Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Making Snow Doggies: Why I Was Late Today

I was fifteen minutes late to work today, and here's why. I went out the back door to get to my car. I had allowed Goober to come for the ride today since it's in the 30's and she's perfectly comfortable anytime the temperature is above 20, due to her heavy double coat. Also, she would rather come wait in the car for a few hours than wait at home for a few hours. I think she can somehow sense that she is much closer to me in the car.

So while I was putting my bags in the car, Goober ran over to the snow in the backyard. There is now about 6 inches of fairly fluffy snow, the first time we have had so much fluffy snow all winter. The Valentine's Day storm, the only other significant storm this season, was about the same as far as accumulation, but was heavy, packed snow covered in ice.

Why is the fluffiness so important? Because Goober absolutely loves the fluffy snow. This nearly-11-year-old elderly dog, who barely gets up the energy to fetch her toys more than once or twice, will tear around in the snow for a minute before shoving her snout deep into it, then flipping onto her back and wriggling her whole body side-to-side, much in the manner of a little kid making snow angels. I call it making snow doggies.

Well, she was at it this morning, playing in the first good snowfall of the season. She'd get up from one successful snow doggie, run a few feet, snout around a bit, then roll over to make another. I just couldn't bring myself to stop her fun, and it was such fun to watch her play as well. So I let her continue playing until she had worn herself out.

And so I was late to work.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Cuticles and the Peace Corps

I wonder if I should wax my arms. Some women do. Once when I was a kid at summer camp, someone made fun of the amount of hair on my lower arms, but on the other hand, everyone I think to ask nowadays says they never noticed my arm hair, and that I'm the only one that thinks it's bad. Or maybe they just don't want to hurt my feelings.

I was getting a mani-pedi today. I go to a place where they give you massages and all that stuff too. I read once how you're not supposed to let them trim your cuticles because that's one of the most frequent ways people get infections at the nail salon. Still, I just love having my cuticles cut. I love watching them use those tiny clippers and how the dead skin keeps collecting on the clippers until the last pinkie finger, when there is a whole lotta dead skin on them, and no longer on my body! It's a sort of purging, I guess. (It's probably similar to the feeling those people who love enemas get when they're done with those. Still, I'll skip trying an enema, thank you very much.) I wouldn't give up having my cuticles trimmed for the world, though.

Right now I am having an argument with myself about whether to leave my nice, warm apartment to go to the Irish pub down the road and hear Black 47. This will also attract some fellow Lamont alumni. However, having been sick with a stomach flu for the last 3 days, going out for a mani-pedi took a lot out of me and now I may want to just stay home in my hot pink and green frogs-holding-martinis pj's and drink some wine (or, depending upon how my stomach is feeling, Gatorade) while watching my latest Netflix booty.

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I did not go to the bar to see the band. I drank lots of water and now am attempting a gin and tonic to see how it does. I've been melancholy of late. Being homebound for 3 days can do that to a person. I know that if I were motivated enough I would have made it the 3 blocks to the pub tonight, but I were not.

I spent some time on the Peace Corps website tonight. It's been a long-standing dream of mine to join the Peace Corps. The best time in my life to have done so would have been immediately after high school. That was when I first decided I wanted to, and if I had, perhaps I wouldn't have majored in the wrong thing in undergrad. I definitely wouldn't have spent so many years with the Big X. Unfortunately, the Peace Corps really doesn't want you unless you have a college degree.

I nearly applied when I was about to graduate from undergrad. I had broken up with the Big X, even. It was a period in my life when I was recognizing that he was not maturing at the rate that I was and that if I stayed with him, he was standing in the way of some of my dreams. Smaller than standing in the way of Dreams, he was holding back my everyday life. It was a very tumultuous time in my life.

Within a period of two or three months, I researched and began the application process for the Peace Corps, broke up with the Big X, got engaged to another guy, ended the engagement, took the Big X back, and decided to give up on one certain path that my life might have taken so that I could pursue a future with him.

Now would be a perfect time to join the Peace Corps, if not for my mother's illness. I may have lost the anchor that was the Big X, but my mother's cancer is an even bigger anchor. The best jobs in my chosen profession are in NYC or DC. I cannot leave the state. I know it's a bit of a self-imposition. I could if I wanted to, so perhaps a better statement is I won't leave the state while my mother is ill.

It's a Catch-22. So long as my mother is sick, I feel honor-bound to remain close to her. So long as she's sick, she's alive.

The truth is, she will probably not recover. She may have a remission that lasts 3 months or 6 months, even 9 if we are lucky. But she--and we--are all biding time until the end comes.

Maybe that's all we ever do in life, and it's just so much more apparent in this situation, but still...knowing that things are as they stand, I cannot commit to 27 months outside the country.

So right now I put that dream away. One day perhaps the circumstances will be right and I will get to immerse myself completely in another culture, give of myself to help a community so far from my own. It's something I've always known I wanted to do.

I don't, however, think it will be the next chapter of my life either unless I give up once and for all on wanting marriage and a family, because of that wonderful timer God put on that activity. Kids mean, of course, devoting the following 18 (really more) years of your life to someone other than yourself. Which all means that when--if--I pursue that Peace Corps dream of mine, I will be one of the "older" members to whom they refer on their website.

Do I wish my mother weren't ill anymore? Not if the tradeoff is that she's no longer around. But damn, I wish that just once in my whole life I got to have ALL my options open. I wish I got to choose my own path--completely my own.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

The Aftermath

I did not finish the story of Mike sooner because after he left, my dog knocked my beverage onto the computer, frying the keyboard. So now I may have to spend over a thousand dollars to buy a new computer. I am now using my crappy old Dell, which abruptly ends programs and also cannot be moved at all or the power cord will fall out and the battery no longer has the ability to charge.

But Mike...

I did not make a move. Nor did I have the Adult Conversation. I chickened out. And I know now that I clearly need therapy. I mean, here is this perfectly nice guy. And his politics are great. (My friend Jerry jokes with me that the first thing I say about any guy is what I think of his politics. That is very important to me. I can't help it.) And I think he's cute. And I feel an electricity when I am with him--something I did not feel with P., or with just about any other guy in the past year or so.

I know that what I'm feeling for Mike is special, and yet I minimalize it to everyone, including myself. I make up a stupid excuse not to take a next step. That is what the "Waiting" post was--a stupid excuse. Rose even said so. As soon as I had gotten the words out about that bit of logic, she told me that before I spend money buying a new couch (I currently have one with a hideous print, one broken leg, and one arm torn apart that I inherited from the Grandmonster), I must spend money on the therapy I need to stop being crazy.

I'm afraid to start something because it will end one day? Why the hell be born then? We will all die one day. Everything ends. And yet--and yet that is really the crux of things with me, isn't it? Endings. I've now become so afraid of endings--at least with guys--that I will not permit myself to even start something. How pathetic is that?

After Mike left and I was left alone with my thoughts, I even began to compose an email, wherein I would give the little Adult speech I had worked out. It went something like, "I've been noticing this vibe between us lately, and I think you've noticed it too. Maybe I'm way off here, but if there is something between us, I'd like to give it a try. What do you think?" However, halfway through composing the email was when the dog broke my computer.

I sort of took that as a sign that it was better to not send that email anyhow. But now I am left to ponder what to do next. And then there is always the doubt. Perhaps I've been wrong all these years. Perhaps Mike really doesn't like me romantically after all, and it's all just been wishful thinking. Perhaps I am just setting myself up to be made a fool of.

And so I never re-composed that email. And so I sit here, pondering endings and signs and all those perhaps... (Is the plural perhapses? Or perhaps? Perhaps is more poetic than perhapses.)

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

A Few Miscellaneous Things

I love Office Space. I regret having given up custody of that movie to the Big X when we split. I was the one who paid for it. Sure, it was a gift to him, but still. My money. I should have just kept it.

I think my dog lies to me. I think she scratches at the door when she doesn't really have to go out. She holds it for up to 12 hours sometimes, and then other times she decides she needs to go out an hour after she was just out. And always when I'm watching a critical point in some tv show.

P. wrote me again. He wants to know how I'm doing and blah, blah, blah. So my question is, should I write back and keep up a friendship, knowing that in his mind that means the door is still open? I don't like people not liking me, so my initial reaction is to write back. Also, I could totally use him for a date to my cousin's wedding in July if we are still talking then and I don't have a boyfriend.

But that is mean. Using him like that when I have no intention of actually dating him again.

My Mike is coming over next weekend for dinner and a movie. I have been told alternately to make a move and see what happens or else to have an adult conversation about the fact that I think there is something between us and does he also think that and should we pursue it? But I hate adult conversations. I'd much rather just jump a guy and sort it out later.

Monday, February 05, 2007

More Endings

So P. wrote me back and I opened it. And it was good, not bad. He said all the right things because he is a nice guy. Really. He's just too damn clingy. He wants me to contact him when I'm ready to start a relationship. WTF. Don't you know a line when you are receiving it, bub?

Of course, new drama unfolds on the theme of endings...my mother is staying over tonight and she informed me that the Big X is going to be the frigging best man at my cousin's wedding this summer. And the slut who he cheated on me with (yes, she knew about me) who is 12 years younger than him (and grew up next door to him so he knew her when she was like 10 and he was 22--you know, when we first started dating each other--EWW) is invited. And my cousin wanted me to know that he "understands" if I don't come to the wedding.

Fuck that. I will be there with frigging bells on. And skinny. And a hot piece of man meat on my arm.

Now to plan how to make this all happen....Hmmm.