I feel the need to blog. Why, I do not know, because “Teen Mom” is on and I shudder to admit that it’s my favorite show of the moment.

The amazing Lady L and I packed up her furry four-pawed wonder and headed north to St. Augustine for the weekend. It was the perfect amount of time there — the town was tiny and charming and the people were absolutely lovely.

My boss refers to St. Augustine as “South Georgia,” because Southern hospitality is alive and well there. People make eye contact with you, and the servers are attentive, and not only are you never waiting for a refill but your server will ask you if you want a to-go cup so that you can enjoy your beverage as you go off on your next adventure.

It made us realize that South Florida? Blows. It’s just plastic and fake and rude and barely tolerable for nice Northern girls. If northern Florida is South Georgia, then southern Florida is South New York.

I will be spending my now-fourth weekend away from home this weekend. Yeah! I’m happily hanging out with my fur-nephew again at his palace by the sea. I prefer vacationing with him and his mom, of course. Even if his tiny 20-pound puppy butt takes up the middle half of the king-size bed while we cling to opposite corners.

My cat is slightly irritated at my absence, given the UEOEH’s proclivity to dance said cat around the apartment like a marionette. Also given that said dog ate said cat’s dinner and then peed in her dish for good measure. But, the further away I am from my roomie, the happier I am.

Work’s been good although I should probably stay up all night to deliver a project I’ve been promising for two months. Due tomorrow. Sigh. It’s not that I’m NOT working — it just keeps falling to the bottom of the “urgent” pile.

Anyway, we loved St. Auggie’s. LOVED. It’s a place to take someone you enjoy hanging out with. Even someone you downright adore. I could retire there someday; I loved it that much.

I still want my summer home to be in Vancouver, and I can always return to South Florida to attend to the business that Lady L and I plan to start. But to eat French and Spanish food in a town where everyone (even the ghosts) are friendly (minus those nasty spirits in the Old Jail), I could live happily ever after by the Matanzas Bay.

Especially if our business employed my mother a good four-plus hours away!!!

“You’re askin’ her to dance now
She spins a solid white light
She gonna make love to you today
Today and every night.”

– Beth Hart, “By Her”

T-15 hours till we pull outta this joint and head to the Great White North for 48 hours of … well, I don’t know what, exactly. Not being anywhere near home or work or anything like that. *Squee!*

I haven’t packed. Just gave myself the world’s hastiest pedicure. And really — it’s all good. Nothing that can’t be overcome with a little sleep and a LOT of hustling to get my work done in the morning.

The UEOEH actually washed all my clothes. I’m shocked. I rarely wash clothes because the W/D is in the master bath. And who has the master bedroom? Ain’t me! And I stay as FAR away as possible, lest conversation is engaged and I get to hear in person how mean I am instead of just via e-mail.

I have two new pairs of glasses. That my optometrist is about to staple to my head like I’m Eric Cartman. Sigh. I hate wearing glasses. But I’m not a candidate for Lasik because I’m farsighted and he said it’s only for nearsightedness.

Crap.

The glasses are cute. I have a brown jeweled pair for casual, and a black jeweled pair for dress-up. I surprisingly don’t have a headache, but my eyes are ready to defect from my head from being corrected all day. Yeesh.

I moved into a new office this week. It’s nice having a door, even though the walls are paper-thin. It actually feels like I have some amount of authority, especially because there are only two offices in our whole building.

Of course, I find I have a lot of free time, being down one employee. Which is not the way it’s supposed to be, right? Which means I made the right decision. But, alas, le sigh nonetheless.

Oh well. Tomorrow is a new day, indeed. And I look forward to the road trip, the ghost-hunting, the cozy hotel, and (I’m sure) the world tour of restaurants that we will pack into our weekend away.

And it will feel good to be about 250 miles closer to someone I miss, although I won’t be truly happy till we’re sharing the same breath again. But that will come soon enough. I am sure of it.

“She may be waiting
‘Round the comer of your mind
But still you know she’s there
You can feel her inside.”

I was so thrilled to get away from my crazy family, you couldn’t hold me back. I took the schoolbus (a long one, thanks!) and was on my merry little way. LOVED it.

I learned later that my mom and grandfather had trailed the bus, parked at the school and hid behind another parked car so that they could watch me.

They were shocked that I didn’t even look around. My whole life, I’m pretty convinced that they just could not believe the fact that I didn’t really NEED them. And that day was the first of thousands just like it — I just strutted straight up to the building and went to Miss Ashenbaugh’s room (Room 1 — I’ll never forget that) like I owned the damn place.

Other kids were clinging to their parents, who dropped them off. I had opted NOT to be dropped off. I seriously must have just been ready to get the fuck away from those people. Truly. I was so deprived of social contact as a wee one that ANY chance for escape was to be seized immediately, if not sooner.

Even today, I am a good 1,500 miles away from where I grew up, and I’m STILL trying to outrun the last of them! Why the hell doesn’t my mother GET it that the more you chase me, the faster I run away?

Well, what can I say — obviously, by this photo, you know I’m at home!

I’m so very through. So. Very. Through.

I’ve been struggling with something huge lately. Other than the ominous, whiny, demanding, critical, dependent cloud of gloom and doom that permeates my apartment.

And I realized today, it’s in God’s hands. Not mine. It was never in mine. I don’t know WHY I thought it was.

Well, I DO know why. Because this fucked-up home life of mine refuses to solve itself. I’ve stopped trusting God. I remember when I was unemployed back in 2004. It took me finding God and trusting Him for the situation to turn around.

And here we are, six years later, and I’m doubting Him again. I think He’s going to take me back to the brink of absolute insanity again.

You know what I fear? Other than my mother living with me FOREVER and me missing out on life and love and wanting to come home? I fear stupid shit. Like illness. Or having a kid with some sort of problem or another. (I can’t even articulate it.)

I used to be grateful for “stupid” worries like I have now. I always figured it saved me from having bigger problems … that if I just had a series of utter annoyances, I would avoid Problems with a capital P.

And while I don’t want anything more-serious than what I’m dealing with, when does my break from it all come?

Work is good. Busy. Stressful sometimes. Not bad, overall. Had I not worked at the goddamned insane asylum, I might not be as happy as I am in a mild form of chaos. I like teambuilding and having visitors from out of town/out of the country. I had lunch with a former Congresscritter yesterday. Life’s not too bad these days.

I just wish the UEOEH (Ultra Extra Over Extended Houseguest) would move out. She loves to tell me how cruel I am. Today I asked her (nicely!) to get a package from my cunty landlady, who signed for it a week ago and never BOTHERED to tell me it had arrived. Since, you know, she doesn’t do anything else. (Which, I didn’t mention!)

So she tells me she got the package and asked what I was going to do to thank her for seeing the cunt. I replied with a quick, “Enjoy another day rent-free.” So I got about six e-mails blah blah blah “You’re so mean” and “You’re cruel” blah blah blah.

Hey, if all anyone wanted ME to do was get a fucking box from the landlady instead of paying half of the (*mumblemumble*) rent, honey, I’d be pretty FUCKING happy to stick a Swiffer up my ass and dust the floor on my way out!

I don’t know, God. I know lots and lots of people have it worse. But I also know lots and lots of people have it better.

I know I grew up poor. I didn’t have two nickels to rub together till I was 27 years old. I’m finally at a point in my life where I could enjoy said life. And, I can’t. I try so hard. And it just doesn’t come together.

I have been thinking about kids a lot. A LOT. It’s not that I really want to have one. But it was someone reminding me that I have a finite time to decide either way that really sent my clock into overdrive.

And again, it was always something I (mostly) left in God’s hands. Minus the extreme birth control. God bless Plan B. And Plan C, for that matter.

But I always thought that would be worked out by now. And yet, after Princess plopped her obnoxious ass into my house, I don’t want to live with anybody. No tall people, no short people and no furry people beyond the cat I already have. (And she’s annoying me too — she goes wherever UEOEH goes!)

I started wondering about adoption. Or even a turkey baster. Or hitting the pound for a puppy. But again, I need Miss Muffet to move off of my tuffet so that I have room in my life, heart and apartment for something else. Because anything/anyone else daring to siphon another breath of my oxygen is gonna get a size 8 1/2 foot up their ass.

God? You’ve got my back, right? You’ve helped me with, well, everything else. I want to save my prayers for when I REALLY need them. But I kinda need You now. Actually, more than just “kinda.” I know You’ve got a plan, and I’d be an asshole to question it. But could you throw a girl a hint about Your timetable?

I’m babysitting my fur-nephew/furry godchild George. And I call him a lot of names — Giorgio, G, Munchkin and The One Without Opposable Thumbs. (The latter name has won me a few arguments with him!)

But the one name I think fits him best is “Man About Town.” Because everybody KNOWS him.

I can’t walk down the A1A without hearing a, “Hi George!” at least once a block. I have to put on my damn makeup ’cause people stop to talk. And since George’s mom is a beaming ray of sunshine, I don’t want everyone seeing my surly ass and wondering how we got to be friends.

And even if they (or, for some of them, their dogs) don’t know George, the walk isn’t complete without people stopping to pet him. He is that damn cute, I have to give him that.

People think I’m the dogwalker. I don’t even stop them and try to explain my actual career. As one of my employees noted when I took George into the office yesterday, it might not hurt me to put a bell on certain employees. It would be way easier to keep track of them. (Someone else said it, not me!)

I did have an in-depth chat with Boo Boo (pictured). I’ve run into him twice. He’s from Honolulu. He has a big story, and it’s consistent so I believe him, and I did tell him mine.

In fact, when he saw me today, he said, “I know you — you’re the girl who publishes that shit that don’t make no sense!” And I said, “I’m putting that on my business cards!”

He’s the nicest person. Has a smile and a compliment for everybody. I took this photo of him making some art for me and George — he’s using a magnifying glass to burn words into a palm leaf. On the back it has my name and George’s with a fish for me and a bone for him. On the front is where we met him.

Boo Boo says he has made millions of dollars in his life as a corporate motivator. And I can see that — he’s got bright eyes and a million-dollar smile. Conversation comes easily.

He’s been married three times. Says he hasn’t seen his last wife since 2003 and they never got divorced.

He got sick of the corporate world a few years back and became a beach bum. Lost all his money and makes a few bucks here and there with his art.

What I loved about him is that he just needs enough to buy Budweiser, cigars and the occasional steak. He lives on the beach. (His nice way of saying he’s homeless.) The corner of A1A and Atlantic is his “office” where he does his leaf-burning art.

He told me a story about meeting a woman down here over a year ago. They had a long-distance relationship for a couple of months, and she invited him to come up to the northeast to live with her.

He said she fell in love with the long-haired free spirit who had had enough of corporate life … the guy who takes pleasure in smoking and drinking and shooting the shit with like-minded people.

But then, she got him into her family business and yelled at him about his hair, his drinking, his smoking and pretty much everything that she had fallen in love with.

One day, he quit the job working for her brother in law. Changed out of his shirt and tie. Lit up a smoke and cracked open a beer. She started yelling at him and he said he was going out to the convenience store.

He left and never came back. And, he says, he always finds himself back in Delray, although his heart is in Honolulu.

Boo Boo told me his real name but I like keeping his cover. He doesn’t want anyone to know where to find him. He prefers it that way. He said he’s been featured on CNN. I can’t find it but I admit I haven’t been looking too hard.

But, I just had to re-tell his story because I loved it. I love that he says he made a half-million dollars last year, and pissed it all away. That he works just enough to get what he needs. And all he needs now is a bus ticket to California so he can get home to Hawaii to see his dog.

He said they are partying down at the beach tonight, him and two of his buddies. He wants me to come. He said he was going to go to Publix and get three steaks — well, four, now that I was invited. I said I don’t eat meat (a lie. Sigh.) because I wasn’t sure if I’d go.

I’m not afraid — I just know that I was meant to meet him, for the amount of time we met. If I run into him, I do want to pay him for his art. I of course carry no money on me whatsoever. Hell, I’ll buy him that bus ticket. Or a case of Bud. Whichever.

I guess he had a wild night with some woman he met. I asked a question about her, and he said it happened somewhere between “Bud” and “Weiser.” Hah. I’m stealing that line!

Anyway, while I love me some George, I’m definitely cured of my curiosity about wanting a dog.

Don’t get me wrong — I have LOVED stopping to see all the trees and flowers that I have walked past no fewer than four dozen times in the past year. I saw black-eyed Susans and calla lillies and, thanks to Boo Boo, smelled the awesome fragrance of burning palm leaves.

I’ve stopped to smile at people, to have conversations I would never have had, to pet other dogs and wave at babies who call out “Woof-woof!” when they see my furry little four-pawed wonder.

But I’m still selfish. I don’t mind going at the puppy’s pace. But after I carried him home for four blocks because he was hot and tired and so very over our world tour, I realized that I’m perhaps not ready to be on anyone else’s schedule but my own.

I’ve lived for everybody else. It’s kind of like how my mom took care of everyone in her life till they all died off. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself now. I thought she’d thrive once all her dependents (of which I never counted myself) were gone. But she’s withered.

Not me. Once she’s out of my house (whenever the hell THAT will be), I think I’m OK with finally starting to live for me. And whether that involves a puppy or adopting a kid or, hell, walking away from it all and living on the beach just like Boo Boo, all I know is that I will have earned it and, probably, not a soul will question my reasoning.