Caterwauling

My line of work is good for those of us who don’t have extended family or friends. That’s because, in my particular role, you’re den mother/warden/cat wrangler/therapist/fluffer/bodyguard to the anchor creatures on your own personal Island of Misfit Toys.

In other words, “Other Duties as Assigned” IS my job description.

I learned from a dear friend and one of my top 3 favorite colleagues of all time that one of our boys passed away this week. And given that he’s probably only about 10 or so years older than me, it’s made me sadder than usual when these sorts of things happen.

Everyone always says that I do well with the weird ones … the stranger they are, the more I understand them and can get the best out of them. I like to think it’s a compliment but I never can tell with the people I meet these days.

I figure, we’re all broken and recovering from something. We all find our ways to cope. Or we embrace our inner goofball and make a character or a career out of it. I don’t care. If I find a good heart beneath all of it, then I commit to enjoying the experience.

Anyway, RIP J.L. You were such a life force, and you seemed like you enjoyed the stuffing out of every day you were here.

You were difficult and defiant and you wanted everything your way. So the fact that you trusted me and helped me to help you means that I must have gotten through to you on a deeper level, too.

I know we haven’t talked in a while but you were always someone special to me. I hope there’s good coffee and a wall of trading screens in heaven waiting for you. Those overnight markets aren’t going to trade themselves, you know. Now you’ll have sunshine all the time. Cheers, old friend.

Lately I’ve been caught up in this feeling of everything being OK.

BOY did I let my brain get away from me for a few days there.

Tomorrow is my work anniversary. Read: so long, 168 hours of vacation. Yes I’ll get more. But that’s not the point.

And now with my new project load, either I cancel my December getaway or be prepared to work through it. Because wouldn’t that be anyone’s Christmas wish?

In surprising news, I just got two soft job offers and I promise, I haven’t been looking. (Who has time?)

One from an old colleague who says hey I have an opening if you know anybody HINT HINT. Another from an old colleague who changed industries and said, hey, if you’re serious about making money and not killing yourself for every dime, I’m about to post this job and you should CALL ME.

With both, I thought, nah. I’m good. But then after I smashed my glasses and my farsighted ass had to keep editing and doing layout because the buck stops here baybee, I had visions … of, I dunno, something … dancing through my head.

And here I’ve just been trying to get up the nerve to ask the Alligator Farm to allow me to do freelance so I can afford to get Mom some healthcare. Since, making decisions about how you spend your free time is clearly beyond your feeble little-girl brain.

Oh, spirit guides? I thank you for the dream I’ll have tonight to help me process all this new information. …

By all accounts, it was an extraordinary day.

Got an amazing message from an old friend to start the day off right, received my gold iPhone (it’s syncing now. Thank you Evil Landlady for showing up at work today since you missed the delivery attempt yesterday), got out of work early at 6:30 p.m., got to Publix and finally found my beloved Weight Watchers Triple Chocolate Brownie Bliss bars (and bought five boxes), had time to stop at CVS before it closed and basically just had a Good Day overall.

But even before that …

That familiar voice half-roused me in the middle of the night. “Goddess, there’s something you should know. Let me show you what you didn’t see.”

And so the dream began, taking me to this set of conversations, and I went into fly-on-the-wall mode.

I saw the same person I’ve been questioning. And they were talking about me to everyone they saw. But … listening closely … it wasn’t as bad as the first go-’round.

Oh I heard my words repeated all right. But it wasn’t with embellishment this time. Rather, the thoughts were incomplete … out-of-context. Making me look like an idiot, yes, but making the speaker look like an idiot, too.

I wouldn’t say I was smug about it, but I realized I was in the clear with the people whose opinions I was worried about.

I didn’t sleep much after that, just letting my imagination go a little further than normal on unrelated issues.

I had asked myself yesterday during the loooong drive whether it’s better to squash certain thoughts or to simply let them run their course. I think the creative writer in me longs for the latter, while the right-brain-controlled part of me puts up the roadblocks.

Creative me won today. After all, I do have more books to write. Sometimes a girl’s gotta let the characters explore and develop and feel more alive than the person who will be writing about them.

And my little mind wandering led me to this: Aside from people I have to train myself not to trust with everything, what if there are others whom I haven’t been trusting enough who might very well be worth the risk?

I’m starting to think I’ve picked the wrong everything down here.

I have friends I haven’t talked to in months or even years. And others … I wonder about.

I have been talking a lot about boys lately and that’s just ridiculous, frankly. They don’t take up all that much real estate in my head or in my limited free time.

Mostly they’re imaginary figments in my phone, thinking it’s OK to text me when they have a drink (or something else) in their hand.

It isn’t.

And now that it’s “out there” that it is, let me stuff that genie back in its bottle.

I have too much self-respect. And too many other problems.

I think we all know I do as little to tempt fate as possible. And if I am going to take a risk, it has better be worth it.

I assure you, it usually isn’t and therefore I’m saving all this goddess-y goodness for what is.

I’ve often mentioned being the child of a psychic. It’s mostly only resulted in me having a killer sense of intuition. I don’t see the future and I don’t talk to dead people. But when my spirit guides tap me on the shoulder, I feel it. I may IGNORE it for a while, but I’m hyper-aware.

Had an interesting series of dreams these last few nights. Mostly fun and good. But last night I said to my guides to please reveal to me whether someone is true to me or not.

I admit I was hoping for another good dream.

I didn’t get one.

Oh I dreamed of that person all right. And in the dream, different people came to me, repeating things that person had said. Lies built out of wisps of truths to make them believable.

And to what end, really? I could never figure that out. I expected to have things I’d said repeated, but not quite so embellished. It led me to shouting at a closing elevator door.

I did see X at the end of the dream, looking guilty. In the dream I said, “I will forgive you because that is what I do. What you choose to do with that is up to you.”

I don’t know the resolution. I do know that I am unsettled. And I don’t quite know what to do with it other than continue being a good person and doing a better job of vetting kindred spirits.

Bad day on the scale, great day at Total Wine. I’m a girl who knows how to turn a frown upside-down!

My meeting leader always says that, when you go off the reservation, to basically get right back on it. Her way to phrase it is, “If you break one dish, you don’t smash all the dishes in the house, do you?”

She noted my hangover-induced absence from last week and asked how it’s going. I said I smashed a couple dishes but I got the glue I needed at today’s meeting.

I stayed within my points; it’s just that I substituted wine for food with nutritional value. And a half-pound gain in my world is just as good as maintaining.

This week’s theme is emotion — whether it causes you to eat, or it depresses you when you see a lousy number on the scale. And I am nothing if not emotional. Half the time, anyway. One might think I had a dead, cold heart the other half of the time. Which, if that’s what I was able to convey, go me.

I got an interesting string of texts in the last 48 hours from various people in my life. And I realize I don’t need Halloween because I’m in costume a lot more than once a year.

When I get (I think “too”) close to people, they get it all. Every weird thought or feeling or mood. Laughter, tears and everything in-between. And truth. All of it. If they want it. And sometimes if they don’t.

Other people, I hold at a distance. This is the bulk of the category. I become aloof so they run away. This is my default status.

(This doesn’t work, by the way. It’s like a signal to come hither. My friend said at a happy hour last week to my work friends that I have a bunch of guys who stalk me. That is an understatement.)

Most, I wish would run away. Some, I admit, I hope will rise to the challenge. But I am not terribly disappointed if they don’t.

The “Queen of Mixed Signals, am I,” says Yoda.

So the texts. One, from someone I think I need to protect by throwing the force field around myself. I’m not saying they deserve better. I’m saying I see where this isn’t going and I’m going to save us all the effort and time. Being the daughter of a psychic has its perks. If I feel it (or don’t feel it) and Mom confirms it without me ever saying a word, so be it.

One, from someone who makes my heart leap out of my chest the second I see his name … and then I read it and feel like shit under someone’s shoe. Like, he knows when I’ve strayed too far away and he wants to make sure there’s still a lifeline there.

I often feel like I drove him away (evidence A: THIS BLOG). And I thought, hey, when you sign up for “All This,” that means you get a starring role on this page.

But then I got a text from someone else, someone I’ll love the rest of my life as an amazing, incredible friend.

I don’t talk about him at all. There are sacred people in my world. I talk about myself to death. But some others? You can waterboard me all you want; I ain’t sayin’ a word about them.

All my friends (that’s what I call them all) are writers. And this last one, I had given him permission to use me for material in what he’s unleashing to the world. Because, let’s face it, I have provided some chapters in his autobiography, and I own that.

He said no, I am sacred territory. I love that he said that and I’ve always felt the same. We continue to honor it, and always will.

That doesn’t mean all sacred cows aren’t slaughtered on this page. Some I just can’t give the “press coverage” to. It’s as simple as that. Sometimes I read through these posts and wonder who the fuck I was talking about. Other times I see a mention of someone who didn’t deserve to be immortalized. So now, I just don’t.

In any event, he’s one of the few who KNOWS me. I can tell him something I said or did and he’ll have the immediate and accurate interpretation.

If I ever say I am being a bitch to someone, he’ll remind me what they did to drive me to batshit-world and fuck them if they can’t stand seeing themselves on the blog.

If I say I’m aloof he’ll say I’m loving and that’s gotten me next to nowhere in life so of course I’m not going to get fully invested until they’ve given me a few good reasons to lower the chain bridge across the moat.

I said in a past entry that I need a guy who can give me Europe and mind-blowing sex. Which, Mom says is impossible. And so far she’s right. But I need to add that I do break dishes and I do push people away and I do pretend that I’m tougher than I am because too many people have treated my heart like their own disposable dish.

But let me add this to my list: I can glue my own heart back together. But I need the guy who love it for all its imperfections. Not to look past them but to understand why they became that way. Most people don’t hang around that long. But as you can see, I’m loyal for life to those who do.

I keep singing “Losing my Religion,” but inserting “Vacation” for religion because Monday is the official day my vacation time gets flushed down the toilet.

I just got four major new projects last night, in addition to the others I can’t seem to finish, so we’ll be singing this song next year at this time, too, if I haven’t flamed out in the meantime.

Anyway, I’m going to do something unusual and blog in real time. I met a super-nice guy. Like, ridiculously nice. I always meet nice guys. And I always think, “Poor thing. What I’m about to do to ruin you should be banned in 37 states.”

I always want change. Is this that time? Does our heroine go with it … or entertain other dangerous distractions that need to be smacked in the head with a shovel?

I think we know that answer. Here we go again …

“And now I finally know what it feels like
To risk everything and still survive

When you’re standing on the battlefield
And all the pain is real
That’s when you realize

That you must have done something right
Cause you never felt so alive

I’m holding out for more than I deserve
I’m hanging on to all your careless words

Maybe its time I cut the cord
Maybe I stay and take some more
I’ve become the leader of the broken hearts.”

— Papa Roach, “Leader Of The Broken Hearts”

I wrote a perfect blog entry in my head in traffic today. But alas, here I am and I got nothin’.

I heard some guys at the office talking yesterday, saying “the commute isn’t so bad” and saying if they go 75 mph the whole way, they can get here in under an hour.

Well, you CAN’T go 75 the whole way because half the trip is a 55 zone and I have the $500 speeding ticket to prove you can’t fuck with that limit.

Plus, don’t you have six thousand things you’d rather be doing with that time? Seeing your friends, exercising, hell — catching up on sleep or TV? My ass was in bed at 9:30 p.m. last night. The drive required more skill and concentration than the (flawless) publishing of six newsletters.

Anyway, I also got to thinking about boys. Because, why not, right? And I realized something big.

If they can’t get me to Paris (or Tuscany. I want Tuscany too) … if they can’t get me to a series of earth-shattering orgasms … then they don’t get me at all.

I fluctuate from time to time, thinking lackluster dates and the forgettable physical encounter that may or may not result from one of them (as let’s face it, dates don’t end in sex but apparently making out with random people in West Palm bars sometimes does) is at least an interesting way to pass the time. And then I go to the other extreme of “I’d rather be alone than wish I were.”

Ergo, Europe and mindblowing sex are my recipe for attraction. Fact.

And I don’t know if that means I’ll be alone forever or if, like always, the only way I’ll get there is if I do it my own damn self …

Things that have come out of my mouth in the last 12 hours:

“Be the man you want me to believe you can be.”

“Coffee, a muscle relaxer and some eternal sunshine.” — What I need to recover from this past weekend.

“I’m just a girl in a bar.” (Hat-tip to Meredith Grey.)

Well, actually, my version was, “I’m just a girl in a bar, and I like to leave the boys there when I go.”

“Where’s the man who lights my soul on fire? Because everyone else in the meantime is Just Not Him.”

And as Mom said:

“Dating is hard. I mean, who really gives a shit what he wants on his bread?”

“I got my red dress on tonight
Dancing in the dark in the pale moonlight
Done my hair up real big beauty queen style
High heels off, I’m feeling alive.”

— Lana Del Rey, “Summertime Sadnesss”

There’s an extraordinary remix of this song that was on my iPod all night. I feel like it’s my “functional” song.

To say yesterday was a weird day is to say Tea Party members are one cup of Cocoa Puffs short of being completely cuckoo.

I was driving to happy hour last night (amazing what you can do when you work from home and you’re right in the heart of civilization) when I saw someone I miss very much, walking dogs on the A1A. Sigh.

I didn’t stop because I was already an hour late. But he was just so patient with those mongrels, I started thinking, God, the only person I know with that kind of patience is (X). And then I realized, lo, I knew that guy.

I texted him to say hi but I got nothing back. I’d wonder what I did to piss him off but I think the real question is “how much of my crap did he take before he decided not to take it anymore.”

Otherwise it was a nice night out in what I’ll call Utopia. Every once in a while, we all get together and someone waxes poetic about the way things are going to be and those of us who are “in it” exchange glances and order refills on our wine.

My friend and I stayed out most of the night, long after everyone was gone. Just sitting on overstuffed couches on the avenue, nursing our way-past-last-call drinks and saying the things we can only say to each other when no one is within earshot.

Maybe the right song for this entry is Kenny and Dolly’s “You Can’t Make Old Friends.” You know I don’t trust too many souls out there but damn it’s good to feel safe every once in a while.

Now back to reality, and that feeling of being “out there” in the ether again. Like when someone you adore stops hugging you and you suddenly realize how chilly the air is. Or you feel the wind blowing through that hole in your heart when everyone goes home and your Utopia vanishes and you’re wondering what the hell just happened and whether you imagined it all.

So, something kind of amazing happened. In my head, anyway.

I stopped being so filled with rage.

Work-wise, anyway.

Maybe it was the team dinner last night with more out-of-towners than townies at the table. Maybe it was the chemistry, the laughter, the collaboration, the respect, the rich history (as we’ve traveled from company to company together).

Maybe it’s the fact that my people generally do leave me alone to do my thing.

Maybe it’s that, after a friend let me down, he has been killing himself to make it up to me.

Maybe it’s that I stopped eye-rolling at everyone’s big (crazy) dreams and started accepting the fact that it’s OK to dream the impossible. I don’t have to believe it, but I do have to be around to see it if it does in fact arrive.

Everything else is still a mess. But maybe this work stuff is all going to turn out OK after all. I’m in it for another day. At least …