I saw Angelina Jolie at the grocery store.

I did, really. I was attempting to find a ripe cantaloupe, which as you all know is virtually impossible to detect. But that doesn’t stop me from thumping and smelling alla them. I heard someplace that you could roll it down the frozen food aisle and if it rolls to the left then it’s ripe. Don’t worry I didn’t test the theory. I tried it with a watermelon once and ended up downing a display of bran cereal. The box boy looked at me like I was evil incarnate. Of course at the time I wasn’t intending to roll it down the aisle but my hands were slippery and those suckers are sometimes heavier than they look.

Anyway, back to Angelina.... There she was moving into another aisle. So what did I do? I can’t believe you can even think to ask such a question. I followed her of course. Any lesbian worth a salt would follow either Angelina or Emma Thompson. It’s an unwritten rule; it’s in the lesbian manifesto for crying out loud. So I threw down the cantaloupe... I’d have to go back to my fruit fondling another time... and took off after her.

As I was arguing with my cart to get it to cooperate, I had to wonder what I would do when I finally caught up to her. I couldn’t just tackle her could I? Well I probably could but my friends get cranky when they have to bail me outta jail. Here’s where you start to wonder if someone is better than you in some way just because they are famous or have more money. Why was I stalking her through the grocery store? Sure she’s attractive, but that’s always meant very little to me. Suddenly I decided that I needed to be more cool about the whole thing.

-Step 1 of faking coolness: Stop trying a cool walk. If you don’t already have one, you certainly aren’t going to develop one the instant you need it. You end up looking like a wounded geriatric goblin.

-Step 2 of faking coolness: Try to make sure you voice doesn’t go supersonic. You can’t look cool when the only thing coming out of your mouth sounds like a strangled bird. This leads into what you should say. Remember simple is better. Don’t begin expounding on crap you don’t know. With your luck the person you’re trying to impress is the world’s foremost expert on the subject. Go for the easy things like, “hello”.

-Step 3 of faking coolness: Body language is important. If you shake their hand, remember to return it. Try not to do things like fan yourself with your hand while you’re breaking rule two. Give them some space. You don’t want to forever be remembered as the nutjob that speaks with their head inches from another’s.

-Step 4 of faking coolness: This is the most important thing.... do NOT act like I did.

So with alla my coolness in mind I rounded the corner.... and smashed dead on into her cart. Of course the sudden stop sent me careening across the aisle where I got very close and personal with a can of peas. So I tried to scramble up to my feet, but it’s difficult to do that while catching falling canned foods. That and there was the added problem that my coordination had gone south for the winter.

I then look up ready to say hello to Angelina and add one more thing to my super geeky autograph collection. There was only one problem. This wasn’t Angelina!! In fact the woman didn’t even look like her. In fact the person wasn’t even a woman! What the hell is wrong with my brain? How the hell do you salvage your dignity... you can’t say, “Oh sorry sir, I thought you were a rather overly skinny though beautiful woman...” Nope that wouldn’t work. So I said the first thing that came to mind... “Oh sorry sir, I just really needed those veggies for a stew...” And then I got the hell outta there.

So really I guess you can never see some things coming. You can try to look cool, or worry what others are going to say. But I’m starting to realize that worrying about it just takes too much of my energy... especially considering that even if I worry, I still cannot control most things. That and I learned that Angelina Jolie is actually a man... with a fondness for prunes and creamed corn.

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.” -- Oscar Wilde

Spandex and rubber

Wouldn’t it be great to be a superhero? These are the kinds of things I think about when nursing a sever caffeine deficiency and my harmless insanity. I would just like to know what it would be like to be the hero coming to the rescue. I don’t mean one that’s established like Wonder Woman, I mean if that *you* were a superhero. Whatever your greatest strengths are would be your superhero powers.

Let me give you an example: I would be Captain Cynicism. I’d wear vintage T-shirts with smartass sayings, loose jeans, and steel toed boots. If asked why I wasn’t wearing spandex or a ridiculously short skirt; you’d receive a lengthily diatribe about how that’s just another way to make women fall short of meeting society’s impossible expectations while holding them back as if they were nothing more than a mere sexual object. I would have a procrastination ray gun that I’d use to incapacitate would be criminals by making them continuously put off making plans to rule the world in favor of a bag of chips and the TV remote. I could blind them with my horrible dancing of doom, or bring them to their knees with my super screech like singing. I could confuse them with my losing laser that would hide their keys and make them unable to find the bank they were going to rob. If all else fails, I could tempt them with my cooking that would bring death faster than Poison Ivy’s kiss. Look out evil doers, Captain Cynicism is on duty.

These ludicrous thoughts were running through my mind as I waited on the side of the road with a flat tire. More people than I care to think about refused to stop. Now me being a liberated woman, I know *how* to change a tire. My problem was the Hulk couldn’t have moved the tire lock. My cell phone was so helpfully out of juice, and most people didn’t even look at the girl on the side of the road twice. This gave me all the time in the world as I contemplated who to call collect. Oh, did I mention that I had no change seeing as though I used it for gas, and my wallet was probably under my bed where it does me the most good?

So, just as I was about to head to the nearest convenience store, that wasn’t so convenient as it was about a mile away, a car stopped. An older man in a three piece suit stepped out of the car. He walked over to where I was. I was overjoyed, here was my help. However he said nothing to me, dumped out his old coffee from a travel mug on the side of the road, and got back in his car. Are you kidding me? I was starting to wonder if I was invisible, or perhaps he didn’t notice me standing not 50 feet from him, next to a car that had its hazard lights on. Stranger things have happened. Though, these thoughts didn’t stop me from cursing him as he drove off. Clearly those lessons in etiquette that my mother gave me were tossed right out the window sometime near puberty.

Just as I was about to cry, yes frustration can do that to a girl, a minivan stopped. A frazzled mother of two got out of the drivers seat and walked towards me. She had a stain on her shirt and looked like she hadn’t slept in the last decade. I could understand why judging by the wail I heard from young lungs in her van. She offered me a smile, her cell phone, and even a pop. Then she offered to wait with me until help arrived. She clearly wasn’t having the best day herself, yet she stopped to help me improve mine. Today, this harried mother with wild hair and exhaustion in her eyes was my hero.

Yes, today a woman was my hero and she didn’t even need any superpowers. She just needed kindness and the ability to think of someone else. Of all the people that could have stopped, she probably had the most reason not to. She probably would have been better off with a nap or getting her kids to the babysitter faster, but she chose to stop. She made a choice to use her compassion to help another in the real world. What kind of superhero would you be?

“Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.” -- Benjamin Disraeli

Mutterings

I wish sometimes I remembered how to ask. Somewhere along the line I must have forgotten how to say the words I needed to. Just because you know what you want doesn’t necessarily mean that you will even ask for it.

I want you to tell me a story, your story. A story that makes me understand a side of you I have never seen. But I don’t know how to ask. I want you to tell me that the world isn’t a cold place and I will always be warm walking along side of you. But I haven’t the words. I want you to say that the dark shadow that haunts my nightmares can’t harm me while you are around. That seeing him wouldn’t send me reeling into memories best forgotten. But the words never come. I want to ask you to give me your friendship as well as your shoulder, to let me burden you with my chaotic thoughts. But I haven’t the heart to ask. I want to ask you to wipe away my memory and regret. To glue the broken pieces back together seamlessly. But I wouldn’t know where to begin. I even want to ask you to laugh with me, to enjoy my moments of joy. But I’ve forgotten how to speak.

Where would I start? It’s been so long since I bothered to ask anyone for anything. Someone asked me whose shoulder I had to cry on. The thing is I know those people are there. They are waving their arms at me as if they were tying to land a chopper. I know who “you” is. “You” is everyone I care about, who I know haven’t forgotten what it is to open themselves up to another. But I don’t remember how to ask. It isn’t that I need them right now or that I am falling apart. I just want to remember how. To ask is to open up a part of yourself, a part that I closed long ago in an effort to move on.

There’s no need to comment here, these are just my random mutterings. All I need is some chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and a good book. That and to appreciate that I do have those people there... regardless of if I ask or not.

“I'm just trying to look at something without blinking.” -- Toni Morrison

Say it ain't so

There is a moment in everyone’s life when all their fears about the future come to a head. We dread this day. It lurks in the back of our mind as the worst case scenario. Yesterday was just that moment for me. Yes, that’s right... yesterday I found out I was turning into my parents. Oh sweet god say it isn’t so! Really, there's nothing more frightening than when you catch yourself doing something that one or both of your parents did that drives you insane.

Yesterday I was sitting there trying to figure out how to fix something that I broke. The fact that I broke something is nothing new, but I caught myself saying my dad’s patented phrase, “Oh no I’ll fix it, all we need is a can of WD-40 and some duct tape”. When my ears heard me say this I knew this was the beginning of the end. Soon I will be asking the bag boy at the store if he can bag every cold item separately like my mother does (I have no idea why maybe they contaminate each other or something, there's no logic to be found here), or I could really fall and end up asking people around me when they’re going to tackle step 39 of a project that is only at step 6. But I won’t just ask them once. No, I’ll ask them once an hour... just to be sure. Oy.

I think some of this explains why I’m as insane as I am. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the psycho kind of insane that you'd have to worry about picking through your garbage in order to better stalk you with. I’m just that little bit of insane that makes people in my life shake their head. For example, I am physically incapable of replacing the roll of toilet paper. I'll always bring out a fresh roll, but somehow that sucker never seems to make it on the little roller thingy. When I get flustered the only word that leaves my lips sounds like a cross between a “what” and a “huh”. I play little games in my head as I watch people at the grocery store. I am always looking in their cart all nosey like in hopes that my mind can come up with the reason they are there and the story of their life. I don’t make it a normal life either. Oh no. I can’t tell you the number of ex CIA assassins and members of the mob that have gone underground I’ve met trolling the frozen food aisle.

I guess I was just realizing how much of my time lately I seem to spend in my head. I wouldn’t really say I was hiding from life, although that’s how I think this all started, but I would say that I am living there more than I did several years ago. I don’t blame my parents for my craziness; I just think their genetics helped it along a little. Life gave me my craziness. I wonder if that is why I like being online? Maybe the fact that I can live here but still reside for the most part in my head is what attracts me to this place. Or maybe I have found a new high-tech way to hide under my bed from the world at large.

“I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world's variety and uniqueness.” -- Maya Angelou

Office hurts

Today I went into Office Max. I just love office supplies. I know that’s weird, but I just can’t get enough of them. I have things in my desk that I don’t even have a use for or even know what it is. I don’t think I need 4 different colors of Post-it notes, or a handy little pen-like dispenser for glue. That seems particularly useless seeing as though I haven’t glued anything since the third grade. I even like the smell of permanent markers and rubber cement.

Anyway, I’m a sucker for anything that is an office supply. I guess it makes me a cheap date when I’d probably be just as happy with a bouquet of mechanical pencils as I would be with flowers. It also makes me terribly geeky I think.

I think my love of all things office started when I was younger and my dad would take me with him to work. Every once in a while on a Saturday, my dad would have some work to finish so he’d drag my brother and I along with him. He’s an electrical engineer and this was back when computer monitors only used the color green. Every time we’d go he’d get us a sub from 7-11 and a Slurpee. So while he was working on something or tinkering around with prehistoric geek parts, I would play with the things in his desk. I could make a chain of paperclips 3 miles long, make a projectile weapon with erasers and rubber bands, or draw little pictures on the corner of his dry erase board.

The neat thing was that every time I went back to his office I would see that he still had the pictures that I drew up on his dry erase board. He never got rid of them, and every time I went there I would give him a new one to look at. He was, and still is, a very quiet man. So he never told me that he liked them, but I knew he did just by the fact that they were never removed. To me and at that age, he was everything. He had all the answers. He was my hero.

It wasn’t until I was older that I had to face the fact that he was anything but perfect. We couldn’t be more different. It’s always hard when the person that you place on a pedestal falls from your grace. I think my teen years were especially hard on our relationship just because we are both two very different people with very real faults.

However, it still hurt the other day when he mentioned that he would be for an amendment that would ban gay marriage. This isn’t going to be a blog entry with my political rants, rather one of my sheer disappointment over his thinking. I don’t understand it, and I never will. It saddens me that my once hero would think this way and not even understand how it affects his child. It’s almost like he doesn’t understand what he is saying. Yet he knows and somewhat supports my lifestyle now. Civil unions he’d be okay with, but that’s all I really know because I wasn’t up to talking with him about it.

We have been on a rollercoaster, and I’d thought we were on an upswing from the damage of my teenage years. I guess this will be a test of my tolerance as well. I never thought I’d have to forgive my father for his moral view, but I it looks like I will have to. The bottom line is I wont allow a philosophical difference destroy all the hard work we’ve done. He taught me better than that.

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” -- Eleanor Roosevelt

Happy Easter

When I was a kid we used to hide the eggs around the house. Well my parents did because the Easter Bunny is rather busy you know. We would decorate like 8 hard boiled eggs the night before and leave them out. Anyway, they were terrible hiders. I mean come on; those suckers would be sitting on a self. Then they were sneaky and would hide one or two in impossible spots. They would say things like, “Well I think the Easter Bunny hid alla the eggs in this room.” ~or~ “The Easter Bunny might have been tired last night and wasn’t able to reach anything over eye level.” They would also hide our Easter baskets in odd places. You really never know what you’ll find in the tub or behind the water heater on Easter morning. However, seeing as though these people are related to me, our holiday was not without its share of disaster.

How could I ever forget the time that the dog grabbed the fake grass stuff out of the Easter baskets and drag it around the house. Or what about when my brother and I were finally in charge of the eggs and forgot to boil them? There is nothing harder in this world to get out of a squirming child’s hair than egg. Of course that wouldn’t have been a problem if my brother hadn’t crushed them on my head. I think the worst was when we forgot to find one of the eggs. It took us months to figure out what that mysterious smell was coming from the living room. I think the Easter Bunny was fired that year, but I can’t be sure.

The holiday was always one of my favorites and still is when I look back on it. It’s not about the candy because my brother would steal that anyway; it was that my parents always got so into the whole thing. They didn’t just sit back and let us open presents like on Christmas, but they got their hands dirty and wandered around pretending to look for things they had hidden. For one day they too were a child.

This Easter was good but in a different way. I didn’t go to mass. There is something about me going to church as a lesbian in conservative Arizona that didn’t really appeal to me. I did buy myself a chocolate bunny, but I didn’t hide it. How sad would it be if I hid my own bunny? I did see alla my family in the morning, played with the furry monster that just learned that sleeping under the covers is the cool place to be, chatted with friends, and ordered an Easter pizza. I know it might sound like I didn’t do much but it was nice to have a relaxing day chatting with friends. Of course that was only enhanced by the fact that one was from Ireland, two from the UK, one from Australia, and a few from the states. Now let me tell you, the accents alone that I was hearing over yahoo’s voice conference were enough to make any woman in her right mind swoon. I don’t care if you are in love with someone or in a relationship; you couldn’t have heard these woman talking and not have been loving life. That alone makes for a nice day. Well that and I got to chat with people that always make me smile even if they do call me girly.

I guess the point is that I would have thought I would have missed being a kid today, or being surrounded by family. I didn’t really. I had my chocolate bunny and found myself surrounded with the same feelings that good friends bring. That’s really the point I guess. So I hope you and yours had a wonderful holiday and you managed to laugh. And if you could hear a woman with an accent you really were one of the lucky ones!

"A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.” -- Fr. Jerome Cummings

Ah competition...

Ah competition... It’s everywhere. Generally I love it... I find it motivating, and I used to thrive on it. So much of my life has been spent in one form of competition or another. But when it reaches a point that I feel competition in my personal life or the way I relate to others, I shut down.... I give up.

Competition for the sake of it, or for spite, isn’t something I handle very well. Those kinds of games send me hiding under the bed with a stash of peanuts and Tab cola. Maybe it’s because growing up life was one great big competition. With my brother and I being polar opposites, it was only natural. And in most cases I enjoy it, or at least am inspired by it. It’s interesting that at every opportunity my family seems to foster this game of theirs. Sometimes people or situations have the ability to pit people against each other... never a good thing if you have an underling fear of not measuring up.

Now I feel I’m too old for it. Or maybe I feel in some cases that I’m just out gunned. I’ve long since believed in not playing the game if I don’t think I can win. Forget the joy of the game... I’d like there to be a goal of some kind I’m shooting for. So now when I hear that there’s some competition within my personal life, I have to fight the urge to just back away. I’ll have to find a way to ignore that I’m not holding alla the cards, and the house isn’t dealing a fair game. I think I’m going to have to see these inevitable moments in a better light, and not assume that I’ll never stand a chance. How do you convince yourself that the games you hate are sometimes the ones worth playing?

Games are everywhere, some more fun than others. But I wonder why some just seem to love them so much. There are those that seem to feed on them and the drama that surrounds them. They can’t be upfront with you, but have no problem complaining when life becomes too complicated. Why wouldn’t you just come out with what you’re saying? Why wouldn’t you say what you’re willing to tell others? This confounds me. I can’t imagine why my hiding spot under the bed isn’t more crowded and people are fighting me for the last peanut.

“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.” -- Jane Austen

A Mouse's best firend

If I could walk around with my computer strapped to my hip I probably would. I have a love hate relationship with this hunk of junk. It loves to hate me, and I hate to love it. It even has a name... Wanda. I know people name their cars and boats in hopes that they will bring them home safely. What’s my excuse?

I think I named mine solely for the purpose of having something to yell when it crashes. And believe you me, I can yell. I’m sure my neighbors sit around once a week and say something like, “Oh yes Bob, that girl’s computer just crashed again. Does her mother know she uses that kind of language? How shameful.”

So I spent the better part of this morning and yesterday morning trying to fix a friends computer. That’s always much more frustrating that dealing with my own for a few reasons: 1) People don’t know how to file things. It’s a wonder they can find their underwear in the morning without a map. 2) They sit there looking over your shoulder and asking highly technical questions. Now, attempting to learn new things is great, but that isn’t the best time for you to have your first lesson. 3) They are freaking out to the point that even their pets are hiding under tables. There’s nothing worse than working on someone’s computer and every little *ding* they hear gives them a stroke. 4) They always want to help. You sit there and watch them move their mouse at an excruciatingly slow pace, and it's all you can do not to shove them aside and confiscate it.

I’m sure they ask me for help because I’m really too much of a geek. I mean for the most part, these evil contraptions fascinate me. You’re probably sitting there thinking that you too are a geek. Well, unless you have random computer parts sitting on your kitchen table, you’re not a geek.

You’re not a real geek until you poke around in your open computer tower. Or instead of a normal collection like stamps or those state quarters, you collect MP3s. Ask yourself if you can tell me what a Sims character sounds like, or what it is like to get your ass kicked in some damn online game. Do you window shop at CompUSA only to salivate over a computer that could run a third world country?

I’m thinking one day I might become Queen of the Geek People. This would make my mother so proud of me I’m sure. All my little followers would know what an I-D-10-T error was. It would be apart of the Geek Manifesto. They also would count among their best friends, folks they’ve never met. We would probably never leave our homes. We would become a civilization of hermits that have tendinitis in their wrists from typing, and 20/300 vision from staring at a monitor all day.

The reality is that it’s an amazing world that you can get sucked into when you hop online. I bet you had no idea that you could meet such wonderful people, chat, read such entertaining fiction, learn so much about others and subjects you never thought you’d be interested in, and learn that it really isn’t the superficial that counts in the people you want in your life. Also, I bet you never thought you’d be able to say that yes, you too have met the Queen of the Geek People.

“To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.” -- Farmers' Almanac

So I’m drunk.....

So I’m drunk. It’s been a long time since I’ve bothered to get drunk. That’s possibly because I’m on vacation, or maybe because it’s been a while since I’ve been around friends. Either way I’m drunk. So a first time drunken post… this should be frightening to all that happen by this blog. (after reading this over I realize I’m too old to be drunk).

Isn’t it interesting that sometimes being in this state can bring about truths? Some of them I was reluctant to say, or other people heard some they were unwilling to face before, and some of the truths I myself had been unwilling to face. But it’s there… truth. So, I’ll blog about it in hopes that I remember that which I have failed to face. I cannot speak of their truth… that’s for them to find. But I can of mine… in hopes that I will remember it all and maybe make steps to improve.

I’m basically the friend that everyone looks to for comic relief. (something that has really been hammered home time and time again) For whatever reason I’m not the one that people drop their problems on until they have no other option. Sadly, I’ve been watching them for so long that I know them better than they think, so maybe I could be good with the issues they wanna talk about.

That’s my fault. I have depth… I just hide it. Once people find a way into the deep parts of you, they now have a way to hurt you. It’s so much easier to be the one that cheers others up even when your own world is lacking. I’m the quintessential party favor… You should have me over… I come with a lifetime guarantee to always be amusing and never cause a dyke drama.

The problem is it can be lonely to be in this role. So lonely in fact that you just make sure you stay there so that no one else can get under your skin. Real healthy I know…. oy.

People will say that it’s a gift to make people laugh… blah blah blah… But really it’s a way to hide. I was always great at hide and seek. It’s time I stopped and started worrying about me. It’s time I allowed myself not to hide to that extent. Maybe then a drunken night with friends wouldn’t leave me contemplating more things about my life that need to change… ugh change…

Really I had fun tonight… I just wish I talked to people like this more. Sometimes I think that it would be great if at least once a week I could have these deep life changing discussions when people would remember them.

I’m off to bed now… ready to regret the fact that I actually sent this sucker. Tonight was a good night. Not something I normally do… but sometimes it’s nice to step outside your normal box.