Summing Up

My favorite movie in the entire world, is "The Princess Bride." It is over 20 years old, I've seen it a million times, I have the regular DVD and the Anniversary Edition DVD, and yet I will still watch it on TV when it comes on. And I will still laugh! I put that thought out there so that you will understand what the voice in my head sounds like when I say that much has gone on in the six weeks or so since my last post, too much to catch up: "Lemme 'splain. No, there iss to mauch. Lemme sum up."

So here I am, summing up, in no particular order:

I had another one of those "Worst. Day. Ever." kind of days yesterday, based mainly on the fact that The Tool can't get his act together to give me a schedule of when he's going to take the kids, and how upset the ensuing uncertainty makes the kids and makes me. And also the fact that Cyd was mad because they are having her attend a couple of "functional skills" classes next semester, and she wanted to take Art, instead. I said, "Are you going to cooperate and try your best to listen to the teacher and do the things teacher tells you to do, when you're told, and in the way the teacher says, no matter if you want to or not, every single time?" She said, "Well, I'm not sure about that." And I said, "That's why you don't get to take Art!" So after that, I was a "jerk mom." But then Mindi came over and helped me pack and we talked and I cried and I went to bed (too late!) feeling a lot better than when the evening started out.

The Tool is taking over the house - YAY! He should close, hopefully tomorrow but if not, sometime next week. Then I can close on my new place, three days later (we have to wait for the title to the old place to record before they can rescore my credit to put the loan for the new place through....). That is why Mindi and I were packing last night.

I had my gall bladder out on December 30th. I think I had unrealistic expectations about this surgery. Everyone told me, "Oh, it's so easy now, with the scope," and, "This will be a piece of cake! You'll bounce right back!" I'm hear to tell ya, there ain't no bouncin' goin' on around here! Anyone who knows about the problems I've had with my knee, knows that I am no stranger to painful surgeries. So it's not like this one was the worst I've ever had - far from it. I'd put it in my Top Five, though. It's just - truly, I think I just thought it would be easier than it has been.

My parents usually have both our family's Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve parties at their place, but since our extended family has grown so big, and my parents' house has been in the process of being remodeled for the last two years or so, I had both at my house this year. I've been having the New Year's party for years, and will most likely continue to do so. But I haven't had the Christmas Party for a long time. I remember I used to get all twisted up in knots at the idea of people coming over, wanting everything to be just so and all the cleaning and prep and everything. This year, I didn't even take a shower or put make-up on for the New Year's party. I guess when you have a lot of crap going on that you worry about, SOMETHING has got to give, and for me, it has been fussing about what my house looks like. Either that, or I have r-e-a-l-l-y lowered my standards....

That pretty much brings me up to date. Christmas was one of the best ever - not nearly as traumatic (for me, at least) as Thanksgiving (Thanksgiving by myself was hard). The kids are all doing pretty well, all things considered. The divorce is almost a done deal - The Tool and I have pretty much agreed on a settlement, and it is with the attorney being finalized right now. When he is done, Jeff and I will each sign it, then the attorney will file it with the courts, and just like that, nearly 20 years of marriage will be undone. Whatever. Now it's on to bigger and better things.

And at Mychael's request, I have an old story about her comments regarding the propensity for cheese to bring on constipation, that I will share in an upcoming post, plus I want to do a "100 Things About Me" post. And, if you get a chance, you should check out another Natalie Dee post (not for those easily grossed out or offended by foul language) - this one regarding getting relief for a poor constipated preemie, the 11/20/08 post, here: http://blog.nataliedee.com/

So there. Now I have 'splained. Or at least, summed up.

Everything I Need to Know, I Learned from a Slumber Party...

As predicted by some of you, my Friday night experience is showing up on my blog:

I went to a "Slumber Party" Friday. A Slumber Party should not be confused with a slumber party. For those of you who don't know, a slumber party is when a bunch of girls get together to spend the night at a friend's house. They watch movies, play "Truth or Dare," paint each other's toenails, eat popcorn and pizza and other crap, and prank call boys, among other things.

On the other hand, a Slumber Party is a little get-together similar to a Pampered Chef or candle or Avon or Tupperware party. You get a bunch of friends together to look at some products and then the hostess gets to credit a portion of the sales from her party to her own order. The only difference is that instead of cooking utensils or cosmetics or whatever, the commodities to be purchased at a Slumber Party are...ahem...how do I say this in a family-friendly manner? The commodities to be purchased are designed to enhance personal relaxation and/or pleasure.

Anyway, I am no prude! I enjoy a raunchy joke as much as the next person. I have seen my share of pornography, and even have a couple of volumes of erotica in my own vast book collection. I still have a naughty pen that I got from Paul Arguello in the eighth grade (it has an inch-tall spread-eagled man on it. When the pen is right side up, the man is wearing black speedo trunks. But when you turn the pen upside down, his trunks slide back into the pen to reveal the tiny man in all his nekkid glory. But I digress...). When I worked as an investigator, I went into numerous stripper bars, and have sat in the dressing rooms of the dancers and listened to their conversations with one another, etc. I have even been into Spencer's in the mall - more than once. I, myself, have even danced with a lesbian!*

What I'm trying to say is, I know the facts of life. I am very accepting of all genders, persuasions, and orientations, and generally believe that whatever happens between two consenting adults is their own business and none of mine. I have not led a sheltered life by any stretch of the imagination - especially compared to the vast majority of The Beehive State.

So, I didn't really think I'd be embarrassed about this Slumber Party. And I I wasn't, not really. I mean, I was thinking along the lines of, "Geez! I was married for almost 20 years! And I wasn't a virgin when I got married, so, I know stuff! They can't surprise me!" I was expecting things like edible underwear and the odd 'personal massage tool' or two. Maybe even some padded handcuffs or flavored lube or something.

They had all that, and more. I didn't have any trouble recognizing the various "products" the sales consultant brought out, or why there might be a market for such products. That is, until she got to a pink, gell-filled, pillowy thing about the size of a can of soda. It rolled back and forth in the consultant's hand, and I thought it looked like one of those water-weenie things you used to get in your Happy Meal back in the day. You know, the ones that were like an extra-long doughnut, hard to hold onto because if you squeezed it too tightly, all the water inside the tube squished to one side and it would just pop out of your hand?

Anyway, the consultant said this thing was called a "sleeve." I'm thinking, "A sleeve? For what?" I was actually thinking that a girl couldn't possibly have any fun with such a thing - how would she use it? Is it supposed to go on top of your Wascally Wabbit or something? And what good would that do? How could that possibly make things any better or more fun? I truly was clueless.

I voiced my confusion. "I don't get it," I said. "What are you supposed to do with it?"

Answers seemed to come at me from all around. "It's for the man!" came one voice. "You just hold it!" came from another. "You can use it together, or by yourself!" said someone else. I still didn't get it. How could holding this bubblegum pink, water-weenie tube-pillow-sleeve thing be fun together OR by myself? It wouldn't fit in anywhere, and what good would it do to just hold such a thing - even if you were holding it together? I'm sure my confusion showed onmy face.

Luckily, my cousin has purchased something similar to this item before, and this was not her first Slumber Party! "Oh, fer hell sakes!" she said. "Put some lube in it and give it to me!" The consultant squirted some goo into the center tube of the pink jelly roll thing, and passed it over. Grabbing my hand, my cousin said, "Here! Stick your finger in there! Now do you get it?"

Oh, I got it, alright. As the pressure from the gell-filled tube closed around my finger, and the warmth of my skin warmed the lube inside the tube, my cousin began to move the sleeve back and forth on my finger, creating suction. The proverbial light bulb went on!! I now know exactly what such a thing is used for. Turns out it's not really for us ladies, after all! Oh, I s'pose you could hold it for him, if you wanted to, but I do believe this thing was designed with the gentlemen in mind...

So what did I learn, besides what a "sleeve" is for? Well, for one, I learned that you really do learn something new, every day! Or at least you can, even if you are fast approaching 40 and think you've seen it all. Just go to a Slumber Party...

*See 9/15/08 post

So I Was Dancing With This Lesbian....

I'm sure that headline got your attention, eh? Well, the story goes like so:

I went to a concert at Redbutte Gardens last week. G. Love and Special Sauce were the headliners, and the John Butler Trio and Tristan Prettyman opened up the show. I had never heard of JBT or Ms. Prettyman (I understand she is married to Jason Mraz of "I'm Yours" fame...), but I have heard of G.Love, et al. I am not a big fan of theirs, by any means, but I was mostly going for the company and just the fact that it was something to get me out of the house. A little break, if you will...

If you have never been to Redbutte Gardens, it is the absolute best concert venue for having a good time. Maybe not for acoustics, necessarily, but for just a pleasant ambience, it can't be beat. It is set in the foothills behind the U of U, and there is a little rushing brook with a bridge over it and several stands of trees, expanses of green lawns and planters full of flowers, etc. The restrooms are large, clean, and well-lit. And perhaps best of all, you are refreshingly treated like an adult when you go there. You can pack in your beverage of choice (adult or otherwise) and no one asks to go through your bag with a flashlight, nor are you frisked or otherwise patted down or anything! That must be what it's like to live somewhere other than The Beehive State....

The crowd was really fun. There was a real sense of camaraderie among the concert-goers - people seemed to be laid back, pleasant, and generally into one another's well-being. This is also a refreshing change from many "large crowd" types of gatherings I have been to.

Soon after we arrived (I went with a friend I used to work with, and four friends of hers that she works with now) Tristan Prettyman took the stage. I apologize in advance if you are a fan - it just seemed like generic folk-guitar stuff to me. However, it rained during her performance, and the rays of the setting sun shining through the light sprinkle formed a brilliant rainbow over the canyons behind the garden. I enjoyed some cheese and crackers and sushi and a little Dewar's and water. It was so pleasant - the good food and drink, the sounds of the little stream beside me and the guitar of Ms. Prettyman, the smell of rain and green grass, the beautiful gardens and wild canyons all around...it has been ages since I was so relaxed.

Then, when the John Butler Trio took the stage, the rain stopped. I think I liked this group the best. The main guy - I'm assuming it's John Butler - was an absolute master on the 12-string. Even though I had never heard of him/them before, I couldn't help but be impressed. He is an enormously talented individual.

But what about the lesbian, you ask? Well, G. Love and Special Sauce's style of music is quite a bit more electric/bluesy funk style. They're best known for the song "Cold Beverages," but I personally like "You Get the Ankles, I'll Get the Wrists" better. The first two acts were nice "sitting-and-vegging" music, but G. Love, even if you're not really into him, makes you want to dance.

So there I was, along with my friend and her friends, and we were all just standing and dancing, clapping along to the music like ya do at a concert. I felt someone come up behind me and start the bumpin' and grindin' kind of thing. I was feeling very happy and was kind of getting into G. Love (even though I mostly think he's just "meh") and I just assumed it was either my friend being a smart***, or one of the guys she had brought with her making a pass at me.

Imagine my surprise when I turned to find it was not a guy at all, but one of my friend's female co-workers!! Silly me, I didn't want to offend her, so I just kept dancing, trying to inch away slightly while pretending like that wasn't what I was doing at all. Then, I started thinking that maybe I had misinterpreted what was going on - maybe it was just that crowded, and she couldn't help it or something. Besides, it was dark - maybe she didn't even realize I was a girl! So I just danced on through the rest of the song and tried not to think about it.

I sat down on my blanket and took a breather after that song was over. I had about convinced myself it was all in my imagination - maybe she was just a MAJOR G. Love fan, and had just been carried away by the music. My friend/former co-worker asked me to go to the restroom with her (you know how girls are...). So, as we are walking over there, she very casually says to me, "You know L [I'm not going to use her real name] is a lesbian, right?"

"Oh, really?" I say, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. "I didn't know."

"Yeah, she's pretty out of the closet. In fact, she thinks she can 'turn' anybody."

I couldn't help it - I just blurted it out: "Well," I said, "I might be able to hold still long enough for someone to practice on me, but I'm sorry - I just can't get up any enthusiasm whatsoever for doing something to someone else!"

My friend laughed and said, "That's OK. She's a bit of slut, anyway. I just wanted to let you know what you were getting into!"

Needless to say, I tried to keep my distance from "L" the rest of the night lest she be under the mistaken impression that, in any way, shape, or form, I was interested in being "turned!"

Since my avoidance strategy seemed to be fairly effective for the rest of the night, I kind of thought that maybe my friend had been over-reacting with her "warning" to me. In fact, it was so outside the realms of stuff you expect to happen to you, I was still unconvinced that "L" had made a pass at me, specifically (it was dark - how could she know?) in the first place. Well, apparently, it was no mistake on L's part as she said to me, on the way to the parking lot after the show, that if I was ever interested in "exploring," to give her a call, OK? Uh, yeah...sure....

Y'know, I read all the time about men who prey on the recently divorced because they think they'll be easy to get into the sack. I had no idea the same applied to lesbians, too. I guess you learn something new every day!

Honestly - the Things You Find in a Freezer!

As most of you know, I am going through what feels like a long, drawn-out divorce right now. I'm sure no divorce is easy, and this one may not be all that bad, comparably. But since it's the only one I've ever been through, it feels that way to me. I am in the process of selling my house, and due to the market conditions, I've not had much interest. So, I am slowly decluttering, packing, etc., both to better-prepare the house for showing, and to get ready to eventually move.

I have had a lot of help in this process, most notably from my best cousins ever, Mindi and Kim. Last Friday, I was having a pity-party kind of day, left over from an emotional meeting with my attorney and the soon-to-be-ex. Mindi had planned to come help me pack and sort some more, but I just didn't have it in me. I called her, bawling, to beg off, and bless her heart, she and Kim showed up on my doorstep a couple of hours later, anyway, with root beer and ice cream in hand.

We had an absolutely lovely time sitting around the kitchen table, eating (drinking?) root beer floats and laughing about squishing bugs and snakes (Mindi can do bugs, but Kim and I can't - however, snakes creep Mindi out, but they don't bother Kim or me at all) and how hard it is to patiently listen to seemingly never-ending stories from your children when all you want is a few minutes to yourself to unwind before bedtime or shower or just breathe!

Well, I freely admit to not being the best housekeeper in the land. For people who know me at work, they would think this out-of-character, but at home, I agonize over decisions. If I have pink and white shirt that needs to be washed, I dawdle, going back and forth over whether it should go in the "whites" laundry pile, or the "reds" laundry pile. If I have duplicates of an item, I struggle over throwing away or otherwise getting rid of the old one (I might NEED it!) - thus the explanation for the work described in the first paragraph!

Anyway, mid-root beer float party, I had to run out and pick up the twins from a "back-to-school" party they had been at with friends from their elementary school. When we got back home, I was surprised to see Mindi and Kim cleaning out my refrigerator! I was chagrined to realize that when they had tried to put the root beer away, they couldn't find a place for it - so they were compelled to clean out my refrigerator in the process of making room for the 2-liter bottle of root beer. For the record, the oldest item in there were some bacon bits that expired in 2000....

I helped finish the fridge, and we started on the freezer. Mychael came down stairs and said, "Hey, we might still have Cyd's snake in there - did we ever bury it?" I had forgotten all about "Slips," a little green garter snake that Cydanie had as a pet a couple of years ago. It didn't last long - it was our first experience with reptilian pets and either we didn't care for it correctly, or it wasn't very healthy to start with, or the stress of bringing it home did it in. It only lived for a month or so after we brought him (her? Hard to tell, with snakes...) home from the pet store. It was winter when it died, and Cyd wanted to bury it, but we couldn't because the ground was frozen. So, we put it in a little baggie, sealed it up, and put it in the freezer to await a proper burial service in the spring.

I was telling Kim and Mindi this story as Mindi was wiping out the door of the freezer and I was working with Kim on deciding what in the freezer would go, and what could stay (yes, this decision-making stuff is a two-person job for me). I was fairly certain that we had already done away with Slips - I hadn't seen him in a very long time so I figured someone had finally sent him to his final resting place in the bottom of the trash bin. It could have even been me, and I had simply forgotten - my memory is not what it used to be!

Shortly after I had assured them that we likely would NOT be finding any snakes in the freezer, Kim reached over to the door next to Mindi, grabbed a little plastic bag with Christmas packages printed on it, and said, "Here, this can go - it has Christmas presents on it!" All of a sudden, Kim screamed! She dropped the bag and bolted out of the kitchen. Mindi was hot on her heels, screaming hysterically as well! And I? Well, I was just standing there, looking around wondering what the heck just happened! Then it dawned on me - could Slips be in the Christmas baggie?

Sure enough - I picked up the baggie and there was Slips, remarkably well preserved. For the morbidly curious, he had little freezer burn, considering he had been in there for at least two years. All of us - including the twins - were now laughing so hard we could hardly breathe. I thought perhaps Kim had picked up the bag knowing that Slips was in there to save Mindi from discovering it, given how she feels about snakes. But no, she was not being altruistic at all. It was just a split-second thought on Kim's part. Sad to say, Slips didn't get his burial - he went in the garbage sack with the rest of the freezer's contents, baggie and all.

Perhaps it was one of those "you had to be there" moments. I am leaving out the parts about how far away some people ran, and who was laughing so hard she drooled, to protect the guilty. However, I bet the next time Kim and Mindi go to clean out a freezer, they will be a little bit more wary about just diving in. Though I hope it wasn't sufficiently traumatic to discourage them from bringing root beer floats to me some other time....I promise there are no more snakes in my freezer.