Needful things

The musky, manly smell of you,
The pliability of your skin,
The rough & tumble texture of your voice
& the crinkle at the edge of your eye when you smile….

You have become a necessity in my life.
As strong as the air that I breathe,
The dreams I conjure,
The food that I eat.

Your absence was never noted until you became a reality.
The reality of you has made the whole of me.

I know that I’m strong enough to live without you,
But without you I cease to exist.

I'm selfish

The thing I am craving most of all lately is to have just one day where the only human interaction I have is with my Joe.

Isolation

I’ve never been a very social person. Some (including myself) may even believe a diagnosis of autism due to the extent of my social ineptitude. It has never bothered me to be by myself & the comfort that I feel when alone is perplexing to most people. Because of this idiosyncrasy I’ve never had many friends although I’ve found that I can get along rather well with a variety of people. I’ve never been one to seek out the company of others & the friends that I do have probably perceive me as (more than a bit) distant because the thought of connecting with others truly never crosses my mind.

So I find it strange to have found someone that I simply cannot go a day without connecting with & the irony is that he is away much of the time. By “away” I mean physically not in the same state. He travels. A lot. If it were anyone else this fact wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. I might even relish the chance for some alone time, but this is sadly not the case. I have a new found sense of isolation & loneliness that I’m having trouble coping with. I’m certainly not afraid to be alone & when he is out of town I don’t particularly want the company of others, but there is a definite sense of loss that I’m unaccustomed to; a sense that I’m missing out on something that I should be a part of. It’s a dream like state at best; nightmarish at worst. It’s as though I’ve pressed pause on the representation of what I have known as my life. But, I’m the only one on pause. Everyone & everything seems to go on as normal about me while I wait to be able to press “play” once more.

Liz was right

Blogs are strange things, no?

Private thoughts put into a public forum is a bit like reverse voyeurism. These are my bits, they belong to me & no one is allowed to see or pass judgment on them but me. Here, let me show you them.

Now there are some bloggers who will say, "Oh, this? I do this for me. I do this for a creative outlet & if someone chooses to read it, well, that is their problem." Those would be the liars. People don't write blogs for the hell of it. They write blogs for external validation. They can argue until they're blue & it will still be true.

Private thoughts should be exactly that. Kept to yourself or possibly shared with very intimate friends &/or family. You want to call out a particular so & so, you don't do it in your blog. That would be something termed passive aggressive & it's a character flaw. Fix it.

That was a weird tangent.

Have I mentioned that I haven't been doing so well emotionally lately? Or, have you guessed that already?

There. I said it.

Joanna Newsome has no clothes.

Rocks

I owe myself an entry, don’t you think? Especially since the cliffhanger I wrote one of the last times I was here. It was about dirt.

Dirt.

No wonder nobody reads my blog. If anybody Googles “dirt” they deserve to be buried under 6 feet of the stuff.

Dirt.

Anyway, the next tremble inducing conglomeration of sentences shall prove to be just as exciting, if not more so. First of all, my barn is still not completed nor are there horses living in it as yet. I do have one living next to it, so I’m getting closer to my ultimate goal. Plus, she can look into the barn through one of the dutch-door windows. Progress!

The gray-ness of winter is struggling to stay in the present, but much to my delight it is losing it’s battle on a daily basis. Soon it will just be an unpleasant memory. Spring is glorious. Now if my yard could make an effort to recognize the season…. The grass is still a sickly, olive straw color & the two containers of tulips I’ve planted off the back porch are refusing to cooperate. I believe a total of 4 bulbs from 24 have poked their little noses out, surveyed the scene & said, “oh, hell, no.” They have stopped at a less than Amazonian stature of 2 inches. Not a bloom to be had. Luckily it looks like the flower bed in the front of the house is doing better, at least in the bulb department. Falling snow from the roof this winter broke off nearly half of the branches from my already suffering forsythia bushes. But, I don’t care because sunshine makes everything better.

Joe & I have a bunch of plans for the “spread” this spring. The planting of trees has been discussed & Joe has become quite an accomplished rock farmer/rancher. In a matter of a couple weeks’ work a rock lined path out to the barn has emerged from a pile of rubble. It looks quite lovely & reminds me of what might be found out the back of an English country cottage.

Rocks? Jesus.

Resurrection

The zombie corpse of the best radio station ever created has risen like a phoenix from the ashes once again.

I beg everyone that has gotten tired of being fed corporate radio to go here: www.woxy.com

Not that anyone reads this, but should you stumble by I guarantee it will be in your best interest to copy & paste that address into your browser. It won't make you live longer or increase the size of your penis, but it's pretty damn good encouragement to keep living none-the-less.

Unremarkable

I grew up in Midvale, Utah. Smack dab in the middle of Suburbia. It wasn’t heaven & it wasn’t hell. It just was. That’s all. I had an ordinary childhood & I have nothing or no one to blame or thank for who I am. I wasn’t molested & I wasn’t abused. I wasn’t spoiled with too much affection or too many gifts. My parents weren’t strict or lenient. They expected us to tow the line just like they did. If there was one thing that rings true for my parents it’s that the only thing they expected out of life was the next day. Since I didn’t have anything to rebel against my only true hatred was for the mediocrity of their ordinary lives. I was terrified of my own mediocrity. I still am I suppose.

I struggled with being ordinary by doing things that might set me apart from the crowd. Not in a “look at me” sort of way mind you as I was just as terrified of making a spectacle of myself. Various eccentricities came & went. I found that it took a lot of effort to be crazy so I gave it up. I came to realise that nobody would ever be impressed by me. Nobody would ever give a damn. Not enough to want to know me. Not enough to want to be like me. Not enough to make a difference. Not enough to be remembered.

& so, I became invisible.

Cuatro Anos

On this day in 2002 I was driving around one particular block in Salt Lake City trying to find a parking space & also the courage that had brought me to this moment. I think I circled that coffee shop 3 times before I managed to find both. I walked down the sidewalk & into the most wonderful, frightening, frustrating, joyful, insightful, exhilarating, exhausting, confusing & purposeful chapter of my life thus far.

I have my Joe to thank for that. He has allowed (& sometimes provoked) me to become the person that I knew I could be. He has embraced my insanity & has allowed me to enjoy his own. I could list one thousand & more of his qualities, but in the interest of subtlety & laziness I won’t bore anyone with that here. Suffice to say, a more perfect companion I could not imagine.

Thank you, Joe, for making the last 4 years matter & for joining me on my journey.

Dirt

A year ago November my Joe & I had a barn built to accommodate my horses. It has stood an empty shell since then & has been a thorn in both of our sides for differing reasons. It’s a magnificent building measuring 42 by 46 feet & will no doubt bring us much joy once we are able to use it for its intended purpose. It’s getting to that point where we are having the problem.

Being the sort of person to do everything ass backwards the barn was built before the ground was ready & now we need to fill the damn thing with what amounts to a dirt pile the size of a small country. People; there is no such thing as dirt cheap. Dirt is the opposite of cheap. After spending nearly one THOUSAND American dollars I am now the proud owner of a pile of dirt I could have hauled in with a little red wagon.

My Joe, as I mentioned, shares my frustration with the barn finishing. Because of this we have come up with a plan B which includes moving existing dirt from one spot on our nearly 6 acres to another. With the excavating expertise of a long time friend & the rented equipment of a neighbor we will soon be embarking on the second leg of the Great Barn Fiasco. Leg three will consist of stall building (a future post all to it’s own I’m sure), followed by leg four: allowing the horses to use said barn as dining area, bedroom, toilet, chew toy & general target for destruction. At that point I shall be nothing more than an indentured servant to my adoring animals.

I am giddy with anticipation.

Silent partner

The distance between home & California is infinite. So much so, that it has the ability to make certain people disappear altogether. The FBI's witness relocation program has nothing on the internet security industry.

Look.

I don't need you to talk to me, but I do need you to want to talk to me.

Maybe I haven't made every sacrifice I could make for you, but I have ALWAYS been there for you. I don't think it's too much to expect the same in return.

I'm not asking much. Just a note in the morning to say you'd love to talk, but you'll be busy & won't have time to chat today would suffice. A call at night to say you miss me & to tell me to have a good night.

Unless those things aren't how you feel.

Which is what I'm beginning to suspect.

Time is wasting

Had a bit of a reality check this past weekend. An acquaintance from school recently passed away from a pretty long bout with cancer it seems. Now, I'm not going to go on & on about what a great guy he was or how I secretly always wanted to get to know him better. I hardly knew him really & I'm okay with that. I can recall vividly, however, a photograph that I have of him doing the "egyptian" in front of a chalkboard in junior high. For all I know he could have been a rotten bastard, but I always found him charming enough. He reminded me of my brother. Maybe that's why I can't stop thinking about him. It wasn't a crush. It was more of a respectful acknowledgement.

He was my age.

I'm 34.

I'm going outside.

Certified anglophile

I love the British.

I should be British.

It might make me more interesting.

I think I'll keep my near-perfect dental structure, however.

Blog, blog, bloggity, blog.

I spend so much time reading other people's blogs that I don't seem to have the time to write my own. Not that it matters much. I read a lot of blogs. There's not a lot of independant thought out there to be had. Why should I expect mine to be any different?

So, you might ask yourself why I read so many blogs when I don't find many of them worth reading? Namely because I'm looking for something different. It has to be out there. It has to. & I'm not looking for the traditionally different; crazy words typed to impress the easily impressed. One doesn't have to be absurd to be different. Just because one's belt doesn't match one's shoes doesn't make one wacky. Words &/or phrases made up to confuse whichever clique to be rallied against doesn't make one edgy or hip. Mostly, it's annoying.

Stuff on my desk~an introduction

Because I'm left alone at work for two hours & can't possibly do anything constructive during those two hours I will create a list of the items on my desk.

Fascinating stuff: 2 candy canes with tiny stuffed renditions of Beaker from the Muppets & Bumble the abominable snowman from the stop motion animation factory of Rankin & Bass (spelling may or may not be accurate). I think they are supposed to be finger puppets after one consumes the candy. They both have very surprised expressions. Might be because they have candy canes up their asses.

Also: an antenna topper in the form of an alien's head, a tiny maroon sitting Budha sculpture, a waving red m&m figurine, a bottle of air freshener, a sample of Ralph Lauren "blue" eau de toilette, a photo of my first horse, a nearly empty bottle of White Tea & Ginger hand moisturizer & various unmentionable regular office type items (phone, paper clips, glue stick, pens, adding machine, stapler, etc.)

& stacks upon stacks of paper that the others in my office might call work.

To my immediate left is a corkboard filled mostly with official looking pieces of paper emblazened with equally official sounding type face. I couldn't be less impressed, but below all of that crap is a photo collage of my 2 favorite people. One I know rather personally, that would be my doting & adorable boyfriend of nearly 3 years, Joe, who gave me most of the interesting stuff found on my desk. The second would be the Rob Dickinson of the former, but now unofficially defunct, alt rock band Catherine Wheel. People venturing into the office often ask who is in the photo & I get to make the 3 hour speech describing who they are & that, yes, they are indeed two very separate individuals although my photographs seem to suggest otherwise. It's a rant not soon forgotten & I've never had to repeat it to the same person twice.

I guess that could be construed as an introduction.