Put your seatbelt on

Aub’s pissed.

Forgive the rant on which I am about to embark. It needs to be duly noted that I am PMS’ing. In as much as I’ve managed to get through my entire life with few symptoms of this monster, I am finding that as I get older (i.e. over 40) it rears its ugly head in the form of intolerance or tears.

The tears part is no big deal but today the intolerance must find an outlet and my blog shall bear the load.

Buckled Up?

What the fuck is wrong with people? I’m serious. This question covers a broad spectrum of people. Let’s start small.

Why is it that Auburn Aries tells me it’s 7:10 this morning (I like to leave my house by 7:20) and then proceeds to walk around the house in bare feet for the next 15 minutes even after I’ve told her to get her shoes on? What the hell is it in her clusterfuck of a bedroom could be so gd important that she’s willing to risk my temper flaring first thing in the morning?

Is there a bag of cash that fell off an Armored truck that she’s been hiding in there somewhere? Is Angelina Jolie laying in there with her legs open waiting for me? Is there a letter telling me her dipshit father is moving to the bum fuck Egypt where he belongs?

I don’t think so.

At 7:25 I stood in my kitchen counting to ten, silently.

How is it also that I bought her the book Narnia and she can’t find it. It’s a frickin’ week old and it’s missing. Can you say where’s the $130 Columbia coat I bought her last winter that she lost one week into owning it. Okay, in her defense it was tied around her waist and fell off while at school and no one bothered to return it. Nice. I’m sure the new book is with the coat.

She’s wanting the Narnia book set but I won’t buy it until she finds the new one I bought her. GD kid thinks money grows on freakin trees.. Want want want want want. I swear – she’s got more shit than she even realizes she has. She appeared with a beautiful bracelet on her wrist last week and when I asked her where she got it she said she found it in her stuff. Yeah, I’ll bet she did.

Moving on.

How is it possible that people can come to me and vent or ask my advice or need a shoulder to cry on and tune my ass out after I’ve taken the time to try and help them, only to find out that when someone else gives the same gd advice suddenly it all makes sense and person b, c or d is a gd Saint for helping him see the way?

Christalmighty, why the fuck do I even bother?

I have stood steadfast by the side of someone very, very dear to me. I’ve listened to every worry, concern, hurt feelings, lost love, broken heart, every tear, every bottle the was dove into… I’ve looked out for this person in his highs and lows only to find I’ve ended up the person in the background whose words don’t seem to matter anymore.

I did the ground work… the grunt work if you will and now there are three other people whose friendship have become the hallmark of true friendship. Grrrrrr. I know these three people and I love them all. They are not bad people in any way, shape or form. But every time I think about the fact that I was there through it all and now there’s no time for me, makes me cry.

And then.

Hot Toddy and I met a guy less than a couple of months ago that had just moved to Portland from Denver. I shall call him K9. K9 is a man who has traveled the country. Over the course of four or five years he lived in 32 states. He has wonderful stories to tell and doesn’t look back on his choice to travel and see the world with any regret.

He is athletic – he rides café racers, he snowboards, he is fearless when it comes to taking a risk. He is a true adrenalin junkie. Immediately after he moved to Portland he found work as a male stripper. Yes, this guy’s body is that hot. He has a natural physique that most men have to go to the gym three hours a day to get. Biceps like huge rocks. Built in six pack abs. A v-shaped torso that is simply a thing of beauty on which to cast your eyes.

Tired of stripping he took a low-key job at, where else, C.C. Slaughters. This is how Toddy and I met him. He spoke of his struggle to settle-in in a town where he knows no one; where he is unfamiliar with the geography of a city; of how he’s been robbed four separate times after moving here.

His car was broken into a couple of different times. His expensive snowboard stolen, his snowboard gear stolen, his satellite laptop stolen from underneath a bed where he slept and thought he was safe. His photo albums of all of his adventures, gone. His motorcycle leathers, gone. Money stolen. How this guy has managed to stay and overcome something that would have robbed me of any faith I had in mankind, is beyond me.

After conversing with K9 for a couple of hours, he shared how his goal is to stick it out and not run from adversity. He wanted to save enough money to get himself an apartment – someplace that he could call home and that he was proud of, rather than renting a room in someone else’s house and paying $125 a week for a daybed and a bathroom.

Toddy and I talked about it and decided to offer our home to K9. This poor guy can’t get a break and we wanted to help.

So a over a week ago, I talked to K9 and extended the offer. Toddy was willing to give up one of his bedrooms downstairs and I would not charge him rent so that he could save up for his own place. He wanted to be in something by the end of this year.

Sounds great right? Well then why the hell isn’t this guy looking at apartments? Is my gd house just too gd comfortable? The agreement was through December which means, uh, tic tock, tick tock motherfucker. Don’t tell me you’re saving for an apartment and deposits and then talk about buying a new snowboard.. Unless you plan on using it for a pillow when you’re out of a place to stay. I'm your friend not your gd fairy godmother.

Now please understand, I do not regret the decision to help K9 out. He’s a sweet guy. But all my routines are out of whack. There’s no bed downstairs yet and he’s staying upstairs. I know I seem like a total bitch complaining about this but let me remind you…PMS!!!! I know in a day or two none of this will matter, but for now…

K9 tends to be negative.. rightly so I’d imagine. But I’m silver lining girl. I see the glass half full. He called me yesterday at 3 p.m. to tell me how Oregon sucks ‘cause there’s nothing to do. How he sat in my house all day and was bored beyond belief.

I’m from San Diego. It is still my home in my heart of hearts. Though I’ve lived in Oregon 16 years, it will never truly be home to me. However, I have lived here long enough to know there is an asston of shit to do up here. Oregon is beautiful.

I told K9 to drive up to Multnomah Falls (after I said the name 19 fucking times because Multnomah sounds like PAH-TOE-MA on a cell phone) and hike the falls. Or go to Mt. Hood and rent a snowboard and burn off some energy (can’t do that “because rental equipment sucks”) or hike the Butte behind my house and get some fresh air. Or ride his $2k mountain bike on the Butte. Do something. But whatever you do, don’t bitch because you chose to sit in the house all gd day. I found it odd that he did just that.

He reminds me of Bohdi (Patrick Swayze) in Point Break who, throughout the entire movie, experiences rush after rush from so many wild adventures. At the end of the movie, Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) finds Bodhi in Australia surfing and tells Bodhi he’s come to arrest him for all the robberies blah blah blah… to which Bodhi replies, “I can’t live in a cage. I’ll die there.”

K9 is Bodhi. If he’s not running full-speed with his hair on fire then he’s not going fast enough. I’m 42 years old (K9 is 31). My perspective is different. Don’t ask my advice and then not bother to consider it…oh, wait, I’ve already addressed a subject similar to this one.

K9 has found himself frustrated by his job as well. He’s a straight man working in a gay bar where he doesn’t feel accepted because he’s different. He feels discriminated against by the very people who preach non-stop about being treated the exact same way.

What the hell is it with me trying to help the stray puppies? Toddy and I were laughing about this other day. He and I are just alike that way. I know I just have to put my patience cap on but until my PMS subsides, I need to stay busy so I don’t get like this.

And then there’s the trek I made to Pioneer Place to take Aries to see Santa and pick up her Nintendo DS bundle. EB Games was out of DS. A quick search in the computer showed there are only two left in this area. The next closest is 2,000 miles away. So today on my lunch hour I’m driving north of Vancouver, WA to pick up the gd game.

And Santa… that fat bastard. His sorry ass was gone when he finally got down to see him at 7 p.m. Aries was crushed. We go to Pioneer Place every year to see Santa. She put on her cutest shirt and put clips in her hair and stood there with a sad little face like she didn’t know what she was going to do if she couldn’t talk to Santa. I promised her we would make it back to see him later this week. Now I have to carve more time out of an already busy week. A mother’s work is never done.

She’s been overwhelmed with kids at school telling her Santa isn’t real. She spoke of how Santa is real because parents couldn’t write out all those tags or wrap all those presents. How Santa is real because he leaves her a letter propped on the tree each year. How she’s seen the left over cookies the next morning and how he left chocolate chip smears on the napkin she left out and how he dunks his cookies because she saw the crumbs in the glass of milk and how he tracked leaves into the house.

She talked about how all the Santas in the malls aren’t the real Santa because the real Santa doesn’t have time to go sit in every mall. I told her she was right they weren’t the real Santa but they were members of a Santa club and that Santa actually hires each and every one. She was amazed and thrilled when she realized that the mall Santas have actually met the real one. She said that even though she’s never seen the real Santa she knows he’s real because she’s heard the sleigh bells and only Santa has the real sleigh bells.

All those little bastards in school need to shut the hell up. This may be the only year left of Aries believing in the magic of Santa.

I know I have Aries and I have Toddy and the rest of my chosen family all right here. But I can’t help but miss my bio family. I can’t help but acknowledge the emptiness that exists silently inside of me. Everything feels big right now. Not enough time, not enough money, no one to ask me how I’m doing and truly wait to hear the answer.

Again, I know my current state of mind is temporary and it’s entirely possible I’ll have to write another post admitting I jumped the gun. But for now, I’ll get through my day without losing my cool, thanks to this – my blog and your willingness to laugh at my plight. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be laughing with you.