Thursday, February 25, 2010

face-palm

i am near to done with the times.

ffs.

an ostensibly lib op-ed guy, a british jew ex-pat (right?, lol) had this in his column today, re: health care reform:

Aren’t Republicans about choice?


wtf, man! republicrats haven't been about choice since nixon. gaah. i just need to go to bed, i guess, but how do these guys sleep?




more than i can chew right now

i am trying to fix myself. the broken bits. the parts that snap like a steel bear trap when threatened. the pieces that cut my soul and heart like jagged glass and make me cry in the night.

i am looking, searching, trolling. reading. sometimes you need a break. sometimes you visit places that hold warm memories, like-minded folks and a semblance of understanding. and then... nobody was expecting the spanish inquistion! no really, you're looking for fluff and then you get more than you bargained for.

this is a paste/copy/edit i stole from somebody who ain't no dummy, a sadist/dominant, so that i can more easily track the info i need and ponder the ideas (my blog, my rules, and this is all unfinished biz)

from him, in a thread about how common a rape fantasy is for women, although not for me:

Marianne Noble lists three "psychological traits associated with masochism":

  • a desire for perfection
  • a fear of intimacy as a kind of assault upon the self
  • a particularly emphatic sense of individuated selfhood.

The second one -- fear of intimacy -- was a surprise, but then I thought of all the masochistic fantasies ... forceful, penetrating fantasies. I think there are women who want to be intimate but aren't comfortable opening up to intimacy, so they long for a forceful figure, a demon lover or vampire or rapist (or mebbe, my thought... and uh, in real-life, not twilight movie-- or a dominant completely set on autonomy...) who will force her to open up to him.

Someone who has "a particularly emphatic sense of individuated selfhood" is someone who feels independent; she knows who she is, she knows there's no one like her, she feels unique. Sometimes she might feel special, in an enchanted way, and sometimes she feels alone, in a dejected way. Her sense of self is so pronounced that she is always aware of how different she is from others, and she feels isolated.

So she daydreams about dominant figures who will overwhelm her, take her away from herself, make her forget her name, her face, the clawing boundaries of her body, her distances. She wants to encounter a force that will demand she give herself to it, holding nothing back, until she opens and aches and loses herself. Until she loses her self, the self that can be such a burden.


Tuesday, February 23, 2010

like herpes too

just like her mom, just when you think you're done having to hear about her, bristol palin is right back at you. now she has been hired to "play herself" on a show called "the secret life of the american teenager." the main character is coping with being pregnant AND a teen! omg-- get the most famous american unwed teen mother on the phone!!

i dare say, there is nothing secret in this girl's life and why does this family still feel so compelled to whore her and her uterus out for money and press? she got knocked up on high school, while having sex under her mother's nose, so why is she being put forth as a role model? unlike most teen moms, she has money, access to child care and the ability to pursue higher education if she desires. she is a privileged white girl with just a little bit of an "oops", i guess?

oh, yeah, and she's smart like her mom too. she had this to say on good morning america:

"Regardless of what I did personally, I just think that abstinence is the only ... 100 percent foolproof way to prevent pregnancy."

more nanny state nonsense

under the auspices of the american academy of pediatrics, dr. gary smith, who heads the center for injury research and policy at nationwide children's hospital in columbus ohio, released a paper yesterday asking that hot dogs, wieners, frankfurters, what have you, carry warning labels. not because they are laden with sodium, nitrates and toenails, but because that they are a choking hazard for small children. not content to simply nanny parents of toddlers, he suggests that the food with an ancient pedigree (yo, forcemeat goes way back. ask any peasant of olden timey days, k?) be redesigned.

"no parents can watch all of their kids 100% of the time," smith says. "the best way to protect kids is to design these risks out of existence." jeebus, kids wind up in his emergency room cuz they are choking on food, so oscar meyer better step the hell up and fix this.

yes, by god, let's outlaw cylindrical foods. grapes and bananas, you had better look out! we are so coming to get you!

gee, i don't know. maybe parents could cut the things up? or maybe, even, i don't know, not feed crap to their kids? just sayin'.

Friday, February 19, 2010

i know you are, but who am i?

long long before this noodle was a twinkle in anyone's eye, my maternal grandmother was having an affair with one of nyc's finest. ahem. he was not her first, nor, i presume, last. (however, he did endure. they wound up married after my grandfather died and stayed together til he died a few years ago.) when his wife discovered the infidelity, she issued an ultimatum. he chose his not-wife. an annulment was easily had, she took their son and disappeared. i do not know if he ever contacted the boy or vice-versa. they vanished.

this was before my mother was even a pre-teen.

their affair was long-running by the time i was born. i have no recollection of how his presence in our lives was explained, but i saw him more often than i saw my grandfather, who was occasionally estranged, ostensibly to punish my mother, and frequently on the road for work. he and my grandmother had long ago stopped sharing a bed or a room. when he retired at 40, he spent much time upstate at his cabin. was he alone? who knows? whenever i asked to go up, i was told it was " not a place for girls."

my grandmother referred to this other man by two different names, even in my grandfather's presence. i'm guessing she was pretending he was two separate people, but i have no idea what my grandfather knew or truly thought. they saw each other nearly everyday, many times after my grandfather had made dinner she would just split. he'd park around the block and she'd walk to the car. even when family was visiting, she would rush to go, then return several hours later.

at some point, this man and my grandmother bought a cottage at the shore. a low-slung 3-bedroom waterfront bungalow with mimosa trees in back and front. i was told i had my own room and there would be a bicycle there for me. even though i was profoundly uncomfortable with this cop -- he was oafish and stupid and broke nearly everything material that he touched -- i was excited to get away. my mom was single, angry and struggling, i was often alone and this would be at the beach!

then i got the talk. and it was the same talk i got many times after. i had to pretend that she was not my grandmother, but
my aunt . to neighbors, absolutely, and oh, yes, his sisters, brothers-in law, nieces and nephews are coming for a party so for them too, and don't make me punish you for getting this wrong. i was six. won't take a rocket scientist to figure that in the excitement of the party, and needing the only person i knew inside in the house, i called out to her. to this day, i remember and feel fear over the ire in those icy eyes. one of the girls was named nanette, which is close enough to what i called my grandmother, so she was able to laugh it off that i was mixed up and silly. when everyone was gone, i was beaten, yelled at for being "so stupid" and sent to bed weeping.

over the years and still as a wee noodle, i was brought round as her "niece" to his mother and other of his relatives. many of them were sicilian widows with plastic slipcovers and snippy dogs. i was terrified of these seemingly ancient crones, their shivering pets, dark man-less houses and saying the wrong thing, so i was afraid to talk and too nervous to eat, which made the old ladies upset as well. lose-lose for noodle.

what kind of foundation is that for a kid? "i love you, now pretend you are not mine?" let alone a latch-key kid whose father's parenting is non-existent. some might fault my mother for allowing me into those scenarios. i cannot. she doubtless endured them as a girl, and feared her mother's volcanic wrath far too much to object. if she even saw harm in it? i don't know. we all only have our "own" normal, eh?

cue to grown-up noodle.

when i did fall in love, it always was men more emotionally damaged than myself. "if i just love him enough, more than enough, that will be enough to heal him." i didn't try to change or control them, but perhaps that is what they needed -- someone manning the rudder in the relationship. i had never seen a functional loving relationship up close, and was too full of my own self-loathing to conjure it.

cue to the owner finding and taking me.

with his family "over there", he was careful to keep me at an emotional bay, all the while encouraging me to fall and fall and fall. it was like being trapped in a net, dropping deeper and deeper into a bottomless sea, with the only escape i desired being allowed more intimacy with him. never in my life have i known a person i was lost without.

cue to after the deluge. to kind of now.

we are not like other people. our relationship, the lack of balance and what works best for us is not conventional. our danger sex is almost besides the point. i don't necessarily feel a need to explain any of that. we enjoy being together and out. more than one acquaintance has said they've never known a couple who laughs together as much as he and i. that speaks volumes, yes? he has cared for me and supported me in ways my family never did.

yet the owner feels semantically challenged whenever asked the simple question, "are you seeing anyone?" rarely is he at a verbal loss, and yet two years post-divorce, he still says, "no," and thus deny my existence. this query has come from people who have seen us together, and not just once. that negation, that disavowal, is truly more than i can bear. much of that is him wishing to preserve the possibilities for bedding other women, but it still feels a lie to them and a storm of stones over my heart and a jackboot to my devotion each time he does it.

my work and his hectic social ambitions keep us apart far more than ever before, perpetuating my non-existence, or at best the image of being incidental. he is out and about most often now with other women and there seems little chance on my end, nor inclination on his, to change that.

i find myself adrift and afraid more than i like. i have drowned it more than once in martinis. he fills his life so easily without me, i think, "i guess i don't matter," and it only hammers home even further his renunciations. out-of-sight, out-of-mind. bon homie, sex, massages and music are all easily had with the click of a mouse or a short stroll. i am not in walking distance, nor of a schedule that allows for spontaneity.

where does this leave me?

waiting. alone.




crutch much?


6 days into being sober, i got to work and a handful of my co-workers were deadly hung-over.

one had failed a difficult certification test the day prior. one he thought he'd ace. beers, manattans, wine AND gimlets made him forget the pain for the night and knocked him out cold.

another had been stood-up by a blind date. i'm guessing of the match.com variety, but she looked too wobbly and still too sad to ask. she had pouted in her apartment, then felt like not being alone, so headed down to her local and did some serious damage.

yet another had been on a 3-day bender from valentine's day. her last relationship ended last year on v-day, so she and some other angry single girly-friends all went on a tear. her face was puffy and hair dirty.

the hostess also looked out-of-sorts, but that's her coke habit more than the booze.

since we dispense and are surrounded by liquor, i suppose it's easier to be open about what we did the night before. it's a running joke that booze is a balm.

it's no secret that the restaurant industry attracts unstable sorts and addictive/self-destructive behaviors seem to be the norm. is it different, really, elsewhere? we have brokers, lawyers and bankers in there tossing back every night. some guys are monday-friday martini regulars. lord only knows what their wives think they are actually doing. still slogging away in the office, i presume.

on the phone with an old friend yesterday, she told me of a recent party she and her husband attended. one husband out of work 18 months, another cut down to 1/4 time. others warily holding their collective breath with lay-offs still in the cards. more than one wife broke into beer-tears. said friend was happy to not be one of them and was again thankful her husband is thriving in his new position and their mortgage whittled way down.

i admit to using the liquor as anesthesia. it ceased to become a simple social lubricant awhile ago. why else am i having drinks at 1:00 in the morning when i get home from work? will i ever be that person who can shut her own self off? will i ever stop being so afraid?

today is only day 8, so i don't know the answers. but i am last asking the questions.


Tuesday, February 16, 2010

not high, but dry

this weekend was a perfect storm for us restaurant folks. a 3-day weekend with valentine's day falling the night before a monday holiday before school break. those red-sweatered lovebirds who got locked out of sunday came saturday and the even bigger procrastinators were sweetheart bookends on friday and monday.

towards the middle of my 3rd double yesterday, i was bleary-eyed and jello-brained. "do i have a box of tissues?"; "you eloped and only came here to have cake? here? for CAKE?"; "no, little fat boy, we do not have diet root beer, snapple or butterscotch pudding." mother of god. when it at last ended and i got out of the building -- "oh! that's what the sky looks like" -- i felt much calmer. there was no wind, the water was still and the air lacked its recent bite, but i was bone-weary. my norm on a night like that would have been to walk down to the swanky hotel and saddle up for a nice big-girl martini. feel the tension just ooze out of me and then slide home like a happy relaxed noodle.

no. i promised myself and the owner i am on the wagon.

when at last i got back to the noodle house, and the shoes and bra came off and the bath was running, i heard the wine calling me. no, i told them, i am not drinking. i was exhausted, but knew the owner was in the area, likely on a date with his new prospect, so sleep would just not come.

i could get up and have a nice glass... nope.

by the time he called to tell me about his not-date, it was after 2:00. the riot of voices in my head after that nearly hijacked sleep for the rest of the night, but i finally got the committee to shut the fuck up and managed a few hours.

today, no work, but errands and i snuck in a movie because the weather was so foul. my habit is a drink either before or after, or at least with lunch. i abstained. it was harder today.

puttering and making dinner here i normally have wine.

blogging at night i normally do too and when catching up on my tivo.

no, no, no.

my fingertips on a glass is a near constant when i am not working or under the eyes of the owner. it's reflex, it's habit, i like the taste and i like how it makes me feel. the trouble is, lately it's never just one. ever, and i fear i'm becoming compulsive about it. i can't stop myself, i've made numerous scenes and i have had blackouts. i have embarrassed the owner and shamed myself. i am that person talked about by people who don't know me as the drunk messy too-loud chick in the bar.

how is that the woman i have become?

alcohol keeps tight the lid on the well, hiding the goblins, dragons and mean irish ladies who haunt my dreams. it keeps them out of my days. it shunts away all that i can't face.

today is day 5.

how long before the demons see the screws are loose?




Sunday, February 14, 2010

fat girl


during the holidays, as always, i worked like a crazy person. lots of doubles, few days off and erratic sleep all left little time to cook or even shop for raw snacks. this coincided with a period of making myself nuts tracking my food and weighing every morsel i ate, so i stopped. it was all too stark a reminder of the anorectic calorie-counting and food neurosis of past bouts.

i continued to shrink, to the point of pants dragging on the pavement, even though the scale didn't budge. i admit to eating treats i shouldn't have. cookies and candies were everywhere, including my own house. never gorged, but i'm not supposed to have any. staff meals were a challenge as they are typically a carbo-feast one day it was garbanzos, rice, french fries and chicken nuggets. just yukkkkkk. as a release and an excuse, my drinking increased too, especially the late-night, "just home and need to unwind, so i'll have a glass or 3..." habit, which i thought i had kicked. my weight didn't decrease, held steady, but i noticed my work shirts were much looser. still shrinking.

the scale's recalcitrance was making me despair, so i finally stopped weighing. my menstrual cycle also was behaving strangely so that increased my terror of digital truths.

holidays finished, work at a reasonably human pace, i got back on the scale a couple weeks back. the same. gaaaaaah.

only rational action is go back to basics. i have been bringing my lunch and getting a mostly good balance of what i "should have." (damn the skittles yesterday.) tracking my carbs. unrelated to my weight, i'm going on the wagon for awhile. (another post-- the pain remains too raw...) am very curious what will happen with this new eating and no booze. a few years back trying to cure my bird flu, i went dry for 9 days. it did not help my health, nor did i lose a pound or an inch. now i realize the weight stasis was due to my broken insulin response, so one of my 1st tangential thoughts on drying out really was to the see the difference.my consumption has been extreme for months now.

goal of a week dry and healthy foods before i dare chance the scale.

this morning, manipulating my naked body, the owner asked what i weighed for the 1st time in months. it must be worse than i thought. i swear to god, i can no longer tell what the fuck i look like when i see myself in the mirror. could i ever ? his question, not at all unreasonable, made me sick and embarrassed. we had set a goal weight for me, with particular and peculiar rewards. for ages it has felt like it will never come. i had given up daydreaming about the ministrations i crave under his hands. yet another failure.

he has recently met a woman he finds appealing and attractive. youngish, but not too very. he is again playing the bill clinton game of "define is" when asked by their mutual friends if he has a girlfriend. respective to our dynamic he absolutely does not, so with his semantic gymnastics, they hear he is not seeing anybody. which makes me nobody. she has met him twice now, while he was without me as an encumbrance, in very friendly environments and i imagine him to only have been charming and warm. each enjoying the others' company on an open playing field.

for him i was out of sight, out of mind, knee to knee with a fresh prospect.

for her, an attractive, intelligent and respectful, fun, SINGLE guy - jackpot.

for me, by his words, she is slim, pretty and perfect. all the things i will never be.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

everybody panic!

BLIZZARDPALOOZA!! SNOWPOCALYSPE! THE END IS NIGH!!

before a flake had fallen, schools were closed, flights canceled and parking bans enacted. the entire district where i work was closed by massport, leading many of the major employers in the area to shut for the day.

i checked the weather before bed and expected to awake to a winter wonderland. nothin'. as a good little new england noodle, i went home to get on my blizzard gear, most the courtesy of ll bean. the practical and frugal folks who made those boots i have had since college and my ski coat which will never see a lift or lodge, but i'd be really warm if ever thrown down the matterhorn. gloves, scarf, layered sweaters, hat, etc. i was roasting on my way to work, but the snow had started so i felt ready.

by lunch, it was doing nothing. no wet from the sky. city streets empty. nonsense.

by rush hour, it did look possible to achieve actual blizzardiness, with that knife-like wind and hard pellets of ice stinging my face. per usual, the blue line was fucked so 10,000 people were sardine-canned into each car to get under the water over here to eastie. my station was closed with a power-outage, so i trudged home the longer way. frankly, i kind of like that raw in small doses. as an urbanite, i'm not out in nature much and appreciate the reminder of its ferocity.

the whip and whistle of very hard snow and determined wind sent me off to dreamland and again expected mountains of white in the dawn. i laughed out loud because i can see grass the ground-cover of snow is so meager.

the major bollocks of that blizzard of 2007, when the entire commonwealth hit the road at the exact same time and caused utter marathon gridlock remains fresh in everybody's minds, fer sure. but this chicken-little shit is beyond the pale. it's new england. it gets cold. it fucking snows. put on your big-girl pants or move to nevada.

Sunday, February 07, 2010

real amurricanz, redux

lazy blogger, i've become, off cheating on other boards, but this was too good to take a pass.

our old friend the slutty stewardess has been flogging her book and raking in speaking fees from hyped-up teabaggers. this morning in nashville, she made a crack about obama being charismatic guy with a teleprompter. she apparently was too busy doing her hair to watch his face-off in front of the congress last week, which was unscripted, off-the-cuff and during which he eviscerated most of the republicrats with his smarty-pants-ness.

anyway, her usual blah-blah-blah, then she sat down for a little q & a. during which she could be seen looking at her hand. i've pasted a large format of the pic so you know I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

like a 4th-grader cheating on a test, she wrote her talking points on her palm.

"Energy"
"Budget (cut?)
"Tax"
"Lift American spirits"


she had crossed out "budget" and replaced it with "tax cuts". even she doesn't know which she is for? or was she not sure what the guy would ask her?

she cracks at obama for using a teleprompter, (uh, shrub did too...), but apparently isn't smart enough to use one. also proving she isn't smart enough to know that people in the audience all have little devices that take pictures. pictures that make points and do not go away because they are instantly on the twitternets and spread all over the world faster than she can shoot a wolf.

in case we need proof that even cheat sheet can't help this broad, here is the word salad she offered in reply to the question, "what should a republican congress's top 3 priorities be?" palin replied, "stop spending," "energy policy," and something about hugging and speaking to god:

"I think, kind of tougher to put our arms around, but allowing America's spirit to rise again by not being afraid to kind of go back to some of our roots as a God fearing nation where we're not afraid to say especially in times of potential trouble in the future here, where we're not afraid to say, you know, we don't have all the answers as fallible men and women so it would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country, so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again. To have people involved in government who aren't afraid to go that route, not so afraid of the political correctness that you know – they have to be afraid of what the media said about them if they were to proclaim their alliance to our creator."


now i know why she hates the word "retard."


thanks to huffpo for this bright spot in my day, lol.