Caterwauling

… blowing through my life again …

Trapped in traffic last night, I stopped at a mall to waste some time. I was wandering around, yapping on the cell phone, when I saw someone who looked exactly like someone I knew, once upon a time.

I don’t like to hold on to the past. Thus, I hate it even worse when it creeps up on me. Because I am not that person anymore. Not to say that the “old” Dawn wasn’t a good person who was fun and lighthearted and introspective — the “new” Dawn is all of that with a heaping side of neuroses yet minus the dumb, impulsive shenanigans.

But it’s like how when you become a nonsmoker — you simply cannot be around smokers … not for a long while, anyway. The first year, the temptation to pick up a cigarette is downright overpowering. Thus, you stay out of bars and, sadly, perhaps find excuses not to hang out with your smoking friends in social environments. Then after a year has passed, it’s a “filthy, disgusting habit” that you can’t imagine that you used to partake of.

That said, I wrote an imaginary letter to this vision from the past:

Dear M—,

I can’t count the years that have passed since I’ve seen your face — I can’t even remember what you look like anymore, save for the one photo of you that I ever possessed, which I lost a few years ago. That, I had memorized. That is the image that comes to my mind when I think about you.

And so, I swore I saw you last night. Read the rest of this entry »

Just kidding — I can’t afford that brand yet!

Alternate entry title: ‘Wake me up when September ends’

I’ve never understood why we acknowledge “anniversaries” of epic, tragic events — whether worldwide or personal ones. Anniversaries should be celebrations of great things — marrying the right person, ending a war, stopping whatever desructive habit that keeps us from being greater beings who achieve greater things.

That said, September is an anniversary month for me, of sorts — this month last year, I quit two very bad habits. And both happened under auspicious circumstances — although admittedly, their absence brought more positive energy to my life. And today, I resolve to let go of the last piece of the puzzle so I can truly be free. So here it goes: Read the rest of this entry »

I thought I could come up with something profound to say today — some lesson I’ve uncovered or some platitude that could apply equally to the four-year anniversary of 9/11 and the two-week anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. But, alas, brilliance doesn’t arrive on demand. Sometimes, it doesn’t arrive at all.

If we really have to go through it, this is where I was on this day in 2004 and, retrospectively, in 2001. So I ain’t regurgitating that mess. But when I awakened today at 9 a.m. and realized what day it was, I remembered Doug and Andy.

Ordinary day
There’s little left to say about them, other than it was the bizarre love triangle of a lifetime. I remember standing on a streetcorner with them on 9/11, taking one of our three scheduled smoke breaks during our spirit-crushing workdays. I’d missed the morning breaks due to meetings, but I was there for the 3 p.m. shift.

Our breaks, usually filled with laughter and jabs and joy — they often told me what they loved about me was that they could rip on me and I’d truly love it, that I didn’t *act* like a superior even though, in our company, I was (and let’s not talk about how much *my* superiors hated our friendships) — were filled with silence.

Our office was located in one of the worst sections of the city — just across the street was a high school where, just the day before, there had been a major assault on a bus driver by three students. Several people had been stabbed. Ambulance sirens had penetrated our breaks the day before.

And the next week after 9/11, I would wake up and decide to go buy my car (as I took two buses into this hellhole and had been followed/threatened/catcalled to and was otherwise tired of carrying a pocket knife and mace), which would be keyed up two weeks later in our crack den of a parking lot (two streets over).

Although, truth be told, I was more afraid of the abortion protesters who clogged our alley because of the women’s clinic next door — you want to see me fly into a murderous rage, try accosting me and beating pro-life rhetoric when all I’m trying to do is just go to fucking work in the morning.

Sorry, I digress. 🙂

The point was, we were accustomed to not feeling the slightest bit safe, and 9/11 served to remind us how quickly things slip away — how we were all waiting on dreams and moments and things we thought could make us happy while just trying to get through a day without being publicly excoriated and privately devastated.

That day, we could be publicly devastated. And we didn’t know how to let it show other than to smoke and nod at each other and look at the sky and wonder what was next. We would later try to find comfort in each other — and I even dumped someone else to pursue this exquisite pain — although in retrospect, you’ve never met three formerly good friends who could have hurt each other more.

So what’s my point? I guess I don’t have one, other than that I hope and pray for myself and for all of us that we go through these life tragedies, big and small, for a reason. I hope that when our spirits, our hearts and even our belongings are washed away, that something even better will be regenerated in their places.

And that, after all the mistakes we’ve made, we can permit ourselves to believe that we deserve those better things.

Learning to feel good again
That was when I amplified my personal crusade to rebel against injustice — that was a time when I started making choices that, while probably wrong, let me make a great deal of my mistakes while I was still young enough to recover from them. (Clearly, I keep continuing that trend. LOL)

I was thinking about my last post about waiting for the Easter egg — wondering what’s going to be in the pot at the end of the rainbow and whether every injustice we collectively encounter will bring us closer to a reward for our patience and good nature. And whether getting upset and reacting to the crazy stuff in perhaps a not-constructive way will reduce the reward.

Like, those of us who can stay quiet for awhile but eventually lose our shit are doomed to wander the earth until we learn whatever life lesson keeps eluding us. And we — I — keep wondering WTF gives me the right and the authority to fight against what I don’t believe in instead of just trying to change to fit what it seems like the world wants me to be.

But then I think about politics (in every realm) and how it’s the diametrically opposed beliefs that keep our country going. And then I hate myself for walking away from discourse, which I often do — not to preserve an uneasy peace but, rather, because the loudest voice is rarely the one that’s the most right.

Not OK
I saw a commercial recently, with a woman screaming that she’s had it with being OK with things that upset her. I think it had shown her saying “That’s OK” when somebody screwed up her order somewhere and a few other things. God, I love that commercial.

I think about that all the time. My nature was always easygoing, although it was just before 9/11 that I got into a groove of wanting to pick a fight with anyone who would listen. I am confident that we’ve all had to give up things we’ve wanted, and we’re left to wonder when we’ll find something to fill that abyss in our hearts.

I know we get tired of life’s little inconveniences (like getting bad customer service or dealing with a series of small hurdles when we’re only trying to accomplish a minor errand). It’s this shit that saps us of much-needed energy and motivation to accomplish the great things we were put on this earth to do.

As I watched the ReAct Now Hurricane Katrina benefit, I thought about the people like me who might have been writers. The ones who made a living doing something else but who had computers and/or boxes full of unfinished stories that they can never recover.

I hope they don’t abandon those creative works. Moreover, I hope their dreams get bigger next time around. It’s so easy to be afraid to dream again after your heart has been broken, and it is my wish that evacuees can recover the intangibles and use them as the foundation with which to rebuild their homes and their lives.

And maybe that is the lesson I take away from today — that the world can strip you of your land, your belongings, your pets, your family members and friends, even your dignity — everything that defines you. Unfortunately, nobody can/will give you those things back, and I guarantee more people are going to die of broken hearts in the next year than any other cause.

I don’t know how to save these people. It’s a challenge from time to time to salvage my own spirit — I have no advice on how to bottle and sell the magnificent strength I’ve witnessed throughout our world’s tragedies for those who could use a dose of it themselves — I’m but a wee liberal who does NOT want to see the estate tax repealed but instead want to see that money funneled into vocational and mental health counseling for our flood victims.

And then I wonder why I am NOT shouting from the rooftops — why am I sitting here with electronic and paper journals full of ideas and plans, letting my ideas go unsaid to anyone who could help me to make them happen? Why do I let my anger over the injustices I see simply rage within me until I can’t see straight, yet I will verbally crucify someone who cuts me off on the Beltway?

If I ruled the world
I usually like to wrap up an entry with something pithy that ties the whole entry together, but I don’t have it today. The only thing that comes to mind is Bertrand Russell’s quote that “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent
are full of doubt.”

It’s not that we’re not capable of changing/saving/revolutionizing the world — we’ve just never had anybody believe in us up till now that we could do such a thing, so we don’t know where to start. There comes a point when you’re tired of debating and you want to start doing — when you want to channel your energy into making the world a better place so that your own little universe is a place you really want to inhabit. Instead, we focus on making our own lives good enough or manageable or maybe even a little bit happy but are reminded by these major tragedies that the world is NOT fine and that brings such a level of guilt when something actually does go our way in our little lives.

I just don’t want us all to look back and know we could have done more — that maybe the reward of knowing that we helped generations to be better off than we were, in whatever shape or form that could possibly take, would be that ever-elusive happiness that we seem to spend our lives searching for. I want us to feel that our voices counted and our intentions became achievements. And I want the patience to not go apeshit in the interim, feeling like I have so much more to contribute to every area of my life and my world and that those contributions would be welcome, if only everyone knew how sincere my motivations really are. That the status quo of not giving more because nothing more is expected of us is an absolutely horrible example to set and an even worse groove to which to succumb.

I never thought I’d want kids in this lifetime, but as the 30s tick on, I wonder if I’ve been keeping a gift from this world — maybe if I can’t personally be the one who delivers the miracles, perhaps I might deliver the person who does. Maybe it’s that I need a team that I trust who can help me to execute my visions rather than trying to do it alone.

Maybe I just need another bloody mary. 😉

On iTunes: Bon Jovi: “Save the World”

I have been on this ridiculous quest for the perfect bloody mary. I figure, I used to be on the warpath toward finding the best amaretto sours drink (Alexander’s Pasta Express in Pittsburgh — theirs are frozen and to simply die for), so I have needed a new goal.

To date, I think Jack Stack’s serves the best bloody mary, but as it’s in Kansas City, Mo., and I am (happily) not the slightest bit close to that area, I have found a more-than-suitable first runner-up in that department in the Red Rock Canyon Grill’s “ultimate bloody mary.”

Let’s just say that was dinner last night. I mean, those come with grape tomatoes, olives and shrimp. *full-body orgasm* I also had a Yuengling for dessert.

Speaking of full-body orgasms (just kidding), there are actually some attractive men in Maryland. Really. I was just in Pittsburgh, where I actually had men approaching me and talking to me and flirting with me, and here I live in this body-to-body yet barren wasteland known as Northern Virginia where I couldn’t pick up a man with a dogcatcher’s net. But then again, with most of them, I wouldn’t really want to. 😉 Perhaps this is yet another reason to expedite my move — for the scenery!

Speaking of scenery, I loved the restaurant. The food smelled good (but I will never eat in public. Really. I usually end up with more ON me than IN me, so why make an ass out of myself when I simply have my verbal dysentery to take care of that for me?). But what I loved was the crackling fire outside of the restaurant — I dig that smoky smell and wish that someday I can actually have a fireplace of my own (those things are fabulous at destroying evidence, too, but I digress. LOL).

And the restaurant is set in the middle of a man-made lake and I had to hoof across a little wooden bridge to get there. Way cute. Seriously, I need to start carrying a camera with me more — especially because I saw the sun dipping behind the trees through the walls of windows. *sigh* I might’ve been born at dawn (hence the name) but the night is my time.

Oh yeah, good conversation and all that too, naturally. It’s nice to crawl out of my hole and realize that there is in fact a life out there to be lived.

I know, you’re wondering WTF the entry title is all about. Well, thanks for asking — I will tell you. Some of us were talking about going to movies, and I inquired whether someone stays for the credits.

The reason I ask is simple — I love to watch the credits when I go to a movie. Sometimes, it’s because a fantastic song is playing and I simply cannot leave until I’ve heard the whole thing, else I’m waiting to see the song list in general so I can hit iTunes when I go home.

But why I really stay? I’m waiting for an Easter Egg. You know, the hidden jewel that’s meant to reward — some last scene or surprise tacked onto the end of the credits. Even if it never comes, I know that I didn’t miss out on a single thing.

And I think that’s a good motto for my life right now. I’m waiting for some amount of hidden joy — a surprise that’s worth hanging in there for, even if I have no idea what it is.

At this point, I am not even sure what I *want* it to be, truth be told, but I can’t give up hoping that someday, I’m going to find the point to this journey — that this blind faith that things are going to turn out OK is going to be rewarded in some fashion.

That, after all the stops and starts and aspirations and heartaches, I’m going to be smart enough and tough enough and humbled enough to have earned my happy ending. (Or, at the very least, a good climax!)

Oh, and duh, here’s YOUR Easter Egg — in the form of tunage, natch!

On iTunes: Emiliana Torrini, “Tuna Fish”

I have absolutely refused up until now to blog about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Seriously, I have shut the TV off because the real horror wasn’t the fact that there was this horrific storm that claimed lives and livelihoods en masse — rather, it’s the fact that Americans lay dying in one of the most accessible cities in the country due to our government’s proclaimed inability to actually enter the city for a week.

It’s been said before, and I’m saying it here — I saw a faster response to the Tsunami in Asia. ASIA!!! We could haul ass over there and create public service announcements and send volunteers halfway across the world but we couldn’t get the slack-jawed imbecile of a president on a plane or a truck or what the fuck EVER any sooner than we did?

If this were Boston or Georgetown, D.C., or fucking Crawford, Texas, you can bet your sweet ass that your tax dollars would have been hard at work saving your fellow (affluent) Americans. In this day and age of instant communications and prosperity, I am appalled at the images I am seeing on my television. Fuck Tom Ridge and his stupid terror-alert system too. Had this been a terrorist attack, what would have been different in the response? Huh? I’m waiting. Other than exchanging the floods for fires, what would our country have done differently, if anything?

I was reading Editor & Publisher yesterday and thank god I was at home, because I spit out my Diet Pepsi straight at my screen when I came across this article.

I’ll spare you the click-through:

Barbara Bush — the former first lady, not the dipshit first daughter, although you would expect this kind of stupidity from one of those “Twins Gone Wild” — toured the Houston Astrodome, where hurricane survivors, after a week of wandering the streets, were dumped because they had nowhere else to go. And the old, crusty bitch had the AUDACITY to muse that “they were underprivileged anyway, so this (arrangement of being camped out in Houston) is working very well for them.” Read the rest of this entry »

Meet my latest addiction: the Post Secrets website.

A local guy (from Germantown, Md.) shares intimate secrets from others that are too intense for them to keep.

My favorite (so far):

Many thanks to D2 for turning me on to this!

On iTunes: Black Eyed Peas, “Sexy”

No kids, that’s not my first, middle and last names, although I can’t say those don’t fit right now. 😉

But first, tunage!

Is it possible to feel anchorless and yet like you’re carrying the weight of a thousand worlds on your weary shoulders?

I’ve spent the last year not feeling like I am entitled to any of my feelings — good or bad — and I am feeling an insane need to emote, even though I know better. No matter how valid I believe my feelings are (and how desperately I need someone, anyone to validate them), conventional wisdom dictates that this has never done me any good, so why start (again) now?

I’m just speaking generically, by the way. I am rather adamant that one should do something splendidly bitchy like leaving meat and fruit in the vents of an apartment she is being unceremoniously forced to vacate. Because, fuck, why act civilized when, say, your management company is telling you your car will be towed on Sept. 1 if you don’t get a new parking sticker from them even though you’re getting an eviction notice 30 days later?!?!

There was a moment when I had too much time alone with my dark thoughts today (I believe it was on the Beltway. LOL), and I almost started to believe this fucked-up little voice in the back of my noggin that told me that I worry about everything because I don’t have any real problems — or, at least, I feel like my problems don’t *count.* (Yes, holy shit, PITY PARTY.)

I was reading some old blog entries and just doing my usual manic processing of a million unrelated events (hello Deep Thought!), and I spit out one correllating factor — I don’t always emote when I need to because I’m always absorbing what everyone else around me, near and far, is outputting. And I end up turning it all inward and otherwise DRIVING MYSELF INSANE.

What a revelation! It sucks now that I see it (theoretically) on paper, but dude — I get it now. And I’m not special in this, mind you — we all do it. When all others are losing their heads, someone’s gotta keep it together, no? Problem is, it’s like the commercial with the raft that springs a leak and, while the guy is scrambling for an idea of how to save his girlfriend from drowning, she plugs it with a Tampax Pearl and the world is right again.

But I hate those screwy-shaped tampons just as much as I hate BEING an emotional tampon, to borrow a phrase from a male friend who always seems to attract hormonal females who just want to dump their problems on him because he happens to be one of those good guys who listens and dispenses useful advice, just so long as you can accept the truth.

In any event, I guess I’m just hormonal now and I just want to feel like I’m actually contributing something to this world and making the most of my time in it and not just waiting. And waiting is a loaded word in this use, but I don’t know that I have enough server space to talk about all the things we’re waiting for (Godot?) and all the things we could/should be doing in the meantime.

Is it guilt that drives us to this feeling of absolute inadequacy if we cannot list 20 things at the end of every day that we’ve conquered? And even if we do, people like me might multitask like madwomen but, while we seemingly accomplish a lot, we can’t give anything or anyone the real level of attention that they deserve. Except for the one itty-bitty thing that makes our right eyes start to twitch uncontrollably — and people probably think we can’t handle anything, if something that ridiculously MINOR sets us off.

Ah, what goes unsaid behind what IS said — talk about the real books and movies and plays that are inside all of us. But will we ever find people who will listen and not judge, who will encourage and not discourage, who will make sure you cast away that weight on your shoulders and not allow you to acquire another layer of worry and regret?

And so we drift from person to person, thing to thing, looking for some level of trust that can be turned into longevity.

But that scares people like me, too — was it Groucho Marx who said he’d never want to a club that would actually want him as a member? I don’t believe it’s that we think we can do better in a different environment — we’re just terrified that this restless feeling will haunt us for eternity and we’d have to suffer with it. Not that we wouldn’t be restless elsewhere, of course, but that doesn’t occur to us at the time.

Yet nobody wants a home more than we do. Ponder the dichotomy — I do it every day. I fear being real because I am terrified of the repercussions. Yet, it sure would be nice to feel safe enough to drop our anchors and not worry about being seen with our guard down.

Maybe that would encourage us to learn how to swim, for those of us who don’t know how already. If, of course, we can get up the courage to let others see us in our uncertainty and be truthful in admitting that we don’t have the faintest idea how.

It’s almost like some of us treat life like a series of motel stays — and maybe that’s just the way it has unfolded thus far and that’s why we’re in that cruise-control mode — in that we’re constantly shuffling groups of friends, relationships, cities and surroundings. If we get too comfortable, maybe we’ll wear out our welcome, so we should go before they *don’t* miss us. Perhaps it’s also like dating and flirting and all that crap — we’ve been taught to put a cork in it and not reveal too much, because people will call us back and want to take us out again to keep learning incrementally more.

And so, we are rewarded for holding back, for being enigmatic, for hiding our whole selves. I find that so difficult — I want to be 100% me, well, 100% of the time. Yet when I am, I always walk away from the situation, wondering if I’d done the right thing.

Perhaps I need to pop more Midol — this is way too deep for me right now. 😉

But I don’t want to imply that I’m fake in any way, either. I hate confrontation in a big way, but when asked for honesty, I don’t hold back. It’s just deciding how to serve it up otherwise, in palatable, dainty little petit-four-sized bites that’s the challenge. Like, I tend to bring up certain issues when it’s really something else (usually ridiculously minor) that’s chafing my cha-cha.

In these small ways are how I test the waters, so to speak. It takes a lot for me to feel safe.

Because that means I’m trusting them with me — with my heart, my memories, my mistakes, my lessons, my evolution. And also with the one thing I cherish more than anything: my soul. Some people save their virginity for someone special. For those of us whom it’s, well, WAY too late for that, our soul is the one thing of precious value that we’ve been protecting in our hope chests.

And when we’re ready to open those hope chests, perhaps that’s the land-walker’s equivalent of tossing out the anchor at the spot with the greatest view of the sunrise. It’ll be good to see what’s inside and how well it was preserved for the perfect time and place, where it could be most appreciated. And, god, won’t it feel good to bob along the waves instead of fighting against them?!?!

On iTunes: Black Lab, “Keep Myself Awake”

Sometimes, my emotions get the better of me. I try so hard to prevent inappropriate displays of emotion that I theoretically “shove a cork in it” when I feel myself wanting to react to anything with 100 percent authenticity. Because, really, who wants to hear what I think of anything?

Emoting through road rage
Other times, my emotions become volatile within my widdle head to the point that I overreact to stupid things so as to at least contain my reactions to real events. Like, I was a holy terror on the highways this morning — I won’t go into detail about the number of multi-car collisions I nearly caused, but I will tell you about the soccer mom who thought she was too good to wait in line like I (and dozens others) had to because there was construction at the exit we needed. Bitch ripped up the empty right lane and tried to merge left in front of me.

Hah. Bloody fuckin’ HAH.

I had coffee in one hand, a CD case in the other and a fit waiting to be pitched. She was literally going to kill us both to get in front of me. And I was perfectly willing to keep flooring it and to rear-end the Volkswagon in front of me if necessary to prevent the snotty bitch from letting her pinched-face, minivan-driving ass get to work any sooner than the rest of us who saw the “lane ending” sign and merged accordingly.

She tried quite a few times to merge, but I wasn’t having it. But when she gave up trying to assault me and got behind me, I totally remembered where my brake was. LOL.

Anyway, I say this to say that I’m tired of always losing seemingly every little battle. I’ve gotta start scoring some victories, or I’m never going to have the strength to win the war.

Regeneration
Do you ever get the feeling that the universe is never going to be done testing you? The universe and I have a deal — I will tolerate the random series of annoyances (like today — accidentally spraying/staining my pale shirt with cologne, breaking an earring, slamming my fingernail in a drawer, spilling coffee through the car, stepping in a pile of cat droppings, just to name a few) if it means I don’t have to deal with Bigger Problems. You know what I mean — be glad all our appendages work, we’re not homeless, blah blah blah.

But once we’ve had one or two Big Problems rattle us to the core, I think we have every right to inquire of the universe just when we’re going to start living Happily Ever After. Maybe we need to stop reading kids fairy tales, if all we’re going to get is Marginally Tolerable Till You Die.

Alas, though, I know inspiration and hope come from the strangest places, but that doesn’t mean we have to give up hope on actually getting it — even from people and places of which we happen to have high expectations.

I’m tired of expecting the worst and being pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t come to that. I see no reason to NOT expect the best and to expect it to keep getting BETTER.

Like me — I function best within expectations. Because then I have a measure to SURPASS. Perhaps the same is true of expectations themselves, then. …

And today’s grab bag emotion is …
Sadness.

Yup, I’m wishing I were able to crawl under a rock today, but how do you call into work for being sad? And lord knows we’re all entirely too accustomed to having to function not just through a day — but rather a LIFETIME — feeling icky.

And that, in and of itself, blows goats.

Here’s the deal, it’s been a year since I left the old job. And while I do NOT miss it, there are certain elements that I miss. My incredible team, my ridiculously fantastic office, my four-hour lunch hours (hey, I worked 72 hours a week — I deserved my shopping trips!) and a couple of other people. But many of those people have gone, too, or just haven’t evolved in the same direction as I have. But I kept as friends the ones I needed, and I am also surrounded by another amazing team now, too, so life goes on. The things I miss are replaceable, for the most part, and those are quite few in comparison to the reasons it was time to throw in the towel.

I think the reason for my sadness is that it seems like so many people have Plan Bs and places to land, while my own safety net was so flimsy that my fat ass fell straight through it when I needed it. Rock bottom hurts, friends. Don’t try it at home.

But while my abrupt resignation was scary, it was needed. And I felt less scared than relieved, even though I didn’t even have a Plan A, for crying out loud. I wish we could all have the security to wake up one day and say, “NO MORE!” in whatever aspect of our life needs an exorcism.

Just like it would be nice to say, “DAMN IT — I NEED A CARIBBEAN VACATION” and thus, it is granted. Long live Jambi. Meaning, the exact amount of vacation time and fundage magically appears because you deserve it. Wouldn’t that be DIVINE? Although I’d much sooner want to go to the French Riviera and anywhere in Italy, but still.

But alas, the world doesn’t work that way. Like, don’t you wish you could just go one full stinkin’ year without some calamity occuring to disrupt the fragile balance you have tried so hard to achieve and to cling to?

Yes, I did have a point to all of this
I had an ugly revelation the other day, of the “be careful what you wish for” variety.

I was one of those dipshit feminist types as a teen — I wanted to immerse myself in a career. I didn’t want kids. I wanted to prove that I could survive just fine without being married — that I could take care of myself, damn it. I wanted to live in a big city with a Big Important Job and grow old with cats and buzzy toys. And I hated female friends and wanted none of that bullcrap.

Seriously, Jambi? You shouldn’t listen to hormonal teenage girls. Because we totally talk out of our asses. Not that I’d want to give up what I do have, but there’s a hell of a lot more out there that doesn’t sound so bad anymore. And maybe it never did sound so bad, but you know me — I’d rebel against anything just for the sake of rebellion itself.

So, in sum (yes, she IS capable of shutting up), I am grateful for all the opportunities life has presented to me to help me to advance or grow in every way — even those miserable experiences because I totally kicked ass and surmounted quite a few obstacles. But I’d totally dig an opportunity to throw it in cruise control and regenerate some of my spirit, because I am emotionally burned the hell out and want something, anything to just change for the better.

Don’t get me wrong, though — I appreciate that my calamities have happened successively and NOT concurrently. I would just like my happiness to kick in sometime soon and to follow a similar, successive pattern. …

On iTunes: Hooverphonic f/Depeche Mode, “Shake the Disease”

Apparently, not a day will go by for the foreseeable future that Troll and/or Cruise Director aren’t reading my blogs.

OK, Caterwauling is officially offline, but I’m still keeping it handy (there’s just too much good shit in here!). I had a secret site — at Diary-X — until I found the snail trail of the Veggie Patch in the hit counter. Fuckers. As I was already leaving town the next day, I salvaged the entries and shoved ’em into the annals of Chez Caterwaul. Luckily, I had pulled down all but one post about the Veggie Patch. But what the hell — why be nervous? They can’t fire me. I quit THEM.

I did get smart and tossed up an HTACCESS file on my personal website. Never do I even mention the old Club Medicated, unless it is veiled and totally in passing (e.g., “Saw some people who used to know me. They said my new life seems to be agreeing with me.”) And even though I only blocked the main IP at the hellhole on (blah blah) Avenue, I knew they could read it from home. But, as I figured, if you want to read it, then I’m gonna make you work for it.

I never did block Maddie’s site, and it occurred to me that they were all over it. They had a pattern — one machine would visit it, then another machine would (judging from the final numbers of the IP set). Like, Troll hit it and would call Cruise Director and say, “Hey, the bitch blogged. Read it.”

And I have to admit, it has me in absolute hysterics that they read Maddie’s blog. I mean, this isn’t MENSA-level intelligence by any means. “I had the most glorious poop today!” or “I wiped my butt on the rug again and Mommy got mad.”

Well, at some point, I finally started linking instances of “Mommy” to the domain that bears my name. And suddenly, I see the fuckers have circumvented my block and are now freely reading from that shithole. Two days ago, I finally got around to blocking them from Maddie’s site, but I see they blew past that, too, because not only did they show up on Maddie’s Precision Counter, but my Site Meter on the other domain tells me they got to that page by clicking on Maddie’s page.

I’m just pissed off. I expected this, of course, and I am tickled to death that they are going to keep reading, waiting for me to slip up and write something they can sue me over. And that day, my friends, is never going to come. Ever. Those mother-fuck-me-nots can keep reading, and they can still never fire me! HAH!!!

But, I admit, I am tired of this. I have been gone for more than seven weeks. My replacement has already been in place for a week. I did not take the company down with me. I did not have any people quit because I did. I do not fucking talk about them because that part of my life has ended (and happily so). The only thing I hold on to is that I worked really fucking hard and loved that newspaper to death and wanted so badly to branch out and do more work for the company, but all I get is a speed pass to the exit because I had a blog that pissed some people off.

So fuck them. I may be evicted in two weeks (and it’s looking likely, at this point, unless a goddamned miracle occurs), but I don’t have to look at Demure’s mustached face ever again. EVER!

What fucks with my mind even more than how hard I worked (and ended up with nothing) is that they took every single suggestion into account when I left. They got rid of Demure (well, she’s still wasting oxygen there, but they took her away from the Veggie Patch Gazette. Fucking finally!). Cruise Director now oversees the newspaper, and that’s the way it should be. Graphics Gal has more to do with the final design of the paper instead of the editor being the one to ensure that all graphic elements show up in the final product (I didn’t mind that so much, but god forbid if I missed something because I never saw it in the first place). The staff writer is just that — not going to fuss with Gannett and shit like that. Of course, Angie and I made our Gannett runs into a party, but I never, ever saddled her with the sole responsibility the way fuckhead Shawn used to make me deal with things on my own when I was the departmental peon. But, alas, it’s a new reign, and she’s not doing any more than she has to. She’s not driving herself crazy or working herself to death.

That has been another huge change — Cruise Director doesn’t want anyone working past 5. He says if it doesn’t get done, then it doesn’t get done. Fuck it. And he means it — no nights, no weekends, no getting stressed out and hating them.

The exact opposite, in fact, of my reign. I remember being told (or, maybe it was just very strongly implied) that there would be not a minute of interruption to services because of the crisis. Members were not to notice that fuckball had departed. And I so badly wanted his job that I worked myself ragged, I say, to pull it together. And for what? Not for glory. I did get the job, though, but I admit that time probably burned me out for the rest of my career there. Even Angie had that same note of disgust in her voice when she would call to bitch in my absence — that, yeah, it’s all fine and good for them to say go home, but who was going to do the work, then? It still had to get done and certainly couldn’t be put off indefinitely.

I really think they’re reading the blog because, with Shan and I gone, their idea generators have left them high and dry. They don’t have us to solve their problems anymore. Not that they took our suggestions, but it sure seems they are implementing stuff now that we’re not there to take any credit for our obvious solutions or enjoy seeing them be implemented.

Fuck ’em. I just really needed to have a true, bona-fide bitch session tonight. I feel better already!!! I just wish I could have written this on my live site. 😉 Or, even better, revive this bee-yotch and REALLY make them squirm!!!

I was driving to Annandale this morning to get my car fixed (brakes, tires, etc.), which I have been putting off for months. Finally, with travel looming, I decided today was the day.

Anyway, as I was driving along Little River Turnpike, a gentleman pulled up beside me a la the Grey Poupon commericals. He put down his window and said, “There’s something wrong with your car, honey.”

I looked at him quizically — what the hell else could be wrong with this two-year-old car?

“Someone went and put a Kerry bumper sticker on it!”

I laughed. “Imagine that!”

“Just thought you’d want to know about that — I didn’t think you’d actually want that on your car.”

We laughed and he speeded up as I made a right turn into the automotive place. He probably is a senator or representative or something like that, knowing this area of town. But I thoroughly enjoyed the moment, even if he is going to go and vote for Dubya and cancel out my vote! 😉