Caterwauling

The air just changed a few minutes ago. No, nobody’s here but Maddie and me (and no sudden draft just blew through the house, so that rules out ghosts), and the doors are locked, so there are no live intruders in the place, but I just kind of perked up and realized that something is looming. What, I have no idea, but I’m eager to find out.

Have had a few good responses to my personal ad this week. I’ve been too busy (and let’s face it, too cheap) to even think about paying the money to respond to any of them, but I am sort of intrigued by one. Another one gave me a great response but said he feared he wasn’t my type. So I read HIS ad, and as it turns out, I am the one who isn’t HIS type. He’s looking for the anorexic (read: probably doesn’t want to have to spend money to feed them) type, and well, that ain’t me. Oh well. His loss.

And THEN I heard from my gender-neutral personal ad account, from a person with whom I’d been e-mailing for weeks until the Xmas holidays came and went. And maybe I’ve read entirely too many pages of my Melissa Etheridge, “The Truth Is: My Life in Love and Music,” but maybe the stunning disappointment (anybody remember G3?)that I’ve been feeling with the men I’ve been meeting recently might be a biological indicator that I need to broaden my horizons for a little while, to see what it is that I’ve been possibly denying for years. 🙂 I will always love and worship men, but it’ll be interesting to broaden my horizons. … There’s a bit of a geographical distance, which has made me feel safe because it’s not like there is a date in the near future. I get to kind of talk and share and learn, and maybe, eventually even consider something different. I like the personality so far and hope to gain a good friend out of this process.

At any rate, the Melissa book is wonderful. I’ve been highlighting passages that totally sound like they could have been typed by me. She called her (boring) job one day and said she quit, and she went and got a nightclub gig that very night. She wrote, “If I was going to have a job, it was going to be playing music. Music and nothing else.”

While I have the musical talent of a deaf-mute, insert my own talents in there. She wanted to follow her heart, and everything else be damned. And look where she is today.

She also wrote about the exact moments when her grandmother and dad died. Those hit waaaayyy too close to home for me. I cried over both, remembering similar conversations and circumstances.

She wrote about the tingling sensation your body goes through when something important (wonderful or wretched) is about to happen. I get flashes of that feeling every now and again. And I just felt it.

In an ideal world, I’d get the promotion at work, I could stay there and make enough money to move so that I can set up a home office, and then open up my own business. Or, save up some money and invest in Shan’s business, so that when it takes off, I will earn back my money and then do my own business. And in an ideal world, I’d start dating again, as I’ve had a bit of a dry spell lately. And in a TRULY ideal world, those who lost their chances with me will kick themselves in the ass for letting me walk away from them. 🙂

I’ve been cleaning house on the links, and it’s about time I added Michele and Rachel Lucas to the list. As a blogger I’ve long stopped following has decided to de-link them, I will gladly (and “glee”fully) recommend them to my five loyal readers. 🙂

It’s just a shame in this day and age that there are still so many people who view homosexuality as a condemnable sin, and I am pleased with these gals for standing up for our gay and lesbian friends and for continuing to blog about real political matters. Anyone who wants the rest of my opinion (and what triggered this) can e-mail me, as I do not provide links here to “people” who promote hatred.

As the only money I’ve spent in the past few weeks has been on pizza and other hideous fast food disasters, I decided that it was time to celebrate surviving the past few weeks of work with some bargain shopping. And although I spent waaaaayyyy too much money, I am a happy girl right now.

Poor Shan is tied up with work stuff through tomorrow, so I braved the shopping plazas alone. I found a bunch of super-discounted shirts at Ross, and also found a Hilfiger skirt I’d wanted for months (for which I’d refused to pay retail) as well as a great olive-green suit for a mere $27.99. That was the easiest $90 I’ve spent, but as I have bags of goodies waiting to be unpacked, I am pretty darned pleased. Besides, I got five shirts, three of which were $3.49, and the others were $7.99 and $12.99. My theme today was trendy but timeless — they’re not warm enough for this ridiculous cold snap we’re having, so I think they’ll still be in fashion for the springtime. 🙂

And then I hit the grocery store, for the first time in ages. I never really wander around in the supermarket, as cash is always severely limited and I only stick to essentials, but today I treated myself to some new, frivolous items as well as some old standbys. The damage was too much to mention, but I’m deliriously pleased with the new coffee-and-cream Oreo cookies that I opened before I even stuck the beer in the fridge. Oh, yeah, that’s another treasure. I haven’t had a Yuengling since I left Pittsburgh in June — it’s brewed in Pottsville, Pa., and it’s dirt cheap above the Mason-Dixon line. And it’s good, too! But I hadn’t seen it in bars or stores down here until today, and hell yeah, I got a six-pack! w00t!

As I was wandering through Kingstowne, I did a lot of thinking. I wish I were motivated enough to write down all of my thoughts, because I had about six thousand ideas for businesses to start, things to do, things I should’ve said, etc. Sitting in front of a computer really isn’t my point of inspiration — it’s being out and about, eavesdropping and observing. I really should bring along a tape recorder every time I leave the house, because I already talk to myself — at least the tape recorder would justify my sudden little verbal outbursts.

At least, though, I don’t speak directly to people. But they don’t return the favor.

Retail Agony

I had the Church Lady chatting with me in Ross, as she picked up ugly tops and admired them and did the “Isn’t this gorgeous?” conversational entree to me. Sweet Jesus. Then she showed me all the other shit she had in her hands, Xmas books and tapes for kids. She bragged that she’ll put those aside for next Xmas, but she fretted that she wants her grandkids to learn more than the meaning of Xmas. Initially, I thought that was cool, because I assumed she meant that she wanted to teach them that Xmas isn’t the only important holiday and Christianity isn’t the only faith in the world, but I was wrong. She started launching into this diatribe about how all the Disney shit in her hands wasn’t the true meaning of the holiday, but the Bible is. And she went on to tell me that she has Xmas-themed religious books for the kids, to balance this trash that she was buying. Christ. I scooted away quickly after that. I mean, I respect all religions and have no problem with people having faith in whatever they choose to believe or celebrate, but for god’s sakes, if you’re denting my bargain-hunting time with it, well, I get pissed. Then again, my own spirituality is a private thing, and I hate when people assume that I am thrilled to hear about theirs.

But I digress. Again, I keep to myself when I’m not among friends.

The joy of finding bargains was once again overshadowed in the checkout line. I was third in line, and a girl walked over to the couple in front of me and said, “I can take the next in line,” and she motioned to her desk. They stared at her. She said it two more times before the couple in front of THEM told the salesgirl to speak in Spanish. So she did, and they understood and followed happily.

And then everyone looked at me, as if for my approval or jubilance or something. Yeah, whatever. I was pissed. I kind of blew my bangs out of my eyes and sighed deeply. I wanted to klunk their heads together. I mean, if they can’t even comprehend conversational English, between the two of them, what the fuck are they doing in my country? I mean, I can’t believe that when I go into CVS, I can’t find a CVS Care Card application in English, but there are two displays full of them in Spanish. When I got my card, I didn’t even fill out a form, because I couldn’t read the damn thing. Believe me, I can only imagine how frustrating it is for a non-native to learn English, as there are millions of Americans who take English for 12 years in school, then for another four years in college, and still can’t pronounce a third of our vocabulary.

Blah. At any rate, I treated myself to coffee and a cinnamon scone at Starbucks, which is absolutely my favorite breakfast in the land. I’d wanted Columbian coffee, but they hadn’t brewed it, and the cashier asked me to pick among some other flavors, and she offered to put a shot of hazelnut in whatever I chose, to give me the Columbian flavor. I asked her to surprise me, as my brain had not been caffeinated yet and therefore I was rendered incapable of making this decision. She seemed pissed that I wouldn’t pick for myself, so she made some concoction that ended up being fabulous for me. What I did not mention is that I couldn’t UNDERSTAND what she was asking me to pick from, as her accent was too thick, and I couldn’t be bothered with my Gibberish-to-English translating capabilities at 10 a.m. on a Saturday. And I tried to joke with her a little bit, but she didn’t understand me, either. We were equally glad when I took my scone and java and went to the coffee condiments station.

In Other News

Looks like Chris and Shawn’s wedding reception will be on-or-around July 26 in Minneapolis!!! And Leslie from Ireland called me for a long chat, and she will be in town for it. Woo hoo! She will fly into Dulles Airport earlier than that, and we will bum around D.C. for a few days before wandering out to Minnesota together. One can only hope that I have my life a little bit more on-track by then, so that I can afford the trip as well as the drinking that I KNOW we’re going to do! 🙂 When we were last in Pittsburgh together, she also entrusted me with her wedding present for our friends — here’s to hoping I will remember where I put it by then!!! Ooooh, goody. I can’t wait for her to meet Shan — my two Pissed Off Irish Princesses, together at last!!!

It’s so strange — many of my friends are finding true love and/or even welcoming the next generations of their lives into the world. Many times, I’ve wished for a great relationship, but it’s just not in the cards for me right now. I’m OK with that, but it still doesn’t help when everyone else around me seems to have someone to complete their lives. I guess my real hope is that, after all of this wishing and wondering, the person I eventually meet will have been worth this insufferable wait. In the meantime, I have a litany of self-improvements I need to make for myself, so that when the right one comes along, I will be able to lavish affection upon them without having any outstanding issues of my own to resolve. Unfortunately, at my age, people are still getting over or even just beginning to face their own demons. My dream of dreams is to find a normal person to complement me, and to be that normal person that they themselves have been searching for.