Don't You Ever

Today one of the banes of my existence tried to sympathize with me about the last 8 career-flaming months I've just had.

The concern on her face so pronounced that my stomach flipped.

How are you?  she wanted to know.

I said I'm fine, how are you?

I'm great, she said, but I just feel so sorrrrrrrrry for you.

Listen.  I don't need your sympathy.

Don't you ever fucking feel sorry for me.  Don't you fucking dare.

You are about as deep as a puddle on the street and I'm a fucking ocean over here.

I've got life forms no one's ever seen before and I will fucking DROWN you.

At the end of the day, little miss, I'm absolutely fucking amazing, and you are who you are.  SO. DON'T. YOU. EVER. FEEL. SORRY. FOR. ME.

Woah. I Like Me.

You are Strength

Courage, strength, fortitude. Power not arrested in the act of judgement, but passing on to further action, sometimes obstinacy.

This is a card of courage and energy. It represents both the Lion's hot, roaring energy, and the Maiden's steadfast will. The innocent Maiden is unafraid, undaunted, and indomitable. In some cards she opens the lion's mouth, in others she shuts it. Either way, she proves that inner strength is more powerful than raw physical strength. That forces can be controlled and used to score a victory is very close to the message of the Chariot, which might be why, in some decks, it is Justice that is card 8 instead of Strength. With strength you can control not only the situation, but yourself. It is a card about anger and impulse management, about creative answers, leadership and maintaining one's personal honor. It can also stand for a steadfast friend.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Getting an Early Start

April, as I've mentioned, has decided to be themed - Letters. 

Well.  I think I've just seen the Holy Grail.  

I've been known to write a few letters.  If you come across a post that is labeled LETTERS, you can click on it and it will show you everything I've ever labeled that way.  

Now, to flex my correspondence skills, I will write to someone who has an apology coming his way....

Dear Leo,

Oh, my boy.  Oh, little buddha bear.  We are so so sorry that you've got such a burdened life.  We both know that the only thing you need is your dad to hold you, and your mom to remember to give you the wet food every night.  That and the top of a couch in the sun is all you've ever asked for in life.  And then we introduce you to Lucy, and boy, are we sorry about that.  If cats could go to therapy, we know Lucy would be a test case for aggression.  She's a raving lunatic, and this we know, and we apologize for bringing her into your life.  Mom is sorry, because I'm sure you know that Lucy goes wherever Mom goes.  

Then we get you the Prozac.  We did this because you were peeing in the dirty laundry, and do not think that it escaped Mom's notice that you never peed in the clean.  There was that one time you peed on the bathmat, but I think the exits were blocked and I can't tell you how much I loved you for your sensitivity and your highly developed sense of what is easily laundered.  You are a champ.  You make do with what you have, and you try not to be a bother.  

And you're such a good boy with the Prozac.  You take the pills like a champ, you eschewed the chicken-flavored liquid, but even in that you were a gentleman.  You did not swing your head side-to-side while making a noise like something dying, which is what Lucy did.  Did you see her with full claws a-blazing, shredding mom and dad while she sprayed us with chicken-flavored liquid Prozac?  

I'm sure you didn't, honey.  You would have been aghast. 

What I want to apologize for, dear boy, is that your dad and I have been forgetting who is supposed to be giving you the Prozac, now that we have the treats we can slip the pills into.  And as a result, we've determined that you were double-dosed at least three times last week.  And still, you are alive and there was no drooling.

We celebrate the fact of you, Leo.  We love you dearly, we love you within an inch of your hyperesthetic life, and we would be lost without you.  Your dad named you from a Shakespeare play, Leontes, and you are the gentleman he was imagining.

Peace and much affection,

Mom

Don't Get Me Started

Buoyant, joyous, knocking 'em out and dragging 'em home today.

Might have been that wee double latte I had while doing some training early this morning.  God, I love Lattes.  Life just wasn't full without them.

I was FLYING after that.  Chewed 1/2 a pack of gum and learned how to snap it, all by myself.  Then I annoyed myself with it, and stopped.  

HEY SANTA FE, GIVE ME A CALL.  

As much as I love talking to your person, and hearing her tell me what an EXCELLENT chance I have, I get increasingly worried when the phone log shows just the usual players.  No weird numbers.  And we all know what happens when I get worried, don't we?

I GET PISSED.  

But I promise not to get pissed.  Because I'm jovial and flexible and totally a good sport and all that other bullshit that I will tell you about myself until you get me in there and I show you the charming, funny, total hard-ass that I am.

I drove by a statuary today.  I love statues, my yard would be indecent with them if I wasn't so decently inclined.  I might be Greek in a past life.  This particular stone work was a flat facade of the head of a lion, roaring with wide open mouth and luxurious swirls of mane.  I drove past the statuary and then proceeded to plan a garden around just that very piece of stone.  Something orange, red and yellow.  Different blooming times and different textures.  Something to make it look like the lion was always breathing fire.  

Wow, I just made a cosmo but with gin because we're out of vodka and this is delightful.  And I am HAMMERED.

Who is reading this anyway?  Tell me who you are.  Do you know me or do you just like reading this?  De-lurk, please.

Sprang Sprung

Shockingly, startlingly, the weather in Seattle is awful right now.

Weathermen are cheerfully predicting some light snow this week.  I want to take their good cheer and drive it like a stake through their undead hearts.

Rain, rain and more rain.  And after that?  Light showers.  Or downpours.  Or both, in the space of the same frigid hour.  

I did some ass-busting on Monday and decoratively barked the back yard.  It took four huge bags of bark (which were back-busting, I'll have you know) to do so.

I'll take a picture once it clears up.  

Best this yard has ever looked.

Excuse me a second, I just busted up laughing reading my own last sentence.  If I wait until the weather clears, I'll be a hundred and eighty seven before I get those shots.  I'm a little downgraded, as I'm sure you can tell, about the weather.  It wears on you.  And then it wears through you, and then it just keeps on going until it chews your heart into sludge and saps the energy right the smack right out of you.

I got new contacts and suddenly I'm all over the details of the leaves on the trees.  I'm freaking with joy over the finely edged blades of grass that are vibrantly green and showy on the side of these gray, soaked streets.    I'm also realizing that I have an alarming tendency to get so close to my work monitor that if I announced we were secretly dating, no one would be surprised.

I had lunch with an old friend from a visiting office today.  This woman is WONDERFUL.  Spending time with her is like spending time with someone who crawled out of my soul and still will talk to me.  She makes me laugh like I don't remember when.  She just comes out with these sayings, and she's boisterous, and she's funny, and she's like a good mood just metamorphosed into a human being and then gave me a hug.  I can't even relate them to you, because they wouldn't seem funny, but they were so perfectly said, right at the perfect time, and they were hysterical. I don't have a nickname for her because none of the words I have in my repertoire do her justice.  She defies description.  I honestly feel like I'm in the presence of a movie star when I hang out with her, she is just THAT charismatic and vibrant.  I'm so lucky that we clicked.  Because I didn't even know I was missing her until I met her.  

April posting month is themed LETTERS.  Oh, I think I might just be able to come up with one or two.  I haven't written a letter in a long time and I think the world may just be sliding off its axis about that.

Love,

Salome 

OK Spring, we were totally just fucking with you

We are not spring yet.

We are not, thank you driving rain and chilly temps JUST IMMEDIATELY after I was walking to and from a work appointment.

Thank you for pouring AFTER I returned to the office.

That actually was very nice.

So, guys, the KIDS said no.

The CONSORTIUM hasn't responded.

But SANTA FE called today.

Probably not qualified, but they don't know that.  

And if they're the right people, they won't care.  

You don't leave jobs to horizontally move.  

You leave them to make a vertical leap.

You leave them so that you can jump off the cliff of comfort, throw your bra to the wind and say, GODDAMNIT LIFE, I'm ready for more.

Do you have more for me, Life?

Did You Get a Good Lawyer?

After the vagaries of last winter, spring arrived with a burst.

All of a sudden, cherry blossoms exploded.  

Literally one day they were not there and the next, BAM.

Lovely, everywhere you looked.

This year, it is different.  

Cherry blossom buds are creeping slowly open.  

Like they are tentative.  The skies clear intermittently, with storms on all fronts, everywhere you look.  I want to encourage them, tell them it is okay.

It is okay.  Nobody's going to Scotland.  Everyone still hates their job.  It is okay.

The cycle of hope has been extinguished.  There is nothing to shout about, anyhow.

Big fight with the cats today.  And even in this, I'm resigned.  They'll get it.

Everyone will just get over whatever it is they need to get over, anyhow.

Funny how the world works.

How the world plays.

I'm cleaning.  Reorganizing.  I am GAINING ACCEPTANCE with those things I cannot change.  And you know what?  That isn't much.  There isn't much I can't choose to change.  Myself.  My life.  What I want.

You can get to a point where you care too much.

Then you work yourself to death, exhausting all your possibilities, and STILL no one rewards you for it.  And then you decide one day, after bad things happen and rude things happen and inconsiderate things happen, and some unavoidable things happen, but you might still sit on your front porch one day and think, "I am the person that no one feels the need to say SORRY to."

And I'm out there, but what is the best way to say to someone,

"I'm the best goddamn thing that's ever walked in your door.  You've never met anyone quite like me before, and you aren't likely to again."

"You should absolutely hire me, because I can do all the things you need done, and then I'll do more.  And then I'll be charming, and I'll be fun, and I'll work harder than anyone you've ever met, and there won't be a single goddamn thing you throw to me that I can't catch."

How do you say that in a half hour interview?

And I write to Santa Fe, and I write to the Bay Area, and I write, write write so that someone picks up the phone and calls me.  And then that someone calls me in for an interview.  And then that someone looks past my natural dork and hires me. 

So.

Listing the house.

He says we're grounded now, but I've never been grounded.  

I don't even know what that means.

I'm always a half-second from flying away.  I'm always a hairsbreath from jumping from the earth just to taste all the potential that might be.

I'm in love and I'm secure and all these changes aren't bothering me.  

For the first time in a long time I am hungry again.  I am positively drunk with all the possibility and I only lie awake at night to make sure that I've effectively covered my back. 

For the first time in a long time, I'm growing up to my full height.  And the people that try to get me down are just noise.  They're all just noise, and none of them will be remembered past the time it takes me to say goodbye.

Quiet now, hush.  

I have things to do.

Medicated Cats

It turns out that the stray, who is the sickest cat I've ever met, does not have ASTHMA, which we thought this weekend.  And to which I am still incredulous, because for fuck's sake, what would she be allergic to? 

She has some sort of infection in her lungs, which requires antibiotics.  Okay.

She is also supposed to be getting prednisone 2x daily, which is a steroid I've taken a whole bunch of times because I have asthma.  

I speed all the way to the vet's office to get there by 6pm and pick up the antibiotic.  I beg the vet and he assures me it is a liquid.  

We now have 2 cats on Prozac (when we can forcibly get a pill down Lucy's throat, the raving bitch) and one cat on prednisone pills 2x daily + antibiotic fluid 2x daily.  Lovely.

I am on Weight Watchers and am not supposed to drink wine, and I quit smoking three weeks ago and the Pope is on a business trip.

So I buy some Pill Pockets to sneak the pills into chicken-flavored dough packets to get these goddamn cats their medicine so that everyone can live happily ever after.

The stray, who we've spent so much money on that I will just call her the DAUGHTER, the Cleo, the wallet drain that is really pretty cute, walks out of her room and whuffs at me, squeakily.  It is darling and my heart melts.   

So, of course, I stuff a pill pocket with the steroid pill and set it in front of her.  She sniffs at it and looks up at squeaks at me.  I nudge her, like, go on, I spent $10 on these things, just to fool you, EAT it!  :)  Big Grin, Happy Mom, Everything's OK, just eat the little chicken thing.  HMMMMM?

She won't eat it, but is real cute about that.

No wine, no cigarettes, money leaking out of my wallet and I just drove like crazy to make it to the goddamn vet's office to get you this crap because you have ASTHMA or something and you are a CAT.  SO EAT IT.

YOU HAVE TO.

YOUUUUUUUUU HAAAAAAAAAVE TOOOOOOOOOOO!  I scream and stomp around the kitchen, which causes all three cats to run under the bed for the next hour and a half, and forces me to open a bottle of wine.

I am at my wit's end.  At this point I want to lock them all out of the house and call the coyotes.

Boing Boing

Last week, at Weight Watchers, I looked down the row of seats I was in.

Three pairs of black clogs, in a row.

Welcome to Seattle, folks. 

Caution

*Supposed to be posting daily for the month of March.  Whoops.

*Supposed to be on Weight Watchers, but fucked off all this weekend.  Dammit.

*Should be passed out right now, what with the bottle of wine I just drank.

*I broke something just now.  It felt good.  

That fucking thing was asking to be broken.

I should have broken it MONTHS ago.

I am unhappy.

I lie in bed and think, where did my life go?  

Why am I so stuck and so poised on the edge of unhappiness all the time?

How did I get so stuck?

What I want to do is QUIT.

I want to SELL.

I want safeguard my three dear kitties with someone who will love them.

I want to throw all my possessions into a large body of water, take a baseball bat to some, and then join the Peace Corps.  Or the circus.  Or something that matters more to me than this fucking empty rat-fucking-race of life.

Is there any way to get unstuck?  

Or do you find yourself in your thirties, do you just find yourself there and then, there is where you are?  

I hate this.

I'm going to bed.

I have to.  

I must remember that I need to get up in the morning, to go to that place I hate and do that job I despise, for people I no longer respect.