The pair I'm wearing tonight

I grew weary of arguing with blogger about where these pictures should go. These are my practical shoes.

You can quit laughing anytime now. 

Vanity, thy name is woman

I went shoe shopping with a friend yesterday, always more fun than going it alone. A half hour into the trying on I noticed that a number of people were staring at me. Well, it was more like a glare actually. Oh, I guess I should mention that the friend wasn't actually with me. I was taking blurry pictures with my iPhone and emailing them, and then waiting for the thumbs up or down. In addition to taking pictures of my feet I was trying to carry around all the boxes with the possible take home shoes with me until a shoe store lady walked up to me with a large tote bag. "Would you like to use this?" I thanked her profusely and realized how myopic I had been since the large tote bags were hanging at the end of every row of shoes. That was when I noticed the blond in the clogs pacing me up and down the aisle. Of course, I couldn't really read her mind but it seemed like she was fascinated by the fact that I had been walking around in each shoe I tried on, only taking them off to try on the next.  The pair I was wearing at the time (see picture above) were the most comfortable of the day despite the fact that they made me just short of six feet tall. It's a powerful feeling being up there in the rarified air, kind of like the afternoons in my childhood spent walking on stilts. 

As I moved to the checkout line about two hours later I was standing behind the blond who had been sort of stalking me. She paid for her two more pair of ugly shoes very similar to the ones she was wearing when she arrived. I wonder if she is thinking the same thing about mine? The check out lady does a little sigh and says, "These are the hottest shoes in the store." Maybe she says that to all the ladies, well, except for my blond friend who has already gone out the door, but somehow I think she is sincere. 

I put on the impractical but hot Steve Madden zipper front heels and modeled them for my husband.  "You aren't going to dance in those are you?' was his only comment. I told him no, and came back with my second pair, a full inch shorter, hot but reasonable for spinning. He gives his approval but I think he is looking at my legs instead of the shoes. I sit down and email my shopping friend who had to leave before my final selection was made. The conclusion is that I have some very hot shoes, less money in my checking account, and I am not necessarily the most practical woman on the planet. I can however guarantee you that I will be having more fun tonight than the blond with her new clunky footwear.

He didn't write it but he did inspire it

I offered my husband the position of guest blogger this week as I have had little time to post. He never really said anything but I am accustomed to that. He has perfected the art of the non-answer, appearing to speak but saying nothing definitive.  Last night however he mentions to me, “I think I might have something blog worthy. Remind me to tell you about it later.” When I finally settle in to listen he starts telling me about a meeting at his office and I am prepared to stifle a yawn. Now my husband has a female boss, a very attractive black woman who is most gracious and business like. I like her quite well and he gets along famously with her and the other ladies in his office. They are quite frank with each other at times, but today was not going to be one of those days.

The lovely lady boss has positioned her blackberry on the desktop right beside my husband but of course it is muted during their meeting. On the other side of my husband is another coworker, also female. The discussion they were having was no doubt of sealing wax and kings or some such thing that state bureaucrats talk about to fill up their day and use our tax dollars wisely.  Suddenly the phone on the desktop interrupted the proceeding by buzzing and moving slightly on the table. For some reason he could not identify my husband found it disconcerting. He could not focus on the conversation at hand but kept staring at the blackberry. It went off again, rattling against the desk and he had a light bulb moment.  He nearly put his hand over his mouth to keep from saying, “Oh, that sounds just like my wife’s vibrator.”

Needless to say he doesn’t remember much about the rest of the meeting. 

My Lucky Jeans at the O-asis. BTW do you know how hard it is to get a good pic of your own ass?

I really wanted to give the three girth challenged girls at the next table the benefit of the doubt. I know a redneck bar is not the place to go looking for brainiacs, but I wanted them to have something going for themselves so badly. The weight issue is not as big a deal in this place anyway. As I told my husband, “Just don't ask anyone when their baby is due.” The girls are chatting before the band starts and overhearing conversations is my forte, an occupational hazard I suppose. 

“So they put these weights on your hair and it makes it grow longer” says the dark haired one in the black tent top. Everyone at the table listens with interest. I make brief eye contact with the prettiest of the girls, short hair, absolutely lovely face, and I see in her eyes she knows this is BS but these are her friends. They all sip bright colored drinks in tall glasses and rarely glance around the room at the men, although there are three men at the bar right in front of us about the right age. The men however are looking at me. 

I know you are all going to find this hysterical, but when I left my Kentucky home for the Baptist college I had ambitions to be a missionary, and no, I do not mean the position, I mean the occupation. I got over my religious ambitions but never the belief that I can fix the unfixable. I am the idiot that thinks if you just explain things correctly everyone will see the error of their ways and do right. In my heart I want to go tell the pretty fat girl that she can change her life if she wants to but first she has to stop hanging out with other fat girls and find friends that can challenge her. I then want to tell the skinny 25 year old that this girl could be his dream come true. I didn't do any of that however but I did have words with the 25 year old. My husband had just left for the loo when he walked right up and into my personal space. “Where's your man gone?” says Mr Suave. 

“Toilet” I said.

“Well if you ever need anything, anything at all, I'm available.” I give Mr. S high marks for confidence and low marks for underestimating his target. 

“Darlin',” I tell him in my sexy voice, because I never mess with a man's ego, “I'm old enough to be your mother.” I almost say grandmother but don't because it might be true. 

“Age doesn't mean a thing. You are hot.” Now don't think that I'm not flattered by the boy. He's cute, kinda skinny, but in 15 or 20 years he might be interesting. Not to me however, not now, not ever. I run my hand lightly down his cheek and look into his eyes briefly, and then over his left shoulder. He turns quickly anticipating my rather large husband might be standing behind him. He is back at the safety of the bar stool when my husband returns. He took the quick chance of grabbing my hand when my husband left the next time. His hand is hard and calloused, not the hand of a man who sits behind a desk all day. I give him my sweetest smile and let him go home thinking he could have had me if my man hadn't been there. 

I tell my husband the story when we get to the car. “You mean the skinny one?” He probes for detail. I think about the fat girl's eyes as I tell him. She kept staring at me all evening too. She saw the boy hit on me, and the look on her face was not envy but admiration.  I want to go back and get her and take her on as a project. I want her to have a man who looks at her the way my husband does at me. I want her to be standing in a bar when she is my age having a inappropriate flirtation with a cute guy. Of course when I was 14 I wanted to convert all the jews to christianity. Sigh. Maybe my husband is not so far off the mark when he says I am secretly a hopeless romantic. I still think he's just projecting, but maybe I'm wrong. Now if you will excuse me I'm going to take a nice hot bubble bath. Seems like I might have overdone it when I was trying to impress the 25 year old by getting low, low, low, low, low.

Did I mention I love interviews?

Sigh of relief that WG didn't ask me anything too revealing, but then, is there anything left that someone out there does not know about me? Actually the answer to that would be yes, but that's all you're going to find out about that. I told a friend that I was hiding in plain sight by seeming to tell every detail about what I do and yet keeping my life essentially secret. So, on to the questions.

1. How has your relationship with your son changed since he became a parent? This has been subtle and is still evolving. No relationship stays static and ours certainly has not. The fact that he moved 3000 miles away and got married has made far more of an impact than the wee bairn however. I have had to steel myself to the reality that I will only be a blink on Sagan's radar, a picture on the computer once a week, not a real flesh and blood part of his life. That reality hit my son a short time before the baby was born and he called me in distress. I gave him all the comfort I could, but I cannot change the lives we have picked. In truth my first born and I have so close a bond that neither time nor place can alter it . It was forged in the years it was just the two of us. I adore my daughter in law for the wisdom to see all of that clearly. She knew it would be best for her marriage and life to move away, and I respect her for that more than she knows. I do wonder what it would have been like to see it all, to watch my son grow into the daddy thing, but that is not the life I got.

2. How did you come up with your cats' names? I don't have any cats actually, they all belong to my children. Also I have discovered that you cannot have one cat because they evidently have a psychic connection. I did bring the first cat home so I cannot blame anyone but myself. I found him dancing painfully on an asphalt parking lot in August. He hopped right into my car and announced he was mine. I named him DoWahKitty because “There he was just walking down the street singing do wah diddy ditty dum diddy do”. I sang it to him all the time. He's gone to that big litter box in the sky along with several others, Mr Doodle because that's what he did mostly, Mootsie, Cutsie and Tootsie, named by my then 12 year old daughter, and Sam, the first cat I really loved. I called him that because that was obviously his name. Currently we have, in order of age, Sweetie, named by my girl 17 years ago for unknown reasons. She has not lived up to her moniker. Little Kitty, half the size of a normal cat, soft grey and so sweet, but with no indoor manners. She lives in the garage with a cat window to egress the great outdoors. Then we have the Sailor Moon cats, all named by the girl. Tuxedo Mask is an enormous 35 pound black and white Mane Coon, gentle and a friend to all. Luna is a black short hair, the cat who would be king, and finally fluffy white sweet stupid lovable Artemis, everyones darling. Dianna. the other Sailor Moon namesake, got tucked in a sack and carried to Seattle where she lives contentedly with her boy as an only cat.

3.  How did you get into your field of work? Shit happens. I wanted first to be a ballerina but the two left feet and lack of grace got in my way. Next I thought about riding in the rodeos, but that was before I got on my first horse. They turned out to be really big and smelly and not especially good at taking direction. I picked myself up off the ground and went back to school. The degree in social work looked good for about five minutes but then I had this class with a Svengali of a teacher whose children I would have gladly borne, so I changed my major to Urban Studies. I never worked a day in that career but took a job in Management Engineering because I was able to convince someone in an interview that it was a related field. All the people at my job made less than the computer nerds, so I went back to school and got another BS degree in IT. I love BS degrees, but I hated the reality of programming. Who knew that is was big and smelly and not especially good at taking direction. I took some time off to have babies and while I was thinking about the future I realized that I had always been able to talk people into things easily. I walked into a call center and the rest is history. I talked my way to my current big high mucky, muck position and as long as I can just keep talking I'm solid. 

4. If you could have a superpower, what would it be? I have a superpower but I'm not telling you what it is. Hint: It is not talking, although some people think that when they first meet me. No, it's not about sex either although I've not had any complaints.

5. In your opinion, what is the most obnoxious color to paint a house? Purple. Not that I'm dissing purple mind you, but really, a whole house painted purple? Some really rich people in our neighborhood actually painted their half million dollar home lavender with purple shutters. It does not blend with the landscape.

That's My GIrl

I have nothing of any importance to say but I never let that stop me before. I was off on Friday and I spent my day cleaning house because my daughter's new boy friend was coming to meet the parents. Saturday morning the two of them head off to San Francisco to meet the best friend. I gave them both a hug in the airport Saturday morning and told him to take good care of my girl. I had done all I could do by getting her drunk on Mimosas before the flight. The check in lady didn't seem to notice, but she did pick up on something the girl had missed. 

“I can't check your bags through to San Francisco because you are landing at Laguardia and taking off from JFK.” My daughter looks at the paper in her hands as if seeing it for the first time. We both say something like OMG, you're kidding, even though we know she isn't. The new man, Marc, is non pulsed, which is going to serve him well if he plans on hanging out with Eva.

 “Well, that's going to make that four hour layover a lot less boring” he states with the edge of a smile in his voice.  Eva and I are outright laughing at this point. 

“I guess that's what you get when you plan a trip with two days notice” she says. 

“Hey, it's gonna be more fun this way” I tell her encouragingly.  “It will be an adventure.” As we take the long walk to the gate Eva suddenly remembers that she doesn't know her best friend's address. Once again Marc gives no indication he finds this unusual. My phone rang around three in the afternoon. They have negotiated the transfer and are sitting on the tarmac at JFK with suitcases tucked safely in the hold. I hear the edge of terror in my daughter's voice. 

“There is something wrong with the plane.” 

“It will be okay sweetie. They won't take off until it's fixed.”

“There is something wrong with the plane” she repeats, speaking slowly and louder since I have obviously not heard her the first time. Marc makes soothing noises in the background while I find out through questioning that it is only the toilet, not the engine or the electrical system. I tease my frequent but jittery flyer into laughter. I am beginning to think that Marc is up to the challenge of my girl.  I guess that if meeting the parents and the crazy best friend in one hysterical unplanned weekend doesn't break them up we're going to be seeing a lot more of him.  

Clutter

I have had a day of contemplation bordering on, but not quite touching laziness. I went early to the gym and then came home and wrote a lot of first sentences. You know, some people have trouble getting started, but today I am a whiz at opening lines. By the time I wonder into the second one however I am off track. It comes from having something to say that I cannot bring myself to say. My life seems a room too long neglected, so cluttered I don't know where to start cleaning. I keep opening the door, looking around, and then shutting it again. 

After a long time torturing myself I do what I know I have to do. I step quickly across the threshold of my troubled mind and pick up one thing. I stare at it, wondering what I was thinking when I bought it and what I should do with it it now. Finally I put it in the box labeled “Charity”, and I pick up the next thing. I put that broken twisted item directly in the box labeled “Discard”. Two less than a thousand or more I think, and I pick up the next one. This may take a while. 

You know we've all googled ourselves on occasion curious to find out what others might read if they took a look. Mine is pretty predictable and some of the post are actually about me. I got bored with those and tried goggling alternate names. I thought, what if I had never married, so I googled my maiden name. Damn I wish I hadn't done that. I came up with a woman who was incarcerated in Mecklenburg County Jail for child abuse. I was horrified because I cannot imagine anyone hurting a child. Then I looked at the news report. I think she might have gotten a bad rap. You see my namesake was born without arms, and she is in jail for shaking her 7 month daughter. She is also pregnant with her second child. There but for fortune go you or I, but especially I.

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