Effing Rant

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! If I had paper--newspaper, preferably--just lying all around me I would tear it. I would rip it just into shreads. I am so angry and frustratedandconfusedandsadandrejectedandstupid.

I am just BUSTING. I could just BUST. I want to shriek and make a scene and throw things and sob. And instead, I sit at my desk, passive-aggressively excising my demons to almost no one. Very therapuetic, clearly.

Last night was one of the most fun, energizing, positive nights I have had in a long time...for the most part. EditorFriend--name going unsaid for privacy reasons, but those in the know, know--was invited to the Grand Opening of the new Brazilian steakhouse downtown and let. me. tell. you. Holy crap. If the service and the artichoke hearts and the lamb chops and key lime pie and house Malbec are always that good, they should just fill in the "Cause of Death" right now: gut bust.

Nene was two tables away (He is SO big. SO big. And since I was strictly verbotten--rightly so--from playing the starstruck fan-girl card, I decided that earning a silent appraisal was the best I was gonna get. Maybe. So I sashayed my super-star strut right up to the salad bar past him and his equally unusually tall-sized lady and might, just MIGHT have gotten a once over. Yay me. NBA eye candy. Life-goal: Check.) Mayor Hickenlooper did a loop.

Not to mention the superior quality of our own company. A certain co-magaziner or two, both of whom I entertain on-and-off crushes on, attended and we laughed so hard, and the general atmosphere was one of such bouyant delight that my face actually hurt from smiling and I think my nipples were hard for a decent part of the evening--Pardon the crassness, please.

I mean really, it was not a single moment of delight. There was not one thing that was amazing. I was in an unwavering, overwhelming state of titillated. I mean, I WAS delight.

And one of said onandoff likes may have asked me out. He was a little lit. But hey, I will take it, Tyler, bring it on. But, I suppose that brings me to the rage-y, annoyed, frustrated and confused part of this little ditty.

The nasty, negative, newly-bitter part of me (I used to have so much less of this quality) wants to just say, "Why even think about it, E? You KNOW he won't call. And then I want to slap myself, tell myself to shut up and quit borrowing trouble. I sorta listen to this part of me, but there is a nagging little whisper underneath that talk that knows that I am almost always right about this. That, despite the fact that an evening is all but perfect, I will still be jilted. It has happened all too many times now. Apparently, I have this effect on people.

Take Dream-Boat. Well, let us adjust this to: Emotionally-Unavailable Wants-What-He-Can't-Have Giant-Child Fuck-Up Boat. Ironically, one in the same with Dream Boat. Every interaction together is perfection. If a night with a romantic interest could be a natural sweetner, this would be ambrosia. And I.Never.Get.A.Call.Back. Dickhead, quit screwing with my feelings, right?

Next example (mind you, this is totally disregarding my ability to repulse even those I am ACTUALLY in a relationship with, like I send out irresistably strong go-to-some-other-chick pulses that ACTUALLY propel them away): Had a date three (?) weeks ago. He leaked from his eyes and nose for the entire two hours we were together. He called me a luddite bc I said it was sad, the way people were dismissing the printed word (did he KNOW who he was going out with? And, P.S., KELLS--stupid name--I heart technology, there is lots of it I want people to buy me), and looked a TINY bit like that guy from A Clockwork Orange. That's right, that creepy ginger lead man. Even HE didn't call me. I wasn't sad about that, it just shows a pattern.

Last, but not least: Over the last two workdays, I have exchanged approximately 80 emails, 2 dozen text messages, and a moderate amount of Facebook chat with yet another fellow. An internet date. L-dog (again, privacy people) and I re-vested in a free, crappy internet site mostly just for distraction. It is fun. Most people, if you ever meet anyone, are not quite up to par, not to be a jerk. Just not. But clearly, judging from the absurd! amount of communication here, this was not the case. I laughed out loud. I should interject that this cube has not seen a lot of out-loud laughter of late, my normal source having, for the most part, dried up. (Or just disappeared, it is alive and kicking elsewhere, notta regular part of my life, eh.) So this was welcome change. We kept sorta making plans to meet in several days, and kept trying to push it up, eager, it seemed.

SO to get to it, I was excited about this tiny guy. Yes, tiny. He said 5'9 but I was in flats, and I have my doubt face on. Small.

Nonetheless, very excited. So much so that I did the most ridiculous, spontaneous, borderline unsafe thing and just went and met him after dinner last night. That's right, no one knew where I was, and it was at his personal dwelling (which he owns...grin), rather late at night. No Me! Don't do it! Right? But all was well, we had a Corona and scrolled through his AppleTV (amazing stuff, I dig it a lot...KELLS. Grrr.) He told me I was "very pretty," that he liked the way I dress (?), and that I was "so fucking sexy." (That, of course, was halfway through the Corona, to be fair.) Seems like a good start, right?

We laughed a little, it was late, I left, all parts in tact, not taken hostage by internet nutcase whose home I entered willingly.

Then today he cancels our other date.

WTF, batman? I mean, for cereal. WTF?

Hence paper-ripping, foot-stomping, tantrum-throwing pissed-off mood! What is WITH this endless stream of guys who say I am cute and and attractive, and they want to touch me, and we get along like dogies on an open plain and STILL this sort of runaround. I quit.

Linda Wortheimer (sp?) on NPR, I SWEAR, says nBr and I want to call in and ask that if they are going to keep employing full time RADIO NEWSANCHORS that they have some godforsaken ENUNCIATION.

A very ugly woman in the car in front of me today had 4 small children, IMPROPERLY STRAPPED IN to the back of her Saturn today. As she was driving badly, I might add. As I pass said terrible driver, I see that contributing to her terribleness (which was aplenty already) was the fact that she was TEXTING (come on, horseface, it is SEVEN THIRTY) AND smoking a cigarette. In her Saturn. With four 5-year olds. I quit LIFE!

AHHHHHHHHH! Where is something I can destroy?!

On the upside, I am def. going to start boxing lessons. ;)

There, my anger for the day.

Week.

Month.

Season.

Puddle O' Muddle

So, I find myself two months older than I was the last time I posted. It is ridiculous, I know, you can save your lecturing, I have done enough berating of myself.

I know it is a sorry excuse, but really, truly, I HAVE been nutty busy, between holidays, a record amount of work for the magazine (five? six items in the Feb issue and a feature due out NOW for March?), travel, and trying to maintain some semblance of a happy, normal personal life, I have just been wearing myself thin. I am just waiting for some sort of diagnosis, I am sure I have a deficiency of some sort or a pissed off thyroid or the beginning stages of diabetes. But, more than anything I guess that the real reason for my absence (and total neglect of my creeping, blog-hack, relation by marriage) was a strange new life form that I hadn't seen in a while: happiness?

I guess I have been more happy lately, more looking to real people in my life for support/fulfillment/constant yammering rather than the cybernetic nobody that reads this blog. Weird. Totes weird.

As much as it pleases me, I think it is sad that I will have so much less man-alysis to do on this thing now, and, that which there is to be done may actually be too--gasp!--private to do here. I wouldn't want to alienate anyone, nor am I totally free to bitch about you the way I want to if YOU ARE READING THIS.

Now, for the news:

Since our last non-versation I have acquired a number of things (including a taste for terrible, made-up-word puns as a writing style, please see the above paragraph as well):

• A new appreciation for the rampant smug self-satisfaction that is basically the foundation of all current music. Not that I am hatin', sometimes I would have JUST as hard a time giving my self-stroke a break if I were these guys, however, I do not count aging Brit-pop Oasis as one of these artists. But I still really liked the completely detached, mental-masturbation style of Liam Gallagher's stage performance. It was fascinating, like watching a gorilla pick at himself in front of the packed zoo window. Thanks for taking me, Dave.
• A new pair of perilously hipster heavy black specs, that, in truth, I do not have the hairstyle to support.
• A pair of purple corduroy skinny jeans that fall into the same category as my spectacles.
• A new car that decidedly moves me back to normal gal status, as it is NOT a particularly hipster thing to have a small-model SUV. Geez, maybe I should trade it in for a Schwinn before the hipster train that all my friends are on pulls out forever....wink, wink, loving nudge.
• A much more rich film vocabulary, hats off to you, Fu. I have, in the last six months of my existence, seen as many movies as I think I have in the whole rest of my life, and I am somewhat wary of saying, this is pleasing me, more and more, you infectious film geek. For all I know, by the time you are done with me, my insides will be all popcorn and celluloid.
• And, not to ignore the requisite dose of melancholy that usually attends these blog posts, a weird condition of late that lends me to vacillate wildly between conditions of intense anxiety and insecurity--most of which tend to eventually work themselves out through pouches just below my eyes that allow for some very cathartic things called tears--and bouts of giddy elation, often accompanied by intense, far more intense that is the norm for me, sexual desires. I am all but consumed at these times by my weird, hormonal horn-doggy self, it is highly stressful, let me tell you. SO, there you go, I am still adrift in strange waves of sadness, totally discontent with a number of aspect of my life, so please do not feel like the world has been flipped on its head, but at least this time, I balanced it out with some good, old-fashioned pervishness. Isn't that wonderful and lovely?

Good day to you, good people, until we meet again.

And for you, rogue label maker and profile defiler, YOU WATCH YOUR BACK. And please see the handy use of your labels, below. F'in Punk.

Speckeled Heckle

Here is the audition draft of my Heckler for the mag. Needless to say, as it is published here, I was NOT selected to write this column.

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I don’t consider myself overly critical and I don’t support girl-on-girl crime, so it is not with personal venom that I report this wide-spread fashion faux pas. A sweet boyfriend on a Life Savers commercial might have been too smitten to tell his gal the real reason she had been hearing “muffin top” all day, but I’m just not that sugary. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Girls, get rid of your gunt. Unhook the camel toe. Free up your fupa. Your boss did not mention you and muffin tops in the same sentence because you, like Elaine’s favorite half, are just the best! (If all this is a bewildering mess of meaningless slang, spend some time with Urban Dictionary, and give some serious thought to getting hip.)

Indeed, the unfortunate trend of too-small pants and too-tight tops is one that has long prevailed, no matter how ill-fitting. Waistbands whimper and seams scream all over our fair city, and likely any city with people. Men, too, suffer from whatever fever makes wedging into clothes like sausage casings seem like a good idea (you know who you are, boys, and slacks are intended to be worn at a waist, not sadly sagging underneath your beer belly) but females are by far the most notorious perpetrators. Don’t get me wrong, I get the less-than-perfect figure; some of my own curves are dangerous—literally. This is not an attack on a thicker sister but rather a cry for smarter dressing.

Friends, comrades, allies: as depressing as actually picking up that size 14 might be (go ahead, sulk while you hand over the plastic, you show that cashier!), it shouldn’t be half as depressing as the way you look when yo’ stomach “dunlap” over yo’ size 12. The rumors are true: buying that one size bigger will make you look one size smaller. It is much harder to pull off a super-squeezed midsection than elegantly drape your padded places with simple, well-tailored style. It doesn’t have to cost a pretty penny, either. Most retailers carry classic pieces to fit and flatter any woman and the more modest garb will impress your co-workers who are tired of tracing the lines of your bikini briefs through your khakis. Your love handles just might start to love you back.

So, unless you sport a Daisy Duke physique, lose the low-riders and abandon the belly shirt. Scratch that—everyone bail on the belly shirt, it’s not so much a trend as a recurring nightmare. The goal is not citywide lifestyle lifts, only closet makeovers. I don’t knock on voluptuous, but looking like linked meat doesn’t work for anyone.

So go a size up for the greater good, or maybe I’ve just been drinking too much hater-ade. I prefer the purple.

Gross-Out Blog

DISCLAIMER (though really, to be fair, un-needed, you all know what you are getting into and with almost every post there is an accompanying admission that it will probably bore all readers):

If you are uninterested in what one elitist snob I know called a "whine blog" please proceed elsewhere. While the rest of you may have drugs or shrinks or healthy, non-busy, in the same city, same-sex friends to entertain your issues and coddle you through them, I do not. This is therapeutic and the only way I keep myself from riddling my ACTUAL life and all the people in it with endless psychosis and actually make it through every day. SO, if you don't like it, fuck off. I will stop by to read your endlessly brilliant analysis of Band of Horses and There Will Be Blood, later. Probably not. BO-RING.

;) I say that with teasing affection of course. I just had an obnxious weekend of a pseudo-break-up with someone I was never with--over texting, no less; feeling perilously let down regarding a friend's maybe-addiction; having NOTHING to wear; falling down, being manhandled and borderline abused and then called a bitch repeatedly. So I had a moment of venting to do. Not even about you, button, turnip, poodle, schnauzer. The good news was I hit my first NBA game. And we won. An unceremonious, not super-well played game, but a win nonetheless. And I could use a win.

END DISCLAIMER
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Last night, I was standing at the window picking my nose and found myself staring at a pink foam Princess magnet that my sister sent me. I don't generally like to put things actually ON my refrigerator, as it would so detract from the dirty hippy motif that rules the home/fridge and ruin the carefully crafted illusion that I do not really live there.

Fresh out of the shower (which, I must mention, has become an ever-increasingly ugly prospect, this whole bathing thing. Mid-November Denver in a crappy-insulated house in a room that doesn't belong or have a vent just does NOT welcome wet legs. Sigh.) I stood at my window staring out at the far-too-early darkness, wrapped in towel, and thought just how much I had grown into that pink foam above-my-bed- label. A delicate, sea-shell princess, this one. Of course, the sort of princess that, just now when I was itching my ear, I accidentally wedged a strand of hair in the waxy canal. When I pulled it out...I liked it. That sort of princess.

But really, outside of that, I have come to have very high expectations. I find myself feeling satisfied less often and critical more. I have been a little irritable, relative to my normal mood. I have been feeling wider swings of emotion. I seriously considered trying to get back on some meds. I mean, I realize that PMDD is clearly a fictitious diagnosis aimed at giving people who don't have the time/motivation to get any therapy nor have any real, serious problem, a little boost to get em past the rough patches. This is ok with me. Unlike Tom Cruise, I have no problem with needless mind-altering drugs being prescribed to treat the symptoms and not the cause. That sounds just right.

BUT, because even that would really take more effort than I am willing to put out, I decided to take advantage of some of my monthly automatic withdrawals. No, no, this is not the time right before that time when I get reclusive and pouty like clockwork. I am referring to those purchases, long-term contracts, if you will that take $16, $25, even $35 out of my checking account each month and have gone neglected far too long.

I have returned to 24-Hour Fitness. My hips hurt, I am pretty sure that I don’t actually do anything particularly fruitful there and those guys with the shiny gloves and the biceps that are bigger than my head (by a lot, for reals) truly give me the creeps. But I am pretty sure I am getting my money’s worth. Right.

I also went back to tan. Or, rather back to orange. And all of this brassy-bronze, gyrating and squeezing really made me realize how much I dislike jiggling all over. So, I have also back a glorious WeightWatchers comeback (though I have yet to finish a week ON program, a feat that has eluded me since October LAST year) and am totally certain that in just a few short weeks, I will be JUST like the woman that teaches the pole dancing class I took.

Side note: I plan on climbing backwards up a pole by this time next year, if not sooner, due to my rapidly perfecting physique. Duh. I am taking donations, as it is what I want for Christmas. The class, you fools, not the ability. But if you know someone who can get me that, right on.
But all of these new operations, along with my general inability to feel stable and organized or even productive about them has left me feeling intolerably antsy. Even as I type this, my finger keeps wandering to my mouth, trying to fish out the hunk of lip I just bit off. That’s right, it’s a nervous habit. Anxiety + oral fixation = Holey Lips, Batman!

But it is not just those things. I am nervous about money of late. Mine, Citibank’s, my family’s, Fanny’s and Freddy’s and Eddy’s and who knows. I just don’t know if I have the gumption to make it through a depression. Depression, yes. But A depression? Sheesh. Well, at least I would have my stripping to fall back on. You know, it is a cousin of the world’s oldest profession, she’ll hook us up. Get it? Hook?

Additionally, I am having a major relapse of quarter-life crisis, obsessing over wasted time, missed opportunities, ones that I am GOING to miss if I don’t get my shit together, all kinds of useless thoughts that actually PREVENT action while requiring it. What a mindfuck.

At this moment I look for other jobs daily WHILE I try to stick with this one in hopes of a promotion/bonus. But there is the looming idea that we will just go extinct, here, in our ultra-floundering business. That’s comforting. I want to travel but have no money. I want to take this dance class but have no money. I need new glasses, want to mail a package, think my brakes are about to go out, would love a new car, new boots, to go back to school but I have no money. And I don’ t think any is coming my way.

Lost in the confusion of all this (to which one can add sporadic stresses of what is feeling like an increasingly chaotic magazine-work element to my life) I want to apply to grad school and am totally paralyzed by laziness (first of all), the total disorganization of trying to figure out what needs to be done to do it (could be helped—though not alleviated—if I weren’t so lazy. Lazy and, honestly, scared. Scared that I wouldn’t get in, sure. I AM applying to pretty unattainable schools (NYU and Northwestern, I think). But that’s not even the primary concern. Scared that I would get in, maybe. Scared to think about a change that huge. Scared to put that much into it and have it be all for naught, unnecessary, stupid, laughable even. I have already DONE that, for chrissake.

I can’t even sit still at my desk. I keep flipping back and forth in windows, opening new tabs on my IE, not even using them, trying to find the track list to Finally, Lillian and Dan, ONLY b/c it would be a good distraction, getting up and wandering into other people’s cubes so that they can be as disturbed and unproductive as myself, getting smacked—quite literally, slapped in the face—by my boss, feeling the crazy coffee jitters of some insanely high-caffeine brew on a small cup of Crispix, feeling like I desperately need to make a list and not even knowing what to put on it (no idea! Of what? What to do? In what period of time? With what money and time? Where do I start? Do I even HAVE things to do?). I even looked up Princess in urbandictionary. I keep opening my iTunes and staring at it blindly. Should I get something? Should I organize it? Add to it? Even turn it on? (It has been open and non-functional now for two hours, currently I think that music would only make me CRAZIER!)

All while pointedly NOT doing my job. I have done literally nothing this week. Other than show up late, take ten minutes too long at lunch, do my OTHER job while here, MASTER JoJo’s Fashion show and Games.com, waste time, money, effort, energy and still not do the ONE. MUNDANE. MIND-NUMBING thing I should do for this company. I SHOULD get fired. For sure.
But then who would they slap?

Coinage

Long time, no talk, world of eager Eva readers. Wait, who are we kidding here, blog, its just you and me. You're the same as me, we see things they'll never see, you and I are gonna live forever. Just the two of us, we've come a long way, baby. Did you ever know that you're my hero? You're the meaning in my life, you're the inspiration, you're the best friend that I've ever had, what would we do, baby, without us? Shanana.

All right, that out of the way, BREAKING NEWS! Yesterday, a young man kindly pointed out that I had particularly "wide fingers." Once past the initial, stunned silence (WHAT? I DO? I have ALWAYS considered my hands to be dainty, delicate, pianist-fingers) that was more like one moment where I scowled at him, I simply said, "Yes, Dave, I have fat hands. Thank you for using such a polite euphemism when making inappropriate, embarrassing observations with a woman you don't know." However, that being true, it is ALSO true that I do, indeed, have fat hands. Any fool reading this who might be considering scoring me that Canary I have so long wanted, go big, or go home.

That fact and the fact that this weekend I consumed 17 times more booze than either food or water combined (but don't worry, what food I DID eat was completely packed with standard American excess that one would hardly be able to worry for undernourishment--and it was good) are what I directly blame for how badly I bowled last evening. Well, those two facts and the fact that I suck. A lot. But I had fun. With my new friend Chris who has a Fu Manchu (and contributes to the VERY funny and tastefully superior--Donnybrook Writing Academy) and a few of his friendly hipster pals, who certainly had to be displeased with having let me play when we realized my high score of the evening was an overwhelming 87.

Ok, that wasn't really breaking news, BUT, this just in: I coined a new word. As far as I know it is new, FuManchu seemed unimpressed with it but I refuse to be discouraged. And when it is as common a household item as Booyah! (I mean, really, when that guy coined that word do we really think everyone just froze, riveted by its brilliance and clear, lasting relevance? Ppff.) So, here it is:

Opionionado.

Take a moment, roll it around in there a bit. (In your brain, in your mouth, either works, it is at home both places.)

Otherwise known as the critic, the person who might not REALLY be qualified or informed on a subject (or just prefers to speak on subjects on which it isn't entirely possible to be technically well-versed), but sure has an opinion on it. They don't know shit, they just talk about shit. Not always a bad thing, either. Depends on if it is funny.

Take THAT urbandictionary.com!

In other news, the African American community suffered a big hit this weekend when BOTH Isaac Hayes AND Bernie Mac kicked the bucket(s?) at prematurely young ages. Word on the street is that Bernie Mac died from complications from pneumonia. This raises eyebrows, mine anyway, what kind of normally healthy 50 yr old dies of pneumonia? None. But UN-healthy ones do... I have my suspicion. But regardless, the world is a little less baritone this week, and all hopes of a re-emergence of Chef on South Park (or of an Ocean's 23) are now out the window. We will miss you, Shaft (singer). Oh, and you too, guy that was in Guess Who.

In brief, the weekend was great. Dinner with pals then out to see a pretty solid local band at the Hi-Dive. Blues and Brews Festival. Baseball game. Blues and Brews again. Bowling. FuManchu's (and at least one other) stellar short film at the 48-hour Film Festival. PTSD exboyfriend in town for a visit, think we showed him a good, Denver-tastic time. Plus, I got to wear 5 dresses this weekend. Any weekend with that much sundress is a good weekend

EXTRA, EXTRA!! Beth is coming in town!!!! Not reaaaally to see me, but SO WHAT! Ya-Hooooooo! AND I finished my FEATURE article for the magazine this past week. I think it is fabulosa. But it is, after all my baby, the product of my very own fat little fingers.

Which, speaking of, are tired of typing.

Over and out.

Potpourri

So. It seems that things, though generally (maybe? possibly? shall I curse myself so?) doing all right, are a wee bit akimbo, not awry, as that implies all bad things, just akimbo, caterwaul. Wonky.

After a few weeks that I would deem some of the worst consecutive weeks in my recent life, I think, I certainly do NOT know, things being comprised right now of some fairly confusing things, that things are maybe gonna get better? Right?

Not all things are great, i.e. work has been more stress these days that normal, small things accumulating and all. I am getting unbearably fat, I think I have been eating my feelings and, as it turns out, my feelings are booze, chocolate and lard.

So that's cool.

A number of other big, small, and abstract things that are possibly too personal for bloggery have been weighing me down. But that is NOT what I am here to say. I am here to say that the things that ARE good are special, unusual, and maybe totally better than all that other crapula.

The Royals are in first place. Go back, read it again, I said first place. (Please forgive if this status has shifted a little and is no longer entirely true, my updates on sports and stats are not always actually up to date.) No one can believe it. It is madness.

Speaking of madness. I thought our stars were aligned just right. After 20 nail-biting years of almosts and should'ves, the Hawks bring home the title. A miraculous, truly earth-shattering 2 second three pointer and a huge, jaw-dropping rally in OT will establish Mario as the most popular boy's name for births happening in the second half of 2008. I know I am naming MY baby Mario, and it's a girl and I'm not even pregnant!

Speaking of babies. I got some pretty surprising baby news that I will intentionally keep vague as I am not sure that I should be the one leaking said littl'un news. But my initial reaction was as follows: Holy Shit.

Other reactions: WOW! My kick-ball team is undefeated. Whoulda thunk? And though I will be skipping this week's double-header to go to my mag's launch party/Betsey Johnson fashion show (P.S. another reaction: OMG!), my thoughts will be with them on the field, kickin' balls and taking names.

Last reaction: HURRAH!! The Rockies pulled out a bottom of the 8th 2-run homer to bring home a win and a much-needed morale boost yesterday as I multi-tasked between the boys of summer and the second half of the NCAA Championship which, as I indicated, changed my life forever and NOW when I have a second child it will CLEARLY have to be named Luigi to match its sister Mario. What have you done to me, Almarie, Ronnie? Good thing I will sacrifice that all-important naming ritual for the glory of your god-like child. But personally I hope Luigi ends up more in the image of B-Rush or Sasha, those boys are LOOKERS. Could eat em right up. Dang.

Speaking of hot men. Though I am certain it is counting my chickens, cuz it always is and especially cuz this particular specimen of perfection also has ISSUES, I am also feeling a almost-familiar-but-thankfully-not-too-familiar-cuz-then-it-wouldn't-be-special gut-tingle and over-all elation about a man I have been seeing lately. Now that I have put this out there, though, it would not shock me if my OWN stars took a little twirl and this did not work out. Unfortunately for both me AND John Cusack, this is NOT a sure thing. I just surely do want it. And, in truth, I so relish even the beginnings of a feeling this great (by the by, only had once before with last, fabulous, worth-every-minute-and-move boyfriend) are totally worth having, even if, in the end, this little heart that is swelling right now is all a bust in a bit.

Other men in the news, N.K.O.T.B. is back and LOOKING GOOD! Who even needs Jordan now, though I NEEDED him when I was 7. I am all for brooding, perfectly grizzled Donny, now. Shoot, now I will have to have THREE gender-confused, indiscriminately named kids. That's right, Donny, you've got the right stuff, too, the right stuff to be MY hero.

PLUS, I get to go to KC this weekend and spend much needed time with family. Particularly sister and bro-in-law and possibly sisters-in-law-ish. Thank God, really. For Mario's Miracle, for family, for boys that make me laugh at least once a minute, and for God's over-generous favor of helping me get not fat again.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, eh?

In conclusion... HUZZAH!!!