Famous Sounding Words Make Your Head Feel Light

Here is a photo of a wave. I miss the beach one whole helluva lot right now. Just so you know.

Okay. Here's the deal. I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed since I've been back from vacation. I have tons of emails to answer, I have blog links to update, and lots of practical shit to take care of. I apologize, if you are any of the people I've been lame about contacting. It's not that I don't want to contact you, it's more that first I was unpacking and returning things and trying to do 1,758 loads of laundry, and then get everything ready for my kids to go to school tomorrow (how is Summer over already anyway?) and paying bills and a whole bunch of other crap that nobody else really cares about but me. Anyway, I will try really hard to get things taken care of this week, but if I say "fuck it all" one night and watch a really stupid movie, it's just to calm me down for a bit, so's I don't actually have that nervous break-down I've been threatening for years now.

But have no fear, one thing I won't lame out on tonight, is coming up with the word. I was tagged by Evil-E to pick next week's Saturday Scavenger Hunt word. I think I'll go with animal. Have we done that one yet? Let me know.

So, having said that, I did give myself a little break on Saturday. The girls went to their dad's by six and I did some serious putzing around my house for several hours and it felt really, really good. I got this crazy idea in my head, that I'd just stay home and watch movies and revel in my aloneness. Then I got a call from my friend Brooke reminding me of her housewarming party. I thought it was just a BBQ thing and that I'd already missed it, but Brooke assured me that it was all a bunch of metalheads who don't leave until the keg is dry. Then as I was getting ready, my friend D. texted me that she and J. were heading downtown. Since I had exactly five dollars, I figured I'd go to Brooke's first and drink the free, really good wheat beer they had in their keg and see all those whacky guys first and then run downtown and buy a beer with my girly friends.

Brooke's shindig was very much fun. There weren't tons of people there, but everyone was really cool. I met a guy who I've seen around town for years. He was just a year younger than me, which was refreshing. He was also gay, and he told me how hot he thought I was. He said he remembered seeing me at the Deadwood twenty years ago, and then seeing me running around town lately and thinking, "Damn. She still looks good." Then when I met my friends at Joe's Place, another gay man about my age, told me how he remembered me from when I used to model for art classes in the eighties. He told me that I was the first woman he had ever seen naked and even now when he sees me running, he's impressed. Don't get me wrong, it was all nice to hear. It would be even better, however, if a guy who might actually want to date me, expressed an attraction to me. Instead, it left me wondering if I had somehow become Iowa City's answer to Judy Garland. Would the drag shows in town start featuring guys wearing curly wigs and purposely klutzing around stages, tripping over everything and speaking too loudly in bad seventies and eighties pop song lyrics, trying to pay homage to me? Shudder to think.