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Monday, October 27, 2014

Putting Faith In Peaches & Herb

...Now....yanno... when you start banking on the advice on a couple singers from The Wayback Machine like "Reunited" crooners, Peaches & Herb (whose Wiki bio says they have been a 'thing' since 1966 through the present day - -  I'm sorry - - what?  Really? Are you kidding me with this?), then you know you are either teetering perilously close to the edge of reason, and or close to the hour of an actual reunion.

I'm pretty sure it's only the latter for me in this instance.

Never mind.

It's been a lengthy stretch, and tomorrow night, The Man & I will be meeting up at ye olde international airport and zooming home in the dark where we will doubtless collapse, only to wake up in the small hours of the morning and....

....drive off for a medical procedure I'm having.

Ooo la la.

Okay, but the next several weeks are clear after that, and I'm looking forward to it but it's always a little scary.

What if I LOOK like I've aged as much as I FEEL like I've aged?
What if he remembers me two dress sizes ago and takes one look and runs for the departure gate?
What if he doesn't so much see the lovely home as much as the dust bunnies (rhinos) and disorganized linen closet?

...granted, this has never happened before, but this is the second longest stint apart we've done.

If you are contemplating a long distance relationship, let me tell you this - - it sucks.

But.

If the relationship is good?  It might be worth it.

I don't suggest entering into it for too long without an end-game plan in sight, and yes, everybody says "oh you're so lucky, you get allllll this space and time for yourself.".   Yah.  These people don't have kids.  Or medical issues.  True, nobody tells you you don't need another pair of black shoes or that salad isn't a meal or to stop singing into the wooden spoon while dancing around to the radio.  Nobody hogs the remote, nobody notices if you don't shave your legs, and if your haircut isn't working, nobody's there to see it.

On the other hand... there's a lot of time and space for yourself.  So you better make friends with you before you try getting involved with someone else.  Actually, that's true of us all.  And there's nobody to help you recover from your day parenting.  Or hold your hand at scary doctor's appointments.  Or buy your shoes.  Or carry your bags.  Or notice if you shave your legs.  (Double edged blade, er, sword, that is.)  There's nobody there.  At. All.

So I'm looking forward to tomorrow.  A lot.  I believe we've stood a good test of time (lots. of. time.) and there's no real reason to believe our reunion will be anything less than wonderfully, joyously jubilant and exciting.  That won't stop me worrying though.

Now.

Nookie.

Has it changed in the last seven months?  Have I missed anything? #itsbeenawhile  #revirginizationofaginger 

Thursday, October 16, 2014

What Dreams May...Come?

Last night, I had some pretty funktastic dreams, even by my standards (which is saying something as I rank pretty high in the arena of Weird Dreams).

Initially, it was a dream in which I'd thrown a massive party at my maternal grandmother's house with some friends and my relatives from the maternal and paternal side of the family.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, was there.  I walked through, greeting, hugging, kissing everyone. Even the deceased, who, mercifully, did not show up looking deceased, but looked instead rather rosy and robust and dressed up and quite happy.  A great aunt asked me for a vodka and tonic so I went to the liquor cabinet and made one for her.  She was delighted.  I kept telling everyone to eat, drink, help themselves, taking photos, arranging group shots, etc..  I was really pleased and felt quite in my element with the whole affair, as though I'd pulled off something quite grand and wonderful.  (Apart from my grandmother's dining room, which, even in the dream, stank woefully of cat urine as it sadly did in real life, decades ago.)

I kept peeking into these little details from my very far flung childhood - the pantry with its sliding serving window, painted a deep green, an array of Cutex nail polish bottles with fluted tops, the endless stash of Final Net hairspray, the Ponds Angel Face powder - all still there, delighting me to no end.

When I emerged one last time, the party was over - shadow boxes and photos had been hung on the walls to commemorate the event, corsages and cocktail napkins tucked into the boxes, photos ringed with marks from wet drinks , smiling, laughing faces showing the best part of us all.

I peered into a room to find my brother, a friend (entirely unrelated to us, and so, out of place but in my sleeping mind it seemed completely natural she would be there) and an errant, distant relative or two milling around, looking embarrassed.  I asked what the matter was, and my brother told me the entire thing had been lame.  My mother appeared and told me I really should have planned better.  My friend patted my arm and asked why I was upset, did I not KNOW it was lame?  Or was it that nobody had told me while it was going on so I could have done something about it?  No, I didn't now and YES that would have been helpful - and then I was sitting on a chair looking up at the smiling photos and remembering my great aunt being so happy with her vodka tonic and asked them was it because I hadn't served alcohol, primarily?  My brother and mother said yes; my friend patted my arm again and said "Next time you'll know", and I wept because even dreaming, I knew how unlikely it would ever be to have that assemblage of people together again and pull off a large scale event like that.

Fade to a house which was mine, in the way dream homes often are familiar to our sleeping selves, but not reflective of my actual home.

Robin Williams - oh, Robin, my favorite - is in the den, sitting on a sofa, looking deeply glum and faded.   I have "won" time with him - per my public assertion that if I could spend time with any celebrity, living or dead, it would be him -  and he has come to my home to honor this .  He is spending a weekend with me but is very much alive ... though his spirit is greatly dampened.  He is an incredibly tamped down version of himself, and profoundly sad.   I'm not sure I'm quite an adult at this time, and feel much more like 17, but the children make appearances so it's hard to tell - dreams, hey? - and I'm so unsure of myself.

I'm excited that he's there but I want him to enjoy the time and I keep trying to find ways to please him.  He is only faintly amused by the antics of my children, smiling tightly.  I ask what I can get for him / do for him and he waves his hand and shakes his head at me, dismissively.  I apologize for not being able to make things better having him come all this way to be with me and he cocks his head and says, rather sagely, you didn't make me come, I wasn't forced, I wanted to.  I sit with him.  I ply him with compliments. He asks me what it's all for at the end of the day.  I tell him kindness and love and compassion are all that matter.  He smiles sadly, nods and reaches for me.  I sit on his lap and hug him. I ask if he would like some scrambled eggs and he brightens for the first time and says yes.  I jump up, delighted that he will let me do this for him.

Inexplicably, I race to the grill outside on a raised deck, and ask the children to ask their grandmother to get me the square grill pan with the wooden handle.  (The pan, I have; the raised deck, I do not.)  Nobody can find it.  Robin comes outside and asks me if I'd like to get going, so we head out together.  He holds my hand.

We walk down cobbled streets, rather more like English villages than Nantucket, through heavily shaded alleys, and find ourselves at the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World, only it looks more like a dive bar in a shanty town.  We go inside and there are pirates and devils and everyone else in line with us proceeds through multiple doors to the inner chamber.  I take off a long scarf I'm wearing and tie it round my head to resemble a pirate's head scarf.  He smiles, takes an end of the scarf and wraps it around his head too.  We are almost physically connected.  Everyone lines up on opposite sides of the room, facing each other The lights dim and flare, there is a horrible sound and terrible smell and the floor begins to buckle and roll and wave under our feet.  Fire erupts at the far end of the room.  I am terrified but I keep telling myself it's a Disney ride and it can't be that bad.  After a minute, he tells me he is feeling terribly seasick and needs to leave.  I'm relieved.  We exit together and find ourselves in a leafy street at dusk.  Buses are passing at a nearby intersection, and I hear the jangle of a trolley bell.

He asks whether I'd like to go to Disneyland instead, and I say sure, and we catch the trolley together.  Instead of Disneyland, we go home.  He pats his lap and I sit on it again, facing him. He says he had a good day, but tomorrow he will have to return.  I nod and tell him I know.  He reaches for me tenderly, wrapping his hand around the back of my neck and pulling me in for a kiss.  *Note.  I have not had such thoughts of him in waking life, but in the dream it seems entirely reasonable, logical, inevitable. We engage in furious...er... congress.

Afterwards, we sleep next to each other on the floor.  It is safe, warm, quiet, still.  In the dark, I reach out and while I cannot feel him, I know he is there.

When I awaken, tears have slid from my eyes onto my pillow.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Mojo Rising?

Mojo Upgrade

What.  The hell.  Is this.

The thrust of the matter is this:  (Their words, not mine.)

Mojo Upgrade is an interactive sex questionnaire for couples. We present a list of sexual fantasies to both partners separately and have them indicate their level of interest. After the couple has finished the survey, we compare the answers. If you both gave a positive response to an activity, then we'll share it; if not, we don’t. That way if your partner is not game to watch midget porn with you, they won't know.

Do I hear "recipe for disaster"?

Jeeze Louise, people, if you can't have an open, honest discussion with your partner about what you would or would not like and or be willing to do in bed (or wherever) with them - -  then maybe you shouldn't be sleeping with them just yet.


Use your damn words.

The Twaddle on Twitter

That could so easily have been an obscene title.

But I'm not a one dimensional sort of Ginger - indeed, if you find one who is, I'm betting their so called 'ginger' came out of a bottle.

Anyway - Twitter.


Trying to sort it out; who to follow and such like  --  so far I've succeeded in following two of me favourite Irishmen, Mundy, whose stunning rendition of Galway Girl furnished me with the only time in life I ever contemplated dying my hair black so I could better display my Galwegian heritage and imagine they were singing about me, with my hair of black and me eyes of blue.  (Well.  The bulk of my tribe appears to have hailed from Roscommon, but it's bloody close enough for me.) And actually, every rendition of that track I've ever heard him do has set my soul on fire, really hit me where I live.  Particularly this one, which has inspired me to try and learn Gaelic.  Because I don't have enough challenges in life.  And  this one, because LOOK AT HIM.

Would.

Anyway.

I also got myself following Chris O'Dowd because, well, why wouldn't you?  I wanted to include for you the scene from Bridesmaids where he, as Officer Rhodes, tells Annie he's been thinking about her and that there's something about her that 'sticks' - - but is that clip available on YouTube? No. No it is not.  So there's this, instead.

Would.

Also Jimmy Fallon, because a) he is hilarious and b) because I think he's a really good person with a good heart.  And there's a real dearth of that in the world.

So who else should I follow?  I'm open to suggestions.  Not those kinds, you freaks.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

The Birds & The Bees

Well.

It's official.


I am the only person left on the planet who isn't getting any.  Except The Man, who better not be getting any either. (Kidding; I know he isn't. There's not a man person I know who is more trustworthy than he is.)

Not only are friends and relatives knocking boots and finding themselves all blissed out in connubial wonderment (and occasionally finding themselves joyfully up the duff whilst my ridiculous uterus malfunctions six ways from sunday, none of which yields a new baby, I hasten to add), my bloody rabbit has a suitor.  She's a cute little thing.  Big ears.  She's a tart for bits of apple and will let me get pretty close before taking off, but the point is - - everyone, from friends and relatives to the G-ddamn rabbit has someone flirting with him, turning up outside his little condo, making her presence known.

Sonofa!

My relationship / sexual ethic is pretty old fashioned insofar as it applies to me.  One person for the duration.  Marriage was one thing <cue disaster sounds - cities collapsing, bombs falling, metal walls being breached, and the like > but after that, just The Man, please.   So no, I can't find a summer fling, or 'take a break' or any of that.  Well.  I suppose I could, since he's not here, but I don't want to. I don't want it for myself and I certainly don't want to do that to him.  I may not know algebra or long division, I may have the memory retention of a sieve, but I know about commitment and loyalty.

This does not assuage my frustration.  A woman of  a certain age past the nightmarish twenties, out of her Dirty Thirties and into her Freaky Forties has needs.  I have heard about this and wondered how much more noticeable it could be and yanno?  It turns out it can be fairly pronounced.

Which brings me to nature.

Stupid birds and bees.  (Yes I know we need the bees. Never mind. This isn't about them.) Did you know - even bears are getting head these days? (Not the gay-man bears either, though I think they do all right for themselves.)  No, I mean hairy bears, out in the wild.  No showers, no shaving, no grooming or dressing up or role playing or mind games or courtship or rules or commitment issues - just wild bears.  Getting and giving head.

Look, just look.  I couldn't make this up:

I can't believe this.

And that's not all!  Look at these nine species getting freaky:

Seriously, everyone but me.

What the hell, nature?  You're either trying to knock me down and split my head open with ice and hail, or drown me (floods), or cook me (hello summer sun), or blow me away (hurricanes) or attack me on the ground (poison ivy, snakes, spiders, other bitey things) and now, adding insult to injury, big, hairy, ungroomed animals (some of whom are in possession of some frightening teeth for such shenanigans) are getting it on with, er, wild abandon.

But you can't work on some sort of transatlantic bridge or teleportation capability?

Seriously!

Friday, June 13, 2014

Twelve Pains of Blogging

With all due respect to that beloved Christmas classic, The Twelve Pains of Christmas.

The twelfth thing on blogging that's such a pain to me...
Random error messages
Arrogant a-holes
Insufficient hits
Nobody's Reading
OCD Level checking
Syntactical errors
Where do I put the picture
FIVE FONTS ON ONE PAAAAGE
The Link isn't working
Using HTML
Alignment's out of wack
And zero comments pending

Buzz Buzz Buzz

So it's late.  Or early, depending how you want to look at it.

I can't sleep.  My thoughts won't stop. Candy Crush is irritating me.  The book I'm trying to finish reading has not gone the way I hoped it would, but instead has gone the way I dreaded and feared it might.  I haven't eaten since lunch.  The rain outside was soft and lulling me to sleep but then it stopped raining and I snapped back to wakefulness.  Now it's at it again but screw it, because I'm here and I'm typing.

And surfing.

And that brings me to the ubiquitous Buzzfeed.  Not what you thought, was it?

Okay, so sue me.  I like taking those goofy quizzes.  I don't need them to define myself but I do like seeing how accurate their algorithms are, because I'm a nerd like that.  (Nerds are so in right now.)

So I'm awake and all crankypants and on a second dose of steroids for my stupid plantar fasciitis, and I come across (so to speak) a segment on Buzzfeed with different titles than I'm used to seeing; these were:  Sex News!  What Outrageous Sex Position Should You Try Next?  Which Male Celeb Should You Have Sex With? What's Your Sex Number?  And How Good Are You At Sex?

You just know I'm going to take these -- if for no other reason than to try to keep abreast (as it were) of things.  You know - - just in case it develops that I am able to have nookie with The Man again before I grow old and DIE.  It's been a while.  Don't judge me.

So I started with How Good Are You At Sex.

I figured, better to just find out before we move on, because maybe there's some remedial sex test that will help bring me up to speed.

I was a little worried, because what if the whole Redhead thing wasn't true?

Yowza.




                             



And so forth. 


But I needn't have worried, and I hope The Man will be very happy to learn that the clinical results are in and they say that:

How Good Are You At Sex?

  1. You got: YOU’RE INCREDIBLE AT SEX!

    OH MY GOD. You’re so good at sex. Seriously, you’re unbelievable. There’s basically no one else on this planet who is better at sex than you. You’re better at sex than Russell Brand. You’re better at sex than Emma Stone. When you have sex, the whole world changes a bit. Everyone you have sex with is incredibly lucky. Every time you have sex, you give someone the greatest gift they will ever receive. You really are amazing. Congratulations.

    Relativity Media / Via teencelebgifs.tumblr.com

  2. Why, thank you.  Thank you very much!  Is there a trophy of some sort?

    Now one might imagine that an accolade such as this would suffice.  But no.  Nooooo.  Now I want to know more.  Also, I want an excuse to think about nookie a little longer, because, nookie.
    (I mentioned it's been a while, right? 78 days? Not loving that - - and no prospective date for reuniting on the calendar which is driving me batshit crazy with torment and such like, but never mind - )

    So I took "What's Your Sex Number", because hell, even at 2:30 in the morning, I can count to two. (2)  (Yes. As in two people.  Ever. )

    Hey-ohhhhhhhhhhhh!

    What’s Your Sex Number?

    You got 81 out of 200.
    1. You’re really good at what you do (wink), but you’re not interested in freaky for freaky’s sake. Bonus: this quiz just gave you a few new ideas.


    EIGHTY ONE?!  EIGHTY ONE?!   I can't decide if I'm humiliated or horrified. Never mind. 

  3. Moving right along -

    "Which outrageous sex act should you try next?"   Well, I mean really.  I'm excellent at it and I'm no spring chicken, I've seen some stuff, what's left out there, what could possibl-  Oh.

    Ballcuzzi.

    You know... the word ball...and the last half of the word "jacuzzi" I'm not even going to get into that one.

    Next!

    Which Celebrity Should You Sleep With?

    ...may I just ask...is there a special section of Buzzfeed where the bored celebrities take tests to see which Average Person they should sleep with?  Or do they take the celebrity nookie test and figure out where their next hookup should be?

    Well anyway.  I'm disinclined to sleep with any celebrities because I'm in a long term committed monogamous relationship with a man I love and he is my Person.  But I was bored so I took the quiz.  Holy flawed algorithm:  Ryan Gosling.  No.

    NEXT! ..quickly...

    At this point, my self esteem can use all the pumping up it can get.  Even so, I took the How Sexy Are You quiz.  I didn't exactly hold out a lot of hope.  Survey SAYS:

    How Sexy Are You?

    1. You got: YOU’RE SO SEXY.

      Christ, you’re sexy. Genuinely. When you walk into a room, heads turn. Everyone looks at you. And you know why? Because you’re the sexiest person in it. You’re the sexiest person in every room. You’re sexy with your clothes on. You’re sexy without your clothes on. You’re sexier than BeyoncĂ©. You’re sexier than Prince William. When people see you, even if it’s just for a moment, their lives change. You really are incredible. Congratulations.


    2. Oh.  Well that's all right then.  And thank you.  Goodness me.  Bless my buttons and everything.  Then I thought... maybe they just tell everybody that.  Because getting a score result that said: "You are not sexy at ALL - Jeeze, you're lame.  Genuinely.  When you walk into a room, nobody notices or cares.  You know why?  Cos you're the lamest person in it.  Lame with your clothes on. Lame with your clothes off.  Lamer than Yoko Ono.  Lamer than Woody Allen.  When people see you, even if it's just for a moment, their lives are profoundly unaffected.  You really are incredibly lame.  Congratulations." -- would probably put you off using BuzzFeed, ever, for anything.   So maybe everybody who takes their quiz is 'sexy'.   It's probably best that I don't read too much into it.

    3. Maybe I should leave it here and buzz back another day.

      All this talk about nookie and sexiness has left me feeling pretty bereft.  Among other things.

      Ok.  Sexy out.  (Don't worry - we will definitely be bringing Ginger, I mean Sexy, back.)