Day 31: If we were sharing a box of wine on my porch

Tonight is the last night of July, and I'm pretty happy that I managed to only miss 2 days this month. I'll make those up, of course, because my OCD insists on it. Coraline has written -- or at least inspired -- some of the most popular posts this month. One of the reasons I haven't been blogging as much is because I thought my life as a single grandmother might not be nearly as interesting as my life as a single woman living alone was, but apparently I was wrong. I intend to encourage Coraline to start her own blog as soon as she can write.

As always, I appreciate everyone who comes here to read and stays until the end of the post. Blogging experts advise choosing a topic for a blog and then sticking to the damn thing in each and every post. Other rules include posting consistently and keeping posts short so readers don't have to scroll. I'm pretty sure my batting average wouldn't get me into Little League, must less the pros. My rule is I do what I want, and you all get what you paid for.

All kidding aside, I, my ego, and my Muse Dolores do sincerely thank you for reading.

And now, on to tonight's random, rambling one-sided conversation which really would not happen if we were sharing a box of wine for realz. I would let you talk sometimes, especially if you wanted to ask me something about myself. That's if, OC, we were sitting on my front porch sharing a box of wine. (It's OK if you drink something else as long as you bring potato chips and chocolate to share.)

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If we were sharing a box of wine, I would counsel you that experience tells me cucumber slices are a poor substitute for potato chips no matter how much salt you put on them.

If we were sharing a box of wine, I would tell you I've decided to stop checking out books at the library. And that's significant because between the 2 of us, Coraline and I always have at least 50 books and videos checked out. It's obscene really, but they let me take them for free, and so I get greedy. I've decided though that I really need to read the books I own, both hard copy and on my Kindle, instead of putting the library books first and never getting to the ones on my personal shelves.

The other day I took back a full bag of books so heavy I could barely carry it. I kept only one book, the latest by Louise Erdrich, titled LaRose. I'll still check out DVD's, but no more books for a while. I feel lighter already. I'm going to get rid of a lot more books in August too. It's not right that I should feel so weighted down by paper and words. Sometimes I think I'd like to live in a hotel and just visit my house.

If we were sharing a box of wine,  I'd tell you about the play I'm in, titled Semple Gifts. It's a play about Aimee Semple McPherson, who had a crazy interesting Pentecostal life. I'm playing one of the lead roles, so I'm glad it's reader's theatre so I don't have to memorize a long script. Apparently someone else was cast in my role, and she wasn't very reliable and quit or something. I don't know for sure. I said yes when the playwright/director asked me, because I miss theatre so much. I think it's going to be good. The music is fun, and I learned a lot about a pretty influential woman in American 20th-century history. We would raise a glass and toast Aimee, and the irony would not escape us, because she was probably against drinking, at least on paper.

If we were sharing a box of wine, I'd tell you every time I have a birthday, I feel like I become more and more transparent, and someday I will become utterly invisible. I'm finally tempted to lie about my age, and I hate that. So vain. Only a couple of people really give a shit about my age, and that says more about them than it does me. You would try to reassure me, but I'm a realist. I would appreciate that you tried though, and then we would probably end up talking about dating -- which I'm not going to do here.

If we were sharing a box of wine, I would tell you I sometimes buy the best presents! Coraline's favorite birthday present from me was definitely her magenta Kindle Fire that came with Amazon's Freetime. That means  she has access to hundreds of books, movies and games free for a year. Her addiction was immediate. And scary to me.

But I think the best gift I gave her was 8 cans of shaving cream. Often after I've finished my shower I'll call her in and wash her hair. Then I'll give her a big pile of shaving cream to play with and she'll stay in the shower running up my water bill for a while. So I gave her her own shaving cream so she could play with it out on the glass-topped patio table.

She had a ball. I had to get my hands in there too, and it felt so cool -- smooth and squishy. Eventually though, she had to come in for dinner, and by then she was covered in foam from her forehead to her feet. I had to spray it off with the garden hose. I thought the cool water would feel good on such a hot day, but she started whining. "What is the big deal?" I said. "It's only water."

"It's not that," she whined. "You got my clothes wet, and dark pink just isn't my color. I need to get these off."

1st world problems.

If we were sharing a box of wine, I'd tell you I have such shitty luck with gardens.  My community garden plot is in a new bed that sits right under a tree. Not only that, the soil is loaded with weed seeds that grow like fucking tribbles, That's my plot there. Not the one you can see. The one on the other side of the tree.

My garden in my yard suffers from the same fate. Too much shade from the neighbors' trees on either side. The neighbor to the north is growing a massive patch of poison ivy up the trunk of said huge tree while my poor tomatoes are pale and sickly looking. I think I should probably give up and put my energy elsewhere next year. Coraline thinks we should just grow raspberries, and let people pick as much as they want. I'm not sure that's the answer either.

If we were sharing a box of wine, we would laugh about this. Because we either need to laugh or run screaming from this country in terror.

If we were sharing a box of wine, it would be empty and I'd mention that it's after 3:00, so I should get to bed. Feel free to crash in the guest room. I'll open some windows and turn on a fan.

What would you tell me if we were sharing a box of wine?

Would you like butter on that?

From time to time readers will send me vaginas suggestions for items they think I'd like to put on my Christmas list things I might want to write about here. One  suggestion, which will go into the growing "things I wish I'd thought to invent + vagina" category, is the vagina toaster (the kind that toasts bread, not vaginas), which is marketed by a company called Burnt Impressions.

Vagina toaster

It makes what I can only imagine is yummy vagina toast. Subtitled "Eye of Sauron's Vulva" toast. That last bit didn't make sense, so I had to have a conversation with myself about it, which led to .... you'll see.

So, which is it? Is it a vagina or the Eye of Sauron's vulva? Because a vagina is found on a woman, but the Eye of Sauron belongs to a man. And an eye doesn't have a vulva, but even if it did, surely only women's eyes would have vulvas. So even though it only kind of vaguely resembles a vagina, it sure as fuck can't be the Eye of Sauron's vulva. It has to either be a vagina or the Eye of Sauron. Not both.

Maybe we're overthinking this? (Yes, I do refer to myself in some convoluted plural first/second person point of view in my head. Queens do that.) It's just a toaster. Who cares what they call it as long as it toasts the bread? It doesn't matter if they made up a stupid subtitle. Just spread the lube butter, maybe drizzle on some honey or spoon on some jam,

and eat the vagina toast.

I wonder if this would be more effective than that tongue-training phone app for teaching men to polish the pearl. We could put the butter on just the right spot and tell  the almost right  guy, "Hey, you could use some practice. Just go to work on that dab of butter there ...." No, the toast would get soggy. That wouldn't work.

Seriously? It's fucking toast .....!

Euww. You don't suppose men would really ....?

No, I don't suppose men would do anything but eat it. It's not like a blow-up doll or a pocket pussy. It's just toast. Toast.

You're right. That wouldn't be very sexy would it? Toast would be scratchy, unless you put lots of butter on it.

Jesus Christ, will you just stop thinking about vagina toast? Find something else to do.

Speaking of Jesus, I wonder if they make a Jesus toaster for all the wanna be saints out there. Oh. That doesn't sound good, does it? A Jesus toaster? Who would want to toast Jesus? I have to look.

Of course you do.

Penis toaster

Oh, my god. You won't believe this! They make a penis toaster too. Wouldn't that be a cute wedding gift? Matching vagina and penis toasters? Who do we know who's getting married? They should have these on their registration.

Why would anybody need 2 toasters?

I guess they wouldn't if they were gay.

We're not getting anybody either a vagina toaster or a penis toaster. Jesus!

Oh, they don't have a Jesus toaster. They're kind of weird about their religious toast. They have the Virgin Mary, Buddha, Ganesha, and even the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but no Jesus.

That's probably Obama's fault.

No, they have him too.

We're done here. Nothing more can be said about toasters tonight. We're going to bed now.

But I'm hungry for buttered toast now. Aren't you?

Toast is the last thing I want to eat right now. Bed. Let's go. It's after 2:00 am .... again.

You're right. Good night ..... Hey.

What?

Let's put this on our birthday list. It's only 4 months away.

Which one? The vagina or the penis?

The vagina! Who wants penis toast? It just doesn't sound the same. I wonder why that is ....?

Don't start up again. Bed. Now. Good night.

OK. Good night. Sweet vagina toast dreams!

Smiley Face Toaster

Shelf of broken dreams

In July I suffered through tolerated celebrated my birthday. Most people consider the birthdays that end in zeros their big birthdays. I don't. My big birthdays are the ones that end in fives. I didn't realize that until this year's birthday.

I didn't recognize that there was a pattern to my years -- a wobbly pattern, to be sure -- but I'm calling it a pattern. I've always done big things during my 5-years, or big things have happened. Here are some examples.

I started school when I was five years old, and learned to take tests and count the slow seconds on the clock.

The year I was 15, I probably smoked my first joint, and I got drunk the first time right after my 15th birthday, which may have set the pace for the rest of high school. It doesn't seem that significant. What is significant is that I fell in love for the first time that summer, and also set precedents for choosing the wrong men and taking a very long time to heal from a broken heart.

The year I was 25 two big things happened. First, my dad dropped dead of an unexpected heart attack at age 46, leaving my mom with 2 kids at home, and 2 more barely out the door. It was my first deep experience with death and adult grief. A few months later when my neighbor's plane flew into a mountain, I was one of the few people who knew how to deal with the grief, if such a thing is possible. I knew something about life that was hard-won.

Second,  we decided to get pregnant with my son Drake. Balance.

Fast forward and I sold our house during a 5-year and bought another one. It was in the same city, which was a first for us. Air Force families don't do that very often. Another 5-year I indulged in an enormous mid-life crisis, lost a bunch of weight, and decided I'd better start living a little harder if I wanted to suck all of the juice out of my life.

Past 5-years have been both positive and negative, obviously. I don't know what to expect this year, except that this will be the 5-year to end all 5-years.

I was telling Drake about my 5-years, and he said he predicted "a rich boyfriend and a muscle car parked in front of my house."

I'm not saying "no."

"Mine or his?" I asked. 

"Yours, of course," he said.

"Both of those things would be big and unlikely," I said. "But I'll be glad to let you drive the one that's possible when you come to visit."

I talked to my daughter Elvira about it, and I said I wasn't sure what might happen this year. I told her what Drake had said, and we agreed he didn't know me very well.

I said I hadn't had a real best friend in several years. Lots of good friends. An embarrassing richness of good friends, as well as my kids and their beloveds. But not a best friend to go places with and share intimate best friend experiences. It takes a lot of work and some fine good luck to find and keep a best friend for any length of time. (It's not me. They find spouses eventually who become their new best friends.) I've had a true best friend for most of my life, except for the past few years.

I told Elvira that could be something that would happen this 5-year. And I said I also wanted to travel more. And I wanted to let myself fall into adventures.

But I don't really think I have that much control over the 5-years. I was just trying to dream. Because ...

Shortly after my birthday, I was listening to a speaker talk about dreams. He told a story about when he was a kid and he wanted to be a drum major, but his dad squashed that worthless wish. He talked about dreams, and how they often get put away, forgotten.

As I listened, I tried to remember what my dreams were when I was a kid.

I couldn't think of any. Not one single dream. I started to feel anxious. Surely I had dreams. Everybody has dreams, right?

I tried to listen to the speaker, but my mind was working in the background looking for dreams. C'mon now. There has to be a dream back there somewhere. Sift. Sift. Sift.

College! That was a dream. I wanted to go to college. I received about as much encouragement as if I'd dreamed of being a lion trainer.

OK, I thought. College. But college itself isn't a dream. What did I want to do? What did I want to study?

As I sat there listening, I couldn't remember wanting to study anything. (As I wrote this I remembered tossing around wanting to be a doctor or a psychologist. Yes, that would be it. A psychologist. I'd help people. It wasn't much of a dream. Lots of kids choose psychology because they can't think of anything else to study and it seems achievable. Like them, I didn't realize the years of school and licensure it would require. I did get a social work degree though, so close.)

Doesn't matter. What I really dreamed about was getting the hell out of that small town and living in a city.

But I couldn't remember any dreams that morning during the talk. Not one, except that vague dream: college. In fact, I haven't been able to remember any dreams until I started writing this tonight. And then I remembered when I was 7 I dreamed of being a writer. And I always yearned to play the piano. And .... that's it. Leave as soon as I could, write and play the piano.

I did all that. But those don't seem like enough. Why can't I remember having concrete dreams that would move me forward in a direction?

What I dreamed was vague. To have a career. To be a liberated women who knew what she wanted and didn't care what other people thought -- especially men. (Maybe that one is still in the box.) Those are character traits, not dreams.

The speaker said it was time to realize those dreams, to get that old, dusty shoe box down off the "shelf of broken dreams in your heart closet."

I wrote it down because it hit me so hard. If something big was going to happen this 5-year, I needed to figure out what my dreams are. It has to be now. I need to use this special year while I've got it, but I need some dreams.

I mean, I'll take the muscle car if it happens and it's cheap. The boyfriend -- rich or not .... well, if he's been sitting on a heart-shelf in a dusty box, he's probably desiccated  I don't want dreams that are half-dead or not achievable.
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The best friend .... maybe. I can't force that one, and I can't call it a dream really. I'm OK with having lots of wonderful friends, and a few who are close enough to get past the sand beaches of my island.

So far, I've had a couple of surprise adventures. I'm not sure if they came out of my shoe box though, because they were more a result of my saying "yes" to whatever was offered, whether it was comfortable or not. There's definitely value in that. I'll be writing more about those adventures. They are a valid part of 5-year.

But they're too fresh to be dreams that have been shoved to the back of my heart closet in a dusty box.

I'm sorry to say, I haven't located the box, much less opened it. Writing this helped. I realized I did have a couple of dreams, and I've achieved them. Writing. Piano. Leaving home when I was 17.

I'm still searching for my shoe box though. I'll let you know if I find it.

Do you have a shoe box on your shelf of broken dreams? Is there anything in that box that you want to dust off and make happen? Inspire me! Tell me one broken dream.

And I'm sure one of these days I'll find that box and tell you mine.

(All photos stolen from the interwebs.)