Nothing says sexy like coming home to this scene.

Is there any one thing your partner does that you wish maybe they didn’t? Even the teenciest bit?

PS It’s not the TP thing, it’s the making me think about him doing stuff.

…on the princess scale. I’m outraged.

Let me back up.

Last year I took three friends – who knew little of each other – on a road trip. We drove south 5 or 6 hours (who can keep track when you’re knitting?) to Jekyll Island and a magical, mystical, friendship cementing, chickens in trees and skinny dipping place called The Hostel in the Forest. During a lazy afternoon of reading on our bellies on a near desolate beach, we dipped ourselves in the ocean.

NOTE TO MEN: look away now.

It was during that dip and chattering over the waves and newfound buoyancy that the topic somehow turned to my needing to roll up the beach to the cabana for a check-in/swap out of a female variety. Problem was that we’d hustled away from the hostel (before chores, me thinks) and I hadn’t…ya know…packed properly. One of the girls couldn’t offer me assistance because she’s a member of the Diva Cup cult, and another couldn’t because she hadn’t packed anything – didn’t need to. The last of my wee little piggies offered her stash of OB.

Now let me just say that as much as I love the earth, I do not love jamming my own appendages in my girlie places. The other alternative involved a cardboard applicator…to which I replied something along the lines of “I have a sensitive vagina.”

Alright. It wasn’t along those lines. It was that line.

The line was noted in our book of fabulous one-liners for which we’d always remember our retreat and though amusing, I’d mostly forgotten it.

Until tonight.

I met up with said Queen of Cardboardandfingerjamming and a few friends tonight after work for a little adult giggletude. They’re her friends, really, a circle I’ve been invited to join time and again (and loved every minute of it!) but nonetheless, her friends first.

One of these friends (who may or may not remain NAMELESS) and my gal-pal apparently had an interesting conversation when we returned from our grand tree hugging adventure to the Georgia Shore, starting somewhere near my sensitive vagina and ending with their having rated all their friends on a Princess Scale – where they were the happy medium.

My vajayjay combined with my blogging apparently ranks me as a 6 on the princess scale – which – returning to my original point – I find appalling.

I consider myself something of a no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners, say-it-like-it-is, hard-and-fast, hike-camp-dig-sweat, morse-code-dashing kinda gal. In real life. A solid 3. I’m a tomboy for cryin’ out loud. I don’t buy designer clothes or wear make-up or spend a lot of time on my hair (all other considering factors on the weighting scale).

It’s only here in the safe embrace of the faceless interwebs or with close friends that I let the other side out. I mean really -I grew up in a house where my mother used code like “BM”, and “TP”. I still can’t bring myself to use real words when I go to the doctor and tell them I don’t feel well. I CRIED at my doctor years ago when he suggested a colonoscopy while I was awake. I cry at commercials. But that’s for me and my loves and not for the whole world. Not for consideration in the running for This Circle of Friends Next Top Princess (which I was really in no danger of winning).

So there’s the rambling story and my ranking and now I want to know – if I’m ground zero, if I’m the neutral 5 on myveraown princess scale – based on what you know about me – where would you rate me? Where would you rate yourself?

I didn’t hear the phone until the third ring. My eyes opened, I was suddenly aware of how hot I was, how dark it was, that there was a cat on my head and that it was way too late/early for my phone to bee ringing. Where was my phone?

I shuffled to what can only loosely be called the dining room – since it’s really just one big room and the dining room table is there. Phone located. Man it’s dark.

It’s not entirely unusual for the phone to go off in the middle of the night. I encourage everyone I know to call if they need a ride, regardless of time. My oldest brother (not the one I frequently type about here) tends to ring after a night out, and just last week text messaged me twice at 4am on Saturday. I expected it to be my him.

I look at the screen and the number is just a number. A local number, no name associated. Someone calling from jail? I answer just as the call rolls. Too slow.

I grumble and call the number back.

A nearly incoherent man/woman answers. “You call me.” The inflection is indistinguishable. It’s probably a question but comes out as a statement.

“No,” I say, “you called me. Who is this?”

“Who dis,” they say. Great.

“You’re kidding, right? At two o’clock in the morning you’re calling and asking who I am?”

Ugh.

I hang up. I shuffle back toward bed with the phone still in my hand. It rings – it’s the number again. I force it to voicemail. The phone rings again, and again, and again. On the sixth round, I answer. I bark profanities into the phone with sleepy lips and closed eyes. I hang up. The phone rings another half a dozen times before I roll over and say to The Mc “I’m creeped out. You answer it.” He does, dutifully.

It takes him a minute to identify the button he needs to push though his sleepy head. “Who is this?” he says. I can hear the response in the dark “Who dis? You call me.” He asks again. Same response. We listen to the person babble to the silence for a while and finally hang up.

The phone rings again and again and again. I take turns between sending him/her to voice mail, and answering it then immediately hanging up.

I finally turn the phone off at 3am after what I can only estimate as 30+ calls.

We’re falling asleep. The Mc says “you have to report that tomorrow.” I sigh. “To who? Surely this isn’t an issue 911 or even T-Moblile would care about or be able to act on.” I watch TV. I know how this works. Besides, it’s not like he/she is at our door. There’s no immediate threat.

Falling asleep I remember our home number changing a few times when we were kids. I remember it being to evade crank callers who wouldn’t give up, but my memory on that is probably wrong too. What I do know is that I still have all three numbers assigned to us in my head, and I used to tangle them up a lot.

I don’t want to change my number, I don’t want to have to call anyone about it, I don’t want to be creeped out (did he/she just dial at random until someone answered, or did they get my number somewhere – in a trash bin or on a previous utilities recklessly discarded garbage?). Part of me feels the smallest bit sad for whoever that person is and whatever screwed up situation brought them to that point, but more of me feels violated, and that makes Hulk very very angry…and very very tired.

Curious? Want to call and get on that endless loop with me? 404- 671 6112 is the number that kept on giving.

Grayson has figured out how to open the kitchen cabinets.

Okay, so it’s not opening at this point so much as prying the door towards him a half an inch and letting it fall back with a thud, but still.

Genius.

Did I mention he also puts a paw on either side of my neck and hugs me?

Yep. Radness.

Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be so excited. Maybe he’s mutating and I should rename him Andromeda…

“I’ve been a terrible blogger lately” she says. We’re walking to her car, night has just fallen and I always hate to see her go. “Me too” I say with only an instant for reflection on just how bad.

She continues by saying “Life gets so busy, then when I have time to write there so much to catch up on it’s hard to find the beginning.”

Yes, yes.

I know that feeling.

The mental post-it’s I’ve made over the last month plus of things that I wanted to tell you are gone. Maybe thrown in a box with not-so-eco-friendly packing popcorn, maybe overlapped with a post-it that holds my new address, maybe crumpled up and discarded by my synapses for not being that funny/important/significant in the first place.

A month, gone.

Looking forward instead of back, we have the beach. It’ll be our first trip in the Mini (which = ample knitting time…YEAY!), a few short days on the sand with a blip of spa time thrown in for good measure, and a long painful drive back to reality.

Like Seth, I’m also trying to get some reading done both on the way/back and under the sun with the waves lapping at my toes. The bits I’m currently reading aren’t doing anything for me, with the exception of The Last Lecture which The Mc just brought home and will surely just make me cry. Because I’m a crier. It’s what I do.

So do me a favor and either friend up on GoodReads or leave a comment with your mandatory summer reading lists suggestions/demands.

Because really, if I have to go through the exercise of evaluating one more thing from soup to nuts – even what book to read – I’m just going to start slapping people. Hard, at random, and without alcohol. At the very least I’ll threaten it with great passion.

What’s to write about that doesn’t rehash the mundane BS we all plod through? Is there anything as boring as listening (or reading) someone tell you how completely crappy their move was? How they had to make a bijillion trips back and forth and it still wasn’t done? I agree. Let’s skip it.

We’re adjusting to living in several hundred square feet where his inability to fold the hand towel *just so* is a windmill I’m staring at with crazy eyes. To fight or not to fight…when there are bigger windmills on the next knoll.

There are two boxes left to unpack, the contents of which, no doubt, I’ll decide I didn’t need to move in the first place and they’ll get chucked down the trash chute. Procrastination never pays.

I’ve yet to find (or research, really) a recycling center in town, since our new complex has passively shown it’s lack of caring for our sweet dying planet and I now have bags of cardboard, glass and plastic hanging from the pantry door – which does nothing for the aesthetic of our wide open space.

The cats are getting a long better than ever…if only Grayson would not dive bomb us in the middle of the night from the “wall” the bed is up against. Whammo! 3am. Right on The Mc’s groin. Gotta give him points for aim.

The things I missed about the city are coming back in tiny spurts – the sense of community, convenience of everything, even the moving with the intent of sweating (intentionally, with associated attire no less). I’m finally snapping out of my “this isn’t my body – where did this *jiggle belly with wild abandon* come from”-itis and feeling hopeful and impassioned about doing something about it.

I’m this close to being out of debt for the second time in my adult life (woot!), we have vacation planned for week after next, another in the early planning stages, and have shifted our house hunting focus to the likes of condos (which is clearly whacked given the ATL market where condos are as abundant as cellphones and oompa loompas with fake boobies ) because it would mean no yard/chores more time/money for the cabin. We’re still clearly lost with that whole “wtf do we want to do with our lives? What are our priorities? How do we honor them and still leach money off The Man to fund our antics?” thing, but really – isn’t everyone?