endings and other upheavals

I can't tell if my life actually has been fucked up lately or if I'm just being a drama queen. See for yourself.

- I got my ex-husband's financial paperwork from my lawyer a few days ago, another step closer to my divorce being final. This pleases me. The ex is doing very well financially, and has saved quite a bit of money since we split. I, however, have enlarged my shoe collection by several pairs, and am feeling somewhat foolish as a result. This does not please me.

- I almost took a new job and left the foolishness at BSMC once and for all. However, the prosepective new employers were offering less money and less vacation, and I decided to stay where I am. Three days after making this decision, I found myself still in my office after 8:30pm on a Friday, cursing our lab for delaying important test results yet again. This is not what I would consider positive reinforcement of my decision, but there you have it.

- The Writer dumped me on Wednesday night. He called around 10pm, and with very little preamble informed me that he doesn't want to be a boyfriend and isn't really in to dating right now, even though I'm wonderful and he feels badly about it and blah blah blah. Once again, I am not pleased. The upside, however, is that since being dumped automatically puts me into what I affectionately think of as "Fat ugly and neurotic mode", it has brought me back to my neighborhood yoga studio in the hopes of preventing any stress-induced, chocolate-fueled weight gain. Plus, as I just fired my acupuncturist, I'm hoping the yoga might coax my shoulders from their current position approximately 1 mm below my earlobes. Why did I fire her, you ask? In addition to making me drink an herb mixture that tastes like hell 3 times a day, she was very into this treatment called cupping. The involves punching countless holes in my back with something that feels like a staple gun, then applying suction cups in the hopes of 'releasing stagnant energy'. If you saw "Alien: Resurrection" (the one where a pre-shoplifting Winona Ryder plays an android), remember the scene at the end where Sigourney Weaver breaks a tiny hole in the window of the spaceship, and the alien gets sucked against it and the sheer force squirts his entire body out of the ship like one long strand of spaghetti? That's what cupping feels like. I'd rather keep my migraines, thanks.

But it could be worse. My orchids are alive and well. I have the weekend off. And I still have one reliable man in my life, although he does hog the pillows.

avoid men in red g-strings

So one of my coworkers invited me to a "naughty girl" party last weekend; apparently it was the third annual such event that she's hosted. She's a single woman in her late forties, rather serious, very by-the-book at work, so this was something of a surprise. I'd never been to one of these parties before and thought it would be something along the lines of a Tupperware party, but with vibrators.

I was partially right. There were toys aplenty, courtesy of my friend Lisa, who was only too happy to offer her expert opinion on ALL of the items she was selling, having thoroughly tested each model (strictly market research, according to her). Most alarming by far was an offering known as "The Scorpion". You know how a scorpion has a tail that curves up and over its body? Picture the body fitting in one hole, and the tail... well, let's just say that an object modeled after a deadly insect wreaking havoc in a rather sensitive part of the body doesn't do it for me. But on the plus side, after a careful perusal of the goods for sale, my friend Angie now has a heck of a gift coming her way at her moving-away party this weekend.

There was food, there were games (do you know how difficult it is to put a condom on a cucumber without using your hands AT ALL? I do.) And, inevitably, there was entertainment.

My friends and I left between the first and second performers, mostly out of fear after seeing the first guy in action. The last time I was in the presence of a stripper, it was at my friend Julie's bachelorette party. Nice looking guy, gave the bride-to-be a little lap dance, stayed and had some drinks with us afterwards - harmless enough. This was something else entirely. I had no idea the women I worked with were quite so flexible.

The good thing about being the photographer in this situation is that I was able to hide behind the camera and avoid becoming better acquainted with the gentleman in red. My friends, who were not as lucky as I, are still recovering nearly a week later. Call me a prude, but I doubt that there is enough alcohol in the Western Hemisphere, let alone at that party, to make me comfortable with having a strange man's head in my crotch in front of my coworkers.

But it was still a good time. And you should see the lollipop I got as a prize for participating in (alas, not winning) the cucumber game! My compliments to whomever was the model.

the state of the union

I started thinking about this post a few days ago, but like many things, the events within haven't turned out quite the way I thought they would. The fact that I'm surprised by this makes me think I'm not quite as cynical as I imagine myself to be. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing, so I suppose it's neither.

A few weeks ago I found a lump in a place where it hadn't existed previously, where it shouldn't exist at all. One of the advantages of being an employee at BSMC (Big Scary Medical Center), I thought, would be that I should be able to have this looked into efficiently, preferably before I lost any sleep. Not so; the soonest the radiology department would accommodate me was July 31st. They were not impressed by the fact that I was an employee in need. But St. John's in Santa Monica was much more helpful and said they could see me in two weeks; time enough to fret, but infinitely better than two-plus months. So I waited. I didn't tell anybody for 4 or 5 days. Then I cracked and told my sister Donna, who did the proper big sister thing and told me it was probably nothing, lamenting that she would be in New York on business and couldn't come to my appointment with me (this isn't lip service; she actually would have come along, being that kind of a sister). And then I waited some more.

Roughly 36 hours before the appointment, I was over at the Writer's apartment. The Writer is a man I've been seeing for over 5 months. I've been on dates since the ex and I separated, but he's the first guy I've dated repeatedly. It's a strange thing; on paper, this relationship doesn't make much sense. In many ways, he's not my type, not who you think I'd be looking for. I've said a number of times that I know he's not the next Mr., but there's something I can't explain that makes me hope it's his name I see when I have a text message on my phone. I don't know how to define this relationship. Uncertainty makes me anxious and I feel better when I can slap a label on something, although in the case of my marriage, the label was frequently inaccurate.

But the Writer can be very perceptive about what I'm feeling when the mood strikes him. On our first date (or what I think of as date 0.5, since it was just a hour's conversation over coffee), he had me talking about myself for probably 80% of the time, atypical to say the least. And this wasn't chitchat about what movies I'd seen recently; it was about my family, my upbringing, what I want from life, things that are important to me and not revealed easily. I let my guard down in front of relatively few people, and the fact that I'm starting to do so with him is somewhat unnerving.

So on Monday night I told him about the appointment, and he offered (twice) to come with me. I never expected that he would do so, and although I was tempted by his offer, I turned him down with the excuse that I was going straight to work afterwards. But really I just didn't want to deal with the fact that I was scared that I might need him there with me if things went badly.

Wednesday morning, I woke up at 4:30 after a poor excuse for a night's sleep. My appointment wasn't for another 4 hours, and I'm not one to bounce out of bed even if I have something to look forward to, so I just lay there and fretted. At 4:45 my cell phone beeped - an incoming text. The Writer sent a message saying to call whenever I wanted. This isn't something we do, 4 am phone calls. My friend Angie has a man in her life who regularly calls in the middle of the night, but my general policy is that if my phone rings after hours, there had better be someone dead on the other end of the line. I'm kind of cranky when I'm woken up.

But I called, and we talked, and he told me that things would be okay and that he wanted to hear from me as soon as the tests were finished. I didn't manage to get back to sleep after that, but I was a little happier when I did finally haul myself out of bed. And, some hours later, I called him back to give him the good news that the lump turned out to be nothing. He sounded even happier than I felt.

Last night he came over. Me being me, I had been hyperanalyzing recent events in the hope of figuring out what it all meant, what we are or what we're doing. I feel like I should just be happy with what's in front of me without deconstructing it all in search of some bigger meaning, but I'm not. So I asked him what he thought was going on, if we were still in the 'dating other people' stage or not. I thought his recent behavior hinted at a turn towards the 'not' but I was wrong. He didn't seem perturbed by the question, but in essence, he said that while he hadn't been doing much dating of other people, he wasn't ready to not do so. He asked what my view of it was, and I told him that while I had been dating other people, I found I was losing interest in doing so. Mercifully, the subject was soon changed, and shortly thereafter he went home, and I found myself lying awake for the second time this week.

There are many reasons why I shouldn't want anything serious. I'm still waiting for my godforsaken divorce to be final (the ex is a bit slow with the paperwork). I'm hoping to go back to school and possibly move in the next year. But most importantly, right now I'm less than certain about my judgement regarding relationships. Last year, once the initial shock of my separation had passed, I began to realize how much faith I had put into my marriage - the concept of marriage itself and what I thought it meant in terms of commitment and the ability to work through issues - while failing to recognize the very real problems developing between the two of us. In hindsight it's easy to look back and see missed signs and opportunities for change, but most of you who have been there will probably agree that in the midst of it all, there are times when very little is clear cut, and you have to do the best you can with the information you have at the time. In worrying over my current situation, I'm trying to project myself to a place where things are clear and certain and logical, even though my experience tells me that such a place is little more than a mirage.

Today I am not calling, not texting, trying very hard not to become one of those girls pressuring the guy for commitment, all the while wishing for the time when the state of my union is a given, and I can focus my energies on more important things again. I've been reading books about Buddhism lately, and one of the truths of Buddhism is that suffering is caused by our desire for things to be different from how they actually are. While that makes sense to me, at times like this it kind of makes me want to smack Buddha across his fat little face. I'm hoping this will be resolved in a later chapter.

Rule #1: Do not point at the turtles.

For one reason or another, my friend Jeannette and I had not seen each other in many months. But after a few phone calls and emails, we set out last Thursday night to enjoy one of the fine cultural offerings available here in L.A. - turtle racing. Unsuprisingly, this was NOT one of the events you read about in O.K. or People, attended by celebutantes and A-listers (or even B or C listers, to be perfectly honest). But hey, it's culture.

Brennan's is a little hole in the wall pub on Lincoln Boulevard in Marina del Rey, populated mostly by buzzed 23-year-olds. It is not a place where you see people drinking Cosmos, or whatever the hell the drink du jour is. There's beer, and french fries, and on Thursday nights at 10, there's turtles.



I've never asked if you can bring your own turtle to race; this is a town populated by yapping little rat-on-a-leash dogs, so I'd be surprised to see anyone pull a red-eared slider out of their handbag. No, these would-be champions are brought out to their racing grounds (the patio adjacent to the bar) in the humble transport of an Igloo cooler. Attendees go up and sponsor a turtle for a small fee, and, three at a time, they are placed inside of a small plastic holding pen. The pen is lifted out of the way at the end of the (somewhat inebriated) countdown, and the turtles race their way to the outside rim of the large circle that serves as their racetrack; the first to hit the painted line is declared the winner. At the end of these races, the various winners are penned together and released for the dramatic conclusion to the evening, in which one lucky turtle becomes the evening's champion. Alas, the glory does not last long, as the champion and the defeated alike are once again returned to their Igloo and ferried away (where to, I have no earthly idea).

(Yes, I know that this is a crappy picture and that I need to spring for Photoshop. But look, people: has Annie Leibovitz ever captured a turtle at the moment of victory? Didn't think so.)

Before the races, however, the evening's emcee reads the rules, the first of which is: do not point at the turtles. Despite the fact that this rule is repeated, at full volume and with an admirable level of audience participation, at the beginning of each and every race, it is frequently ignored. What's more interesting is that the turtles actually appear disturbed by these pointing behaviors; more than once, I have seen the leading runner millimeters away from his goal rendered motionless, paralyzed by the power of a single digit pointing in his or her direction. These races are, in the interest of fairness, disqualified, and the offenders are fined anywhere from $10-50, depending on the number of offenses thus far that evening. I don't know if these fees are actually collected, but they are posted. Rules 2-4 escape me now, but, as the emcee says, they can all be summed up by rule #5: don't be a douche bag. If only more people followed rule #5.