Life on the other side of Sanity

I'm moving!

You can find me here, where I don't promise to update more often, but at least won't be paying $5 a month not to do so.

Slacker. Yep, that's me.

Wow, seriously, a month- a full month since I last blogged.  Ya'll, I am the boringest person in the world, I'm just saying. 

What has gone on in the last month, exactly.  Well, I'm dating, here and there.  I'm going to be upfront about saying that I've met a lot of guys on craigslist, and a lot of them have been very lovely, and several of them I am still friends with.  I met the Hindi Homo that way, as a matter of fact.  I rarely answer ads, though I do occasionally post them.  Lately, in a shameless bit of profiling, I confess that I've been placing fake missed connection ads to target a certain demographic.  I mean, if you're reading this, you already know that I have the curry fever something fierce, so this comes as no surprise.  I post ads searching for a cute Desi guy at random locations, and see who answers.   You can mock me all you want, because I am telling you, it totally works. Unfortunately, it does not weed out the married guys looking for a bit of side action, but it doesn't take much to figure that out.  So yes, there are a few fellows I've been on a few dates with, because I am free to sample with the option to purchase, or at least rent.  Something like that.

Speaking of which, my ex got married to Crazy Eyes this weekend.  A couple of my friends asked me how I felt about it, and I can honestly say, the primary emotion was pity.  Two people who are utterly dishonest with each other are not exactly bound for a lifetime of happiness, but being as they are also two people who have basically manipulated each other to get what they think they want out of life, well, hey, best of wishes and all that.  In that whole debacle, I pretty much consider myself to have dodged a bullet.

Things that happened in the last month:

Had a graduation party for the spawn, which went swimmingly.  All the people that I cared about showing up did so, the food that I slaved and obsessed over for hours was a hit, and kiddo and friends enjoyed themselves.  Friends and family were generous like the lovely people that they are, but it was Erica who brought his favorite gift of all, a tiny little ninja that's one of his most treasured possessions.  I still need to have actual announcements printed, which I plan on doing next week. 

Brown Sugar was kind enough to escort a friend and myself to Desi dance night at Envy, where a delightful young man asked for my number and where I nearly lost a toenail during three hours of very enthusiastic dancing in high heels.  I left a limping, sweaty mess and had probably the most fun I've had in months.

After much thought and discussion with the Hindi Homo, I've made the decision to go to Delhi in the beginning of 2012 for six months with him.  After yet more discussion, I decided to get a job while I'm there and hopefully save up some money.  Brown Sugar pointed out that while I can live comfortably enough there, my salary would be paid in rupees, which wouldn't add up to much whenever I decided to return to the states, so the new plan is to get a job, save up some money for a year or so, and put it into something that I can export here.  If we can come up with a workable business plan, Brown Sugar would handle things on this end with me on the other end in Delhi, meaning an extended stay there for three or four years.

Once I got on board with this plan, I decided it would be a good idea to take Hindi classes.  This has been put on hold, however, as I've now decided that I am so ready to go, and am actively pursuing other jobs overseas in the interim.  I started looking at jobs with Emirates Airlines and have since expanded the search to just about any good opportunity in India or the UAE.  The kid is grown, I've got nothing holding me here, and it is time for me to fly.

Tune in some time in the (hopefully near) future, when I expound on vampires that sparkle and my decision to delete my crazy religious radical Tea Party relatives from my Facebook.

Bonding with the spawn

Today, in yet another milestone of the spawn Doing Adult Things, we went to Wells Fargo so he could open his first checking account.  He did not order checks, because hardly anybody takes them and because why tempt fate and bad credit.  His father and I have directed him to put half the graduation money he receives in a savings account and the other half is his to spend as he sees fit.  Fortunately, he inherited his father's miserliness thriftiness. 

Later, over dinner at the Bulldog (said establishment being whom I blame for the ten pounds I've gained since moving downtown), we discussed his facial hair or lack thereof - "French" facial hair, as he terms it.  He also thanked me for teaching him to play poker when he was nine, thus enabling him to beat four girl at strip poker recently.  He also made mention of the fact that porn is really, really cheap in Chicago's Chinatown area.  I am torn between too much info, and being a little proud.

My head is a strange place to live

I've come to the conclusion that I need to just blog in short bursts instead of saving things up for long, exhausting posts.  One of the things I really like about my job is that it gives me a lot of time to think.  Cleaning is the perfect activity for deep reflection, and I spend the majority of my working hours plugged into my Ipod, scrubbing and ironing and folding and dusting and turning things over in my mind.  I have long imaginary conversations, weight the pros and cons of future decisions, brood over hurts long past.  I ruminate and examine and debate and think to myself, I should blog this, but of course by the time I'm home and showered and finally sat down in the comfy chair with my laptop, all those thoughts have been long swept from my mind just like the dirt on the kitchen floor earlier that day. 

Confession:  At work, I've written reams of fan fiction in my head. 

Two little words

Today, I cleaned for a friend of mine, someone whom I greatly admire.  As I was busy wiping things down, I moved a pile of papers, topmost of which was a handwritten letter.  I wasn't trying to snoop (I'm a professional; snooping is tops on the list of work faux pas), but as I glanced at it, two words at the top of the letter caught my eye:  My darling.

I moved the pile of papers back, but as I continued dusting and sweeping and scrubbing, I felt my heart lighten just a little.  To know that someone out there thought of her as his darling, as someone precious to him.  To know that someone out there, no matter their relationship or intentions or future, sees this beautiful, intelligent, vibrant person for who she is.  Someone who sees her passion and enthusiasm and sincerity, her generosity of spirit and joy for life as the blessings that they are, and not as flaws to try and be overlooked.  To know that someone out there appreciates all these wonderful things about her, and considers themselves just as lucky as I do to know her, made the rest of the day that followed just a little bit better.

A world of no

I have no words for this .

Hey, I posted! Stop nagging me now!

There isn't much of anything new going on in my life, and there's even less I've felt I had something to say about.  Sometimes I just get in those moods, what can I say.  I spend far more time than I should puttering around the house in workout clothes, intending to work out "soon."  My Tivo is thirty percent full of World Cup games, because it is the only sport I even remotely care about.  I have no understanding of people who complain that soccer is boring and yet watch baseball.  I mean, at least in soccer, they're moving constantly, if not scoring.  Also, at the end of the game, they start taking off their shirts, which is truly a beautiful thing. 

The spawn and his friends didn't get their planning together for the Florida trip, so now they're planning a trip to Chicago from the 6th to the 11th.  His dad and I told him we'd pay for his transportation and lodging and he'd have to come up with his own spending money.  I've been taking him around to apply for jobs and such, when he can tear himself away from hanging out with his best friend and girlfriend.  He's dating an adorable exchange student from Norway.  The first white girl he's ever been interested in, and she's a foreigner - I think we all know whose son he is.

I had to reschedule his grad party as the date just wasn't working out for anyone, and I'd like him to have a grad party that people could actually attend.  It gives me a little more time to plan and save up some money, as well.  The only date that seemed to work was a day that the community room was already booked for, so we'll be having it here instead.  This means we have a lot of work to do in the next month to get the place in shape for company, but I think my roomie is on board in part because it gives her incentive to get on some of those projects. 

One of those projects involved me losing my Ikea virginity on a trip to get cabinets for the bathrooms, which ave zero cabinetry or storage of any kind.  Much like losing my actual virginity, I found it disappointing, anticlimactic and not a little bit painful.  Much like the Mall of America, it is just Too Much Too Big for me, and I am not a fan of shopping.

I was Hal Sparks "Charmageddon" comedy special recently, which was one of the most enjoyable I've seen since Eddie Izzard's classic "Dressed to Kill."  He had a lot to say about male/female relationships, including one particular riff that to me perfectly encapsulated the Madonna/whore complex so many men still suffer from.  "It's all about self-esteem. If a guy thinks he's a piece of shit, and you sleep with him right away, he thinks you'll screw any piece of shit, and you must be a ho. If he thinks he's awesome, and you sleep with him right away, well, that just shows you have taste and breeding, and he respects that."  Well said, sir; well said.

Rolling in the poo

Let me tell you what my life consists of lately.  Walk the dogs, go to work, run some errands, walk the dogs, belly dance, cruise the net, record something on Direct TV that I don't get around to watching, hang out at the bar across the street, walk the dogs.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  I'm boring, and I kind of like it.

I won't have the car back for another week, which is fine by me, really.  I get to work, my roomie has me use her car to run errands, it's all good.  I do enjoy driving her little red sports car, I'll admit, though when I take it on the freeway I really find myself missing Charlene.  People respect a '78 Impala.  There is none of this being an ass and not letting you merge - when I'm in that car and put on my turn signal, the seas part.  All hail cars made of actual metal!

The park where I walk the dogs is half a block away, a lovely little setting where there will soon be Thursday evening concerts.  It's divided into quarters by X shaped paved walking paths, one quarter of which is set aside specifically for dog use.  Frequently on sunny days, I will go there and see people laying out on the grass, and for reasons I cannot fathom, they are always in the dog section.  People, there are large grassy areas in all four sections of the park; why do you all choose to lay in the dog pee part?  A few days ago, my eyes were assaulted by a portly middle aged man in a Speedo spread eagled on the grass, a few feet from a couple who were quite literally rolling around while licking each other's tonsils.  I actually suspect that they were under the influence of something, unless their eyes were merely glazed with the haze of lurve.  There's a hotel two blocks away, folks, consider a room.  Also, I think you have dog poo on your pants.

The roomie was up north all weekend, so I took advantage of the aloneness to indulge in lots of nekkid time.  What, don't act like you don't do it.  While I do spend several nights a week at the bar across the street, I usually prefer to go around nine or ten o'clock when things are quiet.  I sit at the bar, chat with the bartenders, have one drink, and go home.  I don't normally go out on the weekends unless I'm with a friend, as I prefer to avoid the crowds.  I was settled in for an evening of pantsless relaxation on Friday until I was lured out by the lovely Lyssa.  On Saturday, I decided to enjoy the beautiful evening and went out for a walk around midnight.  (Some people are appalled at this notion, but for one, this area is very well lit and high density, and also, this is St. Paul, folks, not East St. Louis.  Even our ghettos are nice here.)  It was pretty quiet down here all weekend since so many people were out of town, and I noticed that there were open seats at the bar when I went by the Bulldog.  My favorite bartender and her soon to be husband were there, so I put a few of the vodka infusions I'd mentioned to them in containers, along with some strawberry rhubarb pie, and headed over.  I had a couple of glasses of wine, chatted a bit, and headed home.  Yesterday, a friend came over and we went down to Senor Wong's.  I was talking to my companion about the previous night's excursion, when the bartender mentioned that another employee there had been there and sampled my vodka infusions.  It's a delightfully incestuous bar culture in our small town. 

I got my roomie hooked on "Hex," which I own the first season of.  Sadly, the second and concluding season was never released in the U.S., but my roomie, not letting that stymie her, went and ordered an all regions dvd player.  Brown Sugar, dear man that he is, took time out of his busy schedule to come over and hook up our surround sound and dvd, so I can now start doing my dvd workouts again.  I also had several workout programs recorded off of Fit TV, but when we moved we had to get all new TIVO boxes.  I've since rerecorded all the programming I wanted to keep.  I've been trying to get back into the swing of working out, but have been somewhat hindered by issues I've been having with my left hip.  I can't lay on my left side for more than 20 minutes without it becoming painful, and Friday it was so bad I was hobbling around like an 80-year-old.  Hip replacement, here I come!

I'm mostly occupied right now with planning for the spawn's graduation party, which I've scheduled on my birthday.  It was the day that worked best before he leaves on his trip to Florida.  I'm having it down in the community room, which has a pool table, dart boards and a big screen tv.  I'm not going overboard with it, just some food and drink for a few hours.  Of course, I think everyone knows how overboard I tend to go with the food and drink part, so who am I fooling.

"You're wearing that dress and eating phallic shaped objects; what did you expect me to do"

This was said to me last night.  No, I will not explain the context.  Ya'll can just wonder.

Seriously, though, I've been incredibly busy and haven't been attentive to blogging.  Typepad has a stats page where you can see how many page views you've gotten per day and so on.  It's been very low lately, except for the day of my last entry, which had over 100 page views.  How is this possible?  I am just not that interesting.

We finally got our Direct TV hooked up, which is good and bad, in that there's yet another thing on which I waste time.  We had to upgrade to new receivers, which have a much larger capacity than the old ones.  This means that I think I need to record simply everything that looks even remotely interesting, with no idea when I'm going to have time to watch it.  Not to mention a Netflix account that hasn't seen any movement in over a month.  I am terrible about sending movies back when I haven't watched them, but in the interest of thrift, I really should just suspend my account for now and save myself $16 a month.

My car still isn't completely done, which isn't that big of an issue because I can't pay the insurance that's due for a couple of weeks yet.  I use my mechanic's truck in exchange for putting gas in it on the days I need to work, my roommate has me take her car if there are errands that need to be run for the household, and otherwise, where else do I need to go?  Everything's right here.  While it's somewhat inconvenient not having a car right now, I'm also finding it surprisingly freeing.  If we had a better mass transit system, I'd just get rid of it completely.

I've been dating a bit, nothing serious.  The Punjabi boy I had coffee with has had friends from back home visiting so hasn't had a lot of free time, and I've been busy with other things, but we talk every day.  We're going out on a proper date next Friday, or so is the plan for now.  I've also been spending time with another gentleman, on a strictly friends basis.  He's very recently separated with two children, so anything more than strictly friendship is out of the question for now.  I'm enjoying exercising my options.

While in general my life is going really well at the moment, I find myself unusually irritable about certain things.  I'm becoming more and more curmudgeonly as I age and less tolerant of youthful shenanigans.  Well, less shenanigans than attitudes.  Look, if you're one of those people of a certain age who are hip and cool and really into going out every night and being seen at the right places with the right people, that's your thing.  Have at it.  If, however, you are that type of person who fancies yourself an arbiter of taste and feels the need to constantly be self-consciously ironic and frequently express your disdain for the boring people who do not live your lifestyle and worship the same things you worship, you are a douche.  Not everybody wants to be famous.  Many, many people pursue lives that you may find incredibly dull but that involves activities that they find beneficial and fulfilling.  The fact that you do not share in these things does not make you cooler than them, and to be frank, nobody really gives a shit what you think about it, so take your pretentious ass elsewhere, okay?  I seem to be suffering from a severe case of GetOverYourselfitis.

The spawn's last choir concert was on Thursday, and the ex decided that he should put in an appearance.  He was kind enough to pick me up so I didn't have to figure out how to get there, and we had some nice bonding time over how old we are and how awesome our kid is and holy shit where did the time go and all that.  He confessed that he felt that he'd been less than adequate as a father.  While I'm admittedly prone to parental guilt, I don't get too hard on myself.  Were we the best parents in the world?  No.  Were we the best parents we could have been?  Yes, I think we were, and are.  Our son is happy, well adjusted, and a credit to us in every way.  I sometimes would like to thank my mother for providing such a stellar example of crappy parenting and setting the bar so low for me, as I can hardly help but be a better mother than she was.  Thanks, mom!

I need to get graduation announcements printed for the spawn, as well.  I didn't order them in time, and they're outrageously expensive, so I'm just going to design something and have a few dozen printed up.  I don't intend on sending out too many, mostly to out of state friends and relatives, since we're having a graduation party here for him in June.  He's dating an adorable Norwegian exchange student and has tentative plans to go on a road trip to Florida with her and a few other friends.  I'm admittedly apprehensive about it, but on the other hand, it's the type of thing I really encourage him to do.  I'll just email him constant news items about tragic teenage car accidents, in true passive aggressive motherly fashion.

A Brief Update

I know, it's been awhile, and a lot has been going on, but to be honest, I'm tired and crabby right now and not in the mood for an in depth treatise on the past two weeks.  So let's just hit the highlights, shall we?

We moved, and it sort of blew.  The movers we hired sucked balls in numerous ways, from padding the bill by wadding a handful of small items in acres of paper and stuffing them in a huge box, to not bringing things we specifically told them multiple times needed to go on the truck, to dinging up the furniture and paint on the walls.  Whatever, it sucked and took twice as long as it should have, but we survived.  We still haven't located several essential items such as the power cord to my dvd player (why in hell they separated it from the dvd player and didn't pack it in t he same box is beyond me), our silverware, or the base to the cordless phone.  We also have a truckload of items sitting in the garage of the old house that needs to go to the thrift store and another load that needs to come here, but we'll get to it.  The place is still full of unpacked boxes, many full of things that can't be unpacked yet, as my roommate needs to figure out what kind of storage type furniture to get; for example, there are no cabinets of any kind in either bathroom.  It will take a good month or so to really pull this place together, but it works for now.  We've been here nearly two weeks and I just today got my parking space in the adjoining ramp, which is fine because I still don't have my car back.  Seriously, don't ask, unless you want me to stroke out with rage. 

In general, I love it here.  I love how awesome this loft is, I love the view, all the neighbors I've met are super friendly.  I love the park where I walk the dogs, I love the many places I can walk to, I love the skyways.  I love the community room and the rooftop deck, even if it's the lower roof and therefore doesn't get the great views that the penthouse units do.  Our "gym" is fairly lacking, consisting of a weight machine and an elliptical, but since I do my aerobic workouts at home anyway, it works for me.  Most of all, I love living across the street from the Lowertown Bulldog, where I have spent the last ten nights in succession.  Never fear, I am not becoming an alcoholic.  In fact, I've swiftly become known as the chick that comes in and orders a big glass of water and *one* beer.  I'm also becoming known as the chick that you give free beers to when she brings you fresh baked cookies and banana bread.  Go, bribery!  The owner actually lives in our building as well.  There are over 100 units in this building alone, and I just see that as over 100 potential clients.  My next order of business is to put some flyers up on the bulletin board, as this is exactly the type of place where concierge services are needed.  If I could build up a good client base downtown, that would be great, as I wouldn't even need to worry about transportation issues.  

Let's not talk about those.  The starter went out on Charlene, and she's been sitting at my mechanic's for two weeks now.  My roommate has let me use her care several times when I needed to, which is pretty awesome of her.  I was nervous at first, in part because it's an adaptive vehicle and in part because it's a sports car and I'm not used to how she handles, but it's all good.  I could, if I had no other option, use the Audi, but the whole process of calling the car service and going to the airport to get it and then repeating the same process when I bring it back makes it fairly impractical most of the time.  My mechanic lets me use his truck when I need to get to work, but I'd really rather he just got the damned thing fixed.  Unfortunately, whoever had it before me liked to "fix" it without having a clue what they were doing, which means it's all kinds of screwed up.  This genius decided to - get this - weld a support bracket for the exhaust to the starter.  For those of you who don't really have much knowledge about automotive mechanics, let me explain.  The starter is part of the electrical system.  Welding the exhaust to the starter means that it was running a circuit through the entire exhaust system and hence, screwing up the electrical system but good, causing several shorts.  These aren't hard to fix, but a real bitch to find.  It also meant that the ignition switch was also burnt out.  Long story short, no car, long time, big money, lots of rage.

I'm not so fond of where I live today thanks to construction going on below us that has left us without water since 2:30 and isn't expected to be back on until at least 11.  I can't cook, I can't shower, I can't flush the toilet, and I'm trying to remind myself that I need to keep things in perspective and remember that a significant portion of the population lives like that every single day.  In the meantime, I'm crabby!