Just so you know

I did go to the Yankees Tigers game even though I sound like a cross between a 13 year old boy and Kathleen Turner. Then the Yankees had the audacity to lose in the 9th inning! Oh well, Jeter made some great plays. I'm going to work tomorrow on top of everything. Whee!

puberty

My voice keeps cracking from my sad little sickness. I've had lots of C and today I had a carton of raspberries for fruit. I feel better than I sound, but I sound terrible. On top of this, my friend has Yankees tickets, so I feel like I should go. It'll be okay. Only 1.5 days to power through after this and then it will be a lovely long weekend. Where I can lay around some more and feel sorry for myself. I don't like how often I have been getting sick lately.

sick face

I feel like crap. I have tomorrow off and now I think I'm just going to lay around all day and cough and feel sorry for myself. The worst part is that I've totally been having an apple a day.

Speedy

I would really like to develop my come-back skills. I remember in middle school come-backs were the thing and being an only child, a school-yard goody-two-shoes and generally unassuming I was terrible at come-backs. My best friend (with two older brothers) was often shocked at my inability. She was too quickly bored with me to be good practice.

Yesterday, walking across the top of Times Square to get to the 49th Street subway, an approximately 7-year-old white kid leaned out the back window of a Hummer and yelled 'yo!' I looked up from waiting at the cross walk and caught his eye, I smiled benignly and he did something with his hand which may have been a side-ways flip off, or may have been some one-handed side ways symbol I'm not hip enough to know. I didn't really pay much attention. However, a few seconds later, wondering what symbol was intended for me, I wished I had that second to yell back. 'Yo, tell your dad to buy a hybrid!' And then someday when my synapses are faster, I will say 'tell your parents to buy a hybrid' cause I'm all equal opportunity like that.

Later, after getting off the subway and walking to a house party somewhere in Queens, some bouncer in front of a bar said, "Hey, Sexy" and I pointedly said "Hello" since I have noticed it often shocks people out of their mind that an 'object' can talk back. Seconds later though, I really wish I had said "Hey, Average Looking."

I'm wondering if upping my Sudoku difficulty level will improve my come-back skills....

In other news, this is really funny.

text messages...

I received a text message from one-night. 'Whatcha doing?' At about 3 in the afternoon today when I was doing a hell of a lot. I feel like I'm running work single handedly sometimes. I took the time to write back 'about to do an interview'

I got a text from him on Sunday saying 'Are you an orange belt yet?' But it's just a one line text conversation, he never writes back to whatever I send him.

I have a feeling he just doesn't want to lose touch in case I might be pregnant. I wonder if the next time he texts me I should just write him back and say 'I had my period. If this is about anything else, give me a call'

Besides, he dodged a bullet with that whole 'don't marry a career woman' thing.

After better explaining myself my mother agreed with my assessment of that stupid punk and their magazine. :o)

Aw shit

Michael Noer is in trouble. I'm going to do everything I can to make it very serious trouble. He wrote a very offensive backward article in Forbes Online entitled Don't Marry Career Women. I hope that he'll soon be working freelance for AM NewYork--and only because someone there will believe that even idiots should have a second chance.

The article that was originally posted, astoundingly, under the 'leadership' section, has been moved to opinion. It is an opinion. It is a backwards, disgusting, sexist opinion of someone who I am offended is employed at Forbes. There is now a 'counterpoint' up by a female writer which is supposed to quell the rage found on the original postings message board.

I'm looking forward to this being a huge fiasco for Forbes.com.

For more current info, check out Gawker....

mild concerns

I was going to write a heart-stirring missive about how drunk I am on Tuesday night and the restraint I have displayed by not calling an ex when I thought about it every minute (better than every hour) since about 10 pm. Fucking men.

At least currently my thoughts of calling a certain ex are interposed with thoughts of other exes and 2 C batteries and some guy who seemed nice and I don't remember his name from the bar.

Does any other bookish brunette find it annoying when an unknown gentleman can't pick up on her thoughtful, ironic sarcasms? Seriously, if a potential won't laugh when you call bingo a game of strategy that is their own fault.

Yes, thank you, rumor has it that it is indeed Tuesday.

Don't forget to tip your waitresses

Real News

So, while flipping through headlines, I found this:

Hip-hop community laughs at K-fed

In this time of times it's so nice to find something unifying in the news.

brunette

I dyed my hair today. I asked the colorist to 'dull down' the blonde I had left at the tips of my 8-9 months of natural roots. I think I like it. Some boy came up to me on the street afterward and called me 'breathtaking.' I hope it won't be the last brunette compliment I get....

On my Own

Tmom didn't show, though when she called to own up to it we did have a good conversation. She realized I was 'projecting' and that if it were my shower she would have to show up in a wheelchair. And while I am glad that I communicated my limits clearly, I am shocked that she wouldn't extend such a courtesy to her own daughter. Tsis and I got smashed, the shower was wonderful and I was the last person there. We smoked cigarettes and I gave her the play by play of my fight with her mother (which I told myself I wouldn't do when I was sober).

Today I tried to get in touch with T but he was being a little bitch. Tsis did give me a run down about how her brother would never get married and that I was the best match for him he would ever meet and he screwed it up.

She also told me it was okay if I ended up alone with lots of cats. We were really drunk at that point. Then the next morning I had horrible dreams about being addicted to nicotine and how stupid could I be throwing my life away on an addiction like that....

Luckily my overactive imagination is a great distraction from my personal life.

Other People's Business

I had a long weekend planned. Going down to DC for T's sister's wedding shower on Saturday, but I went ahead and took Friday off and a half day Thursday to travel down there. I was going to stay with St. Matthew Thursday night, take him and his fiance out to dinner and then spend all Friday with T's mom getting pedicures, having fun, etc. Then after the shower on Saturday spend time with my feminist best friend DW. Well, St. Matthew had to cancel because his fiance's aunt died of cancer in New Orleans, so they both left town. So I decided I would go down Friday early. Until Wednesday night T told me his mom might not go to the shower.

I called her on my way to work Thursday (which should have been a half day) and she said she had hurt her back (though she did let it slip that it had been hurting for at least a week). She said she would call me later with a decision.

Well, when she called around noon, she said she wasn't coming that she had called Tsis and asked if Tsis could pick her up at the airport Saturday morning. Tsis said no, because it's the day of her shower and she has other stuff to do. TMom took this as she wasn't wanted and made the sweeping 'I am going to miss my only daughter's only wedding shower*' decision.

This is when I got thoroughly entrenched in other people's business. I felt that Tmom's expected me to accept her decision or tell her it was okay. I refused to do either. In fact, I think I may have raised my voice.... "You wonder why you don't have a relationship with Tsis? I'd say it's because of exactly this. What do you want her to do beg? Of course it matters if you are there. You are her mother!" You have probably already realized that this did not go over well. Tmom got quite quiet and said she would call me later.

I raved to anyone who would listen: DW, my boss, T, and then called her back saying I was sorry if I seemed harsh, it just really mattered to me that she be there, and for fuck's sake I would pick her up at the airport if I had to rent a car to do it! She said she would get back to me.

I still don't know her plans.

I talked to T last night where he admitted that Tmom had seemed upset about me being such a bitch when the two of them talked. That's when I realized this is not my family, and it never will be, and I can't demand them to treat each other right, or love each other the way I think that love should work.

So, today on my fun day off to spend in DC with Tmom (who I really adore and have never had a tiff with in the decade I have known her) I am sitting in my apartment, and picking which bus to take to DC to have dinner with DW tonight.

It's situations like this that fill me with fear at the idea of ever being a mother.

*Tsis is 40 and this is her first marriage

Key-ah!

That's as phonetic as I get. I went to my second Karate class today. I had a great time, my white belt instructor was really clear about the blocks and I think I learned a lot. Also on the blue belt side of the room my Karate boyfriend was teaching. Let's call him Sensi Hot. Sensi Hot taught my one-on-one introduction session where upon I decided he was Sensi Hot, then he saw me walking on the street one day (when I was looking cute) and called out, 'Hey, YB!' I was pleasantly surprised that Sensi Hot remembered my name, and asked me when I was going to begin my classes. I haven't seen him since. I wonder if I have to go up for advancement before I can begin dating Sensi Hot....

Maybe someday, Sensi Hot will marry me and we'll begin to breed our own gang of Karate Street Warriors.

March on

Friday night a college friend had a birthday party downtown. I had called 1-night to see if he was going to be there and he said he would. I went to the party and knew maybe 5 people, and had a great time talking to them. Around midnight I got a text from 1-night saying he wasn't coming out--he had an excuse of course. I left the party soon after and went to a bizarre and slightly famous place that exclusively sells rice-pudding. I took my early-morning rice-pudding to-go and walked the 2.5 miles home. I walked along well lit streets and there were always plenty of people around. I just wanted to walk. I kept passing subway stops and thought, nah, I'll just keep walking.

Today when speaking with a friend of mine he said my stroll was the 'stupidest thing he had ever heard.' I didn't ask if he would have thought it would have been stupid for him to do, but I thought his use of the term 'unsafe' answered the quandry. It pisses me off that I live in a culture where it is acceptable for a boy that I am taller and stronger than to tell me I shouldn't go out alone after dark. If the streets are 'unsafe' for me then that better mean that they are unsafe streets and not that I am unsafe on them. Honestly, I have kept this opinionated boy safe more than once when he tried to stumble around between bars or home some evening. He didn't even think before pronouncing night time off limits to ladies! Why is it that a subway full of strangers is safer than a street full of strangers? At least on a street I could run if ever faced with danger.
At any rate, my short friend aside, I had a lovely night and feel much more at peace with 1-night. I mean, it's much better to know now than later that he won't make effort to get laid, because for me that is a deal-breaker.

I'm marching on.

a few questions:

Does this ban on carry-on liquids on planes make that Sierra Mist commercial obsolete? You know the one with all the SNL folks and then Kathy Griffin 'wands' the Sierra Mist...

Also, when another country actually makes huge bounds in defeating a terrorist cell, why is it that America raises it's color alert system to red?

Lastly, should I call the one-night stand guy???

7 days

So, I've gone from being totally self-satisfied to needing another fix. I haven't figured out how to negotiate the one-night stand life-style. Can I blame it on an addictive personality and say that, in Lay's-potato-chip-terms, "I can't have just one"? I wanna call the boy. To be more specific, I want to booty call him.

Why don't I? Because the 'Up for more great sex?' conversation, while forthright, doesn't seem right to me.

I'm extremely frustrated with these feelings. Is it that I don't know what I want, or is it that I don't want to admit what I want? I'm afraid it's the whole admitting thing. Damn it.

What there is to admit:

I enjoy good sex
I find sex with men to be the most desirable of my options for getting off
I don't need to love said male to get off

Is this so dangerous a revelation? Why on earth do I feel so conflicted about the idea of asking for a second round--or more precisely, a second evening?

There is also the fear that I'll want a third evening and then a one hundred and third evening and suddenly there will be a moment where I will feel compelled to stop objectifying this person as a means to getting off. When such a fateful day comes, the only thing left to call that objectified wonderful fuck a boyfriend or dump him and admit I'm a user.

Of course this last paragraph suggests that the male will not get wise and get over it long before I'm ready to take either step, and then I will feel rejected.

I feel like I'm looking down the barrel of E with more experience and awareness. In which case, the question is (to follow the analogy) would I do it again?

Would I do it again?

I'll give it til the weekend.

Auntie YB

So, I went to visit my two nephews and niece up in CT this weekend. My half-brother just got back from 9 months serving in Iraq. It was pretty interesting. I tried to find out who had armor (the woman driving the truck he traveled in didn't) how likely it would be that Iraq would be in a civil war (no way, though the Kurds will probably have a country of their own) and were there weapons of mass destruction (sure there are, we still have the receipts from the chemicals we sold them in the 80s) but still don't feel like I got the answers I was looking for. I don't know what I wanted him to say--just something definitive.

The kids were great, we mostly just hung around, watched cartoons and had an occasional tickle contest. My sister in-law pointed out that she had her first (who will be 10 soon) when she was 27 (which I will be soon). Funny since I've only just started to enjoy being single.

Kid-free and Anti-war: the best Aunt Ever.

some news

Had an amazing one-night stand last night.

That's what Thursday's in New York are for.

Seriously, you should move.