Reasons why leaving the family for 10 days may not be a great idea:

• Your brother may decide to divulge all of your adolescent secrets to your 12-year old who is staying with him and his family for a week of summer fun and extended family bonding while you're away. This litany of disclosure will likely include the times you dyed your hair purple; wore safety pins as earrings; got caught with your boyfriend hanging out of your bedroom window at 3 a.m.; vomited in the choir loft during communion following a Saturday night of drinking hurricanes in celebration of your 18th birthday.
• Your best gay boyfriend will become so bored he will launch his own blog which uses your full name and muses on all the things he loves about you, many of which you would rather not be divulged in public.
• You will receive 177 e-mails while you are gone, none of which are spam. Your eyes will bleed when you check your account remotely. You will be unable to deal with them and repeatedly hit the delete key in a fit of helpless anxiety once you arrive home. People will be really irritated with you for not responding to their e-mails. You will lie unconvincingly that your PC crashed while you were out of town.
• You will meet all kinds of wonderful people while you are out of town on your own, sans spouse and child. Every one of these wonderful people will want your e-mail address. They will begin to e-mail you immediately, further adding to your crawling anxiety over your inability to keep up with your e-mail correspondence. You will begin to hate these people.
• The GITB will rearrange all the furniture in the house in your absence. It is now not feng shui. It is fucked shui. And you keep tripping over and running into things THAT SHOULD NOT BE WHERE THEY ARE.
• After ten hours of drinking endless cans of Starbucks' double-shot espressos, smoking cigarettes like a sailor on shore leave, singing along with Springsteen at the top of your lungs and tailgating truckers doing 85 mph with all the windows open and your hair flying, you will discover that you really, really, really love solo road trips, so much so that you begin to fantasize about the next one exactly one hour after you return home. You will muse that this is probably not a good thing.

oh, snap, BBQ sauce on the wall...

Grace is visiting in preparation for her two-year move to Paris. I am in denial that she is leaving, that for TWO YEARS I can not impulsively jump on a plane and three hours later be standing in Times Square screaming at her on my cell phone to hurry up and meet me already. Which I actually do every few months.

Last night after the normal people went to bed, we put on a huge vat of ribs--she pre-cooks them in cheap beer then bathes them in BBQ sauce for a day or so--and went out to sit on the deck and look at the stars. I got her to try my Janis Joplin cocktail: Southern Comfort, Diet Coke, some cherries and cherry juice. Very southern girly-girl. We were thorougly polluted after two hours and many refills and decided it was time to get the ribs off the stove and into the BBQ sauce. Two plotzed women slinging ribs at 2:00 a.m. is not really advisable. There was a lot of giggling and whispered shushing of one another and bent-over laughing jags that went on until we forgot what it was that was so damn funny. The kitchen looked like the scene of a heinous crime when the family came out for breakfast. Damn, I am going to miss her.

I bought a lava lamp the other day. I have been meaning to do this since 1977 and, well, I finally got around to it.

When I got it home I was pissed to find that it was missing the lightbulb but since it was on clearance and I got it at such a steal of a price, I got over being pissed quickly and went back out to the store to get a bulb for it. All this and I had a mountain of laundry that needed folding on the dining room table, excerpts and essays from 11 books to read for school by next week, a houseguest and no plans for dinner. The GITB knows better than to give me shit about this because he does a lot of work with Hospice and therefore gets the whole carpe diem thing but he cannot understand why I had to have a lava lamp. He keeps referring to it as a "piece of shit," and then I foolishly ask him to cool it with the excessive profanity and so of course, he proceeds to say "fuck" about 50 times every time I enter the room the rest of the evening and tried to tell me I shouldn't watch the Sopranos because it is loaded with language I may find offensive.

Is it me, or is it ridiculous to yell "mother fucker!" at the contestants on Jeopardy! when they blow a really easy question? I use profanity, yes, but artistically and in the right company and under only the perfect circumstances for maxiumum effect. Did I ever mention that the GITB is a mental health professional? And a huge horse's ass sometimes? Maybe I did.

why too much of a good thing (watermelon shooters) really isn't always a good thing...

...the vodka-soaked delusion that one looks hot. I mean, really, really hot. So much so that a fish would just LOVE to smooch us. Oy.

run, forest, run!

once again, I have proven to be an idiot savant of pop culture.

Remember I was ragging on "Charlene" and her god-awful 1970s shit-ass song "I've never been to me?" And how when Miss Otis really wants to torture me, he calls me up and blasts the song?

Well, looks like CNN audience members agree. Well, sort of. But their ranking of the wretched song as number 4 of the top 5 worst is a rip-off. It deserves to be the #1 most shitty song of all time. And I should know. Because I called this one two months ago. Scary.

Do you think if I try to collect a consulting fee from CNN it would fly? Just wondering. Bastards.

more ladylike behavior

we had a big old ho-down last night in honor of Caroline's 30th (butter-creamed chin on the right) and Kimmie's 48th (on the left, with the strawberry filling on her forehead and up her nose). It was a surprise party and we started out with about 22 guests but per usual, all our men crapped out (went into the house "to watch basketball" translation: "I have had waaaay too much to drink and I need to go sit and stare," etc.) so we girls were the last ones standing. At which point the gloves came off: profuse and liberal use of profanity, consumption of tobacco products, alcohol abuse, cake fight. It was the best. Hard to believe we are all (now) over the age of 30 and some of the wild women I hang with are well past 60. But no matter, we like to cut loose, and as they say, you have to go with your strengths, you know--do what you do well.

The evening was cool and breezy and clouds were dashing around overhead so we stayed outside and sat around under the Chinese lanterns and tiki torches and listened to Caroline sing as her brother, Jay, the only remaining brave male, strummed his guitar.

Caroline's husband had stoked up the fire pit before he beat feet for the house, muttering something about how "the gin finally kicked in," so we reclined in Adirondack chairs we'd dragged into a ragged circle around the flames. And sipped frozen margaritas and looked at the stars. Heaven.

I asked Jay to play a Dylan song and he smiled sweetly at me and without missing a beat (or a chord) slid right into the lyrics of my fav Dylan tune:

"They sat together in the park, as the evening sky grew dark, She looked at him and he felt a spark tingle to his bones. 'Twas then he felt alone and wished that he'd gone straight. And watched out for a simple twist of fate..."

How'd he know? Sigh.

I gave a friend of mine the link to my Blog several weeks ago and when I asked him yesterday if he had checked it out, he referred to it as "disturbing" and made a half-hearted protestation about "the language." And the "disturbing" is not in a good way. After pondering his reaction, I think I am assuredly on the right track. Did I mention that he is a Republican? Not that there's anything wrong with that.

now I hate Staples as much as I hate Radio Shack

I broke my keyboard last night. Don't ask. So I called the long-suffering IT guy at work this morning (as I work, mostly, from home) and told him that my spacebar is DOA and asked him if I could grab another keyboard off the pile in the corner of his office and he said no, because those all have messed up spacebars too and that's why they are piling up there, beginning to resemble a modernist artistic pile of a statement about technology or some such thing, so just run over to the office supply store and grab a new one and keep the receipt.

Fifteen minutes later I am in the keyboard/mice aisle at Staples pondering the mysteries of keyboards and I see a skinny kid in a red polo shirt sidewinding his way up the aisle toward me. I didn't even need to spy him out of the corner of my eye because I could smell him coming. He was drenched in Drakker Noir, a fragrance my 1980s boyfriend wore and because I have a visceral reaction to it and can smell it a mile away, I was more than aware of the approach of Staples Boy long before he pulled up in front of me, totally blocking my view of the keyboards slash mice.

"Finding everything okay?' He asked in a sing-songy, don't actually really give a shit sort of way as he hitched up his pants that sagged right back down around his 22-inch hips.

"Well, yeah, Jeremy," I said, after squinting at his nametag.

"I want one of these Logitech keyboards in black. That whole stack there is all white. Do you guys have black?"

"Nope."

"How come?"

"Nobody wants black. It isn't a popular color. But if you want a black keyboard, we have these," he said, sweeping his hand, and I looked at the dozen or so black keyboard models they had that were all minimum twice the price of the white one I had in my hand.

"Didn't you just say nobody wants black? And why would I want to pay double for a black keyboard when this is all I need?" I asked, waving whitey.

"Well, these have all these other media features and some are wireless. Don't you want a wireless?" He asked earnestly.

"No." I said.

"How come?"

"Because I'm not allowed--my IT guy said not to get a wireless. And besides, I don't understand why this only comes in white -- what is the deal? It's the only one you have under $20 and it only comes in white and it's the only white keyboard you stock?"

"Well, you could paint it." Jeremy said.

"You're kidding, right?"

"No--I painted mine green and blue but it was a bitch cutting out the mold to put over it so I could paint it without fucking up the keys, took me forever but you, know, I was grounded so I had a lot of time on my hands..."

When I went to the counter to pay for my under-$20 white keyboard, the kid at the register asked me if I have a "Staples Savngs" card. I told him no.

He said "You should sign up for one. You'll save a lot of money."

I said "No thanks."

He then placed an application form on the counter and tried to hand me a pen.

I said "Listen, I don't want any more of my personal information out in the world than is absolutely necessary, so no thanks."

"This is just for us--we don't sell your personal information like Blockbluster does..." he said.

"No."

He glared at me with naked hatred and slapped my change into my hand like I had just told him his mother is a whore.

I hate the intrusion into my private life that is what should be a simple transaction. This is why I refuse to step foot in Radio Shack--I do not want to tell anyone my zip code or fucking phone number. I shouldn't have to. And giving the phone number to the county detox unit is just no fun anymore. And now Bath and Body Works is doing it! I just want to buy whatever it is I want to buy without disclosing personal information and I am happy to bypass "a 20% discount on this purchase!!!!" to do so. Can't I just buy in peace and anonymity? Is that too much to ask? I guess it is.

We got up early Sunday morning to take our sweet girl to school as her class is off to Sea Camp down in the Keys for a bit of marine science and all sorts of adolescent horseplay. We were forbidden from signing up as chaperones this time. She won't be home until Wed. night. So the house is very quiet and I got more work done today than I have in weeks and the GITB and and I actually have had a few meaningful conversations and went out for dinner at 8:00 p.m.!!! and had cocktails and ADULT conversation. It all feels so weird. I am not ready for her to leave for college. I realize that this won't happen for five years. But it's already started in a way. And I'm not ready. But she is.

I'm sorry, I am just so enamored of this portrait of moi that eb created for my birthday, I just had to post it. Without her preauthorization. She could probably sue my ass. But she is on vacation right now, so not likely that legal action is on her agenda at the moment. Anyway.

Remember this young man? I found him delightfuly intriquing back in December when my girlfriend, Grace, (yes, Miss Minnesota, ANOTHER ONE!) and I literally stumbled across him as he was sprawled across a sidewalk writing love-sick poetry in colored chalk.

Seems the St. Petersburg Times finds him intriquing as well.

Four months after I noticed him and blogged about his sidewalk prose.

Hmm. Am I being plumbed? Sure seems that way, doesn't it? Especially since the one poem I fell in love with and posted on my blog (with his consent) is the same one the Times used in its story about said young man in yesterday's edition. If one were paranoid, one really could begin to suspect plumbing...Hmm...good thing I'm not. Paranoid.

On another note, because of the nature of one of my jobs, I have an e-mail address that's published. As a result, I recieve anywhere from 25-100 spams per day pitching everything from software to real estate to precious metal investing, vacation packages and the requisite penis enlargers. Some of the faux people who send these e-mails to me are:

Aidan Scott
Efren Harvey
Jakob Adams
Ingrid Galindo
Kristen Solis
Kristopher Franks
Anibal Trotter
Damion Rosado
Efren Barnett
Wilma Wood
Jack Long
Bryan Phillips
Katrina Phelps
Francisco Barber

I am fascinated by these names. Who the hell comes up with them? My fav is Wilma Wood. Sounds like a porn star. Or a drag queen. She and Jack Long would probably really hit it off.

Judy-ism

I am a practitioner of Judy-ism.

For some insane reason there are 7 wonderful Judys in my life. They are all wise and wonderful and talented and witty and beautiful and sassy and who I want to be when I grow up. One of the Judys was counseling me last year about my struggle with just relaxing and accepting the inevitability of what and who happens to me. I ran across this old e-mail from her today and I thought I'd share it with you:

"...We all meet here because we have this karma to work out with each other. You know how sometimes you meet someone and feel an instant affection for him or her and form a quick bond? Or how the opposite happens?

...It really is just karma, as they say. Stuff we have to work out with each other from previous lives, maybe, or new karma we're making that we'll have to balance in some later life.

It's like a huge cosmic choreography, the way we all meet and depart."

God, I love the Judys.

Excerpt from the coolest e-mail I received this week:

"When I win the lottery or finally publish one of my novels, I'm going to buy a boat and follow cocktail hour around the world. I'm just certain the Goddess made the earth round so that it's always cocktail hour somewhere."

My girlfriends are awesome.

it's official--I have overdosed on Peeps. I even ate some of the really garish purple and blue ones today (the purple ones when my youngest niece foolishly looked away from her basket, silly girl, that'll teach her once and for all that Auntie Ell cannot be trusted around the Peeps. It's like leaving a voracious vampire alone in a blood bank). I am so going to hell.

I am sort of in hell, anyway. My buddy departed yesterday and the sense of loss is like I am 8 and someone has ripped my Mrs. Beasley doll from my arms and savagely pounded her against a muddy concrete culvert, breaking her glasses and soiling her hair before running her over repeatedly with their min-van. Yeah, it's raw and childlike. Do I sound bitter? Yeah. I am.

PS--eb: IT IS TOO A BLOG!

One of my most beloved friends on the whole planet has been visiting this week and it got me to thinking about what a gift long-term friendship is, and how it's different and even better in some ways than the familial bonds we have with the people we are related to. Our dearest friends are the family we choose for ourselves and they love us because they choose to--not because it's expected or required.

My sweet friend has seen me at my absolute worst--frantically young, insecure and completely clueless, and at my best--settled and (sort of) mature and content. It's been a huge 20-year arc of growth and loss and coming together and moving away from each other, but we've managed to stay connected through it all. That's love.

And I know I have said it before, but there is something so magical about sitting on a beach at midnight and looking at the stars with someone who knew you way back when--when you were both in your 20s with so much ahead of you--before spouses and children and careers. When that friend still loves you and thinks you're cool and fun and sees you in some ways exactly as they did back then, and you feel the same in return, it's just the best. The whole friendship thing is an awesome gift we give to ourselves and each other and there's nothing better. Okay, I'm rambling and embarrassing myself now, but I'm a happy, nostalgic camper with sand in my car and U2s Joshua Tree in my CD player. Oh, jeebus, the stories we could tell...

one last bit of news: after much hemming and hawing I applied to grad school a while back. They accepted me. Mid-life crisis checklist complete. I have NO idea what I'm doing but of course they don't seem to be concerned...

But, you know, as Miss Otis said:

"Honey, at least you're not making a complete ass of yourself like______ (unnamed friend, also in mid-life crisis who recently quit a high-paying job with a defense contractor to take acting lessons, hire an agent and try to be an actor. Yeah, his wife is FREAKED out) Going back to school is a much better choice. Less chance of picking up an STD too."

Miss Otis is right. School is a much better option than STDs and bad acting gigs doing industrial ergonomics training films. Sorry, Ron, but you know she's right. Oops.

the stars at night are big and bright

look at what my favorite Texan did for my birthday!!!! (I especially love the boobies which really did used to be way up there once...). You know, if I were a lesbian, I'd have a big old lesbo crush on eb just because she's smart AND funny and drives an art car and loves puppies and baseball. Go Rays. And go, eb. You're a peach. And a damn fine artist too. I think I have a new headshot.

be still my heart. she be back. release the doves and smart asses and swillers of chai everywhere rejoice.

I'm a sassy fruit. Among other things.

You Are Apple Green

You are almost super-humanly upbeat. You have a very positive energy that surrounds you. And while you are happy go lucky, you're also charmingly assertive. You get what you want, even if you have to persuade those against you to see things your way. Reflective and thoughtful, you know yourself well - and you know that you want out of life.

So, What Color Green Are You?

who gives a shit?

I know I am expending waaaaay too much energy on this, but I speak for all of my colleagues when I say once again that Katie is NOT a journalist. She is an over-paid, over-rated, botoxed bleach-blonde, glorified reader of teleprompters. And she has pulled off one of the most impressive numbers on CBS that anyone to date (with the exception of Rather) has yet to pull. $20 million? A year? Anyone ever read The Emperor's New Clothes? Anyone? Anyone?

And here is my prediction, the ratings CBS has enjoyed of late will remain where they have been, even with Miss Perky at the helm: in the toilet. Which is exactly what they deserve for being such morons.

What a lovely bunch of spring flowers.

My friends are some of the prettiest girls in the whole world even though they are really boys. The one who looks like she spent way too much time in the tanning bed in the back row--yep, that's my best friend, Miss Otis. And yes, she does regrets.