Category Archives: Love

Tres Times is The Charm… I Hope

Music, Social, Work

In which I had an even better interview today!

Today I interviewed here. There were two half-hour skills tests; Excel and Word. (I aced ’em both.) Then an hour-long interview in a conference room. The HR woman showed me detailed job descriptions for two positions and I want both of them, but the second one — a data-crunching job — appealed to me most. I think. Hard to tell in advance.

A two-hour interview!

Not only did I get the impression that I’d really like it there, but I really, really, really need to get hired ASAP. I have less than a hundred dollars to my name.

This poverty shit SUCKS. I have a friend waiting for me at the bar, but I don’t think I should spend even $3 on a drink at this point, so I’ll probably stay home.

Bambú — a band made up of old friends, many who are back in town specifically to do this gig — is playing the Old Armory tomorrow night, but cover is $12 and I’ll probably be feeling too poor and miserly to pay it. There’s a mardi gras party at the Dead Cock tomorrow night too, and people are even gonna dress up for it. I might go to that, at least, and hope that people buy me drinks.

Right now my roommates are out playing pool and having Friday night drinks. Hell, everyone I know is out having Friday night drinks. I have less than $3 in my wallet. I have three great interviews under my belt from the past week, but no offers.

I. Need. A. Job. *sigh*

Sensationalism

Soapbox

In which I’m offended.

As huge NASA supporter, I pay attention when they’re in the news. I’m totally pro space program, because we need it to develop the technologies we’ll require to get the fuck out of here after we finish brutally overusing the resources of and overpopulating the planet of our origin.

Not to mention the fact that the space program is responsible for all kinds of important tech advances currently in use, which is reason enough to love NASA.

That said, I just wanted to point out that every single article I’ve read about the astronaut love triangle situation has mentioned that the woman wore diapers on her long drive, in order to avoid making bathroom stops.

I have no meaningful comment on the situation or her mental stability as it looks to me like she just went to beat some bitch up over a man, which isn’t even news; the fact that she went über well-prepared to do it is exactly what I’d expect from someone who’s BEEN. TO. SPACE, where preparedness is the key to survival.

Mostly I’m just sick of how sophomorically titillated everyone is about the fact that she used a diaper. Uh, hello?! She’s been trained to do that. SHE’S AN ASTRONAUT. THAT’S WHAT THEY DO.

In other news, I’m out of dog food so Bindu’s dinner was a bowl of basmati, tuna, and feta. Lucky dog!

On Relationships: Spockism

Love & Marriage

In which it’s not you, it’s me. I mean, it has to be, because the one constant in all my relationships has been — well — me.

I’ve been observing the relationships around me closely since I left my husband. I’ve been wondering what makes some relationships work, and others fail. I’ve been comparing my experience with what I see around me.

And I’ve been wondering if I’m deeply flawed, or too judgmental, or too distant, or if my expectations are wholly and utterly unreasonable.

You see, I’ve been accused of being chilly, dispassionate, distant, or standoffish more times than I can count; every relationship I’ve ever been in has failed; and I find that being around couples lately can drive me bat shit.

It all drives a girl to introspection. Continue reading On Relationships: Spockism →

Mobile Bachelorette Party!

Love & Marriage, Social

In which I party myself into the ground! (Eh, like THAT’S news.)

This morning I emailed a bunch of cell phone pics to my Flickr account, only discover that one cannot send an email to Flickr with more than one image attached. Ergo, each of the six images that actually made it to the target web site represents four to six more that did not make it. What a pain in the arse it is, to get one’s photos off of one’s cell phone!

Bachelorette PartyThe party was fun. A bunch of women stood around in the high school parking lot introducing themselves to one another until the bus arrived. (AmmZon had to speak with the driver three times before he found us. Eek.)

We all piled onto the bus, decorated it with blown-up copies of the bride’s yearbook pictures, and started drinking immediately. (The hostess had put mixed drinks into water bottles, and brought coolers full of them. Brilliant!)

We picked the bride up at her house, then went on a tour of her life. Some of the girls put on wigs and did skits at various locations — one skit involved the bride’s sister in the role of the bride and Amazon Blonde [the original one, not my roommate] as herself, reenacting their meeting, which apparently occurred while the bride lay on the sidewalk in front of Wolfgang’s place, drunk, and said to the approaching Amazon, “Hey, I know you! We fucked the same guy.” After that vignette we piled back on the bus. We stopped at the hotel bar and more women joined us. We visited various landmarks important in the bride’s formative years, including: a couple of fields, Wal*Mart, the golf club, that huge ugly mansion with the bowling lanes downstairs and the caves over the pool, and the street in front of a few houses her boyfriends used to live in. The bride got properly shit faced. A fabulous time was had by all, and I remember remarking several times that the bride has KILLER friends, and also that there were a lot of really nice boobs on the bus. (Seriously. The majority of her friends have remarkable racks. Go figure — her own are freakin’ gravity-proof themselves.) Continue reading Mobile Bachelorette Party! →

At First I Was All About Him Being Wrong, But In the End Maybe He's Only a Little Off

Soapbox

In which I’m just as afraid of the fundies as everyone else with half a brain in her head, but I had to take issue with at least a little of it because contrary to much of the evidence believing in God does not immediately make one stupid.

First, go read Why There Almost Certainly Is No God, so we can all be on the same page.

Done? Welcome back.

The author finds the presence of people in our society who would be genuinely excited by, say, the total loss of New York via giant fireball, and the hundreds of thousands tragic deaths such an event would cause — as signs of Armegeddon, the Second Coming, and the Rapture — to be not merely disturbing, but a social and intellectual goddamned crisis.

Which is exactly what it is. There are people who believe literally in the Rapture. They profess to think that supernatural beings — angels and devils — will come to earth and stage epic battles before their very eyes. They really believe that all the sinners will go to Hell — which they think is a literal, physical location — and that all the Saved will be resurrected and live forever in the Kingdom of Heaven, another literal physical location.

They might as well still live in the Middle Ages for all their intellectual sophistication. Apparently metaphor and symbolism escape these people utterly. They can learn that an icon on their cell phone represents something without actually being that thing, but yet they read the Bible literally¹. It boggles the mind, to know that people believe in Armageddon literally. Continue reading At First I Was All About Him Being Wrong, But In the End Maybe He's Only a Little Off →

Benefits

Music

In which there are gigs!

Last night’s gig was fun. Here are the reviews:

“… fabulous original music that touches the heart and exhilarates the spirit.”

“… incredible harmonies sung by as many as seven of nine extraordinarily talented band members.”

“… a great folk-rock style that gets your feet tapping and your heart dancing.”

“… Mindy Meacham and Michelle Mook definitely are among the area’s hottest female vocalists.”

“… what a loving and joyful experience!”

“… bagpipes and electric guitar? This music is hot!”

After last night’s show I went to the bar, then I went to Torino’s and had pizza with FunkEd.

I’m doing another gig tonight. I’m gonna need a coffee!

If you live in my town, you should come see us tonight. It’s at Morning Star Studio at eight, and the door charge is only $7. The money goes to the Jefferson County Resource Center and to Airline Ambassadors. Good causes, folks! Come on out!

Womanly Duty

Love & Marriage

In which I ponder marriage, sex, duty, and who may have a right to my body.

One of the big problems in my marriage, particularly at the end, was sex. It all seemed terribly complex at the time, with all the love and hurt and rejection on both sides, but in the end the problem can be stated very simply: he wanted more sex than he got.

My husband used to tell me that he “never got laid any more,” a statement that made me so angry — because I was deliberately and acutely conscientious about making sure he never went without, even to the extent of frequently and cheerfully having sex I didn’t want to have — that I actually kept a calendar in order to prove that he did.

Sucks, don’t it, how what starts out as a source of intimacy and bonding can become its own polar opposite?

Anyway, point is, I’ve been contemplating this issue for quite awhile now. Lately I’ve discussed this topic in depth with a few couples, and based on what I’ve experienced and observed and been told, I’ve come to what I feel is an important conclusion for myself:

I should never marry, because I am not willing to owe sex to anyone.

Yeah, whoa is right. A lot of you would might compelled to jump on that and say, “You never owe anyone sex, not even when you’re married!” Just let me unpack this so you can see how I got here.

Women sometimes lose libido for a extended periods of time. This seems to be fairly common.

I had no sex drive for nearly two years, due to various factors. It was not intentional. It was not my fault. It just happened. At the beginning, it was just a state of being. By the time my libido returned, I’d been nagged for sex for so long that I continued to say no just to be a bitch. It hadn’t been my fault in the first place, and he’d punished me for it anyway, so I was punishing him back. (Yeah, I’m mature like that.)

The math is that males are fertile all of the time and females are only fertile for three days per cycle. Assuming a 30-day cycle, the male-to-female fertility ratio is about ten to one. Ten to one! If you compound this cruel joke with the fact that women are several orders of magnitude more hormonally complex than men (and are therefore more likely to suffer failures), and then you mix in hormone-altering things like birth control pills, pregnancies, and plain old-fashioned stress, well, then, suddenly it begins to seem that periods of libidolessness are a natural occurrence in females. Continue reading Womanly Duty →

Blue Dog

Pets

In which my dog is such a good girl!

I’ve had my beloved ACD Bindu with me for a couple of days. Bread let me take her when I saw him at BoSe’s the night before last, and I walked her over to AmmZon’s and bathed her immediately, then poisoned her with flea meds.

I’ve had her at work with me, and she lounges under my desk and naps, or plays with the other office dog, Jamal, who is a gorgeous and friendly brindle pit bull.

This morning Bindu and I walked from AmmZon’s to the square to work. She’s remembered all her training, and heels beautifully. When we walked on a leash this afternoon, she left the perfect amount of slack in the lead. I love that. (A dog that pulls bugs the shit out of me, so I kick ’em in the haunch until they stop.) If she’s off lead and we approach an intersection, she always pulls back and looks at me before we cross. Such a good girl!

Dog love is a beautiful thing.

This Is How A Heart Breaks

Love & Marriage

In which it actually sucks more now than it did before.

I left because I couldn’t give him what he wanted and I couldn’t stomach another goddamned fight. A couple days later he realized I was serious, and started asking me, “So this is it? You’re done? You’re not going to try anymore, you’re just going to walk away? You’re just going to give up?”

Never mind that I tried my heart out for six years, never mind that I don’t have any tries left. Never mind that I’m sorry. Never mind his own culpability in this thing, because as far as he’s concerned I’m the one who’s leaving, I’m giving up, I’m the one who killed it. So the worst part is not that I’m poor, homeless, and heartbroken. The worst part is not that I failed as a wife, nor that I made all the mistakes I did.

The worst part is that he’s in pain and I never wanted him to be. The truth is that he doesn’t really want me, not really, what he wants is who I tried and failed to be. But his heart doesn’t know that yet, and so he’s in pain and there’s nothing I can do to fix it.

He gave me a week to get my things and my dogs off the farm, and he wants a divorce right away. He’s so angry he doesn’t seem to want to cut me any slack for the fact that I spent my last $20 buying dog food and the last of my gas driving it out there for him, or that I’m not one of those stupid bitches who wants to take half his shit, or who fucked his best friend in his own bed, or who is petty and vindictive because she feels she’s got a right to be for past harms. The fact that I have no money (with which to rent a house to put my stuff and dogs into) moves him not at all, because right now I’m nothing more than the bitch who broke his heart and left him.

I understand, I do, but it sucks.

Update: We just spoke on the phone and he said, “I read your blog, and I’m not trying to be a dick,” and I said, “I know.” Because I do know. It’s just a rotten damned situation.

The House Always Wins

Love & Marriage

In which things have changed.

Separated. I guess that’s the term.

We’ve been talking a lot since he got back from Indianapolis, and Wednesday afternoon after class it all came to a head. One of us had to leave, he said. I don’t blame him; I haven’t been giving him much of anything for quite awhile now. Not only don’t I want to, but I can’t.

So I left.

I packed an overnight bag and drove to town. No money, no job, no place to stay. I parked in the municipal lot next to 2nd Street Coffee and slouched in my seat with my sunglasses on and smoked. Nodded at a few people I knew who walked by. Felt weird and shocked and disassociated.

Finally got out of the car and walked over to the bar because I couldn’t decide what else to do.

I got shitfaced. Stayed up until two in the morning. Slept on the cramped little loveseat in Gorgeous’ basement. Woke up at eight the next morning, still drunk because I’d been drinking on an empty stomach.

Class started at nine. I sat next to him, in the spot I’d been in all week. He was pleasant. I rode with him and BoSe on the ‘field trip’ to see a building under construction. Had lunch with him at Subway.

I guess I need to find an apartment or house I can rent that takes dogs. I need to get a full-time job; there’s more data entry for me to do at WGI but there’s been no discussion about it being either permanent or full-time.

After completing this class, I could feasibly be deployed to do CAT insurance adjusting when/if Ernesto hits, but I wouldn’t be able to go because I can’t afford it. So now I’m qualified for a discipline I can’t work in because it takes money to make money.

It’s kind of freeing, really, having nothing at all.