 1pm yesterday at his regular job, and then ran home, threw some lunch down his neck, and went to his bartending job until 9pm. While he was gone in the morning, I ironed his bartending clothes and had that episode of depression, which probably started because, like an idiot, I put on CMT's top 20 videos show. Country music is just somewhere I shouldn't go - it makes me sadder than any music I can think of, and I just sat there like an idiot, watching CMT and sniffling like a booby. Then I tried on my dresses and posted yesterday's "Whine and Cheese" entry.

When T left for his second job, I realized that I was being an asshat, and that there were Things To Be Done. I went out into the driveway to start cleaning the racks on the grill that the tenants left behind. I grabbed the racks, threw them on top of a garbage bag I'd laid on the ground, and sprayed them with Easy-Off. Then I went back over and opened the lid of the grill to get a look at the inside. Ye gods and little fishes, it was disgusting. They had put charcoal briquettes INSIDE the GAS GRILL (????) and they looked as if tar had been poured over them, making them a permanent structure all across the bottom of the grill.

Then I got angry. That's usually the first step in my coming out of a funk. I get good and pissed off (usually at myself for being a dork), and then it's time for ACTION!!! I realized that T and I have been living here for over five years now, and we've been scrimping and saving and using other people's cast off grills and whatever. Damn it, I thought, we are getting our own grill!

I picked up the greasy racks off the driveway and threw them back in that disgusting heap of metal, grabbed my keys, and headed to Home Despot. As if he knew I was on my way, there was a salesperson in a bright orange apron standing right at the curb next to a plethora of gas grills when I arrived. He looked like his name would be "Pointdexter", but he was very informative and even had a funny little sense of humor - the kind you'd expect an animated mouse to have in a Disney flick. He pointed me to the perfect grill at a great price, and I bought it and wheeled it to my little Ford Ranger pickup. I put the tailgate down, and was just pondering how to get it up there myself, when a handy and helpful guy on his way into the store stopped and said he'd give me a hand. So we each grabbed a side, and it was in the truck in mere seconds. Thanks, handy helpful guy!

I got home and managed to get the grill out of the truck myself (removing the gas tank was the key, as it was the heaviest part of the whole contraption anyway), and wheeled it into our back yard, putting it in the newly cleaned out corner near the patio set. It looked great! Now to complete the surprise... I snuck back out to the driveway, and wheeled the disgusting ball of grease grill over behind the front house, where it isn't visible from the street or the driveway.

Then, feeling very happy and accomplished and somehow skinnier, I put my hair up, crammed a baseball hat on my head (backwards, so I could see what I was doing) and went over to the apartment and started painting. I cut in and painted the living room and hallway, and then it was time to attack the kitchen. I pulled all the "fix it" stuff we had piled in the kitchen out into the hallway, and then shop-vacced the floor. I took a bucket of Pine-Sol and a scrub brush and scrubbed all the barbecue sauce and ??? off the kitchen walls, scrubbed the doorways and doors, which were blackened with god knows what gunge. Then I took all the blinds down, and taped off the windows.

I had "B103", the "sing along with the oldies" station on, and had a really good time painting while singing at the top of my voice... "Love the One You're With", "Leroy Brown", "Wake Up Little Suzy", and the rest. Not music I would generally listen to, but when you're sweating your ass off, standing in pretzel-like contortions while up on a ladder, and breathing paint fumes, it's a pretty good distraction.

I took the blades off the ceiling fan and cleaned the mystery-spooge off them, then left them to dry in the other room, since they'd just be in the way of getting the ceiling painted, anyway. Then I got about 2/3 of the kitchen cut in before T got home. He wanted to come over and start working, but he was hobbling like a 90 year old man on his sore feet, and I was just about nauseous from the paint fumes and lack of food, so I insisted that we could get it all done later, and that as my husband it was his duty to make sure his wife didn't pass out from paint fumes or starve to death (ha).

We headed back over to the house, and I grabbed a flashlight and casually said, "Oh, yeah - I cleaned up that grill the tenants left... I want to show you." We walked around back, and I gave him the flashlight. It's a very small flashlight, and only throws a small circle of light - you couldn't see the whole grill at once in its light, which was perfect. He shone the light right on the front of the grill, and said, "Damn, you got this thing really clean!" Then he moved the flashlight left, right, and said, "Man, you REEALLY did a good job...???" and grabbed the lid and opened it. The paperwork, instructions, and etc. were still in a plastic bag sitting in the grill on top of the completely new racks... and he laughed out loud.

Today we're going to have a couple of friends over, relax, and cook out on our new grill. The sun is shining, the breeze is tickling the wind chimes, "Sunday Baroque" is playing on NPR, and my husband is snuggled up in our bed, enjoying the chance to sleep in. The kitties are chasing each other around the hallway, enjoying the patches of sun on the rug. I am going to go and grind some Chocolate Truffle coffee beans and bring T coffee in bed. And maybe some dessert!

Step Away From The Fork

I was ironing some work clothes for T, as he's going straight from his regular job to his bartending job this afternoon. Since I already had the iron set up, I decided to iron a few of those summer dresses that I was so happy to release from storage a few weeks ago. As I took them out of the closet, I decided to try them on before ironing them.

They didn't fit. My favorite peach colored dress couldn't make it past my thighs. Then I tried on my african print with the lace up back panel. I got it on - and my boobs were squished flat, the seams were straining so hard across the back that I thought they might split. I nearly didn't get out of it at all, I was dancing around the room grunting and trying not to rip the ears off my head.

Then I just stood in front of the full length mirror and stared at myself. I took off all my clothes, partially because the polka-dot panties that I picked out because I thought they were cute looked more like a hot air balloon, and I stood there and really looked at myself. I hate what I saw. My long legs look short because my hips and thighs are so wide. My ass - let's not even go there. I have no waist at all - it goes straight down from my armpits to my hips like the sides on a can of tomato sauce.

I went to the gym for the past two months, three times a week, at least two hours each workout, working my ass off, running the elliptical machine, lifting weights, and I still look like a plastic bag full of vanilla pudding.

We've completely stopped going to the gym now, since this apartment thing has taken every minute of our spare time. I feel like I'm slipping backwards, off the cliff again. I was so sure I was going to lose the weight this time, and now I feel like a fucking prize winning heifer at a 4H event.

In my head I still look the way I did in college, when I wore size 8 jeans and cut off tee shirts. When I look in the mirror, I don't recognize the person looking back at me. She looks suspiciously like a fat, middle-aged woman.

I know that the Atkins diet works as far as taking off the pounds - I looked beautiful in my wedding pictures, thin and happy. Unfortunately, my heart started having bouts of fast, irregular beats, and I developed a bad case of acid reflux which I am still dealing with now. I don't think that diet is one that I can live on.

It should be so easy - just stop eating so much. Work out, and eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, and stay away from junk food. Yup, it's that easy. So why the fuck am I still fat? It makes me so angry at myself, I just want to cry.