Your Parts Will Go On And On...

Dear Saturn, 

I never realized how much you meant to me until you were cruelly ripped from this world by an incompetent Polish guy in a Corolla, we had some good times though didn't we?

I never named you Saturn, other drivers would have named you "Sally" or "Suzie", but not me dear one, I always respected you too much to equate you with a middle aged waitress. 

I remember the first day I brought you home, pushed in the clutch, threw the gearshift into first and realized I had no idea what I was doing. You were so patient with me Saturn, remember the first time I tried to get into a steep driveway and screwed up so badly that I now know what burnt clutch smells like?

You always forgave so generously, I cannot count the number of times I took out my anger on your dent-resistent polymer side-panels and you took every kick without showing a scratch. 

Remember when we almost ran out of gas outside of Oshawa? Saturn I'm so sorry, but seriously I didn't know anyone had planned a city where you could go 20 kilometers without ever finding a gas station. We made it to that Esso together, me turning off the ignition and coasting down every hill and you ekking out every last drop of gasoline in your fuel lines. 

Near the end you even stopped making that annoying beeping noise when the tank was almost empty, because Saturn, you knew I wouldn't damn well fill up until I had to. 

Remember when I said goodbye to you Saturn as they hooked you up to the tow truck? I gave you a good 'ol pat on the back for a job well done and ended up with a nice deep cut in my hand from your splintered side panels. I know it wasn't a last little bit of revenge for not changing your oil in the last 8,000 kilometers, it was your way of leaving your mark on me so I could carry a piece of you with me just a little while longer. 

They've sent you to selvage my dear Saturn, to be picked over like carrion by remanufactured car part vultures. They'll tear you apart and sell you off piece by piece to go into countless other cars just like you. You'll save lives Saturn.....well actually you'll just save a few people a couple bucks....but everytime I see a Saturn I'll think that maybe a little part of you is living on in them. 

Amen.

Anticipation

Apart from the whole emotional trauma (or lack thereof) there are two things that happen when you become "unattached" that really affect your life:

1. You can kiss other boys. (Or men if you so wish to do so)

 THIS IS IMPORTANT!! NEVER FORGET THAT YOU CAN ACTUALLY GO OUT AND DO THIS AND IT IS PERFECTLY ALRIGHT! 

2. Your friends, family, neighbours, postman and complete strangers will become never-ending fonts of knowledge dedicated solely to when, who, how (and in some strange cases "what") you should date.

Some of you will say that this second item really shouldn't be that important, but as someone who was told from a young age that EVERYTHING I DO IS WRONG I usually get advice on any major decision from an entire panel of representatives.....hey, I'm all for democracy alright?

So far, while some representatives have been divided on a few issues, there is one on which they stand in solidarity.....very LOUD solidarity:

THOU SHALT NOT RESTRICT THYSELF TO ONE PERSON, THE MORE THE BETTER. 

And i get where they're coming from, especially in respect to me, the girl who cannot stop having back to back relationships like it's a saturday afternoon CSI marathon. But just for arguments sake (and thanks to freedom of speech YOU CAN'T STOP ME) I'm going to tell you all why I think YOU ARE WRONG. 

Anticipation. 

What, you need more than that?

Do you remember the first kiss you had with someone that you really liked? Wasn't it awesome? 

And I'm sure that a kiss on the first date is really good, for me the more build-up the better. 

So just imagine this:

There is this one person currently in your life that just stands out a little more from the rest, so you decide to get to know them just a little better. Sometimes you find out that they have a strange penchant for scrapbooking their financial statements and it ends right there AS IT RIGHTLY SHOULD,  BECAUSE WHO DOES THAT!? But if you're lucky, you start discovering someone who is way more than what they appear to be. I mean, this person has untold DEPTHS of not-too-scary and sometimes kinda wonderful things about them. The more you learn, the more you want to know. It's like a Pulitzer prize winning book with a really bland cover, you're not sure why you even picked it up to begin with, but you end up reading it until the early morning hours because it is JUST THAT GOOD. Eventually you become absolutely consumed with this person, you start imagining places that you would go together, conversations you would have, jokes you would both totally get and the imaginary sex? IT DOES NOT SUCK. 

And in real life? You haven't so much as touched this person in any way. No hand holding, no accidental footsies, no gratuitous hugging and of course do not even think about staring deeply into their eyes. Did you just think about it? You thought about it, didn't you? Well STOP.

Then there comes that moment, just before THE TOUCHING that you are physically and mentally more aware of this person than any other. For God's sake you could pick out the exact shade of their eyes on paint chip at home depot, graph the number of times they blink per minute and catalogue every item of clothing you've ever seen them in. 

I live for that moment and the one that comes after it. The moment that their lips and your lips finally, FINALLY get to meet. Because it breaks down that no-touching barrier and all of a sudden you can do all of those things you've been thinking of incessently for weeks. You can finally wrap your arms around their waist, trail your fingertips down their arm or nibble on them a little. Actually, save all biting and nibbling for at least the second date, you can work up to that.

And you know what? The kissing doesn't even really matter. It doesn't even have to be that good, and you wouldn't even know. It is the thrill, the release of ALL OF THAT TENSION rushing at you that makes it better than any roller coaster, horror movie or near death experience. 

Focal Point

This whole "unattached" thing was supposed to give me a chance to reconnect with myself. 

Rediscover what it is I'm passionate about, what I actually want from life.

Instead, I've spent most of my time thinking about you.

I'm disconnecting the internet.

Either kiss me or never speak to me again, I can't handle this in between shit.

Anger Management

Narrow-minded, patronizing, arrogant cocksucker.

now I feel better.

Insanity

It amazes me how you can think that you know someone so utterly well that there is no chance that they could have slipped past the insanity detector and then one day.....

We are driving down a country road in that godforsaken car, headed once again to That Place We Go Every Freaking Weekend and I am trying to control my anger at his overly cautious driving. The road is currently at it's maximum of two lanes, about to narrow down to one just past the intersection we are approaching. We are in what I call the correct lane, the one that will not abruptly end. The light ahead of us turns red and the four cars in front of us come to a stop and as we approach he does something that I will never be able to reconcile with rationality: he switches lanes. He not only moves into the lane that will end 10 meters past the intersection, but he moves directly into position behind an 18 wheel diesel truck. Willingly. I almost don't want to ask, but I have to know why in God's name anyone would make such a ridiculous decision. Are we deliberately trying to make this car ride last LONGER? He has been impatiently sighing at the traffic for the last twenty minutes and he's suddenly decided to take the scenic route? Perhaps he's had an epiphany, maybe he's come to the sudden realization that life is so fleeting and our journey to THAT PLACE is a metaphorical representation of our life's path so we must enjoy the journey for as long as we possibly can. So I ask, waiting for his lips to form a response so profound that it will enrich my life just to have heard it spoken aloud. He turns to me and says with a conviction that could rival the pope's:

“Well, large trucks always start moving quicker, 'cause like they've got somewhere to be”.

And with those words my life is indeed forever changed. Everything I believed before that moment has been completely wiped away by one indisputable fact: He is completely insane.

Caution: Choking Hazard

I promised myself a long time ago, in the days of livejournal, that I would never use any form of open journal as my personal battleground.

No matter how anonymous you make something, all it takes is one person with a vendetta to expose everything.

However, sometimes my anger needs an outlet so I'm going to take a chance with this one.

I've been sending e-mails back and forth to my ex, mostly because it was a mutual break-up and I'd like to keep things friendly. But we've gotten stuck conversing on the reasons behind our mutual separation and it's now become a problem, and when I say “we”....I mean him. I won't get into the details, because the actual subjects are not the issue. This is:

I'm the kind of person that chooses my words carefully, if I use a particular word it's because it implies exactly the meaning I'm trying to get across. No more, no less. And I find that a lot of people get stuck using specific words, maybe because they like them, maybe because they aren't aware that it doesn't really mean what they think it does, but they throw them around without realizing the severity of what it is they're saying. In this instance, there's a specific word that I'm speaking of and of course, a certain person:

Irrationality. I'm not sure what Webster's has to say about its definition, but to me it implies a complete disconnect from reality and rational thought. If you're irrational, you're likely one boarding call away from the crazy train. It is a somewhat subjective term, as my rationality and your rationality may differ, but I'm talking about rationality in the more general sense. I am not, for the record, irrational. Never have been and likely never will be.

I've read this e-mail, where I and my reasoning are repeatedly deemed “irrational”, quite a few times and I'm going to either delete it or frame it as one of the few examples of things that make me truly and genuinely angry. I've explained myself to death, I've simplified the concepts so that even the mentally retarded would catch my drift and this person just does NOT GET IT. Because they don't want to. That's the only conclusion I can come to. They have no desire to genuinely understand my perspective because then it might be ok to do things a little differently. It might reveal the fact that there is truly no one, absolutely correct way to do things. I think that's what they take comfort in, as long as they follow the rules there is no way things can go wrong, there's no way that THEY can be wrong.

I've always been one to just agree to disagree and accept that while we may differ in opinion both are equally as valid and there really is no right and wrong. I guess we all have to eat our own words at some point:

You. Are. Wrong.

And if I could, I'd make you eat all your words too, starting with “irrational”.

I kind of hope you choke on it.

After these messages...

It's been awhile, my few but loyal followers. 

I used to have to grasp for subject matter, but now it's like the all-you-can-eat buffet of subject matter has opened and I'm just paralyzed by all the choices. 

So I guess the most important thing is that I'm now unattached. 

Notice the careful use of wording there? Unattached. Not single. Because that's how I feel and that's what I'm going to call it.

Actually, the most important thing is that the break-up was not really that significant to me. I care, it changed my life, but I'm not all eating-buckets-of-ice-cream and weeping-into-my-tv-dinner kind of sad about it. Firstly, because tv dinners are just wrong and even an astronaut can tell you that. Secondly.....secondly.....I just don't know. It should have been slighly traumatizing to let go of something that was that good....sometimes. I guess it should have been a lot of things that it just wasn't.

I thought I should have been a lot of things that I just wasn't. 

So I've tentatively come up with a life plan that THIS WEEK I am happy with and some of this requires ALL OF YOU TO PARTICIPATE (if there's a word in the English language that fills me with a greater sense of dread than "participate", I haven't found it yet). 

1. I'm switching my major to ENGLISH.  A whole other post will be dedicated to why...but for now JUST GO WITH IT.

2. I'm finding a decent paying, permanent job when the semester finishes. 

3. I'm gettin' the hell out of Dodge and moving out.

4. I'm continuing in night school.....for likely the next 4 years or so. 

5. If you will look directly to the right of this post you will see a link under "Other Blogs" it will take you to a magical place if you click on it just right.

Bathroom Conversations

I've discovered that there are two types of females in this world: those that think it is not necesary to hold a conversation in a public washroom and those that see no reason for a conversation to not continue just because you are performing a biological function (I'm looking at you Avery)

While at first I found it slightly strange to carry on a conversation through the wall of a bathroom stall, I've been desensitized to the strangeness of it. However, I was recently subjected to a whole new level of bathroom conversation:

I was in a bathroom in a bar in Toronto, which of course was a little on the sketchy side, complete with black paint, the requisite graffiti and the minimum of two stalls. So as I'm in one of these stalls I hear laughter coming from the one next to me. Repeatedly. This person is not on a cell phone as far as I can tell so I'm thinking they've had too much to drink.Now, I can tell from the shoes that it's a middle-aged woman, because let's face it, middle-aged women all seem to shop at the same shoe store that specializes in neutral colored, comfortable and ergonomically correct footwear that almost always has some sort of leather braiding or weave pattern all over 'em. Now this woman just keeps laughing which puts her into either the REALLY WASTED before 9pm or the mentally unstable weirdo brigade. She exits first and my first inclination is to just barricade myself in there until she leaves, but hey who wants to miss out on seeing the potentially insane? So I cautiously exit the stall to find a fake blonde, middle aged woman staring at me in the mirror with this huge smile on her face and you know what she says?

"I'm sorry, but you just have the most incredible bladder I've ever heard. I could just not believe it, like you just kept PEEING!!!!"

Now if that's not a compliment I'll remember until the day I die, I don't know what is.