december 1

healthy but...prude

I've taken on a new journaling challenge this month: I've joined the HoliDailies ring, which means I am to update everyday in this month of December. Hello to all of those coming from HoliDailies!

If you haven't read my last entry, you probably don't know that I'm getting my head together again. Well, I am. Internally at least. And I can't tell you how much of a difference that makes. I may not being doing everything perfectly--I still paid the bills late, I didn't do any grocery shopping, I didn't even wash the dishes from LAST WEEKEND--but I at work I got shit done and did what I need to do to have a successful business.

And, as is always the case (when will I ever learn this?), as soon as I got my head together, everything started to fall into place. Past clients came back for more, colleagues sent referrals, I made new contacts. This business of having my own business may never come naturally to me--I'm just not a born entrepreneur--but I really do love this work when I've got it. I just have to make sure I do what I need to do to get it.

The only thing that sucked was that my sweetie was gone all week in New York on business. My home rhythm was thrown off and I had trouble sleeping. Deep down I was feeling this low-level anxiety knowing that A* was in NYC, on Long Island actually, mere miles from the plane crash. I really wasn't worried, just, you know, concerned. He left me three voice mails while he was gone and I saved them all, just in case, so I would always have his voice. I'm macabre like that.

***

I had coffee with an older friend the other night who told me this hilarious story and I swore I wouldn't tell but this is just too good:

Friend was shopping over in the Hawthorne district with her nieces, one a college student, the other is in high-school. They are cousins. Friend, who is in her 60s, has a very close relationship with her nieces and they tell her everything, including the details of their budding sex lives.

Well, the older of the girls suggests they head up the street to a special store.

"Sure," Friend says. "We can go wherever you want."

"Well," says the older girl, with complete confidence, "I want to go to [Local Sex Toy Store] to buy my cousin her first vibrator."

And as soon as Friend told me this I, uncontrollably, screeched right there, in the middle of this tiny little cafe where Friend and I were sipping lattes. I screamed and covered my mouth with my eyes popping out of my head like a frigid old biddy. It wasn't until later that I realized not only should I have been embarrassed by my outburst, but by the fact the my screeching only drew attention to us and I'm sure the entire cafe heard the rest of the story.

Now, I am not a prude, by any stretch of the imagination. I have been the proud owner of a Hitachi Magic Wand for the better part of seven years, the best damned $80 I've ever spent. But I've known these girls since before they were born--the oldest was the first baby I ever felt kicking from the womb--and I could just barely fathom the notion that they were old enough for vibrators, much less that they were taking their aunt along for this happy occasion.

The rest of the incident involved the girls asking their aunt's opinion on which was the best type for the younger girl's "first one." Friend examined the representational dildos and proclaimed that they were really only for "gay men." (This is where Friend starts to show her age, I believe.) She moved onto the wand styles and tested each one for speed, intensity, weight, etc. She never actually told me which one they decided on, but I hope the younger girl is satisfied with her purchase.

I had a similar "old biddy" experience last week.

I was watching the U2 concert on VH-1, recalling the fond high school memories I connect with their music. Making out to Rattle and Hum. Discovering BB King. The boy I was crushed out on for ages who looked like Edge, but whose name I can't remember for the life of me.

Toward the end of the show Bono pulls this 16-year-old girl up on the stage in the middle of a song--I can't remember now which one it was--and they laid there, singing together, Bono, who must be 45, gazing at her and pulling her close. The ick of it all just got to me. When I was younger I thought his touchy-feely tendencies were sexy. Now I think he just has a problem with boundaries and I told my husband as much.

A* starred at me.

"You are so thirty," he said.

- december 1