Yoo hoo...is anybody out there?
Alright then. Turns out that when I'm not getting paid for it, I'm an incredibly inconsistent blogger. What the heck. I'm good at lots of other stuff.
All the same, I'm not throwing in the towel yet. For those of you who are interested, here's what we've been up to (to be followed, within a few months, by either another random bit of "what we've been doing" or maybe, just maybe, some snarky political commentary, or a viral video that hasn't yet been taken down):
Let me see. I took a long trip out west in September, which included a whirlwind work trip to San Francisco followed by nearly 3 weeks "back home" in Washington State. I can hardly remember that trip now, except that I ate a lot of good food, my new nose ring got infected as a result of a sunburn, which caused me to get an ugly sunhat and I was incredibly stressed out by the election (thank goodness that went the way it did, although I'd have to say that I'm as disappointed as anyone by Obama's cabinet picks and especially this Rick Warren shit). I was also torn up by the fact that one of my brothers (top secret: my favorite) spent all but the very last day of my visit there in an in-patient rehab facility in Mississippi. I picked him up at the airport the night before the night before I left, and he delivered me back to the airport about 36 hrs later. The good news is, he introduced me to my newest musical love, Tim Fite, (in Philly Feb 21 and DC the 28th -- come with us!) and he was still clean when I came home for the holidays.
I got back from Washington on a Wednesday late in September, which is noteworthy because Mr. Man and I moved into a new place THAT WEEKEND. Talk about a tough move. Although Mr. Man did his best to pack up before I got back, there was a mountain of shit to do, and the move put quite a strain on our already-pretty-strained relationship. Mr. Man had just started back at school, and I was swamped at work, so things were just...tough. I'll spare you the details, sexy readers, and flash forward a few months to the weekend before Thanksgiving, when we found two couches for $20 and $40 respectively, which we had delivered (AND the old couch removed from the front porch, where it'd sat since we discovered on moving day that it wouldn't fit through the front door) for a song at $40 plus a $20 tip.
We're now roughly 75% unpacked, which is pretty good, I'd say, considering the fact that we never even got most of our artwork onto the walls of our depressing old place. We've encouraged (read: forced) ourselves along the way by hosting a few small parties.
The best news about the new place:
1. It has a huge yard. I mean, huge. Plenty of room for lots of veggies, maybe even a few laying hens.
2. The landlady, a belly-dancer, is a saint so far. Our dryer (see #3) went shithouse on us the other night and she immediately started making plans to buy us a new one. Compared to the old landlord, we can hardly believe she's real.
3. It's got a washer and dryer. In the unfinished basement, which has plenty of room for our extra crap.
4. It's ridiculously cute. Ok. It's a little quirky, but mostly adorable.
5. It's in a great neighborhood, within walking distance of several of our friends, three amazing restaurants and a couple of decent bars.
Now for the bad news about the new place:
1. That huge yard is full of ticks. I just pulled one off the dog the other day, but when we moved in, I was pulling dozens off of her. Turns out that in spite of having a normally high tolerance for most things gross, I've got a weak spot for ticks.
2. Our bedroom and my office both have two of the most hideous paint jobs I've ever seen.
3. We've got mice. This is especially bad news for the devil cat, because we're rationing her meals until she kills them for us.
Three to five ain't bad, huh?
Aside from all that, we're relieved to have weathered what was a pretty tough year. And we're doing quite well romantically. Better than we've done for any stretch of time since we moved here. We've been fucking, not quite like bunnies, but almost like we did before we left NYC.
And I think we're each doing much better personally. Mr. Man is still on somewhat of an academic vacay, and although he's been stressing a little about work, he is lightyears more relaxed than he was before I went out to Washington for the holidays. As for me, I spent nearly a week off-line during that trip and have decided it suited me quite well and that 09 will be the year that I work less, garden more and do more for myself, like yoga and swimming and walking the dog and taking baths and fucking my boyfriend and making more friends in the Charm but also getting up to see my friends in NYC more, too.
There's so much else. Mr. Man went back on T, which we were nervous about but so far seems to be treating him just dandy, maybe even better than that. He's getting hairy, which I think is adorable, and other than that, actually seems more relaxed. The dog really does have arthritis, which is maybe better than having Lyme's disease, which was what I thought she had the first time it hit her hard enough to put her down (not "put her down"). $500 later, we've got it figured out and now she's on a regimen that is serving her well enough that she's playing some frisbee and doing lots of stalking of the cat. We haven't converted the car yet but in spite of a few minor fixes, she is a peach.
So. By and large, things are super good, which, I realize, probably places us in the top 1% luckiest folks on earth, considering the half million Americans who lost their jobs in November, the 1 billion who stand to go hungry worldwide in 09, and the poor Palestinians who are getting the shit bombed out of them as I type this. It might sound stupid, but I'm hellbent on channeling my energy into putting positive vibes (and positive work, a la peace march rather than anti-war demonstration, if you catch my drift) into the world, doing my best to roll my anger and stress off and do good instead of sitting around bitching.
We'll see how it goes when my/our luck takes a turn for the worse, which it inevitably will, because, as my daddy says, "the good old days for one guy are the shit days for somebody else." For now, though, I'm rolling with it.
PS. We're crazy enough to be heading down to the Inauguration, which, according to my handy Hightower countdown clock, is in less than two weeks! If you're that crazy too, give a girl a call and let's hook up.
Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Friday, January 4, 2008
Home Sweet Home
Mr. Man and I actually got home on the 29th, but the jet lag, the overdue spiritual cleansing of the house (which up until just before I moved in, also housed a crazy bitch who I won't comment on here but suffice it to say had left something of a bad air in the place), a long, wonderful visit with two of his besties, getting back to work (sorta) and a day or two of overdue processing (phew!) really took it out of me and it's only now that I remembered that I started a blog last year. Oops.
Anyhoo, my trip home was a little depressing--I hail from Western Washington State, an area which was ravaged by floods in early December. Although the closest acquaintances of mine to be personally affected by the flood was the cuh-razy sister of my "estranged" sister-in-law and the new-ish boyfriend (who I'm not quite sure about) of one of my besties, and the freeway and most public areas had been cleaned up pretty good, there was a definite air of depression and loss in Lewis County. Also, my little brother's wife (the estranged sis-in-law, who I love--the "estranged" term was her own, and tongue-in-cheek, though I can tell she feels bad for having done by brother so wrong) left him last summer, and although my adorable neices are dealing and I think they'll be fine, I feel bad for my bro and just wish the whole thing had gone differently.
On top of that, a truly estranged friend of his and mine passed away and we skipped out on the service, which I think is fine--the deceased, a drug addict from way back, had fucked my brother over in some unforgivable ways, which complicated the "grieving" process. I'm not saying that we should or shouldn't have gone to the funeral--I think there are lots of ways to say goodbye to someone, and lots of people piss people off before they die--but the whole thing took me back to an even sadder time, when my brother was a junkie and made me reflect on what kinds of chances this guy ever had, which were not many. Erk.
The day after Xmas I flew to Denver to meet Mr. Man's mother, brother and brother's girlfriend. Which went ok, in spite of the fact that the four of them had spent most of the previous six days together, and his mom, like my own, is a pretty tough case. His brother's girlfriend seemed to have suffered the most stress, which resulted in her hiding in their bedroom the length of my visit and saying about three words to me the entire time I was there. Which made for some uncomfortable moments. Erk again.
So talk about PHSD (post holiday stress disorder)! It was really good, after all of that, to get back to our own little house. We finally got some decent food (the families don't know how to eat anything but processed yuckiness that Hillary Clinton endorses) and cleansed the place in our birthday suits, and then welcomed our friends to the Charm by taking them to a fabulous New Year's Party, held by our best new couple friends (we seem to have hit the equivalent of a queer networking gold vein with this couple, who we also adore--the party was crawling with adorable and brilliant queers). And although we are both still suffering some of the fallout of PHSD, and getting back into the swing of domestic bliss, I am wicked glad to be sat on a comfy couch, free of all things familial (except the pet-daughters) next to the best boyfriend money could buy.
Happy New Year.
Anyhoo, my trip home was a little depressing--I hail from Western Washington State, an area which was ravaged by floods in early December. Although the closest acquaintances of mine to be personally affected by the flood was the cuh-razy sister of my "estranged" sister-in-law and the new-ish boyfriend (who I'm not quite sure about) of one of my besties, and the freeway and most public areas had been cleaned up pretty good, there was a definite air of depression and loss in Lewis County. Also, my little brother's wife (the estranged sis-in-law, who I love--the "estranged" term was her own, and tongue-in-cheek, though I can tell she feels bad for having done by brother so wrong) left him last summer, and although my adorable neices are dealing and I think they'll be fine, I feel bad for my bro and just wish the whole thing had gone differently.
On top of that, a truly estranged friend of his and mine passed away and we skipped out on the service, which I think is fine--the deceased, a drug addict from way back, had fucked my brother over in some unforgivable ways, which complicated the "grieving" process. I'm not saying that we should or shouldn't have gone to the funeral--I think there are lots of ways to say goodbye to someone, and lots of people piss people off before they die--but the whole thing took me back to an even sadder time, when my brother was a junkie and made me reflect on what kinds of chances this guy ever had, which were not many. Erk.
The day after Xmas I flew to Denver to meet Mr. Man's mother, brother and brother's girlfriend. Which went ok, in spite of the fact that the four of them had spent most of the previous six days together, and his mom, like my own, is a pretty tough case. His brother's girlfriend seemed to have suffered the most stress, which resulted in her hiding in their bedroom the length of my visit and saying about three words to me the entire time I was there. Which made for some uncomfortable moments. Erk again.
So talk about PHSD (post holiday stress disorder)! It was really good, after all of that, to get back to our own little house. We finally got some decent food (the families don't know how to eat anything but processed yuckiness that Hillary Clinton endorses) and cleansed the place in our birthday suits, and then welcomed our friends to the Charm by taking them to a fabulous New Year's Party, held by our best new couple friends (we seem to have hit the equivalent of a queer networking gold vein with this couple, who we also adore--the party was crawling with adorable and brilliant queers). And although we are both still suffering some of the fallout of PHSD, and getting back into the swing of domestic bliss, I am wicked glad to be sat on a comfy couch, free of all things familial (except the pet-daughters) next to the best boyfriend money could buy.
Happy New Year.
Monday, December 17, 2007
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