One Pale Fire

house hunting blues [rant]

I really don't get it do people really do this for an entire year - search listings, do drive-bys, go out with a realtor inspecting 7 different houses til they find one they like, make an offer, wait to hear back, make another offer, wait some more, get jerked around-up-and-down by everybody involved until it falls through and then you start all over AGAIN... for a year?

And these are the SAME exact people who are all "oh when its meant to be it will all fall into place, you'll see!". Or "oh don't worry if this one doesn't work out that just means an even better, more perfect place is just waiting for you"... What a load of crap they just got used to the insane process is all doing a helluva lot of mental editing - the clouds didn't part, angels didn't sing and no one greeted them at the door with a clip board to sign the forms and receive a key. No I'm sorry but that does not happen, I think the definition of "fell into place" just changed via the outcome or its like that nice little pat answer of "its always in the last place you look!". Its all like rose-colored-hind-sight glasses. Every difficult thing that is over with suddenly seems so much easier.

The short sale people are screwing with us - they want 20,000 more I offered, which is fine, but they lowered their price to that mark without so much as pausing to spit in our general direction. Which might even be fine except we just talked to them the day before so why not bother to say something then. I guess because they want me flapping out in the breeze as a runner-up, stand by, worse case offer. Thanks a mil, guys seriously. Our offer is supposed to expire on Monday and we have 5 days to blahblahblah-whatever so my realtor wants to give them a call but I said why the hell even bother they are gonna want it sitting out there at the new rate for at least 3 weeks to see if even 5 people call to ask about it at that price before they will be willing to reconsider and then they'll want to string me along for another 2 months - and then if in that time some one comes around offering even $2,000 more then me they will get it. Why bother waiting for the other shoe to officially drop? Why call? Why give them the time of day, they saw the paperwork, they know when the offer expires so screw them time to just get back out there.

So we did.

Yeah, it really didn't go well. We saw 4 houses today that were all just hand up in the face "NO". The roof, termites, whatever - I mean one just screamed no before we could even open the door all the way because something had died in the wall and all the windows are closed in nice and hot steamy Florida all day - the smell nearly kicked our teeth in it was so harsh. We tried to at least glace through the thing really fast with hands and shirts over our face but it was just so extremely unpleasant. Amazing how bad the houses were today - it could not possibly have been more obvious if we lost control of the brakes and slammed into a "not-gonna-happen" sign. So here I am rubbing my head and mumbling "did they mean 'ever' or just not this year?" I honestly can't tell but if its not this year it might as well be never.

I just don't know what to do and of course I made the stupid mistake of talking to D today and saying I was really down about it and of course he's all full of glee about the house he just offered on (its a short sale so I'll have to kill him if they don't drag his ass through the mud for a couple of months). Then he starts talking about these condos again - yes, D we know "daddy knows best" and daddy thinks silly lil old single girl can't handle a whole house by herself and what's a single person like me doing even trying to because its not like I even have a family consider and everyone knows I am supposed to find a man that already has a house. Screw off and die seriously. I mean why I expect him to just get - hey, this is your friend, you know the one everyone always thinks of a wise and stable, saying that she wants this, this is important, this is a sound financial step in her future and she even pays someone to advise her on such things and HE SAYS SO TOO - so just get the fuck on board already - "DAD"! I don't want a condo conversion that feels like just another bad apartment with crappy neighbors I don't like sharing the same walls.

Besides what is so incredibly irritating is telling him for the forth time that even the average condo out there is NOT that much cheaper then houses right now - with the condo fees and the taxes the way they are. I'd just be paying more then rent with about 3 times the responsibility and less room to rent out a room and no yard hating the place and wanting to move in 2 years. But its become clear to me that's all he thinks I deserve and attempting anything else makes me a demanding unreasonable little lady dog. Seriously the attitude has got to go.... 

Then he brings up the duplex idea again, like that's the only other option I have any right to consider  and it drives me crazy because it always makes him seem like a superdupergenerous guy but "oh, uh-oh, how'd that happen he has more control in your life!? Huh, how did that happen? I was just taking a piece of candy and then thing I know I am tethered to revolving around him for life and he still not paint the damn walkway or let me hire someone to fix the gutters when I want to because half the duplex is his"... The reason he is a procrastinator is because he enjoys the sense that people depending on him while he has control - that's what makes D happy - no matter how insanely inconvenient and madding it is to anyone else. He always plays the generous to a fault good buddy everbody has to love but there is always a little more control to give up to insure he is always the hero and you can't leave. 

Gawd why do people find creepy co-dependent stuff endearing and "romantic"? I mean there really is no mystery why I never got married - its because I am counter dependent and I hate being joined at the hip with all the weird psychological voodoo of doing everything with an eye to enabling someone and making it difficult for them to stray two yards away under their own power without you.

What makes me really sad is it might be time for another 2 year gap in our acquaintance where I don't have so much contact with D. He doesn't know this but his whole attitude is driving me away to protect my independent - I think it might be time to consider looking for a house in Tampa. I don't want to be back there living closer to my family but I don't know where else to go right now where I have a vague resemblance to a support system or know anyone. I mean beside my family I know R & L and I like them, and there will be people I used to go to school with to run into and I can telecommute to work with D still or maybe come down every few weeks to hang out with M and se the girls. Maybe I will even find a nice little Craftsmen's Bungalow to plant a garden around.

I thought I finally had a chance to make South Florida my official land-owning home but I just don't see it happening anymore. Everything has just been like one big sign that its not going to happen and I'm going insane sitting around waiting on "god's time table" for anything in my life to happen. I am so sick of it that's all I ever do it find one petty distraction after another or try to be patient while I am waiting for things to happen. I hate they way people revert back to "god" and his "divine plan" to explain everything and how everything is a lesson about how he loves us and is teaching us whatever - its just a way of explaining things. All I ever do is wait for some explanation of why I'm even here or where I am supposed to fit in - and it never comes.

And if you suggest I read 5 People You Meet In Heaven - you can choke on it because I already did and found it trite and disappointing.

frustrated & feeling stupid

Someone had this list of 100 books on this other site - I guess its the BBC "classics" or bestsellers or something (http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml) - and these people are checking off how many they've read and comparing notes.... omg, what a bunch of bookworms! One person had read about 53 of them and I think the lowest in this little group was like 25 or something.

First off I can't believe 5 People You Meet in Heaven and Bridge Jones's Diary is included in the list among other more current books. Its not that they are bad books, just seem kinda "pop" ya know, which, I guess that's all this list really is. Books popular among Brits.

Secondly where to people find the time? Not just to read a few books in the first place but to have read as many of the same books as they have. Did they not date at all in college or something? Do they have a Kindle with them wherever they go? Does no one use books on tape or watch the movie versions? 

Thirdly, uhm, okay, excuse me but can they seriously remember reading half of these books???.... If so I'm thinking I have bigger problems then some book list because I always mess up on the last 2-3 when I try to name all 50 states. I stared & stared at this list and I couldn't gather a coherent total because I simply could not remember with certainty.... I noted that there were about 8-12 I remember from school or something 20 years ago - seriously these people remember reading a book from cover to cover 20 years? I vaguely remember some book reports but were a few maybe just Cliff Notes versions or something? I dunno... Another 4 I have heard enough about I kinda felt like I had maybe read them but wasn't sure. Another 8, I couldn't remember if I just saw the movie, in fact I think I did just see the movie. Another 6, I might have started and not finished... I dunno I think these people are lying or seriously fluffing their numbers.

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In other news today sucks - just have this one project that is like pulling teeth, just having a hard time with it and I don't know why I can't just sit down and do it already. So instead I went to add a few more things to my online portfolio (http://www.crowdspring.com/portfolios/kismet) and finished this little nothing project to shut this other client up - then made a bunch of phone calls and email inquires so I felt like I was getting something accomplished.

My other errand was to go by and get Tinker's medicine - I heard from the vet yesterday that she is just barely clinically hyperthyroid but given her "presentation" in person they felt strongly she would benefit from treatment.... Okay but damn i can barely remember to take my own pill. Gonna half to set a PDA alarm for this now.

After I got back to the house there was a call from the realtor... *stops to sit and think some more*... she says that the other realtor says the bank did a driveby appraisal so they will probably be getting back to us soon, but our offer is set to expire soon as well and they may not get back to us specifically before it does so we need to decide if we want to extend it for a couple more weeks - which I am inclined to do just because I am so freakin' busy with work and frazzled. But the only catch is when my Realtor was examining the comparables, they've fallen since we made our offer last month so she is thinking maybe we want to lower our offer.... This is where I get nervous as hell because I just don't know.

I looked on ziprealty and played with the filters but I do not get the same sense of alarm about the price we offered being too high - I mean if it was really THAT HIGH they've have jumped on us to get the papers inked and lock in that offer, I would think. On the other hand who know with these short sales because there's 2 different banks and 3-4 parties or departments to get through before everyone signs off. The main reason I am so confused about what to think is, this is such a difficult neighborhood to get even comparables for - couple blocks in this direction the neighborhood bites and its close to the railroad tracks, half a mile further its all duplexes on the bad side of the railroad tracks or half mile in the other direction is across another major highway divide toward the beaches and then to top it off all other houses are so much bigger and newer... my brain hurts just looking at it.

I don't know so I asked an appraiser acquaintance to just give it a once over on paper and tell me what he thinks. I am inclined to trust this particular realtor's opinion but its freaking me out to think I might possibly under price us just out of consideration or that the lender will force me to by dropping what they will finance. I am beginning to hate this whole thing again and not even want a damn house - or here le'me just sit and watch the prices fall and pick this house up in auction in 2 months or something. I mean it is just so hard and people keep telling me when its right it will just fall into place *shakes head* nothing falls into place for me, people always said the same thing about finding a mate, its crap, its a crapshoot. I don't understand what they are talking about with the magical falls into place perfectly, I think they are just remembering it that way (be it all perfect or oh so easy or both) because they wanted it so much not because that's how it really was at the time. I mean, really, I never get a sense of process or anything when people say this and I get so sick of feeling like a completely lame loser that it never happens that way for.... I mean this one girl, ugh, I had to just stop talking about the house because she started going off on the super excited, super chipper happy joy joy "oh this is it, this is thee one, I just know it, you'll see!!!!!!" Does the phrase kiss of death mean nothing to you lil CareBear cheerleader?!

It seems that this kind of frustration - that I realize I am just especially sensitive to - is supposed to be helping me distance myself or gain perspective or be a little more detached but really it just makes me want to drop the whole thing altogether and forget I tried.

not super nova hot

I don't get the whole waiting for attraction to gel thing. I went out with this guy again because I was feeling sort of ambivalent before and my girlfriend & were talking about different types of attractions and what translates into long term compatibility but as I was sitting there I just couldn't see it happening.

I mean, he's nice blahblahblah and his being nice to me might grow on me but why go there if I don't feel that compelled - I feel like I am waiting around hoping something will change and not knowing how much it ever will and then I feel awkward about the effort of filling in the time between. And I just feel so self-conscious about this being all about a "safe" choice rather then an intuitive "honest" kinetic reaction.

I realize it could work both ways - I mean you could be going full steam ahead to avoid emotional intimacy in favor of hotter more immediate distractions or gratifications (and I have done that) but I think you can also go too far the other way into finding distraction in control, safety and offsetting your emotional intimacy with less opportunities that exploring it will be a problem because that person never really gets you on that level. Balance and not living on one level is the key I guess but I don't know many people who have truly mastered that... I was thinking about it all on the way home and I had a little more respect for both my mistakes and my choices to go for it. I wasn't always demanding longevity out of my explorations or the times I backslid into super nova hot romps, its just the way I bond I think I need to honest about that and have some fun/hot memories with that person for when things cool down into the deeper more committed long term.

a pang at Chang's a a toothpick sized stake in my heart

Wow, I am really attracted to this very young waiter at PFChang's. He's just an impressively personable and articulate guy aside from being really cute. It was funny he seemed to pay particular attention to me too. I wonder if I was imagining that? I mean the pheramones seem to be firing more accurately lately but he looks really young so I can't imagine he'd seriously be interested. Regardless it was nice that he remembered my first visit there - it was at night, a busy night and I came in with the bitch S and he did the whole sauce presentation for us & everything and then when we talked today he remembered it was a couple of months ago and seemed to pick up on my having been there a lot since then although I don't recall seeing a lot of him since then. I do remember that I was impressed with him then too but today it was a much stronger feeling of connection - like he knew just was I was thinking about what to have and little side things of interest that he would mention and then he told me a little about his vegetable garden. What was odd was I found myself ordering a desert I didn't really need or want just because I wanted to be around him a little longer - and the thing is I swear he felt the same way - I mean beyond his being a good waiter and that being what successful waiters do. He was just so refreshingly attractive and articulate. And its funny that's exactly the kind of attraction I was talking to my friend about today. Apparently we differ a bit on how we chose mates and I would venture to say that since she was married for 20 years she is maybe a little better at selecting mates or else I just have an entirely different criteria on the experience I am looking to have via specific kinds of attraction. My favorite kind of attraction is the one I had today - soothing, scintillating, easy to slip into and multi-layered as in not just physical or mental but also emotional - it just feels good. It doesn't exactly hit you over the head and drag you back to the lair but it is definitely there and the more you get to know them the yummier it gets for a while. I usually know I really like something about them at first be it physical or whatever but its that feeling of not wanting to leave that usually clinches it - if I were to spend more time with this person I'd soon find myself wanting to kiss them, maybe even longing to. I don't tend to care for very sedate slowly growing, "well, he definitely doesn't offend me" kinds of first attractions that take a while to fully form - if I am ambivalent after the second meeting or the first 30 minutes of spending time with them then I usually don't feel very strongly compelled to pursue it. Well, that guy that I met out for lunch the other day definitely rated stronger then "well, he definitely doesn't offend me" - but - not that much stronger to the point I really wanted to find reasons to spend a couple more hours with him. I mean the pauses and silences were comfortable enough but he was just so laid back that I kept wondering just how plain and vanilla he was.... although, I dunno, I was pretty addled with nervousness at first and the low-grade anxiety about what I wore and the act of even going on a date sort of stayed with me so I decided maybe it warranted a second look.... actually he sent me a link to his website and I liked it which is what really put me over the edge - it upped the interest level a little. I don't think I would have been so nervous but I have been having this inner conversation lately about my lack of trust and how it affects all of my relationships - even somewhat business relationships. I was sitting around the other day after the dream funk and it eventually dawned on me that what was missing was that added dimension that trust brings to relationships. And I am not talking about the uber-sappy, ultra-fluffy, sister-subbie-bunny-trust-is-holy-in-bdsm kinda cock & bull. I mean there is a difference between an educated, estimated cognitive belief that someone will probably do right by you or faithfully carry out the services you are paying for and real trust in the people around you. Its an added emotional dimension - it isn't require to function in relationships but you notice it when its gone. Well, mine has been gone for a long time. That sort of feeling of being secure in someone caring about you or that they will probably do right by your acquaintance is just gone. It is that nothing's-the-matter that is missing that I noticed the other day. Once I saw it I realized why I've been such a damn bundle of nerves about the realtor and just about every-fucking-thing around me including my best friend D's motives regarding the househunting. I saw how it affects me just as clearly today when I had to take Tinker into the vet. She's lost weight and has been acting a little weird but as I sat in the waiting foyer with the other pets I grew more and more anxious about even being there. There were a lot of dogs. it was a little crowded and I did recall moments of waiting with Zoe that made me a tiny bit emotional but I kept pushing it off "no, we need to be here and look into this" I thought to myself, but the nervousness didn't end there. Later in the examining room I continued to get more nervous - would they be able to help her? Is she just old and there is no help? Am I gonna lose her (& how is another can of worms I don't want to face that right now)? What do I do to make her more comfortable? I don't know these things and what's more is I feel frazzled trying to resolve them all myself.... and apparently its because I trust NO ONE. I love this place and I did trust them before - they are very good at not only caring for the animals but at treating the owners and their connections to their pets with a great deal of compassionate respect - but today when I was there I noticed how much trust was missing in me. Just sitting still while they were prying in her ears what driving me crazy. I was tense with anxiety about even being there let alone what they were doing to her or her discomfort with the moment at hand - my whole torso was tense - there was no stomach knots to read into, or emotional center of my chest to commune with in order to gain more sensibility about the moment at hand. I can make a blanket statement about the capacity I have to trust myself but in that moment I was cut off from any intuition or external trust in the people around me, as if it was all solely up to me somehow. Tinker is fine, I think, she had a very small tumor in her ear that we may or may not treat and she may be hyper-thyroid - otherwise she is just really old and all I can do is love her... "okay, I can do that" I think to myself as I gather her to leave and await tomorrow's blood test but as I paused at the counter to pay my bill it occurred to me, that is wasn't a coincidence that I was confronting this current lack of trust episode here. This is where I was with my kitty, Zoe, the last time X really hurt and betrayed my trust. I finally "got" who he was but what was so filthy, staining and unforgivable at the time was not that he would insult, steal energy, deplete emotional resorces for his own ego and disgard all concern for me but that he also thought nothing of extending this to the innocent, defenseless, DYING creature that he had just that very morning, pretended to have concern for - the bastard turns on a dime but wtf? was that really necessary? I understand that trust was grievously misplaced in him but what I missed was in forgiving myself and constructing my own intellectual closure without him since then is how one reacquires the ability to trust. I had assumed that cognitive type of trust would eventually trickle down my chest and re-root itself in my heart... it hasn't. I didn't feel wounded today in the vet's office and I guess not re-living it all is a step but I think you have to give in to vulnerabilities that surround you, acknowledge them by staying in the moment with them, rely on others and trust yourself to be okay if they let you down - then maybe when you gather enough of those moments around the healing site, trust will grow back. For now there is still a little toothpick sized stake in my heart with a empty seed-packet-flag on it.

watching paint dry on someone else's dream

okay this is gonna make me freakin' nuts!!! So here I am sitting here waiting to hear something on the short sale I offered on meanwhile this other house I was kind of interested in has just lowered their price - again - and D is gonna be out there buying a house next week with his business partner easy as 1,2,3... ugh! I wanna house!

This just bites, sitting here on my hands, I feel like its all passing me by and its never gonna happen. A friend of mine keeps telling me not to compromise on what I want, but what if, what I want most is starting to compromise and control me? I was gonna extend the offer if we hadn't heard anything this coming Tuesday but now I think I will walk away and just go for something I can actually get and get on with! I mean I might even find something that isn't perfect but is a lot cheaper and I won't need a roommate for and won't be another 10 miles away from everyone I hang out with. So what if it needs a stove or lots of yard work and doesn't have oak floors, I don't care anymore. Seriously!

Yeah, besides what did being so uncompromising ever really get me anyway? Certainly not more friends and a husband - lol. Oh gawd, I do hate people but it was fun to sound like one of "those women" for half a second. Almost made myself upchuck, but it was fun. I have been trying to find another activity partner to do things with and so far it is just a weird little search - one lady is nice, she just needs therapy because she seems to think marriage will magically change everything about life she isn't happy with right now... the other is... I dunno, she seems like she might be normal but she is pinning over some guy that obviously doesn't see any real future with her and that makes me a little sad for her because she's having a hard time getting unstuck... but then again it seems like she might be more in love with gaining "marriage material" status then in love with him. Although the first one was a super flake and I liked the second one I don't feel like I have anything in common with them... I mean I want a life partner but I have no designs on marriage specifically.

No, I just want to marry my house and live with it for better or worse.

I wonder if its time to take down my little smiley-face house I draw when I was trying to refocus my intentions. I thought I found it but everyone keeps saying how when its right it just falls into place and it hasn't yet, it just keeps dangling up there in obscurity and uncertainty clouds.

I am still so curious about this notion that people have about things magically falling into place and why I never see it that way. I mean I could see it that way if I was willing to wait long enough but jeebus just the waiting seems like such an infernal effort I could hardly go swimmingly with the view of it magically falling into place as if meant to be. No, I either worked for it or I waited long enough for the whole world to pass me by enough times and I had talked myself into believing it was perfect for me.... 

I guess there is a school of thought that says these things come to you when you are ready to receive them but I really do think that is just the same kinda convenient confabulation. I'm ready, I'm open - seriously, try me. Com'on house I dare ya!

the cracks

ugh, I adore my god-daughter but apparently I can't take being around her and her 2 yr old sister - this will be the 3rd or 4th time I have gotten sick just after seeing them for dinner. Its only been 3 hours but I can tell this is gonna be soooo much fun! Warm, chills, headache and I feel like throwing up. I can't believe I find myself half hoping it is food poisoning because I can't afford to be sick for another 2 weeks only getting about half the work done that I usually do. I'd rather have 3 days of digestive hell and get it over with instead having 7 days of sleepless miserable quarantine followed by about 7 more days of a coughing plehm fest and then having to resot antibiotics.

Autoimmune diseases are so much fun. Even when you treat Hasimotos with thyroid medication and feel better you still have to watch out for sick people all the time and hope they don't take it personally. This last year & a half for some reason has especially sucked and the kids is the only thing different I can think of. In the 4 years I have worked for myself I barely ever got sick because I just didn't have as much extended contact cooped up in an office with people or that much contact with children. My girlfriend keeps telling me that if I am exposed enough to kids and every damn new strain of cold and sinus infection that comes down the pike then I will build up a resistance to it but I don't believe her, I think its a silly apparition for someone with an immunity problem. Dan Active, vitamin C and zinc my ass - that doesn't help either.

Oh well soon I will fall into a fevered haze and I can happily forget all about the date I had today. It was super low-key fun in a way I guess - he's nice and attractive - but he's maybe too vanilla/mellow for my taste and I don't think we have that much in common. It was nice to have company but I kept feeling self conscious about what I wore - ugly shoes, not feminine enough? too casual? I dunno, I think its just in my head but what do I do with my head? I mean there's no manicure for the attitude and mine still isn't all there. I can touch up my roots and do my hair but it still isn't there. I mean, I do okay but yesterday as I pressed send on the email to him I had a moment of near phobia over dating in general again. I don't even know this guy and I had a moment of high anxiety. 

The other day Iw as sitting outside on my patio in the middle of the day - another beautiful, perfect Florida day where there's a cool breeze in the shade and plenty of bright sun light to warm you - I was still in a mild funk from the bad dream. I thought I shook it off but as I sat there I started feeling this unreasonable sort of sense that something was missing but nothing's-the-matter. I don't know how to explain it. My life is full and I know how lucky I am but there was something that wasn't there somewhere and I it wasn't just about having a man in my life. It just slowly dawned on me how little trust I have. You can function, and you can even carry on relationships without it - its the nothing's-necessarily-the-matter that is missing. Suddenly it was all I could see when I looked around my mental landscape.

Damn, I just assumed eventually it would grow back on its own but it hasn't and I'm not sure how to better cultivate it consciously or if it will ever be like it once was. I guess I could have tried harder but I doesn't seem like its all about me, myself & I. I feel like I actually trust myself pretty well, I have faith that I can get through things and that I am not reliant on others to do so, so it seems I looked right past investing it in other people and how that adds up to how I feel about things in general. I think that's why I've been such a freak about the various relationships involved in finding and acquiring a house. I've just been such a vulnerable nut case about the tiniest sense that someone's motives are not perfectly aligned with mine or are the least bit counter productive to them - because that basic willingness to trust people is not there. I can trust an agenda if I can identify it and can work around it or with it but the minute it goes off course or seems to be hidden under something else... I've just been a bundle of raw nerves. People must think I am crazy but I have to say it is no fun to be hyper-vigilant like this, it's actually quite exhausting and really saddening.

What is saddening is that I just can't seem to get over it, I feel like I make progress and time is passing but sometimes I look up and it still comes back to the same thing: X. I honestly wish I never met him, he's a stranger to me now and I am thankful for that but I wished I had never gone to the 5 minute dating party and met him or had fallen in love. Sometimes I wish I had just continued dating for those few years I took off while I was trying to get diagnosed and treated for the thyroid stuff... and moving... and working 15 hours days... and burning myself out on the corporate life. Ugh. *shakes head* It's just so weird that when I did get back to dating I managed to somehow pick out the most personally toxic person imaginable. Total emotional vampire. 

I thought it was something defective about me like a kind of blind stupidity - and though I'm told I am not stupid, maybe it was something about me that makes me prone - but last year when I was having dinner with that compulsive lying snake Drew I started to think it was something of an immunization or a gift of insight having gone through the experience (still can't say I am thankful for it but...). I was sitting there listening to Drew spin his web and lay his groundwork and that dazzlingly, hypnotic, artful way he'd slip a little "we" in here or there like we were really bonding and forging a connection. Amazing, just freakin' amazing what a snake he was. It was weird like for once I couldn't be disarmed and I could just see the wheels a-turning in his head - how he was constantly assessing everyone around him and predicting their next move and how best to manipulate the situation. I mean, this was no average trial to get into someone's pants, it wasn't just about sex, it was about emotional energy and the thrill of screwing someone over in the head and tricking them into believing something for the fun of thievery - which is what makes it so gross and predatory, and him so pathetic. He's one of the few men I have met in person that I would define as absolutely brilliant in every sense of the word but for once I could see plainly that he didn't just develop these intense skills of perception and guile by pure accident. 

It was then that I finally felt a little less bad about myself for having fallen for it. When I was able to observe it without being taken in, I was able to forgive myself but I just still don't feel sure I am immune to it or that I don't have a big target painted in invisible ink on my forehead. It was suggested to me that I might be a target because I am a more challenging target - as if an active, discerning mind puts off its own pheromone or something and that's what makes me such an irresistible mark. I dunno, it's such a convenient and attractive compliment in a way but I couldn't possibly accept it because that would mean I have to hope for a massive brain injury to attract a different kind of compassionately intelligent guy... or be attracted and satisfied with different type of guy and whatever distractions they can offer me. I guess I better learn how to trick myself into it but I'd rather have plain ole trust again.

Earth Hour 2009

http://www.earthhourus.org/miami/miami.php

It’s time to turn out and take action against global climate change. Miami will once again join millions around the world by turning off their lights on Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 8:30 pm during Earth Hour. By flipping your light switch, you can demonstrate concern for our living planet and send a loud message to our leaders that you support action on climate change. Stay tuned for more updates from Miami.

smoke & ashes

there was some mention of cigarette smoke/smoking today and as I tried to stifle all the usual banal arguments about health and the sheer stanch I found myself thinking back to when I was a kid and they were first discovering just how bad they were for you. Now, my Dad was akin to a chain smoker, he polished off a pack a day neat - pack and a half on bad days. It seemed like I always ended up in the back seat behind him in the car but then again he was always smoking so who can tell - ugh, even when the windows were down the smoke just flew right in my face and I couldn't fathom how adults could smoke - they would tell kids stuff like broccoli or in my Mom's case Kim-chee was an acquired taste but that stuff was just heinous. Worse was if we climbed into the glass fast-back of his Cuda - the smoke would just pool there as he drove and you'd practically get lightheaded (from coughing not the tar in the smoke). I digress, anyways, I can remember when one of those first "major studies" was released and they were reporting it on the nightly news - my reaction? DUH! Where all adults hard-of-smelling or what?!?!? But what I didn't understand was how any adult would remain complacent in the blue TV light of "the reports", casually tapping ashes off the red cherry top - even as they watched them increase and proliferate. Did they just float up in the air like smoke? I looked over to my Dad with a lit cigarette wedged between his yellowed fingers, staring at the TV screen idly scratching his stubble and I really wanted to ask.... 

In retrospect considering his already shaky health and lack of immunity you can't tell me it wasn't a passive and complicit contribution to the end of his own life. And I don't mean that it was immaterial given his illness "so who gives a damn?", I mean he was complicit in speeding up the process but never actually alarming anyone with something more overt. I was watching the back-fire exhaust from a truck today in traffic when thoughts drifted to another day so many years later when I was smoking a joint with my brother in the backyard of the house we grew up in. It was back in the day when cell phones were still fairly new and none of them had cameras built in - I had come over to take pictures of his car as a favor because he had to file an insurance report and we hangout for a while to catch up. He offered me a toke, as he dosed almost daily and it was time for a smoke. He was an open advocate for drug legalization as long as I can remember - I rarely bothered with the stuff myself but I remember thinking that a doobie with your oldest brother must truly be a rite of adulthood or something. I mean screw peer pressure - officially graduating from dorky, annoying little sister was just not an opportunity you miss. He ended up telling me he thought I did the smart thing going straight into commercial art because he ended up hating drafting and went into the sign business. It had taken years to acquire the skills and the surrounding technology changed almost weekly but he had often wished he had found a more direct route into it. I was stunned to hear the dorky little sister had actually done something right in his glassy eyes, but I had a sneaking temptation to ask if the pot had ever arrested his ambition. I didn't though, I just inhaled and thanked him. I still have three pictures from that day - 1) the big old "hand" tree we all used to sit in and swing from, which seemed so much smaller then I remember it 2) one really goofy, slightly cockeyed smirk that I love it because it's a trademark family expression and 3) one with the hand-tree in the background where he is ducking from the camera with a joint to his mouth - it's cropped to half his face but it's my favorite because it always makes me laugh to think he'd rather have saved the toke he was in the middle of and duck then just take it from his face which to me seemed to more obvious choice.

Ha - caught on film, better not show Mom!... Actually she wasn't dumb she always could smell it in his hair.... (me at 12) "note to future self: Mom has the nose of a blood hound - Visine, hair spray and breath mints are mandatory... but stay away from home until you hear Dad canvasing the neighborhood in the Cuba just to be on the safe side...*waves hands in air around hair*..." Truthfully I was never really addicted to much of anything much less interested in drug/alcohol abuse (although I did smack it around once or twice) but I do remember one day when I was actually glad I had a third of a joint left to smoke. I think it was the same one I shared with my brother... I used to be in the habit of stashing half spent joints because I once lived with a boyfriend that smoked and the forgetful habit came in handy about a two weeks after he finished off a bag and he was extremely cracky, stressed and jonesing. But this time it was me - when I had moved back to Tampa and was training to be a ride operator at Busch Gardens and on my first three days I was stuck on the ride platform loading guests and sending off boats because someone didn't show up for a shift when they were supposed to. Hours and hours of standing and chipper noisy vacationers was about all one could take of a theme park. My feet were throbbing, my legs were burning, my back were killing me and I didn't care if I never saw another tourist or that ride for the rest of my life but I still didn't have a car so that meant I was relegated to waiting for the bus home or walking and walking wasn't an option at the time - not after standing all day in topsiders. I searched my purse for a stray asprin but all I found in the pill case was that left over joint my brother gave me and two matches. It was stale by then so it was a bitch to light and tasted especially gross but it really helped take the edge off. I think its the only thing that makes me unscrunch my shoulders - I don't advocate drug use but I did get some clarity and perspective from that particular smoke. So there I was in my uniform, leaning against the bus stop sign on a very busy 6 lane road and defiantly smoking a roach contemplating the choices I had made and a pair of blue eyes I met that week. Complacent to everything behind me, casually eyeing the red cherry tip and holding it like a cigarette thinking it drew less attention that way - screw the traffic, the warnings, the threat of law enforcement and health concerns.... Back to the choices - let's see, we have a yes in the career choice column from my brother, and an admission from a bygone high school competitor that I was in fact the best in my class... but then again I wasn't working in that career... I wondered how anyone felt about my choice to come back to Tampa, seriously? My Mom seemed happy and it was some mental relief that Max was a short drive to Orlando away but they both might as well have been a million miles away because he was married now and Mom was just Mom. It wasn't clear to anyone back home in Fort Lauderdale why I had "fled" to the hills of West Virginia and I was content in the illusion because there was no master plan and I wasn't fleeing anything really - there just was nothing better to do except take the most round about way possible to coming back to Tampa to make peace with some ghosts and get to know my family again. Although I imagined living with my Mom in my 20's made me something of a loser I have to say I was pretty happy with my relative anonymity working at the summer job theme park and saving up for a car. Everybody at work was so much younger then I was, the lack of responsibility was invigorating and I felt like it was all some big strange teenage do-over because things were so dreadfully serious when I was in high school. That was when I took to staring at the tall trees across the street around the employee entrance I had just left. I could hear the roller coaster rounding the bend and from the screams it much have been the upside-down part. When I was a kid my and my brothers would occasionally climb up to the top of the Silver Oak in our front yard - on a clear day we could just barely see the top of the roller coaster loop from there. Seemed like a magical escape back then, but here I was literally at the back stage door - completely unvarnished or glittering. Just then I turned toward the growing glow of traffic just before the sun set to see the bus was approaching so I tossed what was left of the roach and dug into my pocket for change in slow motion thinking about how the only other time I was happy for a joint was the one I shared with Max the night I heard my Dad died. Don't worry it wasn't the cigarettes, it was the mystery Chronic inflammatory disease behind door #2 that he'd acquired during his years as a Marine in the Korean War. Max never knew because he wasn't literally at my side when I got the call that day and I could never speak about it then but I wondered if he remembers that night riding around high in the car with Gary turning over neighbors' garbage cans as we sped by listening to "Classic rock" (the only other time I felt like a teenager incidentally - except that time I really was). Ya know, my head really did feel "like two ballons" but it was Bernie Taupin and Elton John's "Someone saved my life tonight" that I felt asleep to. "Sweet freedom whispered in my ear You're a butterfly And butterflies are free to fly Fly away, high away, bye bye" Its weird I felt less free to leave the second time around in Tampa because none of the ghosts had in all the time I was away. I couldn't understand, if the knew all the dangers and what had happened already why'd they stay?

tinkering with limbo

I think the limbo of waiting to hear about the short sale house is making me complacent and apathetic  - maybe it's an unavoidable protective response to limbo sooner or later but I think it may be far worse for me then the house would be good for me. 

Just feeling useless to waiting is stirring up all these horrible feelings, I just have such steep issues with limbo and holding patterns and having there just be NOTHING you can do. I start thinking what's the point, the house isn't worth this, no matter how many cents on the dollar the bank will consider. I mean you start something you have no control over finishing, you can't do anything to make it easier, you can't speed up the process, you can't prepare for the next step til you know its gonna happen, you can't just get it over with and fast forward to the part you wanted.

To make it worse I keep having this feeling my oldest cat Tinker is gonna die before I even move into whatever house I eventually get in my imaginary life and its making me terribly sad. She's getting old, really old, but other then that I can't explain this very strong feeling but nonetheless I'm having a harder time with the change that I elected for, regardless of whether it means I'll be going about it without her or not. Its always the same - elect for change and you never know what you are gonna lose or have to give up in the process. She's such a pain in the ass but I don't know what I would do without her - find out like I always do I guess, I just don't wanna do it. 

Gain: a house, a yard, a better balance sheet, a roommate, a tax break, new responsibilities, new fears, god-parenthood and the pride of mortgage ownership... whatever, why don't I feel like I am trading up? Why don't I feel like I have enough room in me to accept these things? Why do I only see the output instead of the input. I mean who knows maybe a roommate is just the change I need most - but instead of excited or adventurous, I feel inert to the "good" or "bad" of any aspect of it right this moment.

I mean not that I feel replete about staying in the same place if I did give up on the house thing. Not now, I couldn't if I wanted to. Well maybe I do in a way, maybe the break-even head space of mine is the reason I've been having this restless feeling over there being essentially nothing really missing from my life, even though there clearly is. It doesn't matter it all just evens out...

I dunno, useless babble, I just can't sleep - I keep thinking "hey, life whatever is gonna happen next go ahead and happen already! Because this stillness routine is driving me nuts!" Except I am gonna be so sad if that thing is losing Tinker. I'd really regret being willing to consider change if it means she goes. I don't care what makes up for her in the long run, I just don't wanna think about "without her" just yet. There must be some way to push it off because I don't feel like I have enough to give that scenario right this minute.

under the see

Aquarius Horoscope for week of February 12, 2009 "When we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours," wrote author Robert Fulghum, "we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness  -- and call it love." I mention this, Aquarius, because the  Valentine season will offer you ample opportunity to bask in the wonders of mutually compatible weirdness. It could  come in the form of friendship or romance or some other  collaboration, but one way or another it will help you feel  less alone in the world, suggesting that maybe you're  not an extraterrestrial time-traveler from the 29th  century after all.

The other day and I had an odd moment of remembering I guess, although it seemed like imagination too - sort of the way they say muscle has memory. It wasn't one specific moment it was a memory of how something felt when you were in it but could see through it too. The feeling of connection to my lover in the fantasy was strong enough but I was more struck by a sense of... I dunno, just me, all of me - just how I was with all of him right then... I don't know how to explain it. Its not like I feel like something is missing from myself in day-to-day life but in this moment it was like... ugh, like there was more of me? or a much stronger sense of myself - or it was like I was seeing myself with this added dimension of timelessness and I missed what I saw in a flash. Sounds nuts as if sex is some religious experience and, like I said, I can't explain it well - but - I missed it and later as I was sitting around I just thought about the weird dream that I had last week that put me into suck a deep funk... It was sort of like it was replaying my feelings on my involvement with X just for the random terror of it or like it was a way of explaining how I got ship wrecked here - a fashion party, a short dress, some drinks - he poisoned me and suddenly my alien nature was revealed. No one could have predicted it, least of all me. I thought I was just a little drunk from some bizarre flavor of vodka at first but then I started to sweat and the more I did the more my skin started to turn this eggplant purple/silvery green stripes. Suddenly everyone know... and it was so weird how thick the stripes were lengthwise from head to toe - it was if, better placed it could have appeared one arm was purple while the other was this grayish pale green except I wasn't even that lucky, I just had one half purple arm and one whole purple arm from the front and two mostly silvery green arms from the back. Damn the sleeveless sheath dress! At least no one would ever notice one eye was slightly higher then the other ever again but there just really is nothing neutral enough to detract from the hideous contrast or combo of purple and silvery green. When I started to recover something about the toxicity and the air combined to stain my skin a more uniform murky dark purple, I had wished I was more of an olive tones so I could say I was from some remote part of Turkey and got too much Sun but as it was I made even black people very uncomfortable because it just wasn't a natural shade of anything. It was very much like an ugly duckling story in reverse - I jumped into the pool and all the white fleshy tones came off. I don't blame him for destroying my trust because I wasn't all the way back to being myself when I started seeing him any ways - I could see that from the dream. I mean its probably why I chose him, chose the uneven power dynamic and stayed with him as long as I did. My therapist thought the term sociopathic was too strong but on a simplified fundamental level buried under all the personality there is just no other word to describe his approach to his priorities - he wasn't a sadist who enjoyed the pain he inflicted, the people he might mark or poison - he was worse because he sincerely didn't care. It was just a by product and the business of getting his needs met and his ego pacified.... emotional rape was just harvesting a rainforest for profit to him, who cares how many people turn purple or die without the rare antidote that grows naturally there - he was making 85K a year now, he had an exotic erotic story or two to tell and it was someone else's problem now. Besides how many people would that antidote have worked on anyways? There was only one documented case and no one could prove it had anything to do with some blood-eyed-tree-frog-spit mixed with some mango-like sap anyways. Enzyme-smnyzme ya freak. Some days I can vaguely remember this sense of self I once had but it was so long ago the picture is always foggy inside and was fading before I even met him and then after meeting him it only got to be even more of a surreal remembrance that I assumed it wasn't real or more importantly it never mattered, it was just something one grows out of. I mean I think I chose X because I wanted something different then I'd ever had before because this notion of "home" was too painfully frustrating to consider how to get back to - I wanted to get further & further away from it so as to deny it ever existed, so that damned blurry vague sense of direction would just go the fuck away altogether and stop tugging in different directions so then I wouldn't have to worry about it never coming clean the way it never did anyways... that's when I met Crush. He seemed so strangely familiar to me. It wasn't his face or any particular silvery-green-eyed thing about him, it was just the way his mind worked, the way I felt around him. Less purple, more down to earth. Past all the bluster and the bragging about whatever he wanted me to be impressed by, I just stayed but continued to side step the things he throw down for me and what I was then impressed by was his willing to let that happen and not hide a smile of delight in what fell off like clothes you never liked anyways. He seemed so familiar to me then I started to think it was just something I dreamed once. It was weird we sort of bonded over relationship war stories like old army buddies but somewhere during one of his stories - Korean arms or the Mexican revolution, I'm not sure - it was like someone was rubbing the film off a mirror and the picture was getting clearer. The movement beyond the dirty surface and milky old glass and speckled electro-under-plating seemed so oddly familiar. But there's this weird place with trust that no one ever talks about that is between forgiving yourself or forgiving a partner in crime who was helping to re-injure your psyche and just forgiving events that no one could have controlled where it seems like part of yourself might never come back - the part you trusted would always be there - you can sit there for a century and it might just be forever changed... so would you change back if the opportunity presented itself? I mean if you can't trust it to just be there anyways, what's the point? Right?... particularly if it seemed conceivable that no one else thought that other place was all that great to begin with... I looked in him and thought - that was a great place, I want to trust it. But this time he didn't. He looked inside of himself and he didn't see what I did. If it was a point in time that you could put your finger on maybe it could be treated like a pressure point and the fog and malaise would abate and you could see yourself clearly but this injury seems to defy that level of muscle memory aided healing. Time & space isn't static so as to make that convenient - its a tide of floating overlapping areas of waxy build-up on the mind's eye. Oil slicks and rainbow puddles on the road of life. I think I shifted into those areas to shield myself from something at one time and got stuck - I dunno. Its just funny that once I was finally ready to go back to being myself the tide shifted, the planets fell out of alignment, I was stung by some cosmic jellyfish that I didn't see coming and that atmospheric window was gone again but this time I'm not content with adventure of finding out what won't kill me or make me stronger - no charting the degrees just for fun and endorphins anymore - now, I just wanna go home and take a long nap inside of us.