Some Blog

desperately seeking sanity

Saturday, November 29, 2008

My sister is pregnant. This is good. The family is getting their grand/great-grand child. My sister is getting her child. I am getting some peace.

Except I am throwing her a baby shower. Cross-country. And my family, they’re kind of being special about things. Specifically my stepmother and father. I don’t know about you, but when I get a request for mailing addresses for four specific people I don’t return a list of 14. I’ve already order the engraved invitations so ordering more is not happening. I’ve already sent out invites to all the other families and groups of friends and the RSVP date is in four weeks, so even if I lost my dang mind and ordered another printing of 20 invites, which would cost half as much as ordering 80 so kind of a lot of money there,  I wouldn’t have time to get them back to me and then addressed and mailed out. I did the next best thing.

I spent the day at stationery store buying card sets that match the paper of the invites. Bruce then scanned one of the original invites and I tweaked a little until the coloring was right. I then messed around in word and created reasonable facsimiles of the RSVP card and direction inserts. I then printed onto the card stock. You see, even though I had set aside four for the original list I didn’t think I could send engraved invitations to my four aunts and then something clearly different to their daughters. So I had to make invites for the whole list. My head is killing me and all I want to do is go to sleep, but the pile of laundry calls as does Bruce’s very untidy apartment.

This whole matter is only complicated by the fact that my step-mother has not sent me a list for her side. I’ve already sent her invite and invites to some of her niece’s. I specifically mentioned that I needed five addresses from her side of the family. So it’s kind of strange that the list I got only included my father’s side. I’ve managed to whitepage.com two of the people I needed and I sent one of the niece’s to her mom with an apology note (I hated getting invites at my mom’s house long after I moved out). That leave two more people from my step-mother’s family. Everyone else is going to get invites and being talking about the baby shower at Christmas, which is historically held at my father’s place so that is going to be really awkward for the two females from that side that didn’t get an invite. I’ve already resorted to calling 411 to get their phone number to call them directly to get their address, no luck.

I am dealing with all this in a strategic manner. I left a message on my father’s voicemail saying: “I found a few addresses, but I still needed two more. I’ve already mailed out the other ones and I know my sister really wanted to see her aunt and cousin and I wouldn’t want them to feel like they were not invited.” I hope this motivates my family to do the right things. Unfortunately do to all the personality disorders that are running rampant right now, I don’t know if that is even a possibility. 

I’m not sure what the interaction is going to be, but if there is a reason for what’s going on, I am going to make my father and step-mother tell my sister directly. I am not taking the heat for this.

Just a city boy, born and raised in south detroit

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The recent appearance of some past friends has had an unusual effect on my life. My balance had been unbalanced. Balance.

There is always the welcomed flashback, especially in the case of the good ex. I know, such an oxymoron, but he was good. He’s still very good. And that is good. I really need to stop saying good. Then there’s the bad. The very bad. So, I am more than happy to hear about the good and his happy life. Knowing that his life is doing what life does and includes someone that keeps him warm at night…is. It just is. It’s the bad that drives me nuts.

Basically every time I hear from him all I can think is “Hey fucker. Shut the fuck up. You stupid annoying fuck. Fuckity fuck.” Of course others might think that I care and that’s why I am annoyed by his very presence. Thankfully I’ve had an epiphany, it’s not that I care, it’s that I really don’t believe the drivel that comes running out of his mouth. At least three times in the last five years he’s told me all about the woman he’s going to marry…this time. There is a point where the comment is actually superfluous and that is not something one should think about a declaration of love.

I understand that he has always wanted to meet the girl of his dream, get that house with the white picket fence, a few kids, a dog and a sunset. But for all that is holy man, stop being so transparent. There’s a reason why so many perfect matches turn out to not be what he thinks. I just wish he would stop trying to convince me of whatever it is that he’s trying to convince himself.

I have a friend going through some bad times with a very toxic friend. We’ve all had them. It’s so hard to cut them off and make a break from them. There is something in the way the toxic friend builds a relationship that makes the innocent party feel guilty, like it’s our fault for not being more understanding or something. I gave her some great advice and told her that I would support her in making a clean break. The thing is, I should have been taking my own advice. My bad ex is totally toxic. He is all those things that would make me drop a friend.

He is selfish and stupid. He has only ever thought about himself and was never really interested in what I needed. He is still trying to run his game and I keep letting him be in my life. But why? What’s in it for me? Where is the take in this give and take situation? The toxicity is overwhelming at this point and there is only one way to flush this out of my life.

It’s time for me to tell him who he really is. He is, quite frankly, not a good guy. He is not my friend. He has no place in my life. Good bye bad ex. Ye hardly knew me.

Never the Same

Friday, November 14, 2008

Sometimes I want to be the same.

Portland Feel To It

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

And with the beginning of new day here in this corner of the Internet I call home. After taking two months off from the gym (it was all because of The Great Toenail Removal Project of ’08 and not because I am a lazy fuck) I returned to great success, by which I mean I got my ass on a treadmill for over an hour without passing out. Sure, my pace was off but I am just glad I didn’t die. Now all I have to do is remember how to run on a treadmill again and we will be back in business.

My self improvement project of myself is moving along swimmingly. My hair has moved up the rating scale from attractive to super fantastic. Strangers on the street are stopping me to ask me where I get my hair done. This is step one in becoming Agent Breck.

Step two is that my invisaligns are more than half-way done, a mere three more months and my “American Teeth” will be “Hollywood Teeth” and I will spend my time being super smiley. This is coupled with my stupidly shallow obsession with my eyelashes, which have now been extended. This really is better living through science people. I dreamt of the day when eyelash extensions would be within reach and now here I am, with newly extended lashes, super straight teeth and shiny hair. I AM AGENT BRECK!*

Step three is the gym. I hate the gym and always will but I am now determined to be a gym freak. In January I am going home for my sister’s baby shower. Coincidentally the date of the baby shower is also my 30th birthday. Awesome. So I am now determined to loose as much weight as possible in the next 3 months, have super hair, super eyes and super teeth because people I cannot face 30 while being anything other than absolutely fabulous. I was not made to be 30 but if I have to be 30 I will be fan-friggen-tastic at 30.

* The Breck Girl was always so super fantastic and smiley and wide-eyed!

To tell the truth

Thursday, April 24, 2008

There seems to be a thing where the spam bots are getting smarter and leaving both comments and track backs. I’ve started disabling the track back ability on all my posts. And when the insanity gets to me, I disable the comments. It’s not that I don’t want the comments. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to why certain posts attract so much attention from fake bloggers, but they do.

So, if I’ve turned off comments on a post it’s not because I don’t want to hear what you’ve got to say. Feel free to comment away on other posts.

I am now going to go lay down and try to sleep, I’ve got a hell of a day left to this week, and I promise at the end of it all I will share with you the story of what happens when seven strangers live in a house…no wait, that’s the wrong intro…what happens with 8 members of my family descend on Seattle to visit my mom and her current husband.

People really do stop being polite.

Popeye The Sailor Man

Monday, February 25, 2008

I am home from work today, the third time in several weeks. The first two days were because I was sick. I had this creeping yucky that led to me eating 234087234 sugar free Popsicles. Today is all about Bruce.

At about 4:30 AM I was driving Bruce to the hospital because he had uncontrollable full body muscle spasms for an hour last night. I was only awake for about 15 minutes of it before I made him get in the car and it was only once we got there and Bruce started telling his story that I learned he had been having the spasms for about an hour.

Of course I kind of feel bad because when I woke up to Bruce shivering in bed and gasping for air my words of wisdom were: “relax, breath slowly and go back to bed.” Seriously, I took in his obvious distress and told him to go back to bed. It took a few minutes to realize that something was rotten in the state of Denmark. And when I finally hauled out of bed and told Bruce we were going to the Emergency Room, his lack of a fight made me really scared. Bruce is you basic male stoic so when he was so willing to go to the hospital I knew he was in trouble.

Of course by the time we get there, he can breath and the spasms were done. The diagnosis is something along the lines of an electrolyte imbalance. I think that means that our diet has taken certain vitamins out of our diet and Bruce’s natural aversion to certain vegetables meant that he was really lacking in things like Potassium. Oops. So while Bruce takes it easy at home, I am off to the store for some bananas and spinach.

On this side of things we can say that we are fine and everyone is okay, but in the moment, I think we were both scared. So scared in fact that when we got home we had a conversation about estate planning and writing up our wills. Nothing like a health scare to get us all kinds of serious. 

Mrs. Goodbar

Friday, November 16, 2007

As my time in the suburbs increase the things I miss most of what I was living before is public transportation. Shut up!  I know.

I don’t miss the smell of vomit at 8 AM on a Friday morning or begging a nightbus driver to pull over and let me off because I fell asleep and missed my stop. What I miss is what is implied by the public transportation. I miss walking to starbucks. I miss my $15 a day starbucks habit. I miss drunk shopping for Christmas gifts. I miss convenience stores being conveniently located. I miss being at a bar until closing and still being in bed before midnight on Thursday night (hence the smell of vomit at 8 AM on a Friday morning).

With all that I miss, and there are tons more, but I think you get the point, what I miss the most are the people. I wake up missing specific people around the globe. I know that Pussy Willow will never move to San Francisco, that PB is building her life in Boston, that the girls in Texas are in Texas for a reason, that Carrie UnPatched likes life in the country side, that Bonnie has her life in New York, and that Willis has hers by the beach back home where we use to live. I get that all those people in my life are where they always have been and I am the one who keeps leaving the place where everyone else is. It’s just that all these people have, at one time or another, been my person. And for the first time in a long time I don’t have my person.

I just want my new person here to reveal themselves because I miss making fun of the homeless (what, you know you do it too, besides they are just homeless because they are lazy) and eating sushi after Martinis on Friday night. I miss having someone who will call me to tell me that they got home just fine and that guy from the bar passed out in the cab so she just left him there to find his own way home. I miss having a shopping buddy who will listen to me bitch about how annoying Bruce is.

Most of all, I miss someone who tells me that I am okay.

Vanity, Thy Name Is Some Girl.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

This evening, as I was getting ready for bed, I went about my normal routine. And then I peed on the floor.

It started out all normal and I did what I do before bed, including, going to the bathroom. As I sat there, I happen to contemplate the last time I shave my bikini line. I had used a new product that was suppose to alleviate the razor rash. As I sat on the toilet I realized that thus far I have been bump and itch free. I then decided to inspect the area, not thinking that I should wait for everything else to finish first.

I gently spread the skin at the top of my thigh and as I did the stream of urine changed direction and there was an unexpected pool of urine on the floor in front of me. I just like to reaffirm to everyone that I am possibly the least graceful person to live on the planet.

Really, the point is that as cool as I seem in some ways there is an appropriate check that balances. I am worldly and well traveled and also klutzy. I am eloquent but often spill soup down the front of my shirt. I have my nails and hair done regularly yet occasionally pee on the floor. I am the embodiment of those photos in the tabloid magazines that scream: “Famous people are just like us: the buy groceries, they pick up dry cleaning, they park cars!”

For the record, this is the second fresh post in two days. Not that I’m counting or anything.

A Little More Bliss

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Bruce came home from Europe with wine, chocolate, and a cold. I spent the day nursing cups of tea, heavy on the honey. I may have miscalculated the amount of caffeine so here I sit. Playing with the Internet. I think of the Internet as a finite amount of information and when Bruce and I speak, I often tell him I am reading the Internet. Sometimes when I am bored, I tell him I’ve read the whole Internet and am just waiting for someone to write something else for me to read. Really, the world does revolve around me.

Tonight, I did something I’ve never done, spurned on by something Bruce told me a few nights ago. He was telling me about the google search of long lost friends. I have a somewhat fatalistic approach to my friendships and am of the general opinion that I have the friends I want and the ones that were left behind, whether by distance or disdain, were just that, left behind. Not having a need to weigh myself down with those messy things like relationships and emotions, I’ve allowed myself to believe that I am behaving within normal social parameters.

Tonight I found my first long lost friend. And guess what. He died last year.

There was the flood of emotions (shock, disbelief, grief) and I suspect that is normal. But then came the wave of the other. I started to read about his life, and while it seems that he was deeply loved and will be missed by many, I wonder, is he better off? He never made it out of our town and was holding his status quo. Good ol’ boy doing what he aught to, but I wonder, was he slowly dying inside? Was he feeling shock, disbelief and grief as his dreams of getting out faded away to something so very different.

I remember the boy that caused more trouble than he was worth. I remember the boy that worked hard but was misunderstood. I remember the boy that wanted to be something, anything, that got him out of his house, out of our town. I remember a boy that had it pretty bad and knew that there had to be something more, a reason for his life.

I can’t say that there was a reason for his life. He died young and right where I left him. Behind.

I’ll Never Learn

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

I thought I found Nirvana on a string, too bad, as always, I am disappointed. Two weeks ago I went to a new eyebrow lady. This was a final straw after a waxer took off the end of my eyebrow such that the left one had a much shorter tail than the right one. When I met the threader I explained the situation and she seemed to understand my issue. I went back today and pointed out the regrowth of the missing eyebrow. I specifically said, this is where I am trying to grow in the hair. I suppose that I should have then said, “so don’t thread this.” So, now, I am in the same place I was four weeks ago.

The place where I went for the threading was awesome. It’s the front room of a discount video store run by a Sikh Indian family. This combination leads to some excellent TV while I wait. This time there was something called “Let’s Rock” that was in a language I would guess to be Hindi. There were a variety of Indian pop stars dancing on stage to techno beats and Hindi words. I think I recognized one song that had been remixed with the Knight Rider theme song in 2003. The whole thing was hilarious, especially when the MC said: “I know this next act is who you’ve all been waiting for, and I hope you’re ready to tap you’re feet…” I know that the culture is so different and I get that the polite applause and the bobbing of heads is what one does in Indian society. But what made the whole thing awesome was the commercial break. The “back after these messages” thingy had a cartooned image of Slash.

The juxtaposition of the Indian music, the restrained audience and Slash made the visit worthwhile. I figure that I will have to spend the next four months growing out the brows and then I will try her again, if only for the free entertainment.

I Don’t Regret Anything, But…

Sunday, April 08, 2007

I wish I had an afro.
I wish they would call about the job.
I wish I took that opportunity that one time.
I wish that Disney dreams did come true.
I wish I had majored in interior design.
I wish I could figure out the manual settings on the camera.
I wish I had stayed in touch with all the people to whom I swore I would stay in touch.
I wish I was more dedicated to blogging.
I wish I didn’t still desire a cigarette every time I smell someone else smoking.
I wish that the bottle of champange I drank for lunch on Thursday had made me drunk.
I wish that taxes were easier to compete.
I wish for peace on earth and goodwill towards humankind.
I wish you knew when I was being snarky.
I wish someone would invent a self cleaning toilet.
I wish they had those shoes in my size.

Hey Ma, What’s Up, Let’s Slide

Monday, March 05, 2007

My mother has taken to leaving messages for Bruce and I on the land line. She has managed to master the breezy, not trying too hard, but you can probably tell I am thinking very carefully about my words because you lived with me for 18 years, message.

“Hey Some Girl and Bruce. I was just calling to say hi and talk. It’s been a few weeks and I would LOVE to catch up. If you end up leaving a message make sure you tell me when it would be best for me to call so that I can find a time when you are home for me to talk to you because I miss talking to you. Well, just calling to say hi. Love Some Girl’s Mom’s given first name.”

Yeah. I know. My mom very specifically will say that she loves us both when she leaves a message that we both hear. I suppose it’s nice that she’s making the effort, considering she has yet to meet Bruce. Also, unbeknownst to my mom, Bruce’s family has taken a different approach. They are not exactly coming over for dinner or anything. In fact, they’re not coming over at all. I think this has something to do with the living in sin with the Jewish girl. Bruce thinks that they just wanted to give us space. Bruce is also sweetly simple (I love you and don’t mean simple as in mentally disabled).

In all of the conversations Bruce and I had about the meeting of our minds we never really thought about the meeting of the minds of everyone else. I mentioned that my family can be difficult, and in some regards they have lived up to their reputations but in other ways they are being very well behaved. Bruce assured me that he had been raised by a rather broad-mined set of parents who would see the wisdom of our ways.

Of course life is playing out differently than either of us expected. Because, seriously, my mom. She loves us.

Someone send some weed*

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

My uterus is trying to kick its way out. My meds are in jail at the pharmacy. Bruce has the car.

Can a bad touch come from the inside?

*In the majority of cases Marijuana (Cannabis Sativa) has proven to relax or suppress the pain and remove a proportionaly [sis] large amount of stress. Althought [sic] doctors consider this to be an unorthodox method given all the treatments available to this condition and the fact that it may not produce any long term effects, this may still be an effective way to combat Endometriosis. Research for this method is little to none since the drug is banned in most countries and even inside those countries that support a small legal prescribed amount, the amount does not prove sufficient to effectively deal with the disease.

Fluffed and Folded

Thursday, February 22, 2007

A year.

Normally this is the time where I start throwing my cake out in the rain.

There is an incessant high pitched ringing in my ear. Bruce thinks this is amusing.

He also finds my constant orders amusing. He says no an awful lot.

A year.

The brik-a-brak is still identifiably one of ours but has started to mix nicely.

Our books share a case mixed by type and subject, although I suspect no one questions who brought the Torah and who brought The Soviet-Afghan War. It’s nice that there are places where we almost overlap. There are more places where we overlap: Ikea in the morning, breakfast foods at dinner time, dark wood, clean glass, wikipedia for research.

That’s not to say that we don’t have our moments of sincere fuckitude. We certainly have plenty of that. We fight about lighting. Bruce is thisclose to blind and would like to import the sun into every room. I am in favor of low lighting with my perfect vision and would use the ambient glow from the television to read (which is how I do all my late night typing). I know it seems petty, but I think I might have a brain tumor and all that bright light really messes with my eyes. Okay, so maybe there’s no tumor, but whatever.

I recognize that I don’t know how I got here and how this is still a here. It’s not easy or logical, trust me, we’ve heard from plenty of people about the lack of logic of us, but on we march.

Bruce gave me a card. A first birthday card with Elmo. I think that sums us up perfectly.

Washed and Waxed

Thursday, February 15, 2007

In my earliest days in my newest home town I found my way to a local nail salon. As is the want of these establishments, they also offered the waxing of a variety of body parts. I decided that I was at the juncture in my hair growth cycle that required a fresh eyebrow wax, just to maintain the wonderfulness that is my well manicured and professionally arched brows. The woman, a term I use loosely because she’s really a monster that visits me in my nightmares, heard something different.

Along with a layer of skin (meaning that I had scabby welts that needed ointment for two days), half of my eyebrows were ripped from my forehead. I looked very surprised. No really. For like a month I looked as if I was in a permanent state of suspicion. I suppose when I entrust my eyebrows to an Asian woman who has drawn on her own brows, well above the supraorbital bone on her skull where the natural brow would sit had it not been entirely removed, I really only have myself to blame.

I won’t lie. I cried. The pain of the waxing was less upsetting than idea that I would have to be seen in public with these mangled arches (for the sake of reality, I suppose I should mention that Bruce saw very little wrong and had the audacity to state that he thought my brows were fine and the same as before the criminal hair napping took place).

The past three months entailed a procedure that included brow stencils and dark brown powder. Whilst I no longer looked surprised, I did look Mediterranean. I have purchased a professional eyebrow kit ($40 at Sephora and more than worth it, people buy this kit).

There has been an excellent re-growth process and my brows, those gentle non-invasive creatures that had never so much as offended a depilatory process and staunchly defended their right to frame my face in a manner that flattered and balanced my visage, my loved and perfect brows HAVE RETURNED!

Yesterday I noticed that I needed to clean up the eyebrows, to maintain…well you’ve heard this story already. I decided that someone else would not be touching my brows and I waxed them myself.

What the fuck? OUCH. No really, that was not good. There is a reason why people are well paid to abuse my body with hot wax. I cannot inflict that kind of pain on myself regularly.

At least I still have my epidermis. And I don’t look surprised.