Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner

I received a rather disturbing email from D a few days back. He said that things were bad, everything was bad, especially with his love life and the military. No further details were provided. I'm worried that someone has outed him and he is going to get kicked out of the military. Not that he would mind leaving the military, but there are certain people in his life who don't know that he is gay and he doesn't want them to find out by him getting kicked out of the military. What I don't understand is how the military can get away with this in the first place. It is blatantly against the law! UGH!! and GRRR!!!

On a more positive note, I hope all have seen the happy newly-weds: Rosie O'Donnell tied the knot in San Francisco! Congratulations Rosie!!

I have the most wonderful husband. A recent situation:

Me: You know my friend Adam? The one who lives in Alaska? I knew him in high school? [I conveniently left out the part about Adam and I dating the summer before I met Kevin, and how I often referred to him as "the one who got away," again, before meeting Kevin.]

Kevin: Is he still fighting fires in Alaska?!

Me: Um, I guess. I don't really know what he does there. Anyway, he's coming to Missouri for a couple of weeks.

Kevin: [Silence]

Me: He wants to make a whirlwind tour of Missouri to see everyone in the old group, you know?

Kevin: [Silence. Is he even listening?]

Me: Adam wants to come to Kansas City for an afternoon so we can catch up, talk about the good old days.

Kevin: OK

Me: OK? That's it? Because if your not OK with it, I'll tell him to skip Kansas City. I really will. [I was expecting a LITTLE bit of jealousy, and feel somewhat let down by the lack of it...maybe I can make the green eyes of envy flare] Adam and I dated, you know.

Kevin: I know.

Me: I really liked him.

Kevin: [Silence]

Me: [jumping up and stomping my foot] HE WAS THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!!!!

Kevin: Have fun.

Me: [sulking back down onto the couch beside him] OK. You don't care?

Kevin: I don't care.

Me: I love you.

Kevin: Love you, too.

Just for the record, had the situation been reversed, and had Kevin come to me and said, "Honey, I'm going to spend the afternoon with an old flame catching up on old times," I would have said, "Oh, no you're not!!!" And I would have been a complete brat until he said that he wasn't going to see her. That's just the way it is. By the way, he doesn't call me Honey, but I'd like him to, and in my fictional accounts of nonexistent events, he will hereafter be calling me Honey.

We have a house!! Hooray! There wasn't much negotiating. I feel like we maybe gave too much, but we really wanted this house. It is oh so sweet. I will finally have a place of my own with plenty of room for my sister and her family to come and stay. And Tom, we can eat at Pizzeria Uno! And my parents can come and visit without all the stress of hotels and running around and such. Yes, a home of my own! I, of course, being my mother's daughter and my grandmother's granddaughter, have made list upon list of things we will need to purchase to make our home comfortable. I think the perfect way to celebrate this victory is to go buy something for the house!! Maybe shower curtains or towels or both!! Oh, how luxurious to have two whole bathrooms!

Buying a house is not fun. Ok? Everyone was right and I was wrong. Buying a house is not fun! I thought it was going to be days filled with roaming through beautiful houses and the only hard part would be choosing which beautiful house to buy. Wrong. The days have been filled wandering through complete dumps, with the exception of two non-dumps, which we promptly made offers on and which other couples promptly bought out from under us. Can I handle rejection again? I don't know if I can. Tomorrow we are looking at a house that seems nice from the pictures. We have been in this neighborhood and like it. It is within walking distance to a very nice park with walking trails, a rec center, and a lake. Four things could happen tomorrow:

1) I will love it and Kevin will hate it because the basement will not suit his dreams of a woodworking shop and the drum set that he thinks he is getting (but he is DEFINITELY not getting a drum set).

2) Kevin will love it and I will hate it because the kitchen isn't big enough. Does he want his dinner or not?

3) It will be a complete dump and we will both hate it.

4) It will be perfect. We will both love it and immediately make an offer. Halfway through the paperwork the bimbo who answers the phones will come in to tell us that the house is sold. Then she will shrug, smile, and say "Sorry!" Dumb hoochie.

For whatever reason, I have a lot of gay men in my life. Now, I'm not one of those girls that seeks out gay best friends because they are trendy. True, a handsome gay man on your arm is a great accessory, but that is not how I use them. I unwittingly happen to latch on to in-the-closets. My first real boyfriend, for example. Yep, gay. My best friend since high school, who came out when we were juniors in college, saw ex-boyfriend kissing a guy at the one gay bar (that I'm aware of) in Springfield, MO. When he called and told me about the scene, of course I was a bit shocked, but it made sense. Ever since I have learned of the ex-boyfriend's lifestyle, I have been dying to get hold of him and give him a big hug and tell him how happy I am for him. It must take such nerve to come out of the closet in a place like Springfield, MO, a town crawling with conservative Southern Baptists, who are all too frightened of going to "Hell" to come out of the closet. D's parents were Southern Baptists. When they came to visit us in college we had to hide the beer on my closet shelf. D's sister's weren't allowed to go to high school dances because dancing is sin. They were both pregnant by age 16, as were both of their daughters, making D a great uncle by the age of 20. D coming from this Southern Baptist family is exactly the reason that I thought he would never come out of the closet. But he, of course, did come out of the closet. And then there were 3. These lovely men, with the exception of the ex-boyfriend (who had a major impact on my life, but is no longer in my life), are my best friends. I love them dearly; they are family to me. All it takes is someone saying, "That's gay" to set me a-fumin'! I don't tolerate the intolerance of others. Similarly, knowing that I am sensitive to that subject, and also knowing that when someone says, "That's gay" that they aren't purposely gay-bashing, I try to make a huge effort to not say things like, "That's Jewish" or "That's retarded." Anyway, let's all try to remember that everyone is entitled to the lifestyle that they choose, the religion that they choose, and no one person is better than the next. The only people who deserve to be ridiculed are those that think the color of their skin or the god that they worship (etc...) makes them superior. I'd love to stay up here on my favorite high horse, but The Bold and the Beautiful is on. Is Brooke's baby Ridge's or Nick's?

My hands smell like goose poop. That's right, goose poop. Our apartment complex has one of those "lakes" behind it. We pay extra for a "lake view." There are 50 or so geese that live here year round and poop all over the place. How did it get on my hands? Let us start at the beginning of the disastrous evening...

Kevin came home with the usual hug, kiss, how was your day?, mine was ok, too, what's for dinner? So I pile up my paper work, make a mental note to remember where I was, and go throw the meatloaf together, pop it in the oven, set the timer, and sit back down to work (on The Case From Hell). Thoroughly engrossed in finishing The Case From Hell, I forget the rest of dinner altogether until the meatloaf is finished and I haven't even peeled the potatoes for mashed potatoes! I hurry the rest of dinner up while the meatloaf tries to stay warm for us. The kitchen sink clogs. Great. The sink is full of greasy water, meatloaf chunks, and potato peels. Yuck. Time for supper! Put on a smile! We eat. It is good. I am scraping the plates over the trash, as the garbage disposal is inoperable, when Top asks to go outside. 1-2-3 NOT IT!! Ha, Kevin has to take her out. He brings her in and she is a wet mess, she has been rolling around in the snow. Aww, how cute, a wet puppy dog. Top comes over to say hello. Hello, Top. Something smells. There is poop on the underside of her big beagle ear. There is poop all over her! Hurry, to the bath tub!! I lather her 3 times. Topper's ears still smell like goose poop and so do my hands. How gross is that? Such is a life at the R*****bi***e*s' residence. Yes, our last name is really that long. But, again, that is another story for another day. Good night.

It is official. I am turning into my mother. All week I look forward to the weekend for one reason...no alarm clock. Getting up in the morning is actually physically painful to me. It HURTS! The last couple of weekends, though, I have found myself waking up around 6:00 thinking about all of the things I could be doing if I just get out of bed. Unlike my mother, who gets up and starts working, I toss and turn and kick and punch the pillow for an hour or so before finally getting up. Other ways I am like my mother:

1) It's my way or the highway
2) Rather than asking my husband to help with the household chores, I do them all myself because I don't think he'll do it right (...except ironing. I DESPISE ironing and my mother irons EVERYTHING. Blue jeans don't need to be ironed, Mom.)
4) I talk in jibberish with my words all backwards and upside down and I expect everyone to listen to what I mean, not what I say.
5) I plan everything ridiculously far in advance. For example, my new house that I haven't even found yet is completely decorated and I'm already throwing imaginary dinner parties in my mind. (In reality, half of the rooms will remain empty for months and I don't even know enough people to throw a dinner party.)

I know there are many, many, many other ways that I am turning into my mother, I even look very much like her, but that is all that comes to mind at the moment. Happy President's Day!!

Mattel has made the official announcement than Ken and Barbie are no longer "an item." It was not made clear who initiated the breakup. Move over Ben and J-Lo, you can't hold a candle to the publicity Barbie is getting out of this! Some are saying that Barbie was tired of waiting for Ken to pop the question, while others speculate that Ken was more interested in GI Joe. Whatever the reasons, the world is shocked and dismayed. They seemed so happy!! What would make them give up after their 43 year romance? If a couple like Ken and Barbie can't work through their problems, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Last night we had dinner at the Goods'. The Goods are our married couple friends. At least weekly, Kevin and I will eat with the Goods. Sometimes we cook, sometimes they cook, always it is a nice relaxed evening. The dogs play (rather, their dog torments poor old Top, but I think Top secretly likes it), and the rest of us hang out in the kitchen until the food is done, chatting about our days, jobs, families, etc... Dinner is always delicious, compliments are handed out to the cook, and the kitchen is promptly cleaned and put back to order. With full bellies, we all plop in front of the television and watch whatever the must-see TV is for the evening. Last night was the American Idol results show. This was 30 minutes of heated argument between the four of us over who voted for who on Tuesday and who should be eliminated. Kevin is above such silliness as calling and casting a vote for American Idol, but he has no qualms about arguing among the four of us and can be quite the know-it-all. All in all, it was another lovely evening with Goods, and I am looking forward to many such nights with my husband, our friends, the dogs, Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and the devastatingly handsome Simon Cowell.

My college roommate, D, is recently out of the closet and is thus, at 23, a late-comer to the dating world. His after-first-date phone calls to me make me grateful to be settled into matrimony. Dating is hard! It would be especially hard if you were out of college, where it seems so easy to find a date, and a homosexual in west Texas. Of course, unbeknownst to the stuffy old conservatives running the show, the military is crawling with gay men, and D is fortunate enough to be living on a military base.

I have had several frantic emails from D in the last 24 hours wondering how he should handle Valentines Day with his new beau, V. They have only been dating for a couple of weeks, and it is not serious. This is a tough situation. Would a Valentines gift be coming on too strong? Ignoring it altogether would suggest disinterest in exploring a relationship. My final answer? I told D to invite V out for dinner at a nice restaurant, and acknowledge Valentines Day with a card. What are my husband and I doing for Valentines Day? We are opting not to support Hallmark's commercial holiday.

Our dreaded weekly teleconference ended on a happy note today. Every investigator in the company is getting a raise! Thank goodness for the mute button because this sent me whooping and hollering about the room with joy. A raise!! And this on top of the regular raises we receive every 6 months, anyway. I make plans to meet some coworkers at the office for a celebratory lunch. When we arrive, the manager is nearly in tears because people have been calling her complaining that the raise isn't big enough. The nerve! The girls I was lunching with, like myself, are new investigators, and we are all ecstatic to be receiving more money out of the blue. I cannot believe how greedily and childlike my coworkers are behaving! What would possess a working adult to call and complain that their raise (the raise they did NOTHING to deserve) is not enough? It is bad enough to think that it is not big enough, but to actually pick up the phone, call the supervisor, and tell her that the surprise swelling of the salary is NOT ENOUGH!! Maybe I'm still fresh enough from the poverty of college to appreciate any money that comes my way. Maybe I'm not as selfish as I've always thought myself to be. Maybe I'm just one step closer to being an adult, while the people I've been looking up to as adults have taken one giant leap back toward adolescent greed.

Really, it was just a breast. I was a slightly shocked when Janet Jackson's breast was exposed at the superbowl halftime show, but...it was just a breast. It takes an incident like this to make us sit back and look at the warped morals of America at Large. It was just a breast! No body was shot, there was no violence. If Justin and Janet had both brandished automatic weapons as props and started shooting up the stadium, America wouldn't have paused in the packing down of the chicken wings and cheese cubes to take notice. No big deal, the guns aren't real! There is no problem with gun violence in America! PEOPLE!! In fact, if we were in any country other than America, there wouldn't be this scandal. Breasts are everywhere. Sex isn't forbidden. Dirty. Not spoken of. Offensive. Damaging.

Terri Carlin of Knoxville is suing for billions of dollars claiming to have "suffered outrage, anger, embarrassment, and serious injury" upon glimpsing Janet Jackson's breast. Doesn't Carlin have breasts? Has she seen them? Do they embarrass her to distraction? This is clearly a misuse of our justice system, which is a different story for a different day. Americans, idiots like Carlin, need to start focusing on the real problems of our society and if one must point fingers, don't try to make an exposed breast the basis for America's moral decay. It was just a breast!

Writing another blog about another one of my favorite television shows is going to make me sound completely lame, but I feel compelled to make people watch The Ellen DeGeneres Show. I cannot say enough great things about that woman. She is simply hilarious. She is pure funny without being vulgar and nasty. I am usually home from work, if I am out, by 3:00 and I watch her every day. I sit there alone on the couch laughing out loud. For example, today Ellen went knocking on doors and asking people if they watch her show every day. OK, that doesn't sound very funny now. Just trust me and watch the damn show. I know that most of the world isn't a fan of television the way that I am, especially daytime TV, but Ellen is worth it. Laughing burns a lot of calories (how many I don't know because I don't keep track of such nonsense). It is in your best interest to watch an hour of Ellen every day!

The weather forecasters in Kansas City are under a lot of heat about now. Last weekend, they insisted that we were getting a minimum of 10 inches of snow. Of course, the entire city flocked to the grocery store to stock up for the "GREAT STORM OF 2004." What did we get? A slight dusting of snow. Last night the news said maybe an inch of snow, MAYBE. Here I sit, and here I have been sitting for the last 4 hours, watching the snow pour down on, so far, 4 inches of snow covered ground. Of course, the cupboards and fridge are empty as we have eaten our stock from the "GREAT STORM OF 2004." Luckily, I am able to work from home on days like this. Sitting in my warm little apartment, pretending to work but really concentrating on the going-ons in Genoa City (The Young and the Restless). As one of my co-workers so well put it, "A good investigator never gets wet." That line of thought has pretty much applied to my adult life, as most of my college instructors knew that if it was raining, Sara would not be in class. I think I am about to have a battle with my husband over who has to take the dog out in the snow. I don't want to get wet, of course, but Top loves the snow and it is really fun to watch her bound through the fluff with her little beagle nose buried deep trying to find the perfect place to do her business. --We interrupt this blog with the latest weather forecast. Kansas City is expecting no less than 9 inches of snow by 6:00 this evening.-- What the hell?! (Kevin just volunteered to take the dog out. How about that?)

I will stay up past 9:00, I will stay up past 9:00. When did I become such an old fuddy duddy? I'm only 24!! Around 8:00, I start thinking about the following day, what time I will have to get up, and, using my basic math skills, I figure out at what time I have to be asleep to get my full restful 8 hours. When did sleep become such a priority? I certainly didn't sleep this much in college...or did I? Class was never until AT LEAST 9:30, and I remember frequent, if not daily, naps. Huh. I didn't have these circles under my eyes in college, either. Are they supposed to be here yet? Hello, aren't you a little early, dark circles? If 8 hours of beauty rest can't make me beautiful at a childless 24, what will I look like when I have children who make a full night's sleep impossible? Is beauty that important if you are happy? Yes, it is important to me. Beauty is important to me!! Ahhh, that was liberating. Time for bed. 9:00 is fast approaching. I bid thee goodnight...

Hmmm. My first blog. I have been contemplating this for a long time, being a daily reader of several blogs, including my sister's, and being a half-hearted aspiring writer. Writing is simply one of the things I love to do, but I am rather lazy and do not want to take the time to research my ideas or risk missing one of my many reality shows to hone my skills. Speaking of reality shows, is anyone else hooked on America's Next Top Model? How about American Idol? The Apprentice? I'm a sucker, I know. Maybe I should get off my rear and do something for myself instead of sitting on the couch eating starburst and obsessing over other peoples' dreams. Can't do it, I just can't do it! I have to see what happens! I CANNOT, WILL NOT, SHALL NOT miss American Idol!