Goodbye '09, bring on the '10

If I had to summarize 2009, I would say that thematically it was markedly pleasant, but punctuated by a few definitive personal separations.

It started at the tail end of last year when my great grandmother died. Although she was in her 90s and we all knew it was coming, it was still quite sad. I probably took it the best of most people in our family, but there were still several times this year when I would have dreams about floating through the mobile home in which she used to live. All the furniture was there, but she wasn't. Or I would wake up, and the first thing I would think about was that she was gone, and I wouldn't see her ever again in this life. As much as I believe that death is but a door that leads to something else, once someone dies, there's something flatly undeniable about it that bears such cold finality.

Then there was Mara, the wife of my estranged biological father. She'd begun emailing me on MySpace about a year and a half ago, and I didn't know who she was. I just thought it was some random, middle aged woman being very friendly out of the blue. When my half-brother Gavin emailed me letting me know who he was, it opened the door, and I put the pieces together. It also united me with my half-sisters Lila and LM, the latter with whom I now have a wonderful relationship. I continued my correspondence with Mara after some discussion with my mom, who admitted that Mara had a rather shady history, and told me to be careful. I wanted so much to believe that this person with whom I did not have a blood connection could still be a connecting figure in my life, but as the details unfurled, I learned she was not the person I'd hoped. And I could not continue a relationship, even a harmless online one, with someone who had done the things she'd done and worse, would not even admit it. The fact that after I ceased communication with her, she began a smear campaign against me only confirmed to me what kind of person she was.

And in the most surreal of circumstances, I reunited earlier this year with an old flame, Gideon. We'd had a fast and furious fling back in 2000, and I'd always regretted that we'd parted ways so unceremoniously. I dived in, and emailed him on Facebook, we met up, had good times, and things went from platonic to romantic. But when I tried to make a commitment with him, he just wasn't in it. I'd thought he was the one that got away, but it turns out he just wasn't the one for me.

But this is all blithely depressing, when in fact, most everything else about my year was rather fantastic. I began my new promotional position at work, which, while it entailed some rather heavy projects during the year, also entailed a heftier paycheck. It is definitely nice being able to enjoy a nicer lifestyle.

And the big trip for the year was to Disneyland with my niece Ashley and sister Marie. I hadn't been in well odd fourteen years, and going back with two such dolls was a wonderful treat.

We will be at the End Up on New Year's. Aaron is in town, though LG sadly can't come. I am hoping for much fun, and a happy start to 2010, y'all. I mean, you. Guy. Sssssss.

All the ding's horses and all the ding's men

It was all set to be a wonderful chill Christmas at home, when Costella decided to make it a party fest of all too fun proportions. It was fun, but I was pooped, and I spent the latter half of it recuperating. Though I daresay, with my new laptop and smart phone, one barely need leave home. How I lived without either, I'll never know.

Of all the Disney villains, Maleficent from "Sleeping Beauty" is my favorite. While all of them have some sort of motive--Jafar thirsts for power, and wants to be Sultan; Scar is jealous of his brother, and of little Simba; Ursula is resentful at being banished by King Triton; and Cruela de Vil has a penchant for Dalmatian puppy fur--Maleficent is just evil for the sake of being evil. She puts a curse on a baby, Princess Aurora, who then has to be kept from her parents for sixteen years and out of reach from any spinning wheels. Then she locks up Prince Phillip, the only person who can wake Aurora from her endless sleep, and there's a whole scene where she mocks him and the power of "true love". Plus it's inferred at the beginning of the movie by Flora that Malficent's powers are "far to great" for the Good Fairies to simply undo her curse. She's a nasty, hateful bitch with immense power.

It's no wonder she's always the lead villain in any of the Disney video games. You've got to admire that kind of ruthless consistency.

Little Bunny Foo Foo, get out of dreams, get into my car

This past week, I've had dreams about bunnies. The first one was a few days ago. I was staying in some adorable summer cottage, and Sugar dashed out the front door. It was a beautiful night with a full moon that shone a light on the front lawn and a giant oak tree. There were a few cats lazily milling about the tree and cuddling. And just to the left of them in an alcove were several white rabbits. It was some Lisa Frank shit the likes of which was insanely cute and cuddly.

Then yesterday, I took a nap and, once again, dreamed about some rabbit that I was babysitting. The rabbit was trying to escape my grasp, but I was trying to get it back in its cage. It finally managed to escape, so I went looking for it, and looked under one of the cushions on the couch to find a baby rabbit in a baby blue sweater. It was sickeningly cute.

I have no idea why any of this is happening nor what any of it means. But I'll take dreams about bunnies over nightmares about homeless crackhead zombies any night of the week.

Apple Brown Betty

I bought new work shoes over the weekend, and it's like they've got fish hooks jutting from the inside heel. In fact, my heels are rubbed raw and have broken skin. I tried breaking them in over the weekend, even cut the backs a little for some leeway, but still, pain. I've been wearing Band Aids on my heels to help, so it just feels like someone's pressing a pencil really hard against my heels with every step I take. I thought only chicks who wear heels had to deal with this shit?

If the '80s are back in now, and we're about to go into the 2010's, does that mean the '90s will be back in soon? Flannel shirts, Doc Martins, chokers, and grunge? That would be a sight.

I have jury duty tomorrow. I'm also supposed to get an H1N1 vaccination tomorrow. The office cookie exchange party is tomorrow as well. It's like a big old fiesta of death in one day! What gives?

Hole on to your love

You know how they have iron-free clothes? Well, they should also invent rip-free clothes. At least once a month, I rip a hole in something and have to get it repaired. And it's not ripped in a sexy, stylish way. It's ripped in an annoying, what-the-hell, how did I do that way.

The other day I went to get something laminated. It was my facetious and humorous take on "'Twas The Night Before Christmas" all about my boss and her partner, which I put along with a wreath on her door for when she was to return from vacation. Nice of me, I know. But when I went to take the poem to the copy store and asked how much it would be to laminate it, the woman immediately said, "It's cheaper to do more." I waited and said nothing as she looked for the binder with the pricing. She then had to call her co-worker out, who produced the binder with the pricing, and she repeated, "Yeah, it's cheaper if you do it in bulk."

And I just wanted to slap the bitch as hard as possible across the face, you know? Groceries, I understand. Household amenities, perfectly reasonable. But a two-for-one special on laminating is not something I'm interested in, and a fucking retarded thing to try and up-sell when I've clearly only got one piece of paper in my hand, and would gain no ostensible benefit from going all the way back to work/home, ferreting out other documents, and bringing them back to be laminated. The $4.83 wasn't going to break my bank.

Stir-fried schmoozin'

According to MySpace, my blog has been viewed 337 times this week. In fact, for the past several weeks, the number of hits has always been in the triple digits. Which means one of the following:

1. Several people read my blog regularly, or at least a small number of them read it repeatedly
2. MySpace has its shit fucked up
3. I have a stalker
4. Someone is trying to break into my account

To which I say:
1. Why, thank you! Hope you enjoy
2. I'm hardly surprised
3. Who are you?
4. Whoever you are, I have a hammer

Last year was the first year I went out and actually bought real live Christmas presents for everyone, wrapped them all up, and sat in line behind several retarded people for a good hour at the post office to mail them. This year, everyone's gettin' cards.

Don't you hate it when you grab a newly washed glass off the dish rack, pour yourself a delicious beverage, and taste the tell-tale turgid tinge of dish soap in your drink?

Sugar Kitty Diva Jones

When J. Co and I first adopted Sugar from the SPCA, they told us that she wasn't the type of cat who would sit on the bed with you while you gently petted her. In fact, she was classified as a Level 4 (that was one of our nicknames for her) out of a Level 5 scale of aggression. Her bio on the front of her room at the SPCA read, "Sugar wants you to know she has a little spice", a sugar-coated way of saying that she was a sheisty animal. However, we were so won over by her forwardness, her adorable little cross-eyed green eyes and pink collar, that all she had to do was meow and we would start cooing over her like dopey new parents.

That first night we got her home, she was on my bed, and I went to pet her. After a few strokes, she suddenly grabbed my hand in a bear hug grip and began biting my fingers. Yup, the wicked little cat drew blood her first night in her new home.

She is still not keen on people petting her unless it's on her terms and when she wants to be pet, but like any loving father, I like to think she's getting better. And as much as she likes to be in the presence of people, she doesn't necessarily want to be picked up or pet.

Only now, I can say that she actually has gotten better.

Recently, when I've come home from work and am laying on the bed watching TV, she'll come right onto my lap, get comfortable, and sit there happily, gazing at me with her green drag queen eyes. It's such a touching display, I've been known to sit there for a half hour or more even if my butt begins to fall asleep. And it breaks my heart a little to have to get up and disrupt the rare and tender moment of affection from the most precious little mal-tempered feline in the west.

It's the little victories. Happy Hannukah!

Tummy yummy

I like people who have a tummy. I have a tummy. People who have tummies enjoy life. They:

1. Eat dinner after 6:00 p.m.
2. Enjoy a chocolate chip cookie every now and then
3. Partake of a cocktail once in awhile

That's not to say a perfectly flat and/or six-packed midsection isn't hot. It is. But it takes a lot of work. So you have to kill yourself at the gym. Or starve yourself to death. Or have the benefit of being young and having a naturally high metabolism.

Whatever suits your pleasure, Samantha.

If you like it then you shoulda gone and rim jobbed it

It's so cold out, it actually physically hurts.

I'm getting back into my gym routine, which had fallen by the wayside after the fallout with fucking Gideon. I had a rough go of it yesterday, and had to reduce the amount of weight on two of the machines and cut my cardio by ten minutes, but at least I got through pretty much my whole regular routine. And my body, in shock at being forced exert itself so, issued a revolt. I felt like I had to pooh and vomit at the same time. Delicious.

Isn't it something to think that someone had to teach you how to wipe your butt?

I'm finally getting a laptop and internet access. Leaping into the year 2000 with gusto and girth!

I'm, like, so past the past

Every so often, I'll have a dream about the movie theater in which I worked while I was in high school: The Pacific Trolley Theaters, located, as the name implies, by a trolley stop in San Diego. The intention was to make the area cute and bustling, as if riders would stop off at this particular spot, take up a movie, visit Borders, stop by Trader Joe's, blah blah blah.

I went and applied for a job there three days after my sixteenth birthday, finally of legal age to work and anxious for some disposable moolah of my own. Not long afterwards, I got a call for an interview, an interview I mistakenly showed up for a good hour and a half earlier, but one that I nailed, and got the job. I worked a combination of usher and snack bar attendant, got to see plenty of free movies ("Mrs. Doubtfire" is forever etched in my memory, as is "Four Weddings and a Funeral", "The Lion King", and "Schindler's List"), and worked with a vibrant group of people which included some high school aged folks like myself, a healthy handful of college kids, and a few older folks.

One of the older folks was this woman named Virgina, who was only forty, but looked well into her sixties due to a hard partying life. She'd intended to get her life straight by taking the job at the theatre, and was a plenty competent employee as well as being hysterically funny and well-liked.

Well, in the dream, I ran into her, and she looked much older and saggier. We were for some reason sitting at a table with some other people eating, and I noticed she kept looking over at me. In the dream for some reason, I was pretending to ignore her. But later on, she approached me, and I did that whole thing where you pretend to notice someone after you've ignored them, and was all like, "Oh, Virginia, that's you! I didn't recognize you!" And she just looked at me for a very long time, in disbelief, and said nothing. I waved my hands in her face as if to say "are you there?", and said, "Virginia, what's wrong?", but still, she said nothing.

Of course at some point in the dream, as is always the case when I dream about the theater, I end up being right back there, usually working there. In reality, the theatre closed, and was converted into a Japanese restaurant. The parking lot now houses a condo complex. But in the dream, I was in the theater, it was completely empty, and I was going through some upper passageway. I think I was trying to find any left over candy or popcorn (though I have no idea why--gross), or maybe trying to escape Virginia. Dunno.

I only reminisce about those days in a positive way, since the friends I had there were fun peeps, and it was good times. Only when I dream about it, it's like my life has gone to shit here and I've had to move back to SD and take my old job from high school from fourteen years ago. It's amazing how I only worked there for a year and a half, and yet it creeps into my dreams all the time.

Dat subconscious be so silly.

Dear The S.S.

December's here! Who would've thought.

I had a lovely vacation taking soused strolls throughout the City, watching holiday movies, and just generally hanging. Even though I don't sit down with the fam and open Christmas presents anymore, I still sometimes enjoy this time of the year. Like when Mandy and I were out the other day, and were sniffing the Christmas trees like freaks, enjoying that tell-tale scent of pine. Or how Union Square gets all decked out and as wintry as California can get.

Do you ever just look at certain people and start laughing?

Long Island Iced Teas are the cocktails of the poor. For I remember when I was younger and had a bit less in my pocketbook that that was the stuff that got you fucked up fast. Now I can't imagine swallowing that grim reaper's brew of multiple alcohols mixed with Satan soda. Talk about system trauma, you guys.