Depression has a laundry list of symptoms that, to the healthy reader, seem laughable; dry mouth, insomnia, sexual side effects, diarrhea, nausea, and sleepiness, among others. This results in “Is anything broken? You MUST be depressed! /smothered snicker”. But … to the sufferer it’s pretty obvious that depression causes all those symptoms and more, to various degrees at various times, none of which are wanted. Nothing grates on a sufferers nerves more then to hear these two trigger phrases: “You seem like you want to be this way” and “You just need to [insert activity here that is supposed to 'get mind off of' being depressed]”. The emphasis on the ‘just’ in the “you just need to” heightens as the mentally healthy person becomes more and more aggravated with the ongoing, seemingly self-inflicted doldrums of the depressed person. Likewise, if curing depression were as easy as “getting the mind off” as if it were as simple as a hand job, then by all means we, the depressed, would fucking do it already.

I used to have a LiveJournal which I posted in at least once a day, sometimes as many as three to four times a day. Those times are long in the past and those journals are long deleted, but I store them as massive .docx files on my computer, the re-living of such being nothing short of mortally embarrassing. Even worse is that I posted this shit for the world to see. A) the world didn’t have the balls to force me into therapy B) I expected the world to give a shit C) the world didn’t give a shit D) the world still does not. The end result of this realization came in two parts: I only update my WordPress blog on up days with details or stories I think a passerby might actually want to read and I cut off all ties with drama-creating females in my life and lived in the company of men for roughly 2 years before allowing women back into my influences, and this bucket still only consists of two females.

An interesting aside is that the two females I regularly associate with are both buried so knee deep in their own issues that it feels morbid of me to gripe about my own, and even when I do I try to be apologetic because my severe downs are almost certainly chemically and not situationally induced. However, I do often wonder why this is. Why are these two other voices in my head, of my same gender, age group, educational background, IQ and upbringing pretty much howling the same woes as myself? I can’t help but notice the demographics and have to draw the conclusion that perhaps the three of us are batshit insane by nature and nurture, and the natural habitat of the female twenty-something is angst. I suppose the solution for all of us at this juncture is to hang on, stay quiet as much as possible, and see if it gets better over time (providing we don’t elect for a last memory of a cold gun barrel clicking against our incisors).

This week Simon asked me if I wanted to hate myself, and at the time the question was asked the answer was No, Not really. But, like a Regina Spektor earbug, it’s been bouncing around in there once every 15 minutes or so, demanding more of my meditative attentions. I learned that the only time something refuses to disappear into the murky depths of the background is when the answer I gave is not consistent with truth. The next logical step would be then to pose the question again to myself, answer it oppositely and then try and figure out why the other seemingly the correct answer.

Question: Do you want to hate yourself?

Answer: Yes.

Since “No” was clearly not the answer that was going to let me get any sleep, now I had to figure out why “Yes” was the way to go. Ironically enough the reasons for this are one and the same with the other task from Simon, which was to list everything I don’t like about myself and fix track percentages of completeness. I don’t think he expected me to end up with a mental list no less then six pages long, the existence of which is the exact same thing as my answer of “yes” to the “do you want to hate yourself” question from earlier.

If I could manage to hate myself and wholly loathe every layer of my being down to the core, then it would be easy to insert a gun barrel and end my suffering. My suffering, in turn, has it’s roots in trying to do something about the laundry list of things I hate about myself. But I can’t end it, because I am indecisive and weak. I have been in the tub, with the water turning red from all the places I already cut up my once perfect skin, pressing the razor into my wrists when I turned back. Why? Hope. Hope is like the cough that won’t go away for 2 months after a bout with bronchitis. Hope is a thong riding up the ass beneath dress slacks during an interview. Hope is that one pore that everyone has that is never in good condition. Hope in this case is the lingering aftertaste of my self-esteem building childhood, my innate supposition that I have potential, and the irrational certainty that things will get better, eventually. It is annoying as all fuck but as everpresent as gravity. Without it, I would have had success long ago.

As I was saying a few paragraphs up, I used to post my generic angst multiple times a day, and then howl at people who were unlucky enough to be my friends and did not immediately respond with condolences and promises to kill whoever had offended me that day. As such, I am systemically going back, tracking them all down, and apologizing. I am not, contrary to the typical nature of apologies, letting them back into my life. I’m not fixed yet, and after a lot of contemplation I doubt I ever will be. Frankly I don’t think anyone should have to deal with me nor should anyone want to, aside from a paid and licensed psychologist. I might be entertaining for a while, like a feral child or the active viewer base who shit out YouTube comments, but it doesn’t take long to see not much is changing and people lose interest. There is nothing more irritating (or fundamentally discouraging) them not being able to fix broken things. At that point I have to be fair and use my common denominator argument again: all was good advice given by good people with good intentions. The common denominator of unfixability is therefore me.

It got so bad that I didn’t even want people to know when I had a new boyfriend. I say that like this is a past-tense issue, and I suppose I should re-phrase. It is so bad that I don’t like people to know when I have a new boyfriend. It’s embarrassing and another nail in my coffin every time you have to change your goddamn MySpace relationship status back to single for all your exes and enemies to see and revel over, and then tell your mother that yes, she was right . . . again. I can never shut up about it completely though, because in some twisted little corner of my brain I think that if someone can love me, even if they only love me forever right now, then I’m still worth the air I breathe and still worth saving. It is in this way I validate myself through others.

After a particularly bad week where I asked my boss with no reason given to let me go home so I could remote into work, I realized my instability is not receding over time, but is in fact a “hindrance to my lifestyle” as the ads are wont to call it. I type that phrase with a wry smile because I find it humorous on two levels, the first being that depression is not so easily pigeonholed as it is different for every person, and the second being that ‘hindrance’ isn’t so much as accurate as saying depression IS my lifestyle. I realize there are pounds of legal and politically correct considerations that go into writing these ads for depression medication, but seriously? It doesn’t fucking hinder your lifestyle, it becomes you every waking minute. Yes, I can graph my ebbs and flows so I know when they are coming but I can’t make them stop.

I told a few trusted coworkers who share my chemical imbalance problems that it’s like being a corn dog. I’m Dexter on the inside, rational, unaffected and extraordinarily bright, but I’m trapped in a thick, fat, loud-mouthed layer of Rosie O’Donnell. I resignedly watch myself become irrational, needy and petulant and my inner core has no option but to hang on and ride it out, with deductive faith that ‘this too will pass in a day or so like it always does’ as my only solace against the rampage.

This is not a mere hindrance; this is who I am, and I have learned to hide it really fucking well from the rest of the healthy, happy populace who has expectations that I behave and act like they do.

I want to touch on the symptom that practitioners call “loss of interest in things that used to interest you.” I suffer from this, but it’s an internal suffering. To the happy, healthy onlooker I am just as productive as any other average jane doe. I put out good work, and a lot of it, I am generally clean by average standards and I read a lot of books. The affliction is internal; with the work I put out, I only am able to retain a passing interest in any given project before it begins to bore me, and if I have to do it for too long ends up in me resenting it entirely. Anything repetitive I find both soothing and insulting simultaneously. I accomplish things for the satisfaction of being able to check them off. I don’t enjoy the journey, and I don’t learn much by experience. I don’t really care about the books I’m reading; I’m just using my growing list of “has read” and “now owns” as a tangible meter that I’ve got some purpose and some worth. I’ve always said ‘I’ am nothing more then a conglomeration of my memories, and books provide some pretty in-depth and complicated memories to tack onto my plethora of identity tags. On a similar note, I have never enjoyed a job for the work itself, but by how being successful at it would make me appear to others. Again, my self worth is defined there as what I do,and not who I am.

So yes, I suffer from loss of interest in things that I used to take delight in doing. I was just too unreflective before to realize I wasn’t delighting in doing those things (or is that just the depression talking? Hah! There’s a cyclical and constant Catch-22 for you – constant self doubt). Contrary to what you might think, I can’t look back and add to that “but I used to be happy and healthy when I was [insert younger age here].” I have always been this way, without any concept of self, but I just didn’t realize the implications of it on both my innards and ennards when I had less pensive time under my belt.

For the record, this didn’t fall into the category of shit I thought people would want to read about, but i needed out and this is as good a medium as any.

In summary (to use a phrase I hate and refused to ever use in any essay I ever wrote) I can say this: I’m sorry you know me, but thanks for sticking around. And I forgive you when you decide to leave.

(The day I blow a grand on shoes is the day I deserve a bullet between the eyes - but goddamn those are hot!)

I could just kill the singer from Aerosmith for ruining it with his big, gaping mouth, but it’s true that I lay awake just to hear him breathing.  I’m a night owl and he haunts the early mornings, so I always crawl into bed last.  My favorite thing to do is fuck up the way you’re supposed to spoon (where the guy holds the girl) and I hold him instead.  I touch the tip of my nose to the back of his neck and feel him breathe, and put kisses all over his shoulders.  He likes the softest touch, and I run my fingers over his back and down his arms, just barely grazing the tips of the hair on them.  I don’t know if he ever feels me do it, but I wonder how badly my touch fetish screws with his circadian rhythms.  Sometimes I know I disturb him because his breathing gets light after I mess up the covers and wrap myself around him.  When that happens, if I can reach and have somewhere unobtrusive to rest my arm, I will gently stroke his eyebrows, from the center outward, until his breathing gets deep again.

We don’t have a night light, but we have small shoji lamps next to the bed that put off the softest, warmest, faintest glow.  I sit and do nothing more then watch how the light changes on his face and chest as he breathes.  Sometimes the cat watches me watch him, but I always win that staring contest.  Maybe it’s ‘creepy’ but I’ve always said I’m a visual, and there is nothing higher in this life then finding your soulmate and having the privelege to gaze on them.

I know every curve, every freckle, every scar, and every fleck in his eyes.  It will take years to get to know every recess of his soul, and I convince myself that if I can just mash myself a little closer into him that it will speed the process.  I am happiest when every possible square inch of me is pressed against every possible square inch of him, and everything fades from consciousness except my fingertips on his skin and a soul deep peace I had never thought existed until now.

This is the first relationship I haven’t doubted.  There have always been doubts, hidden away, or masked as irrelevant.  But not this time.  I know shit happens, and I’m painfully aware of the age difference and what that means in the long term.  This just makes me that much more rabid to get in as much time as possible now, when life is … really good.

We’ve done everything ass backward.  I don’t think there is a single rule we haven’t broken.  It seems fitting since doing it the right way never worked before.  I loved him before I even knew what the guy looked like.  You spend enough hours talking to someone and you get to know them, even if you lack the face to face contact.  I knew his habits, his childhood, his beliefs, some of his fears, and more then a few demons long before that fateful day when I turned around and locked eyes with him.  He struck me thoughtless.  Not just speechless, but thoughtless.  Total blank. Shock.  There is an intensity and depth to his gaze that has literally frightened away more then a few women.  Lucky me
Lucky me.  When I was 16 and as of yet un-kissed, I went on a crusade to find out what love was.  I didn’t know, and didn’t think I had great chances of experiencing it, so I started reading up on the topic, like any self respecting, scientifically minded chicka would.  I found nothing, except floofy metaphors and subjectively romantic dribble.  I found a few gems in the writings of C.S. Lewis - The Four Loves, and settled on a mixture of that and my fundamentalist upbringing.  I decided love was a commitment.  Funny how that first philosophy came about; anything I had ever clung to was solid only because of commitment.  Commitment to family, to faith, to evangelizing the poor saps who were my first boyfriends.  Anything worth fighting for required a fight.

College, losing my faith, and being temporarily disowned changed all that.  Once again my view on love took on the form of my life at the time, which revolved around my studies in philosophy.  I decided that love was not a commitment, but that it was an action.  Love is not something you commit to, like a binding contract, it was a tangible thing you could and should do.  I swore to embody agape, and practice unmotivated love as best I could being fallible and a human.  I failed, utterly and loudly, after being emotionally and spiritually drained and dried to a husk.

My first two conceptions of love came from my surroundings and external influences, and were largely based on whatever I was immersed in at the time.  So, you can imagine my shock when I found myself face to face with the real deal, having been surounded by servers, command line, flashing red lights, and (to my shame) kept drunk half the time by crushing stress.  This wasn’t something I read about.  I couldn’t have made this up out of anything in experience.  In fact, it took me a while to realize exactly what it was, and several cosmic braindusters (see: Bill Engvall) before I realized that - oh shit, I’m actually in love.  Love isn’t a commitment, and it isn’t an action.  Love is.

It was arguably a classic Oh Shit moment.  Mostly because I was already engaged.  But people come and go in my life, and I never felt sheer panic like the day he almost walked out of work.  Nothing prepared me for the total rage I felt upon learning how he had been hurt before, and no one could have warned me how it was going to feel.  Why? Language doesn’t cut it.  Now I know why the greatest minds and authors ever known were reduced to dribble and analogies when it comes to the topic of love.  It’s almost blasphemous to even describe it, or to try.  So I won’t.

I’ve gotten concerned lectures from more then a few people for “jumping in.”  I’m not oblivious to how this looks to an outsider.  But I’m serenely peaceful with everything that has happened, and rather then waste their time or my effort trying to vocalize why it’s okay, why I’m okay, and why we’re okay … I am letting time do the talking for me.  Every week that goes by I realize more and more how utterly lucky I am.  Wrap me in the worlds bestest lie detector, and I can say without a blip that I am the luckiest girl in the world, and I get to bask in the presence of the most handsome and wonderful man I could ever have imagined.  Mushy? Sure. You probably just threw up a little in your mouth.  He calls me his “cute little blind girlfriend” and he is so dead on, but probably not in the way he thinks.  I’m blind, yeah, but it’s because of love and not any personal failing.

We would totally kick ass at a dating show.  The announcer would ask me what Ryan would do, say or want, and I would just have to answer with what I would do, say or want.  I was warned, though.  I have one friend who had the balls to say, “Kirsten, be careful.  Finding your twin is awesome, but be on your guard because you can lose yourself in that.”  I’m blisfully lost in this, but more myself then ever.  Now I enjoy things because of what they are in and of themselves, and not as an escape or a means to an end.  I’m getting a healthy body back, one slow step at a time.  Most of all, I’m learning from his beautiful, beautiful mind.  I’m listening to what he has to say, and I’m growing.  Maybe even growing up, but that’s unlikely ….

That gaze of his is just as consuming as ever, but I like nothing more then to drown in it.  He gets embarassed and says, “Quit it, you’re being weird!” but I just smile because we both know it’s because I love him.

If you’re lucky enough to be able to share the same space as someone, breathe the same air, then touch them like you mean it.  Touch their skin and realize you’re stroking a soul, not a body.  Realize that nothing is permanent, and go run your lips over their collarbone and their stomach.  Talk to them about their dreams, and laugh as much as you can.  Never go to sleep angry.  I won’t ever, ever ‘couch’ him, and when he gets up before I do, I sleep with my arm thrown over to his side.  That way I can feel when the bed is still warm, knowing he hasn’t been gone long … and if the bed grows cold, I lay my arm there, hoping he will return and jostle it, waking me enough that I can lay my hand back on his chest where it belongs.

We do it all backwards, and we sleep back to back.  The bed-positioning psychologists can go fuck themselves; to me it is the most comfortable thing in the world, and symbolically it’s obvious.  We have each other’s back, and we share the same need for touch.

I love him for who he is.  I don’t want to change a thing.  Not one, single, goddamn thing. Not. One.

That’s how you can tell.

I SHOOT EVERY THIRD SOLICITOR. THE SECOND ONE JUST LEFT.
LE TIRO A CADA TERCER SOLICITADOR. EL SEGUNDO SE ACABA DE IR.

NO TRESPASSING (PROHIBIDO EL PASO) and/y NO SOLICITATION (NINGUNA SOLICITACIÓN!)

I printed the above sign out and tucked it under the mat so anyone coming up the walkway will see it, and so I don’t have some unsightly thing easily visible on the front of the house.  Since putting it out there, we have received (1) ! ONE! Flyer on the door! We used to get as many as 3 and 4 a day.

It’s the people I talk to that make my days bearable.  One of my friends has two sons who are both still in the rugrat stages of pre-adolescence.  This guy suffers through indignities like impromptu hysteria in Target when a Pancake Puff is spotted, and some of the most bizarre conversations that, looking back, I’m sure I put my own parents through.

See, his sons are like yin and yang, good and evil, Jeckyll and Hyde.  Every time he tells me a story about his little Hyde, I feel a sort of displaced, third-party pride and get that fuzzy twinge that maybe there is hope for humanity after all.  This kid’s age is in the single digits and he already exhibits the markings of awesomeness; he enjoys manipulating his peers, but only considers kids in the grade above him or higher to be fair game.  See? Genius, morality and an innate sociological bent all in one package.  Anyhow, the latest chuckle involves his Mr. Doom and Gloom tendency to plot various ways to kill animals.

“Dad - you know the easiest way to kill a duck?”
“Um … no?”
“You put poison on bread - and then the duck will eat it - and then it will totally die!”
“Um … yeah - that is true I guess.  But - Zach, we don’t kill animals.”
“Oh, yeah - I know, I am just saying - it would be really easy. You know the easiest way to kill a squirrel?”
“Zach - stop - we aren’t going to kill anything.”
“No, I know - we aren’t.  I don’t want to kill anything.”
….
….
” . . . but you know a really easy way to kill a squirrel?”
“No, Zach - how?”
“Light the tree on fire - it would burn up and the squirrel couldn’t get out.”
“I don’t know Zach - it might jump out.”
“Yeah - that is true……  ”
…
…
“I bet we could get it to eat the poison bread though, Dad.”

If I could have access to the build script, I would totally configure a kid just like that for my own.  I used to pull the same shit when I was little, except I wanted to skin my prey and look at all the body pieces.  I guess the desire was half curiosity, half conquering tendencies.  That lasted right up until my Dad shot a squirrel for me; up close those little guys are mite-infested and nasty.  I nailed the tail to a tree and after it got rained on it lost it’s fluffiness, so I decided they looked cooler on the squirrel from then on.

Ryan pissed me off the other week, and while I can’t even remember what he said that set me off, I do remember the resulting conversation because it got pretty philosophical.  Ryan and I are both borderline sociopaths in that we don’t ‘get’ social customs and ritual, nor do we practice them in any case except where we have psychological hang-ups.  I, for instance, find myself enslaved by an estrogen surge at a periodic frequency (pun intended) and require ass kissing and massive interpretation during these times.  Ryan, on the other hand, requires a spotless house and silent burping (farting is cool, burping is taboo).  Anyhow, I was trying to define the mental dance a guy has to go through to not insult a PMSing female (duct tape is always a safe route) and managed to sum up what insults a female, or anyone else for that matter.  You are only insulted by something if you believe it to be true about yourself.

Think about it: self assured people don’t even have to work to develop a thick skin; they just laugh at what was intended as an insult and move right along.  I have two key areas that I value most but also wonder about; as such, the easiest way to piss me off right to my core is to snub my intelligence.  I wouldn’t recommend trying it, even as a joke.  If I do turn out to be dumb, that isn’t something I can do a damn thing about, so it stings even more then fat, lazy cow comments - because I can fix fat and lazy, even if the barb hits home.

This conversation about what is insulting continued on into normal working hours when a female coworker asked me if I would be offended if a guy called me a broad.  She added that “although I realize that practically nothing offends you” to the end of the question, which is what sparked introspection on what does offend me, which is when I postulated the intelligence bit from earlier.

But, back to the ‘broad’ comment - the answer is No.  It wouldn’t offend me.  I’ve been called much worse in significantly more vitriolic terminology (psycho ass bitch, raging cunt, sociopathic slut and evil bitch monster pop into mind) and only felt flattered.  In fact, said friend has my custom ringer set to that “You’re a bitch, but I love you anyway” song for when I call her.  But ‘broad’?  Nah.  It doesn’t even evoke an emotional response, because in my humble and always correct opinion, terms like broad, filly, woman, etc reflect more on the person who says the word then the person being described.

I thought long and hard on this one, and came to the conclusion that a guy who calls girls a broad is probably one of two things: emotionally immature, or deeply jaded by dating/fucking a long string of evil cunts.  In the case of the former, he will probably grow out of it and look back on his younger days and think “Man, I used to look like a real asshole.  I don’t know how I ever got laid!”  In the case of the latter, the 15 foot pole rule applies because the guy will inevitably be out for a quick fuck so he can turn around and tell his equally misogynistic friends about how bad you were in bed.  Granted, the more adventuresome females can use this type to get a quick fuck themselves, but that’s a story for another telling.  Conclusion: when someone calls me a broad, I usually giggle and want to talk to them more, but clearly not for the reason they think.

Speaking of unhealthy relationships - today Simon apparently pissed someone off by telling them that romantic relationships are not his thing and are more of a pita then they’re worth.  I would have forked out a wad of cash to be a fly on the wall for that conversation, but second hand is almost just as good because the way I imagine a shocked face is probably better then the real thing anyway.  We discussed, and I’m glad he brought it up because it goes hand in hand with the previous topic on why people get offended.

In a nutshell, any violent response indicates you hit a nerve. The fun part is figuring out what nerve it actually was, and I have a high success rate by pretending I’m the other person and conceptualizing what matrix of circumstances would cause me to react in a given manner.  I concluded that if I were to flip out when told that relationships suck it would be because I myself would have to be currently in a shitty relationship as well as spending a good portion of my energy and focus on desperately maintaining it, keeping it alive if you will.  So having some jack-off tell me their life is peachy while doing the polar opposite of what I was doing with my life where I also had gnawing doubts about my own decisions, well . . . this would logically make me froth at the mouth in an effort to validate and justify my actions to myself.  Cuz if the onlooker agrees with MY argument, then I must be doing the right thing, eh?  Nothing deflates your balloon like being told, “No, no, you’re doing it all wrong” . . .  and, well, Simon is gifted at that. /chuckle

I’ve been thinking a lot about morality this week and what matters in life.  I think the reason I hate corporate behavior is because it rings false on every level.  I’m watching an entire department collapse under the weight of it’s own enforced hierarchy, and it’s mowing down friendships like a drunk Slayer fan at a Hannah Montana concert.

Allow me to Socratic-Method you for a moment.  Your job (A) is what you do so that you can live (B).  You live (B) in order to make connections with people (C).  Deep down you know if you were the last man standing, after driving every abandoned car in the city, blowing up lots of shit, and hitting golf balls off really tall buildings, you would blow your face off.  So logically, if A then B, and if B then C, then if A then C.  You work so you can make connections with people.

Can anyone explain to me how a job that destroys all human connection is a ‘good thing’ ?  If your job ruins your friendships, then you basically devolve into a state wher you are working . . . so that . . . you can work more?  Living is thus cut out of the equation entirely.

This is what corporations are all about, and it happens so slowly and insiduously that you don’t realize it until you catch yourself drunk during lunch hour while simultaneously realizing the most interesting conversation you had in the last 48 hours was about a CNN article.  Maybe your job leeches your time, or your energy. Maybe you are outright told you cannot talk to anyone during work hours about any tpoic that is not work related, via any medium.  Maybe the bobble heads decide to add layer upon layer of management, promoting everyone to different tiers and strangling human contact with the bonds of “professional conduct.”  Put 5 managers in a room together, and I don’t care if they used to be best friends, they will all have on social kevlar and fake smiles.  I hate this shit.  Don’t discuss the weather with me, I have Google for that.  I don’t give a rats ass about the news; I want to know how you feel about things that matter to the human condition.  Otherwise, silence is golden.  I’ll take silence over fakeness any day that ends in y.

This ‘human condition’ phrase leads me into my next topic, which was covered on the way to Vegas.  I’ll start off by saying that anyone who likes to quote philosphers who has not actually read the book in it’s entirety should be shot.  All the little goth kiddos who run around screeching that “God is dead” should really be ass raped with a hardback compilation of Neitzche.  Similarly, teachers who spout phrases without any explanation given should also be drawn and quartered because they give philosophy a bad rap.  Ryan told me that in high school during the existentialist segment of his theology class his teacher used the phrase “Existence is the precursor to essence” and when pressed to explain what the fuck he meant, simply repeated the phrase.

I could have cried.  It’s a glaring logical fallacy to define something by itself, for starters, but what really got me going was that Ryan is in his thirties and had yet to have this explained to him.  This turned out to be the ultimate irony because once I explained what it meant, he realized he is the most hardcore existentialist evar, which I knew all along and is one of the many reasons I’m head over heels for the guy.

The explanation is simple.  Existentialists only give a shit about things that exist and can be experienced.  You throw something in their path, and they will ask “How does this pertain to me and my quality of life?”  If they have no conception of it, and no reasonable probability that they ever will expeirence it, the issue becomes a non-concern.  So, back to our troublesome tidbit: “Existence precludes essence” is a fancy pants way of saying that the damn thing has to exist before I can experience it, and if this is not the case, *yawn*

This mindset is one of the areas where Ryan and I are solidly in tune.  If an issue is a grey area, it’s usually because we haven’t experienced it and don’t feel we could pass judgment until we go through the experience.  Abortion is one of these examples.  I am pulled by both sides of the argument, but having never been faced with it myself I’m not capable of getting off the fence or passing judgement on anyone who made the decison either way.

Along the same lines, issues that have people up in arms baffle the hell out of us.  It has yet to be explained to me how gay marriage will in any way effect the quality of my life.  If porn offends me, I can choose not click SEXFUCKTITS links in Google or set foot in an adult store.  It never fails to baffle me how the government regulates anything and everything that could possibly offend someone.  I thought that is what ‘community’ was for?  Find a group you jive with and leave everyone else the hell alone.

This is my step-on-toes rule.  Anything goes so long as you don’t annoy the snot out of those around you.  Being an avatar for any cause is just shallow; you haven’t understood something, including the other side to your argument, until you have felt it’s pull.  Don’t be annoying about it.  Like Jay-Z? Great. Buy headphones.  Want to be a lesbian? Sure.  Don’t fuck up traffic with a walk down main street.  Want to allow prayer in schools? Fantastic. Allow it but don’t require it for everyone else.  Want to drive 55 mph on the highway? Have at it, but get the fuck out of the fast lane and allow me room to get over.  Want to validate yourself through endless wailing? Go for it, but post it on a blog where I’m not forced to participate, and don’t exceed the decibal range of a shit storm on monkey island around my cube when I’m trying to write fucking code.  Do as you will, but leave me out of it.  If I want to know, I will ask or find the data myself.  This, my beloved, is the golden rule.

Cuddle time, yo.

Notable travel quotes:

“I’m firmly convinced people would eat warm dog shit if they could get it for 99 cents.”
-Ryan on McDonalds (which we refuse to eat)

“A quarter inch is still a miss.”
-Ryan while passing on a solid line

This week the love of my life and I fled to Vegas, and I demolished entire chapters of my Things To Do In Life book.  I had never had room service before (they can bring Krispy Kreme!) and I finally got to blow a small wad of cash playing roulette.

We stayed at the Palazzo and it was, in a word, heaven.  We immediately hit up the Canyon Ranch Spa and got a couples massage; I even summoned the balls to use the suit-optional public jacuzzi (don’t get any sexy pictures in your head - I thought I could be all suave and remain wrapped in a towel until the last step down, and I miscalculated and fell in, towel and all).  Our suite was on the 35th floor and we had a fantastic view of the strip.  I probably took at least 5 baths and made use of a solid marble shelf that was central in the room and seemed to be designed especially for me to fulfill my fantasy of sexing on solid marble.

We hit up the shoppes and Ryan almost drooled on the floor when we ran across a photo gallery by Peter Lik.  The images are remarkably high quality and resolution and are printed on highly reflective paper so the common misconception (ourselves included) is that they are backlit.  His inner engineer took over for a while and I patiently observed as he tried to figure out how they achieved the effect; thankfully one of the guys there helped us out and explained the whole thing to us, including the story behind an image called Genesis - the beauty of which is profane to describe in mere words.  As such, we almost walked away with a 9 foot print of it, as well as a slightly smaller print of Bamboo (keyword “almost”).  Apparently they’re running a special right now where they sell anything off the walls minus the cost of frame and shipping, and while it was a spanking good deal we couldn’t stomach dropping that much cash on a whim.  The desire to own the prints hasn’t diminished, so I’m hanging onto the business card and plotting a birthday gift . . .

Dinner Saturday night was at the Tao Asian Bistro at the Venetian, a place I had been eyeing for a few months in various ritzy magazines.  We had a reservation and so avoided the line, and the food and decor were fantastic.  The music was so loud I yelled at Ryan the whole time, but such is the way of those joints.  I had 3 rolls of sushi and Ryan got wickedly good filet mignon that he actually sat and cooked himself via a skewer and a pot of boiling liquid over a real flame.  Highly entertaining.

After dinner I fulfilled a longtime desire to visit a strip joint, and we hit one of the best: the Sapphire.  We arrived just in time to beat what turned out to be an insane line.  I got 2 lap dances, the first from a sexy lady named Nina from Detroit who had the hottest cat eyes of all time and the second from a tattooed minx named Rogue.  I was frankly worried I might be horrified in such close proximity to another girl; at one point in my past I had tried to kiss another girl just to take a picture and giggle about it, but couldn’t get within 2 feet of her without invoking the gag reflex.  Not so much the case anymore.  I enjoyed myself thoroughly, and made Ryan jealous; I got my ears nibbled, my neck bit, my boobs grabbed and a face buried in MY cleavage. :)  Girls have all the luck!

We returned to the hotel and relieved our frustration, and as of now I’m getting serious about losing more weight (6 pounds down, baby) and am considering exotic dancing as a side job.  I was told I had to go see it before I decided, and I’m honestly fascinated twice as much now then before.  There was a dancer there who was perfection; she was my height and build, and I’ve never seen anyone move like that.  If I can wrestle my figure into anything resembling her shape, I will die happy.  As such, I’m trying to find a stripper pole I can install for vaulted ceilings.  No such luck yet - and he who offers me hamburgers in the upcoming months will be sneered at :-)  Girl on a mission.

Meet my new baby, Blue.  2008 Infiniti G37 S. 330hp + Stripper Shoes and a free afternoon . . .

I have successfully photocopied my ass after always wondering if this was something that was even remotely possible. It involved standing on the desk; check back tomorrow for pictures to be posted on Flickr.

You didn’t really fall for that, did you? HAHAHAHA … suckers.

Had a feast today; steak, corn on the cob, shrimp kabobs and Beer Butt Bird. If you haven’t heard of the last one, don’t diss it till you Google it and try it for yourself. or just invite yourself over one weekend and we’ll hook ya up
On a more serious note, I’ve gone from 13k+ debt to exactly 8k in 2 months. Encouragement is the best drug. Third only to sex, with Love still holding a definitive lead in first place.

Thought I had mono this week, since Ryan was diagnosed with it Wednesday; turns out I was just exhausted from not sleeping well. I feel recovered after the weekend, but I can’t say I’m looking forward to the upcoming work week. Who does?

I really wasn’t meant to live in civilization. Every goddamn day we get at least 2 of those frigging flyers on the door and I want nothing more then to send the things back to the business they came from via the Brick+rubberband+moonroof launch delivery method. Other suggestions from the peanut gallery included a prominent No Solicitation sign, which has already proven ineffective, letters to the city elected (which caused much hoopla last year but again proved ineffective; apparently freedom of speech for businesses trumps trespassing and litter laws that protect the common man), or monitoring the front yard with a shotgun or equivalent.

Google was, for the first time in memory, of no help. I found some cutesy signs that people posted that had moderate deterrent effectiveness, but decided to go with obvious. Since I live in an area overrun with illegal immigrant workers (who I have seen distributing said litter) I realized that a No Solicitation sign in English would be rather laughable. So a buddy at work translated for me, and I’m going to have a custom sign printed ASAP.

I SHOOT EVERY THIRD SOLICITOR. THE SECOND ONE JUST LEFT.
LE TIRO A CADA TERCER SOLICITADOR. EL SEGUNDO SE ACABA DE IR.

NO TRESPASSING (PROHIBIDO EL PASO) and/y NO SOLICITATION (NINGUNA SOLICITACIÓN!)

Failing that, I may toy with the idea of calling every business who leaves shit on my door and demanding a $100 processing fee, otherwise I take them to small claims court and nail them with a $2500 littering fee. Or finding out who the distributor is and screaming at them. Or maybe I get bored and nix the issue in the middle by catching up on my reading in a stealth lawn chair with my trusty supersoaker+food dye close at hand.

If I maintain an online database of businesses who spam my lawn, would anyone have an interest in boycotting these businesses with me?

My boyfriend loves me. New toy. I cannot wait to make Beer Butt Bird and corn on the cob this weekend. Hell. Yes.

Most of the other news from the weekend is not public domain . . . which is a crying shame because I have a mental bulleted list of things someone did that is their idea of “taking it easy.”  This includes but is not limited to: moving a couch, falling off a curb, and riding a crotchrocket. And yes, I took the first steps this weekend to learn to ride a GXR; if I can swing it, he wants twin Ducatis. Heh. I reminded him of the inevitable delights of insuring a 23 year old on a Ducati, and we left it at that.

In other evidence that the world is going to hell, the UK is mulling over a bill that would make it illegal to view any BDSM oriented image. I want to know a) how the hell that is the governments business and b) how in blazes they plan to enforce that. The act itself will not be criminalized, just viewing images. Does this mean you are not allowed to view pictures of yourself in the act? Will the internet be monitored? I could even make a strong argument that any image of the crucifixion would fall under imagery of “an act which results in or appears to result (or be likely to result) in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals”. That whipping Christ got before being nailed up sure falls under BDSM as well.

I spent years trying to find a good passage that describes what love really is. I failed miserably, so this weekend I tried to write it myself, and faced failure yet again. I’m starting to understand how useful analogies can be in conveying things of that depth, but have just been familiarized with the limitations of analogy in the same exercise. Basically, nothing I write will make sense to the reader unless they have already experienced what I write about. How do you put into words the feeling of having no more desires or wants? How do you encapsulate a before and after that is as stark a difference as life and death? How do you explain being content to stare into a pair of eyes for hours on end, and finding peace in closest proximity to a mirrored soul? It’s impossible to describe, and comes out woefully weak considering the speaker; I’ve been howling about having found my soulmate time and time again for the last 6 years of my life, mostly to try and convince myself of the fact. This time around is different. I feel no need to explain, justify or enlighten any external observer. If I do, it will be after I have mastered an entirely new language, the words of which I don’t even yet know.

My father is being rude again. It’s so hard to not blacklist his work email address, but avoidance is not going to solve shit. I failed to take the high road and have sent two equally snarky responses in return, but realized today that it takes two to fight. There is no way to gracefully ignore him without tension, nor is there a way to politically discuss the issue, because a) he won’t listen and b) responding invites further attacks. I’m at a bit of a stalemate, so for now I’m ignoring the whole mess and focusing on not caring. It isn’t as if he has ever approved of me before, so I haven’t lost a thing.

I saw that post before you deleted it, Miss Hannah, and you will be getting an earful after I collect my thoughts on the matter.

A benefit to having an atypical, ass-backward relationship is the ability to look at other atypical ass-backward relationships in a whole new light, and find powerful delight in people who are able to maintain and find happiness in such bonds. I’ve lost the ability to be judgmental, and have even noticed myself giving cliches more consideration, seeing as I’m locked into those and analogy to explain what the hell is going on in MY life. “Nobody gets it” has become a profound mental exercise as of late, and “not like anything else” has left the void of theory and plopped into my lap as reality in both my own relationship and another that I’ve had the pleasure to re-examine. Things are simpler: I’m happy. If someone else is happy, then I am happy for them regardless of how they got there, or where I think that path might take them. I’ve rediscovered a lost appreciation for people, for breathing cool air, for the feel of water running down my face, for sex, for traction around corners, for the fullness of a good meal, for having no fear, and for trying anything once, and usually again.

He said that photographs were pointless, because if something was really “memorable” then you would remember it without the damn photo. I disabused him of this by explaining the inexplicable value to sharing memories and by showing him in real life a few “snapshot” moments. As such, there is a picture I must take, and another I hope to capture for eternity. I might share. Maybe.

I still might write a book, and I still might call it Tideless Creeks. My original plan was to use the difference between living creeks with an ecosystem and dead “tideless” canals as a groundwork for the difference between mindsets and the facelessness that city life is turning into. Instead I might tackle a sham relationship versus the real mccoy. Not an easy task. Living versus dead, purpose versus stagnation, layered ecologies versus oil slicks, natural versus manmade.