Caterwauling

081

Originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn

I tell you, five years of high school French don’t mean SHIT when you’re turning 36 in a week. I’m not even trying to pretend I know the language!

After the Tuesday Day o’ Meetings, I was free to do mah thang. The lovely gal in the gift shop — who was born in D.C. and left South Florida a few years ago … does that mean Montreal is my next home? — recommended I should explore Rue Saint-Catherine.

Apparently Rue S-C has a string of British shops/pubs on one end, and French cafes/stores on the other. I walked the length of it. Same stores on both sides, although the British side rocked my world. Highlights? H&M and Urban Outfitters — neither of which South Florida has the courtesy to offer. Bastards!

Actually, there were a variety of designer outlets — mirroring The Magnificent Mile in Chicago — but there were two locations of many of them on this street.

The bummer is that everybody but the restaurants rolled up their sidewalks promptly at 6 p.m. Excuse me, but this was my only night to go out and shop, merci beaucoup.

With literally not a damn thing else to do, I want to have dinner at Les 3 Brasseurs. I never spoke a word, and I was handed a French menu.

I had it mostly figured out (biere! terrine! salade! s’il vous plait!) until my server started talking. Upon seeing my very blank stare in response, she said, “Want an English menu?” LOL. Yup.

The nice thing up here is that the U.S. dollar is almost at parity with the Loonie, so I can actually pay with the money I have in my wallet without bothering with the exchange rate or having to go somewhere to get Canadian dollars.

At first I thought people were kind of rude up here. But really, if you run into someone with an attitude around Montreal, chances are that they’re from the United States.

I’m not saying anyone’s overly friendly — other than the gal at the hotel boutique and a guy on the street who was asking me to support the local AIDS organization, I haven’t had my socks knocked off by any signs of intellectualism or sweetness.

I think I had visions of Montreal being a grand city on a hill. And it is, to some extent. But far from being paved in gold, it’s easily interchangeable with Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Chicago.

If the signs weren’t in French and I were a little too tipsy, I might not be able to tell the difference. (Until I tried to get a cab and couldn’t remember that my hotel is on Rue Rene Levesque.)

We’re going to take a little walking tour this morning. All I brought were my dressy flip-flops, so I shall be suffering in the name of cute. It’s a hard life, I know!

Today’s highlights:

1. Learning that “Montreal” is derived from “Mount Royal.”

2. Having a bumpy flight for three hours, surrounded by people who refuse to wear deodorant. The guy next to me was so nice, but I wanted to jump off the plane every time he lifted his arm to operate the video screen on the seat in front of him. Woof.

Oh, the highlight? The plane didn’t crash. It sure felt like it. At this time last year, I was on a plane that almost DID crash. And I was so through with my job/life that I willed it to go down in flames. This year? Not nearly as unhappy with my life as I was then. Not even close!

3. Cheese and cabernet. Emphasis on cheese, and lots of it. Cheese platter and a brie-and-artisanal ham (whatever that means) baguette. Mmmm, cheese.

4. Met a guy from Zurich, for whom it’s now 5 a.m. (he flew in earlier today). He said he only stays up till 5 a.m. when he screws a hot woman, which only happens every five years or so. Ha! I like it here already.

5. Joke of the night (not from the guy in No. 4): Q: What did the two tampons say to each other? A: Nothing. They’re stuck up bitches.

6. Re: No. 3. I was at a hotel bar up the street called Le Beaver Club. I’m not kidding.

7. Joke No. 2 of the night: Q: What did the egg say to the boiling water? A: I just got laid; not sure I can get hard right now.

What a weird week. Mostly in a good way, though.

Several of my beloveds from “up north” are in town.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday with one, eating oysters and foie gras and the most-amazing peanut-butter pie over expensive red wines on Atlantic Avenue. And I spent last night with my beloved Goddess Sabre and her family, in from D.C. for her son’s graduation.

The diet? Is blown, by the way. Pudge muffin. Yaar. And I don’t suppose heading out of the country for the next seven days is going to do any favors to my waistline!

I had two major battles to resolve before Friday. (Hence, the drinking. En masse.) And despite numerous odds stacked against each deal, I prayed for miracles to prevail. I had half of Facebook praying along with me, after I did everything I could and the rest, as they say, was in God’s hands.

The result? Not so good on one account, but progress on the other.

One of my Twitterfriends posted a link to a commencement speech from 2005. And I’m bored and actually sitting upright from the three-day boozefest that just concluded. (Fat. Ass.)

I HIGHLY recommend you read that speech. It was the reality check I didn’t get until I’d been out of college for six months.

I can quote a passage from it, to give some perspective on what went down this week in Goddess’ world, mostly because I know the person who NEEDS to read it is READING THIS RIGHT NOW.

“Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.”

I’m just mad because there are too many people who wear their diagnoses like a decorated soldier. Once you discover exactly how fucked up you are, you’re supposed to work on it, right? Let me clarify: You work on FIXING it, not PERFECTING the psychosis.

And from where I stand now, they just seem so small and petty and insignificant. Sound and fury, signifying nothing. The very large butt of a very big joke. The one whose epitaph will read nothing more than a name, whose final resting ground has grass that’s dry and brown and dead from everyone in THIS generation who pissed on it, the way everything in which they believed was pissed upon.

In any event, I’m just mad that Lilith Fair has a sucky lineup in West Palm (and I spent a lot of money on tickets), but it looks fabulous for Washington, D.C. I mean, throw a girl some Missy Higgins here, pretty please?

(Hello, no transition between subjects!)

I invited one of my up-north friends to come down here for the concert. I’d rather go up north and see it there instead, truth be told. (I’m happy to see Sarah McLachlan and Sia here. But Indigo Girls! Missy Higgins! Sara Bareilles! Are in my homeland but NOT HERE. GAH.)

In any case, that invitation was made in one of my liquid-courage moments.

But what’s so funny is that it’s perfectly the norm to ask someone to fly somewhere for an event. Just like I have plane tickets booked for the rest of the year for one-day meetings and weekend events. I love that this is my new normal.

This year, I’ve decided to simply hop on a plane and just DO shit, when opportunity arises. Life’s too short to sit on a pile of “somedays,” especially after too many YEARS have been robbed of me otherwise.

“I’ve been running all my life
I ran away, I ran away from good
Yeah I’ve been waiting all my life
You’re not a day, you’re not a day too soon.”

– Sia, “Day Too Soon”

Even if I only get two hours of face time with a long-distance friend here and there, it’s two hours I didn’t have otherwise.

So, M, I’ll see you in Sonoma; C, I’ll see you in Philly; V, I’ll see you in West Palm; B, I’ll catch up with you in Baltimore; L — Key West, here we come; and to whomever is in my life then, we have a hot date in Mexico at the end of summer.

And all these thoughts will keep me warm when I’m freezing my Florida-girl ASS off in Canada on Monday!

Lazy Afternoon

Originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn

Either the planets were out of alignment this week, or else the Apocalypse is nigh, but last week? SUCKED.

Today? Started out for shit, with all of my smoke detectors going off for an hour. The fun part was that they didn’t even have batteries in them.

If you’ve ever wanted to throw a social mixer where you could meet your neighbors at 8 a.m. on a Saturday, I highly recommend it!

The gal right below me came up in her jammies (I was also in mine). I answered the door with tears streaming down my face and clutching a hammer in my hand.

O HAI I’m Goddess — pleased to meet you! *pound, pound*

The landlady lives down the hall and didn’t answer her door when my lovely neighbor went to fetch her. There’s a real shocker right there. (Almost as shocking as how much work I got done today with no meetings and no Over-Extended Houseguest underfoot — imagine!)

I was worried about seeing Miss Thang … after the scathing review I left on ApartmentRatings.com about this shithole on stilts and the cunt in charge, I’ll NEVER get anything done around here if I don’t do it myself!

I had to shut off the electricity and untangle the wires in order to get some peace. My ears are still ringing. I imagine the potheads next door slept through it, but I feel bad for all the dogs within an eight-apartment radius who — if they weren’t annoyed by the smoke detectors — were probably dying over my own high-pitched screams.

It’s about 90 degrees outside and 130 in here. I’m still not sure about turning on the a/c after the last apartment I leased here (i.e., $600 first electric bill due to shoddy equipment).

Incidentally, I look like I just emerged from the pool. After spending 15 minutes on the balcony. *pant, pant*

And since I spent however many of the past few months paying for the OEH to have her own place and she spends EVERY WAKING MINUTE in my house because apparently the cat needs her), it’s my easy way of smoking her out of here. Like, maybe she’ll go DO something if it’s too hot. But nope, not bloody likely.

Overall though, I have to remind myself that life is good. I know others have it worse, and that’s the bleeding-heart socialist in me.

But the emerging capitalist in me knows it can be better, and I want that instead.

I didn’t get the house, the white-picket fence, the 2.3 children and the hot, wealthy husband. I did get a waterfront apartment, good job, great potential side gig and a few good friends around the world.

I guess I just want to feel free, whatever that means. Money in the bank, a stamped-up passport, admirers and lovers around the world, and the ability to go where I want, when I want … without having to check in with anyone and/or having to reschedule around them because they have that power and I don’t.

I’m working on it all. And I hope that when I have it, I’ll finally know that ever-elusive happiness that I so desperately seek. Something tells me, though, that — when all is said and done — it just might turn out that I had known it all along. We’ll see, my darlings; we’ll see …

So, it’s Day 7 of my diet and I hauled my pudgy pork roast ass back to Weight Watchers. Lost a whopping 3.6 pounds, which would be good if I hadn’t put on 18 in the first place. *snarl*

My leader, Johnny, is awesome. If he isn’t a flaming gay man, he sure as hell plays one on Thursday nights. He asked if I’d talk for a second about my ‘first week’ on the program.

I announced my status as a “two-time loser,” as it’s my second time around. And he LOVED it and referred to me as a “two-timing loser.” Yeah, we’re gonna get along just fine!

He asked how things were different during the past week. I said that for the past year, I was VERY roughly counting points, saying things to myself like, “Oh, that’s about 2 points.” When, in reality, I do the actual math and write it down and say, “Oh, hey, fatass, it was more like 8 points.”

A hush descended upon the room at the “F” word. Johnny loved it and said, “Oh, you say that to yourself, too?” And I said yeah, I suck at the “positive self-thinking lesson” and he said, “I know!”

And I was kind of comforted, mostly because I wasn’t sure he got my reference when I was on the scale and asked, “Did you deduct 16 pounds for the shoes?” (“Romy and Michelle,” in case you’re lost.) So, I think he got it.

Then we broke up into groups to talk about our challenges. I picked the “food pushers” group so I could bitch about the Over-Extended Houseguest who bakes and cooks good food with a stick of butter and then gets hurt that I spurn what little contribution she feels she can make. Which I punctuated with, “No wonder I’m fat!”

And that pissed them off even further. Whoops.

Look, you have to learn at a young age (if you’re pudgalicious at a young age) to deal with people calling you names. Fuck, there are people in their 30s who act like 5-year-olds and address you as such because they’re pissed off that their skinny asses are having a miserable life. (*points and laughs at one in particular*)

Sticks and stones, yo. Sticks and stones. I get the last laugh AND the first one.

I call myself names when I do something stupid. Like eating the whole cake when I’ve already ruined my diet with one piece. Like trying to wear my “skinny jeans” that were a little tight 15 pounds ago, if I’m being honest about it. Or like when my confidence turns to shit and I don’t grab somebody and kiss them when I know perfectly well that I CAN, because I get struck by sudden shyness that they couldn’t POSSIBLY want my pudgy butt.

Anyway, someone in the meeting today called me my nickname (a derivation of my real name, NOT fatass!), with a certain accent in his voice, that reminded me of my friend Vitamin D. And I missed her very much today. (*waves*) And she was my real champion, when I did this the first time.

So, yeah, I’m back. Hopefully this time, it’ll stick. But at least I’m trying. And maybe I’ll find another name with which to berate myself for the dumb things I do in the future: “OK, skinny ass!”

Second time’s a charm, I hope!