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Now comes the best part about these types of lists: ripping them to shreds! What lyrics are missing? Which ones should not be there? Etc, etc, go to it.
I woke up before my alarm this morning. I think my body woke up my mind so I could consciously experience this last morning of the Dawg's warmth beside me. He was groggy and sweet, like he is every morning. We hugged and kissed and hugged some more, and I left for work.
I felt okay on the walk to work. I mean, on paper, what do I have to feel bad about? We're seeing each other again in two short weeks. I've found the love of my life, he loves me back, it's not like we're breaking up or anything. But as the day wore on, my body started to shut down. I got sleepy and lethargic and I literally felt as though there was extra weight inside my chest, around my heart.
I left work early – what was the point of staying – and when I got home, and the bed was made and everything tidied up and the fridge freshly stocked with Diet Dr Pepper, I let myself feel the loss. Cried and cried, took time out to give myself a hard time for it, told myself to fuck off, cried some more, called the Dawg's cell and left a teary little message, and sat down at the computer.
I came thisclose to posting a blog featuring the lyrics to Michael Johnson's Bluer Than Blue – indeed, I found some lameass home page where someone had the Barry Manilow version playing on a loop, and I listened to it three times in a row. I knew I was being maudlin, but I just gave in to it. I didn't even bat an eye when an animated butterfly flew across the screen. Although I think I kinda sensed at that point it was time to wrap it up.
Not long after that (I was actually in the process of checking the Time Life website to see if Bluer Than Blue was on The Classic Soft Rock Collection – jeeeezuz), the Dawg called me back and saved me from myself. Sigh. We are already transitioning back to how it was before this blissful summer of easy familiarity and natural intimacy: telephone calls, e-mails, and counting the days til the next cherished visit.
I feel so grateful and so bereft at the same time. It's just an adjustment.
Aug 14, 2007 6:23 am
Mood: aggravated, 13008 Views
<<--- Screen shot I just took of my blog. After I posted this blog, all appeared normal, so I deleted it. When I deleted it, my blog appeared to be EMPTY, with the message that there were currently no entries!
How’s everybody doing? Heart rates receding to normal levels yet? Have you sheepishly cancelled the emergency appointment with your therapist that you begged and pleaded for in the midst of the panic attack you had when you couldn’t access the blogs?
The weekend-long glitch was just one more in a loooooong string of service interruptions in the FC-provided blogging site. In addition to the occasional lapse in service, there are the regular “quirks” of the site that we have to put up with:
no hyperlinks to the outside world
lengthy time delays between posting blogs and/or comments and seeing them go live
incomprehensible censorship of content and photos
server that sometimes runs slower than Bartholomew’s oobleck
Inevitably, the notion of ditching this place for greener pastures is raised, and seconded, thirded, fourthded, and so on, by the angry masses. And believe me, I grok the angry mob sentiment.
But hold on there cowpokes!
I don’t know if the answer is as simple as that. There are a number of factors that make the blogging community as sponsored by Fast Cupid unique:
The really cool thing about the FC blogging structure is that everyone is guaranteed front page status for at least 4-6 hours. Every new post gets listed, regardless of the “popularity” of the writer, or the merit of the work for that matter. When you write a new blog, you are guaranteed an audience for your work. Whether or not you can build on that audience by writing stuff people are interested in is up to you, but at least you know your stuff is not going out into a deep space vacuum.
With other blog sites, such as Blogger, Blogspot, Typepad, etc., you have to build an audience from scratch. Some of our bloggers here keep blogs on other sites – I’d be curious to hear back from them if they get the same numbers reading and responding to their posts as they get here.
Being part of an online dating site guarantees that we get a steady influx of “new blood” to the blogs – new readers, new commenters, new writers. It keeps things from getting stagnant, and infuses a vitality and freshness to the community.
The FC blog is dead easy to use. Anybody can post a blog here! If we moved to a network that required a bit of self-administration (i.e. adding tags, creating design/structure, etc.), not everyone would be as comfortable with the interface.
Who here wants to play administrator, giving up their free time, responding to requests for features, explaining to the less technically-inclined how to do stuff, etc? I know they could do things way, way better here, but at least somebody else is doing it for us.
Moving to a different setting is not impossible, and some of these points can be mitigated through research and planning, but I just wanted to point out that the answers to the problems we have here may not be as simple as they appear to be from a distance.
The door to denial has just slammed shut with a sickening thud, with no chance of escape. Now I am alone in the Panic Room.
It all happened so fast. For weeks now, people have been asking me, "When does the Dawg go home?" My answer was always just to shrug and say vaguely that I knew he had to be home some time in mid-to-late August. Any time I brought it up with him, he never seemed to answer definitively, and the conversation just drifted off somewhere else.
But just now, I was about to make an appointment with the vet for Lola's annual check-up. I wanted to get it sussed out while the Dawg was still here with his car. I asked him, if this Saturday was no good, would next Saturday be okay? He said that would be pushing it, and that anything up until Thursday should be okay.
Gulp. Thursday? That's only a week away! Oh god! ohgodohgodohgodohgod.
I mean, I've known it was coming. In the last few days, since we hit August, really, I've noticed that hugs are a little harder, tender moments have a little more poignancy, and everything just feels slightly more urgent than before. But I felt okay about it, even sort of looked forward to my apartment returning to its regular state of clutter as opposed to the superclutter we've lived with for two months of cluttered bliss.
The impending dread was an idea, a non-threatening, distant eventuality, not this anxiety-filled, gut-imploding physical symptom. But those days are over. And soon, so will be the Dawg Days of Aught Sev.
Somebody get me a Xanax, with a side order of chocolate, stat.
This weekend the Dawg and I visited my family out at my mom's place. Dawg has already met Big A and CMAT, but this was his first time meeting my brother, his two teenaged kids, and his wife, Shrillster-in-law.
Now, me and CMAT have known Shrillster for over 20 years, since she was just Shrill Girlfriend, and Big A has had 10 or 11 years to get used to her. Not that you ever really do get used to her. Her narcissistic control-freak micro-managing of every single minute of her children's lives and to a lesser extent everybody else around her is UNBEARABLE.
In writing this post, it's difficult to decide how much detail to go into. I was saying tonight to the Dawg that when explaining her to others, it's hard not to sound as though I'm describing an exaggerated, two-dimensional castrating mother character in a Tennessee Williams play, except way worse.
Perhaps a few snippets from this weekend, just to give a sense:
She accused my 16 year old Nephew of moving her camera to another part of the room she was staying in, ostensibly in order to get back at her for always getting after him for not knowing where he's misplaced things. She was seriously pissed, based on the "evidence" that his Pepsi bottle was in the room. It's simply not possible that she forgot where she put the camera.
She grabbed my 14 and a half year old Neice's arms tightly at one point and told her to say she was sorry for being lippy. Neice rollled her eyes and said she was sorry, since this is no longer a new and intimidating "technique". Shrillster-in-law told her to "apologize and mean it!!" as if it's possible to force sincerity through sheer shrillness.
She treats the two family dogs with more love and respect (albeit constant micro-managing) than she does her own family. You know that thing some crazy people do, where they talk full sentences to their pets, explaining to them in detail why it's necessary for them to follow a command, as if a logical justification might somehow make the whole thing a little more palatable? Yeah, she's one of those.
Last night at dinner, I didn't finish my steak. It sat there for awhile, as we conversed and dined. After about 15 minutes, the Dawg helped himself to my uneaten meat. Shrillster expressed her dismay that the poor dogs had been staring at that meat all this time, anticipating the succulent delight that awaited them. There was a light tone to her voice, but I mean for fuck's sake. The Dawg just laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and cheerily kept eating.
When I inquired about the surgery she'd had last month to repair a varicose vein, she happily launched into a detailed description of the ailment and the corrective procedure - it's so fun to talk about oneself! Hell, I admit it - and then went on to matter-of-factly blame Nephew for the whole medical condition (which she had just told me ran in the family with her mother and one sister suffering the same problem), as she was pregnant with him when the problem first appeared. Ha, ha, it's funny to tell your kids they are the source of prolonged pain and suffering you've endured!
I could go on, but I think you are probably getting a picture here. I don't know what her problem is, but it casts a pall on the mood of any room she walks into. She can't seem to let a conversation pass without attempting to dominate it with her opinion or taking the lead on questioning the person who is speaking. If it's one of her kids, she drops the pretense of politeness and respect that is implied by her question tone, and simply barks commands, corrects them, contradicts their stories, interjects her opinion of their behaviour, whatever, whatever, you get the idea, and I'm getting pissed off just typing this.
The Dawg found the whole thing a bit much. When people are around that energy they tend to get sucked into the bicker-pick-pick-pick atmosphere pretty easily, myself included (to a much lesser extent, but, you know, mea culpa). The Dawg, on the other hand, pretty much just shuts down in that environment, having grown up around similar sort of energy and abhoring it.
I felt bad, because I want my family to see the same Dawg I see, and I want him to regard my mom and my brother and his kids (could give a fuck about Shrillster or Big A) with affection, even if it's tempered with a resigned kind of acceptance. Of course you want your peeps to dig each other. But we talked about it a lot on the way home. I realize I can't force that kind of bond any more than Shrillster can force her daughter to "mean it". I totally get why he needs to shut down in this situation, and I don't expect him to put his own stuff aside so he can help me with mine.
Anyway, I love that he knows me that much better than he did before the weekend. And we're taking the kids to Canada's Wonderland on Friday. (Sans Shrillster.) I love rollercoasters! They're so... metaphorical!
Well it seems that what the blogs need now is love, sweet love. And I am inspired, by the selfless, non-horny giving of the Hugger Busker, by the still-vital afterglow from our mini bloguefête in Montreal, by the ongoing nurturing and camaraderie of the blogstars, and by my awe and gratitude for the love I've found.
So! It's Blog Fair time. Lemonade, pie baking contests, pie eating contests, a romantic ferris wheel, Whack-A-Mole, and, of course, the Kissin' Booth.
Do you need your ass kissed? I'm offering FREE ASS-KISSES for anyone who needs one. I will blow the sweetest smoke up your ass you've ever smelled. If not your ass, tell me where it hurts, and I'll kiss it better. If you need someone to tell you why you're special, I can and will do it.
We all need to hear it once in awhile, and it feels pretty damn good to say it too. Come on, it's free!
So step right up to the Noisy Kissin Booth. We've set up a recovery area in back.
To link to this blog from blog posts/comments, use [blog Noisy_Introvert], from anywhere else use http://personals.girlfriendsmag.com/blog/Noisy_Introvert, and to read it remotely use the feed.
