my heart's in the highlands

i am leaving for the highlands in a minute.

high on my list are visting culloden (of blood and gore mel gibson in skirt fame) and the castle from highlander.

scotland kicks ass. especially when i have a car.

have i finally converted to british?

i just got home from the pub (well, "tavern") where i stood around rubbing shoulders with a bunch of broguish musky men watching the champions league match; arsenal v. barcelona.

now i have always thought barcelona was an exceedingly sexy city, indeed, one of those exotic type places too cool even for tourists. but if their slackjawed nancy-boy forward is anything to go by, may i never set foot in spain.

but still. i swore, drank miller, and all in all almost felt like it was a november saturday but for the weird offside rule. its a shame football is so lame, but i've still signed up for the world cup pool at work. it may kill me, but i'l try goddamnit.



that said, i had a most excellent day.

speeddater visited me at work (to lend me equilibrium. yum.) where he was drooled over by co-workers (i love a good tease).

then got a text from hot scot, who has now finished novel three and is ready to party.

and rounded out the evening with a few sexy footballers and some chips and cheese with brown sauce.

i need a break from holidays

i hate planning vacations.

i love reading up and thinking of my endless options and imagining life without the daily mundane. but the whole choosing and handling is so bloody boring.

granted, i learned my lesson with the VWbug-in-a-corn-field-due-to-jet-ski-show-cost-me-$1000-in-damages-fucking-black-ice scenario in college, reservations are worth the pain. carpe diem isn't for everything. but still.

i'm trying to cram three seperate trips into under a week and the logistics are making all dreams of road trip journals and seascapes flee my sore head.


so, maybe i didn't tell you - my dad is coming...but on a golf tour with all his middle aged dentist friends (he is nothing if not stereotypical).

so, i am taking this weekend to meet up with them at their fancy hotel in the highlands for a weekend of wandering days followed by pampered nights where people with six digit salaries foot the bill.

but, since i was up there anyway, and dad said he'd rent a car for me, i figured i'd strike out into the wilderness for a few days on my own. which has now turned into me and liam on a yet to be determined holiday. i am glad we'll have some time and space but slightly anxious at what if any questions will be answered along the way. it should be fabulous. and another brilliant chapter in my memoirs of ridiculous impossible things i let happen to me.

but then, i really want to see dad. so after his friends leave the following weekend he and i are going to the isle of arran. which means i need to be back, ditch the car, get down south again, find him, and get us to an island with a population of 1100 (i hear there are more bottles of whisky than people there), then get us back here in under two days so he can fly home all tuckered out.

i know it will be good. i am dying to get away.

but i am just now realizing exactly how much i took on with this. (now being 3 hours into reservations, phone calls, and general madness with my nose in a lonely planet)

i know my tendency to plan, mother, and over analyze gets me into trouble. i can deal with that. but just once i'd like it to not interfere with my social life.
there should so be an off button for that kind of thing.

sometimes part-time is best

i believe i may have prefected the random friend.

we only see each other every three months but we fall in like we bantered just yesterday, speed-dater and i.

it's like having a penpal, but in person.

someone you have a fleeting moment with, where anything is game from pop culture whims to confessional type memoirs. where it can all be true, since it'll have no bearing on your tomorrow.

today's menu was my adoption story to his paedophile teacher, but only after we agreed futurama is better television, but family guy is still funny.

and three hours later (full of haggis stuffed chicken and banoffee pie), knowing it'll be august before we do it again, we part ways in the sunshine.

patty duke on line 1

yes dear, i am fine.

just bemused and constantly surprised at my middle school mentality. he said, she said, what did that mean?

you would think, for all my modern views, my one night stands, my harmless flirtations, my masculine mannerisms and perfected girlish laugh i'd be beyond these simple urges. i know the game, i know i don't want to play by them, and i still get sucked in every round.

we have always known i have low to no self control, but i find it shocking i get thrown back into archaic expectations and down right silly conventions when i let myself actually feel something.

it's not important, i won't get into the whole sordid affair (a turn of phrase more than a literal act), either it'll sort itself out and i'll gush or it won't and i'll become flippant and move on.

suffice to say, i've found a new one to obsess over. and not in a nickname and casual flirt, but kind of actually care (and more importantly want him. for keeps maybe even.) and it fucking freaks me out (and pisses me off just a little). and i keep saying i don't. that i won't fall for this. won't be one of those girls who waits. who worries. who doubts and denies and follows.

but for all my dithering in the end i still want him to call.

well, and then throw me on the bed and fuck me senseless.


is that so much to ask?

does not compute

i have often, though not in these pages perhaps as regularly as elsewhere, referred to my silent scream. the unheard voice and ignored plea of my deepest darkest self. wordlessly raw and often violent.

but it is not her that plagues me today.

it is, if anything, more of a screaming silence. no, that doesn't fit. a deafening blinding quiet. a heavy Nothing.

an aching weight whose only relief is expression, and i am at a loss for words.

i don't want to talk about it or write about it or even really think in traditional terms, but i know of no other way to cope than words.

and i find they are insufficient.

his thoughts kept him from feeling. winterson may have been writing about atlas, but she got it right.

i don't know how to process this.

epiphany of the day: the lucky shirt

while standing in the shower this afternoon, i realized a very important thing about myself.

fact:
with 50% (1) of the men (2) i have hooked up with (3) in the last year (4) i was wearing the same shirt.

where:
(1) 50% as in 5 out of 10
(2) i use the term loosely though their equipment defines them as masculine anatomically
(3) as in anything beyond second base (i know. but you come up with a better system then)
(4) 16 months but poetic licence is never more applicable when considering past partners

conclusion:
either the low neck navy polo was built for my tits or i desperately need a new wardrobe.

May Day mayday.

so beltane is amazing. and retarded. and possibly unhealthy. and yet, i'll always go and always kind of love it. contemporary pagan fertility rites are worth it.

not only is there traditional king stag-may queen orgytastic fun, there are giant penes (yes, like theses is the plural of thesis) and burning effigies and lots of naked pagans (who are really just bongo-hippies with less clothes and more fire) in red body paint who harass Neds.

best of all, in my version there is a flask of whiskey and pyromania. it was brilliant.

well, the part i remember. of course, after the bonfire and cigarettes i kind of have no recollection - especially the precarious climb down calton hill in the dark - and am hoping had i partaken (partook? partakEd?) in the orgiastic revelry it'd be more memorable.

but sadly, we can't all have pagan hippies with flaming swords.

the best kinds of days are one ones where you wake up the morning after refreshed with grass in your hair and plenty to think about.

liam called it a roller coaster, but then i suppose anyone would after 10 hours in my company. i do a lot of gear changing.

i scare me sometimes and it's really really nice to just be with someone who doesn't mind.

pr stands for prostitutional retail

so i totally wrote like two entries this week which are so not there.

but that is neither here nor there. my real worry is the inordinant amount of valley-speak in that sentence.

linguistic snobbery aside, i am on the verge of mental collapse.

although my add/ocd tendencies are erratic at best, i find myself compelled to put forth every effort in this mediocre retil job.

most of the time this is an utter waste which leads to me sitting up all night worried about that simon and schuster returns note and if i need to hotline in the new young bond title for monday.

but sometimes it so completely pays off. a themed-month gimick yields massive publisher support and author visit. author visit becomes tour - and i am now in full on business card schmoozing mode with lunch meetings and a launch party tonight ...

today was 200 tweeners in a massive auditorium with gift bags and autographs.

best of all, i am the golden child of said publisher and have landed the premiere (and a limited edition pre-release copy) of next fall's best newcomer. Seriously, I will be the only person with a copy outside the company and will be hosting the press release party london houses are vying for.

a lame thing to be excited over, i know. but somehow it makes such a difference that somebody gets that i am good at this. that wasting my time on little thing like projection dvds and negotiating better margins turns out for the best.

give me a year - if i am not out of retail i promise to bite the bullet and get a phd at bryn mar and finally make that leap to full time academic lesbian.

why isn't there a british equivalent to americana?

so perhaps it was a subconcious effort to be contrary, but i have had a remarkably simple britishness in the last couple days.

lunch at the mosque - the best curry kitchen under a tent you will ever see - followed by the hippie tea rooms where no one spoke english, and a rounded out night at the pub quiz. sadly it was not dave the pub master, as he was at a fencing tournament, but his ultra scottish sub who is almost impossible to understand as microphones seems to enhance his brogue.

then this morning, picked up some herb baguette from the french baker and went to doze under a stone angel in the ancient graveyard up the road with a turn of the century copy of Jude the Obscure from St. Columba's Hospice.

v nice. lets only hope the tranquility i am storing up sees me through a week of teenagers and overly-enthusiastic book launches.

faux americana

my weekend has inadvertently become a celebration of american stereotype:

friday; dinner at the buffallo grill
- there were photographs of native americans covering the walls like a themed bennigans
- my co-workers asked if we actually learn about the native peoples at school
- and one even said " chief joseph - that cant be his indian name can it?"
- i had corn on the cob. they scoffed at my indelicacy. i reveled in the buttery goodness
- most of the menu was steak. i had the peppercorn and lemon.
- i had to explain jambalya

friday; community theatre guys and dolls
- they all sounded like bobby deniro in the untouchables
- on crack
- and with tampons shoved up their noses
- adelaide was a watered down lina lamont
- there were paper stars and stripes on the newstand
- it was positively adorable
- and atrocious

saturday; lupe pintos
- a mexican deli
- ... is really and import grocer with stove top, betty crocker and their ilk
- i bought a whatchamacalit. hersheys is unheard of (did i tell you the time i brought back hershey kisses and everyone was thrilled because they had never seen a real one and wondered if they really all had the little flags? yeah. arthur giving them to francine would have been lost. no wonder aardvark picture books are in a slump here.)
- and pace salsa

saturday; junebug
- totally one of those indie family pastiches
- absoultely hilarious
- and depressing
- americana on film makes me sad for home. even if its appalachia baptists, it's closer to hicksville midwest catholics compared to here. i miss my boppa.
- worth seeing even if alessandro nivola couldn't pass for a southern boy in a million years, he is fucking adorable

saturday; home
- call mom
- call sister
- wear flannel shirt
- hum showtunes

and although kitch and wrong and oh so very very bad in places (yes i know oversized flannel died with cobain), it still has a little piece of me aching for home. because, as the fairy tales tell us, no matter what kind of hell-hole farm you are from, there is no place like home.

office politics can always be resolved with spirits

at work i am barely third tier.

i make very little, i have only the amount of clout i can earn through my american smile and charisma (read: only with geek boys and the clinically insane), and i am by no means cool enough to believe in yoga boxes or drum and bass.

so it was no surprise i was not included on the 4 seat guest list for a publishing party/whiskey tasting.

but low and behold, miracle of miracles, multiple drop outs later i am the last minute pinch hitter for the shop.


and i must say it gave me no small pleasure to turn up fashionably late from having impromtu cocktails with friends and ended up knowing more people there than any of the managers who insisted on coming. plus, i revealed my snazzy (read: entirely lame publisher produced) business cards - but at least i have them. fuck head office denying me, if i am ever going to make it out i need contacts and i need them fast.

all pettiness and balding thirty-something co-workers aside, i love the publishing association and spanish port cask single malts (110+% proof).


ps - i am drunk.

easter is apparantly time for reflection and enlightenment. sadly, this is the best i have come up with:

i. the charm of my town is unfathomable. there was maypole dancing in the gardens below the castle. and a petting zoo. with a guinea pig. and a chicken.

ii. alice bands kick ass. i always thought ribbon/headbands should have a name. it's a damn good one.

iii. even if you never visit your favourite painting at the gallery, it should still be there when you go back.

iv. despite the protests of any irate thirteen year old, there is nothing better than hand-me-downs.

v. part of me will always want to go to church (this year was the 5th anniversary of my last attempt - a convuluded holiday with the putvins at my aunt's hippie church with pink-hair katie), but most of me will think it's comparable to having my nails ripped out and being bled by leeches. but i'll still miss the singing.

vi. it is my mission in life to incorporate 'ghetto' into the everyday discourse of the incredulous british population. so far so good.

vii. it sucks my sister is unwell.

change of pace

in an effort for a breath or fresh air and a new start to spring, here is what i did today:


- returned my library books before they were due
- sat barefoot in a beautiful cemetery and sketched a stone angel then lay in the sun watching the clouds go by (sometimes i think i should have been a most excellent goth girl)
- bought the screwtape letters
- walked along the canal smiling at swimming labradors and sleeping swans
- ate a vanilla ice cream cone walking home in the rain

it was a good day. more importantly, it was a different day.

point for nature

when i went on the pill i was still (mostly) un-sexually active, but let's not split hairs.

i mostly needed to curb my wonder woman size hormones and avoid the two days of excruciating pain a month where i had to call into work saying "i cant see straight because my woman parts are being turned inside out" which made my boss uncomfortable. and the regularity was a major bonus.


i have three little pink pills left. three days (give or take, i always hope for give) of safety and normalcy to prepare myself for the plecebo pandemonium. i specifically even picked tuesdays for least screwing up of my daily life and weekend plans.

and yet here i am, sore, bleeding, and crabby at 9am on a saturday.

what the fuck.

why oh why? how can it be possible even modern medicine cannot outwit my internal chaos? i can only conclude my hormones are stronger than whatever is in those things.

in the arm wrestle for my vaginal timetable, it seems biology has triumphed.

friendom

i'm doing it again. and i am going to stop it this time. i have to.

my whole life i follow a pattern. a curse. a lie. i vividly remember the first time it happened. i was 5.

i meet man/boy. i am amused/charmed/interested but immediately know it is platonic. the first impression of the asexual.

what was a random acquaintence becomes a friend. someone outside my mess. a breath of fresh air.

a friend becomes closer. people joke about how much time is spent together and we both ignore the insuations and laugh with the flippant comments of friends. but its nice to have that even.

somewhere in the joking things get awkward, and we get over it (it usally takes me awhile to not feel scrutinized and you not to feel judged). we maybe even take a step back to assess and readjust to this post-weirdness phase.

and a little part of me is always disappointed.

not that it didn't become love. not that i didn't suddenly wake up and realize this was forever (and equally important, that i want to jump their bones). but that it's the beginning of the end.

that the culitvated intimacy i have so enjoyed isn't going to be enough for you soon.

i can't deny it wasn't like dating without the date. it was all the good bits and none of the mess. it was the niceness and honesty.

and somehow soon it will be wrong of me to want that.

one day, or perhaps phased over weeks, you'll realize you'd rather have someone you can fuck. and i'll slowly fade into the background as nice girls fill my slot for your time and your chat and your lost moments - with the added attaction of sex.

i don't blame them. it's how it works. i wasn't the one (i didn't want to be, but it somehow stings all the same). its okay though. you'll be happier in love. i probably will someday too.

but i really wish there was a man i could be friends with (and not resent it like a girlfriend when he leaves me).

there is no ever after for friends.

one step closer to kevin bacon

everyone who knows anyone in the film business is a name dropper. you can't help it.

i don't miss it much and as a bonus, the further away you are, the more easily awed your friends/co-workers/target (not that i would ever brag while chatting someone up. of course not.)

but all that aside, i'm just a little happy that a movie i once helped out with is on imdb.

granted, i griped the whole time, i did it only for my sister, and i think i am visible in all of one scene. but all the same, it exists out there.

not that i have ever watched my dvd copy (it probably totally blows), but still.

and by the way, the DoP fucking kicked ass. He is probably going to be actually famous. Then the real name dropping and back stage stories can begin.



ps - I can't believe I anticipate the success of others and gauge its usefulness. it's sick.

i heart tv

we all know i love steve carell.

i loved him before he ate big red candles and threw tridents.

i loved him in head to head debates with steve colbert in his bowtie era and interviewing appalachia's finest in those early post-Kilborn days.

and i will continue to do so - even if he does insist on making that piece of trash, that atrocity evan almighty.

but until today, i couldn't forgive him for the office.

granted, i am in the land where ricky gervais is king and i don't own a television, so my hatred of the american remake could be preemtive. though i must admit, it does look from here like nothing more than coupling 2 - a sacriledge to the epitome of british humour and pain (and the inexplicable dorky sexy of martin freeman).

today i am willing to reconsider. still off from work, i happened upon the office PSAs. and begrudgingly, some are actually funny (well, at least funnier than the Family Guy PSAs in that one where Lois loses the car in a Native American casino, which is already a rip off of the Simpsons where Marge gets addicted to slot machines, except with more spirit guides.)

so maybe i was a little hasty in my condemnation. maybe i was being judgemental in rallying against all hollywood sitcoms (and was becoming more british than i thought in my pseudo-patriotic televisual stance). and maybe i was the tiniest bit wrong.

just maybe. i make no promises.

but the least i can do is give it chance.

i'll try for you steve. for the sake of our love.

news of the day

1 - i got up off the couch
1a - and did laundry
1b - and bought ice cream and cranberry juice just in case i induced a relapse by going to the shop
1b(1) - when i left the house, i was still wearing slippers. am delirious with fever. went straight back to bed (after ice cream)

2 - my dad is coming to visit
2a - on a golf tour with a bunch of dentists
2a(1)who may or may not have time to fit me in between rounds
2a(2) - could they be more cliche?
2b - despite this, i am excited
2b(1) - and may hijack him and go to dublin

3 - i, of my own free will, called someone today.
3a - on the phone.
3a(1) - on my mobile where i had to pay
3b - i thought he was deathly ill and i had given it to him.
3b(1) - it is not fatal, but it is my fault.
3b(2) - this does not detract from the importance of the gesture.