Clareified

I confess, I can barely look my blog in the URL anymore. So many months without any proper posting, the shame of it. I derided bloggers like me, now I am a blogger like me. Wait… what?

I have tons of stuff to write about — did you know that I went to the final Taylor Swift concert on the “Speak Now” tour? It was awesome! And I need to finish a writeup of returning shows(The entire NBC Thursday “comedy” block needs to be canceled. Ditto “The Mentalist.”) But, I’m packing and getting ready for what I think will be my last WPBT in Las Vegas and when I return from that, I’ll be off again to the Dirty Souf. I hope to get some writing done on the plane and maybe at Beni Hana, since I’ll be dining alone and will need something to occupy my hands in between wiping away my loser tears.

So, short post, slightly longer, things should be back to normal, just not right now.

GO RANGERS AND RIOTS!

I was up late Sunday night watching football. The game turned out to be the most awesome thing ever, and I was all jacked up on adrenaline and couldn’t sleep. So… I stayed up and I watched the game again.

Needless to say, by the time I got home on Monday night, I was dead tired and face planted into bed. When I checked my phone this morning at 4 AM, there were like five text messages from my mother saying “Urgent. Call me immediately.” There were three missed calls. I decided to call her. She was totally sleeping.
“Hello?”
“It’s Dawn. You said it was an emergency…”
Still groggy she’s all “What?”
“It’s Dawn… you texted me ten times yesterday…”
“And you’re just now calling me?”
“I was sleeping…what’s the emergency?”
“I wanted you to show me how to log on to facebook so I could vote for Dancing with the Stars.”
O_o

I missed my bus this morning.

My ipod died.

Chupacabra threatened to fire me again.

It’s cold.

AAANNNNDDD I’m hungry again.

Watched the Rangers blow a 4-1 lead with less than 11 minutes to go.

The Patriots lost to Pittsburgh.

I lost my bet with T-bone.

The Patriots play the Giants on Sunday, so every sports outlet and their mothers are talking about Superbowl 42 *AND* showing clips of that homophobic douchebag, who is now bagging groceries at Walmart.

I have a cold.

My earphones broke.

My cell phone died.

I can’t buy tickets with miles because US Airways blows.

I’m mercury poisoned. Probably.

AND I’m hungry.

A few weeks ago, Alceste told Mary and I that he was test driving new Audi SUVs and planned to trade in the Lexus.
“Sweet!” We both said all encouragingly.

Last Saturday, when the three of us were heading down to the City… not the Pacific one, the Atlantic one, in my boring old two-year old Beamer, Mary and I had the same thought: Heeeyy, wwhhheerrreee’sss oooouuuurrrr nnnneeeewww ccccaaaarrrr??? #RUDE

Alceste was  all blah blah blah economy blah blah financial responsibility. And we’re all, dude, you promised us a damn hell ass new car!  New car! New car! New car!

Next time, he should follow Kearns’ lead and get a new car and then never speak to any of us again. I mean next next time, he owes us an Audi! Now now now!

Yesterday was some kind of bully awareness day. From the mom tweeters that I read, public schools have gone to some weird “zero tolerance” bullying policy whereby if a child is kicked by another child and retaliates, they are both expelled.

That strikes me as dumb and overbroad.

In New Jersey, a guy who caught his roommate making out with another man with his webcam, is being prosecuted because his roommate then jumped off the GW Bridge because his gayness was now out. This too strikes me as dumb and misplaced prosecution.

Shrug.

I saw a funny tweet in response to all the bullying ones that went something like “the solution to bullying is to grow a pair.”

Which, I know, easy to say harder to practice, especially with all these stupid rules now. At what point during retaliation does the bullied become the bullier? I can remember fights on the playground after some kid called me Shamu the whale or tripped me in the cafeteria, where the other kid’s face was well and good shoved into the asphalt and I’d still kick them in the stomach for extra good measure. That was probably…um… wrong?

And then there’s bullying that I absolutely approve of… this dude on twitter was writing about his “mind grain.” As in headache. DUUUDEEEE!

So many people retweeted his words with mocking preambles that he deleted his tweets and started crying that people were making fun of him. If you are over the age of 10 and still think migraine is 1) two words and/or 2) contains a d, you deserve whatever you get.

Then there was the guy who thought there were 28 letters in the alphabet. Ditto for him. Whatever. He. Gets.

And no, kids shouldn’t be picked on for being gay or black or fat or ugly or fashionless — but schoolyard fights, teasing, they’re part of growing up, aren’t they? Are we raising a generation of sensitive ass whiners who won’t be able to take a joke? Who won’t be able to handle it when our Chinese overlords tease them about the shape of their eyes and their good driving?

I hope not, cause then I’m going to need to write all new material for my blogs!

One of my facebook friends posted this article on his page yesterday. We’re not close, we graduated high school together, didn’t speak much then and certainly haven’t spoken since. He appears to be divorced with a son about 8 or 9 from the pictures. The article, part of the New York Times’ “Modern Love,” series (which I’m not familiar with) tells the story of a couple — maybe in their 50s, who have been together for 20 years and have a young children:

“I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did.”

His words came at me like a speeding fist, like a sucker punch, yet somehow in that moment I was able to duck. And once I recovered and composed myself, I managed to say, “I don’t buy it.” Because I didn’t.

He drew back in surprise. Apparently he’d expected me to burst into tears, to rage at him, to threaten him with a custody battle. Or beg him to change his mind.

So he turned mean. “I don’t like what you’ve become.”

Gut-wrenching pause. How could he say such a thing? That’s when I really wanted to fight. To rage. To cry. But I didn’t.

Instead, a shroud of calm enveloped me, and I repeated those words: “I don’t buy it.”

You see, I’d recently committed to a non-negotiable understanding with myself. I’d committed to “The End of Suffering.” I’d finally managed to exile the voices in my head that told me my personal happiness was only as good as my outward success, rooted in things that were often outside my control. I’d seen the insanity of that equation and decided to take responsibility for my own happiness. And I mean all of it.

My husband hadn’t yet come to this understanding with himself. He had enjoyed many years of hard work, and its rewards had supported our family of four all along. But his new endeavor hadn’t been going so well, and his ability to be the breadwinner was in rapid decline. He’d been miserable about this, felt useless, was losing himself emotionally and letting himself go physically. And now he wanted out of our marriage; to be done with our family.

But I wasn’t buying it.

I said: “It’s not age-appropriate to expect children to be concerned with their parents’ happiness. Not unless you want to create co-dependents who’ll spend their lives in bad relationships and therapy. There are times in every relationship when the parties involved need a break. What can we do to give you the distance you need, without hurting the family?”

O_o

The guy who posted this on his page, shared the article saying “this woman is so brave.” Now, see, when I read the story I immediately thought of a dozen adjectives to describe this chick (delusional, crazy, dumb, sad…), brave did not come up. Not even briefly.

I can’t imagine where you are in life to have someone that you love and trust, basically spit in your face and you wipe it away with the back of your hand and ask what they want for dinner. Now, I’m not even saying I would rage or scream or throw things, cause I wouldn’t, but you best believe I would buy it. Right away, no questions asked.

I mean, HONESTLY.

A man doesn’t say such things without putting serious thought into it for a long time! Hell, I believe that shit when it’s not even said – when it’s just actions suggesting it — ignored texts, unreturned phone calls, disappearing acts — fuck that shit, I’m out, son!

I suppose marriage and children and the like should be taken more seriously, but DAMN. Dude, said he wanted OUT! What if this were the story about a woman who said the same thing and her husband was all “Nope. I don’t buy it.” I saw that movie, and got damn if I wasn’t clapping when Tina Turner finally got her divorce.

If this is “modern love,” I’ll be over here on my couch watching Revenge, thank you very much.

There’s a monsoon on in New York City this morning.

The water is falling in a steady, heavy stream. There is no wind though, so an umbrella will keep you dry.

I rolled up my pants legs to keep them from dragging along the wet pavement.

They came undone as I ran for the bus.

That bus turned out to be out of service.

There’s a monsoon on in New York City this morning and I’m waiting for a bus with wet pants legs.

Good morning everyone!

So, this happened to me yesterday…

I packed my lunch for work during the pre-dawn hours, after my attempted kidnapping, and it didn’t work out so well. Sad to say, my office is on top of a super over priced deli, but the place has good food, so long ago I had to stop carrying cash or cards with me because I just kept spending $20 on nonsense food every day. So long story short, a can of tuna and a cork screw = sasat for Dawn.

I will spare you how far into the can opening process I attempted before realizing it wasn’t going to happen.

However, the snafu recalled a weird incident from my youth. The power in my building was out and it was a Saturday or something, so my mom and I were at home. In those days, we only ate rice, eggs, mac and cheese, franks and tuna. Jelly sandwiches were the rare treat!

Yes, yes poverty is very sad. (Also, I was very picky and these were the only things I’d probably have eaten even if we were rich.)

Anyway, with no power, the only thing we could eat was tuna, but the opener was electric, so my mom stabbed the can with a knife and cut a jagged circle in the top. It took like ten knife of pressing and turning the can before she took her fingers and peeled the metal top back, then used it to squeeze the water out of the can and dumped the fish contents out onto a plate for me.

Then she repeated the process with another can for herself, this one she topped with heaping gobs of mayo.

Dinner was ready.

I’m sure there is some lesson to be learned from the fact that when my mom was pretty much my age, she could cleave open two cans of tuna to feed her family, while I spent nine hours whining on twitter and facebook, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what that lesson is.