"Better than I've ever been," He said.

Something wonderful happened to me last week while walking back to my office from lunch. As I made my way down a flight of concrete stairs two guys made their way up. Not that it matters, but this is the last set of stairs I descend before I am reminded that, yes, I work for a living doing a job that is something other than writing and my lunch is a mere minute from being over. Once I get to the big open spot of sun on the sidewalk path ahead, which is just past the part of the walk where all the shadows of the leafs from the trees which line the walkway speckle it a darker shade of gray, I must do my best to open that office door and try to avoid all the A.D.D. moments that will inevitably conclude the rest of my day. (I love my job. I love my job. I love my job. The work is fulfilling... Oh, but it is.)

Sounds uneventful, to walk past two strangers, does it not? What’s more, I can't remember what one of the guys looked like, because he, as it pertains to this blog entry, was just the guy walking next to the guy who inspired this blog entry. But, our blog-entry guy, I will probably always clearly remember what he looked like because he said something wonderful to me and the way he said ‘what’ he said made him that much more memorable.

In case your curiosity is eating away at you, he was tall, about 6'2", handsome, a beautiful dark, dark shade of black, and he was athletic looking (very muscular). He may have even been an athlete. He wore a New York Yankees baseball cap, a white-cotton T-shirt, and a pair of navy-blue gym shorts. He also wore a cast on his foot—maybe it was his leg (that part I do not remember)—and because of this cast he required crutches to get about.

My gaze must have been fixed upon him as I was in my own little world (I was contemplating getting another tattoo, a possibly more public one) and had no idea I was staring at him. Perhaps that is why he engaged me; He didn't know he and his easy smile were just part of my forward glance as my brain said, "Yes. Do it. Get that tiny little tattoo on the inside of your left wrist. You'll be able to hide it with your watch if you are in a professional setting where potentially closed-minded people would be judging you and would, therefore, be less likely to appreciate your intelligence.” (Oh, society... CATCH UP! We are not our bodies, our tattoos, our hair color, our wrinkles, our fat asses, and, as Brad Pitt/Edward Norton's character in Fight Club said, we "...are not our khakis.")

Then, this memorable guy, with my wistful yet purposeful gaze unknowingly fixed upon him, asked me, in his deep, baritone, cheery voice, "How are you feeling?"

How are you feeling? I'd never been asked that as a greeting/question from a stranger before. How are you doing? How are you? How are you today? Yes. But, unless it was from someone I know, and that someone I already know knew that I just got over or just got sick with a cold, or was plagued with something to the being-sick effect, I can honestly say, no, I've not been asked, "How are you feeling?” by a stranger. (Can you imagine, if I got that asked all the time? You'd think I was a walking corpse, or worse. Although I cannot think of what's worse.)

"Great!" I answered over my shoulder, then asked him, "How about you?" as he continued on, climbing up the stairs with his unmemorable friend and with a click-step, click-step of his crutches. "Better" he said, answering me.

My first instinct was: Ah he's just said, "Better," because whatever it is that has him on crutches, with that foot…leg? injury of his, is now better. But, I couldn't help myself, that didn’t seem to be why he said better. I had to know. His "Better," made me curious. “Better than what?" I had to ask him. I had a smile in my question. He knew it, and he answered, "Better than I've ever been."

Then, with him, getting far enough away from me that he was just about within hollering distance, and because I now knew he’d baited me with his, “Better,”I chirped back, "I like it!"

And, “like it” I did!

"Better than I've ever been," he said. That, my friends, is what I call a man living in the Now. He was making his way up a stair case with an injury which required crutches and he's better than he's ever been? It reminded me of how powerful I'd felt after I'd broken my radius, just at my wrist, slipping in the snow, snapping the bone clean in half.

I didn't feel powerful when it had happened, of course not. Breaking my radius had physically hurt like nothing had ever hurt in my life. It hurt so much I refused to cry because I thought my brain would get the message of how much pain I was in if I did cry, and I could not bare any more pain. However, that broken wrist got me to question myself in a way I hadn't before.

I asked me: WTF? You eat great. You don't party hard very often. You run. (Well, as much as a consistently inconsistent person runs.) Yet, you smoke? What are you doing to the only body you get to borrow in this life time? The energy in you may be infinite, but this body, this earthbound form that is on loan while you learn life's lessons; it's not as resilient as you'd like it to be. Remember? The genetics in this body of yours suck. Get with the program, chick.

That’s when I got with the program. Just a month after I broke my wrist, two weeks after I stopped taking the prescribed pain pills, I quite smoking. I had a plan. I was determined. Take the pain pills for 2 weeks, even though the Dr. said to take them for 4-8 weeks, depending. Don't drink any alcohol the entire time you are taking pain pills, because, come on, that's just stupid and probably dangerous (plus, whatever your ailment, you heal slower when you drink alcohol). Allow yourself a couple of glasses a wine here and there, with what will be your last two weeks of smoking. And, get that Alan Carr's "Easy Way to Quite Smoking" book off the bookshelf (that's been colleting dust for 4 years) and read it (duh) then quit. Don't look back.

(Incidentally, I’d recommend the "Easy Way to Quite Smoking" book to anyone you know who truly wants to quit. They may find it monotonously repetitive in the beginning, as I did, but I think the book actually helps to reprogram/hypnotize the reader when they are ready to quit.)

That was that. I quit. After too many years (that I care to admit) of having cigarettes in my life, I was done with them.

But, I can admit that getting through the first year of not smoking was a bit grueling. Smoking was my I'm-fine, just-let-me-just-have-a-cigarette crutch, just like many of us have that let-me-just-throw-back-a-bus-load-of-pasta (or pizza, or liquor, or whatever) so I can eat myself/drink myself (“something” myself) numb and I will be okay mechanism. I am telling you, it felt like I cried every time something bothered me that I would usually smoke away.

This meant that I cried when some a-hole cut me off in traffic. I cried when I knocked something off the kitchen counter while making dinner. I cried, like a child cries, when I was tired. I cried when I wasn’t tired. I cried when I didn't know what my new identity was if I could not be the tough girl who didn't need to cry and who smoked instead of crying. In other words, and in two words: I cried. For a year.

That was tough for me, that year. I’ve never been a really impressive crier type person. True, I cry at sappy things (easily) like good movie endings. I cry those leaky-happy type tears (the watery-eye ones that never make it all the way out to rolling down the cheeks), when I am overjoyed for myself or for others. I even cry every once in a while when my hormones are out of whack. But, still, I am not technically what you’d call a crier when it comes to life’s basic ups and downs. I usually get more angry than teary. In the last 3 months I’ve only cried once and it was over a situation, with my butthead neighbors, that has been building for over two years. (Okay, so I am a build-up crier.) They finally pushed me to the hilt. (One of these blogs I will have to lay it out, why my neighbors are such buttheads. It will be the most boring blog ever, but at least then these worst-neighbors-in-the-world will be stricken from my “About Me” section and it will all be off my chest.)

So, with quitting smoking, the crux of it is that I cried because I couldn't smoke the emotions I'd shoved down for so long. I didn't even know what half of those emotions were. Most of the time, they weren't anything big. I just sort of stopped feeling in a lot of circumstances because I was too busy smoking instead. That’s what I was addicted to (I think intensely), to the not-much-hurts-if-I-smoke-it-away feeling. One gets a mistaken feeling of power when they can figure out how to live without much mental affliction, even if they don’t consciously know that they are turning their feelings off.

Why do you think people do what they do? Eat? Drink? Drug? Etc.?

But, it's more of an incredible thing when you realize that you have been identified with and addicted to something that is robbing you of a lot of your true identity. Coming to this conclusion is why quitting smoking has become one of the most powerful things I have ever done in my life. There are no words to explain how it feels to know that it is within you to give to yourself a more authentic you.

I thought it would be beyond impossible to give up not just something that I used as an unconscious crutch, but also something that was pure hedonistic enjoyment for me. I loved inhaling in on a cigarette and watching the misty grayish-white smoke come swirling out of my mouth. I looked forward to that rush of nicotine hitting my blood and the effect of this washing through me and creating the lightheaded calm that would envelope me. Pure satisfaction and complete control are the two things I felt most during the smoking of every cigarette.

Who would want to give that up? Exactly. But, again, having done it, and knowing I was bigger than the wanting of that experience…

Imagine that power for yourself for whatever holds you back.

But, back to Better-Than-Ever-man, and more to the point. Before Better-Than-Ever-man had said that he was, “Better than I’ve ever been,” I'd just come back from investing 45 minutes of my lunch with reading more from Eckhart (Eck) Tolle's "The Power of Now." In fact, I was absorbing some of the information Eck had offered in his book when I was unknowingly staring at Better-Than-Ever-man. Since a lot of what Eck writes in his books has to do with living in the Now, and the tattoo I want to get has EVERYTHING to do with reminding me to do just that, live in the now, my gaze had become fixed. That’s why it was so wonderful that while thinking about such a thing as the Now, someone living there so fully brought me wonderfully back to the Now.

More fantastic, ‘is’ what he said, the, "Better than I've ever been," part of it. Think about it. As Eck explains—and most of us know this, but cannot or do not practice it—it’s vitally important not to be identified with the pain from one’s past. What a novel concept that is. Right? But, think about how wildly and intensely life changing it would be to not root oneself in a victim identity, to not see one’s self as a product of what has happened, or believe that what will happen is what one should base their happiness or dissatisfaction on.

The fact is, believing in the past, believing in events that have already happened, makes other people, other things (things done and gone with), responsible for who you are, for what you identity is, and, clearly, other people, and those things that have already had their time in the sun are not who we are. As Eck basically says, in more brilliant and smart-guy like fashion, we are who we are Now. Who we will be in the future depends on how rooted we remain in the Now and how conscious we become in the Now.

I started to think about how easy this concept is if you equate it to something simple. For example, becoming more authentically you and living in the Now is like training to become a world-class bicyclist. If you have never ridden a bike before, not ever in your past, that does not matter. That’s the past. But, once you start riding a bike right now, while you may suck at it at first, and fall on your arse a couple of times, because you have not practiced enough to maintain balance more of the time than not, eventually you will be able to remain balanced on the bike.

And, each time you fell off the bike before, had a false start, or someone said you couldn’t do it, that you weren’t good enough to ride a bike, or smart enough, or anything enough, that’s in the past. It’s not now. So, you have to ditch the identity you might be inclined to hold onto, that you are not a good bike rider because someone said so, or because you fell off the bike, or because you don’t believe in yourself any more. That’s not who you are.

You are the person getting back on the bike right Now. You are the person who is getting better and better at riding the bike each time you get back on the bike and continue to practice. Eventually, you are the person winning the race. But, again, as the future is determined by each action in the Now, if you never get back on the bike, if you, instead, identify yourself as the faller-off-er of the bike, or as the person who cannot ride a bike, or as the victim of those who told you that you could not ride the bike, then that past, those things, they become your identity and you are not, therefore, your authentic self living in the Now. You are living in the past and identified with it.

Better-Than-Ever-man, he was not identified with an injury that occurred in the past. He didn’t say, “I’m alright.” He didn’t say, “I’m good, except for this broken wing.” He said, “I’m better than I’ve ever been.” He was like a bird with a broken wing. Have you ever noticed how the bird will keep trying to fly? They forget each second before the next, and attempt, over and over in each new second, each new moment of Now, to fly. They don’t ever doubt that eventually their wings will carry them again and should be carrying them Now. A bird knows its true self. A bird knows it ultimate potential. A bird knows it can fly and that is what it keeps trying to do.

We should strive to be more like Better-Than-Ever-man, to be more like birds. Our true selves can fly. When we are living in the light of our fullest potential, and practicing the embrace of our authentic selves, temporary injuries, circumstantial set backs, they will not define us. We are, when we are living consciously, in each moment that we are in, better than we have ever been!


On a totally unrelated topic, but I had to share because it was kinda cool, today one of my neighbors told me I was hot. He, this neighbor, not one of the buttheads, came to my door to ask me if I minded if he blocked the shared driveway for a bit. When I thanked him for asking, because the buttheads never give me or anyone that respect/courtesy, and he could see that I was visibly annoyed at the buttheads, he said, “You are hot when you are angry. You are hot anyway. I’ve always thought that. But you are really hot when you are angry.”

Ahh. The neighbor thinks I’m hot. Thanks, neighbor. Thanks especially because I have not washed my hair in 2 days, it was up in a schoolmarm bun, and I was sport’n a make-up less face. If only my neighbor was single, attractive to me, and really was the answer to me getting laid. If only. (Don't worry, there is no chance of my neighbor reading my blog.) Guess I’ll have to wait for my man, whoever he may be. (Oh, yeah… Universe? Could you speed it up before my libido tanks?)

That’s great, anyway, yeah? It is not very often that someone thinks and tells you that you are hot. I’ll take it.

I’m Not Getting Laid Because I am Boring.

It occurred to me yesterday, during the course of a conversation with Ava (I was at work and stealing a moment away from my desk—thus hiding out at Ava’s desk) that at some point, as I write about this or that in this blog, and say outright, and/or slip it in where I can, that I need to get laid, people are going to A. start to wonder how long it's been since I last got laid, B. start to feel sorry for me, no matter how long it's been (because I cannot shut up about it), or C. get so sick of me saying that I need to get laid that they, therefore, are going to D. tell me to just go out and slut it up, already. Well, I kinda did that.

No. No. Sorry. I totally was not trying to be misleading this time. The truth is, about a year ago, probably longer, I did slut it up and it turned me off from slutting it up again. I met this guy while I was out with a friend... Correction: I was out with someone who I used to work with and who is not a friend anymore because she's a drunk and she blamed getting her vintage-fur coat lost, or stolen (God only knows), on me. I'm sure you can figure out that her leaving her coat somewhere, or her getting it hijacked by the cute little Asian chicks that were sitting next to us and admiring her coat, not even 30 minutes before it went missing, is what I call: shit happens, and not, in fact, my fault.

This gal? Yeah, she not only holds the distinction of being one of only two friends in my life that I have formally ended the friendship with, she also gets to be one of the crazy-biach title-holding friends. She goes to swinger parties (lost her unicorn status just two weeks before we went out together that night). She intermittently does cocaine and "X", which accounted for the 20-pound weight loss she’d said was “eating right”. (In what universe is vodka and bar appetizers a good dietary program?)

She drinks, a lot, so much so she’s got a bottle in her drawer at work, and she is not a functioning alchy (her 2 kids live with her parents). She's more than a recreational pot smoker. And, oh yeah, she's obviously crazy because, according to her, it was also my fault that she lost the house and car keys that she’d put in that stolen/lost coat pocket. I know, I should have been babysitting my 38 year old friend better. (I don’t usually shirk responsibility.)

Yup, folks. I'm an equal opportunity kind of friend. Come one, come all, drunks, druggies, spiritual birds, brainiacs, every-day normies, or nerds. As long as you don't screw me over, I'll be your friend.

But, I diverge. (No surprise there.) Anyway, that night, as blame-your-stolen-coat-on-me-crazy-biach and I were talking up all the other bar-folks who were sitting to our left and to our right, at the bar-type ledge we were occupying, the man I was to have a one-day stand with, who was sitting in a booth with his brother just below that ledge, started chatting me up.

He was cute. Not holy-cow-I'm-breathing-hard cute, like Mr. Adorable was, but cute. Cute like the guy in the grocery store that you start sizing up, because you, like me, haven't been laid in a while, is cute. Once Mr. one-day-stand man started to come on strong, and plead, "Go with me and my brother to this other bar. Come on. Come with us." That’s when I started to size him up.

I told him, "No. I’m not going anywhere with you tonight. You can call me and ask me out on a proper date.” What he didn’t know was that in my mind I was saying, “No, I am not going anywhere with you tonight because I am so tipsy I might sleep with you and I do not want maintenance for one night. I want sustained service for a couple of months…at least.”

And, the very next day, calling me up to ask me out is just what he did. But, I was coming down with a bad cold. That’s when he, somehow, talked me into coming over to his house to let him take care of me. “I’ll get you some soup,” he begged me further. Stupid me. He wanted to take advantage of the sick girl. Stupid him. I wanted to be taken advantage of.

Look, I hadn't had “any” by that time in about two-ish years. And, I'd also rationalized in my mind, while he was lobbing up his fifth plea to take care of me and following it up with why I should let him do so, that it's not slut like if you meet the guy the night before and then sleep with him the next day. A one night stand is a one night stand. You meet a guy at night, sleep with him that night, then you never see him again. It doesn’t matter whether the walk of shame happens before or after sunlight. A next day lay, which you are planning, is like a relationship. (What? That isn't sound logic?)

If I am even more honest, I was giving him a trial run on my sick day. I knew he was not for me in the long run, but for once in my life (okay, twice. We'll get to the other time in a second.) I wanted to just be selfish and get what I wanted from him and then move on regardless of what he wanted from me and I had to see if I wanted what I thought I wanted from him. I figured if he did his job right, he'd get a couple months of me before I was done with his service. (In hind sight, it’s actually pretty impressive, the almost arrogance I’d had, that I’d get him under my spell and get as many months out of him as I wanted, especially when I am the furthest thing from cocky.)

Then…once I slept with him I knew I’d never do it again. It was so bad that I honestly don't even count him as a notch on my who-I've-slept with post. (Shit, I guess he counts now if I am blogging about it.) The point is, I had him slated to take care of my business for a couple of months, this cute-enough-but-not-breathtaking/you’re-lucky-to-get-a-chance-with-me dude. Then the plan I’d hatched to let this guy, I normally wouldn’t be interested in, get lucky with me, while I filled up my I-need-sex-tank with enough gas to get me further on down the road until Mr. Right-For-Me pulled my car over, failed miserably.

Further to the point, one-day-stand man was the worst lay of my life. He was everything, and more, you DON’T want someone you don’t love to be: sweaty, quick, small, loud, and amateur. (Sorry for the details, but I’m the one who suffered it first hand.)

The other time I threw the slut-label to the wind and didn’t care what blew back, or if I got sexed-up by someone I wasn’t in love with, was Ross...and that was about three-ish years ago and about a year-ish before you-suck!-one-day-stand man. Okay, so Ross wasn’t the first time I was selfish, but he was the first time in the last 15 years, past my early/mid twenties, which is pretty much when every girl is a bit of a lost, insecure, selfish slut.

Ross? He was just your typical every-day 45year old (looked 32 years old) Greek God. Imagine, if you will, that Matthew McConaughey and Jeff Bridges had a baby. Okay, now imagine just like that, but better than that, equipped with Matthew’s six pack abs. (I’m not lying for effect. Ross had a body that would make a nun ditch her vows.)

I'd known Ross for about seven years before we'd ended up in the sack together. I'd first met him at a friend's backyard party. When Ross walked through that rusty-red-paint-chipped gate into the main back court yard, and made his way through the candle-lit, white plastic tables and chairs to greet the hostess, every inch of my sexual being wanted his bread and began to plan how our butter would melt together. He was into me, too. Big time.

But, now, imagine Sean Penn’s character Spicoli in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” After five minutes of conversation with Ross, because he’d just totally blazed before he’d walked into the party, I couldn't take it. I know I’m not a rocket scientist, but every time he laughed that fader laugh of his, the kind of stoner laugh that gets trapped and then curls up in the back of stoner’s throat like a sputtering but smooth engine, or, more accurately, every time he laughed like a goat’s bleat, and every time he paused that pot-head pause, which, if you’ve seen that squinty eyed pause, it feels like you are watching someone one’s brain cells burn up on the impact of each new thought, it’s a painful experience for the non-stoned, over-active, intensely minded person such as myself.

Again, I am not claiming that I am or was smarter than Ross. Just more sober. (I had no way of knowing that night that Ross would turn out to be a bit of a pot-savant, a bit of a brilliant and artistic mind and conversationalist—stoned or sober.) However, at the time, listening to his baked ramblings and haze-filled advances was harder for me to endure than it would have been to have my arm hairs plucked out one by one with a tweezer for two hours straight.

But, alas, seven years later, and a thousand times later of us running into each other through the same mutual backyard-party-having friend, time after time, bar after bar, party after party, him stoned or not, I wanted to get boned a lot by him, but…I never made it known to him or any of our mutual friends. That is until the night we both acquiesced to our mutual desire.

That night I didn’t want to jump him right away when he showed up at the bar that backyard-party-having friend and I were at. (Later, I’d learn, because Ross told me, that the reason he showed up that night, and always seemed to show up when I was out with backyard-party-having friend, was because every time she told him that she was out with me he’d jump at the chance of seeing me again.) Alright, I did want to jump Ross that night. I wanted to jump him every time I saw him, but, also like usual, I wasn’t going to do anything about it.

The fact remained, each time I ran into Ross, as much as I wanted him to take me further away than Calgon could ever manage, I could never get past his whole Spicoli presence. I’d imagined that getting it on with him would be a lot like having your dog stare at you during sex, only the dog in the room wouldn’t have a bark. It would be his ever-present stoner laugh and dimmed stoner stare breaking the mood.

It wasn’t until after a couple of drinks, four…no five, six glasses of wine, that I knew it might finally happen, regardless. That’s why I didn’t argue when Ross and our backyard-party-having mutual friend planned for me not to drive home and to stay the night at his house. I’d drank too much, they’d said. Duh. I was getting up the nerve to put the moves on Ross.

But, once we’d gotten back to his place, and I had nowhere to go but to sleep or to bed, and once Ross had landed a kiss on me in his hallway, right in between the door to his bedroom and his two bikes (street and mountain), which were hanging from the ceiling, my mind started to pick “to bed and now!”

But, with fifteen years of: I’m over treating myself disrespectfully, and working out whatever issues I might have in bed with strange, or familiar, men, springing up on me (there weren’t that many men, as I am merely exaggerating, again, the rite of passage many girls experience going from slut to more so self-respecting saint), post my first kiss with Ross, and post our second, third, and fourth, and then post the two of us making our way to his bed, cloths still on, I didn’t want to do it. I put the breaks on.

I said, “I’m sorry, Ross, I can’t go there.” Then, my brain gave me the bird and said, “The hell you can’t, sista!” and my cloths flew off quicker than a sneeze.

I’d been run-into-him friends with Ross for seven years. If I couldn’t break the seal with a hot Greek God of a friend that I’d always wanted to go more than French on, what was I waiting for?

Then, after about two-three months of Ross serenading me with his guitar pre-sex, after doing yoga naked in my living room, pre and post sex, after multiple classical music concerts, dinners, a lot of wine, and after some of the hottest sex I’d ever had in my life, I found out that Ross had never been, as he’d convinced me, broken up with his girl-friend but was, instead, cheating on said girlfriend to be with me. Okay, part of me knew that he was lying to me by month two of our coitus, but I needed a couple more weeks of don’t-ask-don’t-tell, and just-keep-using-a-condom and keep giving me this drug-like sex, before I was ready to confront him.

Once I confronted Ross, and confirmed that my intuition was correct, that he had never broken up with his girlfriend, like he’d told me that he had the first night we were together, and once I realized that he was probably too messed up of a guy to be faithful to anyone (he’d even cheated on his wife of 18 years), I couldn’t knowingly put his poor, confused, messed up heart, nor my own selfish I-want-your-great-sex need (but you suck for lying to me, even if I never intended a future with you) through it any more.

Plus, once I definitely knew that I was one half of something I could never abide by, cheating, I felt sorry for whatever it was in me that needed that human contact enough that I’d allowed my intuition to be ignored, and I felt even sorrier for his girlfriend. I wasn’t the first, I wouldn’t be the last. Although, I always told myself that I was special. Not special like I was better than any of the other girls that Ross had cheated on his girlfriend or his wife with, I’m not an idiot (he was a lost, cheating man), but special because he waited seven years to be with me. Every other girl, he got the night he went after her. (Like I said, Ross is HOT!)

So, while there is nothing special about being with a man who is lost or who is hurting someone to be with you, that small part of my ego that is not fully enlightened, AKA all growd-up and developed (I’m big enough to admit that) liked that he’d waited seven years to be with me. I liked that I found out that for seven years he’d been showing up every chance he could to get that chance to be with me. I liked that he thought I was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever known, as he’d said, “Inside and out.”

After all, I’d waited a long time to be with him, too, in a way, minus needing to get past his stoner-induced goat bleat laugh, which I’d way over-imagined from the first night. He really didn’t have any annoying traits, aside from the first night of being really baked and the biggies of being a lost cheater. His laugh was actually adorable and infectious, I’d just been hanging onto the idea that his laugh and his stoner persona weren’t something I could get past…that way I could keep myself from “going there.” (I think I knew he was a little damaged from the beginning and I’ve never been good at consciously walking into damage. Unconsciously? Yes)

Ross, if I give him the credit he is due, outside of him misguidedly thinking he’s “not that man” (his words) who cheats, is one of the sweetest, sexiest, interesting, and fun men I’ve ever had the pleasure of being with and whatever is broken in him that makes him a cheater fails in comparison to the heart of his that I got to know. I’d never put up with his or any other man’s cheating, like his girlfriend did. I’m just saying that Ross has a gorgeous heart, even if the cracks in it misguide him. So gorgeous that, even if I’d remained resolved that I didn’t want a future with Ross, there was enough in him: beautiful, intriguing and easy, that I, on a couple of occasions, while I was with him questioned…is he someone I could spend substantial time with?

Now…what to do to solve my current problem of being among the un-sexed? If Ross wasn't such a mess, and if I thought Ross and I could have one of those every-once-in-a-while agreements (most people just call it friends with benefits) I'd have called him up to get another three month session going…by yesterday. Truth is, I'd called Ross about a week before I met one-day-stand man. But Ross was, as unfortunately expected, still not broken up with his girlfriend and still cheating on her with some other new girl he was probably hoping would fix him better than a bowl full of weed or I could.

And, it’s really a waste of time to go backwards and fill one’s time up with someone who has nothing more to teach you. I know Ross doesn’t have any more lessons for me. He might have some new moves… Can’t think about that.

So, the best chance I have right now for getting laid is waiting to run into my Mr. Right-For-Me at the grocery store, or hoping that the possible fix-up Ava might be able to arrange happens and turns into something substantial.

But, fix ups can sometimes be a long-shot, and not because the person doing the fixing up has something to do with the actual mechanics of the fix up working or not working out (meaning they fall off their match making duties). A fixer-upper-er not following through is not usually the case for a fix-up not happening (besides, Ava is a follow-througher). I’m far enough along in life to know that if the fix-up isn’t “it” (it-it), or isn’t one of someone's important stepping stones in life, or if someone isn't going to learn from it, grow from it, or isn't going to get something or give something to the person their person is trying to fix them up with, it ain’t gonna happen.

See, the universe gives us the lessons we need to repeat until we get them right. The universe gives us the people we need to meet in order to point out who we still haven’t become in our personal quest to live up to our full potential. And, the universe aligns everything, including moving the right people, the fixed-up recipients, into the right path, the right mental attitude, and, well, into the right magnetic net (like two flower seeds trapped by the same window screen) if it is supposed to happen.

So regardless of whether I’m up for it, and I am, or if he’s up to it, and I do not know that yet, if this guy who Ava mentioned might be a good fit for me is not the fit the universe wants for me, or for him, for a long time or for a short time, we probably won’t meet no matter how hard Ava gives it a go for us or no matter how hard we both want to meet. Something will get in the way. That’s what the universe does. It puts up road blocks up for things that are not supposed to happen and opens up gates for those things that are supposed to be.

Now, if I was still asleep at the wheel of my life, like I was when I was younger, I would have already met Ava’s Mr. fix-up by now, I would have pushed her and pushed anything I could to make it happen and I would have already begun to experience the lessons, or what I would have dramatically begun to call “the tragedy or bliss of our love”, unfold in my life. But I am too awake in my life and I know that I cannot force a lesson that is not mine to learn, not with this fix-up guy, or with any other guy. I cannot hope the right guy into my life sooner or hope him into a more convenient package. I cannot bend the universe to my will. The universe is meant to bend me to its consciousness.

Of course, if you ask Jen, she’d say I’m lazy in my pursuit of love and I need to push the people who are trying to fix me up more. Jen would say I need to let her fix me up more (more than never) and that I need to let more people fix me up, period. She’d say I need to go out more. Basically, she’d say I need to just "do" more to get things going. And, she’d probably be right.

That’s why, for the first time in the history of someone saying, "There's someone I think you might like," I not only took the bait when Ava initially said it, I, just yesterday (three months-ish later), post Ava and I having an I-need-to-get-laid-conversation, asked Ava, straight out, to get Mr. Fix-up man to check me out on Face Book and, if he thinks I'm cute, to give him my number and/or email.

I've never done that before. Usually, I am lazy, just like Jen says. Or, I'm probably also not comfortable being pushy. I figure if someone really thinks it's a good idea, they'll follow through. If they don't, it might not have been a good idea.

Plus, now, with me being all sort of rosy and more balanced in my life the older that I get, I’m extra boring. I’ve come to accept, even more, that what will be will be. I no longer desire exerting the kind of energy it takes to go down a road where I have to lay all the friggen cement first before this road can be traveled upon. I've learned that the roads you are meant to go down, once you’ve already gone down most of the bumpy ones, those roads, are mostly paved and they unfold before you more easily.

So, we’ll see. Ava assured me that this fix-up guy is tall, mature, spiritual, and handsome. What more could a girl want?

Or…we won’t see.

Or, I’ll see and won’t tell you about it because I’ll want to keep it all to myself for a while.

Oh, and if you are wondering why I am blogging about a guy I have not met and may not, and also writing about two of my past lays, one of the worst and one of the best, it is because I have figured out, just as I have told you, that I am boring.

What else am I going to write about?

I, without any doubts now, lead an uninteresting life. I’m interesting, but to the outside world, my life ain’t. And, while it may also seem sad to the outside world, I love my boring little life. Nothing could be better than having the evening ahead of you where a long hot shower, a bowl of whole-wheat pasta with a mound of fresh chopped garlic and Roma tomatoes, a glass of wine, and your couch and television are all your date. Okay, having an actual date could be better. My couch, while comfortable to lay on, is not my idea of a good lay.

However, if it is not already obvious, since I go out very seldom, that leaves me with very little to write about. If I am not blogging about my most recent spiritual revelation, or what has already happened, I got a bunch of noth’n.

Yes, I do go out every once in a while, but do you really want to read about me and Chloe having drinks two weeks ago and how the bartender at Chloe's neighborhood bar flirted with me? Because that didn't even happen. I flirted with him first then he flirted back (kinda). I can't really say what happened and what my mind filled in. How could I not flirt, though? He looked a little like Michael Buble and the first thing he asked me, in an Irish accent, was, “Can I get you something, love?” I wanted to tell him he could get me on my back, but I thought I’d just order a glass of wine.

Chloe and I also went out during the middle of the week to see this dude she was thinking that she might be into. This bohemian type dude had a singing gig. He also played an instrument, although for the life of me I cannot remember what it was. Sax? Horn? (He wasn’t my man. Why would I remember?)

But, I told Chloe, after he walked in and didn’t notice or say hello to Chloe and I for a half of an hour, that he wasn’t it for her. It wasn’t my place, and I should have kept my mouth shut, but Chloe had come to his gig because he invited her. Chloe and I were the only ones sitting at the bar five feet from the front door that he entered. Also, Chloe is GORGEOUS! She is hard to miss. Everywhere we go men stare at her.

So, because of that, whether he was shy, arrogant or otherwise, I decided that he was not her man. She deserves a man with enough grace to thank her for coming to his gig the minute he walked in. I don’t care how shy, or how whatever he was, he had to have noticed her and it took him too long to acknowledge her. And that’s on him, not her.

I could also tell you how last weekend I went out with Fae and her hubby for lunch, but the waitress was a female and she didn’t call me love, but that’s pretty un-interesting and un-getting-laid worthy, eh?

Two days later, this last Tuesday, when I drove in the pouring rain on flooded streets to get all four of my SUV tires changed, like only a jack-hole does, the guy at the tire store flirted with me. But he was married, and a bit trailer-trashy, so that’s not very noteworthy, either.

The point is, like I said, a couple of times, I AM BORING. That’s why I’m not getting laid. I rarely go out. I’m making the psychic’s prediction, that I’ll meet my hubby this year, a wondrous and distant dream by leading the life I lead. I know that.

Shoot, even the notes from the universe that I signed up for, which Ava also turned me onto, told me I need to get off my arse. Go to Tut Adventurers Club and sign up for your own emails from the universe. It’s fun. :>)

The note from Tut said: Should you choose to go, do, and be, at the end of your life, shocked and dismayed, you'll likely exclaim that because of all the uncanny events, wild timing, weird coincidences, and sheer chance encounters, all of your life's good fortune must have been your destiny.

Or, should you choose to wait, wish, and hope, at the end of your life, shocked and dismayed, you'll likely exclaim that because of all the uncanny events, wild timing, weird coincidences, and sheer chance encounters, all of your life's bad luck must have been your destiny.

Hmm.

BTW, it was also Ava who inspired me to start this blog, so it’s not surprising that she’d continue to inspire me on future blog posts, but if telling you why I am not getting laid turns out to be as boring as my life, and if you find yourself no longer surprised as to why I am among the sexless…still, don’t blame Ava. Blame me. Apparently boring people require batteries and I’m all out. (What does that even mean?)

Everything is Connected? Prove it!

I won’t be messing with you in this blog entry. I won’t lead you down a path and then admit that I am lying, or, as I prefer to say, using my imagination again. But, I could be lying about that. So let’s not hold our breath.

Actually, I really won’t mess you, spare that tiny little indiscretion that just took place, as the main goal of this blog entry is to allow you to decide, for yourself, whether or not you believe, in part or in whole, that everything is connected. And, while I cannot prove this to be an indisputable fact, I have witnessed strong evidence to support this assumption in my life. Daily I see connections and seeming coincidences, I believe are not mere chance events, which affirms that all things are interrelated and stem from one source.

This brings me to how I started my year off and how I knew it was going to be an amazing year at that. About two days after I got home (on Wednesday, January the 6th) from spending time with Jen and ringing in the New Year, I was in my living room (a shoe-box sized room where I keep my couch and television) and I had this all-consuming feeling of gratitude wash over me. I can’t say why I’d become instantly affected with such an amazing surge of grace and energy, as I was merely walking from my bedroom (a tissue-box sized room where I keep my bed and dresser) to my living room when this feeling rushed into me, but it was so intense that I decided to sit down and let the affect of this emotion finish with me.

Then, as I sat there in my computer-desk chair, a normal-sized computer-desk chair, I started to smile, and not like an oh-gosh-what-a-pretty-day-it-is-generic smile, but an all-aboard-whole-body-beaming smile. Next, I felt a calm permeate my being. It was as if my inner-knowing had come forth and I was devoid of all thoughts except one: Because all things are connected, I am part of the greater Oneness. Feeling this, knowing it, my smile grew even bigger. Then, a new thought had come. One I hadn’t felt in a long time. About 15 years to be exact.

I felt, deep down, that this would be the year that I was going to meet my someone—my last someone. The soul mate I would go home with (I’ve got a whole theory on soul mates I will share in a later blog). This feeling didn’t come because every year my poor mother, who is worried about me, says, “This is your year, honey. I just know it is.” (She’s probably also worried that I’m freaked at this point, being single and 40—which we’ve established, is not the case). Nor did I feel this because at the end of last year my father decided to ask me if my biological clock was ticking, which is weird, because neither of my parents have ever asked me about my personal life—let alone my yay-or-nay desire to have kids—until recently, and, frankly, I don’t want my father asking me questions about my uterus. And, though it would seem so, it’s also not because the psychic said this was the year I’d meet someone.

The feeling just showed up on its own path and was not introduced by any preceding thought having anything to do with anyone or anything else. I can promise you, that the only other time I had a feeling like this one was on the night I met Mr. Gold standard (which was, as stated, 15 years ago). I didn’t want to go out that night, because I had a nasty cold and felt like crap. But, I knew I was going to meet someone. Not just anyone, but someone special. So, I let Jen talk me into going out with her and a bunch of her friends I didn’t know. (I say talk me into because this crew was a little off and I don’t even think she knows any of those freaks any more.) By the time I left the house that evening I was sure that whatever I had felt, that I would meet someone, was not the truth at all but was, instead, only my desire manifesting itself as thought and, because of this, I’d be better off at home nursing my cold rather than following some intuition I wasn’t even sure I’d even felt.

And now, about a month after having had a thought like that again, there is that very careful part of my ego that thinks I’m an idiot for even putting it out there in such a public forum that I felt it again. My ego asks, “What if it doesn’t happen? What if a sinister soul reading this blog would sooner delight in my failure than success?” To that end, and to my ego, I would reply: The feeling was there. It was unmistakable. It will either manifest or it will not. I am blogging about all things spiritual in my life, and about all things being 40, and meeting the man who is meant for me this year would be one of those things and would be truly fabulous. Besides, I am sure we’re ALL sick of hearing me say I’d like to get laid. So… P.S. Ego, and sinister souls who delight in anyone’s failure, get stuffed!

Anyway, after the feeling that this was to be the year I’d make a soul connection left me, my thoughts went back to the connectivity of things and my smile grew as wide as it could possibly get. After that, I decided to go to Ross to buy a rain/winter coat.

What the hell does that have to do with anything? Well, the reason I was going to buy a coat was because I wanted to send my old coat to Jen’s house so that it would be there every winter when I came to visit. This way, I wouldn’t have to pack a coat each time. The reason I was going to buy a coat at Ross was because that’s where the gift certificate was issued from that one of my co-workers gave me as a Christmas gift. The reason I didn’t want to pack a rain coat ever again was because I was trying to lighten my load due to the fact that the airline I’d just flown this last time going to Jen’s charged me $20.00 to check my baggage (both ways). The reason I had to check my baggage was because after packing and unpacking too many times: bigger bag to smaller bag, then smaller bag back to bigger, then bigger back to smaller, then, finally, back to bigger (so I wouldn’t have to cram things for once) I, as evidenced by that tortuous smaller-bigger-bag-who-the-F’-cares journey I just took you on, settled on the bigger bag…which I never do.

The reason I was going to Ross that day, instead of the next day, was because I didn’t want to have to run a thousand errands the next day so, while I also went back and forth a bazillion times on this decision, I finally figured I’d knock out at least one of those errands thereby saving myself the monotonous affliction of doing all these day chores—these I’ve-done-this-shit (get gas, get groceris, etc.) a thousand times and I’m over it—that I was begrudging getting done all-in-one-day in the first place. Finally, the reason why I was going to Ross that instance, instead of an hour later, which is what I had previously planned, was because I got so sick of doing all the housework I’d been doing all day, that I was also totally OVER, that I’d thrown in the towel. The dishes, getting something to eat, and putting away all my laundry, they’d have to wait. I just wanted to get the damn errand over with so I could come home and relax for the rest of the day.

If you are still wondering what the hell does all of that have to do with anything? I will tell you. About four minutes after I walked out of my back kitchen door a friend, my neighbor, had a Xanax/alcohol withdrawal seizure in front of me.

You do the math. How many things led up to me walking out of my door at that time? And, what made me stop to talk to her for a minute before I got on my way, especially when I was in a mad hurry to go and get back home? That, I cannot answer.

But, I can say that if the chain of events that had led up to me walking out of my door at that moment had not transpired, and if my neighbor had not decided to go outside, just two minutes prior to get some fresh air rather than stay inside, she might have been alone when she had this seizure.

You may not have a mind that works like mine, where you relish in any opportunity that allows you to see a chain of events leading up to a singular event, but from my account of just such a chain, you must see, at least, why it is that I do not believe in coincidence but rather in connectivity and/or in divinity. It was, in my humble opinion, divine planning that had me there at that moment.

It sucked being there. I said I wouldn’t lie to you this time, and I won’t, so I will say that it beyond sucked being the lone seizure witness-er/helper-outer. It was one of the most traumatic events of my life.

Imagine that you and a friend are just talking normally. She’s asking you how your New Years was. You’re asking her how she’s been. She’s also trying to read a text from another friend during this blasé exchange and can’t quite make it out, which, in hind site, was the beginning of her seizure (she’d complained that she was seeing spots). You think she’s just hungry and light headed, because she never friggen eats, and you take her phone away from her to try to decipher WTF the text says. (It’s almost painful watching this poor too-hungry soul, or so you think, remain confused.)

Then, she says she sees a weird light and starts to follow it with her eyes. Her body then follows her eyes, leaning forward towards this light, but you still think it is lightheadedness and remind her, again, that she needs to eat something. Later you learn that this sensation of seeing “the light” is known as the Aura, the Pre-ictal phase of a seizure, a brief period just before the actual seizure where it’s not unusual for a person to experience certain sensations, a common one among them being a visual perception of light. But since you don’t know Jack about seizures, you now adamantly remind her that she needs to eat something and then you go back to trying to decipher the text message for her.

As you are turned away from her, to hold her cell phone into the light and make out the text (because while you look pretty good/young for 40 yrs old, your sight sucks a bit), and just as you start to make out said message in its entirety, you hear the plastic Adirondack chair she is sitting in behind you start to scoot, making a skipping-plastic sound against the pavement. You also hear something banging against the wall. When you turn around to see what the commotion is you see that the thing banging against the wall is her head.

My first instinct? I thought she was joking, doing one of those things where she was physically acting out, in overly-dramatic fashion, how badly she felt because when I’d asked her earlier how she was, she’d said, “Shitty. I haven’t been feeling very good lately.” True, she’s not prone to the comical dramatics that my innate nerd-ness enjoys.

But, what’s also true is that she rarely feels good. She’ll tell you that herself. So, I thought nothing of it when she said she felt shitty. She always feels shitty. She’s also recently had her gall bladder out. She smokes a bus load of pot and smokes almost as much in the way of cigarettes. She stays up late and sleeps all day (her circadian rhythm—her internal biological clock/sleep-wake cycle—is way off). She doesn’t eat right when she finally does eat. She drinks. A lot. She, to put it succinctly, lives up to the large tattoo inked across her chest just under her collar bone, which says: Live fast. Die pretty, and she, which she would also tell you herself is true, pretty much wears her fast-paced lifestyle as a badge of honor. She has said to me, on more than one occasion—in a cavalier fashion, “I don’t want to live to be really old. I’m fine with dying young. I never thought I’d make it past 30, anyway.”

The point is: it took a good 5-10 seconds for my brain to kick in and realize that something was terribly wrong and that perhaps she was having a seizure. 5-10 seconds is a long time when it precedes such an event.

Now, I’d seen two seizures happen in front of me before. Once, when I was about 19 yrs old and working as a waitress one of the guys, from a party-of-four, I was waiting on up and had, what I assumed to be, an epileptic seizure in the middle of giving me his order. Yeah. “I’ll have a side of fries with that, and...” WTF?!

Since no one who was sitting with him decided to do anything about his body contorting about, except for to get out of the booth so that they could watch, from afar, him continue to stiffly writhe about, I yelled, at the top of my lungs, “Call 911!”

Then, I told his friends to get the hell out of the way as I guided his seizing body out of the booth so that I could get him clear of everything he was banging against. Before I knew it, his seizure was over and the paramedics where there to extricate him from my lap and from my care and to takeover. Whew. He was to be fine.

Another time, I witnessed a co-worker go into a diabetic seizure. This time it was my friend Fae, who I worked with at the time, who called 911 and guided our diabetic co-worker out of her office chair and on to the floor and who also turned our co-worker’s head sideways so that she wouldn’t choke on her seizure foam. Whew. She was to fine, too.

But this time, being alone, not having a restaurant full of people or an office full of co-workers, it was different. Whatever calm I used to pride myself in having, during storms such as this, was no where in sight. Fortunately my reserve switched to auto-pilot and took mostly over. It was that auto-pilot part of me which knelt down on my knees to face my friend and neighbor and take her head into one of my hands, pulling her forward, in an attempt to cradle her against my chest and my shoulder to keep the back of her head from banging against the wall behind her. I was also trying to tilt her slightly to the side, angling her, to keep her from choking on her seizure foam. (Sadly, she actually ended up with a bruise on her forehead from my doing this. The force with which I was required to use in an attempt to draw her forward was so great, because she was convulsing so hard and therefore stiffening away from me, that my strength was barely a match to her rigidity and left a contusion on her head during my effort.)

It was also that auto-pilot part of me who began to use my other hand to dial 911 on her cell phone, which I was still holding—thank goodness! I can’t imagine what I would have done if I had not had her phone in my hand. I was too petrified to leave her alone, thinking that even a second of her on her own would be the death of her. Turns out, dialing 911, those three little numbers, is not so easy when the part of you that is afraid that your friend is going to die in front of you, and that no one will be there to help you, becomes the prevailing part of you now in control.

I dialed 912. Shit! Then I dialed 911 and pushed the green send button. Shit, that was not the green make-the-call-send button; that was the red-stop-the-call button. Just dial 911! Damn it! Push green! Did I get it?!

When the 911 operator came onto the line and told me to calm down, interrupting me in the middle of trying to give him my address so that an ambulance could get the hell on its way, I was livid. Really, asshole? Is this how it’s going to be? I thought. I’m calm!!! Now take my friggen address down you muther #^@&*! so someone can come help me before she dies. I can't be alone.

In hind sight, the 911 operator was probably right. I was not calm.

The fear of being alone during this formidable circumstance was not the only emotion I experienced. I ran the gamut of wondering if she was going to die in front of me, wondering if what I was witnessing was, indeed, a seizure, or if it was a stroke, or something else entirely. How would I know? I’m not a doctor. (I’m an artist/writer.) I moved on to wondering if she would fully recover. Would she have brain damage? Would she be able to use her entire body again or was I witnessing the event that would paralyze her in some way?

Why would I think differently? What she’d had was a full grand mal seizure complete with muscle rigidity and spasms, major jerking, a loss of consciousness, and then, when it was finally over, which felt like hours of my life had gone by, it was followed by her entire body slumping into a motionless limpness. Then, slowly, but eventually, she became conscious. That’s when the lethargy and confusion ensued.

Watching her coming to, it was like something out of an alien movie. Her muscles were contracted and her entire body was contorted. Her head rolled around on her shoulders while she unsuccessfully attempted to hoist it straight and keep control of it. Her eyes, reappearing from being rolled back into her eye lids, tried to find something to focus on that made sense. No part of her was conscious enough to reason what had happened to her but the recognition that something awful had happened enveloped her with a visible fear.

Watching it all was intense. Seeing her trying to navigate her own body and mind, both of which were not responding to her desire to come back to full consciousness, that is when I was sure she had brain damage. That’s also when I thought she might have paralysis. Her limbs still weren’t responding to her efforts to use them. It was as if her skin and bones had become an inanimate object, much like a puppet, and her inner will had become the puppeteer, only the puppet proved too heavy and too unruly to be animated by the master.

By that time, the paramedics had shown up, and it was no longer necessary for me to remain on the phone with the 911 operator who had been unsuccessfully trying to calm me down by narrating what behaviors I could expect to see my friend exhibit next. His narration, while it did help me to understand what was happening, mostly served to bring the shock of it all more present.

Each time that he was right, each time that she fell in line with what he told me I would witness next, such as her becoming confused once she began to regain consciousness and how she would not recognize me or where she was at first, it freaked me out. I kept wondering if what he was describing was normal, like she's going to be alright normal, or if it was the kind of normal that precedes someone walking with a limp for the rest of their life because the part of their brain that controls one half of their body got burned up and died in the seizure and one of their arms and one of their legs no longer works. It will now need to be dragged along every where they go.

Eventually, she came to enough for the paramedics to ask her simple questions about herself: How old are you? Where are you? What’s your name? Questions she could not answer. Yup… brain damage, I thought.

She never gained full consciousness in front of me. While the eight paramedics/fireman who showed up scattered around her and began to put her onto the stretcher to go to the ER, she just kept looking at me through her blurred expression and wide, confused eyes. As they wheeled her off, further and further, she kept her gaze fixed upon me. She seemed to be asking me, the only recognizable part of her world, “What’s happening to me?” Later she did confirm that my face was the only thing that made sense to her at that point.

What was especially hard for me was that I didn't get to go in and see her in the ER room, not being family. So it wasn't until six or so hours later, when she came home from the ER, that I was able to see her and was able to ascertain that she wasn't brain dead or didn't have any permanent physical paralysis. Even so, I didn’t sleep that night, or for many nights to come. Visions of her seizure, being the visual/artist-ish person that I am, plagued me. (I can still see her seizing to this day. I now get PTS disorder. I never want to go to war. I can’t even handle a seizure.)

Let me remind you that it is an entirely different experience seeing someone that you care for and love having a seizure. The restaurant epileptic-seizure dude, oh…I made amends with that experience not long after it happened. It was the same with the co-worker. But when you are the only one there with the person seizing and you are not even sure it is a seizure, and when that person is someone you love, it feels more alone than I think I have ever felt in my entire life.

But, I feel blessed that I was there, for her and for me. First for her because she was mortified that she’d put someone through what I’d gone through. I assured her that of all people, it was probably supposed to be me. I’d continue to gently remind her that this might have been her wakeup call, but I would never judge her while doing so. I get why she does drugs and drinks. I get why she, and why any of us, need to do anything to check out for a bit/for a while. There is no one among us that has not eaten something fattening to eat themselves numb, and there is also no one, who is "us" or someone who we know, who has not attempted to drink, smoke, movie-watch, relationship-divert, or drug their way different from how they are feeling…which hurts.

Then, for me, this has now become one of those things in life where, if you have your eyes open, you see that there is a divine order to things. I was there. I was there because of so many reasons. I was off from work because it was a furlough day. Then there was the whole bigger-smaller-bag thing, and the bag charge thing. There was the coat situation and the timing of the errand, and… Need I go on?

If this particular account of what I was a part of, and we’ve established that my life is not a movie (or, I’d be getting laid by now) does not point out the divine connection to things, at least in some little way, I am not sure what more I can say except that I am sorry. I am sorry for anyone who does not feel connected to the Oneness of things.

I, on the other hand, post digesting the trauma of the situation, felt blessed and more connected than I ever had before. To walk out of my door, still feeling the grace of the gratitude I’d just experienced for recognizing that I am connected to the whole, and to be presented with an indisputable example of that connective energy, her seizure and me to help, well, it’s an overwhelmingly beautiful gift.

Yes.

This is going to be a blessed year.

It may also be an intense year, as it started out with a pretty big bang, but I am up for it. I’m going to keep my eyes open wide. I am going to open my heart even wider. And, I am going to remain as vertical as I can. The past, the future, the worry and fear that both plague one with and keep one trapped within anything but the Now, well, they, too, can stuff it right along with my ego. If I can do one thing this year...I hope that it is to banish, once and for all, whatever tie my ego has bound itself to that is incapable of living completely in the Now and without unnecessary fear.

I am here Now, baby! It’s beautiful.

By the way, totally unrelated, but I found it amusing, I offered someone else an apple today. He wasn’t homeless. He was a co-worker. But, he didn’t want an apple either. He said that he was a meat and potatoes man.

I think I need to quit being an apple pusher. After all, I eat almost an apple a day but it hasn’t kept the doctor away and my genetic blood pressure still sucks. I even have a cardio stress test on Monday. I’m kinda nervous about it, but at least I’ll find out if I can run again without having a weird episode like the one I had just before Christmas last year where I got so light headed and nauseous, which has never happened to me, even though I have been running on and off since the 2nd grade, that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to drive myself home. :>(

Sorry, bad note to leave my blog on, but it just feels weird to have a doc appt. where I need to show up in sweats and run to a point just before something bad might happen. So, connect to me and hope that my veins don't suck and I can run again.

Regardless, keep being fabulous! I will... even if my blood pressure sux.

The Grass is Green on Both Sides of a Gray Fence

I’ve done it. In the first month of this year, seven days after my 40th birthday, I have met the man I am going to marry. Guess who it is? It’s Zipper, from my last blog entry. No, silly. It’s the homeless guy I met at Ralph’s grocery store earlier today. He thinks I’m pretty. He asked me, “Why are you so pretty?” Of course he said this after he told me he was hungry and needed some food and asked me if I could buy him some. I offered to buy him an apple, but he said, “I don’t like apples. I want a donut.” Then, that’s when he asked me why I was so pretty.

What’s sad, is that I have really bad luck with offering apples to homeless guys. I always seem to have apples, they are my on-the-go-food, and I am not afraid to offer them, obviously, but homeless folks don’t seem to want them. One time I offered this other guy an apple (maybe he was homeless, maybe he wasn’t), who was begging for change outside of Taco Bell, and he didn’t just have a thing against apples, he hated all fruit and told me as much—with zeal. Then, he gave me a dirty look for offering him something so healthy. He wanted Taco Bell, damn it. How dare I?

And today, I offered an apple to yet another homeless guy, even before I got to Ralph’s and got buttered up with flattery (this other homeless guy stands on the same street corner day in and day out right in front of the coffee shop on Pacific Coast Highway and 7th Street in Long Beach) and he didn’t have anything against apples, per se, he just couldn’t eat them. No teeth. But, at least he was gracious enough to smile his toothless grin and thank me. Now him, he deserved a donut.

What I have concluded from all of this, is that when a homeless guy asks you for food, he doesn’t want an apple, and when he asks you, more than once, “Why are you so pretty?” what he is really asking you is, “Why won’t you just get me the F’n donut, biach?”

Will the real man of my dreams please step forward? Da dada da tada…behind door number three we have Mr. Adorable Italiano (who is also from my last blog entry). “How can that be?” you say. Mr. Adorable didn’t ask for my number, you protest further. This is all true. However, my friend Willamina convinced me that I shouldn’t leave well enough alone, even when I fervently suggested that I should. She said that I owed it to the love Gods to pull one of those same-time-same-place moves, and that I should get my tooshy back to the breakfast joint counter where Mr. Adorable and I met, and I should give him a chance to show up and ask for my phone number.

Sounds desperate?

I couldn’t agree more, which is what I told Willamina along with saying, “I don’t think Mr. Adorable is it, Willa.” But, given the fact that I’d also shared with her many other things that the psychic told to me, aside from telling me that I’d meet my husband this year, Willamina made me promise that I’d humor her and…just friggen do it! A promise is a promise. Plus, when two people remind you that you need to learn to be a girl, a friend and an amazing psychic, who, by the way, predicted another friend’s marriage, you start to take heed.

It was hard, hearing Willamina regurgitate to me, again, what the psychic had confirmed, that men are afraid of me. Not afraid of me like I’m going to eat their head off of their shoulders with my metamorphic, alien, giant-sized mouth, but afraid of me like they don’t think I need them so they feel emasculated by me. It was probably necessary that I be reminded, because it’s kind of, um…true. I know I can be scary independent.

I’ve never been good at being the damsel in distress. My mother told me that when I was a little girl if I was sick in the middle of the night I would sooner get up and change my own sheets and put the dirties in the laundry than letter a whimper loose and ask anyone for help. The only time I climbed into my parent’s bed when I was a kid was during a massive lightening and thunder storm. Let me tell you, I still remember that monster storm. If one like it hit again, I’d be looking for someone’s bed to crawl into right now.

What’s sad, is now that I am an adult I know that asking for help is an amazing strength to have, but, among all of my strengths, that is one that is underdeveloped in me. This I am trying to change. We accomplish more when we work in solidarity rather than solitarily.

That said, it is probably true that most men don’t get the impression that I even want a man in my life. I got it when the psychic said that while it is essential that a woman gets in touch with the goddess side of her nature, and taps into her strength, beauty, and sensuality (while maintaining her brains), that strength can sometimes become a weakness if she does not let others, namely in my case: a man, give her their strength back.

Allowing vulnerability is good. I have never denied the gift of a friend’s strength in my life before. However, it’s been a long time since I’ve met a man who has enough of his own emotional strength that he is not afraid of mine. Again, I am not saying I am the epitome in emotional wherewithal, but I do know that, for better or worse, I have spent a lifetime being strong for others. Somewhere along the way I learned how important it is to let others know that they can count on you. That characteristic has, in many ways, become predominant in my nature, among other characteristics that do not spell out: I-will-let-you-help-me to a man. I am sure that some of my breakups have also left me with some residual armor I’m not conscious of. It’d be stupid to assume that many of the men I’ve encountered are not picking up on that.

Thankfully, in recent years I have felt a lot of my energy shift to a much more open, available, and vulnerable space where men are concerned. But, I can imagine that before this inner alteration, which almost always has to happen subconsciously before one becomes conscious of it, the previous energy, which has left so many men with the impression that I’ve got it all figured out, has prevailed. The men I have encountered have likely thought: This chick is taking care of herself and others. She doesn’t need me. The problem is, no matter how good I am at looking after myself, that doesn’t mean that I don’t also want someone to care for who can also watch over me.

That’s why when I saw Mr. Adorable walk into the breakfast joint I felt I had another opportunity to be a better flirter, to be a better, softer girl. I wasn’t going to go wearing pink or anything, but… Alright, I’m am so friggen lying again. Mr. Adorable never showed up. But, I did finally figure out why I lie so much. It has nothing to do with a blow to the head as I’d previously ascertained. It also has nothing to do with me being an actual liar, because I am, in reality, a pretty darn honest person.

It’s as simple as this: I’m a writer who has never written the truth before. Meaning, I usually start out with the truth, as most writers do. I draw a basic story from the truth and utilize the emotions that follow. Then, in much the same way that a painting speaks to me as soon as I put the first stroke of color on the canvas, the story calls out to me. It asks me, like the painting does, not just to create it but to listen to what it has to say for itself. The color in my paintings and the words in my stories, they talk to me. They tell me what they need and where I should go next. I listen.

But my life, this telling the truth as it is happening business, it seems to require that I become somewhat of a reporter—a teller of chronological events—rather than an imagine-ista who get’s to listen to the whispers of hue, saturation, and nuance, or who gets to cast out a word or a sentence and see what kind of an adventure fish takes the bait.

Before this blog, I’ve never done that, this going with just-the-facts thing. Maybe I have done it, reported stuff, in my emails to friends, but not as a writer. Going with only the truth in this blog is still strange as hell to me. It feels like putting bacon bits on vanilla ice-cream. BTW, I don’t even eat bacon or ice cream. There’s too much salt in bacon, which is bad for my blood pressure, and I am lactose intolerant. So? See how difficult this is?

And, the whole truth is…this life of mine, it ain’t the movies. No one’s life is. We don’t get what we want in approximately 1 ½ to 2 hours—standard movie length. In our lives, there are no ten minute introductions to all the pivotal players—heroes and zeros. We cannot count on the meet-cute (boy meets girl) playing out in the way Hollywood contrives these encounters. No. Our got-love/lost-love, got milk/get drunk, it all plays out as successive steps getting us closer and closer to the lessons the universe wants us to learn in order to fulfill our ultimate potential in this life. Which is why we totally miss out on the 90-minute build-up of the rhetorical: Will they? Won’t they? When we know, stylistically and statistically (because it’s a romantic comedy, duh), that: They will!

So just get on with it, already. Hurry up with the stock argument, the fight, the misunderstanding AKA: the turning/breaking point, and get to the last 15-20 minutes of resolution that ends up in a kiss, a marriage, or at least a car driving off to Mexico, and role the damn credits. Then, we can throw our popcorn tub and empty soda cup onto the ground just underneath the seat we borrowed for a bit, because someone’s getting paid to pick that crap up, and we can go home to our lives where, if we’re telling the truth, may not be as tidy or as interesting as the diversion we just paid almost ten bucks for.

And that, my friends, is why I find myself constantly staring down the what-really-happened path, while my imagination, that big story fish, which says, “Hey! I’m over here. You could say this instead!” and gives me a run for my money. I find myself wanting to take you on a journey far less pedestrian than the goings-on in my life.

But, as you’ve seen, I sometimes have my amusing moments. Take Zipper, for example. I’ve never made a puppet out of a man before. Telling you about Zipper in my last entry has a little more grab than what happened today. Today, I took the same-time-same-place challenge Willamina indentured me to, and I went to breakfast with my friend Chloe (I needed a beautiful buffer of a friend to go with me, thnx Chloe) and I waited for Mr. Adorable (well, I meant to wait, but I got so caught up in my conversation with Chloe I honestly did forget why we’d gone there for breakfast in the first place), but Mr. Adorable didn’t show up, my oatmeal was cold, and my toast was soggy.

At least it never felt right that Mr. Adorable was my man in the first place, so I didn’t feel let down.

It would have been far more interesting if Mr. Adorable had shown up, though. That’s why, for a sentence or two, when the story begs to take me somewhere else, as this one did, I always want to go with it. Except, this is not a story, it’s my life. I have to keep reminding myself that. So, what I’ve been calling lying is really just imaginative creative writing. However, I am going to make a deal with you. So that you won’t start to think that I am forever the girl who cried wolf, I’ll try not to be imaginative for a while.

Something I do not have to make up, is that when I, in passing, said to someone I work with that I was going to meet my husband this year, I was looked at as though I was, indeed, an incredibly pathetic, desperate woman and not at all the assured, spiritual, self-fulfilling-prophecy of a positive woman I liken myself to be. So, to set the record straight, I have few things to say about that. (Not that that negativity-cow, who I barely know, who broke into my conversation with a real work-friend to interrupt, and look at me weird, is going to read my blog, anyway, but it’ll make me feel better to get it off my chest.)

First, let me explain, in more depth, why it is that I have been mostly single for so long aside from wanting a really wonderful man for myself and being unwilling to settle for less. About seven-ish/eight years ago a friend of mind said that I should enjoy being single and not having kids. My first reaction to this statement, even though I’d spent most of my life being single as opposed to being in a relationship, was to cry.

I was in my early thirties. I’d just broken up with a man who’d wrangled half of my identity from me. I was searching for someone else to give me that identity back. I had no idea that looking within would do the job better than any man could do for me. And, I believed that I might never meet the right man in time to have kids. In short, single made me sad. I was good at single. It’s what I’d mostly done. But, I didn’t want it for the rest of my life, and my break up with the man I’d given half my identity to had me believing I would be single forever.

Then, miraculously, three years later, I took the friend’s advice. It didn’t happen over night, and I never meant to enjoy being single, because I thought it was impossible, but for that three years I began to ease into it. I had started to take pleasure in being on my own. Accepting my single status, without knowing how long it would last, was foreign at first. Again, the whole reason I’d always been single was because I was unwilling to settle, not because I wanted to be alone. And, although I was still afraid of being alone forever, I was no longer afraid to be alone for months on end anymore.

Ultimately, whatever fight in me there was against being single started to diminish. I still didn’t want it; but I was getting better and better at it. Then, something switched in me. I began to enjoy it—really enjoy it. I began to relish having the bed all to myself and sleeping in. I started to realize that my company was not only pretty damn good, my company didn’t require me to put make up on or wear a bra.

I always got to watch what I wanted on TV or at the movies. If I didn’t want to cook, I didn’t have to cook. If I wanted to eat bad, good, or somewhere in the middle, no one was going to argue with me or tell me if I was pack’n on a few pounds. I was the only one seeing me naked. I was spending my money and my time how I wanted to spend it, and I was working on the most important relationship of my life. I even realized, through my spiritual growth, that if I was meant to have kids I would have them. If I was not, I wouldn’t. Either way, I was okay.

That acceptance surprised me most. There was a time all through my late twenties, and in my early thirties, where if you’d asked me if I would be fine if I never had kids, when all I’d ever wanted to do was to be a mother, that I would not have been able to answer you through my tears. You would have taken my bellowing emotion as a definitive ‘no’. No, no, and no. I was not going to be anywhere near okay if I did not have kids.

Now, I don’t even know if I want kids anymore. I am not just saying that, either, as I am still surprised that it’s true. I haven’t stopped loving kids, or being a mothering person, there are just so many more days now in my life where it no longer makes sense that I would have kids. I’ve not become selfish. I’ve become accepting. Admittedly, there are days I’ve so wholly embraced the freedom being single offers that when there is something else I’d rather be doing, or I’m tired, I sometimes get mad at my plants because they need watering. That makes me realize that it’s okay if my life remains simple.

But, there is a middle ground to every path. And, as I’ve explained, I have been on both sides of this journey before I found myself anywhere near a centering point. I’ve been scared shitless that I might not find someone in time to have kids, and have, as such, thought that the grass is indisputably greener when you are standing on it with someone else. I’ve also felt unsure if I even wanted to share my quiet, hermetic state of self-love, and, probably, self-safety, and, definitely, total freedom, with someone else. There is something empowering and magnificent about finding a patch of beautiful green grass that doesn’t require anyone else to stand on it for its beauty to be revered.

Now, I’m where I should be. I’m here Now.

I think eventually, hopefully, every person finds themselves discovering that the fence that divides the grass is just as nice as the grass on either side. That’s where I’ve turned up, on the fence. I’m in that place where most days life’s big questions don’t always have to be answered and all laid out in black in white in order for me to be happy. Going with a little gray, with a little it-is-what-it-is, otherwise known as riding the fence, isn’t such a bad thing.

After all, the grass is only as green, on either side of the fence, as the love and care you put into tending your field. If you never recognize that it is your acceptance, or your inability to embrace That Which Is, that is determining whether you can embrace your life and move forward, it is quite possible that you will remain stuck in the mud complaining without any grass in sight. Happiness is a state of mind not a patch of grass.

Okay, enough with the metaphors. The point is, I found out for myself, in the way I could interpret it best, that whatever the universe lays out for me is what I am going to be happy with because…that’s my path. This understanding has allowed me to peacefully reside in the midst of what-is and come-what-may.

It is from that place that I realize I am ready to share my couch, and the remote, and share my time and my Being, if that’s what’s in store for me. I now have a wonderful life to share. It hasn’t changed much, but how I see this life of mine has, and that’s made all the difference in the world. But just so we’re clear here, the sharing of the bed part is seriously going to be a bitch. I suck at sleeping. We’ve established that. Been this way since I was a kid, and it’s only gotten worse with hormones. So, having someone in my bed who might move their pinky toe a nano-fraction in the middle of the night, thereby waking me up out of my not-dead-but-barely-resting state of sleep, ouch. That’s gonna hurt. But, I’m ready to rally. Let’s do this thing.

So, what I was getting at this whole time, is that negative work cow can get fried. I know what desperate looks like, and it ain’t me. It’s been me, and I’ve been it. That’s how I know it ain’t me no mo’ and hasn’t been me for some time. The me-me? I’m a ready me. I now know that I’m more ready now than I was before when I thought all I needed was someone for me to adore who would love me back even more. (Corny rhyme. I know. But it made the point.)

It’s nice becoming the kind of ready where it doesn’t matter if I meet him this year or in another five years. Whenever I do meet him I won’t expect him to be anything but imperfectly perfect and I won’t expect him fill my divots. There aren’t any holes in my grass, thank you. I got my gaps covered. I might expect him to like apples, though.


One last note, and this is totally unrelated, but I had to share: Chloe and I also went to see the movie Avatar today. It is now one of my favorite movies. It has everything I love in a film: An epic love story that transcends boundaries, a tale of majestic heroism, an out-of-this-world display of science-fiction special effects and gorgeous cinematography/computer animation (it was like a liquid dream, some of the color in this film), and, most of all, a beautiful and spiritual story line with a message in one of the sub-plots dear to my heart, which is that everything is connected. The Na'vi people, they even greeted each other by saying, “I see you.” Oh, that sucked me in good.

Go see it.


Keep being fabulous!

Know Who You Are

I just got done watching the movie “Taking Woodstock,” directed by Ang Lee, which is based on Elliot Tiber's memoir, and there is a line in the movie I had to share.

The actor playing Elliot (Demetri Martin) asks another character in the film (a Trans named Vilma played by Liev Schreiber, who also played Sabretooth in the "X-Men’s Origins: Wolverine" movie), "Does my dad know? You know, what you are?" Vilma answers, simply, “I know what I am. That does make it easier for everyone else."

GREAT line. Great Advice. Know who and what you are. I am not sure what kind of reviews the movie got, but I liked it, and even if I didn’t, it would have been worth it just for that line!

It's Good to be 40. It's Good to be seen!

Here we are, post my 40th birthday celebration (which was on the 23rd), and post my actual birthday (the 24th), and you should know that I got so drunk that I fell and hit my head on a street curb and ended up in the emergency room with a concussion. Not really. I did, however, get buzzed enough that I turned some poor guy into a human puppet. (I’ll get to that later.)

The great part is…it’s official. As the title of my blog entails, I am a member of the fabulous 40s. BTW, I am completely aware of the fact that the title “The Fabulous 40s” is not only lame, it's also obscenely generic. Ya gotta admit, though, at least I’ve got 10 years worth of material where unless the 40s become frightful, which I highly doubt, no title change is required. (Ah…can you smell the convenience?)

Most of my favorite people were in attendance at my birthday celebration. I made out with some pretty awesome loot, too, and the booty is still coming. (Thanx, Ava, for the Victoria Secret schtuff! I am gonna shmell so good.) Truth be told, I am not usually about the getting-of-the-birthday gifts. In fact, I often give presents on my birthday as a way of letting the people who show up for me in life know that it is the gift of their friendship that I am most grateful for. Yes, I am proudly that sentimental. I like to think that I am also smart enough to know how fortunate I am. But, why not get gifts? It was, after all, a milestone of a birthday turning 40. That said, I got some pretty dang-cool jewelry and the surprises that came my way were even cooler (is that a word?). Okay, they were bitchener. (Worse?)

My friend Vican didn’t just bring her amazing smile, she, and her hubby, Ward (although, unfortunately, Ward didn’t come as he was home sick) gave me the neatest one-of-a-kind art ring. It looked like a bunch of jade grapes, only the pomegranate-shaped beads were configured in more of a circular cluster, much like the many art-deco cocktail rings I’ve seen. I just love that my friends know my jewelry taste: funky and chunky and/or simple and unique, but almost always sliver, beads, seeds, Lucite or leather, but never (EVER) sparkly, girly, gaudy or gold. Of course, gaudy is up to the eye of the beholder, and some might say that my taste does, at times, lean towards the Bohemian chichi, but the eyes on me ain't behold'n no gold. (Gold is fine, just not my style.)

Mine eyes might take in some sparkly, eventually, as a little dazzle is necessary for one of the rings coming my way, but that's where the simple-for-that-kind-of-sparkle will likely prevail. Princess cut, please. Platinum should probably also make an appearance, but ornate, for that? Nope. No can do.

(I know. That was seriously among the most retarded-est of tangents. Who do I think is reading this: my future husband?)

My friend Rena, who gave me the gift of a beautiful sliver and earthen-red beaded bracelet (and brought a yummy cake loaded with candles for my birthday wish), was the one who got the party started when she bought me my first drink, a dirty vodka martini. I knew the party was getting good as soon as everyone began to make more and more toasts and I started to notice some slurring going on, which was, um, all me. In hind sight, it might have been a wiser choice to turn down the 2nd dirty drink (the restaurant’s free contribution to my 40th celebration) and stick with my usual libation of choice: red wine. Not to worry. In no time at all, after I deftly mixed my liquor choices and made the switch to red wine, I drank myself sober. Which is either the truth, or I just quit noticing that my tongue was wrapping gauze around my words.

No matter, by the time my dinner guests started reviewing the different pictures of me (at various ages), which one of my best friends, Emily, and my sister, Lyn, had brought to lovingly roast me and thereby entertain everyone else, I think the whole group was slurring a bit. They might have been spitting up a little, too. How could they not? Seeing a picture of me from the late eighties sporting Pamela-Anderson-type-bleach-blonde hair, Rod-Stewart-type bangs, and donning a satin-purple-type women’s suit jacket (with I’m-a-friggen-foot-ball-player shoulder pads) is enough to make anyone lose it.

But it’s great, you know? All my friends are now privy to some of my awkward stages. I’m sure everyone feels like my dork-ish-ness helped them bond. (You’re welcome, friends.) But, I ask you: What’s wrong with a 2nd grader who has a bad parted-in-the-middle hair cut, who is wearing tortoiseshell glasses that make her look like a mosquito, and who is missing a couple of teeth? That’s how they were doing it in the mid-ish 1970s. (This means I’ve always been cool.)

My sister Lyn had also worked with my friend Fae to put together a birthday card for me. What made this card so wonderful, and I highly suggest doing this for anyone you love (as it made me feel incredibly special), was that they were putting the card together as the night was playing out. Fae had each of my dinner quests take a Polaroid picture with me, and then Lyn would insert each of these snap shots into a ready-for-it slot within the card/scrap book that she’d pre-made. She then had each friend sign their name/note next to the photograph. How awesome is that? It’s about as great as the questionnaire was that Lyn and Emily had also put together.

What sort of sucked about the questionnaire (well, was a little embarrassing) was that I didn’t know all the answers to this fun little exploration into me. I had to ask my sister and Emily for help. What I loved was watching my friends trying to cheat to fill in their answers, thus attempting to prove that whatever group they were working within was the group who knew me the best. There is no better feeling than watching people working dis-honestly in union towards piecing together pieces of you, especially since there were no prizes. The cockles of my heart were better than warmed.

More than anything, having my sister Lyn and Emily put that questionnaire together, and seeing that they were able to come up with things about me that were funny and quirky, and unique to me, and having so many people show how much they’ve also noticed who I am, and what I am all about, well, it made me feel honored. I felt incredibly loved and cared for. Everyone in the world just wants to be listened to, just wants to be known and appreciated, and, more than anything, seen. And there I was, sitting in the company of a table full of people who were essentially saying, “We not only see you, and love you, we’re enjoying doing so!”

Another wonderful gift I received, even before my birthday celebration, was a CD compilation of many of my favorite songs, and many songs that remind both Jen and Emily of me. Wow, that Jen and Emily worked together on this CD, and that Jen burned it, when Jen hates doing shit like that as much as I do (computer-home-administrative type things), brought me to happy tears, which my poor friend Mari had to endure as I opened the CD while on the phone with her. Man, I am such a sap. (But, thnx, again, Mari, for such a fun pre-birthday call to set my celebration weekend in motion!)

The point is: It was an amazing birthday.

Blessed. That’s what I am.

Again, I really would suggest doing the questionnaire and/or picture thing for someone you love on their birthday, or for any special occasion. It's such a gift. But I'd leave out the dark crack spot in their life, which is, pathetically, why I probably didn’t know all the answers to the questions about myself. It’s all that crack cocaine I did, so many of my memories got blacked out. Alright, that never happened. I wasn’t a crack head; I was a drunk. Okay, I’m lying again. I was never a drunk, nor am I now. I'm a perfectly functioning alcoholic.

You know what? I bet I really have sustained a blow to my head. Not the drunk-hitting-my-head-on-the-curb thing I lied about at the onset of this blog entry, but some other blow to the head entirely that I am not recalling. That would not only account for my inability to remember certain events about my life, that my sister and one of my best friends is apparently able to recollect, it might also explain this perpetual pension for lying. (Just a thought.)

After my birthday dinner most of my loving crew went home, but I had Emily, and my friends Winn and Rick, willing to hang tough with me and get one last drink. (We professionals like to maintain a good birthday buzz.) The problem was, when you get four people together who are in their late 30s, and one who has just turned 40, no one wants to stand in line or pay a cover just to get one last drink. So, we stood on the sidewalk instead, just outside the bar that was to be our last option for having no line or no cover, and we pouted. We would have gone into the bar, but it was closed; hence the sidewalk loitering and the wondering what to do next.

Our pouting group of four was immediately joined by four more pouters (two couples) who were also unwilling to stand in line for their next/last drink. Then, what started out as eight annoyed people became a party. Not five minutes later, two twenty-something girls happened upon our sidewalk soiree, and these inebriated gals (obviously not professionals) offered us up a cheer. “Yes! Yes!” we encouraged them. And, while they were barely able to maintain their balance between kicks and squeals, they weren’t half bad. The exuberant support emanating from car passengers and the honking of the passing cars’ horns inspired continued spirit from our cheer captains.

Then our little blitzed-cheer-o-matics were off. Gone in a poof with our cheerleaders was the apparent wife of one of our two fellow pouting couples. Not to worry. Turns out wifey number one was a fake wife. She’d only just met, and latched onto, the brother of the wife belonging to couple number two. (Still with me on this?) To put it another way, another snockered reindeer girl, besides our cheering Donner and Blitzen, fake wifey, was roaming 2nd st./Belmont shores, and when they had all first happened upon us (my birthday group) and we had asked her (fake wife) how long she’d been together with brother (fake husband) she lied. She said, “Five years,” and brother, Mr. boozed-up, went along with her, even though they’d only met not but five minutes earlier. Imagine that: Someone making shit up. Odd.

As if that all wasn’t enough entertainment, more was to come. Next, and what is perhaps the strangest part of this social sidewalk gathering, I somehow managed to give my number (cell phone and home number, no less), to some zipped-up guy who, trust me when I say this, not only did NOT want my number, he ran off down the street to get away from me.

Welcome. We now get to the part of the evening where I turn a strange guy into a human puppet. How could this ever happen, you may find yourself asking. “Easy,” I’d answer. First, add to the mix two more newcomers showing up, who we will call Zipper and Party Guy, who had proceeded towards the same closed club that had us all dwelling on the sidewalk in the first place. Then, add me telling Zipper and his friend that the club was closed (I was honestly just trying to do them a favor so that he and Party Guy wouldn’t waste their time trekking up the stairs to the locked club door). Mix in a little more Party guy, who was a cup full of lacking-all-apparent-respect for Zipper’s soon-to-be-found-out tight-ass personality, and said, “Hey, everyone. Zipper here has a boat. Why don’t we all go party on his boat?”

Zipper, he didn’t like that. He shot Party Guy a look that could choke baby ducks. That’s when I, trying to side with Zipper, and let Zipper know that I was feel’n him (that his Party Guy friend had no right to invite people to a boat that wasn’t his own), went over to Zipper’s sweater (which was zipped midway to his chest at this time) and proceeded to zip it the rest of the way up, and (making a voice which was intended to be Zipper’s), I said “Dude? WTF? I’m not letting these strangers onto my boat. What are you thinking?” Then, because that wasn’t already enough of a gross infringement upon Zipper’s personal space, I zipped his sweater almost all the way down, and said, “Nah. Just kidding. You know what? Let’s do it. Let’s brings these jokers onto my boat and party our assess off. Who cares if they could be thieving ax-murderers. It’ll be fun.”

I should have stopped there. But I didn’t. I zipped his sweater back up, and said, “Dude! Seriously! Why would you invite a bunch of sidewalk freaks onto my boat? How irresponsible can you be?” And, because this was not one of my finest moments, I went for the zipper yet one more time and I zipped that black, cable-knit, Banana-Republic look’n sweater of his right on down, again. Then, I said, “You know what, man? I change my mind. Let’s all go party on my boat. The liqueur is on me.”

What’s worse? While my friends know I am an ass, who loves any opportunity offering a laugh, and know I am also a diplomat, who loves just as much any occasion to play mediator/devil’s advocate, and with this knowledge were therefore laughing at me, hysterically, Zipper thought everyone was laughing at him. He was so butthurt that before I recognized that I’d turned him into a human puppet he’d high-tailed it out of there and had made it two blocks away before I even knew he was gone.

Who could blame him? In hind-sight…certainly not me. Yet, my charade had somehow convinced Party Guy that Zipper and I were a match made in heaven. Party Guy even said, “Oh, shit. You guys are perfect for each other. He needs to marry you!” So, Party Guy decided to call Zipper via cell phone and then he asked me to convince Zipper to come back. Now, feeling a little regretful that my sense of humor sent someone packing, I was more than happy to oblige and offer my heartfelt apology. Only Zipper wasn’t answering his phone. So, Party Guy thought it would be a good idea to hand his phone to me. That’s when he said, “Give him your phone number.”

In my infinite-liquored wisdom, I complied. It was, however, also my boozed brain that had me wondering if the cell number I was relaying of mine was even correct. I thought: Better give him my home phone; I think I can remember that one. Then, just as the last digit left my lips, my brain went kerplunk, and I said to Party Guy, “Dude!? What am I doing!? Your friend does NOT want my number!”

So? Think Zipper will call? Me neither.

That’s okay. In my defense, Party Guy was pretty cute, too, and he appeared to be Italian, so my lopsided reasoning had me thinking that by giving Zipper my phone number I was, in effect, making it accessible to Party Guy, the Italian. And since Zipper wasn’t Italian, Spanish, or Greek, and though I am usually into Scottish/English looking boy-next-door types, like Zipper appeared to be, last year a psychic told me I’d be marrying a man of one of those descents (Italian, Spanish, or Greek, which we will hereafter refer to as the ISG-Trifecta) so Party Guy was, probably, in my buzzed stupor, the real digit target. I hope so, because I’d hate to think a little buzz makes me stupid enough to thrust my number upon the un-wanting

By the way, can you see now that I may not be the self-fulfilling-prophecy lunatic I might have appeared to be when I said I was going to meet my husband this year? A psychic helped me get to this self-fulfilling place. It was here that told me I’d meet him my husband-to-be this year. (Wait. That probably didn’t prove my rationality.)

Coincidently, an Italiano is just who sat next to me when Emily and I went to a late Birthday breakfast the very next morning. A Mr. Adorable Italiano, that is. Sadly, Mr. Adorable didn’t have the same idea as my psychic. Sure, he flirted with me, made it obvious that he was single and didn’t have kids, asked me a zillion questions about myself, used his deep, sensual, chocolate-brown eyes to smile at me before the corners of his mouth polished off his every grin, and, he finished half my jokes and most of sentences (leaving me to believe that if I was not going to marry this guy we were, at least—by way of our synchronicity—going to have hot sex for a couple of months), but then he…to my dismay…didn’t ask for my number.

No sir. When Emily got up to go to the bathroom, giving Mr. Adorable what she, too, believed was an opportunity he’d appreciate (to ask for my number without the witness of a best-friend watching on), he didn’t bite. Instead, he got up, extended his hand, smiled an even more devastatingly charming grin than all the previous ones he’d been torturing me with all morning, and said, “Leven, it was really nice to meet you and your friend Emily. I have to take off now, but Happy Birthday…you and your friend are really funny. Thanks for a really entertaining breakfast.”

That’s when I started to wonder if he meant that Emily and I (me especially), were like clowns, funny tasting (hard to swallow) and not at all funny-charming, like with brilliant senses of humor. So, as he walked away into the sunset, I consoled myself with the fact that either, A. I was just too much woman for him, or B. He was probably only eager to leave because he was on his way to watch the 2010 Super Bowl play offs (he’d said something earlier about going to his friend’s house to do so). Since I didn’t even know who was playing, or that the Super Bowl play offs were going on (until my dad told me that morning when he called to wish me happy birthday), I assured myself that Mr. Adorable was not my man. Imagine. Me with a football love’n man? An artist with a sporty? A writer with a meat-head? Makes no sense at all.

Okay, so he was the furthest thing from a meat-head, as he was quite charming, witty and intelligent and smelled like a wonderful mass of GQ come-and-get-me potion (and there’s absolutely no problem with him liking sports), but work with me on this bruised ego.

He wasn't attracted to me. It’s as simple as that. It doesn’t mean that I am unattractive or funny tasting. A couple of weeks ago a guy who works at Lowe’s in the plumbing dept. thought I was plenty appealing. He even gave me his business card and told me that I should, and I quote, "Call him anytime. ANY time." So there is really no reason for my ego to be bruised, right? (Yeah. Still a little bruised.)

Plus, as my friend Shane, who I am happy to report came to spend the rest of my actual birthday with me, said, “What is meant to be will always find a way.” While she may have said this in reference to the fact that we are both so elated that we've recently reconnected via Face Book (we were best-best-BEST friends in Jr. High and lost touch when I switched High Schools), I see no reason why this particular saying cannot be applied to the situation with Mr. Adorable. Obviously, he was not my meant-to-be, else he would have found a way.

There. That’s done. I’ve tucked Mr. Adorable nicely into an Everything-that-does-or-does-not-happen-happens-as-it-is-or-isn’t-supposed-to-happen box.

And that, my friends, everything from being surrounded by all my amazing friends on the 23rd, and spending the 24th with Shane (which included another fabulous birthday dinner and an amazing/fun girl chit-chat session ‘til 12:00 am), to two near misses with cute boys, is what I call an amazing birthday weekend!

I felt so utterly blessed by it all that I was bursting with joy the whole time.

It is because I felt so seen and so loved, that I want you to know that you are seen and you are loved, too. I see you. Yes, while it may seem like I am taking liberties when I say that I see you, I want you to know that I mean it. I really do see YOU! Hence the picture that I decided to upload: Me seeing you.

Alright, I know what you are thinking, that I chose that picture because it disguises me enough that it allows me to maintain some of my anonymity so that no one I work with or no one who doesn’t know this is my blog can recognize me. You got me. However, while you’d be incredibly astute in this line of thinking, I also really liked the idea that the picture I chose to represent myself in this blog would also serve to symbolize one of the things I have written about, and will continue to write about, and that is that in one way or another…we ALL see each other.

Even when we jeopardize our emotional survival by forgetting that we’re all connected, we STILL see each other. We still bleed the same blood, laugh the same happiness, experience the same energy, fear the same fears, and long for the same love.

And, you are probably also thinking that if you do not know me, and we may never meet, how can I ever see you?

I can because I believe that the truth of our connection continues to remain the truth—that we are all intertwined and carry within us a deep knowing of this universal alliance to the same energy—and that even though we may not always recognize this truth in our present circumstance(s), this truth persists. This truth gives me great comfort, and I hope it does you, too.

Keep being fabulous!