Let the record reflect that I’m not a cat person…hell, I’m barely a dog person and when I found out The Mc had a feline — it was almost a deal breaker. Almost. Her name is Amber and she’s a princess to be sure, which is almost enough to make me love her unwaveringly HOWEVER she and I have a few small issues.

~ She’s needy and insists on interrupting when I’m talking to The Mc on the phone
~ She’s overweight, takes no pride in her appearance and shows no self control at the food bowl
~ She has bootie cleanliness issues

Yeah, little Ms. Thang has quite the dingleberry collection and despite The Mc scrubbing her hamhocks on a regular basis she insists on continuing the hobby.

She also has a habit of doing wind sprints in the middle of the night, which I suspect is just an effort to outrun the dingleberries. She’ll get revved up and haul ass out of the bedroom and down the hall, with claws gripping carpet in a way that’s less than pleasing to the ears. This is usually followed by a trip to the crapper, which is one of those fancy electronic jobs that refreshes the litter 10 minutes after she’s exited. Maybe she does the sprints to pressure her bowels, but I suspect otherwise. I also suspect she hates me.

So last night went something like this:
8:00 – Get to the house, Amber hangs in the living room and eyes me skeptically.
8:15 – We eat, she eats. She’s always eating.
8:30 – We watch TV, she lays on the floor and eyeballs me.
8:45 – I go upstairs and she talks to her dad in a hushed voice about “that lady” taking her spot on the couch again.
9:00 – Attempt to sleep.
11:00 – Amber starts with the wind sprints.
12:30 – She’s trying to eat my pillow.
2:00 – She’s rubbing against one of the bedroom doors banging it on the wall.
3:30 – Now would be a good time for her to have a conversation with herself.
4:00 – More eating my pillow in an effort to get me to leave.
4:45 – Wind sprints.
5:30 – Time to wake everyone up, because the Princess is hungry.

FWIW, those turds were still clinging to her ass this morning when I left. I doubt she’ll ever successfully outrun them.

Originally written many Saturday nights ago and posted without conscious thought after two glasses of wine on an empty tummy the following Wednesday night, I promptly removed this post the next morning. I’m going to post it again, because someone suggested tonight that I write about what I fear in an effort (I think) to help me purge it. Trust is something I fear.

When I test-published this a month ago, it was without inhibition or any obvious concern for the fact that I’ve continually made an effort to keep my “real” life far from these pages and these pixels. There are volumes of words you’ll never see that have fallen clumsily onto a keyboard by way of my heart and hands. This should be one of them, but for inexplicable reasons, it’s now yours. Who knows, it might disappear again within minutes. We’ll see how long my bravery holds.

The sun spent hours attempting to set tonight, far longer than she should have given my impatience. I don’t blame her completely for wanting the beauty of her youth to last, adolescence is precious and she showed her unwillingness to go quietly by reaching her beams out like the arms of a child being torn from its mother’s bosom.

The long shadows that extended beyond the rooftops and the brittle streets seeped silently into my psyche – taunting me. The minutes ticking pulled at my mind like a thick, long, dim hum in my ears I’d failed to notice there until it stopped and the vacancy became abundant and blaring.

Realize that my preference for the peace that comes with the cover of night is a truth I would never expect you to comprehend in the way my soul does. The muted air is tender and soft and I revel in the joy that comes with my intrusion as I cut through it like a razor to flesh. Unwanting, uncaring, unafraid and invincible.

Perched precariously on the edge of an overstuffed chair, biding time awaiting the safety that comes with lack of light, I found my jaw sore and my brow furrowed. I’m grinding my teeth during what should be my resting hours, and have awoken countless times in recent nights to find my arm asleep from having used it as a pillow. With the weight of my cranium cutting off circulation to my limbs (it’s heavy from all the brains, yo) I realize fractions of my body are battling others for power while I continue on in an unconscious world showing black and white mental films of fantasies that bleed into memories. The soul my mind claims for its own is restless and weary, the heart I attempt to deny strains under the weight of its own emptiness and threatens to collapse on itself.

In a display of ruthless irony the universe directed me to spend time winding through a familiar organizational maze in which I uncovered a picture of myself from early in this decade.

It’s been years since I was entangled in the colors that bind my image to this memory. The day this picture was taken, I knew comfort and familiarity. This is what I looked like hours before the hurt, months before I tried and failed to heal, years before I discovered the ability to comprehend or employ forgiveness.

I considered the story as my weight met buckling paving stones with resounding thuds, as I ignored a want or need for grace and focused only on holding my head up and breathing. Breathe. Breathe. Trying to push the memory out through my legs, attempting feebly to bury it deep into the cracks of the sidewalk as the tread of my shoe met it with malicious intent. As if the flex of a muscle or the scream of a joint could silence the mind and prevent it from retelling a tale it would rather forget. It’s a wound that’s healed, but as is often the case, it left numb tissue behind. In the end, the scar is the remainder of the equation we created and this photo is the sum total of what I looked like the last time I believed someone loved me.

Buried somewhere in those words is the answer to the question that was asked of me and somewhere beyond the confines of this screen are the bravery, desire and inspiration needed to face and conquer the fear.

Kissy boo, darlings. A happier post tomorrow, I promise.

In Europe today, it’s all the rage to use models who look like normal people. How sad is it that I even have to type that? “Normal”. Ugh.

The spot I’m thinking of is presented as a diving competition where a guy that’s two bills + does a cannonball and continues on to show azz crack when climbing out of the pool. A hilarious and not-so-subtly pointed message about the link between beer and sex appeal, mocking reality as it were, and the absence of men with smoldering eyes waiting to drop a great line on you because you ordered the right adult beverage…oh and you’re a “10″.

This is the agency supplying “real” models to the studios: http://www.ugly.org

Can I get a WOOT WOOT? Hats off to another advertising trend that doesn’t inspire self loathing.

Real women have curves.

I read an article years ago with Nicole Kidman where she was asked what one thing she would change about herself if she could. The question was offensive to me from “go”, worded the way it was implied she should change something about herself. More than that it implied that in fact there were are a multitude of things to choose from – pick one. As I read on, she completely changed my jealous-of-the-skinny-girl-hope-you-choke-on-your-diuretic opinion of her. I broke out my mental pom-poms and cheered when she answered with grace and documented instead on what she wouldn’t change. Among other things, she listed her “pooch”.

Continuing, the then Mrs. Cruise said that Tom loved it. Tra la, a man with taste. Of course it’s obviously no longer relevant and he’s since proven that he’s completely fucking batty, but whatever. I too have a pooch that no amount of running, sit-ups or starving myself will ever force into extinction. It has its admirers.

I hold this truth to be self-evident: You. Are. Beautiful.

The lost years became the found years, lessons presented in my youth are understood (but still questioned) as the years have evaporated.

This is my log, my spot, my beach, my Sleeping Lady, my milky sky with the sun that won’t set. It’s just at the end of the runway for the Anchorage airport and a place that knows my secrets.

I’d sit here for hours, alone on my chunk of driftwood, watching couples wander up the rocky shore looking for privacy to celebrate their “love”. I’d listen to the planes and imagine the fascinating people coming to our town from exotic places and day dream that one day I’d leave there. I fantasized that maybe one day I’d return, if only to find an emotionally lost teenager on my corroded wood sharing my decade old thoughts. My shadow, gazing out at the edges and waiting for someone to swoop in and rescue her from herself.

I spent a few minutes here during my last night, the minutes ripped by hissing as they grazed the water. It was just long enough to revel in my escape, to ponder my new world without mountains or ocean air in the place where I was reinvented. To think about the heart that hurt then and the heart that hurts still, the challenges associated with things that can never be conquered. To savor the smile emanating from my core and delight in the evolution of self, the long road behind and the longer one ahead.

I’ve made it this far.

Approaching my escape from Alaska to California in my 18th year I was passionate, terrified and eager. I wanted to leave someone behind I didn’t know anymore. I never felt I had to change what was inside, what was still evolving and bursting forth – only what was outside. I knew deep down despite the comfort and familiarity of “home” I couldn’t be my most raw, real self if I didn’t push, if I didn’t run, if I didn’t rebel against complacency.

I knew loss, I didn’t know change.

I’m frightened of a good many things, most of which are on my list of “to do’s” because with out the terror and the rising above it and the championing what lies only in my head…I am without. Minus conquering the trepidation I am inadequate and incomplete and useless to anyone else, never mind how useless I am to myself.

“The easy thing and the right thing are rarely the same”
-Rep. Jeremy Fischer

I built a mini-life in California before my adventure eastward, prior to tearing it all apart and trying again at 21. Before doing it over – better.

The years between home and halfway home have been full of daring adventures, devastating heartache and overwhelming hope.

This is the dream I have for you. That you will find what challenges you, fills your heart, threatens to break you and ultimately assists your evolution to the unleashing a new, improved you.

Your heart has stopped as if it were holding a breath of its own, awaiting the break. Gently, quietly remind it to beat. Maybe it won’t shatter after all. Maybe the truths will bring you closer to your dreams, instead of breaking them.

The pitter pat we’re inherently greedy for is unsurpassed when it finds you. Just as clean and pure as our need to take deep breaths of fresh air, those sensations we feel initially in our youth at the touch of our first love.

Remember those sensations? The first time in some semblance of adulthood when we realized our need to be touched, to be comforted, to have a bond and a connection with someone else? The bravery involved in taking the hand of your sweetheart – it brought that punch of adrenaline, that shot that coursed through you making you feel alive in a way you didn’t know you could? The first time someone told you that you were beautiful – and you believed them?

We spend near the remainder of our days trying to recapture that feeling.

There’s a fraction of it in every new encounter and if we’re truly lucky, we find someone who brings those feelings back over and over and over again. The one you can goof off with in the grocery store, wrestle with at home, curl up with and read together on a lazy weekend, or say nothing at all to and just revel in the closeness.

Maybe it’ll happen for you now. If it doesn’t, it’s not punishment…it only means that there’s something even more perfect for you around the bend. Wait for it, lean on your friends, and count your blessings.

A good friend of mine asked me last night over dinner what one thing someone should know about me if they’re being invited into my life.

I guess the truth is, I’m a hopeless romantic – a visionary. I give my heart freely, probably too freely; and those receiving it are rarely aware that it’s happening. I believe in the good in people. I see it when others don’t, and I celebrate it. Even where the masses might, I fail to hold grudges or anger or resentment. We all make mistakes, we all require forgiveness. I’m a tiny person, and that would be a lot of toxic baggage to lug around.

I live in fantasy land.

True enough, I’m a ruthless wiseass, have a twisted and despicable sense of humor that frequently borders on crude and I talk like a sailor. I laugh incessantly at physical humor even when it’s not supposed to be humorous i.e. others in physical pain. I’m oftentimes self-deprecating and randomly sarcastically self-avowed.

It’s all protective coating.

Over coffee on Saturday my landlord asked me where I got my sense of humor. It was a rhetorical question but it got the wheels spinning. I suppose it was The Boys – the Original Boys – my brothers. Picking, mocking, and yet somehow always defending. I developed a thick skin, an immunity to the jabs and the digs that would bring other girls to tears. Clearly I learned to enjoy it, it was our bond, and eventually I became a pro at giving it back. Then of course there was my father who told absurdly horrible jokes which we lovingly refered to as “groaners”. Three or four minutes of waiting for the punch line and all you could give him was “ohhhhh that was awful”. He would just laugh, pleased with himself and we would invariably laugh right along with him.

So the answer is this: deep down, beyond the banter and the wit, lies a little Irish girls heart. It’s well hidden, but poorly guarded.