lobstah

No, not the unbelievable dinner I had with friends last week, but damn was that the tastiest meal I have had in a long time.

I feel like a lobster right now, or rather my version of a lobster, since I have no idea of the thought process of an actual lobster. Hopefully it's simpler than mine. Anyway. One of the ways you know you are getting a good lobster, is when you get them with their shells really hard. That means they are at the peak of their growth and that shell is about to be shed and a new, softer one grown. I imagine it must be uncomfortable for a lobster to be literally bursting at the seams and so eager to shed that shell and start the next chapter. As I feel like a lobster with a hard shell at the moment, it is decidedly uncomfortable for me, because I, too, feel like I'm bursting at the seams in more ways than one.

My brain is overworked lately and I am kind of excited to engage in some darwinian drinking, where hopefully all of the over-thinking, really tough brain cells will die in that evolutionary experiment. Perhaps the slow leak will increase its flow, that way.

I know I'm not going to write tomorrow, unless I have some sort of sappy iPhone charged moment, so here's to letting go of the year, knowing I am on the upswing, letting go of the apprehension and fear and distrust of the last four years, and to appreciating the people I am so fortunate to have in my life.

So fuck 2011, it's over. Ready to start year two in the decade of this girl.

the last spear

I have friends coming in from California today. They have never been to New York and they will be here for four whole days. I feel grossly unprepared in what I wanted to have done with the house, but they won't care and may even help me with my project, because they are just that awesome.

This New Years, I will have an important part of my west coast contingent and several of my closest friends on the east coast together at the same time, in the same place and what it is already doing for me is unbelievable. The battle wages on with training and pushing forward and I continue to fight it. I am feeling optimistic about things, mostly, and it's really nice to be having more sunny days than cloudy ones, again. I have decided that I'm taking January off from the party to recharge and prepare for the next steps, which are quite important. I have had an amazing year, all told, and going into the next one in such a good frame of mind and with this group of friends is a gift from the universe. Kind of like the cavalry is here.

The beauty about this all however, is that there is no last spear in this battle, because it is part of an evolution and evolution never stops.

o man......

Yeah, so this happened. Yet another installment highlighting the rationale behind my 'no relationships' thing, lately. It doesn't get much funnier than this.  Decent guy, but such an obtuse request.

And without further ado......

Dude: We were supposed to be doing a dinner at my friend Jenny's house, but everyone bailed except for me, want to maybe do something for Christmas, or is that too much too early?

Me: the Jenny you hook up with?

Dude: we haven't hooked up in years

Dude: but yes, that one

Me: you like to keep em close, don't you

Dude: when you have mutual friends, it's hard not to...haha

Me: insurance policy

Dude: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Me: you realize she may have worked it out that it was just the two of you?

Dude: no, I didn't think that at all

Dude: maybe I should bail

Dude: LOL

Me: wait, so you were asking me to join you for dinner at the house of some chick you used to fuck, just the three of us? You're on your own there, buddy, sorry

Dude: silly girl, people were coming after dinner for drinks

Me: yeah, i'm gonna go with no on that one, haha

Dude: you suck

Dude: i don't want to go alone, haha

Me: no, i really don't.

Me: i'm not putting myself in that position no way. for future reference, the answer to a question like that will always be no.

Dude: bite me

Me: and you wonder why i don't want a relationship with you. hahahahahahaha...o man.

Me: best question ever.

Dude: bite me

Me: you do see how ridiculous that is, right?

Dude: nope

Me: seriously?

Dude: seriously

Me: wow. hm. well i don't know what to tell you then, but purposely putting me in an awkward situation and being patently unaware, to boot, is pretty ridiculous.

Me: maybe think about a role reversal? I dunno.

Not much I can add to that one. Still laughing, though.

quotish

I may have put this up at some point in the last few years, but who cares. This quote bears repeating and is one of my favorites:

"If you treat a man how he is, he will remain how he is. If you treat a man how he could be, he will be come what he ought to be and should be."


Heard that at a young age, and it's one of those that stuck with me. I translate it to: being nice to people and treating them well bears returns not just in the fact that your relationship with that person (whether male, female, friend or lover) improves and is stable and happy, but in that the person's opinion of him or herself improves and they treat everyone in their lives better. If someone has ever done that for you (and someone has for me), then it's good practice to pay it forward, as your life has benefited.

People in my life and one in particular, are being very nice to me right now. I appreciate it and it makes me feel good. I'm [trying to be] nice back. Even to boss.

wochenende

I have a persistent cough that I've had for about the last three weeks. It sounds like a Volkswagen is going to come out of my lungs at any moment. I could be doing more to heal it up, but I'm sort of going with the flow of what's going on right now, which means I spend several nights a week out, at the moment, most of them with a cocktail or five in hand.

This weekend I went to see this band called Deadbeat Darling, twice. Great shows, both times. At the first show - which was at a small, dark venue on the LES, I texted my best friend from high school because the ninetys-ish sound they have going reminded me of when we used to chase bands around all weekend, every weekend, in my 1968 bug. I got nostalgic. I miss hanging out with bands - and being in one. I miss live music and I get all stoked when I have the chance to do something I used to do regularly and really love - especially when there is a personal connection to the band, via the person who introduced them to me.

On the way home last night, after many delicious and expensive drinks involving various iterations of whiskey, I found a phone in the cab I was in. I grabbed it, because it was a really nice droid phone and it would suck for someone to lose it. I waited. Predictably, it blew up with someone calling repeatedly at 1:30am, while I was washing my face. When I finally got to it, I thought the girl was going to burst into tears. I had pegged it for a guy's phone, because the bottom was cracked and it had no cover, and girls are usually more careful with their things. She's meeting me at 10:30 tomorrow morning, to pick it up. This was my good deed for the weekend.

Sickly

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renothingships

I laughed SO hard when I read this. Partly because it's just empirically funny, and partly because I have recently experienced such a thing after a one-dater refused - or refuses, to get my extremely direct message (I didn't completely ignore him, I told him I wasn't interested about fifty times - literally - and THEN I ignored him.)

I did consider publishing some of our correspondence, such as:

Me: "I've completely lost interest and have moved on, please leave me alone."

Him: "Wanna go to Miami and you can think about it?"

I truly don't understand it all; the boys sending such blatant and obvious signs of disinterest, followed by near stalking when I say 'Okay, bye.' It's really too confusing and too annoying for me to invest in, and I've arrived at a conclusion for how I will be proceeding henceforth, that I'm quite happy with.

See, when I was training, I did not have the emotional capacity to commit to another person and get all boyfriend. The couple of exceptions to that were guys that had exactly my same schedule, and were in the same places I was, most of the time. That was just easy pickins and it made it easy to keep the numbers down and be highly selective.  However, these were people I truly enjoyed spending time with, but who were in a similar position to me, or who didn't want to be fully invested, and so it worked out quite well for many years. When I retired, I made the fatal error of deciding to become a 'relationship girl'. I gave it two solid tries. One was just not meant to be and the other was an epic, epic, seismic fail. I believe I have now evened out and found what I feel is the best course of action going forward.

No more relationships, or at least no active searching for them. People do the most fucked up things in relationships. Things they would never do to their friends or family - only to those suckers who are dumb enough to get into bed with them  too quickly and think it means something. I prefer to take my time....suss things out and let my brain to the thinking.  Should something come out of left field and knock my feet out from under me, well I will happily evaluate that when the time comes.  In the meantime however, I can no longer invest in situations rife with high drama and low benefit.  The bonus......no one gets hurt or irritated, me especially.

I've been told I'm 'guarded', and maybe I am, but I'm not holding anything back. I'm still my same self with the jokes and the fun times and the affection. Just no emotional investment without good reason and unadulterated reciprocation on both sides.  Once it becomes un-fun or gets unnecessarily complicated by elaborate stories and things that just don't add up, I'm outta there. 

We learn, we grow, we continue to push out the bs.

wake up

I posed this question on facebook, which of course is the litmus test for all things being "real".

"Why can I wake up at 6am for an annoying dental visit (yes my dentist operates on hours that I can actually make), yet I can't wake up at 6am for a workout, which is awesome?"

No one chimed in. Probably because that was a rhetorical question and also probably because it is a stupid question. Part of me thinks that years of 4:30am wakeups did me in and I used up all of my capacity for that. I know that's bullshit, so the rest of me thinks it's because there is no outside pressure to do so. Plus I'm an insomniac who can't fall asleep or stay asleep.

See, I have been struggling with the whole "real athlete" thing. I trained like a motherfucker for so long and did workouts that only a sliver of people in the world would want to do for such an extended period of time, that the whole go-to-the-gym-and-take-a-class thing just seems like a cop-out to me. This is stupid. As I would tell any normal person, just getting your ass there and doing anything at all, puts you in a far better position to succeed and step it up in short order.  You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Where I stand now, yoga makes me sore. Granted this is no slouch's yoga, but really? I mean, really? Sore abs from yoga is an embarrassment to someone who routinely had a coach (albeit a very small coach) literally stand on her stomach during leg raises. The state of affairs is ridiculous and if I want to start racing again when I move, and I desperately do, I need to get back up with real lifting and quantifiable progress in my bigger muscle groups. Yes, I need to go back in with the boys and start squatting and deadlifting and carrying a 45lb weight through my ab circuits. At present, if I held a 45lb over my head while I did crunches, I'd come away with a broken nose and a fractured skull, after I dropped it on my face.

Progress - albeit slow progress - has been made, but I'm at the point now where I have 19 days left in the year to show myself that I can maintain some level of consistency and to not have one of those December 31st self-flogging fests, where I bitch and moan about letting myself down yet again. I did run a marathon this year, so regardless, it won't be a total loss, but I need to put some serious thought and effort into that 6am question.

After all, that's a good ninety minutes after the hour that I used to bounce (or slither) out of bed to go row in sleet, snow, rain, and cold. Bullshit.

smackers

Okay actually they are called Spanx, but I thought that would be a sucky title.

If you don't know - but seriously, who doesn't - girls do this strange binding ritual before they go out, when they are feeling less than spectacular about their shape, or are going to be photographed by the papparazzi. They squeeze ten pounds of sausage into five pound, stretchy, constricting casings called spanx. Spanx are basically modern girdles and while they do add a nice sleekness to just about any shape, the restriction that comes along with these bad boys is, well pretty restrictive.

Being a bit portly at the moment, I thought perhaps I should purchase a pair, in order to squeeze myself into shit I have no business wearing, so my odds of attracting a suitor would increase. I don't know what the hell got into me that this thought came across the scroll, but I found a pair that would (theoretically) "fit", and this morning, I attempted to pour myself into them. The logistics involved in this were significant. I think to put them on properly, one needs a team of professionals, a pair of rubber gloves, some advil and a shoe horn.

Once in them, movement is not so bad, generally speaking, however I do think they should include a catheter in the package, because should I have to use the ladies room, they will have to come down and then the quandary of how long it will take to summon the team, the rubber gloves and the pain meds versus just unpeeling the whole charade and letting the true level of rotund-ness shine through, is not worth it. I pretty much always err on the side of comfort, so I think I can say with some certainty, that this particular beauty garment will be leaving my arsenal.

The only thing I can think that would provide adequate explanation for the frequent wearing of this fabric boa constrictor, is that the girls who wear these things are like the floor model in the store. They are to be viewed only, not tested very rigorously and the dressing should never be altered, lest it mess up the aesthetic. I don't think those girls get laid. Just sayin. I mean what guy would be so patient as to wait while de-constriction is underway?

jack

Been in a Jack Johnson mood lately. The musician, not the boxer.

I think I'm on a seven year sort of cycle. Seven years ago, I really needed for things to speed up in a real way, on multiple fronts. Seven years later, they have reached a frothy pace and I now need them to slow down in a real way, on multiple fronts.

Turns out things pick up on the holidays, whether you want them to or not. Something I love about New York is that while most places slow down and people hunker and stay in during the winter months, New York is bustling. People actually go out more. And drink more. I think this may have to do with the fact that you can't spend your energy outside in the park or along the river or cruising around during the daylight hours, so people save it up and then go out all night, where the primary activity is drinking. An example may be going out to Long Island for what you think is going to be a relatively mellow night in with friends and pie and beirut, and having it start out that way, but finish up at sunrise after a quick zip back to the city, a bar, a lot of gin and then breakfast. Followed by a couple hours of sleep and a sluggish and questionably productive day, it sort of costs even more. Not that I have any complaints about how any of that went.

There are only twenty six days left in this year and apple cider with Jack Daniels rye whiskey is actually really good. And very potent.....in keeping with the Jack theme.

The significance of all of this means jack shit.

da keedz

This kid nearly brought me to tears with his passionate and extremely well-articulated message. I had to put it up for general consumption.

We really ought to just move past this issue, as I really can't see how it is even controversial.