Moving on ....

I finally brought my guitars home today. That was certainly an unnecessary ordeal. What many messages, face-to-face talks, unanswered calls, and unanswered knocks on the door didn't accomplish, two police officers did. I have no idea why shit got that crazy, and I'm not even going to guess. My imagination is only so good, and my time is precious. Too much of both has already been wasted on the situation.

I have learned a couple of lessons though. One is a repeat that's hard to put into action: If a woman starts dating a male friend, and she tries to get close to his friends and immediately make them her friends, maintain distance until her motives have been determined. I've learned this one the hard way and more than once. The other part of the lesson is that you'll probably lose the male friend anyway if he stays with her, because .... well, because. Who gives a shit? It's a thing that happens. As my daughter Elvira tells me, friendships are fluid. She's such a Buddha.

Second ... duh. Don't loan guitars to said girlfriends to use as props for sexy photos. Even I'm rolling my eyes at myself over that bit of stupidity. I'm not going to say I'll never loan a guitar. I've got one out on loan now, and I won't be worried if I don't have it back 2 years from now. But never again for a frivolous reason.

I'm sure more unpleasantness will surface from this stupid bit of assholery, but for tonight I can only report that Free to a Good Home finally, finally, got to have a band practice. As we were playing through a new song we're learning, I realized a sense of euphoria that only comes from playing music with close friends. The kind of friends you'd ask to witness your will or share an orgasm on stage.

At one point Chicken Grrrl said she had decided she would sing the part of the song that sounds like an orgasm ... ah ... ah ... ah. And I said I'd sing the harmony, and we could have a double orgasm on stage in harmony.

We looked over at Joe, who was standing there with a blank expression on his face, just holding his bass. I said, "Joe, we're talking about having orgasms."

He said, "I wasn't really paying attention. I was thinking ...." 

I said, "That's how I know you're like a brother to me. You don't even listen when the two of us are talking about having orgasms together right in front of you."

He said, "Oh, I know what you were talking about, but I was thinking about two other women while you were talking."

Flattering. Like a brother. Then he told us every man fantasizes about making two women come at the same time, and Chicken Grrrl that would never happen except maybe in porn.

I said, "Even so, you'd have to have a plan .... Ready ... set .... come!"

Get it? Come instead of go. Maybe you had to be there.

Anyway, I hope I don't have to call the police again for a long time. I've needed them for four situations in the past month. The first was somebody breaking into the house next door to steal the copper pipes. The pedophile who lived there is in prison, and it's in foreclosure. Those of us who live nearby are not going to let thieves do any more damage than was already done by the former owner.

The second time was when a dog attacked Drake's dog Duke while we were on a walk.

The third times were while I was trying to get my guitars back after they were held hostage for over three months.

And the fourth time was this afternoon when I got home from picking up my guitars. Somebody kicked in my back gate last night and broke the lock. For now, it's booby-trapped, and my friend A Man Called Horse is coming over to fix it tomorrow. It will be better than ever when he's done.

And so two more lessons came to me today. First, no matter how much bad press they get, the police can be effective guys to have on your side. The two who wasted the taxpayers' money helping me this past week were courteous and efficient. It's kind of embarrassing that I had to bother them with something so stupid and avoidable, but neither of them treated me like that.

Second, hold your good friends close and kick your enemies to the curb. It's easy to become cynical about people, and I'm guilty of that, but focusing on the friends who love me feels a lot better than obsessing about the idiots who prefer to wallow in their own drama. Running around the barnyard pecking and squawking is for the chickens, and we all know how smart those birds are.

In this year of unpacking, I'm grateful this is one nasty experience I can unpack and put behind me. Moving on ..... I think it's about time to write about some vaginas.

Unpacking the music

A couple of weeks ago my son Drake was here for the weekend with his roommate K. I was bemoaning the length of time I was taking to unpack from my move. It has become embarrassing for me, but in order to unpack some things I have to wait to hire a contractor to do some work. And then there are some other things I just haven't known how to deal with.

I pointed at 3 big boxes of CD's that were sitting in the small parlor beside the art I haven't hung. I said, "I definitely don't want to keep all of those CD's. I need to sort through them and get rid of a bunch, but I don't know what to do with the ones I don't want."

Drake said, "You can try taking them to a second-hand music shop, and see if they'll give you something for them."

"I thought of that," I said, "but a lot of them aren't and never were popular music. It's not like I'm going to get rid of my Monkees CD's."

"You could use them for skeet shooting," K said.

Drake and I stared at him. He has an unusual sense of humor -- dark and dry. But he seemed serious.

"I can't use them for skeet shooting," I said. "They have music on them. Somebody else might want to listen to them."

He shrugged. "If you don't want them, skeet shooting is as good a use as any for them."

I just shook my head at him. Ridiculous. You don't ruin perfectly good music by shooting at your CD's with a gun. Not that I'm a skeet shooter anyway. Besides, these CD's were precious. Somebody wrote and sang those songs, and I listened and sang along and danced to them, and sometimes I cried to them. Skeet shooting my ass.

The next time I looked at those boxes though, I remembered what K had said. And it struck me like a shard from a shattered clay pigeon that I was refusing to unpack because I thought something I didn't want had value .... which meant I had to either keep it or get the value back. And I was wrong.

If I never listen to them again, those CD's have no value at all. In fact, they are costing me space and worry. They have negative value. It doesn't matter if I take them to the resale store, where I might not get enough to cover my gas and time, or if I drop them at Goodwill or if I take them to Best Buy to recycle them for the aluminum and plastic (yes, you can do that) or if I stop one of the neighborhood cart pushers and ask if he can recycle them. It doesn't fucking matter. The music and the memories that are tied to them shouldn't tie me to them.

pinoybraniac.com

Then again, I thought, if I'm not going to use them for music, I could make other shit with them. Turns out Pinterest is full of CD crafts and projects. Like this homemade disco ball. I found a shit ton of ideas for purses and clocks and Christmas ornaments and mosaic tables. Endless.

And stupid for someone like me who does not need one more fucking project.

No, the CD's were not -- are not -- precious. And that's that. I needed to change my thinking, not change the CD's into desk accessories.

So I finally started going through them. It took me several hours to sort them into piles: keep, sell or recycle, give away to a friend, or throw away. At the end of it, I added the "give away to a friend" pile to the "get rid of however I can" pile.

I probably could have done the job faster, but a lot of those CD's had strong memories attached to them. Some were ripped and burned copies that friends or former lovers made for me. Some of them were thoughtful gifts from people who are long gone from my life now. Some of them were from concerts I'd gone to where I'd loved the live music, but the CD didn't give me the same thrill. Or I bought the CD just to support the artist. Some of those weren't even unwrapped.

I persisted though and culled about a third from the herd. That's not bad. What I kept will fit into one section of my TV cabinet.

And the others are in a box waiting to go .... somewhere. I still can't decide, but I'm on spring break, and my deadline for getting them out is Friday. If I get close enough to a cart pusher and he wants them, then that's where they will go. Otherwise, I'm leaning toward Goodwill. I just don't want to deal with hauling them someplace and finding out the young clerk will offer me $5 just to get rid of me.

Sorting and getting rid of those CD's has been a valuable unpacking lesson, and one that will prepare me for doing the same difficult job with books. I realized that I don't have to keep an object that has memories tied to it. The object isn't the memory, and it's not disloyal to the memory to let go of the object.

But I also learned that the music on those CD's doesn't have to be kept. The songs still belong to the people who wrote and recorded them, but they don't physically have to either stay with me or be sold, or even given, to other people. Their only value comes when someone actually listens to them. And I don't. I haven't for years in some cases. The CD's aren't really the songs.

It seems so simple and logical when I write it, but obviously I had an urge to hoard emotions tied up in those CD's that needed to be unpacked. And unpacking I am. Slow and steady.

The weight of giving up my nice package

I finally did it. I unpacked Time Warner cable yesterday. Of course they tried their many tricks to make me change my mind, but I held firm.

Their first trick was not answering the phone when I finally, after 17 pushes of the automated buttons, arrived at the one that told them I want to cancel my service. I'm sure somebody who gets paid lots of money to analyze customer behavior said, "Don't answer the phone right away. Make her think about it. Tell her the wait will be 7-18 minutes and then offer to call her back. Do it so she thinks you're only thinking about her convenience." I left my number for the call-back and then started making banana paleo pancakes.

The phone rang 17 minutes later. My pancakes were cooking on the second side. I answered, and the automated voice said I could press 1 if I still wanted to take my place in line, but if I wanted, I could give up and go watch something On Demand hang up and reconsider. I stayed strong and pressed 1. A couple of minutes later, Anesa came on the line.

I told her I wanted to cancel my cable. 

(digitaltrends.com)

Anesa: May I ask why you want to cancel it?

Me: It's too expensive, and I have better things to do with both my time and money.

Anesa: OK, just let me get some information from you ....

Me: You may do that, but don't try to talk me into keeping it.

She said she wouldn't. She made sure I wasn't some crazy bitch who was trying to cancel somebody else's cable, went away for several minutes, then came back with a request.

Anesa:  Can I ask you a few questions before we finish?

Me: Are you going to try to talk me into keeping my cable? Because I don't want you to try to talk me into keeping it.

Anesa: May I just ask you a few questions?

Me: Is your goal to talk me into keeping my cable?

Anesa:  I wouldn't say that it is. Can I ask the questions?

Me: Only if you promise you're not going to try to sell me another package or lower my rate and keep the cable.

Anesa: Can I ask the questions now?

Me: You can ask them if you promise you're not trying to persuade me to keep my cable. Promise?

Anesa: I just want to ask you some questions. Can I ask you some questions?

Me: Only if you're not trying to talk me into keeping my cable. Is that what you're doing?

Anesa: Not really. I just want to ask you a few questions. Can I ask you the questions?

Me: I'm not going to keep the cable no matter what you say, so you can't ask them if that's where you're headed.

Anesa: So I can ask the questions?

Me: You've already asked that question a dozen times, and I've given you the same answer.

Anesa: Does that mean I can ask the questions?

Me: Fine. Ask the questions.

Anesa: What do you and your family watch on your TV?

Me: (long pause) No, you can't ask the questions. Just do whatever you have to do to stop my cable TV.

I slid my pancakes out of the pan onto a plate, and spread butter on them while Anesa did whatever it was she was doing. She reminded me periodically that she was still there trying to figure out how she could talk me into buying more cable assisting me.

She came back.

Anesa: Wow, Ms. Reticula. I see here that you've got a very generous package. (I suspect that line works better on a man than it did on me.) You're paying less than almost anybody for a very nice package.

Me: You can blame that on Obama. I'm aware what I pay for my nice package, and I'm not willing to continue paying that much .... or anything at all.

Anesa: Do you realize the value of your package is $253.67? And you're only paying $153.89? You're already paying a lot less than what your cable is worth. A lot less. I'd hate to see you give up this tremendous value.

Me: Is that all you've got? Really? You realize somebody made up that number -- $253.67 -- and said that was the value, right? Somebody at Time Warner just made that up -- or maybe you just made it up -- and now you're trying to tell me I'm getting a good deal because I'm paying less than a made-up number. That's not very persuasive.

Anesa: Well, I .... ummm .... I just thought you should know what a good deal you're getting.

Me: Uh huh. Thanks so much for that. Are we about done?

Anesa: Almost. Just a minute or two longer. Thank you so much for your patience .....

I'd already poured maple syrup on my pancakes, and it had soaked in. I poured a glass of raw milk while she went back to work on her end. She was gone almost 5 minutes this time. She came back with a brilliant plan.

Anesa: Here's what I can do for you, Ms. Reticula, and I think you'll like this. I can offer you a rate of $120.24 before taxes, and all you have to drop is your HBO and Showtime. How does that sound?

Me: It sounds like I won't be able to watch most of the shows I watch. No.

Anesa: This really is the very best deal I can offer you.

Me: I really don't want a deal. I want to cancel my cable.

And eat my fucking pancakes, which have probably gone stone cold by now. I took a bite. I was right.

Anesa: OK, then. Just a few more minutes while I .....

Me: Please don't come back with another plan to persuade me to keep my cable. Just tell me where to take my DVR, and unhook me from the fucking crack.

Eventually, she came back, told me how much my bill would be in the future (about $75 less), gave me the address of the closest office, and told me I would still be billed until I returned my DVR. I stuck my pancakes in the microwave to reheat them, because there was no way I was eating cold pancakes after I'd just said goodbye to my dealer.

I took the DVR back this morning, and sure enough, by the time I got home there was no signal running through the cable to my TV.

Of course I fucking tried. Wouldn't you?

As I was standing in line to return my box, I realized I hadn't written down the list of shows I had set to record automatically on my DVR so I could try to find them other places. Damn it! I had a moment of panic ..... and then I remembered the reason I was doing this wasn't just because of the money. It was so I wouldn't spend so much time in front of the TV. (Still looking at you, Facebook, you fucking soul-sucker.)

So that's done. Unpacked. Put away. I'm no longer dating Time Warner cable ... or anybody else for that matter.

I thought I'd save more than $75/month, but I'm exploring other options for my land line, like Magic Mike Jack. I'll probably stay with TWC for my internet though, because they offer the best plan for the price around here.

How are you doing with your word for the year, if you chose one? I'm feeling pretty good about my progress so far, but I've got a lot of unpacking to go, and some of it will be harder than transferring my TV viewing from cable to Netflix.

Unpacking my second-favorite waste of time

Now that I've embraced my word for the year, unpacking, I feel motivated to unpack as much as I can in the 9 1/2 months I have left. Tomorrow I'm unpacking something that distracts me from the other really important unpacking I need to accomplish. Something that whispers "Come to me," and I do far too often. Something that is like a drug that lies and tells me this is what I want to waste my hours doing. Something I've been paying for since .... well, since I didn't pay for it the 3 1/2 years I lived in Georgia back in the 80's, because somehow we managed to steal it. (Doesn't matter though. I've more than paid for those years since, both in time and money.) Something that I do when I could be doing so many other, better things, like writing and playing music and having small intimate dinner parties and hanging some fucking art on my walls and yoga. Something I've been threatening to get rid of for weeks ... maybe months .... now, but I haven't because it's like chocolate heroin, and I keep getting my fix one day at a time, even though every day I tell myself I'm done.

Tomorrow I'm going to call Time Warner and tell them to shut off my cable. And then I'm going to take my beloved DVR, which allows me to skip every fucking commercial, even the Super Bowl commercials, to their office -- wherever that may be -- and leave it there forever.

That's right. I'm giving up my cable.

*sob*

It wasn't until I decided to get rid of it and save over $100 per month that I realized just how addicted I am. I planned to do it when I moved in December. I planned to take with me the internet and phone, but not the cable.

I couldn't do it. I don't even remember why. Maybe I had movies on my DVR I still wanted to watch. Maybe I was mid-season into one of the too many shows my DVR is set to automatically record. I don't even fucking remember, but it must have been important if I was willing to spend over $100 every month to watch.

And I mean really fucking important, because I still haven't finished painting my kitchen chairs, hung my art, scrubbed down the woodwork, put together the bookcase for my music, painted my downstairs bathroom door purple, or started the poetry wall I've been promising myself for years -- just as soon as I own my own house. I'm not even fucking dating, although I watch plenty of other people act out doing it on the little screen. I need to do these things .....

.... And that's the short list. If I listed everything I could be doing instead of watching the stupid tube, I'd be here all night.

It's an addiction -- one I need to break tame. And by tame, I mean .... I'm kind of embarrassed to admit it ... but I'm going to give up my hundreds of cable channels and reduce

Does this look like a drug
deliver system?

my possibilities to Netflix, maybe Hulu Plus, and whatever I can get locally by antennae, although that would mean I'd have to watch live TV with all those fucking commercials, and I don't think I can go back to the 70's and do that. I hate the fucking commercials.

From a financial standpoint, it's a win. I'd pay around $15 for both Netflix and Hulu Plus. (I've already got both, but I piggyback off someone else's Hulu, which I traded for my HBO Go password. Now that I'm giving up my HBO, I'm not going to continue using his Hulu account, even though he said I could. It wouldn't be fair.)

So it's not like I'm going cold turkey. I've still got 3 seasons of Sons of Anarchy to watch, and I've only seen 3 episodes of Orange Is the New Black. And .... movies.

I'm going from heroin to methadone.

I hope it works. I hope I start going to bed at a decent time and getting up before 9:00, not only because I'm not watching Shameless on Showtime or True Detective on HBO, but also because I haven't put off grading or writing here until after midnight because I've spent the best hours of the night trapped in the crystal clear fantasy land on my flat-screen TV.

So tomorrow I'm calling Time Warner and telling them I'm on the wagon. And no matter what they offer me, I'm not taking it. My cable days are over. Finished. I'll watch cable in the nursing home with all the other old ladies who have outlived the men our age, but not until the time comes.

I'm not sure simply getting rid of the DVR will be enough, but that's where I'm going to start. If I simply replace Time Warner with Netflix and Hulu without changing my behavior, then I'll have to rethink those too.

I'm saying it here so I have to do it: I'm unpacking Time Warner cable tomorrow. No more broken promises to my better self.

Facebook, check your back, asshole, because I'm looking at you, you miserable life-sucking whore. Once my mind clears and the cable drug is out of my system, I'm going to unpack some other wastes of time, and you're an even bigger problem than cable. (But damn it, you're such a cheap date.)

Note: If I'm not here writing tomorrow night, I failed. Don't even try to save my weak ass. I've got hours of episodes of Ink Master on my DVR, and I'm not afraid to sink into the couch and watch them.

Unpacking dating .... eventually

When I asked what I should write about this month, a significant number of people wanted to know when I was going to get back to 10 Dates, 10 Men. In fact, I can't remember the last time I went to a party that somebody didn't remind me that I've slacked off on the 10 Dates, 10 Men project ... and I am also reminded every time I subtly deny giving a guy my number that I'm not really pursuing this dating shit very hard.

It's not that I don't want to but .... well, I have reasons. I always have reasons. I suspect they've turned into excuses by now, but semantics don't replace actions.

So tonight I was going to write about that. No, really! I was! I even picked up a book on dating at the library yesterday and skimmed two chapters. I had every intention of writing about it and getting it going and making a fucking commitment! ... But when I started making notes on a big sheet of paper while I watched The Voice, I realized I didn't have my shit together yet ... not enough to write about it.

But I will. I mean, I am .... taking notes, I mean. Looking at it through the lens of my word for the year, unpacking, along with my epiphany about my "5" years, I really have to consider breaking through my resistance to dating.

I've bought the new house, and I'm unpacking it. I started a new job teaching creative writing at a nearby magnet school for the arts. I'm unpacking a new curriculum and leaving behind academia for an entirely new culture in a public school. And it fits me much better than teaching at the university did.

Much as I'd like to avoid it, dating seems like the next thing to unpack ... which may be why I'm unpacking my house so slowly, because I really can't date if I can't bring a guy home with me. I mean, right?

And yet, when it comes to dating, I feel like I'm sitting on a pine cone. It's time to let loose the spring fever and either get a dog (please don't recommend a rescue. I only live with standard poodles) or date somebody.

So I'm working on a post about that and why it's so fucking hard for me .... and yet seems so easy for other people. I still need to unpack 1 of 10, who has been ridiculously resistant to leaving the suitcase.

And I need to lose 20 pounds and get some blonde highlights in my hair, because isn't that what every woman does when she decides to date?

Stay tuned .....

The Weight of Unpacking

Here is the post I should have written at the beginning of the year, not two months into it. The post about the word that will guide my actions and reflections this year. Last year's word was "moving on," and I moved on big time: I bought a house of my very own, and I took a new job teaching creative writing in a magnet school for the arts, and I took off my clothes in public with strangers, just to hit the high points. Lots of moving on, but I already wrote about that on New Year's Day.

My word for this year is not one I chose. It chose me. It's a stray cat of a word. A too obvious word. A word I've had to mull over for several weeks before I could come to appreciate and accept it, because when it first forced itself on me, I pushed back.

I wanted a different word. A word that was a poem in itself. A word that smelled of sage and lavender and clean sheets. A word that evoked riding on the back of a stranger's motorcycle or dancing into the wee hours of the morning or sitting down to meditate or getting into the habit of doing yoga every day or baking cookies, but no ..... The word that stuck itself to me like a burr in a dog's fur is none of those things.It's not a meditative word; it's a "get shit done" word. A utilitarian word with a unattractive popping plosive right in the middle of it ...

The word I got is "unpack."

I know, right? Unpack. Unpack? I thought. Of course I need to fucking unpack! All I'd been doing was fucking unpacking. In the weeks just before Christmas I had moved a metric shit ton of stuff from my old house to my new one in the middle of the worst winter many people can remember. I'd been unfuckingpacking for weeks.

And I'm still unpacking. I have a garage full of shit I need to haul into the house and unpack, including at least 35 boxes of books. I have one parlor that still looks like this.

I didn't want "unpack" for my word for 2014. That's why I haven't written about it for two months. And that's why I haven't written much here in the past two months, because I needed to write that post first. (Well, that and the whole moving and taking a new job within a period of just a few weeks. I've been doing what I get paid to do and paying for what I bought. It all goes around.)

As I've had some time to get used to unpack though -- because this fucking word would not go away no matter how I begged the Universe for a different one -- I've come to find quite a lot of meaning in it.

Yes, I do need to physically unpack a bunch of boxes, which is why this word seems just too obvious. But there's a deeper meaning of unpacking those boxes and either keeping what's in them or getting rid of it. I've moved a lot during my adult life, and I intend for this to be my last move. I plan to die in this house. So my goal is to unpack everything, and either find a place for it or get rid of it. That's one reason the job has gone slower than I'd like. For the first time, I'm putting down tap roots.

That's the literal job of unpacking I have to continue to work on.

But as I've lived with this word for almost two months and watched my life through the lens of unpacking, I've come to realize boxes aren't the only thing I need to unpack. And they aren't the only things I have been unpacking.

So I'll be writing more about unpacking -- and either keeping what still has value or making room for something new. Because if life is a journey, I can't keep the same shit in my suitcases all the time. I need to unpack sometimes, so I can make space to repack whatever it is I need to move on, be that friends, childhood hangups born of shame and punishment, patience with boorish behavior (yes, there's a story), or the need to take care of all the people.

I have too many suitcases with too much shit in them. I need to unpack them, so I can travel to new places with a lighter load. Or so I can make room for new shit that better fits who I am now. I have, in fact, already started the unpacking process in several areas of my life while I wrestled with accepting this word over the past couple of months.

It turns out "unpack" is the perfect word to follow last year's "moving on," and now I'm looking forward to seeing how the world looks as I travel on with that concept as a companion.

Did you choose a word? How's it working out for you? Or would you rather talk about vaginas?