Be thee not a coward.
Cowardice is the least masculine of all personality flaws. And what the Curly Haired Girl needs most is a tough man who isn't insensitive, but also isn't a ninny.
Own up to your mistakes. Apologize when you fuck up. Stop fucking up. It's not that fucking hard.
To summarize thus far:
1. No assholes.
2. No alcoholics.
3. Ability to drive a fucking car.
4. No sissies.
I really don't think this is too much to ask for.
It's so well-documented on this here pink-hued blog of mine that it's an embarrassment to continue writing about it. But since I'm tapped out on anything that isn't too personal or baby-related, you're going to make do.
About a month ago, I messed up the thumb on my left hand. Shit like that happens all the fucking time, so it was no surprise that when I woke up and was unable to use it, that I had no recollection of how the hell I did it this time.
But, like most of my other injuries, I ignored it. Aches and pains usually go away. Two weeks later it was still kind of swollen and useless. So I started wearing a splint. Which is so unattractive and sent my nephew into a tizzy this afternoon when he saw it. Kept telling me his thumb wasn't broken, so how could mine be?
Now the doctor is concerned that it might actually be broken. I call bullshit on that, but I'm still going to get xrays taken tomorrow. Which is so annoying. Taking time out of my busy schedule to be radiated. Watch my hand turn green. And glow.
Well, that might be kind of cool. This whole bum thumb thing though? Not so much.***UPDATE 8:39 PM***
It's not broken. Whoopdee. So that just means that I have a nasty contusion or some such nonsense. Argh.
After 18 hours of labor, the baby boy finally arrived at 4:08 pm PDT. The daddy summed it up like this:
"He's 19 inches long, and for all you Indians out here, he weighs 7-11."
He was born under a full moon and has quite a lot of hair. We all joked that he's a werewolf.
It was a wonderful afternoon. Both of our families were there: the grandparents, all 3 of her sisters and their kids, and my other brother and his little brood. All of us crowding up against the tempered nursery glass. To watch my baby brother make faces at his little baby.
My baby brother is a daddy! It's so awesome.
Labor started this morning. We're all just waiting for his head to pop out!
Updates later.
Underground, 1999 My nephew was the only little boy at my niece’s tea party yesterday. Not to be outdone, he contributed meaningful conversation:
Grandma: Where did you go yesterday, C-note?
C-note: To the gift shop.
*puzzled looks all around*
GPG: What did you get there?
C-note: A sprayer.
GPG: Oh. Where was the gift shop?
C-note: In the back.
GPG: In the back of what?
C-note: *exasperated* In the BACK!
GPG: "The back" where?
Sister-in-law: *trying to run interference* C-note, where do we go to see the animals?
C-note: The zoo. Duh.
Oh. Of course.
Remember Meaningless Memes Week last March? Well, I just watched the third and least satisfying of the Pirates movie and am stunned by my lack of brain power. So guess what you get more of? That's right:
What does next year have in store for you?
Doesn’t Remind Me – Audioslave
What’s your love life like?
Disconnected – Goo Goo Dolls
What do you say when life gets hard?
Beautiful – Open Window
What do you think of on waking up?
I Like Dirt – Red Hot Chili Peppers
What song will you dance to at my wedding?
Your Girl – Mariah Carey
What do you want as a career?
Sweetness – Jimmy Eat World
Your favourite saying?
Giving In – Adema
Your favourite place?
Can I Walk By – Jazze Phe featuring Monica
What do you think of your parents?
Don’t Let Go - Weezer
Your pornstar name?
Love Don’t Cost a Thing – J. Lo (clearly I’m a poor pornstar)
Where would you go on a first date?
Under My Voodoo - Sublime
Drug of choice?
Big Bang Baby – Stone Temple Pilots
Describe yourself.
Like a Stone – Audioslave
What is the thing you like doing most?
Thief of Hearts – Madonna
What is your state of mind like at the moment?
I See Sound – Moth
How will you die?
Your Embrace – Shakira
Tagged for this silly experiment are the girls: Fresh Blade, Princess, and Sasha X.
When I was barely a a year old (if even), my father decided it was time I learned to swim. So he threw me in the pool. And something magical happened: that's the day I became a fish. You could not get me out of the water.
Summers were spent up the street at my aunt and uncle's house, which had a gianormous pool. 12 feet deep with a diving board. I had perpetually pruney skin. There's a reason I had short hair for those formative years. Curly hair and swimming don't mix well.
Come high school, I avoided the run-of-the-mill PE classes by trying out for the swim team. I spent 2 years on the JV team. I wasn't the strongest swimmer, but I could hold my own in the 100 meter freestyle.
But it's been 13 years since I swam competitively. I got fat and lazy and grew my hair long. These don't make for fish-like behavior.
Until today. When I found myself with a free afternoon and a gym with an indoor pool. As much as I've always detested the stench of chlorine trapped within tile walls, my membership doesn't afford me an outdoor pool. So I made do.
And the fish busted out. I swam countless laps back and forth, loving the water. Counting the strokes between breaths. Forcing myself to hold it longer and farther down the lane.
I managed to go eight strokes--halfway down the lane--before coming back up for precious oxygen. There's nothing like a little light-headedness to keep you motivated.
I forgot both how hard it is to keep your form and how great it feels to slice through the water. With each stroke I was trying to keep my legs straight, making sure my arms swept underneath me properly and came up pinky first, parallel to the thigh. It's been so long, and yet it's just like riding a bike. Albeit, underwater and with foggy goggles.
Tomorrow, my obliques are going to ache like a bitch, my arms are going to feel like jello, my back and shoulders are going to be unhappy, and my thighs will probably protest every step.
It was truly the best workout I've had in ages.
I can feel the gills growing back.
1. Don't be an asshole. I hate arrogant, self-involved men who think the world revolves around them.
2. Don't be an alcoholic. You really don't need to drink at every single given opportunity. No, really. You don't.
3. Know how to drive a stick. All real men need to know this.
It's so fucking simple! Oh, and also
4. Don't live far away. I really hate that part.
Orchids #26, March 2007I thought I had finally reclaimed the center of my bed.
Most of my adult life was spent very selfishly sprawled across the entire bed. I have had a queen-sized mattress since I moved out on my own, and have relished every single inch of it.
Some time ago, I wrote a rather scathing diatribe about how I do not share my space very well. It can best be summed up in these few sentences: And I want you to leave soon after we're done. I don't cuddle. I sleep diagonally across my bed, so there's no room for you.
For the longest time, I didn’t sleep well if there was someone else in the bed. Probably because I felt encroached upon, like my sanctuary was invaded. No matter how much I liked the boy, he got kicked out as soon as he served his purpose. Cuddling? No thank you.
Then someone came along and actually broke me of that bad habit. The first night he spent with me was not one fractured by an inability to relax into dreamscapes. I actually slept—and well! There was something comfortably special about him, if not only because I allowed him to stay, but his presence there all night didn’t rob me of sleep.
He's been gone for quite some time, but for some reason I'd managed to leave his part of the bed untouched. Until just recently.
It took a long time, but I finally got that bad habit out of my system. For the first time in over a year, I parked myself smack in the middle of my bed and stayed there until morning.
And I slept very well. Didn’t fall out of bed or nothin’!
Except now someone new is vying for that space. I've managed to give up half the bed when he's there, but I still prefer sleeping diagonally. So the question is: how long before I give that up for good?
We all know I love my baby brother. Whose fianceé is about to pop out that baby boy of theirs any day now. It's a very exciting time.
He will, however, always be my baby brother, and therefore subject to certain types of abuse:
Baby Brother: I was told I have nice legs.
GPG: By who?
BB: My wife-to-be.
GPG: She has to say that.
BB: Shut up! I have nice legs.
GPG: God, you're such a girl.
Dad: Your mom used to tell me that when I was going to the gym regularly, I had a nice butt. Women like that stuff. And I never knew!
GPG: Uh, yeah. How old are you and you DIDN'T know that?
BB: Haha. Dad has nice nalgas.
GPG: You're both so queer.
I know the summer is already half over. So don't look at me like I'm late to the party. If you've ever been to a party with me, you know that there is always a huge rush to greet me with hugs and a general disruption of goings-on while everyone screams "hey, the GPG is here!"
Shit don't really start till I get there. It's true.
I've been wasting away at work since January and I'm completely tired of it. A new distraction in late May made it nearly-bearable until it too became inconvenient (read: hard). While I figure out whether or not he's worth the aggravation, I have to come up with new ways to avoid being at work 18 hours a day.
To wit:
- Clean out the closet. I have many clothes that don't fit. They will probably never fit again. Like those 17 pairs of jeans that date back to high school. They aren't even in style anymore. Did anyone know what a boot-cut was in 1994? No? Then to the Salvation Army they go!
- Organize the photo collection. There are 3 places where my "artwork" lives, none of them in any sort of discernable catalog. Then there are the brazillions of 4x6s that were taken at parties before god invented digital cameras. Remember 1994? My jeans do. So do the pics. Time to trash or box up in a single spot.
- Clear out the clutter. I've somehow developed ratpack-iritis, which in its most deplorable forms makes you keep a 3-foot tinfoil Xmas tree bedecked with pink glass ornaments in your bedroom ALL YEAR LONG. There are also 82 issues of magazines I never read. And a bag full of presents I brought home on December 25th that never really found a home. All of this will see the inside of our apartment building's trash receptacle by Labor Day.
- Lose this horrible 10 pounds I've managed to gain being completely sedentary for 18 hours a day over the last 6 months. A coworker and I made a pact to lose 15 pounds by end of August. I don't know that there are any consequences for failing, other than the utter shame of breaking the pact. Which is enough to keep me going, that's for damn sure. I figure if I hit at least 10, that's a success.
Them's the biggies. And probably all the responsibility I can handle for a while.
La Ria and I just saw the funniest play, N*ggerWetb*ckCh*nk. It's paraphrased where my memory failed me.
From a scene where Jesus is Hispanic:
Chink: So why did God tell Adán and Evina not to touch the fruit on the tree?
Wetback: Because if they picked it then, they'd be picking it for the rest of their lives!
***
And then politics:
Nigger: Well, at least we have a black governor.
Chink & Wetback: What? No, he's WHITE.
Nigger: Well, in German "schwartz" means black. And we've already gone over what "negger" means.
***
Go see this play. It's 2 hours of brilliant, completely un-PC hilarity. I highly recommend.
Earlier this week I started getting that familiar itch to get the fuck out of town. When the timing is right, I escape up to the high desert to check out the ghost towns. Some are mere remnants of the silver boom. Others have turned into functioning tourist attractions out there among the hills and vultures.
Like Calico, where I shot this random pipe:
Calico, 2004
The other night I had really good duck for dinner. The G-brat found this story to be particularly hysterical.
G-brat: *incredulous laughter* You had DUCK?!
GPG: Yeah, it's just like chicken.
G-brat: Did it go quack quack quack?
GPG: You silly girl.
G-brat: Did you eat it's tail? What about it's beak?
GPG: No.
G-brat: QUACK! QUACKQUACKQUACK!!!
She's five. They're allowed to be obnoxious when they can't wrap their heads around eating Donald Duck for dinner.
She laughed for a good hour over the idea that her auntie would eat a duck of all things.
Gotta love her.
Seems like Jay's advice works and you can force a title in the box. I like it "in the box."
Heh. I'm five.
Because my pseudo-vacation robbed me of any and all energy, the June recap is a little late. So much so that I barely remember the month...but here's the ol' college try:
1 new little French Canadian brought into the world
5 glass of scotch in a single sitting
21 years of aging in port wood
18 year old Macallan that has become the delicious standby
110 miles to a San Diego resort
2 days "resorting" with my favorite Krazy Mamacita
116 dollars for 2 bottles of wine
4 birthdays celebrated
108 years combined
2 brothers sizing up my date
9 children I think I'm related to, creating a ruckus in my parents' house
1 adorable baby boy who I'm definitely not related to, but seems to really like me anyway
10 magnificent ounces of steak enjoyed above the city
2 days spent waking up at the crack of fucking dawn
1 incredibly successful summit at the horrible convention center
3 of the worst meals I've ever been forced to eat (worse than prison food, I swear)
6 hours slinging authentic Louisiana snowballs in Long Beach
2 sunburnt shoulders
3 songs in a serenade
2 new objects of my affection
1 is a man (the other is scotch)
1 amazing duck breast
1 G-brat doubled over in hysterical laughter, quacking
93 minutes of the original 1932 Scarface
4 hours giggling with La Ria
2 incredibly disappointing restaurant experiences
2.5 combined hours spent waiting for food that never came
13 major work events to round out the month
403 attendents at the installation of the company's new president
50 at another party 2 days later
3 judges at the table
1 newly minted president sitting right next to me
30 minutes chatting with her about the future of the organization
1 dinner with the Krazies
2 mutual great first impressions
1 very happy GPG
'Tis the season to go outside and get a tan. 
I'll be doing just that, or something like it, this week.
Fun in the sun time!
