This Year's Get-Away

You thought I’d forgotten about the annual group retreat, didn’t you?

HA! Like I would do that to you…

Not only have I not forgotten, I’m actually planning something a little special this year.

I’m going to rent this big, gorgeous house, with the big, gorgeous porch looking out over a… well, not so big - but hugely scenic - body of water. There’s a lawn large enough for croquet, pine trees for the wind to murmur through, wicker chairs to relax on, a boat, and even a dog!

See? 

Perfection.

Who’s with me?

Anyhow, that’s another year of February Fragments done and dusted.

Thanks for coming along for the ride - hope to see you back here soon!

Wish List

For no particular reason, except that I’ve been bingeing on Mary Beard videos lately…

(Altho', if anybody can find one of the
"When I Grow Up I Want to Be Mary Beard"
t-shirts, I'll trade for that!)

Uh, Yeah, No.

Once upon a time, I was informed, ummm, mid-romp shall we say, that there was a time and a place for humor, but during sex was NOT that time or place.

Obviously that killed that mood because, clearly, I don’t subscribe to that philosophy.

Neither, thankfully, does BG:

"God, I love mauling your tits! 

But I can’t spank you AND maul them both…

Next time, I’m going to bring an extra arm!

…stop laughing - I am…!"

Because I Like It Wednesday

Text Snippet #829

Jz: […] then BG said, "let's sashay out of here"... 

and I asked, "Oooh! May I actually sashay?" 

           "If you must, sure"

SP: and did you?… 

I love it when you sashay… you do it so beautifully.

Jz: Actually, no, I did not. 

I was not dressed appropriately, so it would have lacked effect.

SP: ah yes. 

Sashaying without the proper flowy skirt isn’t truly sashaying at all...

Jz: I LOVE your immediate grasp of the essentials!

Tale of A Midwinter Break

It was a typical weekend spent at Thelma’s. As she is a champion organizer, she had planned a chock-a-block agenda for adventure that began nearly the moment I arrived. I was given time to put down my overnight bag and powder my nose but then I was shooed back out the door and into her car.

Our first stop was a “Tropical Tea”. The promotional blurb spoke glowingly of tea and dainties, served amid the warm and sultry atmosphere of a greenhouse. Visions of wicker chairs clustered around low white tables nestled amongst fragrant greenery (all beneath gently steaming orangery windows) danced in our heads.

You know, like this!

Reality, however, was a partially glassed-in room in a hardware store, which contained 7 orchids and about 150 golf-ball-or-smaller sized miniature succulents. The far corner had a folding table set up, upon which sat a thermos of hot water, a box of generic-brand tea bags (no milk or sugar), paper cups (no napkins), and a tin of Danish butter cookies.

To say we were disenchanted would be a masterpiece of understatement.

After a few minutes of hiding our disappointment behind a polite pretense of interest, we took our shattered dreams and tea-less selves off to the next (hopefully better) adventure.

Which was a pop-up market at a local brewery. Neither of us drink beer but there were several very nice artisan stalls and an excellent food truck parked outside. We each made at least one craftsy purchase and snagged a hot beverage to go. We trundled off, happier now that we had experienced at least one proper adventure.

By this point, it was time to head home, with just one last stop at the grocery store to snag the ingredients for dinner. My contribution - a pan of The Worlds Most Amazing Brownies - was already sitting on Thelma’s counter. Of course, when we got home, having been denied dainties as well as tea, we felt it would be appropriate to have a tiny sample of the brownies. “Oooh, yum! Perhaps just a bit more…”

We took the entire pan (and a knife) with us into the living room, where Thelma proclaimed her intention of going back out after dinner for an Owl Prowl. You know, that thing where you go traipsing through the woods at night in hopes of perhaps hearing an owl…? Now, I’m not opposed to nature - or owls - but it was stinking COLD outside, and it had started to snow. “That will be even more perfect!” Thelma exclaimed. I was unconvinced.

You wouldn't actually see an owl, however, because you prowl in the dark.

But after all these years of friendship with Thelma, I knew better than to argue with her.

Instead, I remained judiciously silent… and simply passed her the brownies.

Within a half-hour, the brownie pan was soaking in the sink, dinner had been rescheduled to lunch the next day, jammies were donned, a fire was lit, and movies were queued on the TV.

Final score:

Owls: 0

Brownies: 8

Spock Fails To Understand, Too

Kinda goes with the week I had…

And, For Saturday...

While I'm Not Understanding Things...

Many years ago, my parents put in a hedge along the front of our lawn. The bushes are set back several feet from the road, so obviously the mown and maintained grass in front of them must be a public right of way, right?

Now, I'm situated on a blind curve, so I honestly have no objection to pedestrians choosing trespass over becoming an unfortunate traffic statistic. I’m slightly less sanguine about cars that choose to park on that strip but those are mostly yard sale groupies - so it’s both an infrequent occurence and a waste of my breath to yell at someone who’ll likely never pass this way again anyhow. (Locals know enough to park on the side street.)

However, the car that pulled off onto my grass in the midst of a torrential downpour to disgorge a mother and daughter, who BOTH promptly hiked up their skirts before squatting on my lawn, did manage to raise actual ire.

First, that's just plain socially unacceptable. 

Second, you JUST passed several hundred feet of uninhabited woodland AND a river - could you not have stopped there, where you could be privately uncouth? 

Finally, do you really think the woman standing in the window 20 feet away, looking aghast, doesn’t notice that you’re peeing on her lawn? 

More Things I Don't Understand

How this seems like a good idea...

“Hey! I’m gonna get a checkerboard ukelele and play "TipToe Thru The Tulips" to a tiger!”

Anyone…?

Snippet #93

I was listening to a podcast about "The Tempest" and got laughing at an observation made by one of the panel, that "some of [its] more ambitious speeches seem to crumble beneath their own ambitiousness."

I laughed, because all I could think was, "Hey, I've written posts like that, myself!"

Except my posts never turn out to be timeless art… 

Evolution

Crews Of The Snark

(apologies to Jack London but I couldn’t help myself)

I was in discussion with some friends and we were giggling over how much fun it is to be snarky… Yet somewhere inside my head, warning bells were going off. It’s true that I love snark - because to be successful, it has to be witty, a thing greatly to be desired in my world.  

The problem with snark, however, is that, like any form of sarcasm, it is a dangerous creature. Snark is addictive - an escalating kind of game we play with ourselves, always trying to top the last “Good One!” Snark doesn’t require an audience - in fact, I think many of us snark simply to amuse ourselves.

But we don’t keep it to ourselves, do we? 

Rather, we let our amusement override our judgement - opening our mouths and loosing our edgy brilliance upon the world. A world that may very well not be nearly as amused by it all as we are. With reason… because by that time, we’re often bordering on (if not downright waist-deep in) cruel - completely violating the primary precept of my mama: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

Even if we do get lucky and not offend everyone in the immediate vicinity, snark is still an unholy proposition. Because, really, is “amusing but cruel” truly the image we want to project?

Around the same time as the snark discussion, BookMan & I were chatting and I was describing some event or other that I found fairly irksome. (No idea what - the possibilities are too vast…) Now, the wonderful thing about friends like BookMan is that they see my flaws and love me anyhow - so I don’t need to police my thoughts... or muzzle my mouth. I wasn’t on a rant, precisely, but I was uninhibitedly voicing the inner dialog that, in other company, I will generally deem best kept to myself. 

The next thing I knew, BookMan was bent over with uncontrollable giggles. When he finally caught his breath, he gasped out, “You are so… terribly funny … when you’re being… unkind!”  And off he went, into further paroxysms. 

Of course, I giggled right along with him. 

And while I would love to tell you that his comment stopped me short, it didn’t. 

I was being unkind but we were both having fun… and it was in private, after all.

Still, I’m pretty sure I disappointed my mama…

Nothing To Do With Anything

It just makes me laugh.

Saturday Morning Truth

Which, of course, I won’t be able to manage until I’ve had my coffee, 

but right after that, I’ll be on it, by golly!

Enter the Dragon

Big day yesterday. My Christmas present finally arrived... with BG hot on its heels.

Yep.

It came

   We saw

      (I came)

         It conquered.

holy moly.
Just... Holy. Moly.

Who knew you could get JBF hair from a dragon?!?

So, in 24 hours, I’ve gone from not being entirely certain about this purchase...

...to already saving my pennies for the next. :-D

A girl and her dragon.

Happy Valentine's Day, indeed! 

(actual sticker included with my present)

Oh, Yeah

OK, so in this respect, maybe I am a size queen!

What'cha Readin' Wednesday

Subtitled, “How I Fell in Love With Roxane Gay”

This one isn’t a book, it’s just a quote - but what a quote!

“Don’t flirt, have sex, or engage in emotional affairs with your friends’ significant others. This shouldn’t need to be said, but it needs to be said. That significant other is an asshole, and you don’t want to be involved with an asshole who’s used goods. If you want to be with an asshole, get a fresh asshole of your very own. They are abundant.”

Admit it - you’re in love with her now, too, aren’t you?

(And yes, I’ll be reading this book soon!)

That is Roxane Gay Lists 13 Rules for Female Friendships

excerpted (I believe,) from her book, “Bad Feminist”… 

I’ll confirm or deny after my library hold comes in! 

Can I Get An "Amen"?!?

Snippet #86

He’s a dominant - one simply cannot tell him what to do. So I don’t. 

I am an independent cuss — telling me what to do doesn’t usually work out too well, either. (I’m talking big picture items, not the minor details of our interaction, like “Be Naked”, “Have dinner ready at 6:30”, or “Swirl that tongue!”) So he generally skirts directives, as well.

It’s not the kind of D/s that most of my blogosphere cohorts seem to desire… to the point that it took me a while to accept that our style of dynamic actually was valid. Yet D/s comes in as many shapes and sizes as love itself. That my way doesn’t work for you doesn’t make it less real for me - or vice versa.

A Girl Can Dream...

Segue Saturday

Because really, what else could follow yesterday’s post?

"I had the weirdest dream..."

Of Quotes and Quibbles

I have this e.e. cummings quote that I’ve been wanting to use… but when I'm blue, it strikes too close to home - and the rest of the time, it's a misleading representation of my mental state. Yet, I still love the darned thing.

So there I was, sorting through all my “snippets & drafts” folders and I unearthed this piece that I’d written a while ago. It got dropped because I generally don’t stay in a funk for too long and when I’m not in one, the last thing I want to do is publish a mopey piece.

And yet… (she muses, looking from the draft to the e.e. cummings quotation and back…)

Two birds, one stone. I love February.

*****************************************************

I periodically go through phases of feeling fairly disposable. This is not a surprising rollercoaster ride for any perpetually single, never-married-or-mom’d older woman... but that still doesn't mean I have to like it! Which I don't, by golly.

Because feeling disposable sucks.

It's worse than simply being "unwanted". Unwanted hurts, to be sure, but still feels a little less personal, I think. With unwanted, you can still cling to the comforting possibility that you're not lacking, you're just "not the right fit" - Which is disappointing, but not devastating.

Even “replaceable” (tho’ not a pleasant descriptor in and of itself) isn't as bad. It somehow lacks the whiff of disdain you get from “disposable”, with it’s hint of “used kleenex” stank. Replaceable implies there's value you appreciated enough to replicate - disposable just can't hit the trash can soon enough.

*sigh*
Yep, I got them Skanky Tissue Blues.

Ain't it grand?!?

A Little STEM Humor

I originally snagged this for Tiny Woman but I think it needs a wider audience.

Perhaps I Won't Bet The Farm...

Digging through my folder of old drafts and false starts, I unearthed this - the "here's what I want" part of a dating profile I was toying with back in that Year Without BG. It was mostly a means of venting - and it's irrelevant at the moment, of course... but it still amuses me as an experiment in candor.

Think I'd get any bites?

*****************************************************

Now we come to "what I’m looking for in a guy"...

Well, you're bright, have a good sense of humor, and the ability to see the big picture. 

I am pretty flexible about most of the rest... except for the parts where I'm an absolute hard-ass.

Namely...

1- If you’ve been married, don’t talk to me until the ink’s been dry on your divorce papers for at least a year.
In extraordinary circumstances, I might give you a 5-day grace period and make it 360 days.
That's as low as I'll go, however. Don't push it.

2- I’m not into velcro relationships.

  Don't propose to me on the first IM. 

  Don't call me your girlfriend on our second date. 

Either will send me screaming into the night. 

A mutually supportive relationship is great - being your crutch is not.

3- I am NOT interested in seeing (or hearing about) any of your male parts until such time as it might be pertinent. Which is never before I've met you in person. 

Let me repeat: Never. 

4- Nor do I expect impertinent comments about any of my own parts. You do not know me well enough for that… nor will you ever if that’s the approach you take. Choose wisely.

5- Along the same line, don't pursue me simply in hopes of getting lucky… Odds are not in your favor. 

     You know how some people believe that any sex is better than none at all? 

  I'm not one of them.

  I'd rather read. 

(And if you’re tempted to boast to me of your aptitude, be warned that I consider that sort of talk a sure-fire sign that you rarely surpass “adequate”. So spare us both that adventure in awkwardness, ok?)

In the unlikely event that you're still reading this profile and find yourself intrigued, I hope to hear from you.
I enjoy a man who likes a challenge. :-) 

From My Inbox

An email from my cable company, subject header:

       “Jz, you might need tissues for this…”

My first thought?

       “Oh, they must have moved to electronic billing!”      

Alternate Versions, #21

One of the truest memes out there…

Transporter Malfunction?

There is absolutely no rhyme or reason for this one except that I think it is stinking brilliant...

Well done, unknown creator, well done!

February Fragment Frenzy

I have never gone into a February Fragments as woefully ill-prepared as I’m entering this one. Ordinarily, by Jan 30th, I have a nice little schedule of options all mapped out and am composedly waiting for the month to begin. 

This year, Jan 31st found me screeching through the door at 8 pm, going “Holy Hell, it starts tomorrow and I’ve done NOTHING to prepare!”

So this month may be even more of a choppy ride than usual.

I suggest you hang on tight and keep your dramamine handy.

Altho' I think we can manage a fairly smooth Day One, with this very "me" sort of giggle...