Wanna get naked?

When I was 19, my first hubby didn't think that being an at-home-mom was a lucrative enough endeavor.  He was a drug addict, but rather than stop using, he thought I should get a job.  We had lots of fights about this, but as you will find by this story, I didn't win many fights in that marriage.  He made me sign up to be an Amway Representative.  I thought, "one day I will look back on this and laugh"  I guess 14 years isn't quite long enough.   I  went to all the the big conferences and listened to all of the "how to sell a ketchup Popsicle to a woman in white gloves" techniques.  My sister-in-law at the time, taught me to say "Money is no object".  I had to practice that more times than my Lamaze breathing exercises.  I remember thinking, "What is a lie and what is sales and what is dreaming and when does it matter?"   I learned about "posturing" and how to look like you know everything and have it all together.  Though I never sold an Amway product, I learned to sell me, or at least the form of me I wanted you to buy.  At one point I called it "Paul Syndrome" being all things to all men." It was a clever disguise of my clever disguise.  I just referred to it as being "relevant" (this is a whole nother post" ((holy crap that is bad English and I LOVE it))

I have a limited ability to have intimacy with others because being intimate with them puts me in a position where I have to cope with their shortcomings and areas I don't agree.  I like to be right and think that I am most of the time.  Statistically speaking, I can't be as right as much I think.  So, I am  forced to look at an alternative view.  I could very well be not-so-right, wrong or even there is no clear right answer.  When I say "Let's just agree to disagree" what I am really saying is "I know you are wrong and I am satisfied with that and I am too tired or don't care enough about your opinion of me to spend more time trying to show you just how right I am".  While I am thinking this, I am also thinking... "They are such a pain in the ass to be in relationship with".  This is more ironic than 10,000 spoons any day.

Intimacy requires trust.  I have to trust that if you see me and know me, you can still love me.  And I can't trust that from anyone else, because I can't trust that from myself (the only person I DO trust).  This is two-fold.  I know me and I don't like me.  And if I know you too well there is a good possibility I won't like you either.  So many of our perceptions are based on life experience.  ALL of my life experiences have involved me.  How I respond and perceive to people has shaped how I believe you will perceive and respond to me as well.

This blog is a form of false intimacy.  I liked that idea when I first started using it, but now I am not so sure.  I want intimacy and I crave community.  I like conversations, blogging is like this "I tell you what I think, saw, want....then you say "Yay or Boo" then I say "Wow, I really am amazing and clever" or "They really don't know what they are talking about".  Then sometimes people will talk amongst themselves like on DM's blog...("jessica" is yours truly, i was all incognito and stuff)...but I am not sure these are real conversations either.  I recently read Rob Bell's book Sex God.  Sara gave it to me and I like the idea of intimacy with Sara and she seems to be able to handle it from me and maybe giving a book is intimate.  I read it in one day while flying to Dallas.  It was nothing like I thought.  I learned the importance of the "Me Too" factor.  Those two comforting words that say I am not all alone here in this big unknown, I have company here and maybe I am getted or gotten.  Then, I remember the "me" factor in the "me too" and wonder how possible that really is.

I showed your mine...now.....

a read day in my real life (unedited or proofread)

this morning i had to be out of the house by 6:30am. i don't do vertical before like 8-ish...so this was already a challenge. i haven't slept past 6:30 yet this week, and was even up one day at 4:30 to meet my new hour long commute head on.

so i left the house in a hurry, but was still able to hear hubby say he didn't check the fluids or get gas in the car that let me sit briefly just yesterday. i am out the door and on my way. my time with god in the mornings has been quite sacred. so vivid i find myself telling him jokes and laughing out loud as i am amused by the thought of his amusement with me. all of the sudden i look down and there is no gas...the gauge is apparently very unreliable and we don't let it go much below 1/4 tank as we don't know when empty actually happens. well folks, we are well below 1/4 and i can never gauge distance to my next destination without gps, even if i have been somewhere 3 times already that week.

i am already concerned the car will putt out on my way... (i bargained yesterday,that if it had to break down it should happen on the way home. i got my wish!) now i am driving on fumes of faith too. more laughing out loud with god. i requested that the next gas station be a sheetz (they have my favorite chocolate milk in this area). next station...sheetz by only a parking lot, there was a sunoco or something next door, life is good. i pull the car to the wrong side of the pump and have to drive around, but got it on the first time, which is rare. i head in, get my chocolate milk, a bottle of fuel injector cleaner, some smokes (i told you i was a jerk) and pre-paid for my gas.

i dropped off my goodies on the front seat of the car and began pumping. part way through, i realize i have not put the cleaner into the tank...(yes, this is a real decision a 32 year old woman made today)...i put my gas nozzle on the ground and go rummaging on the front seat for the cleaner. it's not there! my eyes are darting back and forth from the nozzle on the ground, to the pre-paid status on the pump to the front door of the sheetz. i can't rehang the nozzle, i don't know what happens when you have a credit card paid-pre-paid pump nozzle before i have finished pumping. i flash back to all of these sticky labels on the pump "ALWAYS REPLACE NOZZLE" "DANGER"

i know my choice is a bad one, but highly warranted in this situation. in a moment of glory i barrel back towards the store where the clerk (who has probably seen the nozzle resting on the ground) is coming towards me with my bottle of cleaner. i grab it and thank her graciously, then run back to the car/nozzle crisis i have created. the man pumping gas beside me seems to be in some state of disbelief. he is looking at me like someone would a mentally disabled child who is beating himself in the head with a stick. he just can't seem to wrap your mind around the concept, and "alls" he knows it just "ain't" right.

the bottle of injector cleaner spills out over the side of the car, the nozzle is still laying on the ground and all i can think about is "when i get in the car, i want to smoke and not light myself on fire". (i don't know what is in fuel injector cleaner, but it smells pretty serious) i finally resume pumping which brings some relief to the grimacing pumper beside me. i replace the nozzle and sniff my fingers, mary kathrine gallagher style of course...it's official i am a fire hazard. i grab a napkin from the glove box, but it was of no real value to the situation. i look and behold....(enter angels singing)...you know that thing hanging on the pillar in most gas stations with the window squeegie? i dip my hands in the water, surely infested with insect parts and the like, and begin cleaning my hands. after a few dips and rubs i see my fellow pumper is pretty disgusted. he is looking at me like i have disrobed and am sponge bathing with the bug water squeegie and all. i pat my hands dry with the complimentary paper towels provided, probably for windshields and fluid checks (quite absorbant) and am on my way. leaving a story for my perplexed pumper friend to share at his next destination.

i arrived at work with only a few putt and pops. the day was...ugh...no desire to talk work! but to give you an idea, one of the people i assigned to this huge account i am trying to save POOPED HER PANTS AT WORK...get the picture???

end of the day, hop back in the car...exit the freeway to continue my final 28 miles til home....putt putt putt, sputter, sputter, sputter...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. i am officially broken down at the side of the road. cars flying by, hot, after a week that would make a grown man cry like the rolling stones.

a tow truck, free cup of joe from the nice lady in the farmer's market beside my car's preferred resting place, a call or 11 to hubby for a ride, an hour drive to pick up annie at camp, the song from the red robin restaurant chain stuck in my head and this obsession to use an old man voice and say all of my S-sounds with a whistle (possibly a sign that i have finally lost my mind) and we are home safe and sound (minus the mind)

and this friends is a real day in my real life

Jesus Christ, get off the road!

This is just too good to pass up.

Is that a Tic-Tac in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?

I came across this article.  I was impressed at the many creative ways to describe the severed and poorly preserved penis of a French ruler.  Makes me want to write a limerick.

Napoleon, you'll never believe this
The doctor's clipped off your little penis
Like a gerkin too far
From the pickle jar
Your "jerky's" made all of us curious