Sunday, April 19, 2009

Open House Sunday

In this economy, and in this time in the world, I should be really glad that I have a job that I like.  I should be fucking getting on the floor thanking God almighty that not only do I love what I do for a living, but that my boss cornered me in the gym yesterday until I agreed to go to body sculpt class with her next Saturday.  When your boss wants to hang out with you on off time, that's a good thing, right?  But, I'm uncoordinated and I'll have to show that I can keep up and enjoy it.  And, I have to agree that I love the teacher as much as she does.  In exchange for this effort, I will boycott the office for a week and not show my face.  Not a "game move" as they'd say on The Biggest Loser.

I should be glad but I'm scratching and skimping for every penny.  I just want ONE media outlet--a biggie like The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal--to write a story about how we're in the bottom of the real estate market and that I could forward said fantasy article to all my clients and they would jump up with glee and call me to go look at new apartments.  This is not happening.  Instead, I'm busy working on rentals, which might as well be the shit end of the real estate world stick, because renters have nearly no loyalty, are picky and after you've spent days and weeks working with them, they find something offered as 'no fee' from Craigslist and sign on for that one.  My attitude is reprehensible, but the truth is that I curse renters under my breath.

As for my personal life, things are slow there--and sort of sad.  Fritz is very flighty and clearly has no care for my libido which he often leaves running like a car engine when you run inside the house to get whatever item you've forgotten--only, he's lingering in the house and isn't really worried about overheating the engine, ruining the battery, or wasting gas.  He's just lollygagging around, taking his sweet time and figuring that the car will be there when he gets back.  And while it's a slap in the face to my gender to say so, he's right. The libido will stay running until he gets back into the car.

It's gotten to the point where I'm going to have to actually say something to him.  It occurs to me that despite his excellent education at Michigan and Columbia, he might be clueless when it comes to matters of the heart (as, I can be too, though I hate to admit it) and not get that the little things that I do for him are actually romantic gestures.  Of course, the fact that I looked him in the face a few months ago and told him that I was interested in someone else and that I didn't want anything but a sexual relationship with him may have done little to insert clues of my interest in him.  My friend Martin, and most people think that when you are interested in someone, it's apparent, almost intuitive, but I have to admit that even for me, I don't readily get it unless it's painfully obvious.  Another friend said to me last night, "It's obvious that Fritz likes you." Really? Not fucking obvious to me.  So, maybe he and I are a good clueless pair.

Only now, (scary drum roll), do I have to face it--and tell him that I actually do find him interesting, smart, passionate, sexy, appealing.  I texted him this morning and told him that I wanted to talk to him--surely, if history of us proves anything, he'll expect me to be pulling up roots, bidding him Ciao and moving onto my next sexual conquest, but alas, I am doing the opposite, of sorts.  I dreaded this until I called a tele-psychic this morning so she could forecast my future.

Mayaan, a psychic who charges a bargain rate of $1.00 a minute, is originally from New York, so we communicated in short hand--having lived here for 15 years, I totally understood her ghetto-speak and could quickly translate it into more educated English.  For many years, doing exactly this has been a hobby of mine.  Taking a perfectly wretched ghetto sentence and making it into fancier language.   I wish I could think of an example to illustrate this point, but I'm sure you can imagine.  Anyway, she told me much of what I knew--that Fritz is insecure, that the self-confident approach that he takes is largely crap, which I can easily say about myself too.  That he likes me, rather, that he loves me.  I feel sure that he doesn't quite love me, but I'll settle for like at this point.

Anyway, I cross referenced this with another psychic who was more steeply priced, at $3.99 a minute and talked to her for a total of 5 minutes.  I could hear alternating sounds of her birds chirping and her dog barking.  Her name was Evelyn and I immediately pictured her sitting in a small house with a patio, cigarette burning quickly in a dirty ashtray as she was shuffling her worn tarot cards.  She later revealed that she had a pendulum as well and asked if I wanted to double check her answer on the pendulum, assuring me that it was the 'cheapest way' to check her answer.  All three answers--between the 2 psychics and the pendulum all revealed the same answers, but of course, I'm a skeptic about it and can't quite figure out how it works.  

Most people don't give much thought to the psychology behind such things, but having had my own past as a phone sex operator, I do have some curiosity about how to satisfy people's urges on the phone and get them to call back for more.  I guess it must be obvious what sort of answer I'm looking for once they ask what area of my life I want them to look at, but since all those answers were, in fact, exactly what I wanted to hear, I'm prepared to congratulate these people about their magical powers. 

So, I'm at the second open house and ready to shoot myself in the head and cursing myself for even agreeing to do this, when I could be home in the fetal position with my dog, hiding from the world and avoiding working on my tax audit preparation.  But, instead, I'm in a stinky apartment, listening to Fleetwood Mac, fantasizing about what I'm going to eat for a very belated lunch and reading and rereading the email that I just sent to Fritz where I barely, gently, nearly suggest that I could perhaps have feelings for him. Fucking shit.

Yes, it's a beautiful day.  Yes, I have a job that I love.  Yes, I have a great dog and I'm alive and well and having a wonderful hair day.  And yes, I'm cranky and curmudgeonly as usual.  Why? Because I'm me.


Saturday, April 04, 2009

Date Night

At 5:22pm tonight, I got into bed and was quite content to stay here all night.  That makes me feel somewhat ashamed of my lack of social life and yet happy to just be here and be lazy.  I'm hiding behind my excuse that I have to be up and at the gym early tomorrow, but the reality is that the people that I want to hang out with--the two couches that I'd like to be on--one is too far and the other is too soon, so I'm here.  In my bed.  With the scary, scary pit bull puppy eating pineapple and pita chips and frustrated that I have to pee every 15 minutes because I'm hydrating too much. 

At 7pm, I got a call from an old lover who is in New York for the night to attend a wedding.  He asked if I needed a roommate for the night and initially I said no, and then reneged and offered him a place.  It goes without saying that he'll be in my bed, but it doesn't go without saying that, gulp, I actually only want to have sex with one person.  The owner of the couch that it is too soon for me to relax on.  

It's been a funky week and I blame it on Jupiter Square Pluto, or Neptune or something.  Anyway, there is an astrological reason that things are shitty.  It makes perfect cosmic sense that the weather has been gray, rainy and cold, and that I found out that I don't actually have a tax credit to balance out what I'm afraid the IRS might disallow on my upcoming audit.  There is some universal sense that I've been moody, cranky and impatient.  Not to mention hard to rear into productive mode from my laying-in-bed mode that I seem to have lived in lately.  I don't understand the squaring and triangularing of planets--have no clue what it means and feel bad when my friend Sarah tries to explain it to me like it's obvious as the nose on my face, "don't you get that 2+2 equals 4?!" and I don't and she gets frustrated...all I know is that I complain to her about something and she said, "that's because blah is moving through your 7th house of blah and squaring blah."  Luckily for me, it's been predicted that April 15th will be a dreadful day, assured to deliver me news that I *don't* want to receive, so you can be sure that I'm longing for that day.

So, this week, I've learned the following: a) it's hard to put fitted gloves on wet hands, b) eating too many Pepperidge Farm cookies, good as they may be, are not really good for your figure, c) my PC is haunted and is now sending messages on its own accord, d) small sandwich bags are too small to pick up my dog's poop, e) if you want to hire someone to beat the shit out of someone else, it only costs $500 and it's important to hire someone who doesn't drink or do drugs so they won't get stoned or drunk and blab about your joint crime, f) I found an excellent new banana muffin recipe, which I'll include for you all (my nod to Nora Ephron) and, g) it only takes 20 minutes to get to New Jersey by car and pretty much everything is cheaper there.

Before I proceed...I baked these muffins for Fritz and left him some, and some biscuits for his doggy.  They were delicious and I know just how tasty they were because I had an emotional binge and consumed several of them while I was agonizing over what to write in the enclosed note and how he would receive the package (it went over fine, thank you very much).

banana muffins/bread:

loose cinnamon and sugar mixture
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
4 teaspoons lemon juice
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 large ripe bananas, mashed
loose brown sugar

Oven to 350. Grease loaf pan and lightly coat with cinnamon and sugar mixture.  Cream butter and sugar, and add egg and lemon juice.  Add flour, soda, salt to the butter mixture and blend well. Stir in bananas.  Put batter in loaf pan (muffin tins), and top with loose brown sugar.  Bake for 1 hour (less if you're making muffins) and EAT.

There you have it.  I enclosed a simple note written on red paper, written in blue crayon and I baked it carefully, with affection.  Please don't throw up reading that.  I'm dismayed and alarmed to think what is happening to me.  I am finally not interested in the one-night stand, not interested in the married, unavailable man.  The zipless fuck that I used to entertain is no longer what I crave--it's just sex, in whatever form it may take with one particular person. 

I shudder to think of what I have become.

So, dear readers, I'm sorry to tell you that I have no fun misadventures to report tonight.  I'm stuck in my bed mixed with emotions.  Partly scared to venture out and afraid what I'll find. Worried about spending money that I'm so carefully trying to hold onto and even more terrified that I'll eat and tomorrow my face will be more round and filled out. I'm staying home tonight and working on excel spreadsheets for my accountant to bring to the IRS and playing with the newly selected ringtones on my blackberry. And between all this worry, concern and neurosis, I'm sort of happy to be here and not forced to be on any sort of behavior.  I'm bathing in my peculiar mood, watching the clock tick on, and being lulled into the night listening to the hum of my computer, the deep sleep breaths of my dog and the promise of Six Feet Under reruns--not to mention the back and forth of emails to plan a rendez-vous tonight that will not materialize.

So, if you take anything away tonight, aside from the promise of a wonderful banana muffin, it's always negotiate with your hired help--you can always do better than $500 in this economy.

xo