Punchdrunk Princess

Today is the start of girl-cation, where the girls go do super secret girly things with no boys allowed!  I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time!  Today we’ve booked a full day of pampering treatments at the spa and for the next couple of nights we’ll be staying in the rock star suite downtown.  There will be food, there will be fun, there will be freedom in the sun.  We may answer our cell phones.  We may blog.  Or you might not hear from us until Monday!

Who am I kidding?  I’ll be tweeting like a little bird so catch me on twitter.

p.s.  the puppy is really sick and I’m all kinds of worried about her. Hubby is taking her to the vet today so please think some happy thoughts for her.  I almost cancelled the whole shebang but he assured me he can take care of getting her to the vet and all that.  Happy thoughts people!

A while back I was accused of using my ability to put words and phrases together to intimidate people. I was told that it was a sign of my arrogance that I use my words in a way that makes others feel inferior.

The truth of the matter is that I write because I can’t speak. It’s like I have verbal dyslexia because I mean one word but another word entirely comes out of my mouth, and I end up sounding like a moron. I’m not fond of sounding like a moron so I tend to keep my mouth shut.

Instead I write.  If I have something important I need to say to you, I will write you a letter or an email because I can try to better get my point across. I can read over what I have written and make changes, whereas once I open my mouth it’s too late. You can’t reel it back in at that point and it doesn’t matter what you say after spitting your foot out, those words are already out there.

The only drawback to writing is that you can’t introduce inflection and expression. It is more difficult to inject tone. I think that’s where I go wrong because I can write something with the best of intentions and still be found arrogant if that’s how this person views me in the first place.   Sometimes it’s hard to accept that once we put something out there it’s no longer solely ours.  It’s now subject to the interpretations of our readers/listeners and can come off as something entirely different than we meant. Like a bad game of telephone.

Can you tell I’m having interpersonal relationship issues lately?

How about you? What’s your preferred modus communicatus?

How do you make friends?  What do you do when you meet new people?  Do you give them the benefit of the doubt right off or do you wait and scope out the lay of the land?  And then later when something goes wrong, do you cut it off immediately or do you give a second chance?  If you have decided that someone is maybe not friend material right now do you give them another chance later or do you decide that ship has sailed and that’s the end of that?

I ask this because it’s been on my mind lately. 

I am a cautious at first person.  Rarely will I jump right into a friendship with someone I’ve just met, or even someone I’ve known for a while.   I’m pretty shy, especially in social settings.  I’m the person at the party that sits off to the side and watches everyone, figuring out who’s who and what they’re like, until I get to know them.   I don’t approach people and strike up a casual conversation, but I’m not shy enough that I will turn down a conversation someone strikes up with me.   Once we get into the conversational groove I’m ok, but reaching out is very hard for me.

As far as the second part of my question goes, I am the eternal optimist.  Sometimes that bites me on the ass, but there are times when it works out and those times are worth a little flesh wound.  

I knew a girl a few years ago who had a great personality.  She was kind and funny and her life was a total train wreck.  She was constantly asking everyone around her for help and we all gave it because she was so nice.  I even ended up giving her a car because after a couple of payments she never paid me the balance.  It may have been the ultimate con, but I never felt bad about it because she was so nice and her need was genuine.  That doesn’t mean we’re still friends - I have my limits - but I don’t have regrets.

I know another girl.  She’s prickly and a little odd and her life has also been a train wreck.   We’ve had words on more than occasion but I didn’t give up on her and now I really like her.  She’s funny and smart and still odd and we get along great.   Had I written her off after our uncomfortable altercations I wouldn’t have her as a friend now.  

There have been times in my life where I’ve had drama of my own and couldn’t be a good friend to anyone.  That doesn’t mean I completely blew everyone off, but I couldn’t devote the energy to them that I would have liked.  Those who were my true friends stuck by me, even though they didn’t know why I was being distant.  See, when I’m going through sucktimes I generally don’t talk about it so people don’t know why I’ve withdrawn.  They didn’t care.  They waited for me to work my shit out and were still there for me.  

There were also those who wrote me off.  We’re still acquaintances, but they are distant and no matter what I’ve tried we will most likely never be friends again.  Because this is where I draw the line.  If you are the kind of person to write me off because I am not as available as you would like due to my own drama, then I don’t think you’re the lasting friendship kind and we’re all done. 

The friends I have can count on me through thick and thin.  Even if I’m in the middle of the suck myself I will make time if I need to.  You just have to let me know.  I’m not psychic and I don’t want to be.  If you wrote me off because you think I should have been there for you, but you didn’t tell me you needed me to be, then that’s all on you baby.

I have become more conscious about trying to be a good friend as I’ve gotten older and other relationships in my life have changed.  So I’m curious about how other people go about making and maintaining friendships.  Are you an all or nothing person?  Do you make allowances for people when it’s someone you don’t know well?  Because I think it’s harder when it’s someone you don’t know.  Most of us are pretty good at giving long-term friends the leeway they need but are quicker to cut someone we just met.  The thing is, when you give up you could be passing over a great friend who maybe needs your friendship more right then than you can imagine.

… have lived all over the country and in Italy but have never been to New York.

… love to live near water and miss it terribly where I live now.

… am afraid of snakes and ladders - and not the childrens game.

… love summer the most of all four seasons.

… have never broken a single bone (knock wood!).

… used to be addicted to sleeping pills but kicked the habit.

… taught my son to put the olives on his fingers.

… am horrible at taking care of plants but love to have them in the house and yard.

… never had pets other than guppies as a child and now I have 16.

… sing loudly and off-key in the car when I’m alone.

… am chronically early to work and late everywhere else.

… never grew wisdom teeth.  Not that they never came in - I don’t have them at all.

… write with my left hand but do just about everything else either right-handed or ambidextrously.

… am learning to meditate.

… wish I had known what my true passion was when I was younger.

… was inspired by Miss Britt and Hilly.

What don’t I know about you?

I should preface this post with the disclaimer that I have a mostly hate relationship with the Lane Bryant, partly because it pisses me off to have to shop there and partly because they are almost the only game in town and thus feel free to ass-rape us over the cost of a pair of jeans.

However! I have to give them props for their color-coded rightfit pants. Since I am the poster child for bootyliciousness my jeans are always gapping at the waist in order to fit my badonkadonk, and no one has really addressed that before. The rightfit jeans are separated into three categories: yellow for straight hip/waist girls, red for moderately curvy girls, and blue for us full-on curvy gals.

I am a blue-tag kind of girl and I have to say I am wearing one of the most comfortable pairs of jeans I have worn in a long time! I also found a pair of dress pants that don’t make me feel like either a sausage stuffed into them or like I’m wearing a dress they’re so floppy.

It pains me to say it because two pairs of pants at the LB is $100, but thanks LB for thinking of my booty. I will be back with my real women dollars so hide your clearance racks!

I’m in the process of redesigning my blog (thanks to Goofy Girl designs) and I need your help.  I haven’t liked the name Punchdrunk Princess from the very beginning, but it was all I could come up with at the time and I got tired of waiting to start blogging to figure out something better.   Now I’m at a point where I need to find a title and tag line to stick with but I’m still feeling that brick wall of inspiration.

I’d like to keep the “Princess” part in there somewhere because, well, who doesn’t want to be a princess really?  I also sort of like the Let Them Eat Cake tagline because I’m all about the cake, but it sounds a little…bitchy?  You tell me.  I’d like to have something cakey in there, maybe even in the title, but I’m at a loss as to how to incorporate it.

Here’s where I ask for your help.  I need suggestions and inspiration.  I’m at that staring at a blank screen page and pretty soon my title will end up “All Work and No Play Makes Princess Batshit Crazy” over and over on the page.  No one wants that.  Please.  Help!

It’s Friday night and I’ve had a craptastic week.  Things have gone horribly, epicly (how DO you spell that anyway?)  wrong, or have just plain sucked the poo milkshake, and I’ve been a right wanker about the whining.  Every other twit I send has been waaahhhh this or poor me that and I just can’t stand myself anymore!  So I have decided, just for right here and right now, that I’m going to focus on the positive things that happened this week.

1 - I talked to my Aunt and Uncle, who I haven’t spoken with for any length of time for quite a while, and it was great, and they’re coming to dinner on Sunday.  Nice!

2 - I didn’t get to go fishing but I got awesome new boots for when I do get to go, and they will double nicely as snow boots.  Plus I can fit my orthotics in them.  Score!  And they were on sale.  At Cabela’s.  See?  Nice!

3 - I ordered way too many of the boy’s senior pictures, but that’s because he’s such a cutie and I can’t believe he’s all growed up.  These are the last school pictures I’m likely to get so I had to make it last!

4 - I learned that I don’t want a new wolf badly enough to deal with the crazy wolf rescue lady and her six page adoption application.  Plus, hybrids?  Yeah, no.  Ok, this one is bordering on negative but it’s good to learn what you don’t want right?

5 -  I got awesome new ink on my back and I had old-ish ink rehabbed.  I’m digging on my flowers again

6 - I am reaching out more; commenting on more blogs that I’ve been reading under the covers like a lurkey turkey.  Trying to come out of my shell!  I am even considering going to a blogger meet-up kind of thing.  Sometime.  Maybe.

7 - I got to see killer fog and pogonip this morning the likes of which I usually wouldn’t see until January.  The county installed a new waterline out here that they were flushing this week by discharging a gagillion gallons of chlorinated water into the playa (don’t get me started - this is supposed to be positive!) and it created artificial humidity on a cold morning and we were blessed with premature pogonip.  Very pretty :)  Ok, so it means white death, but it’s still pretty to look at!  Too bad I was camera-less.

8 - I learned that chocolate really is magic!  I was raging away about everything today, just angrier than cat pee about everything, and then I went into a coworker’s office who had save-the-boobies m&m’s on her desk.  I had a couple or 15 as I was leaving her office and I noticed about 10 minutes later that the rage was all gone.  Just like magic beans.

That’s all I’ve got.  I tried for 10 but made it to 8.  Eight is good.  it’s a nice round number.  Badumbum…  Besides once you’ve had magic beans where do you go from there?

Happy Fucking Friday!

I wasn’t supposed to be home tonight.  If all had gone as planned I would have been on the road on the way back from California, sandwiched into the front of a truck with two guys and all of us stinking like fish.

It didn’t work out that way.

Instead I watched the election returns.  I watched the numbers turn overwhelmingly in favor of Barak Obama.  I watched John McCain concede the election as graciously as we have seem him in a very long time, even if his audience was not as gracious.  I watched my home state, Nevada, turn blue.  I watched the next President of the United States take the podium with a dignity and grace we have not seen in a President in too many years.  I listened to him speak with a power and conviction such that we have not heard from a President in too many years.

Finally.  Today marks an historic moment in time.  Today the voices of the American people resonated across the country.  Today we elected a President of whom we can be proud.  Today America grew up.

Winter and I just do not get along. I will conceed that since it’s now November, it’s time for me to suck it up and accept the snow, and I will but…

Why last night? (pardon me… there will be whining here. Feel free to avert your eyes.) Our planned fishing trip was thwarted by snow and CalTrans’ unwillingness to pony up for a snow plow. Instead we had the great fun of being stuck in a truck, mostly at a dead stop on the pass, for 5 wonderful hours. Joy!

Usually I don’t mind snow in the mountains as long as it stays out of the valley because usually NDOT and CalTrans keep it pretty clear over the pass. Last night, not so much! Last night was an epic fail for lack of any meaningful plowage whatsoever.

I understand both of our states are facing a budget crisis, but Jesus H! Get out the goddamn snow plows! It’s not like this is anything new. It’s been snowing over the pass in November since the beginning of time. Stories have been written about it in fact. Remember the Donner Party? They didn’t have a plow either and look how that worked out for them!