Money well spent

When a rock-climbing 27-year-old hottie hardbody (yes, yes, it’s the Captain) called my breasts “gorgeous” this weekend, in a playing-doctor scene that really should have given my almost 38-year-old self some serious body anxiety . . . well, I have to admit, it made the $10K I spent on that reduction a few years ago totally worth it. I promise, I will never again complain and get all insecure that they’re a teeny bit lopsided.

But what about B, you might ask? Well of course I’m thrilled when he admires me as well. But he’s not objective. And just because I felt validated by the Captain does not mean I don't also appreciate it when it comes from B; it’s just that I was prepared for the young hardbody to be a harsher judge, so it was a very pleasant surprise.

Oh, calm down. It's okay, B knows all about it. He let me play out some lingering distractions as I conquer my long-standing commitment-phobia. This unexpected hook-up with the Captain came after two years of flirtatious IMs and racy text messages that I never thought would ever transcend the typed word.

Sample exchange #1:
Captain: Why are you wearing panties? Why aren’t they around your ankles?
Maggie: Because I’m getting cash from the ATM

Sample exchange #2:
Captain: It’s hot and I’m in bed. Are you naked yet?
Maggie: Nope, playing Scattergories with my roommate.
(Later I fed the cat, too.)

Oh Captain *My* Captain

I knew that national sympathy case Alicia Sacramone was a local, but I didn't realize that the gymnastics team captain was my local, from my very hometown!

Chin up, Alicia. You've done great things, and although the international spotlight sucks at the moment, we all remember your victories too!

Some things you just can't Twitter about

...even if what you want to say is perfectly expressed in under 140 characters:

"At bedtime, the still-rumpled sheets were a sweet reminder of the afternoon's indiscretion."

Oh, Captain, my Captain!

So first off, I've begun to think descriptively, to capture moments, in Twitter bites. This is sad, and really bad for my writing muscles. For example, the post above is a pale shadow of what I thought of last night, but refrained from Tweeting (thank God I still have a little bit of decorum left, and have not gone full-on We Live In Public quite yet). I can't remember the good structure that floated through my head last night, and my writing is just too rusty to come up with something equivalent or better.

Next oddness, when I decided to blog this instead of Tweet it, I autopilot logged on to Twitter anyway. Twitter has infiltrated my brain way more insidiously than I'd realized.

Thirdly, in the time I've been away, Blogger has gotten really hard to log onto! Annoying (though they do have a new "Monetize" tab that I might want to check out...)

You know what else is annoying? A clearly dominant personality who claims he wants to be dominated, but could never let go. And there's something else I'm rusty at, as well; I've totally lost the skills and was unable to keep him in line. Sigh, I've got a lot of work to do to get back on track.

PS: that link above talks about way more than just the "We Live In Public" project, so I don't want to give it short shrift. The end of empathy is something I've felt, ironically but most noticeably, since 9/11. Almost as if true feeling and connection has been replaced by the Cliff Notes version. Maybe this is another aspect of my Twitter-ready mind right now, and something else I'd like to work on more. But I think that will deserve a post all on its own. For now, let me just say that I agree with pretty much everything Jason said up there...

Riding the single woman zeitgeist

To summarize, a few things about me --

• I canceled an engagement when I was 21, because I thought the guy wasn't stable enough to build a family with. (oh, by the way, his wife and five-year-old son seem to think he's doing a fine job these days.)


• I dumped a guy when I was 25 because I was intimidated by his family wealth. Also, I thought he didn't believe in marriage and didn't want kids. Last I heard, he's still married to the woman he got pregnant two months after we broke up. They have at least one other kid.


• I thought the series finales of both Friends and Sex and the City were ridiculous, because the most recent reuniting of the couples gave me no reassurance that they woudn't break up again as they had countless times before.


• I am currently trying to conceive a baby with donor sperm -- I have another insemination attempt scheduled for tomorrow -- because I am 37 and unmarried.


• I have a sweet boyfriend who is a good man and adores me, but I refuse to marry him because of religious and philosophical differences, but also because I'm just not feeling it in my gut.


• My Dances-with-Wolves-style Indian name is Paralyzed By Indecision


• I recently watched the movie Say Anything

Despite all these facts, it might surprise you to know that I did not write this article.

But I could have, clearly. Not only that, I should have (why am I not writing more?).

I also should have read this article several years ago, when it still might have done me some good.

Recently, the Lumberjack, the Captain, and a former boss have all put the moves on me in some way or another. It really doesn't help an indecisive type such as myself to be all "strong bidder" like this, when really I should just settle (down) and get married, already.

Sigh.

Shades of Bridget Jones

On Saturday, I felt a bit like dear Bridget when the neighborhood women and I gathered to ooh and ahh over the newest baby on the street. Cameron's mom got married in her late 30s after a marathon of internet dating, and then needed fertility intervention to have her two kids. The other women, moms all, got married very young and had less than no trouble getting pregnant (more like trouble preventing their pregnancies).

The Young Moms swooned over the baby. Then they started joking about how their ovaries hurt, and speculating on the baby boom that Cameron's arrival would trigger in the neighborhood. Because, you see, everyone can have babies, right? Why, certainly, no one in that very room has had trouble getting pregnant, right? Definitely not half the women in the room at that very moment, RIGHT?!?!

On the verge of tears, I got up to leave. Cameron's mom saw the look on my face and quickly tried to change the subject to something more encouraging and less... insensitive.

"Maggie, I meant to tell you! Remember my friend Camille, the one who had her son by insemination? She's engaged!"

Apparently this friend of hers, who had a child on her own three years ago when she was 39, has been swept up in a whirlwind romance with a 35-year-old she met through work. He loves her, he loves her son, the son is already calling him "Dad," and they're getting married in May.

At which point the traditionally more cluelessly insulting (truly, I don't think she means to be hurtful, I think she's just an idiot) Young Mom chimed in:
"Ooh, it's like some urban myth from Sex and the City; you always hear about women who get married in their 30s but you know they don't really exist. But now you actually know one, so maybe there is hope after all!"

I left. Cam's mom left with me, and let me have a good cry on the sidewalk before I went home. Seriously, it's like a scene from Bridget Jones, where the Smug Marrieds treat us like a different species or something.

Maybe I need more "Sex and the City" after all, and less Bridget. Certainly New York Magazine thinks this is a fine time for Singletons in New York.

Hmm, and George wants to see a movie tonight, how interesting....

(Also, the Captain checked in on me last night, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with marriage and babies, in any order.)

Libertine

There has been a liberation. Free at last and all that jazz.

No, I don't really feel that good about it yet. The parts of today when I wasn't actually in tears, I wanted to be, but put on the brave face to be polite (in drunken company). Thank God for Eighties Dave, who perfectly called at just the right moment for me to cry on his shoulder. And that's fine; I need to cry more anyhow. Also spread the wealth among the many fine sturdy shoulders available to me, not lean on Von quite so much.

Things have changed, finally, in the PN firmament. Shaken up. Even Catmandoo isn't mooning around all lovesick and predictable anymore. Time has come for me to fall into step with the Revolution. I'm going to cast my attentions on someone who deserves them, like maybe the Captain. After all, if that Tarot card reading is going to come true, I need to be a good girl between now and August. Less aspiration, more appreciation.

Funny, before I started writing, I thought I had wittier, pithier things to say. So much for a 4 a.m. miracle; maybe I'll try again in daylight.

And yes, I know that's not what "libertine" means; call it poetic license.

Want, want, want

Oh, how I wish I had picked these up when I was down in NYC this past weekend. If anyone was looking for a gift idea for me, you could grab me a handful of these.

(I also wish I had someone to share them with, so to speak. Been thinking about the Captain again lately, not sure why though...)

Update! They give them out at my old stomping ground, Buttermilk. Dave, next time you're down there, will you please grab me a, um, fistful?

Beware the fucking Ides of March

I have an ancestor who was a general in Julius Caesar's army. It must be his blood; I always have trouble on the Ides.

And the day is living up to the terrible expectations:

• After a crappy date (he didn't even know what the Ides of March is), I fell asleep on the couch, as Siena needed some cuddling. Woke up at 6:45 this morning
  
• Went to bed because I feel it's important to spend some time in my bed each night. Overslept.
  
• Went straight to the paper, as I didn't have time to stop by my office first. Parked in front as
  
  
  1. I don't work there and I am allowed to use that guest parking
     
  2. I was only going to be there for 20 minutes.
  
  Regardless, I got yelled at by the front desk guy, who threatened to have me towed because I didn't park in back.
  
• Calendar staff got mad at me because their work is STILL not exporting correctly into the website. Like I'm not already miserable about this and have been trying to get it fixed for months-- now they're yelling at me too?
  
• Late for meeting with traffic folks, my car got ticketed, and I was cranky during the meeting. But I pulled it together, and was charming enough that they want to give me a helicoptor ride.
  
• New seating chart has me sitting next to the guy who makes the wierd bird noises. I am appealing it to HR.
  
• The mammogram department has been trying to reach me for two days; they finaly caught me just now. They found a cyst and need me to go back and make sure everything's normal. Which it will be, I'm not worried, just annoyed. More of my time getting used up. At least they're very nice.
  
• I want the Captain, tonight (he claims to owe me a spanking; how nice to not have to be the one in charge). But haven't heard anything from him today, and he hasn't flirted since last week. Considering how things have been going today, I'd say it's not the day for a bold move on my part.

That said, I am surprisingly chipper. And so looking forward to Chez Henri tonight!

Lollapalooza 2008 : Westward to Chicago!

I had such a great time last year, I'd like to make it an annual trip. Captain's going too; he helped make last year's trip such a blast.

But hey, it's a big place, there's room for more if you want to come! We've missed the early-bird super discount, but advance-sale tix are still available.

Come on, come on! So much fun!

Perky

When I started at this job, I figured there would be perks. Merch sent to the office, free tickets to concerts and shows, stuff like that. But I didn't know how it would work, having never been the beneficiary of perks before.

A few weeks after I started, there was a sold-out show I wanted to see. I asked the Captain how I could get tix. He scoffed and said I had to earn my stripes before I got free stuff (he was always a little big for his britches). Then, once the editorial staff moved to the other office, the flow of goodies into our space dried up to nothing.

Well well well, now I coordinate the events calendar, so I keep getting invited to events. And last night, I finally went to one. What fun a press night is! I highly recommend you attend if you get a chance. (Even if you don't go for press night, you should still see The 39 Steps; it was great! It's headed to Broadway once the Boston run is over; consider yourself forewarned.)

The real goodies, however, are over at the paper. There's this shelf over in the newsroom where all the unwanted swag gets dumped, free for the picking. When the CDs show up, I never know what to take, because I can't tell a good CD from bad just by looking at it. And you know that the original recipient of the CDs is keeping all the good ones anyway. But last week, someone dumped a bookcase worth of books on the shelf. Books, I know from books. And the editor can read a good book, be done with it, and then share it for others. I walked away with armfuls of reading materials.

Then I worried -- is there a protocol to these giveaways that I'm not aware of? Should I have limited myself to one or two books, instead of one or two dozen? When I finished reading the first book, I brought it back to the shelf, and it was quickly snapped up. Hmmm...

Today I spied Demeter, six different bottles from their "fragrance library":
Orange Cream Pop
Baby Powder
Suntan Lotion
Pumpkin Pie
Play-Doh
Bonfire

I browsed, I sniffed, I sprayed. I was intrigued by Play-Doh, but thought it more likely that I would actually wear Suntan Lotion. And after the soul-searching dilemma of the books, I certainly didn't want to be greedy and take two.

As I sniffed Bonfire (phew!), I wondered if Haneway, or maybe Auntie Amanda, would like the Play-Doh. And then my superpower (A Line Forms Behind Me^tm) caused me trouble, as it always does... Someone came up, started sniffing, and took Play-Doh!

Doh!

She asked if it was okay, because I had been there first. But I was still trying to decide, and it seemed ridiculous to take what she wanted when I'd already had the chance.

Bonus, though, is that she took two, so then I felt it was okay to take two myself. Suntan Lotion and Baby Powder, baybee! Now I can smell clean even when I'm not!

Haneway and Manda, I'm really sorry if either of you did want the Play-Doh. I'll keep an eye out for other goodies for you in the future. Any interest in some books?

PS: Let me assure you that I would never wear this fragrance, nor this, though I am totally intrigued by them. Unfortunately, they weren't included in the press pack. Neither was the surrealist option.

Spanking is the theme of the day

This morning, I awoke with a start from a dream where the Captain was spanking me for being late on a writing deadline. (Good thing too, because not only am I late for a writing deadline, but I was also oversleeping at the time that the dream awoke me.)

This afternoon, Gawker addressed the spanking-or-child-abuse debate in their typically thoughtful manner.

I love it when Gawker plumbs my subconscious for clues to the Zeitgeist.