Weird Little Wednesday

Not bad.

Actually pretty fucking good.

Just a little odd.

And I realize that I am ok with a little off, a little odd, a little skewed, sometimes that is fun.

I flirted via text with the guy from last night, but let me be honest, there were other reasons why mama didn’t go down that road, walk over that one block and jump into bed, and I realized that more fully today.

I have a sort of laissez-faire attitude about it in my blog, but there were some underlying things on my radar and after doing some writing and some processing I am pretty sure I won’t be running over to my neighbor’s house to “borrow a cup of sugar.”

I have plenty of sugar in my bowl and there are certain things that are important to me, we have some lifestyle stuff that is just not a great match up for me.

The nice thing or the interesting thing, is that although I got a few cute texts today, they dried up at one point and there was nothing there.

I’m glad I didn’t have too much concern the flirting was nice, validating, fun, but in the end, just flirting.

It doesn’t have to go anywhere and just because someone wants to make out with me doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the best idea for me.

I have some clear ideas about what I want.

Speaking of validating though.

Man is it nice to get a clear and direct message about being an attractive woman.

Someone who I had a crush on from years ago when I worked at the Angelic Brewing Company reached out to me today via messenger and just basically propositioned me.

I mean.

Maybe not outright, outright, but the entendre was definitely implied.

It was fun to flirt and say hey, if you ever make it out to San Francisco we will have to hang out.

I don’t see myself making it to Chicago anytime soon.

That’s where he lives.

But fuck.

It was, again, really fun to flirt.

I like flirting.

Hell I may do some tomorrow night too.

I have a date after a speaking engagement in the Inner Sunset.

I’m quite looking forward to it.

And.

I have no expectations.

Which rather floors me and is nice too, I’m super relaxed about the date, it doesn’t mean anything, I am exploring whether or not I want to hang out with someone and that’s it.

I look forward to getting dressed up.

But then again.

I always look forward to getting dressed up.

I like dressing up.

I love being a girl.

I love being feminine.

And.

I love being sexy.

Granted.

I won’t be too sexy tomorrow, I have to work a full shift before I go to do the deal and then the date.

But.

I will be pretty.

And pretty will suffice.

And when I feel pretty I feel confident and confidence is sexy.

So.

I’m covered.

Life is fun.

I also had some unexpected movement in my schedule this week and I will have more time on Saturday then I was expecting, I should be able to knock out a paper that day and perhaps even get one started or at least outlined on Sunday.

There’s only three more weeks of school for this semester.

Three!

I was supposed to meet a couple of people back to back in the Inner Sunset, but one cancelled and the other re-arranged with me to meet up on Sunday.

Thus freeing me of my obligation to go to the Inner Sunset at all on Saturday.

I basically will do yoga in the morning, then shower, breakfast, coffee, writing, and more writing and more writing until I leave to go do the deal around 6:30p.m.

I will be able to get to one paper and finish it completely.

I am sure of it.

Super grateful for that.

And if I’m able to hang out after on Saturday I will, a friend will probably meet up with me there and I’m going to wrangle her to fellowship.

I ducked out on fellowship tonight, but did catch up with a friend over tea at my house while listening to jazz and the unexpected rain shower.

Hope that clears by tomorrow.

The loveliness of riding my scooter to work and getting to be outside in the sun was really good for me.

Life is really quite sweet right now.

I was not expecting to have tea with my friend tonight, or have flirting messages with an old crush from years ago.

I was not expecting to feel so alive and frisky today.

But I am.

I did.

And though it was a strangle little Wednesday, it wasn’t bad, just different, and a slight slanted perspective on things is good for me, widen the lens, get a better view, see things different and love my life just a little bit harder, fiercer, deeper.

It’s a good thing.

This.

It really is.

Fuck It’s Cold

Put some clothes on your children!

I wanted to holler across the street at the parent of the two tiny shivering denizens of the Outer Sunset fog belt who were scampering down the street in tank tops and shorts with their arms covered in goosebumps.

It’s July in San Francisco.

Break out your scarves.

Fuck.

It just dropped like a thick, spooky shroud.

Of course.

I may be just too far into Stranger Things.

Fuck it’s good.

But it’s not the prettiest out here, right now.

Yesterday I never saw the sun.

Today, I did, but only because I went into work.

The nice thing about yoga, I realized today when I was in the studio, is that it’s always a nice warm 80 degrees and my body needs that warmth.

I don’t like super hot, I can stand it, but sometimes the fog wears on a girl.

Never the less.

I did have a good day.

I got up early and did the writing and the coffee and a nice little breakfast.

Then off to yoga.

A good class, my favorite instructor, who, woe is me, is leaving in two weeks!

Damn it.

Oh well.

The studio has other teachers I like, but I shall miss her classes.

I can see how I have gotten better whenever I go to her class.

And.

They are sneaky classes, I’m doing well, think I got it all under control, then hours later I’m like, why the fuck am I sore?

Oh.

I had Martina’s class today.

Tomorrow I will be sore as well.

That being said, I do plan on going to class in the morning before work.

I’ve got a 1p.m. start all week as the boys are in summer camp.

1-8p.m. means that I can get in a yoga class before work as well as my writing and a shower.

I always need a shower after yoga.

It usually is a lovely thing too, that shower.

So very grateful that there is a yoga studio in my neighborhood, on my freaking block, for Pete’s sake, it couldn’t be more convenient, and it’s super helpful for me time wise, I can get in a shower and sometimes a few other things too.

Like.

I scootered over to Rainbow before work and got a couple of “luxury” items for my Burning Man efforts.

A nice hand salve.

I gift hand massage on playa.

It’s what I do.

It’s a nice way to connect with someone and most folks have such dried, beat up hands from the playa and doing all the work that needs to be done to set up their camp or their art piece or whatever it is they’re doing.

I also picked up some boxes of unsweetened vanilla almond milk, a pair of heart shaped sunglasses, and some of my favorite body lotion.

What with what I got yesterday on Amazon, all I need is to get the rebar for my tent and some work gloves.

I’ll hit up a hardware store this weekend and get it wrapped up.

This weekend so far looks like some “homework” for the American Red Cross CPR child/infant/adult class I’m taking on Sunday.

It used to be that you would have to devote nearly a half day to the cause, the class was four and a half hours long, now you take part of it online then go in for an hour and a half.

The class portion is Sunday.

I hope to have the online stuff taken care of on Saturday, I haven’t really looked at it yet.

And Saturday, aside from doing the deal with my person at Tart to Tart at noon, I’ve got another friend’s 40th birthday party extravaganza to go to in the afternoon and my commitment that night at 7pm.

Sunday, after the class I’ll be heading over to Oakland for another housewarming party.

I wish my friends would all stop moving over to Oakland/Berkley/et al.

I miss you guys.

I totally get it though.

I do.

I just, well, I’m holding tight here as long as I can.

I really feel like I’m more San Franciscan than anything, and I try to represent best I can, that San Francisco weirdo.

I don’t always succeed, but I certainly don’t fade into the background.

Even here.

I do, however, miss the sunshine, and I am constantly grateful that I work in the Mission, at least I get to experience sun there.

Not that I made it much outside today.

Today was all things cooking.

Pot of sushi rice.

Beef stew with vegetables.

Fish for the boys.

A vat of broccoli soup.

Roasted cauliflower.

There will be a bit of cooking for me this week as the boys are at camp for a part of the day that I’m at the house.

Laundry, cooking, errands, marketing, running to Walgreens for prescriptions, going to the dry cleaners.

All sorts of things.

Especially as the family prepares to go on a little trip next week.

FYI.

My people.

I have to work that Monday at the house, let in the housekeeper, this is August 1st, but I’ll be off early, and, and, and.

I will get Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday off from work.

I’ll go back to the house on Friday to cook and prepare for the family to return and make sure the house and everything is in order.

But yo.

I got some free time next week.

Coffee?

MOMA?

I just got my new membership, I can take up to two people with me.

I should definitely go next week, even if no one goes with me, I’m a good solitary museum goer, shit, so many museums have I gotten to visit, such a gift, that.

The Louvre (Paris), The Metropolitan (New York), The MOMA SF, The MOMA New York, The Whitney (New York), the new Whitney, the Brooklyn Museum, The Palace of Fine Art (San Francisco), Le Petite Palais, L’Orangerie (Paris) The Rodin Museum (Paris) The Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, the Asian Museum of Art (Paris), the LACMA, The Chicago Museum of Art, The New Orleans Museum of Art, The Dali Museum(Paris), the DaVinci Museum (in Rome), The DeYoung (San Francisco), The Tate (London), Galleria  Nazionale d’Arte Moderna (Rome), The National Gallery in London, The Jeu de Paume (Paris).

I’m sure I’m forgetting some, in fact, I know I am.

But man.

I am lucky to get to have had so many of those experiences, and most, truth be told, on my own.

Although once in a while with a friend, or a lover, although never a boyfriend.

It’s been twenty years since I have been to a museum with a boyfriend.

My ex-boyfriend back in Madison was way into art and we hit up the ones in Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison.

I remember when I introduced him to Dali.

And to Klimt.

And Kandinsky.

Twenty years.

That’s a long time.

Grateful I haven’t sat around waiting for a boyfriend to go out and live my life.

Not to say I wouldn’t eschew one.

Just that I don’t need a man to complete me.

A compliment, that I could handle, some one to walk by my side.

Until then.

Well.

Friends.

Masturbation and Stranger Things.

Heh.

Today’s Stats

Sometimes I just don’t know what to make of my stats.

Not the body ones.

Or the emotional ones.

Even the mental ones.

Nope.

I literally mean the ones on my blog.

How come so many people are searching that one particular thing?

Why would someone in Mexico want to read my blog?

Who is creeping on my page?

Cuz.

That shit happens yo.

Sometimes I get a great big spike in reads and it’s typically, from my experience, one reader going deep into the blog.

It always leaves me curious.

Who is that person?

Or what are they looking for?

Do they just want to get to know me better, but just a little too shy to ask?

Are they just keeping up with the life and times of Auntie Bubba?

I mean.

Today was not super exciting, but it was special, as is any day I get through without picking up or using and as I was surprise popped to speak at the place tonight, it astounded me, once again, how much my life has changed and how very much I have to be grateful for.

Even when I don’t want to lighten up or have fun.

My life is light and fun.

That does not mean frothy or insubstantial.

If anything.

I believe that it is ever more expansive and open and wonderful.

Deep and complex.

Yet.

Utterly simple.

Easy?

No.

My life is not easy, but by following some simple suggestions.

Well.

Life is manageable and I can let go of the results and just see what happens.

So much can happen.

Least of all when I expect it.

I mean.

Shit.

I’m going to New Orleans on Thursday and three weeks ago that wasn’t even on my plate, let alone an idea in my head, let alone an actual reality, a plane ticket, a room to stay in, a place to meet my fellows, a French Quarter to explore.

I was talking to a dear friend of mine last night on the phone and she mentioned that she has always wanted to move there.

Me too.

It’s been one of those places always on my radar, even though I haven’t been back in so very long.

I made her a promise that I would report back and let her know how it was.

I suspect it will be fabulous.

I suspect I have no idea what will happen.

But it will be good.

I know this.

Having done enough traveling in my life at this point I know how to do a couple of things, pack, and navigate around and get in and out of an airport.

Those things used to cause me an unbearable amount of anxiety.

Just getting to the airport was excruciating and exciting and flavored with fraught anxiety and a curious longing for the uplift of the wings, the expanse of land below me, the clouds and sky alongside my face.

How often have I pressed my face against a window portal, dreaming dreams and aching with some unnamable feeling, some longing for shift in perspective and the glorious wonder of new things to be seen and experienced.

New faces.

New foods.

New streets to wander.

New art to see and be exposed to.

So much wonder in the travel.

The escape from the mundane, well, I don’t think my daily routine is mundane, I should re-word that, the exodus from the routine, to the new and the glad return, the gratitude I have when I land back at SFO and the chill fog coolness swirls about me and the doors open from the baggage claim gates to the outside world.

I am reminded of every time I have flown in and out of the airport.

Of the first trip here when I returned to the land of my birth.

To my last trip from New York.

All the Paris’s and Chicago’s and Minneapolis’s in between.

The Orlando trips, the Madison, Wisconsin trips, those times to Maine and back, Anchorage, Los Angeles, Austin, London, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Boston.

There are still so many places to go and visit.

But there is always home to return to.

And I normally do with a renewed vigor and love for where I am and what I am doing.

I do a lot.

Even when I am loathe to admit that.

I do a lot.

Just writing this blog.

I mean.

I forget that.

The work here.

The graduate school program.

The nannying.

The doing the deal and going to yoga and cooking all my own food (for the most part).

The showing up and be willing to take suggestions even when I want to blow a big raspberry at the person making it.

The willingness to be wrong.

The ability to make mistakes and not beat myself up for not being perfect.

The trying.

The dating.

The sex.

The life.

The love.

The music.

The words.

All the things.

I mean.

I am many, many things.

I am certainly not perfect and I am a pretty open book, although sometimes I can retire into silence and not know what to say to someone or I will lose my voice when I need to self-assert, I will second guess, and not trust my gut.

Or.

Worse.

I will hear that still small voice and ignore it.

There’s a big difference in not trusting your gut versus hearing something, knowing it’s not good for you, or that there’s a lot of information to look at and choosing to ignore it.

Hope for a different outcome.

And even these mistakes.

They are not really mistakes at all.

Just another foot fall on the path to where ever I am going.

To what ever destination God has in mind for me.

This week it happens to be New Orleans.

Who knows where I will go next?

I certainly don’t.

But.

I’m game and excited and over joyed with it.

The ability to do these things that were once such fantasies.

Sitting at the end of the bar at the end of the night rattling off tales of where I was going to go and things I was going to try and places I wanted to see and things I was going to accomplish.

Most of the time it was no further than the floor underneath the stool I toppled from.

Or.

Some strangers bed.

Most often, a miserable repeat of what had happened the night before and the night before that and so on ad nauseam.

There are things that repeat for me today.

Routines, roads I travel, steps I take.

But instead of them being a horrid Ground Hog’s day of terror.

The repetition breeds awareness and it deepens more and more with perspective and experience.

Revealing a steadfast love that takes care of me no matter what.

Always.

Always here.

Always there.

Everywhere I go.

This extraordinary gift.

This.

Overwhelming.

Overarching.

Expansive.

And.

Genuine.

Love.

 

It’s Getting Busy In Here

I would like to say “up in here,” however that would slant my meaning a little the sassy way and that is not what I meant.

Not that I am opposed to it, mind you.

No, what I mean is that the next few weeks just got booked solid with work.

One of the dad’s picked up a contract that will go through the month of November and probably through the middle of December.

Add on to that there will be a work retreat for the two moms in the second week of November.

I am working a lot.

This is good.

Off set that wetsuit cost.

Pay some student loans.

Stick some money in savings.

Buy a plane ticket somewhere warm for the winter.

I am just thinking out loud here, but there are some folks I would like to see and one of the families will be in Puerto Rico for a week in January and I thought, hmmm, I have an anniversary of mine to celebrate maybe I will go somewhere that month to celebrate.

Maybe.

Just things on the horizon.

I am also filled with story thoughts.

November is the next week!

The first of the month is Friday and that will begin my month-long adventure in novel-writing.  Which just happens to coincide with the busiest work that I have had on my plate in a while and the Mike Doughty concert on November 6th.

That week is going to be off the wall.

That is the same week as the retreat.

I shall, however, have extra scratch should I want to get some swag at the concert.

I used to not think much about grabbing t-shirts and such at shows, but there have been a few times that I wished I had.

The Jeff Buckley show I saw at the Barrymore in Madison.

Soul Coughing in Milwaukee.

The J. Davis Trio out of Chicago, their show especially when they were promoting the New Number Two, definitely would have liked some merch from that.

Goldfrapp at the Fillmore.

There’s a few more shows, I have a set list somewhere from a Pete Yorn show I saw before he broke out, again in Madison, and I certainly have plenty of memories about shows.

The show were Michael Franti pulled me from the floor up onto stage and sang and danced a song with his big lanky, sweaty, body draped over me.

Being behind the booth with Donald Glaude New Years 2003, San Francisco.

Yup.

There’s some good times in there.

I am looking forward to seeing Doughty.

I have seen him once solo, at a Cafe Montmartre in Madison, which was sweet and very intimate, despite friends who were there shrooming their brains out who kept professing their love for him.

Yeah, it will be a busy week.

It will be a busy month.

The novel idea is a great idea and I did find the time in my schedule, the dribs and drabs of the hours that will come to mean so much to me as I attempt to cram one more thing into my schedule.

Because I am going to try to grab some hours devoted to working on my other book as well.

I will write the novel long hand.

I have been back and forth with this in my head for a couple of days, well, basically since I signed up for it.

I don’t want to drag my laptop around and I am leery of writing a rough draft of a manuscript on a keyboard.

It is too easy to hit delete and lose thoughts, movements, ideas or feelings.

A rough draft is the cutting of the cloth, you want lots of it to drape your suit of story from.  You don’t want to have to go back later and add stuff.  I don’t anyway.  I want a big swath of material.

Which is the thought behind writing it that way and also that I don’t want to drag around my laptop to work each and every day.

Partially because it is a little heavy and a bit of a nuisance and partially because I want to stretch the life of this laptop out.  I have been experiencing some more difficulties with it and I am getting the feeling that there may be a new laptop in my future before there is a new surf board.

The notebook is the way to go.

The only nuisance with it is that I will need to word count my book into the format for the website.  And I wonder if I will need to transcribe it by the end of the month.

I was doing a little poking around the site to see what the parameters were, but it is unclear at this time whether I actually use the site to write the novel, or I just use the site to track the progress of the novel.

Should I decide to write the rough draft in my laptop I would save it first to the laptop anyhow and then upload to the site.

In both scenarios, there is a word count.

With a notebook, there is me counting the words.

I can make a fairly good guess at how many words I get out on a page and when the fire is hot in my hands and I am a conduit of the muse, which is really always what it feels like, I sit down and the words come from somewhere outside of me, I can write about eight to ten pages long hand in an hour.

I have written so fast before that my hands have cramped to get the words out.

There is a kind satisfying adrenalin rush that comes with being overcome with the word.

It is spiritual in nature and overwhelming.

I feel a little used by it, but outrageously wonderful when it is happening.

There is a high involved.

I won’t deny it.

Even here, the tip tap typing and clack of the keyboards provides me with some sort of visceral fulfilment.

My day is not complete without the words.

The sentences stacking themselves up.

My friend mentioned last night that if I write on average 1,000 word posts (they tend to be a spot over I think, but I will go with that estimate) and I have written over a 1,000 blogs, that in essence I have written over a million words.

A fucking MILLION.

Whoa, damn Gina.

What the fuck is that?

That is not me.

Not this lazy bitch that would rather watch Breaking Bad and House of Cards then type out a story.

How I got here I don’t know, but I have to say, I rather like it.

I think I will stay awhile.

Even when it gets busy, the getting is always good.

Getting some may never have been better.

Well….