September 30, 2004

It's A Nat King Cole Kind of Day

Yesterday did indeed fly by. I made my way back from London to our small and cozy house, noting how dark it was from lack of people and lack of sunlight, the rain clouds spilling outside and painting the world in mist. Walking to the kitchen, there on the refrigerator is a post-it from Mr. Y with a loving message. It touches me, and on closer inspection, I find two others in different places in the house.

What a man. Am I making you ill yet with my romantic idolatry?

I do a bit of blogging. A bit of work. Finish a book I was reading. I drink a beer and have an enormous bubble bath, courtesy of Lush (my new best friend), complete with lit candles and the window open, inviting the rain to bounce around the bathroom. After that, I get out and have my Mexican breakfast burritos (she had burritos. And she declared that they were good.)

I watched crappy Paramount TV, then around midnight I figured it was time to go to bed. I took my book and my pajama'd self upstairs, and upon pulling back the covers, I see that Mr. Y has left me a very sweet and very loving letter in the bed. I get a text from him that is sweet and heart-breaking at the same time, and I curse the inability for mobile phones to be able to let me reach my hands out and hold him and whisper in his ear how wonderful he is.

A quick round of self-relations and I heed Martha's advice-I surround myself with pillows and fall asleep, clutching one.

When I wake up this morning I see the letter Mr. Y left me in the bed proudly on display on my dresser. If I could, if it wouldn't be too hokey and make people within a 5 mile radius vomit, I would frame it with his post-it notes to that I could always have it. Love letters are, to me, the essence of it all, the center, the one thing that a person can always have.

And it made me think. Somewhere deep inside a frozen storage unit in Sweden is a cardboard box that has been lugged across two countries (and will be lugged here, shortly). It has seen some wear and tear, and it's not a box that I go into that often. Inside of the bumpy and rattly box are small ribbonned bundles, bundles that come in various sizes, bundles that come in various emotional investment.

Love letters.
They're love letters from old lovers.
And I won't throw them away.

I don't ever go in the box and open up the ribbons, I don't really feel the need to read the letters again. I think about each ribboned bundle and I remember what it was like to be with that person, what it was like to be loved like that, in that way, by that person. The box contains the detritus of every possible stretch of relationship-letters, pictures, programs, momentos, trinkets. It's not that I want any of these things, it's more like I want to be able to remember what each person and each relationship was about.

There's a few letters from Carl, hastily written on the back of book order forms, as he left them beneath my windshield wiper on my car, in the parking lot of the bookstore we worked in together. Carl and I never had a proper relationship, we never dated, but he was someone I cared about a lot. Tall, brooding, dark brown eyes and tattooes on his arm that told of a youthful past gone wrong. The last time I heard from him was on one of those book order forms on my windshield, telling me that he could stand outside the store and watch me forever, before he fled into the night, never to be seen in the book store again.

There are some cards from my first husband, a short jerky-moving Italian man with forearms like Popeye. He was never one for words, he hated reading, and his cards don't make much sense. I don't think I have opened that bundle since leaving him, but seeing as he's one of the exes that I care about the least, that I have the most to forget him for, maybe that bundle will always stay ribboned. He called me Cat Eyes. I call him a Mistake.

There are a number of love letters from a man I called the Painter. I'm not sure how he got that name, I never know how they get their names, I only know it had something to do with a girlie evening and too much wine, and unfortunately for him the name stuck. He was a weight-lifter, a chemist, and a man with whom I had nothing in common. When we had the purely unsatisfying sex he moved like a rabbit, bucked-teeth and all. Our relationship was short (not short enough) and I am not sorry when I say I hardly think about him.

One large bundle comes from Michael (weird, but that seems to be the post that Mr. Y got named in), a very tall man with thinning hair that was my boyfriend for quite a while. Michael thought everything was a wildly romantic jaunt, a moment of Renaissance to be captured forever, and his letters reflected it. He liked me best when I was sitting down, my head leaning on my hand. He liked me when I was what he wanted me to be. And I liked him before he slapped me and threw me out of the house, naked.

There are several bundles in that box, and also in that box is the Silver Box, a box which I will never let go of.

The only bundle not in that unit is the collection of letters I have from Mr. Y.
Those are here with me.
And you know, I never had his letters in the box. They've always been seperate.

So I have a box. And Mr. Y knows about it and, in fact, when the box gets here he is more than welcome to look through it. I know that he has a box as well, and his box is welcome in our home too. He has love letters from me, in fact. Long, hand-written numbers that may gracefully grow old inside of their small and neat envelopes. And even more so, he has this blog-this blog, where I lay my heart on the line and tell him and everyone who stops by here (sometimes on a daily basis) just how much he means to me.

I'm not one of those women who demand their lovers burn the evidence of past loves, I don't think throwing old lovers into a fire really rids you of them. I think people should keep the love letters, the pictures, the momentos. Keep them in a box and let them serve as a reminder of what it was like to be loved like that once upon a time, and what it's like to be loved now.

That's what my letters do.
I wonder where I can get a frame for my latest love letter.
And if you'll excuse me, Cole's "The Very Thought of You" is on my iTunes, and I need to go listen to it and miss someone.

-H.

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September 29, 2004

Spare Time on My Hands

I'm sitting at the train station, on an empty platform. The air outside smells like Autumn-a heavy organic mix, chilly underscoring wind, with a hint of coal or anthracite topping off the scent, likely from a neighbourhood nearby. I have missed my train and have to wait 24 minutes for the next one, but seeing as the reason I have missed it is because I was bent backwards over the bed frame being drilled like a rookie cadet by Mr. Y, I simply don't mind at all.

In fact, I'm kinda' glad. I'm in a good mood. Nothing says 'Have a good day!' like morning sex.

Unless it's accompanied by evening sex, that is.
Which it was.

Mr. Y leaves this evening for Sweden for 3 days, and I have to be honest and needy and say that I will miss him terribly. I hope to hear from him often-he is going to pack up his belongings, and I myself know how distressing that can be, how hard it is to pick through a life. It won't be the longest he and I have been apart-after all, we've been apart for years before-but it will be the longest we're apart since moving to our house in Whitney Houston. Maybe that's not so significant, it just feels like a type of new step.

At the same time, sometimes it can be nice to have space in the togetherness. When I was away last weekend, Mr. Y missed me terribly and I know it gave him something to look forward to-not only was the house all his, but once the novelty of that wore off, he had someone to look forward to holding again. I think this is likely the case with everyone-at first it's something new and different to be home alone, but that's followed sharply on the heels of 'Man I miss them terribly!'

Personally, I am both looking forward to and not looking forward to being alone. I used to do it a lot-X Partner Unit used to travel a great deal and I would have the house to myself. Being alone does not frighten or intimidate me (albeit, this is the short term being alone, not the I'm-going-to-die-alone-in-50-years-covered-in-20-cats alone.) I don't mind occupying my own space, I think I am pretty good at it (although historically there have been a few times when I have started venturing down the dark side while alone, but I honestly think I am ok now). I don't get scared, I don't get worried. I may be a little nervous handling the middle of the night ghosts by myself, but that's easily solved by running and flinging myself into the bed, burying myself under the covers until I am sure they've shrugged their shoulders, unable to find me (since ghosts don't think to look under the covers) and walked away.

I debated asking Karl to the movies or something like that, but the truth is, I think I would rather just be alone. I have some things planned-a few visits to the gym. Certain meals will be prepared that I know he doesn't like-Mexican breakfast burritos for one (mmmmmm'¦.eggs, potatoes, salsa, cheese and spices all wrapped in a tortilla'¦.mmmmmm). Macaroni and cheese (from a box! We usually make it form scratch, but baby I am going downmarket now!) Maybe a pizza. I will sleep in the middle of the bed, hogging all of the covers and making a burrito of myself with the duvet. I will be watching a lot of channel E4, which has such American fare as West Wing, Angel, Friends, and Sex and the City. I may also be renting some DVDs of chick flicks that I know don't interest him (*cough*Cold Mountain*cough*). I'll be running around in my pajamas, using a face mask, drinking wine, dancing on the table and shaking my thang if the song hits me (ok, I usually do those things anyway). And I will try to spend some time writing, since I think I need to get on with it.

At the same time, I know that these activities, while initially interesting, will bore me quickly. There are only so many old episodes of Buffy that one can watch before her pug nose just gets on your nerves. The gym is less fun if I can't bitch about it to someone else. I say I will sleep in the middle of the bed, but the truth is I will most likely wander over to my side in the middle of the night, every night. To some extent, the activities I have planned are 'shoring up the walls' type of activities, since you know what?

I am really, really going to miss him.

So if anyone needs me, I will be wearing a face mask, drinking wine, and watching crap tv. I will be making my favourite meals and possibly attending a yoga class. I will be having long bubble baths with enough foam to fill a concrete mixer and listening to Enya while I do it.

I will also be longing for my boy. I will be waiting for him to return on Saturday, when I will hug him and make him one of my specialty meals for dinner. I will be hoping he is feeling ok and doing ok and if he's not I will be there to comfort and listen if needed. I will be looking forward to having his warm body next to mine in the bed, and when we wake on Sunday we can have our usual routines of breakfast and the Sunday paper.

And I will definitely be hoping he's up for a round of 'baby I missed you' sex.

I know I will be.

-H.

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September 27, 2004

Moi Aussi, J'adore Paris...

Thursday morning Emily and I got dropped off at the local train station by Mr. Y, and hopped a train into London Waterloo, where a new adventure awaited. We would be taking the Eurostar from London to Paris, point to point in 2 hours 35 minutes. For real.

Waterloo offered a host of picnic goodies that Emily picked up, as well as some more reading materials, and we walked our way through the Eurostar boarding area, security, immigration and headed to our train. Seated in the first car of the train, we had a set of four seats available for our own fun. Stretched out, shoes off and socked feet on the seats, we gorged on pasta, cheesecake, buffalo mozzarella and tomato salad, and a total of 2 bottles of wine.

When in France and all.

Just on the other side of the chunnel was France, a blistering windy grey day, wrapped in countryside that was slightly flatter and slightly browner than we had just left behind. We arrived at Gare du Nord, a train station on the right bank, and took the Metro to our hotel area. After much huffing and puffing, we finally found said hotel, and lemme just say...it was nothing like the pictures. We had pictured some wildly sweet and quirky older hotel, exposed beams and charming sitting areas. What we got was an old hotel. Full stop. Someone else got the cute courtyard.

We didn't really care.

We took off right away for Notre Dam. Gorgeous, Gothic, packed with tourists, Notre Dam was also in the middle of a service. The congregation was tiny, but the service amazing-walking in I heard the song of the blue-robed monk raise up inside of my ears and my eyes. His chant was slow, nearly-wordless, and no great rise in octaves, but it soothed my Tasmanian soul and I quietly lit two candles, the same two candles I always light, as I waved a flame for my grandfather and Kim. And under a statue of Joan of Arc (Jeanne D'Arc, whom, in Notre Dam was found innocent of heresy and witchcraft...24 years after she was burned at the stake. The Catholics get there in time, even if deadlines mean nothing to them.) I lit two more candles, for Egg and Bacon. The first candles I had ever lit for them, although I am sure not the last.

We climbed the towers (nearly 500 steps!) for a breathtaking view of Paris.

Paris

Then we headed back, a bit knackered, and bought wine, champagne, decadent cookies, and orange juice, and went back to the room. On the way we looked for ice to chill the fizzies, but couldn't find any, so we bought the next best thing-a big cheap bag of frozen broccoli. Hey-we're resourceful chicks. We finished off a bottle of wine (when in France and all) and fell right asleep.

The next morning we started off with mimosas (when in France and all), however in the end it was less orange juice and champagne and more champagne. We got up and out of the hotel room, broccoli resting in the sink, and took a boat tour of the Seine, getting out at the Champs Elysees and l'Arc de Triomphe. It was a beautfiul, sparkling, lovely day-warm, sunny, and the sky was crystal blue. We walked up the street, stopping to worship Sephora, which I love, and then ate warm crepes as we kept walking. We hopped the boat again and headed to the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower was packed with tourists, and after a meal of pommes frites, we got in the queues. And waited. And waited. We waited to buy tickets, we waited to get to the elevator, we waited to get to the summit, and after the summit we waited to get back down (although were terribly amused by a newlywed Scottish couple, with him talking about "Paris and all that romance bollocks.")

My French was holding up rather ok there, but I noticed a lot of changes in Paris. First off, I noticed that people were so much kinder than they were when I had last been there (which, apart from a one-night business trip that I don't think counts, was 1995.) The French, in general, just seemed sweeter and more helpful, more able to laugh and joke (that, and my French is much worse now than it was in 1995). Secondly, I noticed that there were armed soldiers and policemen everywhere, especially at the Eiffel Tower. And when I say armed, I mean big fuck-off guns. And third...I only thought of Kim a few times, and it wasn't in any kind of deep, painful loss-it was just in passing, remembering a place or two I had been.

I was thinking of Mr. Y the whole time, and with my whole heart.

Emily and I decided to see the lights of the Eiffel Tower at night, and so had two glasses of wine at a local cafe (when in France and all) and discussed which restaurant to eat at. We were talking, when a local boy walked by carrying two take-away pizza boxes. Emily and I sat straight up.

"I'll tackle him, you take the boxes, and we run." I said grimly.
"I so want pizza right now, too!" she giggled.

And so we went and got a take-away pizza and a bottle of wine (which the shopkeeper flirtatiously opened for us on-site. When in France and all.) and we went and sat on the grass in front of the Eiffel Tower, scarfing perfect pizza and drinking straight out of the bottle, with this as our backdrop.


Eiffel Tower


We giggled and went back to the hotel room, where we polished off more wine (when in France and all), passing out. We were briefly inconvenienced by our neighbors-a group of American girls in the room next to ours that insisted on getting ready for a hookers' night out with the door of their room wide open and their Midwestern accents clogging up the hallway. I opened up our bedroom door, startling them.

"Les americaines!" I snarled in my best crap French accent. I slammed the door, but at least they shut theirs, too.

At 3 am we were woken up again by said cows returning back to their room-first we heard them yelling down the road, then they decided to continue partying in their room. I thought Emily was asleep and didn't want to wake her up, so I stuffed kleenex in my ears and dealt with it. Turns out she wasn't, and at 9 am the next morning, when we woke up, we decided revenge was needed on the likely-hungover cows.

Nothing says I love you like CNN blaring loud in the morning.

So we did that. Then Emily walked by the wall, hacking up her lungs to wake them up, managing to slam into the wall quite a few times. No result. So she chucked a coke bottle. I winged a water bottle. The hotel room service menu was airborne. Then she had an inspiration, and picked up her tennis shoes and handed me one. We knew what to do. In synchronized motions, we winged them at the wall.

It worked-they woke up.
Hands across America and all.

We got up and went to the grocery store to buy some goodies for Mr. Y, then met a sweet chickie and fellow blogger for lunch. Then Emily and I hustled to Waterloo, caught our train (along with a half bottle of red wine. When leaving France and all.), and raced back to England and a barbecue with my lovely Mr. Y. I had missed him very much, as much as he missed me (I got the nicest text messages from him, just as Emily was getting the nicest phone calls from her KW), and when he greeted us at the train station he picked me up and kissed me.

I needed that.
I needed him.
I still do.

The barbecue went by without hassle-Emily was pretty widely accepted by the group, and it was a nice and entertaining evening. We all spent the night at Mr. Y's brother's house, and the next morning Mr. Y, Emily and I left for a day at Brighton.

Brighton

Which, apparently, is where Mr. Blair was also, spending time at the Labour Conference (along with more policemen and peaceful protestors than I have ever seen.). We walked around, Emily buying a few fabulous souvenirs, and then we had a typical English meal-fish and chips (wrapped in parchment paper, of course, and with a useless tiny fork) as we sat on the pebbled beach by the Brighton pier.

Emily and Mr. Y

The three of us went home, after stopping to buy an enormous mound of English, French and Scottish cheeses for her to take home, and managed to get Mr. Y to join us in a mud mask treatment. We polished off three bottles of wine and went to bed early, but not before one last pic (ignore the fact that Ems and I are without makeup).

Ems, Mr. Y and Helen

Emily is now bound for Houston, I am in a boring meeting, my Mr. Y is ensconced within Company X for the day. The week ahead may be a bit difficult-not only will I miss Emily (and hearing about the Tiaras, Sarah, and her life), but my lovely boy is off to Sweden on Wednesday for a few days, to spend some time with his kids and pack up his belongings, so I will miss him too.

The good news is I am mad about my boy.
The good news is I had a lovely time in Paris and with Ems.
The good news is in exactly two months I will have my cats.

-H.

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September 23, 2004

Gay Paree

Yesterday didn't turn out quite as lovely as Tuesday had.

In fact, yesterday was the kind of day that made me feel like squirmy, uncomfortable embarrassment had drifted under my skin. The kind of discomfort that no loofah in the world is powerful enough to scrub away the layers of self-repulsion that lay under the epidermis of who I am, how I acted, what I said, what I thought. The kind of day that left me feeling very low about myself, but hopeful that after a small talk with my Mr. Y (whom I love very much) in which we will pretend the day never happened means that I can leave it behind me.

So I am off to Paris at lunch with Emily. When we return, it's off to Brighton for a barbecue with Mr. Y's family.

See you Sunday.

-H.

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September 22, 2004

A Pearl Necklace Kind Of Day...

Sometimes you can have a great day due to one, enormous, incredible event-winning the lottery. Meeting the man/woman of your dreams. Being the first in the season to discover that black really is the new black. Tearfully accepting the Nobel Prize. Events like those are like getting the Hope Diamond on a chain around your neck, a big sparkly that everyone notices.

But for most average people like myself, a great day often consists of a string of wonderful little pearls that, once slung together on a string, you can wear around your neck and have people admire their perfectness. There's something on your face or in your walk that makes people say: Hmmmm...is she having a great day or did she just get laid? And the fact is, the day wasn't extremely unusual, only special due to the continuing theme of My Day is Outgoddamnstanding.

Like the past 24 hours were for me.

First off, Mr. Y and I troop to the IVF doctor, which was a rare and precious thing. I continue to ooze over my sweet and nervous boy, my boy who has agreed to the next step, my boy who has a body that I still just can't keep my hands off of. Mr. Y and I cook a nice red onion and goats cheese tart for ourselves and Emily, and we all turn in early due to exhaustion and, in Emily's case, not feeling well. Mr. Y and I curl into each other and then quietly heat up the bed, and then fall asleep a big tumble of limbs, the duvet thrown off and the window open.

In the morning we drive to the office together, since my meeting is in Company X premises all day. I love driving together. I love getting coffee together. I love knowing he's 2 floors up. And I feel very thin and cute in my outfit, trim in the waist and girlie shoes-perhaps the last time I can wear them until next Spring, as Autumn drifts around us-nicely turned out.

I got a text message from him during the day that was among the sweetest ones he's ever sent me. Sitting in my boring meeting, my phone lights up, and I flip open the lid to see his message: I think I am feeling more at peace with our relationship on a daily basis.

It fills me so full of hot oozy lava that I burned a smoldering hole right through the chair.

The meeting continues and although it's boring, it's with people that I enjoy working with. We tease each other and talk. We can work together, and although we don't any of us hang out together off-work, they are people it's a grin to have a pint with in the pub. When the meeting ends, my boy is standing in the hallyway waiting for me, looking so cute it makes my toes curl.

Mr. Y and I head to the grocery shop to buy fixings for dinner, and something about it just seemed so normal, so "this-is-how-normal-people-live". We push the cart. We buy juice. I touch his bottom a lot and he lights up when I see him once I turn the corner to the aisle he's perusing. We make dinner, a fantastic soup. We watch Mystic River, and then Emily joins us for our favorite show, an English show called Nylon, about an Englishman in love with an American woman (fiting!)

And the final cap in my feather in my 24 hour period? I was something of a fortune teller. Due to "not fitting in", he's resigned. No more dealing with him. That bastard is AWOL.

That's right. Von PettyPumpkin has quit.

Just imagine me walking down the hallway, throwing the Dr. Evil "MWAHAHAHA!" type laugh over my shoulder, doing a victory dance.

Cause I'm doing both.
Still.
Really.
Worried I might trip even.

-H.

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September 21, 2004

Continue With the Whistling, Not Advice, 'K?

I have to head off to work and we've overslept, so a short one...

We talked to the doctor yesterday, and got all the news that was fit to print. It sums up thus:

- Mr. Y and I agreed to continue moving forward through the process, even if we aren't sure about all our options of the process.

- In the U.S. when they say "tubal ligation" they really mean "tubal obliteration by means of incredibly large blow torch". Re-structuring them is like trying to catch a fart in a colander.

- The doctor has sticky lips. I hate that.

- My English Mr. Y is fantastic...he took exception to the doctor when he made a crack about Americans.

- I am so fucking lucky to be with Mr. Y, who asks many questions and takes care of me.

- I am a little scared. So is he, I think.

We are off to work now-give a thought to Emily, since she has a real kicker of a cold, and it sucks to have a cold on holiday.

And give a thought to Clancy...his baby is with Egg and Bacon now, and my heart is over at their house.


-H.

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September 20, 2004

Guinness, Hallway Wanderings, and Irish Music

The weekend was a blur.

Saturday morning Mr. Y, Emily and I get up at oh-God-hundred and head for Heathrow, to catch a flight to Dublin. It's early in the morning, I'm pissed off about another fight with my family, we all need coffee, and we sit around waiting in a crowded waiting area for our flight. And we wait. And wait. And flights after ours are leaving, but ours still doesn't have a gate. Mr. Y goes to the business lounge to ask what's up, and as he does, I see a gate number flash on the screen. I ring him.

"It says Gate 82." I say, looking at the screen.
"Well, the lady here is telling me it just took off."
"But it says Gate 82 here." I reply dumbly.
"Can you walk to the gate and see what's up?" he asks.

I hang up and walk to the gate, and Emily waits between the two of us. Once at the gate, I realize something has gone horribly wrong.

"Are you on this flight?" Attila the Hun barks at me, annoying boater hat askew.
"Yes, there are three of us." I reply, dazed.
"You have to choose. Do you fly alone or do you all miss the flight?"
"What?" I ask.
"Decide!" she barks.
"Hang on a minute!" I yell back, annoyed at this sudden Sophie's Choice of the airline world. "We've been waiting forever and you've only just announced the gate in the boarding lounge! This isn't our fault!" I flip open my phone and call Mr. Y. "Gate 82! RUN!" I shout into it.

Attila and I are in a battle of the wills, and I can only hope that Emily and Mr. Y run like the wind. They do, and make it just in time, so all three of us troop to the last row of the plane, doing the walk of shame like we held up the plane, when we really hadn't.

It started off well. Luckily, we were able to recover quickly-Dublin was lovely and calm, the weather holding rather well and cooperative. We made our way through the city, stopping for periodic pints, and of course having a grin at the Temple Bar. I introduced myself to the drink that is Guinness, and although I think we can be good acquaintances, I really think it's a limited friendship.

Saturday night we went to various diddly-diddly pubs, drinking and talking to people. Emily talked a lot to the musicians (who seemed thrilled that someone knew actual traditional Irish songs instead of just 'When Irish Eyes Are Smiling'), while Mr. Y and I talked to people around us-we got to know a nice Finnish couple, a Norwegian family, an older couple from Chicago on a golfing tour, and I spent some time talking to the Spanich bodhran player. You know. Cause they have masses of those.

And somehow, we all wound up getting pretty drunk.
After 8 pints or so.
So maybe it's no big surprise that we got drunk.

It was a late evening, and we weaved our way into the hotel. Mr. Y and I hit the bed, took our clothes off, and I brushed my teeth and took my contacts out. As I finsihed up, I opened the bathroom door and saw my lovely, lovely naked boy standing there.

"I'm just going to go to the toilet." he said, and then walked out of the room.
I ran after him, opening the door, as he was standing confused halfway down the stairs.
"Honey!" I call. "The toilet's in here!"
"Ah!" he says, and comes back in the room.

We hit the bed and sleep soundly all night.

Sunday was a nice day spent walking around the city and touring the gorgeous and artistic Guinness factory. It was a nice and relaxing day, and in the end we had a nice quiet meal and not too much to drink-thankfully, otherwise you could wring us out and use us to clean surgical instruments.

I come home to some good news-Luuka is misbehaving already at Eric's place. That bear is unbelievable. She's such a ho, she really is.

Secondly, there is a present waiting for me, of a book I have been dying to read. It's from Goldie, who is fantastic and I am so glad she is writing again. She's been missed. Thanks, babe!

And last, but far from least...Mr. Y and I have a doctor's appointment this afternoon. Four p.m. to be exact. He even told someone on the phone earlier that he's unavailable this afternoon as he has a doctor's appointment. The truth is, I doubt the doctor will be snapping on rubber gloves and checking him out, but he will maybe be doing so to me.

It's our first visit to an IVF consultant, to learn more about our options.
It's a big thing.
Honest.


A Laugh in Dublin.jpg


-H.

PS-if you can-with IVF/baby stuff...well, it hurts a hell of a lot, actually. So if you like me just a bit, please can we continue on the no-advice route? By all means, whistle your support or tell me a joke...just remember that it is an amazingly sensitive area.

Thanks.

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September 17, 2004

You Can Only Mess With The Adults

Wednesday was spent in a state of feeling like I had a big Band-Aid over my heart and feelings. Egg and Bacon weighed heavily on my mind, and I found I was thinking of aspects of them I hadn't before-would they have had brown hair or blond? Blue eyes (no Punnett Square can tell me that as I have missing links in my background)? Would they hold hands when they crossed the street? Would they hate kidney beans like I do?

Riding the tube into work I read the newspaper, when I come upon perhaps the most heat-wrenching article I've ever read in my life, about three teenagers that convenently used a six-week old puppy as a football. The puppy had to be put down. There is a picture of it, looking like the most perfect animal I would love to adopt.

And just like that, I was a 30-year-old embarassment in floods of tears on the tube.
Floods.

I have this thing about me-you don't hurt children or animals. Ever. If you do, you face my wrath, a fury so strong that you can see why I need therapy so much. Oh yes-by day I am calm mild-mannered Helen. By abuse I become the Infurinator, I would rip the limbs off of people. I had images of me being Lucy, holding the puppy-kicking teenager's heads on a tee and letting Charlie Brown actually connect with them. You don't hurt children or animals-I walked out of some dinosaur movie when the dinosaur at e Fido the family pet, strapped to the backyard. I know it's just a film, I know it wasn't real. I simply can't have any support for that kind of thing, I'm the chick that became a vegetarian 4 years ago because of my love for animals and I haven't looked back on the meat world since. I'm the chick for whom all the neighborhood cats are welcome in my house. I'm the chick that would have animals galore, space and Mr. Y permitting.

I tried to find the link online to send to Mr. Y once I got to work (on my working but now completely stripped laptop) and instead found this link.

What a sick fucking world we live in.

Then my banshee came out, and she came out hard. Von PettyPumpkin got blistered in my path when we were discussing desgin documents and commercial agreements. I felt he was being unreasonable.

"Look Helen," he oozed, pissing me off already. "You just have to understand [that fucking saying again!]. Six months from now you and I may be sitting across from each other in a court of law."

I stare at him. "I think the odds of you sitting across from me in six months time are extremely small." I say, unflinching.

And the men in the room actually add an: "Ooooooo!" sound, like you make when someone has stung you good.

Von PettyPumpkin turned red, but we didn't speak again.

Later I talked to Mr. Y about how crushed I was about the animals. He pointed out that adults in the world are often mistreated, adults have horrible atrocities that happen to them. I know this, and my heart goes out to them, too. But there is something even more horrific about animals and children facing the brunt of torture and abuse, and upon thinking about it, I realized what it is: Animals (especially the puppies in question) and children really can't defend themselves. How can people pick on things which can't defend themself? What kind of fucking monsters are they?

The day got better. I talked to my dad, who not only took my call, but told me despite being sent my blog link with an email referring to the damaging posts (said link provided to him, apparently, from the other side of my family that aren't speaking to me. Unforgivable. Absolutely not ok.) that he loves me no matter what, and he won't read the blog again. Even though some things in the call hurt-he and my grandmother were in Paris for 5 days but didn't think to call me to see if I wanted to join them-in the end I didn't care-it was so fucking nice to be talking to my father, laughing and joking with my father, and I sit here on the edge of tears thinking of how relieved I was that I hadn't lost him, too.

Mr. Y got me trashed on red wine later, and we tidied up waiting for Emily. We laughed and relaxed and had a fantastic meal. And my mood went up after seeing the news at the gym, during which I cheered my ass off on the elliptical trainerm celebrating the end of a horrible and disgusting sport of extreme cruelty.

Fox hunts have been banned.

Maybe it was karmic relief for a little six-week-old puppy, who will never know what it's like to run the fields himself.

-H.

PS-Emily is here. She's hilarious, and showed up out of the arrival exit looking all the world like a bright red flame. I have heard masses about the Houston Tiaras, who I think sound like a right rowdy cool bunch, KW and their fabulous menagerie, she has some cinnamon Sephora lip gloss I want to steal, and she's one astute chick. She can hold her own in a bar code chat with Mr. Y. She pointed out to me that I have a big fuck-off surgery scar behind my ear (a fact I had never known). And we got pretty drunk and ate a big Moroccan meal last night, so I think this is going well so far

PPS-Holy tostadas, Batman! Luuka is alive and well and with Eric!

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:28 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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September 15, 2004

Happy Birthday Babies

Today is September 15.

September 15, with the brisk air outside signalling that autumn is here, September 15, the day when Japan celebrates a day of Respect for the Aged. The day I get my laptop back. My father's birthday, whom I will call tonight and hope he takes my call. The day of the first new moon. A day I am feeling low.

And the day that my twins would've been 2 years old.

I called them Egg and Bacon, since I thought a name would be too personal and I had just read a book by John Irving, influencing me on the Egg angle. Two little woeful fetilized eggs, two eggs that had divided into 8 cells. My twins, my babies, my Egg and Bacon. I had a brutal round of IVF to try to conceive them, and I got pregnant.

Pregnant. Me. Nutty, skitsy, difficult, temperamental me. I was pregnant, and the wild thing is, once they were transplanted into me more than anything on earth I really wanted to be pregnant.

For a little over a week, I was pregnant. It was no time at all, just a blip in the calendar, a hold-over during the holidays. It was a blue line on a hospital-strength pregnancy stick. A blink of an eye on the global scheme of things, but something that changed my life.

Before Christmas I was pregnant.
By New Years' I was hemorrhaging a red tide, gushing out the thick cushy nest the hormones and I had been building for my babies, rushing out the perfectly balanced hormone levels designed to keep them growing, ripping off the strands and strings that were holding them to the wall of their new abode...and feeling my body out my babies, too.

I remember it all, and I remember it like it was yesterday, instead of nearly 3 years ago. I remember the shots, I remember the nose spray. I remember the vaginal suppositories and I remember the crying jags. I remember the srugery, the ultrasound on my swollen and engorged ovaries. I remember the blue line on the hospital's pregnancy stick and the faint lines on the 10 over-the-counter ones I bought, ripping open the packages with Halloween candy hope. I remember what it was like to be pregnant, and I remember sitting on the toilet in the hardware store, X Partner Unit looking for some paint for the hallway unaware of the lavatory drama, me crying, wailing, staring at the blood in the toilet understanding that, suddenly, I wasn't pregnant.

And I think about babies all the time. When I leave a building in London and see a whole gaggle of gorgeous little schoolgirls, holding hands in matching burgundy cardigans and identical band-aids on the knees. When I watch a tv show and a lonely woman looks out her window, cupping hot tea mug in one hand and the oh-how-I-wish-I'd-had-children look etching out the corner of her eyes. When Mr. Y talks to his children, that paternal hope and love that eases his soul and lights up the air. And when I see a baby on the street, a nestled pink dove in a sleeping duvet, I feel my heart plunge to the floor, my feet on an elevator crashing to the bottom level of a skyscraper.

I can feel happy for others. Simon has a beautiful new baby boy-I sent him a little gift, and little gifts for his other two children (I think older children should always have gifts too, if a new baby in their family get presents. I have always wanted to buy a pair of pinky sparkly fairy wings for little girls, and now I have had my wish. I buy gifts for the kids I know, so maybe my role isn't as mother but rather as a fairy godmother. Maybe I should go get a pair of pinky sparkly wings for myself.). Clancy and his lovely girlfriend are expecting. Gudy's wife is due very, very soon. I honestly am so happy for them.

At the same time, it tears a huge hole in my heart to think that I am not there myself. That I don't know if I will ever be there. That the love of my life still isn't sure how he feels about babies, we still don't know which direction we will take, but in any case, I simply don't want to hear any of that "why don't you adopt, you selfish cow?" or "dump Mr. Y and pick yourself up a 20-year-old fertile Italian boy desperate to have a dozen children." This is my man, and we need to find a way through this together.

Please...if you like me at all, please no advice today. By all means, whistle your support, let me know you care, leave a thought, but please, as my friend...no advice.

Maybe finding that way starts next week. Hopefully we get some answers and some ideas. Hopefully we can see options and discuss thoughts. Next week...when we have an appointment with an IVF specialist here in the UK.

I wrote a letter to Egg and Bacon those years ago, when I was still pumped full of hormones, soft stomach and high hopes. Since I wanted them so badly, I wrote a letter I hoped I could give them someday, some way of showing how much I wanted them. A letter, as I am so fucking pathetic that writing things down is the only way I can find to let things out.

I've attached the letter that I wrote to two tiny cells. The inanity of it kills me. I don't need the calendar to remind me that this was their due date. Somewhere deep inside of me, I will always remember today. I will always know that for a short while I was a mother, and I ache so much to be one for longer.

Happy Birthday, Egg and Bacon. I wish you were here so much.


December 20, 2001


Dear Egg and Bacon,


Can you hear me? Can you hear me when I think or when I talk out loud? Do I resonate with vibrations of sound, can you hear my music, my whispering to you? Sometimes, quite often actually, I have been rubbing my hand across my stomach, to reassure you, let you know that I am thinking of you. I am not sure where you are located inside of me, but I hope you can feel the warmth of my hand pressing down on you, the heat coming inside to reassure you. My hands a re a bit rough right now, winter hasn't been kind to them and I am forgetful with the lotion, but they will be soft if and when I can hold you someday.

If you'll want to stay, that is. And I really hope you do. I want nothing more than to be your mommy.

You are my babies, put deep inside me by cold test tubes and a daunting process. I know it would have been better to try to have you both naturally, when your father and I held each other close in bed at night, but trust me-just as much love went into conceiving you this way. Perhaps even more so-it is a lot of work and trial to go through IVF.

I won't find out for another week or so if you will stay. Please do. Both of you. I promise to love and adore you more than you can imagine. You have several sets of grandparents-all of them, actually-lined up to spoil you. Stay with me, my dear Egg and Bacon. You are my angels.

Love,
Your Mommy


-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 06:38 AM | Comments (50) | Add Comment
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September 14, 2004

So If I Don't Burn My Bras, What Can I Burn?

Recently I have found my feminist beliefs to be in jeopardy.

I am not one of those strident, burn-your-bra feminists, I am not the type who thinks women should be spelled "womyn". In no way, shape or form am I a feminazi, since I don't think such a creature exists, and if she did, would she announce to a lift full of men that her £70 jeans make her ass look fantastic? Or would that be counter-feminist, since perpetuating the objectification of a woman is the height of iniquitous?

As I have said in the past, I used to be a real man-hater in university. That's "man-hater", not feminist, since the two actually, I think, are not inclusive of each other. Feminists, I believe, think that man and woman co-exist in society and can be seperate but equal in perhaps seperate but un-equal ways-if the woman is the one in charge of child care, then the man can be in charge of car maintenance. Or vice versa. If the woman cooks, the man does the dishes. Or maybe they take turns. Bottom line-no single job is "just the woman's" or "just the man's". Chores suck equally for both sexes.

A man-hater, which is what I was, wants to round up all the men and house them in Nevada, where they can trade sexual favors to the women who run the world in exchange for one hour in a climate-controlled room.

I got over that. Honest. What I am now, is an I-wanna-work-and-have-a-man-and-a-family-and-keep-my-own-name kind of gal. You know. A modern woman.

That's spelled W-O-M-A-N woman, not the other kind.

But recently I have found myself questioning the very basics of my feminism. Is what I used to believe still relevant? And why did I choose to only see parts of it?

This entire week I have to be in London every day, and as such, it means a one-hour train ride in to the city, and a one-hour train ride home. I have this down to an art form. I know how to manage this trip as well as I know how to insert tampons these days. But I had a twist yesterday which made me pause and, riding the train, I put my book down and simply thought about this issue the rest of the journey.

When I get on my train stop, the train is generally empty. It fills up about two stops before London, and from then on, it's standing room only. As we pulled into the last stop before London, a little station called Woking, a surge of people came on, crowding around me and the three men sitting next to me. The last one on the train was a very pregnant woman, one hand protectively resting on her stomach. She pulled the train door behind her, and the three men beside me looked up at her, pulled their newspapers in, and made room with their knees for her and her enormous stomach to stand.

For a pregnant woman.
To stand.
On a shifting train ride that would take another 20 minutes.

I immediately stood up and offered her my seat, which she gratefully accepted and sat down, taking her shoes off and rubbing her stomach. And I stood there in the aisle, trying to hold my balance, and I was really angry. I was livid, as three average, healthy, ordinary male commuters refused to give up their seats for a pregnant woman. The nerve! The disgust! So I had to do it, and I'm a woman!

Hang on a minute.
I'm a woman.
And I'm annoyed that these men wouldn't give up their seats, with the underlying thought that they should have given up their seats, since they're men.
The implication being that I shouldn't have to give up my seat, these men should have.

And it was then I realized that if I want seperate but equal, I need to shut the fuck up and give up my seat to someone who needs it, too. The boats don't need to rescue women and children foremost, they just need to rescue the children first. They don't need to make the men stand on the deck, looking forward to an icy dunk, since as a woman today, we too can tread the freezing water. The days of damsels in distress and rescuing the lost woman are over-we no longer need to be rescued since we're fair and delicate, or since we are the reproductive members of society. The population is pretty healthily high, and I can kick Best Friend's ass at boxing, proving that I am pretty hearty myself.

It's the same with work-my male colleagues tell dirty jokes, they swear, and I swear back at them. If I thought they crossed a line, I'd say so. With the exception of Von PettyPumpkin, they're all good guys who work pretty hard and like a laugh, a pint, and the ability to chill in front of their colleagues. And at work, I want equal treatment, too-I want the same workload as the men (in fact, I like a heavy workload, so go ahead and add more). I like to be paid the same and I like to know my chances of moving ahead are the same as everyones (in fact my manager has asked if I want to be a line manager, to replace him when he leaves in two years. The answer is "no".)

But a recent article in the Times has pissed me off pretty severely. Apparently, women aren't facing a glass ceiling anymore-we're facing a glass cliff. A glass cliff. Like looking up at the bottom of a shoe wasn't bad enough.

According to the Times,:

"...the glass cliff phenomenon, in which the women who did crack the glass ceiling found themselves in a constant struggle to maintain their success."

Wait for it.

"Companies that appoint women to leadership positions often tend to do so when the business is performing poorly, according to the study. This made it significantly harder for female executives and managers to do well because they were regularly blamed for failures that had begun before they started work."

Ah. So is the implication here that people look for a bad-odds horse to blame, a way of pointing the finger? Things are sucking, let's bring a woman here, crucify her, then get a good-old-boy here to rescue the situation? To get a woman to take the "poisoned chalice", as the Times calls it, when a man wouldn't?

But is it perhaps because it's the nature of women to see broken things and want to fix them, to be able to knuckle down at the bow of jobs simply because, based on biology, we're better equipped for the itchy veil martydom? Is it perhaps due to the fact that, with business, women can rule with their head just as well as with their heart? Surely that can't be the only time they give the big captain's cap to a woman, when the boat is looking to capsize and take the crew with her?

I utterly reject that women are facing a glass cliff. I think instead that what some women like is a good challenge, we like to turn things around, we like to be able to see change. Why does the metaphor have to be something that we're pushed from? Why "glass cliff", why not "glass starting block"? Because the truth is, as a follow-up article in the Times showed:

"It turns out that in the five months after the appointment of women, the share prices of those companies in the study did what dark horses always do: outperformed the average."

Amen, my sistuhs.

Now if the Times can help me figure out my stance on men versus women accommodating on trains, then perhaps I can quit taking a lighter up to my lingerie drawer, wondering which filigree lace edge to burn first.

-H.

PS-I will say this again-I don't do politics here. In fact, I don't read about politics anywhere in blogdom. This isn't a "head in the sand" approach-this is a "life is too short to be so pissed off, and I'm grown-up enough to form my own opinions, thanks" approach. You think a chick like me goes around without opinions on the world theater? Me? A chick with a view on everything from love to breakfast cereal to flag waving to books? I turn to blogdom to meet people-kind, funny, warm, loving, hilarious. People. Check out my links for some of them. I turn to the BBC, Radio 4 and discussions with Mr. Y to determine my politics. Life's too short to walk away from someone you love just because of their politics. So if I don't comment on your political posts, or if I don't blog about politics, don't assume it's because I am an imbecile. It's mostly because of my ulcer, and the fact that the ass bleed needs to stop someday.

PPS-I am closing all my old comments down, posts will only stay open about a week-twice in two weeks I have been hit by spam, I have deleted over 400 comments and I just can't take them. Old posts will have comments closed. I hate spam with a vile rage.

PPPS-That screeching sound you hear? It's coming from Houston. It's Emily, giddy with excitement, who will be here in 2 days time. She can prove, once and for all, that I am not a professional writer (I just play one on tv), that I am not a balding man in Ohio, and that I am exactly as I say I am.

Unless it goes all Griffin and Sabine, in which we are in different dimensions and can only communicate via surreal home-drawn postcards. Then I'm screwed. I can't draw.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:19 AM | Comments (32) | Add Comment
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September 13, 2004

It's All A Bunch of Flag-Waving

I've never been big on flag-waving patriotism. To me, a flag is an identifier of the obvious or implied-you fly it on a boat to know where the boat is from. Olympic athletes grace it on their chests. You look up and see it flying at half-mast, to gauge the grief of a nation.

I'm not saying I'm against flags, what I am saying is that I think patriotism comes from within. I don't need a flag to know who I am or where I come from. I don't need a flag to show alliance, grief, or affinity. I know where I stand on those aspects, and a flag is really, to me, just a metaphor for what I already feel and know.

In Europe, I think flags often symbolize or warn about over-nationalism. In Sweden you'd fly them on special occasions. In Germany, you don't often fly them at all. You see a lot of flags in the UK, often associated with license plates and football games, but the Americans abroad tend to lie low, an American flag is a rare thing. Mr. Y is also not big on flags, and we've both agreed not to debate over which flag to fly, the English or the American, we'll simply fly neither of them. I did keep the 48-starred flag that I found, and it hangs over the curtain rod in the dining room.

So I don't fly flags. That said, I don't support flag-burning of any nation, as I think it's the height of insult. I remember when I was a kid and we had to say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, hand on heart facing the hokey paper flag pegged near the chalkboard (why couldn't we have cloth flags? Why?). We started it in first grade, but by the time our legs and minds had grown to sixth grade, the practice had petered out. I wonder why they stopped that.

But the flag rules were relaxed when we bought tickets for Proms in the Park, in London.

The Proms are not an event here where you wear a sparkly gown and a bad corsage, where you go halvsies on a limo and get drunk with your date, winding up eating Doritos at 3 am and trying not to get nacho spices on your dress. The Proms are a series of concerts here, which end in a big massive final concert that the BBC hires out enormous areas, puts on big stages and giant screens, and everyone gets a big picnic together and watches. The last evening, in particular, the music is perhaps a bit less classical and more national, as anthems, drinking songs, and hymns are sung with mass audience participation.

And there are flags.
Thousands of them.
You bring a flag-any flag-but most often the flag of your home country-and you wave it during the evening.

So Saturday night, along with 25,000 others, we head to Hyde Park to watch the Proms in the Park. Mr, Y, Jim, Karl and I pack up picnic blankets, picnic finger-foods, boxed wine (just like being back in university again, making our pound coins work for the highst alcoholic content possible...well that, plus we weren't allowed to bring glass in), cameras...and my 48-starred flag.

Which I would be waving during the patriotic songs.
With great enthusiasm.

The evening was windy, a bit chilly, but the skies were open and the moods were fantastic. Jim, Karl, Mr. Y and I were all getting along and laughs were constant. The comraderie and kindness of the fellow Proms in the Park folk-all 25,000 of us-was infectious. The early music was classical, and I felt I was drifting bodiless around the park to the tune of the beautiful Flower Duet. You could text the Proms a message and see if they would post it. Mr. Y tried it but got his message in too late, however he showed it to me anyway.

"Helen I love you!" was the message.

I was a puddle at the base of the blanket after that, and you betcha' a little surreptitious under-the-darkness-of-night al fresco touching was had.

In Hyde Park, especially, the flags came out en masse during the patriotic songs (the classical works really had most of us just swaying like zombies, they weren't really flag moments). The sing-a-longs, the anthems, the rousing traditional sailor songs...there must have been at least one flag for every three or four people. The flags were mostly the Union Jack or the English flag (looks a bit like a Red Cross flag-a white backgroud with a red cross), Welsh flags, Scottish flags, and a number of Australian flags. Our little group had two flags-my American flag and Karl's Union Jack, and we all took turns waving them, singing along, drinking and laughing. In the entire crowd, I only saw one other American flag, which was unusual since usually at these events there are quite a few of them.

A young woman bounded up to us, all blond hair and bubbly eyes. "I'm from Texas!" she squeaked. "Are y'all really Americans?"

Jim and I verified that we represented Atlanta and Dallas, respectively, and she giggled and insisted on high-fiving us.

The funny thing about being there was the English version of some songs have counterpart American versions. Land of Hope and Glory, a big national favorite, is the graduation song that we march to at High School. And the big anthem, God Save the Queen, is also known as My Country 'Tis of Thee.

So it was, waving my big 48-starred American flag, that I joined in an evening of alcohol, reflection, and national pride. The conductor of the Proms is an American man, I was there with my American friend, and we bumped into other Americans during the event. I didn't need my flag to know who I was, where I was from, or that I was proud of who I was. I didn't need it...but during the patriotic songs, I didn't put it down, either.

Back home now and the flag is where it always was, in the dining room. It will remain there until next year's Proms in the Park, where my 48-starred little wonder will be wrapped up and taken for a flag-waving event, as we lift our voices and sing ourselves hoarse, one evening where everyone's flags are welcome and we're all just there to share a nice evening, remembering what our countries and our anthems mean to us.

-H.

The Gang

Helen and her countries


Posted by: Everydaystranger at 08:51 AM | Comments (23) | Add Comment
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September 10, 2004

In Which Mr. Y Elicits Barking Dog-Like Laughter From Helen

Laughter really is contagious.

Ages ago I used to work with a German woman that Mr. Y also knew. He called her the Fish, as she used to wear one enormous silver fish earring. She had, hands down, the worst laugh I have ever heard. It sounded like a chainsaw being started up. Or a lawnmower being pulled to life by the chain. It was a sound unlike any sound that I had ever heard in my life, and when she started up babies wept. Angels fell from heaven. Everyone else stopped laughing just to hear it and then they went beserk laughing at her.

Once I went to the movies with her and her husband, and lo and behold, he too had a horrific laugh. A scene came on that was funny, and I waited for it. Sure enough, there went the chainsaw, and then he started in. He laughed like a carrot on steroids, one that took great gulps of air and then spewed them back out with insane high pitches like a braying donkey strung out on ecstasy.

The audience went nuts with laughter at their laughter.

I cringed in my seat.

Then I laughed, too.

When I laugh it's obvious laugh. I don't just chuckle. I don't have the big silent laugh that has you inhaling huge gulps of air and then expel them into nothingness. I don't chuckle, or burst out with one large: "HA!" (Mr. Y does, though, and it makes me laugh when he laughs.) I am not in any way, shape or form ladylike or genteel, I don't go like my Japanese ancestors and cover my smile with my mouth.

When I laugh, you can hear me for miles.

That's right. I have a big, loud, enormous laugh that is absolutely unmistakeable. Add alcohol and funny people, and people laugh at me, not just with me. Oh sure-I giggle. I can chuckle and smirk. I don't do the polite laugh, since I feel like a fucking puppet, but I will smile with my lips closed, indicating: I am humoring you, only. And there are some times when I get the short, barking dog kind of laughter, most often when I am reading a funny post, book, or email. It's a sound not unlike a weird chopping sound you would expect to hear from a woodchuck, if woodchucks could chuck laughs.

But my barking laughter is a sign that something I have read has gotten to my funny bone in a very no-nonsense kind of way.

Yesterday, it was an email from my lovely Mr. Y, which I am attaching here.

It's no wonder I am so mad about the boy.


-----Original Message-----
From: Helen
Sent: 09 September 2004 11:27
To: Mr. Y
Subject:


My stomach in very bad shape. No idea why.


-----Original Message-----
From: Mr. Y
Sent: Thu 09/09/2004 11:32
To: Helen
Cc:
Subject: RE:


And no improvement? Getting worse? Immodium?


-----Original Message-----
From: Helen
Sent: 09 September 2004 11:41
To: Mr. Y
Subject: RE:


No improvement. Getting worse. I think I may see if the chemist in town has Immodium, I think it may come to that. I feel ok though, so wonder if it was dodgy food.

-----Original Message-----
From: Mr. Y
Sent: Thu 09/09/2004 11:49
To: Helen
Cc:
Subject: RE:


iffy food when?

-----Original Message-----
From: Helen
Sent: 09 September 2004 11:54
To: Mr. Y
Subject: RE:


I don't even know, really. I think the bad stomach-ness started yesterday afternoon actually. And I am doing the ass bleed thing, too.

I hope you kept your receipt for me, I think I am made of poor quality materials.

-----Original Message-----
From: Mr. Y
Sent: Thu 09/09/2004 12:24
To: Helen
Cc:
Subject: RE:



Interesting concept. Perhaps by paying a bit extra I can get an even better model.


-----Original Message-----
From: Helen
Sent: 09 September 2004 12:35
To: Mr. Y
Subject: RE:


You would wanta better model than me? Really?


-----Original Message-----
From: Mr. Y
Sent: Thu 09/09/2004 12:37
To: Helen
Cc:
Subject: RE:

You are fast enough, comfortable enough and have a very sweet engine. Perhaps a little tricky handling sometimes. Guess any mention of an up-rated exhaust system would be in bad taste at the moment...


-----Original Message-----
From: Helen
Sent: 09 September 2004 12:48
To: Mr. Y
Subject: RE:


You made me laugh.

You are forgiven.

But your forgot to mention my fantastic fiberglass body.

-----Original Message-----
From: Mr. Y
Sent: Thu 09/09/2004 12:50
To: Helen
Cc:
Subject: RE:

or crumple zone and air-bags

-H.

PS-I found my laugh-track, again I think. The humor should be back next week. Thanks for sticking with me through the down parts of my mind. So if you'll excuse me, me and my laptop are off to London to visit the Dream Job laptop surgeon. It's time for a laptop brain transplant, then my Toshiba will be a functioning part of society again!

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 06:53 AM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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September 09, 2004

The Third Rail

I had a train day yesterday.

Not as in I bought a train set yesterday, or even took a glance at Mr. Y's train magazine. I didn't stand at the end of a platform with my notebook and document trains roaring by, and I didn't take lots of pictures (that said, at one train station I was at the lovely Pullman dining car train was parked, and I confess I really did want to take a picture-either I am nostalgic or the train obsession Mr. Y and his brothers have is rubbing off on me, I'm not sure).

I meant I was screwed pretty much constantly on the trains yesterday. And I didn't even orgasm. Not once. I would know.

Only yesterday's train day ended with an unexpected twist.

I had to go to London all day for meetings, as I do every Wednesday. The weather was lovely-warm and sunny, gorgeous blue skies. I had talked to my friend Jim the night before-he had arrived safely in my lovely adopted country and we agreed to meet up Wednesday night for dinner.

I felt the warm weather called for celebrating, so I was dressed in a short pleated kilt and a sleeveless top, the requisite cardigan dutifully packed. Mr. Y dropped me off at the train station with a kiss goodbye, and I walked to the platform to discover that my train had been cancelled.

It would be a 30 minute wait for the next one.

I didn't let it put me off. I stood on the edge of the platform, in the sun, iPod tucked into my ears and I watched the wind chase the wispy clouds away high above my head. When a train would whoosh by the train platform, I would laugh and bounce around trying to contain the hurricane of hair, flying kilt, and compressed wind driving past me. I giggled into the departing train space as all the business-suited men around me chatted angrily on their phones, pissed off at the cancelled train.

When the train finally arrived, we loaded in. Off to London, my day began. I was actually in a good mood-Mr. Y and I were doing well, Jim was in town, I felt like a cute girl in a cute skirt, and I had a full day of work ahead of me. Work has been up and down lately, and to be honest, I think I would prefer to be busy (albeit with a working laptop, which still isn't resolved).

The meetings dragged on, and for some reason everyone was in a terrible mood. Stress littered the tables like spilled coffee, and tempers frayed more than I had ever seen before. For some reason, each action point that was raised got thrown my direction, but I didn't really mind as I wanted more work to do, anyway.

The afternoon whizzed by in a meeting with some of my more favorite colleagues and it included a visit in the pub for a quick pint before heading off. We talked about work, mostly, relaxing and talking about what is going well with the project and what needs improving. It was my first post-work pub visit, and I actually felt really comfortable there, talking with my co-workers, being able to express how I feel about how things are going. Is this what the British pub culture embraces? Sign me up!

I make my excuses and head to Paddington Station to get to Newbury, which holds both my Mr. Y and Jim. Since we moved to Whitney Houston, I have only been going through Waterloo Station, so it was like being back to my old stomping ground. When I get off the tube at Paddington and make my way to the train platforms, I am floored.

I have never, in my life, seen so many people in a train station. Never.

People are everywhere, lined up in all places, squatting, sitting, running, looking angry. A glance at the boards tells me why-every single train is marked "delayed" or "cancelled". Every single one.

There must have been literally thousands of people in that station.

I don't really understand what's happening, so I make my way to the boards, past the harrassed looking train employees in the fluorescent green vests with their walkie-talkies trying to manage groups of angry people, past the nervous looking policemen, past the hundreds of people on angry mobile phone calls. I call Mr. Y but his web access is down, so he can't tell me what's going on either. Everywhere I look, every sign indicates that all services are cancelled.

And everyone is livid and stressed.

Since this is the only station to get the Newbury from, it means I am screwed. I could go back to Waterloo to try to get to Reading, but an announcement over the intercom lets me know that would be a waste of time-there had been an accident and all services between London and Reading were closed.

There went that idea.

I keep trying to call Mr. Y but the calls keep failing, perhaps because there are so many of us trying to make phone calls at the same time. I hear one of the flourescent-vested people tell another customer that someone has died near Acton, and I find myself annoyed, and then feeling guilty that I'm annoyed. I mean-someone died in an accident. I can afford a little inconvenience. I'm not terribly stressed, I simply want to get to my two boys, but suddenly, looking around a crushing sea of people, I have to confess a really horrible thought occurs to me-we are one big station full of sitting ducks, smack dab in the middle of rush hour traffic.

Unnerved, I decide to go to Costa and treat myself to a Lemon Frescato to try to dial down the paranoia.

I walk out of Costa and notice people sprinting hell-bent for a train. Since most of the trains out of Paddington stop at Reading, and Reading is where I can change for a train to Newbury, I ask a sprinter where the train is going. He pants over his shoulder, tie smacking me in the face, as he wheezes: "Cardiff!"

The Cardiff train stops in Reading.

I haul my bag over my shoulder and start sprinting, too.

I make it to Platform 5, into a train that is wheezingly full. I find a tiny place to stand, sip my Frescato, get my breath back and rejoice in the fact that I wasn't wearing my strappy heels that day, when the conductor's voice comes over the loudspeaker. We all had to get off the train since they had to couple it with another.

The train regurgitates its dinner of commuters, and I see a fluorescent-green vested man.

"This train is stopping at Reading, right?" I ask, nervously making sure.
"Nope." he replied. "This train is now bound for Acton. The Reading train is from Platform 1."

I look over at Platform 1, and the conductor is blowing the whistle, meaning "All aboard."

Fuck.

I sprint pell-mell for the train and I manage to squeeze on just in time. It is so full that there are 4 men in business suits standing in the toilet reading their newspapers. They smile at me and gesture there is room for me, but I grin.

"I am not standing in the toilet. I am willing to compromise lots of things, but I am not standing in the toilet!"

They laugh and I squeeze onto a space next to the luggage rack. The aisles are choked full of people, every seat is taken, every inch of space used. I realize that I have never been on a train so full in my life before. The train shudders and begins to move-I wonder if we'll break an axle at the weight of all of us. I manage to wrestle my phone out with one hand and I text Mr. Y the following: "We are now moving! I've gotten less close to people I was fucking!"

Indeed it was true. I could be having sex with the people around me, especially considering my unwise choice of clothing. However, neither the 70-year old man nor the young punk appealed, so I just relaxed.

Outside of Reading our train ground to a halt. We were all hot and sweating in the tightly packed car. My temper was fraying. People around me were getting really angry. The young punk next to me swears.

"Fucking figures! A bloody suicidal wanker had to off themselves during rush hour!"

And I stop.
What?

"Excuse me?" I ask. "Is that what happened earlier? That's why we have all these train delays?"

"Yeah." Punk replies. A business-suited woman next to me nods as well, listening in.

"That's what they told us at information. Someone committed suicide by jumping off a platform." she says, irritably.

Oh.

Ironically, I had just spoken to Mr. Y about this the day before. In England, most trains are powered by a highly-charged third rail, which runs alongside the two normal train tracks. This third rail packs a serious punch, and if a body touches it (and is touching anything else), the body becomes a conductor for the electricity, frying them to a crisp. I had remarked on how dangerous it was, to have a third rail, but he replied that accidents were rare.

Is this what happened to this person? Did they throw themselves off a platform and onto a third rail? Or did they jump in front of a moving train?

The third rail, a horrible way to die. Electricity short-circuits the heart and brain, and the internal organs that are touched by the current turns to mush. The third rail is a no-return ticket, it's one method you can use if you're serious about checking out. For someone to throw themself on the rail...they must really have been at the end of the line, at the bottom of the well. I think about their level of despair, the integration of mental illness wrapped around their brain stem, the hole in their heart once occupied by hope. I imagine facing the third rail as they would, thinking this was the last and only thing they could do.

Jumping in front of the train...even worse. I love to stand there and feel the sucking gaping whoosh that the train separating the air causes. The trains that rush through the stations do so at high speeds, screaming past the platforms. Did someone choose as their last horrible moment the screaming motion that I usually revel in? Did someone step off at the crucial moment, the moment that would mean the train couldn't stop in time? Did they look at the train approaching as they were slammed into with the power of a tornado? And worse...is the conductor, a man who just showed up to do his job and got wrapped in the tangled web of another person's life...is he ok?

When I snapped, I just opened a bottle and swallowed the contents.

They used the third rail or jumped off the platform.

And my irritation vanished in a second. I felt terrible for being stressed and angry at the delays. I felt guilty that I hadn't been there to listen. I could've tried, I could've talked, I could've told them that I know what it's like to think a third rail is all that's left. Or, if their act was an impulse break like mine, then I could've caught their hand as they tried to jump in front of the charging metal bull.

As the train started to move, I knew that I didn't even know where it was that the person jumped. I know there was nothing I could've done, except to know that any inconvenience I could've experienced on that journey wouldn't even compare to what had happened to the person who jumped. The train journey hell, all things considering, was a sign that I was still here.

As stupid as that sounds.

I felt so small and so calm.

When I finally got to Newbury I was so damn happy to see my lovely Mr. Y at the platform. We walked along the platform to the car, the evening sky set upon us. It has taken me almost 3 hours to get from work to Newbury, a journey that should take half that time. I didn't want to take my hands off of him as we walked out of Newbury station and into the night.

And I wondered if on the other side of the platform lay the third rail, a piece of hot metal that can take a person home, that can take a cargo to an airport...and that can end a life.

-H.

PS-my laptop gets fixed (allegedly) tomorrow.

PPS-in exactly one week, Emily will be here. If you don't read her, give it a shot. She can elicit the loud snorting snickering from me, I always appreciate her. I really hope she likes it here.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:10 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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September 08, 2004

There is No Means of Escape Here

At any point during the day I am any number of ages. I think the combination of a missing 8mm memory and a pretty fucked-up adulthood mean I am free to linger and wander the supermarket shelves of Ages, a grocery store catering to those of us that somehow got a little lost. I can wander up one aisle, taking only ice cream sundae mixings that as a child would be a perfect meal, or wander up another and fix something that appeals to all 4 food groups.

I was thinking about this yesterday when I went to get my hair (on my head) trimmed (guys, here's one thing you should know-women actually trim the ends of their hair to make it grow faster. It's a weird thing, but it's honestly an attempt to grow more hair.. Don't stress about the logic.) While sitting there, recovering from a sudden nosebleed (what are the odds of that happening? And of those odds, why must it happen all over a brand new hair salon? I have such problems committing to hair salons!), I started watching a woman with an enormous blond helmet for a haircut next to me, my eyes caught a little girl having Her First Haircut, complete with pictures and smiles from the mom.

I walked up and down the grocery shop of the Ages in my mind, and realized that I am any different age during the day. For example:

- Going to the films with my neighbor Karl (who has become my sci-fi movie date, as Mr. Y hates sci-fi and Karl and I both like the genre) we walk into the theatre complex. On the wall of the parking garage is a big metal sign, affixed next to the stairwell. It reads: There is No Means of Escape Here. I know it means that the stairs are not attached to a fire exit, but still. That sign really is the story of my life. Never in my life have I so badly wanted to get a penknife out and steal said sign, but I resisted since the garage not only had CCTV, but I didn't have a penknife. I wanted that sign so badly, too, to hang on the wall in our house. It summed up my life. I would've resorted to petty vandalism just for the chance to point to that sign and tell people: "See? My motto there."

I was a teenage hooligan.

- After washing my face and religiously slathering anti-aging moisturizer on my face and neck, carefully covering my under-eye area with another special anti-aging cream (I am so paranoid that I will look old. No one has asked me for ID in aaaaaaaaages), I look in the mirror. And there it is. Smack dab in the middle of my part, a grey hair is sticking straight up, much like the feathers at the top of Big Bird's head. The hair it not just grey. It's white. Shockingly white. And it's not the first time I've seen this hair-I've plucked it before, so that strand of hair is growing back in, and it's growing back in white.

I was middle-aged.

- I am laying on my back on the sofa with my feet sticking up in the air. Mr. Y calls me from the kitchen and asks me if I want anything. And I do. I put my feet down and push myself down the length of the sofa, until my head hits the armrest. I continue pushing and snake myself over the armrest so that my head is hanging half-way down the side of the armrest. I am Snoopy on top the doghouse. I am a bendy toy dripping over the side of the couch. I am a snake. I am that jar of weird gooey green gel that you used to get inside a box of Cheerios, a knickknack that held interest for approximately one hour.

"Can I have some cheesy buiscuits?" I plead.
They are not called cheesy buiscuits. They are really called Mini Cheddars, and they are like Cheese Nips but better. I know the name of said product, and I know that I must always have them in the house. I also know that I will never call them anything but cheesy buiscuits, mostly since it humors me.
Mr. Y brings me an individually wrapped portion of cheesy buiscuits.
"I love the cheesy buiscuits." I murmur, and ooze my way back off the armrest, my head red from the blood rush.

I was 4 years old.

- The pink Lola wig on, I feel my body start to shake and shiver. I feel the need to climb on top of Mr. Y, I feel the need to stand on the table and dance. I turn music on and bop my way around the kitchen, unrepentant, unreserved. I make dinner and I move my hips in ways that would make Britney Spears envious. I feel alive, I feel sexy, and I feel bubbly with laughter.

I was in my early twenties.

- Filing papers in a binder, I stand up from the study floor and feel an instant white-hot bolt of pain. With irritation and despair, I realize I have hurt my back again. I pinched the nerves in my back a few years ago, and now during times of extreme stress, if I am moving too many heavy objects, or if I move wrong, my back hurts like hell. Bent over, I walk to the stairs and sit down. Mr. Y provides me with that heated cream on the back, the favorite of arthritics and athletes everywhere. I take copious amount of ibuprofen and shake my head, saying: "I can't do that, my back hurts too much." When I walk, I do so at 45-90 degree angles. I walk on the balls of my feet, my spine feels like a metal rod is soldered to it.

I was an old woman.

- In bed Mr. Y's warm form comes up behind me. I hold my breath, and luckily he takes me in his arms, cupping his body behind me. He molds me to him and squeezes me close, as though somehow he knew that the only thing I wanted was to be held. The only thing I needed, the only thing I could think about, was being wrapped up in arms and cuddled.

I was a baby.

The examples go on, from childhood hijinks to concern about the welfare of others. From the utter fascination watching a spider build a web to proof that "Like, OMIGOD!" screamed at top level is not restricted to Californians in the 80's. From making sure Mr. Y has what he needs and wants to craving chocolate so badly I would sell my soul. In one day, I bounce around the extremes of ages, and I hadn't even realized it.

Maybe my childhood isn't lost.
Maybe I simply forgot how to look for it.

-H.

PS-my laptop should be fixed this week. Sorry if I haven't been visiting or commenting on your sites lately.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 06:33 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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September 07, 2004

Grab a Pen-It's a War.

It's weird-my head races and is full of things to say and think and ache and celebrate, but I just feel like I can't get them out. Maybe they're stuck or in some kind of emotional limbo competition. Like the exposed white background of MT whips me, and bleaches my brain.

Daunting, really.

I don't want to talk about the personal stuff today, I don't want to talk about my family, how I feel, my Mr. Y, or the temperature that hovers outside my window (which I don't actually know, anyway). I don't want to talk about why I am still wearing a towel around the house or why I want to vaccum but haven't gotten to it yet. I don't want to talk about my lovely friend Jim who should arrive here sometime this today, or about the tabby bombs that should be shooting through the house sometime this afternoon (I hope I hope I hope). I don't want to talk, I don't want to talk, I don't want to talk.

I also don't want to give up on this site, hence today's rather meagre post.

Some time ago, Mr. Y suggested that I write short stories for magazines. I bought a literary guide to help me find said magazines. I also have bought a few writing magazines to help me figure my way out of this telecom nightmare and into a world that means just sitting in front of my pc, orchid dripping to my right, stuffed kitten toy sitting to my left, and just write. Ooze onto the keyboard, gush into the monitor, make no sense whatsoever and clog up the hard drive.

The magazines, however, are whipping me.

One whole article-a whole article!-is about the use of the present tense.

The present tense.

Now, I was a real English dork once upon a time. Diagram a sentence? You got it! Learn vocabulary words and use them in daily dialog? Why certainly! Your pulchritudinous oculus have a soporific effect on me! Dangling participles? Nothing to get wound up about.

But a whole article on the present tense? Including sentences such as:

"...reserves his major irritation for journalism rather than fiction, but his complaints echo a frequently-voiced prejudice."

That buzzing sound you hear is me snoring.

Or instructions at the end of such article:

"There is a correlation between narrative tense and narrative tension, and it can be a good exercise to transfer a piece of your own writing from past to present in order to explore the effect of this shift...Try it and see where you stand in the ongoing 'tense-and-truth' debate."

Hold me back, now! This is too exciting to be real! Hot damn, I could be part of a debate! Whoo-eeee-bob! If I transfer from past to present tense, maybe it's better than sex! Maybe I can walk the wild side now, and throw my cordless keyboard to the wind! This is living baby, screw the champagne Fridays, I could be writing in present tense from now on, living dangerously in the literary world!

Mr. Y, upon seeing this article, rolled his eyes and said: "You can never again make fun of me reading train magazines, if you're going to read articles like that."

I think he has a point.

I don't know if the magazines are really going to help much-I'm not saying I am above needing help, I am saying I don't generally analyze the struture of what I write. I just write. So while I may not give a great goddamn about what tense I write in, what "prejudices" are implied by said tense, or if I have armed myself with a quill on the side of the past tense or a rubber eraser on the side of the present tense debate, I am going to continue reading those magazines, just in case.

Just in case, because more than anything in the world, I want to be a writer. Please just let me be a writer. All I want to do is write.

When I grow up, I think, dancing in bright pink fairy slippers and with two pigtails swinging on my shoulders, reaching up to the countertop height and looking up at the ceiling light with enthusiasm, I want to be a writer.

And so, nestled in the middle of said magazine, is a contest which is judged next January.

I am entering said contest.

I'm not going to win, but I am going to enter.

I have to step off the diving board somewhere after all.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:38 AM | Comments (26) | Add Comment
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September 03, 2004

A Little Person in a Big Person World

I am very tall.

About 5'9 and a half.

That's pretty tall.

But did you know that my height changes? That I get taller or smaller quickly? Not just with the 2 inches that a high heel can add, but in really noticable ways. Just like that, my height can change.

Wednesday morning I felt awful. I felt like I had been run over by a truck labelled "Guilt and Responsibility", I had been mowed down by wheels with mud on the relationship mudflaps. It was raining and chilly outside, and I had to go to London for the day, and standing at the edge of the train platform I felt so small and sad, so alone and depressed. My mood overspilled onto my face and I started crying a bit, standing on the platform in my skirt and with my briefcase, looking like a little girl playing at being in a big girl's world. I looked down at my feet and realized how small I was.

I had shrunken to about a foot high.

I was so small that I was disappearing.

When the train arrived I had to battle with the steps, which were half my height. I sat down on a seat, leaving acres of space, and a man in a pressed pin-striped suit tries to sit down on me. He hadn't even noticed me, my little legs swinging and hitting the edge of the seat, one high heel dangerously dangling off my foot.

"Excuse me." I squeak. "I'm sitting here."

He snarls at me in annoyance and moves away.

I shrink a few more inches in response.

The train ride goes quickly enough-I feel too inadequate to get out my book which is half my size. I feel too small to check my phone, which even though the train had been dipping in and out of mobile coverage, I knew it would be silent and unloving. I felt so tired and so alone, sitting in my little space on my great big chair, a chair whose pattern and fabric is cutting my legs into scissor-pattern shapes.

When we get to London the battle out the train doors makes me even smaller, as men with pointy umbrellas and unfurled attitudes push me out of the way and out the door. Some of them even open the train doors and start running before the train has stopped, and it makes me feel so forlorn. I have to fight my way down the grooved train steps, looking at the ash and dirt and stickiness that graces the gaps in the steps. People's detritus from a life less lived, a moment less loved.

I make my way to the tube, getting jostled by people and feeling as large as the specks on the concrete floors, painted with that flecky affect people use to disguise the filth. Gum becomes a ticking time bomb waiting to trap a little person like me in the teeth-combed concrete edges. A cigarette butt becomes a building I have to hold my breath around.

Waiting for the tube, I stand in utter exhaustion and look to my right. A man in a camouflaged T-shirt and olive green trousers is standing on the edge of the tube platform, openly crying. He's not embarrassed, he doesn't care that a room full of commuters is around him. I would offer him a kleenex but I know, somehow, he just wants to be alone. He's collapsing inside of himself on the edge of the platform, angrily wiping his running eyes, and I realize as I watch him that I have grown a few inches.

I have grown, maybe because I am the only person in the room that has seen him, and that knows how he hurts.

Even so, the voice announcing "Mind the gap!" at the tube is ridiculous-truthfully, it's more like "Mind the Grand Canyon!"

I get to work and am so tired and small still, that going through the turnstiles at the office means I bang my head on the silver bar and annoy the security guard. I walk into the meeting room and must have a face like thunder, as the group regards me and offers me coffee or a smile. A new vendor representative walks in and introduces himself.

"Hi, I'm Mark Elmo."

This piques my diminuative interest, and I chime in like Ralph Mouse: "As in, 'Tickle-Me'?" I chirp.

The room laughs. Mark does too. He nods. "I rue the day that toy came out, my mates did nothing but refer to that damn toy."

One of my colleagues, Alan, is laughing, and he says. "That's our Helen. Most people would only think things. She'll actually say them."

And I grow another six inches, feeling part of a gang. A crowd. "Our Helen". I made people laugh. I made people laugh.

The meeting commences and my phone comes to life-a nice text message oozes in from Mr. Y, and I thump my head on the table as I grow another foot. I rub my noggin for a while, pleased to finally see over the table, at the expanse of laptops (except mine, still ill) and a projector that illuminates each little piece of dust in the room. Another text an hour later comes in from Mr. Y which is even kinder, and I ease up again in size, no longer stressing about losing a shoe from my teeny feet.

During an afternoon break, I dash into an empty conference room and make a phone call to one of my oldest friends (we go back almost 6 years, which I realize makes me a bit sad and pathetic that this is the oldest friend I have). He lives in Atlanta, and we once were so close that we could finish each other's sentences. We have inroads of personal jokes, and I miss him a great deal. I call him Mighty Mouse. He calls me Shmoo. I have no idea how we got these nicknames, I only know that they are definitely the fruit of one of our drink-ups. I talk to him, laughing with him, and find out that he's coming to England in the next week or two, so I will get to see him. And even more so, Mr. Y will get to meet someone from my life, and I can't wait for them to meet. It's so important to me to link my worlds together-proof that I can outrun the crazy relay, that I have a past, a present and a future that can and will be meshed.

I grow so tall I can turn the lights in the room off and on with ease, easily able to reach the light switch.

As I head home, I still am only about two-thirds my height, but I have bought things to make a nice meal of moussaka for Mr. Y and I, and I am hopeful that we are going to be good and loving. A man on the tube catches my eye and smiles, and I smile back. As I exit the tube, swinging my Sainsbury's bag, he stops me with a tap on the shoulder.

"You have a beautiful smile. I'd really like to see you again, can I have your phone number?" he asks, juggling a briefcase at his side.

"Thanks, but I think my boyfriend wouldn't like that." I reply, smiling.

He apologizes and I head for my train, and realizes that I have grown again-at the flattery of being told I have a nice smile, and the fact that I do have a boyfriend, one that I care about very much.

I get on the train, nearly whole-sized. My feet reach the ground with ease, my long embarassing colt-like legs spilling all over the floor. I can't see the grooves of the train steps, I can't stress about the gaps. I have spent a day feeling so utterly small and horrible, but things are getting better. Things are improving. And soon, that night even, I would be fully-grown again, thanks to a very sweet man in my house.

-H.

PS-Beth's Carnival or Recipes is continuing again, so read below for my moussaka recipe. I like to up the weird factor on the recipe collections more...

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:39 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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September 02, 2004

The Dump Truck

You know what really chaps my ass in a no-holds barred kind of way? You know what stings worse than sliding down a razor-blade and landing in a pool of alcohol, what's more embarrassing than showing up for a high school chemistry test unprepared, having forgotten my locker combination and discovering that I'm naked? You know what really, deep down, bugs me and pisses me off most of all?

I got dumped by my family in a comments section of a blog.
A comments section.
I'm not sure it gets any more Jerry Springer tasteless than that.

My family has a history of dumping me in spectacular fashion. My father did it once, screaming "Have a nice life!" down the phone at me, then hanging up on me. We didn't speak for a few years after that, and to this day I am still wildly intolerant of people hanging up on me.

But getting dumped in a comments section...geez, it's almost like looking to my left and seeing a table there laden with food, just begging for a food fight. Creamed corn? Why yes, throwing that would be delightful. I stand up and race to the table in my white stretch pants and hope that the Rave holds my hair in place. And you know? While I am at it, let's throw some chairs around and pull hair a la catfight, too.

Tacky doesn't begin to describe it.

Ironically, I have only ever been dumped once. Well, unless you count when I was 13 and Chris W. dumped me since I wasn't willing to do anything more than kiss (Chris? Dude? Look, when you're trying to French kiss, can you remember that the tongue is not actually a plunger trying to bring up deposits from inside the chick? OK? Women will thank you.) Oh, and my fuck-buddy I had in university called our fuck-buddy relationship quits, but I wasn't really cut up about that, considering the fact that not only had I never had an orgasm with him, but he also tried to have a private moment in front of me once when I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth, and that's just not on.

I am not crowing about the fact that I have only been dumped once-I guess I am lucky considering I am the most unstable person in the world, and adding rejection to the already mostrous pile of issues I have on my shoulders is not a very good thing.

Nope, the only other time I've ever been dumped is by Mr. Y. Just into our relationship, when it honestly looked like we weren't going anywhere, blam! he dumps me. I don't actually blame him, and to be honest, once he did that I missed him so badly it cut me into tiny slivers inside and made me realize-more than anything-how much I cared about him and needed him. We got back together then (and split later, obviously), but that dumping of me by him really made me see how I felt about him.

However, the method was not so great-he dumped me via text message. But to be honest, text was really the big and almost only means of communication we had in those early days (due to home situation and the fact that we were both travelling so much), so I actually do understand-it wasn't done to avoid me or hurt me. Lots of big and little things between us then happened over text. We have agreed that should a big split come someday, we will discuss it face to face.

Dumping these days is getting more interesting. I read a story about a man in, I believe, Malaysia, who dumped his wife by saying "I divorce you." three times via text. Ergo, he's a free man. And how many people have gotten that "we're through" email? That one where you click on the loved-ones name in bold, only to reveal once you've dinked the annoying yellow envelope that you read in the text that baby-the love you've had is just gone, gone gone?

When I think back to the breakups that I have had in my relationships, I am almost positive that I have only ever broken it off with people in person. Mostly, because I am a glutton for punishment, but also because I would rather handle these things face to face-I believe in taking my lumps and taking them right off the bat. That said, I have once or twice used the "We need some space, it's not you it's me," line, and the times I said it to those men, I really meant "It's over, and actually, it's you that's the problem." But when I left the big relationships I was in, I went for the truth.

To my first husband as we went for a walk around the block in our steamy Wilmington, North Carolina neighborhood: I don't really think we love each other anymore. It's just over.

To Kim as we sat in a Starbucks in downtown Dallas, the night around us outside the glass and two cups of cooled hot tea on the table in front of us: You are my heart and I will always love you, we just want different things.

However, when we called it a day the first time, Kim and I, he slid a letter under my front door after we had our break-up talk on the phone. And it really hurt. Really.

And I told X Partner Unit a lot of the truth, too, but now when I think about it in my head, I simply can't remember what was said.

I look around me and wonder about people's break-up stories, the best and worst of them. For each person that you meet, you usually have a bust-up in their lives. At least one. And for each one of us, we have a break-up that sticks out the most in our minds, a dumping that really lingers with us. One that stands out amongst the others in terms of heartbreak, or relief, or just plain bad-handling.

The dumping I most remember was of Erik, a Finnish descendant pain-in-the-ass that I worked with in Dallas. One night in bed (after faking it twice) I told him of some of the sexual escapades Kim and I used to get up to. A few days later, I found out the whole office knew about it, and when I asked him, he said he told his department one evening during a "sharing" session, and since he didn't want to share anything of himself, he shared my stories.

*Beep, beep, beep* went the sound of the dump truck backing up as I told him "Baby, we are so over."

Note to self: raunchy sexual escapades to be kept to self. Well, except Mr. Y, who knows all about it.

I remember watching that episode of Sex and the City where Carrie gets dumped by Post-It-Note. That reaches a new low in our society, I think. When we can't take the time to even write a whole letter, when losing someone isn't worth taking up a single piece of paper and going to the effort of putting it in the mail, or taking the time to sit in front of a pc and type it out, we've reached a bad point. A really bad point.

Perhaps even as bad as getting dumped in the comments section.
Which is my new low-point in terms of getting dumped.
So what's your worst dumping/dumpee story?

-H.

PS-yes, still depressed and sad and angry. Still email server problems so if I haven't responded to you, it's because I can't get to them. And I now have no idea what happened to Luuka and frankly could care less. I am perhaps a little low on the emotional resources just now.

But my lovely boy and I made up yesterday, over an evening of moussaka and white wine and nice hugs, so I am much more stable now.

PPS-favorite Shakespeare? King Lear. A story of filial piety and insanity.

The irony is not lost on me there.

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