The girly cuteness

Because you really do have to see it (and also because I'm bored out of my gourd right now):
I did stop short of the towels and shower curtain though. One can't be too matchy-matchy, you know?

Edited: Oh yeah, I forgot about the new super sharp choppy chef type knife. I hope I don't hurt myself . . . too badly.

For the Shopping Mavens

I believe I may have gone just a little overboard lately. Well, not really until today, but I honestly didn't know that "confirm order" meant I was going to buy these gorgeous boots! But I really do NEED a pair of knee high boots for fall and winter, and considering how difficult it is to fit them for my wide calves, these seriously were a great deal, even with the shipping costs from the UK. Ah, well, at least I'll have something to wear after it gets too cold to wear these gorgeous red patent leather peep toe pumps. Now if I could only find a belt to go with them . . .

Oh, yes, a belt. While trawling eBay for a belt to match the red pumps, I did happen across this gorgeous red furry belt. For whatever reason, I just HAD to have this adorable, unique belt. I was delighted when I won the auction for a low, low price, and there was only one other bidder against me. Wait a minute. Only one other bidder. Does that mean that I scored a truly unique find, something only a few could recognize as a treasure? Or does that mean that I slipped in a moment of bad taste? Either way, the belt will be here soon and I'm picturing it with classic dark outfit and it as a focal point. Or maybe even a winter white outfit. Would red furry boots be too much, do you think?

And then there was Bed Bath & Beyond. I swear, I only went in there for a grill pan and a shower curtain liner (my liner was too narrow and was letting water out all over the bathroom). Well, I did well on both, got a grill pan on sale plus 40% off, and a $10 shower curtain liner, when all of a sudden I got sucked into the bath accessories. Really, all I wanted was a new trash can. But this is what I ended up with, including new shower curtain hooks.

Okay, never mind, Blogger won't let me put in any more pictures. I ended up with a trash can, 2 lotion dispensers (one will be for soap), a soap dish (that's for jewelry, of course), a toothbrush holder (and surprisingly Chico hasn't bothered them at all yet), and the aforementioned new shower curtain hooks. But trust me, they are really girly and cute. The Roommate says he can feel his girly side coming out now when he showers.

And a final, non-shopping news item for today: the Roommate will be moving out next weekend. While I'll be sad to see him go, I'll be glad to get my place back to myself, for all kinds of badness and going straight to helledness.

PS - I forgot to mention the resurrection of my Ann Taylor addiction, which so far has net me 2 pairs of fabulous trousers (brown with pink pinstripe, and grey), a frilly burgundy tank top, a gorgeous dark teal sweater, another gorgeous black and teal skirt, and a slinky teal wrap dress. They've started referring to me as a Regular. I'm scared.

*Note: Don't worry, I'll be back with more "I'm going straight to hell" commentary soon. I had to get some shopping out of my system. Now I'm ready to be bad again. Soon.

Saturday, 6:20 am

Man on bus holds door for me getting off.

Me: Thank you.

Him: Damn, sexy.

Me: (to myself, oh shit)

Him: Hey, sexy, aren't you gonna talk to me?

Me: (just keep walking, Y, don't say anything, it'll only make him keep talking)

Him: What's wrong, you don' wanna talk with me, sexy? You one hot mamacita.

Me: (Jesus H. Christ on a bike, what is with these people?!)

Him: Uh huh, I see how ya are, you think you too good to talk to me, you think you too sexy for me to be yer papacita.

Finally, I'd had it. Not enough coffee in me to be patient and tolerant.

Me: No, I'm not going to talk to no fucking stranger on the street at 6:20 am!

Him: (stares at me, gaping mouth)

Me: What makes you think you can just walk up to some woman on the street at 6 Fucking 20 am and start harassing her, huh?

Him: (still gaping)

Me: Because you ARE harassing me. And I don't even speak Spanish, asshole!

Him: (trying to recover) But I need to talk to you, sexy.

Me: No, what you NEED to do is start walking away from me right now. Got it?

Him: But, but, but . . . sexy.

Me: Yeah, well this sexy ass is gonna yell to that cop up there if you don't get the fuck away from me RIGHT NOW. (Okay, so maybe it was really only a low rent security guard, but . . .)

Him: (walks away mumbling about white American bitches)

Just another morning on the way to the restaurant.

(Edited to say please excuse the poor grammar, but at 6 fucking 20 am and with very little caffeine and nicotine on board, colloquial cursing is about as good as it gets for me. I was lucky I was coherent at all, which I attribute to being very fucking pissed off.)

Let me just clear up a few apparent misconceptions

And this is the last time that I will address these issues:

• You don't know the whole story. You only know the bits I choose to communicate. Don't assume you know more and don't read your own choices into mine.
• Regarding comments: I have the option of publishing or rejecting comments. To date, I have chosen to publish all comments (except the damn spam) in the interest of freedom of speech. I allow anonymous comments not so strangers can feel free to slag me off, although if that's what gets your rocks off, good for you, but so people I know can comment without having to register with Blogger. But if you are going to leave anonymous comments in the future, at least give yourself some kind of name or I will not publish them.
• If you honestly think that anything anyone says here will change what I'm going to do, you are sadly mistaken. I am an adult and, as such, I will continue to make adult choices. If you don't like my choices, that's your problem, not mine.
• My current situation has nothing to do with self-esteem. Once again, if you think this is the case, you are mistaken. Thanks for your concern, however strangely expressed, but my self-esteem is just fine.
• Give up on being judgmental. Judge not lest ye be judged. While I don't condone my actions at present, I have not judged others in the same situation when they have come to me in friendship.

In short, we only get to live this life once, and I'm going to live mine the way I see fit, and nothing anyone else says is going to change that. I'd suggest sitting back and enjoying the ride, whether you agree with the way I live it or not.

Letting go

Even when you know this day will eventually come, you put it out of your mind. You just don’t want to think about it. You pretend it won’t ever happen.

But it does. It has to, really. At some point you realize that it’s really in both your best interests for your best friend to retire.

I’m talking about The Bag, the city girl’s best friend. The Bag that you carry everywhere, that holds everything but the kitchen sink (which would fit, too, with just a little reorganization). It has everything in it that you might ever need. Far beyond just a place to keep your wallet, keys and cell phone, it holds the little bits and pieces that help make your life convenient. Your book for reading on public transportation, your portfolio with important papers to take care of, your makeup for touchups during the day (or the next morning, should you be so lucky as to GET lucky and stay over somewhere), emergency things like tampons and bandaids, gum, mints, cigarettes, lighter, small notepad for recording things you might forget later, pens, hairbrush, digital camera, hand lotion, and all the other detritus that finds its way to the bottom.

For the last year, Tod has been my bag. Tod and I found each other on a street corner in downtown DC, and I just knew he was the right one for me. Perfect size, shape and color, perfect heft, perfect volume. Before I had gone even a block, a stylish native New Yorker had told me the designer knocked off and that she wanted one, too. That’s when I really knew that I’d found a keeper.

We’ve been through a lot together, Tod and I. We’ve been to New York, San Francisco and Vancouver, through moving house, two roommates, and we were into our 3rd job together (4th if you count the restaurant). Through the ups and downs, Tod was right there with me, holding the bottle of wine for me, or the coffee cup as I left another office. He was there with me when I had to put Shelby to sleep, a quiet strength and repository for my snot-soaked tissues on the drive home from the vet’s office. There was something comforting about hugging Tod to me in times of hurt, anger or despair.

And then a few weeks ago, I started noticing that Tod was showing his age. I tried to ignore them, but a few nicks here and there became huge open sores to my eyes, even though I knew they hadn’t really gotten any bigger. But around the edges, Tod was getting worn down and losing his color, and it was just hard for me to watch. You never like to watch an old friend wasting away like that.

So yesterday, when I saw Gucci, I knew that it was time to retire Tod. Even after I adopted Gucci, I let Tod take me home with dignity, the last trip carrying everything I need to go about my daily business and more. And even though there’s a new Bag in my life, I’ll miss Tod for a while. I guess I’ll grieve for Tod. I hope Gucci understands.

Don’t worry, Tod, Gucci may be shiny and red and new, but he’s just not quite you. RIP, my friend.

Playing the Blame Game

In today’s society, we love to play the blame game. Someone is always to blame, and in an extramarital affair, it’s all too simple to lay the blame squarely at the foot of the married party involved. But the question remains, What amount of culpability, if any, do we attribute to the single party?

There are those who feel strongly that the single party involved in the affair has no responsibility toward the marriage at all. The single party, after all, didn’t take any marriage vows, legal, religious, or otherwise. They aren’t violating a sacred or emotional trust.

Or aren’t they? Don’t we, as a society, accept a certain amount of responsibility toward all marriages when we recognize the sanctity of those vows and endow them with legal and moral rights and consequences?

I have always argued that a certain amount of culpability is imputed to the single party as well as the married party. Aren’t we taught not to knowingly do things that would hurt others? I know I was, and I've tried my best to live my life according to teachings such as this.

Thus I find myself in the unenviable position of being involved in a situation where I know that I am at least partially to blame, and it’s not something that I enjoy thinking about. But to be truthful, right now, I can’t find it in myself to really care that much or feel that much guilt. I’ve been living such a half life for the last few years, barely allowing myself to feel anything at all, and now that I actually feel really alive again I know that this is exactly what I need right now. For the first time in years, I can feel that part of myself that attacked life and wrung happiness out of it like squeezing a wet sponge. And I need that more now than I need my sense of ethics or morality.

So go ahead and blame me if you want. I know I will, too, someday when I care. And that’s when it will end. Until then . . .

By Special Request

E. has requested that he be known from now on as "Chepe". I have no idea what this means. He claims it's a nickname given to people named Joseph or some such crap, which makes me wonder why on earth he'd want it, since that's not his name at all, but whatever. For all I know it could mean He Who Walks With a Big Stick Up His Ass, but I doubt it. So if you know what it really means, please let me know because I'm entirely too lazy to go look it up right now.

I do wonder now if I should have given him the url to this site, though. Not because I wouldn't want him to read any of it, but because I fear it might make me want to censor things that I may write in the future. I hope that won't be the case, as we have been as close to completely honest with each other as two people can be (note: I don't believe anybody can ever be truly, completely honest), but I guess I'll find out. It's not like I can take it back now.

I really should learn not to give my blog address out after a few drinks.

Where do I get off the bus?

I've had enough of being a grown up. I don't wanna do this anymore. Work shit, money shit, relationship shit, family shit. All I really want to do is go back to that time when it seemed like life was perfect. When my biggest decisions in the day involved which horse I was going to ride, which trail I was going to take, and which sandwiches to take with me.

I'm just so tired. Where do I get off this grown up bus?

Just one of those days

Almost from the time I woke up, hungover, tired and late, I had that feeling. You know the one – it’s going to be one of those days, those days when everything goes wrong. I stumbled to the bathroom, splashed around in the shower for about 5 seconds, fell into my clothes and out the door. The bus was coming and I had to run for it at the inhumane hour of 5:45 am.

The first bus that morning was full of the typical early weekend morning crowds: restaurant workers, health care workers, a couple of security guards, and the random assortment of drunk, deranged, and/or homeless, some of whom were smellier and louder than others. The second bus was waiting for me as I walked through Chinatown, and waiting on that bus was THE smelliest, loudest homeless guy, infesting it with stench. All I could do was sigh, sit up front, and hope the ride went quickly, with lots of fresh air from my newly opened window.

It was going to be a beautiful day, no doubt about it. The air was light and still had a touch of crispness to it. I wanted to stop at The Evil Empire for a venti triple mocha, but I knew I didn’t even have enough money for that, so I headed straight for the inn. As I entered and passed through the lobby and the dim front lounge, I was startled by the night desk clerk sitting ominously in a darkened corner. Everything about the inn and its restaurant had a foreboding quality to it, and the night desk clerk quietly following me around at a distance didn’t help at all.

Coffee. Coffee was what I needed, so, as normal, I went through the kitchen to the main wait station to make it. Desperately I searched for the filter basket to make my liquid gold, to no avail. No on else was at the restaurant yet, no one could help me and the stalking night desk clerk was driving me mad and giving me the creeps.

Feeling as If I was swimming through mud, I despaired and retired to the alley out back for a smoke. After that, the day started to go faster, but not much better. We finally found the filter basket and made coffee, then I got hung up on when I couldn’t promise a caller a reservation from the book to which I didn’t have access. I spilled a huge tub of homemade granola, dropped cutlery on the floor, burned my finger on a hot tea caddy, stumbled into a door and earned a rather nice bruise for that effort, and had to make about a bazillion cappuccinos (go to The Evil Empire for those, motherfuckers, I suck at making foam!). By the end of the breakfast shift, I had earned a total of $10, a few more bruises and burns, and a rather bad attitude.

And then the rest of the brunch shift arrived. A new start! Fresh smiling faces to joke and play with, some of my favorite co-workers. See, in the restaurant business, the other people on the floor with you make all the difference in how your day goes. The job is incredibly stressful and we let off frustration and steam in our play out of customers’ sight, back at the wait stations or in the kitchen. And on that day, even my very favorite co-worker E was on and working the patio with me. Hello, tag team! Tag team means that we both basically work the entire section, so customers get 2 servers instead of just one. Nobody gets ignored, nobody has to wait too long for a request to be filled. Tag team also means we both get better tips. However, to make a good tag team, you almost have to be able to read each others’ minds, and to communicate strictly through glances sometimes.

Anybody who has worked in the food service industry knows that it is fraught with sexual tension. First of all, there is the stress, and the sexual innuendos and joking and playing around help alleviate that. Also, the vast majority of restaurant workers in the front of the house are attractive and single. Not to mention, most are of a rather laidback attitude, fun and outgoing.

So it should come as no surprise that E and I had a very flirtatious, sexually-charged relationship. He’s a very attractive Latino man (phroar!) with a gorgeous body, flashing dark eyes, is smart, funny, and has an adorable sexy accent. And I’m, well, me, need I say more? And when it came to the end of brunch and we were relaxing at the bar with our shift drink (gotta love perks) and the manager needed someone to go buy ice, we volunteered to go. Was I surprised that as we went for ice, he asked me if I wanted to go get a drink? Yes and no. Yes, because my self-esteem has been battered for a few years. But no, not really. If I’d paid any attention, I would have noticed a certain way E had of looking at me, touching me, talking to me.

In the end, we went to E’s house (because he’d left his wallet there) and had a bottle of wine and talked for a couple hours. I learned that E was 38, from El Salvador, got his degree at U of Md., works in IT, speaks French and Italian as well as Spanish and English. I also learned that my body responded to his touch like he designed it himself. We got hungry and went out for some fantastic Thai food with another bottle of wine, then returned to the house to sit outside overlooking a huge, wooded park on a beautiful, perfect night and talk for more hours.

And in the morning, after a night of fabulous, tender, rough, dirty, sweet sex, I woke up in another woman’s bed with her husband and wondered when it would be my turn to have that life every night and every morning.

And that’s how I took a Latin lover and became that which I hate, the “other woman.” On just one of those days when everything goes wrong.

How's that again?

Quick, go look out the window, are those pigs flying?

Must be, because I've suddenly got myself a new Latin lover. Fucking hell, how does this happen?

Details to follow. I've got to get ready for work. Just wanted to warn you.

Because it's all about me

One thing I have learned about near disasters, or possible near disasters, or perceived near disasters, such as today's arrests/raids/whatever in London, is that airfares take a serious dive.

Therefore, yours truly will be spending Thanksgiving holiday in London, courtesy of my American Airlines credit from my earlier, aborted UK holiday. Of course, this will be a much abbreviated trip, only the long weekend, but hey, I'm not going to complain. I'm just going to drink. And eat. And drink some more. And shop. And drink some more.

Ne Fume Pas

I woke up this morning after a night spent sleeping in front of the air conditioner on my big chair in the living room, and repaired outside for my morning cigarette. See, that's me over there on the right. Lovely, ain't I?

Well, that's what I felt like, anyway, and so I think I've decided to stop smoking again. I just didn't enjoy that cigarette. And if I don't enjoy it anymore, then what's the use, right?

In other news, it's been hot here, DAMN HOT. As in almost triple degree Fahrenheit hot with loads of humidity. It is disgusting weather, and health officials have issued warnings to the elderly, infirm, and young, and those with lung/breathing issues to stay inside during the day as the air outside just isn't healthy to breathe. Hopefully this will all change now that I'm not smoking anymore. Somehow, I think it will resolve itself once the temps get cooler, though, sometime next week.

I started my new job on Monday, but I'll have to wait until I get home to talk about that because I really shouldn't use taxpayer dollars for that.

But using them to find a pic of a smoking frog is fine.