Wildness

The mystique of the Wild Woman has been somewhat of a running theme in my life. When I was a little girl, my father used to joke at the dinner table that he was about to go "chase wild women." When I was really young, I actually believed him, and I was horrified that a) MY daddy knew how to chase wild women and b) that he would say so right in front of my mom. As I grew older, I learned that my dad is the truest, bluest man on the planet and the mere thought of him chasing wild women was totally ridiculous. Not that he isn't totally adorable...just that he's too much of a gentleman to know what to do with one if he caught her. I'm pretty sure my mom is enough a handful for him anyway.

My mom is not a Wild Woman, but she is definitely a kick-ass woman in her own right. I've always felt that if I could be half the woman she is, I will be a better woman than most. When my mom gets a hair up her ass about something...well, let's just say it's best to stand back and let her do it until she finishes, fizzles out, or finds something else to tickle her fancy. When she gets in this mode, my dad lovingly refers to her as a "force of nature." Think 'tornado' and you're in the ballpark. One of my favorite examples would be the time she stayed up all night piping little frosting violets onto every single sugar cube for my brother's first wedding. Bear in mind, this brother is a proud member of AA, so the wedding reception had no booze, but lots of coffee, along with probably 500 or so lovingly hand-flowered sugar cubes. I digress.

My mom is a passionate music lover; mostly gospel, blues, and reggae. When I was in junior high, we attended St. Paul's Southern Baptist Church (probably the only black, southern Baptist church in the state of Idaho) just so my mom could hear live gospel music. The city is much more diverse now, but in 1987ish, the only other place in Boise where you might expect to see a non-white, non-hispanic person was on the Boise State football team, and even that was pretty pale. See?

http://varsityb.com/photo-galleries/?album=all&gallery=53&nggpage=3

So anyway, my mom really loves gospel music. When she isn't listening to gospel music, though, she listens to some of the nastiest, raunchiest blues you've ever heard. The nastiest of the bunch has to be Saffire - The Uppity Blues Women. These are middle-aged ladies with no time for innuendo, as evidenced by song titles like Bitch with a Bad Attitude, There's Lightning in These Thunder Thighs, and Silver Beaver (yes, that kind of beaver). It's basically middle-aged divorcee theme music.

Saffire didn't write this song, but they do a bang-up job with it, and it fits my theme nicely, so take a moment and listen to the Wild Woman theme song, Wild Women Don't Have the Blues.  

So, I have made a sincere attempt at being a Wild Woman this summer, but it turns out that I'm not so much a Wild Woman as a Wing Woman. No matter, I've been having a ball. Here are some highlights.

Wild Washington Women's Weekend
My girlfriends and I kicked off the summer with a trip to Chelan. It was a wild weekend at a lovely resort on the lake. The only rules: no kids, no pets, no husbands/boyfriends, and no responsibility. We spent a delicious day tanning on the dock and drinking "yards" of fruity cocktails. I think their "yard" glass was only about 2 feet long, but after drinking 3 of them, I think we can legitimately claim that we drank yards of booze.

 After dinner and a failed attempt at dancing at Chelan's only night club (so gross), we ended up partying back at the hotel with a group of late 20-somethings who were in Chelan for their annual guys' weekend. Correction. Half of the group partied up in the room with the 20-somethings, while I joined an expedition with a mission of accessing the resort's hot tub/pool area. Night-time security guards can be bought, but not necessarily for money. My girlfriend tried to bribe the security guard for pool access with $100, then with $200, and finally with a promise of boob. Guess which one brought him down from the parking garage with key card in hand? I blame the alcohol for this, but somehow my boob ended up being the one offered up. So I let the security guard touch a breast for three seconds and he let us in the pool area. Just to prove how much of a Wild Woman I am not...I swam in my sundress.

 Not long after the security guard let us in, a gaggle of girls (21-ish) scaled the fence on the other side of the pool and started swimming, topless. Guess what the security guard who likes boobs more than money did? Did he kick them out? Of course not. He pulled up a chair and tried pretty ineffectively to keep them quiet while one of them kept yelling "I have teeny tiny titties!" (I'm pretty sure I know why resort security dude chooses to work weekend nights. He probably does this every weekend, right?) We avoided the chaos and silently patted ourselves on the backs for being old and mature enough to keep our tops on.

If being a Wing Woman is about facilitating hookups, then I believe I attained epic Wing Woman status that weekend. Granted, only one of these hookups was intimate, but I think the others totally count as hookups.

• Hookup #1: The hot tub.
• Hookup #2: Towards the end of our day of afternoon drinking, the toilet flooded in our reduced rate hotel room with a view of the parking lot. I called down to the lobby and they sent someone over to jiggle the handle and start mopping. Normally that would have been fine, but I was drunk enough to march down to the lobby and tell the 20 year old behind the counter that there was no way that we should be paying $200 to stay in a toilet-water room. We got moved to a condo with a kitchen and a balcony overlooking the lake. Hooked up!
• Hookup #3: After finally climbing into bed at 4am, one friend and I put our shoes back on and headed out to the beach chairs on the dock so that another friend could invite a 20-something hottie back over to our room for some action. Out on the dock, we wrapped ourselves up in the little hand towels that were laid out on the beach chairs, laughed hysterically about how it was kind of like camping, and waited for the sun to rise over the lake. 
• Hookup #4: Due to different schedules, we had all arrived in Chelan at different times, in different vehicles. I was the first to leave for home on Sunday and was about half an hour out of town when my hot tub friend called me. She was scheduled to stay one more night, but was feeling so hungover that all she wanted to do was go home. I was feeling pretty groggy myself and was grateful to have company for the drive, so I turned around and picked her up. I hooked her up with her own bed that night. What's better than that?

Wilderness

I spent the first week of August in upstate New York for my brother's wedding. It was the most joyous wedding I've ever attended. A few years ago, this particular brother decided to get in touch with our Jewish cultural heritage and started attending a temple. Since his bride is Puerto Rican, their wedding was a glorious mix of both cultures. My mother was employed to bake cakes and she, in turn, employed my cousin and me as her baking assistants, and my sister-in-law's mother as a froster. Remember the frosted sugar cubes? Imagine two days of cake baking mania. She even monogrammed aprons for her crew. Here are the results:

One of the Jewish traditions that they adapted for their own purposes was a tisch. Traditionally, all the men gather with the groom, and all the women with the bride, to tell stories, tease, give advice, and just generally celebrate the honoree. Our tisch was not divided by gender, but along family/friend lines. It started with a passage from the Torah and a discussion of my brother's journey through the wilderness of bachelorhood (and Wild Women!), punctuated with lots of toasts of L'Chaim! By the way, I learned at the tisch that my uncle was the first to bring the concept of chasing wild women into our lives, so Dad is off the hook.

The tisch got me thinking a lot about tradition and community and stuff. I don't quite know how to say this and I think it's funny that this is the first real confession that I feel like I've put on this blog, but I've been thinking about exploring my own Jewish heritage a little deeper than my love of animal print. I've even gone so far as to look up different Reform (obviously, because bacon) congregations in my area. I doubt I'll go any further with it, but it's out there now and, if you know me at all, you know that's just weird. Weird, wacky, wild stuff. It strikes me that going to Temple could be something like a standing date for Friday nights. Who knows - maybe I could even meet a nice Jewish boy who can be corrupted with bacon!

Wild Wild West

Here's one final piece of wildness. I got a chance to chase - well, watch - wild men a few weeks ago. One of my friends and I went to see a western-themed, tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek, male burlesque show. It was SO MUCH FUN! Ladies - you need to go to an all male revue/burlesque. Sure, most of the dancers are gay, but they were delicious and scantily clad and came out into the audience to collect "Buckaroo Bucks" (sold in rolls of 60 for $20 and totally worth it) in their g-strings. Unfortunately, I didn't buy my Buckaroo Bucks until intermission and the second half was short, so now I have a bunch left over. I guess I'll just have to go again the next time they have a show. Yee-haw! 

Another Day

I am currently working on a post about how much crazy fun I've been having in the first month of being forty, but I have to insert this one first because it just threw me a bit off-guard.

So weird. One of the approximately 972 calendars on my phone saw fit to remind me that today is my ex-husband's anniversary. Immediate thoughts:

1. If the calendar knows it's no longer my anniversary, why doesn't it know it's no longer his? 
2. Why can't I locate and edit that calendar?
3. I can tell you exactly what I was doing on this date a year ago, but I would have let today pass unnoticed if the phone hadn't reminded me. How odd that today is just another day.

All the Good Ones...and the Bad Ones Too

You know that saying that all the good guys are gay or married? Well, a recent string of poor judgement calls has me declaring that all the good ones are gay or married, and all the bad ones are unavailable and finding (or being found by) me.

Ladies: Do you have a boyfriend? He might not be cheating on you, but there is an extremely high probability that he is at least thinking about it and/or trying to. Sorry to be so blunt, but you deserve to know. We should stick together. Sisters before misters. Chicks before...you get the point. Ba-dum-bump.

Fellas: When a clueless lady finally realizes that you are coming on to her but she doesn't want to get in yet another awkward situation so she asks you if you have a girlfriend before the petting gets any heavier...um, a fiancee definitely qualifies. This might be your opportunity to save your future marriage, if not your immortal soul. Take it.

I can't claim credit for this, but I totally own it: I am not a Jew. I am Jew-ISH. In a nutshell, I love animal print and shiny things, and I find that the language of my father's people (eastern European Jews) can be particularly descriptive sometimes. Here's your Yiddish lesson. What the fuck, schmuck?!? If you want to commit to being in a relationship with another person, make that commitment. Mazel tov! May you both live happily ever after. If you want to shtup other people, though...just be single. It's not that hard. Nothing pisses me off more than cheating - be it in school, life, or a relationship. And involving me in it?! Feh. The chutzpah! MathMercy's moral compass doesn't swing that way, putz. Oy vey. 

I feel like the poor schnook that is engaged to the putz deserves to know what she's getting into before she says her vows. On the other hand, MathMercy's basic m.o. is to avoid drama in all forms, and it seems like major drama would ensue if I were to track this poor creature down and tell her. What would you do? Would you find a way to warn someone that they are about to marry an unfaithful shmendrik, or would you just let it go and assume that she'll find out on her own?

There are other dating options if I care to pursue them. It seems that when I go out lately, I attract the attention of bouncers. I have a couple calling me for dates but I'm just not interested. So why give them my number at all? Good question, smarty pants. I guess because I'm always flattered when anyone asks, I don't really believe they'll call, and mostly because with cell phones instead of matchbooks it's a lot harder to get away with transposing a couple digits and I'm a terrible liar. So I just put them off for a while, then schedule totally harmless lunch dates, put in a couple hours, and scurry on home.

Another option is to take my dog to a street carnival and have my pick of the ladies. Here is a picture that represents only a fraction of the love that my girl got from random women at last weekend's Georgetown Carnival.

People were actually tracking me down: "Is this Lola? My friend/daughter/sister was telling me about her!" The men who stopped to pet her were from two camps: gay or Schipperke owner (probably married). All the ladies, though, were all over her. Total chick magnet. Lesbian friends: let me know if you need to borrow her for an afternoon. In the meantime, I'm just going to stay home and work on perfecting my meshuggeneh cat lady shtick. Shalom.

My Time

Are you freakin' kidding me? I've only been 40 for a day. Give a gal a minute to settle in.

Screwed, Blued, and Tattooed

The other day, a friend relayed a message to me from her friend, "Pat". Sadly, Pat is an addict who fell off the wagon and will now be serving time for crimes related to her relapse. Although she probably won't be able to read it in prison, she wanted me to know that my blog had kept her going during some of her dark times recently. It's weird to think that my self-indulgent little pastime has any sort of impact on another person, but it makes blogging feel a bit less selfish. If I can bring a smile to someone's face I kind of have to, right? With no further ado, then, here's a post that's all about me, but not in a self-centered way. :)

Kill Blog #5

Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh. Sweet baby girl kitty is inside the house with a rat right now. I hate to say it, but I ran outside, shut the door, and am just waiting for her to put it out of its misery. I saw her in the bathroom next to what I thought was a corpse, but as I grabbed a grocery bag and moved in to pick it up, it dragged itself into an empty t.p. roll (PepPurr's previous toy), which made her all kinds of excited. Now I have a quandary. I'm pretty sure the thing is critically injured but there's no way I can bring myself to finish the job, either deliberately or by slow suffocation in a grocery bag at the bottom of a garbage can. I may be a country girl who has held her share of chickens on the chopping block, but that was a long time ago. Hell, even my dad takes his chickens to a professional "renderer" these days.

As I stood in my tiny bathroom and pondered what to do, PepPurr worked the poor creature out of its hiding place and started to fling it dangerously close to my face, causing me to squeal a little girl and go running out of the house, chasing my dog in front of me.

She just came out the window without the rat. Wish me luck on a quick, clean find. I'm going in.

Update: after a frustrating search with a very excited dog trying to prove the ratter in her bloodline, I finally discovered it on the back of the couch right where I sit. At least it looks like it ended without much trauma. Sigh.

Kill Blog #4 - Survivors

Last night was a long, sleepless night. Difficult as it was for me, it was tougher for the little family that met my monster menagerie. I think I was able to save each one, though. Here's how it went down:

PepPurr. The dog wakes me up at 3:30am. I can hear the bell on my little black kitty's collar tinkling enthusiastically, along with an occasional thud that can only mean one gruesome thing. I let the dog down off the bed, put on shoes and pants, grab a bag from under the kitchen sink, and head to the bathroom to investigate. The dog is losing her little mind trying to see what's happening in the bathtub. PepPurr is sitting in the tub staring at a tiny little bunny rabbit hopping around. I pause for a moment to admire PepPurr's ingenuity at preventing the rabbit from hopping away in the darkness, then swoop in and grab the bunny. I walk across a soaking wet field, deposit it through a hole in the giant fence separating our property from the elementary school and ball field next door, and watch it hop away. Well done, MathMercy. Now back to bed.

Savvy. The dog wakes me up at 4:30am. This is getting old. I have to be up in three hours. A quick inspection fails to turn up cats or any other critters in the house, but the dog is unconvinced. I let her out the back door and start making some tea. A plaintive cry calls me outside, where I discover my big gray cat teasing a little bunny in the grass. Oh yeah, bunnies cry. When I try to grab the rabbit, the cat picks it up and starts hissing and growling. He is often my sweet lover kitty, but Savvy is sixteen pounds of muscle, fang, and claw, and in this moment he is pure hunter. I try unsuccessfully to make him release the bunny and end up watching him carry it over the fence. We repeat this little sequence four or five times over the next 30 minutes. At 5:00 I finally succeed in getting both cats shut inside the house and head back to pick up the rabbit. My dog beats me there and trots off with the bunny. She is much less experienced than the cat, so I have no trouble prying her jaw apart and rescuing the bunny, who is miraculously still alive. I snap a photo, slip it through the fence onto the ball field, and congratulate myself on the second rescue of the night.

Lola. Holy fuck. Are you kidding me? It's 5:30am. It sounds like PepPurr has a bunny in the living room. I put on my shoes and head out, but I find the cat eating cat food and the dog watching me calmly from the couch. Huh. That's weird. I start looking for an abandoned bunny. It takes me a few minutes to realize that Lola is watching me calmly from the couch with a bunny in her mouth. A minute later, Bunny #3 joins Bunny #2 on the ball field. I hope their mama finds them. If she doesn't, though, I am counting on the elementary school kids to take them in.

Losing all that sleep was a pain, but it was nice to be able to rescue something this week. Last week, I realized that I know the sound of Savvy crunching bones, as he dissected and consumed a rodent in the hallway at 7:30am every day Tuesday through Friday. Worst alarm clock ever. I took photos every day, but Thursday and Friday are pretty gross and I prefer the live bunny. No death pictures today!

Spring Blossoms

I was briefly inspired to start converting my room-sized junk drawer back into a reading/sewing/guest room today. I say "briefly" because after about 20 minutes, I opened a box that contained all the journals from back before I decided that, for me, writing journals is little more than emotional self-indulgence.

After spending some time on memory lane, I am happy to report that the journals of my teens and twenties aren't all negative. Don't get me wrong: there is plenty of gloom and angst, but there is also a lot of joy. There is even poetry. That's right. MathMercy used to write poetry, and she is about to share some of it with you.

This poem was inspired by irises, and mine just bloomed yesterday. Finding it today was probably kismet.

The Faintest Scent

Spring is just moments away, 
Waiting. 
Breathless and giddy like a first date, 
Not yet late but hesitating 
So as not to seem too eager. 

Never one to give Them exactly 
What They Want, 
She hints at just enough 
To keep Them clamoring for more. 
Spring waits outside the door. 

A sigh heard faintly through the willow, 
Spring whispers.  
(Don't weep, my dear. I'm here.) 
She leaves just the faintest scent on pillows, 
Enough to open windows 
To invite her in. 

Springtime is my sin. 

I had put this poem on Poetry.com back in 2000 or 2001, so I was mildly surprised and amused to find that not only does Poetry.com still exist, but so does my poem. Let that be a lesson to you, kiddos. The internet is your permanent record. No matter how well you think you've hidden it, all of your future boy/girlfriends, college admissions boards, and future employers will know that you used to write poetry (gasp).

Incidentally, I'm not surprised if you don't know the scent of iris. Irises have a delicious honey aroma that will make you melt, but they don't like to broadcast it. You basically have to get right in there and risk walking around with pollen on your nose. You won't care, though, because you will be drunk on the scent of paradise. Drink it in and let springtime be your sin.

Kill Blog #3

This rat was whole when I went to the bathroom. When I came out a few minutes later...it wasn't. At least I have definitively solved the mystery of what happens to the missing rodent parts: He eats them. When I moved him away from the guts so I could clean them up, he just moved to the body and started (gag) crunching bones.

Kill Blog #2

They produce a lot less blood and gore than your typical rodent, but dead birds are still lame because their little downy feathers get everywhere.  I think this little birdy just had his little birdy heart ripped out.

Damn it. I just swept and mopped that floor yesterday, psycho!

I should have suspected the kill would be waiting for me in the hall when I woke up to a pile of lovey pets on the bed. Homicidal kitty cats get really affectionate when they have death on the breath.