The Old MySpace Blog

I have started drinking my coffee black.

I am excited about this because it will save a fortune on the weird sweeteners and vegan creamers I’ve used in the past (and it’s kind of hard core), but the transition also caused a few moments of apprehension when I realized I would have to revise my corny coffee joke. You know, “I like my coffee like I like my men.” Mine used to go, “I like my coffee like I like my men: strong and sweet and keeps me up all night.”

Here’s the new one. I like my coffee like I like my men: dark and bitter.

I think Scott and I really have it together when it comes to keeping the spark alive in our relationship. I’ve read countless times that one way to keep things lively is to leave each other little notes. Well, just this morning Scott left one for me. He left for work while I was at the gym, and when I came home the coffee was made and there was a note under the coffee maker that said:

MAX POOPED.
JAMIE DID NOT POOP.
Both had breakfast.

How hot is THAT?

I come to you with news: the sassy, snarky, suggestive t-shirt is officially dead, done, and over.

I’m in Virginia Beach this week and a routine trip to one of the souvenir shops (AKA “beach crap emporiums”) found me up close and personal with a sparkly pink tank top that read…

Stop Staring at My
BREASTS
And Touch Them Already

Yeah. Yeah, we’re done here. Like $150 flannel shirts in the 90′s, this trend has not only died, it officially has collapsed upon itself in a giant fiery slurp.

Right now, at this very moment, I’ve had 666 hits on my blog.

Thanks for the evil, y’all.

Wednesday afternoon I was behind a car with Spanish bumper sticker on the back. I tried to translate it, which is something I find myself doing several times a day because just about everything in my neighborhood is in Spanish and English. Usually I do ok, and because I am a dork I enjoy the stretch it gives my linguistic skills, not to mention the draw on those two years of Latin in college. But when I looked at this particular bumper sticker, the translation that first came to mind was “God is my giant. What’s your problem?” I don’t think that was quite right.

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Postscript: When I was thinking of a name for this post, I put “sticker” into an online translator, and came up with “etiqueta engomada.” That didn’t seem right, so I tried translating it back from Spanish to English, and came up with “it labels starchy.” I like that.

The universe keeps nudging me to keep a camera in my car. This evening’s hint was a man in a pink sports bra, pleated mini skirt, and hot pink floral flip flops pedaling a mountain bike up the median of Randolph Road.

This weekend I’ll buy a disposable camera to keep in my purse; it’s way too hot to keep film in the car.

(And, earlier this week, there was the van from B&B Air Conditioning Co., Home of “Mr. Heat Pump.”)

Over the past few days, I’ve been thinking about the many messages to which I have not responded, and all the people I’ve been meaning to check on. Inevitably, what happens is this: I get a message from some one I haven’t seen in a long time and this is very exciting. And then I spend two or three days composing the perfect response in my head, and then a whole bunch of life happens, and I end up just feeling guilty about not responding.

Likewise, something happens, I want to write it down, and in a way I do, in my head for a few days, then it’s gone.

I had thatt running through my head today, along with the idea that I should really stop this nonsense. It was there at work, there as I made dinner and the dog was licking pieces of cauliflower off my socks, that the perfect response is getting in the way of me responding and writing, sucky or not. And besides, nothing is perfect.

If nothing is perfect, everything is perfect. Ah so.

Anyway, there are two things that got me here. First, I think that it is way cool that Bethany (Hi Bethany!) writes a paragraph or two every couple of days. It’s such a great marker of even the smallest milestones in her family. Now, granted, my milestones aren’t quite as monumental as first teeth, first trips, and potty training; they’re more like “today I did 50 push ups*” or “today I actually enjoyed the company of someone younger than me.” Still, it’s neat to be able to keep up with people when I’m really shitty at keeping up with people. Even though I sometimes don’t respond for months or years, I always want to know what is going on with the people who have been in my life. You are all part of how I got here, wherever here is at any given time.

The other item that got me here was hearing from an old friend, and hearing that it’s rumored that an ex-boyfriend of mine is engaged. This is happy and unsurprising news. As a good person in his thirties, engaged is a perfectly reasonable thing for him to be. I am happy for him, but far more than I expected the news was also a hard fist around my heart. It is not that I have regrets (other than not being very nice sometimes), it is more that knowing this about him means that he is no longer 24 and sitting on the couch with a bottle of Southern Comfort. It also means that I am no longer 24 and sitting on the couch with a bottle of Southern Comfort. Years after the fact, I’ve gained mastery over past relationships, a marriage and divorce, and a heck of a lot of good it does me. I’m standing there in front of the orchestra of my past, baton poised, fully rehearsed, only now it’s a free form jazz band.

I’m reminded of something that someone insightful said, along the lines of: “We spend the first twenty years filling a sack, and the rest of our lives emptying it.”

Anyhoo, point is, I’ve got to get out of my head sometimes, and the weird thing is that the only way to do that is to let other people in.

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*I really can do fifty push-ups, and not girly ones, either.

I should keep a camera in my car when I drive to and from these dental appointments. Today the same route that yielded my Putzmeister shirt found me behind a truck from Peed Plumbing.

Swear to google. Go look.