Caterwauling

After chanting some mantras along the lines of, “The Universe really isn’t trying to fuck with me,” I found some level of peace yesterday.

So today’s Astrocenter.com Gemini horoscope is a simple: You may find yourself battling some of those same old doubts and insecurities.

Maybe that’s why I was broken the other day. I’d thought I was out of those woods. Like, oh come ON, haven’t I repeated this process 40 times already? What lesson can I possibly have missed after all this time?

Back in September 2004, I echoed a Zach Braff interview in which he said, “Somebody please send me an epiphany.”

Four years later, I got that moment of clarity.

Two days later, it was squashed like a bad little bug.

And one can say I only had 48 hours with it, anyway, so what’s the big deal? And I will keep telling myself this: What had previously eluded me, and suddenly made so much sense with very little need for convincing, really only lived on in my mind for a few hours.

But that’s the rub, that it made so much sense at the time.

But that’s the thing about epiphanies. They’re life-changing, mind-altering, perspective-shifting thought enemas. I like that, “cognitive enema.”

So maybe the whole epiphany thing was meant to open my eyes in general, as opposed to one isolated incidence of Goddess vs. the Universe.

But I guess the horoscope called it right — I have a default reason for everything. Or, maybe, I had one and it doesn’t really work anymore.

And maybe that’s the epiphany in all of this, that I was in more of a rut than a groove … that the right things will be revealed in time … that if you miss your window, it doesn’t open for you again … to stop wasting all this time under the guise of whatever excuse you deign to avoid taking the bull by its proverbial horns and riding it up the Beltway. I don’t know.

Once I get past the heartburn, and once we have the memorial/life celebration service this weekend for the gal whose passing inspired these moments of mortality ponderance, maybe I’ll get a clearer idea of how I can best honor the girl who loved life by finding ways to fully take charge of my own.

Today’s Gemini horoscope, courtesy of Astrocenter.com: Before you give your heart to someone new, be sure they can be trusted with it first.

I’ll be better tomorrow. But forgive me if I just take tonight to be thoroughly exhausted, sad and just plain confounded by it all.

Universe, I know you’ve got your reasons. But right now, there isn’t one I would accept as logical.

It’s weird to go from, “I can’t wait!” for something great to happen, to “I can’t wait” to move to the next phase of my life.

You just wonder where these thoughts come from and hope that no one else witnessed them. You also wonder whether one day you can have those pivotal moments, know what to do with them and see them work in person the way they somehow did in your head, even for as briefly as they were there.

Maybe there really are life-changing moments, and you know them to see them. And maybe one day you’ll let them happen however they should, as opposed to overthinking it. Damn logic and reason. Damn it to hell, anyway.

I’ll be the one huddled in a ball in the corner, if anyone needs me. …

Lest anyone think I can actually ponder all the existential b.s. for any amount of time longer than it takes me to snarf in a tall skinny cinnamon-dolce latte, let’s talk about some more-critical matters here today.

So, OK, I really don’t have enough of a rack to fill up my shirts. And I’m sad to say the reason why I hate dropping pounds is because the boobage is always the first to go.

Le sigh.

So I’m wearing my favorite shirt, the one I will actually miss when it’s not even in the ballpark of fitting anymore. And what used to be tight across the chest now has become a plunging neckline. And the damn thing keeps unbuttoning itself without the, ah, tension that used to keep it in place.

Oh well, it’s a small price to pay, I guess. I admit, I’m just glad I’ve gone from “bread bowl” down to “muffin top.”

Progress: I’ll take it any way I can get it!

Back to the peep show. …

You know, I’ve tried to make smart decisions all my life. Yes, you can show me evidence to the contrary, but that was one lousy decision that escalated into several rotten events.

I was doodling in my journal the other day and I found myself writing, “O HAI high school.” You know, that time I try so hard not to remember except when someone from that awful era friends me on Facebook.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I have run departments for many companies throughout the years, being trusted as a key player, decision-maker and always the last set of eyes to see thousands upon thousands of words of copy before being the one to push it live. And *knock on wood* it’s all been a stressful but smooth-sailing ride.

And yet, when it comes to boys, I turn stupid. STUPID, I tell you. Stupid. I was cruising in the wayback machine the other day, remembering when I found out Jimmy Skalican had a girlfriend (circa 1986) and how my poor little heart just broke. (See: O HAI high school, although that was junior high, I think.)

BTW, Facebook tells me he’s married with kids now. Not that I’d know him to see him on the streets, but still. (My tastes have changed somewhat anyway, so there. Pfft.)

Anyway, I don’t talk about boys on this site unless it’s seeping out through the hastily spackled cracks of some other event that’s rattled me. Which clearly is now. 🙂 And man, I gotta tell ya, I may think I’m saying and doing everything “right” but gawd, even the best examples from that species are enough to drive even the girliest girl like me into a raging lesbian.

I heard it said once that the REAL reason everyone’s opposed to gay marriage is that we women can no longer say that “all the good ones are gay or taken.” (Read: All the good ones will be taken and there isn’t even the last resort of trying to “turn” one to bat for our team. Waah!)

I dunno. I guess, having always been “one of the boys,” I thought I understood them, and especially how to talk to them. And I know it takes a brick wall to fall on some of them. But I feel like I’m standing in the rubble right now and either some people are spectacular at playing dumb or maybe they just are that thick. And at what point am I going to either bop someone upside the head or just keep on walking?

I always watch Joel Osteen before I go to church, and this week’s message was on the fact that “You’re Closer than You Think.”

This one hit home for me in a lot of ways, mostly that just when you think you can’t take another minute or if you’re just about to give up, you finally catch a glimpse of your goal. I’ve been there. I’ve been at the edge and wondering which way the wind would blow. Hell, I’m there now, hanging in there and trying to remember to walk in faith and not by sight, but still aching from the bruises of walking into obstacles along the way.

Anyway, I don’t know what I’m saying today. Haven’t had enough coffee to have a point. I guess I am just still in a somewhat-altered state from losing a friend and I echo another friend’s sentiments about being especially impatient with time-wasters as a result of it.

But I am trying to keep the faith that I’m closer to, well, something than I can currently see through my mortal eyes. I thought I saw it through a little epiphany last week. But maybe my vision was clouded. It’s possible.

And these days, I’m going through so many changes, maybe it’s now a matter of the inside will evolve to keep up with the outside, too. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out I was right all along. Again, I just don’t know how someone with my IQ, experience and solid grounding of common sense can just get all giggly and silly in the mere presence of a different set of chromosomes.

And for the record, I kind of like the giggly and silly me. I’d like for her to visit more often. And one way or another, I shall make that happen. …

I figured I should start going to meditation class. No time like the present, right? I figure, I’ve got so much on my mind these days, I could use a little bit of “me” time in my own little sacred space.

I didn’t want to judge it, as I need the techniques that these people know. But the class stressed me out more than I already was.

I think it helped, in the end, as it served to ease some of the tension that I carry in my neck and upper back. I was way mellow as I drove home, so not only was that a first, I guess we can call it a plus. So yeah, I guess I’ll be going back.

In the interim, here are the top 10 thoughts that ran through my head as the leader guided us through a meditation in which we were to imagine our various body parts smiling. Yes, you read that right.

1. If you can make my ass smile, then this class will have been worth the cost of entry.

2. Does thinking of somebody else’s smile qualify as envisioning the curve of a smile in my heart? Because my heart ain’t whistling Dixie here.

3. With my eyes closed this long, my eyeliner is definitely smudging. Damn it. I need to buy waterproof liner for next time.

4. Envisioning someone else’s smile is awesome. Wonder what that person is doing right now. Wait, am I smiling? Oh yay!

5. Wonder WHO that person is doing right now. Is homicide justifiable?

6. My ass is DEFINITELY not smiling. Nor is any other body part. Humph.

7. My legs are asleep. And my ass hurts from sitting on the floor. Screw this happy, tree-hugging granola shit.

8. What’s the point of relaxing, anyway? I just have to go home afterward.

9. What the hell is Dionne Warwick’s “I’ll Never Love This Way Again” doing in my head? Holy repressed memory coming through.

10. I should probably turn this shirt inside-out when I go to wash it.

Yes, relaxation and I are two ships passing in the night. …

You know, I was so in love with “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” that I presumed the sequel would be that and so much more.

Save your money unless you’re a teenager. Really. Or unless you’re in your happy place and not in a REALLY BAD FUCKING MOOD, like I found myself in.

(And for the record, I wasn’t AWARE that the Midol I’ve been popping like Pez this week expired in November, OK? SORRY!)

Ahem.

As the only one in the theater old enough to drive herself home afterward, the generation gap between X and Whine (er, Y) was never quite so pronounced.

I’d say spoiler alert but, really, can there be anything to spoil other than your appetite when you see this thing? I didn’t even eat dinner that night, I was so disgusted. (Hey, I’ve lost 20 pounds and counting this summer — at least it isn’t summer of the traveling fat pants! Going without dinner only helped my cause.)

Maybe I’m just jaded at this juncture in my life, and I do know this is a work of fiction, but where the hell do these kids get the money to travel all over the country/world? I know they’re four teens from Bethesda, Md., but hey, I live just outside of Bethesda. It is expensive to live here.

If I had a kid who wanted to go on an archaeological dig in Turkey or two kids who jaunt back and forth between Greece — or, hell, a kid who wanted to live in NYC or Vermont for the summer — well, tough shit. Get a local job like the rest of us had to! Well, not that the parents’ characters seem like anything to brag about; maybe all they have to give is money.

Ahem again.

Anyway, the REAL thing that got me were all these men — young men — who were also flying across the ocean or traveling from Maryland to New York every weekend to see these girls. Seriously? This movie crossed the line from “romantic fiction” to “outright farce” in a matter of minutes. Lord.

And yes, the one did allegedly knock up someone else and was going to marry her (one of my worst fears, personally), and sure, the other one did start dating another’s younger sister in the interim (he’s too young to have a midlife crisis!), but it was just to occupy them till the stars of the movie came to their so-called senses.

Seriously, Lena, I’d have just done the damn model and forgotten about fish boy.

Why YES, our heroine IS jaded toward the other gender right now. Some coffee and chocolate to complement the bitter?

All the girls in the theater were swooning over all these romantic, attentive, persistent boys. The group I sat with (ugh — wall-to-wall people. I need my recreational space, people. Get your Gen Y germs off of me) were all squealing, too, that they are all going to visit Greece because it’s beautiful. They were chattering about asking their parents for money. Hahahahaa. I know I don’t live in a poor neighborhood, but for realz, yo? Reality check, much?

OK, that’s the nicest thing I can say about the movie. The cinematography was brilliant. The soundtrack was less memorable than the first (which had two or three really good songs), but the first soundtrack got on my nerves as opposed to the newest one actually blending into the film.

If I owned property, I have a funny feeling that I’d be yelling at kids to get off of it right now.

OK, so it’s Saturday. Meh. Wevs.

Lovingly hijacked from the beautiful Lachlan.

1. You know you’re old when you REALLY notice the difference between your generation and the next one, especially when you unthinkingly start your sentences with “When I was in my 20s …”

2. My heart is divided between really, truly acting on an epiphany I had earlier this week and keeping what’s left of my heart intact because I apparently reached that epiphany ALONE and don’t think I can handle having that fact verified even more so than it already was just 48 hours later.

3. A vacation sounds pretty damn good. White sand, blue water … just don’t make me come back, mmkay? ‘Cause there ain’t a lot to come back to right now.

4. I have felt the warmth of being thisclose to something worth having; I have known the depths of despair at ONLY getting thisclose to what I thought the world was finally ready to let me have.

5. Gah, won’t these people appreciate the fabulousness before their very eyes and not give me all this space to find out that I can (no doubt) do better? Or, for some others, to get the fuck out of my space so I can miss them once in a while.

6. Start truly taking care yourself — mind, body and soul — as soon as you can! Ain’t nobody else gonna. Trust me.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight is none of anyone’s business 😉 — tomorrow my plans include maybe an oil change, maybe doing something artsy or maybe just staying in bed all day and Sunday, church I suppose and then who only knows what. I’m sure a whole lot of thinking, running away from reality and maybe some writing will factor in somewhere.

I’ve sort of been in this bubble lately, concentrating on what’s important (as much as I can, anyway) and focusing on achieving some goals. And I’ve been doing rather well, as my inner circle can attest. And though there’s been a moderate-to-middling amount of suck on the periphery — that’s exactly where it is: out of sight, out of mind.

And then, this week happened.

We lost a friend this week. Young, vibrant, beautiful — the type you meet once or twice and know you will remember for a long time to come. The circumstances, unfortunately, seem as indecipherable as the Big Question of “Why?”

And the Big Question leads to lots (and lots) of other Big Existential Questions. Which I won’t ponder here but I’m sure you’d have a few of your own, when handed this type of information, to process in the recesses of your mind when no one else is watching you.

Nearly everyone who is touched by this senseless tragedy seems to have retreated offline, into their own heads. And I’ve stayed about as quiet as I could. I admit, I’m wrecked. Color me 14 shades of fucked-up right now. I cry for her, for her love, for everyone affected even in the smallest way.

To say I’ve been rendered relatively useless this week is to understate the issue, oh, just a tad. I mean, you get your personal days and time to grieve when it’s a blood relative. But when it’s anyone else, you have to suck it up and think in your own time.

And that’s when you realize, wow, it’s all my time. And am I truly using it effectively and, more important, pleasingly?

I scrawled a hardly coherent journal entry the day I found out. I wish I could share it here. I really do. I said what might be the most profound thing to come out of my mouth (pen?) in the past 30-odd years.

The simple truth behind it was, in my panic, I saw very clearly what matters to me. The one thing I simply cannot leave unresolved when it’s my time to go. Not that I’d be ready to go at any time — there’s still so much more I expect to do before I even think about being through.

But if my number were up in five minutes and I could do one last thing? I know exactly what it is.

Of course, whether or not I would do it is anybody’s guess. I would have, when I had the thought. But right this very minute? Not so sure. New information and all that jazz. The stuff that’s probably kept it exactly where it’s been, all this time.

The clarity, however, struck me. The “this is what I should be doing” thing nearly knocked me over when I read over what I had written. I don’t even remember writing it. I just remember calling my BFF and saying, “This is what just came out of me.” Rendering her speechless, too, for the record.

I can’t help but feel that this devastating, devastating loss is meant to mean something to us … to all of us … in the grander scheme of things. Moreover than the usual, “Life is fragile and transient” business.

Yeah. Got that. Heard ya.

But I wondered how, a dozen years from now, this sadly significant time will have affected me. What choices will I have made that I otherwise wouldn’t have? What will I have done to honor this lovely young woman by the way I’ve lived my life or loved someone else — because I was lucky enough to be able?

more graph humor and song chart memes

I’d say it’s fairly accurate, although Tetris needs to be deleted (and only one person will get that joke!) and replaced with “Urge to suffocate Squeak Toys.”

Because, you know, if there IS such a thing as dumb questions, the asker will ask an endless stream of them. *squeeeaaaaakkkk* And don’t even get me started on what else they do to piss you right the fuck off, because I will tell you!

I’ve never seen my various online social networks as quiet as they’ve been today, but there’s really nothing to say right now.

I assume we’re all lost in thought, pondering what we know and certainly what we don’t.

I’m sure there’s a “why” or 50 in there, as well.

It puts some things in perspective, and blows a thousand other ones straight out of the water.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can concentrate on little else.

It’s a very sad, still day in our universe.

Go hug someone who needs it. C’mon, I dare you.

I’ll be waiting.