Emotionally Intoxifying Sh*t! (A response from the trenches)

HEY! I had ONE OF THEM! DAMN! Yeah...that's some seriously emotionally intoxifying shit...kind of like human crack. You seem to have the brights to be able to navigate these waters...WARNING though. I had to let mine go as we were just 'dating' and then i met Craig and decided I wanted to head into a monogamous relationship and we HAD both agreed...i'll call him Tall 2Pac, cuz that's what he looked like with THE BEST DAMN TATTOOS in the PERFECT PLACES like curving old english letters perfectly placed on his snake like belly which was so amusing to watch as he was....SH*T....where was I. Oh, yeah. Just be careful exiting the situation. That's where the pitbull comes out...quite by surprise as usually it's them who are SO into the non-committed committment...ya know. Anyway...he went pretty ape shit on the phone talking about why the #$&# was I leavin' him for some other N*gg*, etc...etc...etc. Mind you...he KNEW i was DATING other PEOPLE...just sleeping with him.....quite often. Anywho...he would CALLLLL and CALLLL and CALLLLLL at CRAZY times too like 2AM when i'm snuggled next to Craig!!! He would even be hanging around the house trying to convince me to 'leave that N*gg*'....RIDE OR DIIIIEEEEE BYITTTCHH. No...he didn't say the second part...that was just my demented blonde head having thug life fantasies. Boy...he was great, helped me 'break in' my condo! Tall 2 Pac had the 2nd largest and most functional man parts I'd ever had the pleasure of meeting. And a total FREEEEAAAAKKKK....came over one day with a BASKET full of TOOOOYYYYYSSSS. Had stamina too like he ran off of nuclear energy or something. Ahhhhh....memories. And he's STILL kind of a stalker...FOUR years later...he left a note on my car with his number on it about 2 months ago...I also ran into him on the train home and he was still trying to convince me to swing back his way.

So basically what i'm saying is be VERY how do I say cautious and nice about letting the thug in you go.

And why am I up at 3:50 a.m.?

Because I will not learn.
Mrs. Carnegie, here is the problem. I can’t get rid of this guy. And this is isn’t regular “shoo-fly, shoo” can’t get rid of him. This is more along the lines of he’s dangerous and so his is other girlfriend (who is also visibly pregnant and who he forgot to mention before we slept together.)

Chocolate Boy just left to go who knows where, well, I do know, but I digress. I gotta go to work in the freakin' morning.

Yesterday, I sent Chocolate Boy a message saying we need to talk, but it was a light-hearted message saying that we could talk over lunch or something. Now, I sent it and went to sleep because I knew he was out doing, well youknow what they do on Saturday nights. So he commences to blow my phone up with texts asking what about. He woke me up from a good sleep at 8 a.m. this morning asking what I wanted to talk about.

The plan was to make a clean, amiable break. I mean, after all, it's official, I'm moving to Miami on July 8th. We're on really different paths. Both of us have ex's that cloud our relationship. I mean, there are numerous reasons.

Okay, let's just say, I hit all the points, but in the end, the conclusion was that we were together for the time being. Huh? How does that happen?

He said that right now I'm the only thing making him happy, well save for the days that he makes good money. (Good money is such an oxymoron.)

He's so . . . how do you say it? He's like a pit bull that's been beaten up and you feel so sorry for the little puppy, but at the same time, you know this dog is a killa, but you still want to mush and cuddle the dog.

I'm going to get mauled to death.

The Family that Hooks Together...

Family is a strange, strange animal. We've all heard the adage that you can't choose the blood, but you at least get a little freedom with friends. As with everything, I am a mixture of amused and repulsed by the story that follows:

"I've been away from home for years. I have one connection to the place, my best friend from high school. The other day she called and was like "Girl, I was in the hair store and you will never believe who I saw!" So I guessed some cute guy from high school. And she's laughing and saying "no, your big sister! Anyway, I talked to her and she said you guys had a falling out a few months ago but for me to tell you she loves you."

Mrs. Carnegie...a FALLING OUT? That doesn't quite cover what happened between us. I hadn't spoken to the girl in years and she found me via email. We chat, I'm happy to hear from my sister and then she lowers the whammy on me. She pregnant and she wants me to take the baby she's going to have. This I consider for a very short period of time - I know my sister is on drugs, involved in lifestyle choices I can't support. WE have different mothers and very, very different upbringings. After asking me to take the baby, which she didn't take too hard when i said no, she started telling me how she had to have this one because she'd already had seven abortions since the last baby (who was five) and she was superstitious, but really didn't know what she would do with the one on the way."

That isn't really when we stopped talking, though. It was when she asked me to watch her daughter after the new baby was born so she could go out to Nevada and work in the brothels. I can't judge on hooking, for some it seems a viable career choice. But my sister? And she wants me to watch her kids while she hotfoots it out to Nevada for the legal action. Well, I refused, but I guess someone else took on the kids because a few months later she was calling again to borrow money, again, saying she didn't meet the success she'd hoped for because - get this - apparently the johns didn't like her baby fat! So we argue about money - as in why won't I give her some - and I suggest, mildly, that she consider kicking her heroin-addicted-cheerleader-turned-pimp mother out of the apartment so her elder child can sleep on the bed. Yep, mommy dearest is a pimp out on parole for cutting a "trick" and living with my sister and her two daughters. Is she a recovered heroin addict? She can't even make it through two weeks of rehab without a fix and it's been this way for 30 years!

So far in the equation we have a mother who is a pimp, a daughter who is a prostitute and two toddlers. Is this not a recipe for disaster? The closer aunts and uncles have tried to take the kids on several occasions, as has the state, but they leave the state whenever the grapevine says someone is coming. I don't ask for advice, I don't even know where my sister is beyond a general geographical region, but that is my holiday story. My sister sends her love via my friend during a chance meeting at the hair store.

Vacation at Club Med

Well, nothing like Christmas to bring on a desperate need for vacation. Take urbanite Kimberly, an accountant at a high-end magazine, mother of two, wife of of an immigrant...on $45,000 per year. Does anything about this fail to make sense to you, dear reader? For giggles and grins, let's assume the city is Chicago - one of th emost expensive cities in the country to make ends meet. The immigrant husband speaks marginal English and has a penchant for additional liasons. Christmas has been stressful for Kimberly and I happen to be her friend, Crystina, well actually her neighbor. But when you're that close in proximity to someone and you're already involved on a friendly, shallow plane then it's a little difficult to extract gracefully.

Well, you know, this is a Christmas story Mrs. Carnegie, so I will keep it brief. I kept getting phone calls through the day starting a couple of weeks ago. You know, 13 calls in an hour while I was at work. But i decided not to answer, doesn't that seem a little "off" to you? So the calls keep coming and one day I answer and what I hear on the other line in Kimberly saying "oh, Crystal, I showed up at work today and I was locked out of my computer!" My response was "Call IT." She waiteda beat then said "Well...they packed my stuff up too and escorted me out of the building." But I'm still a little slow, I don't understand what she's saying. Granted she'd come over to my house a week earlier to give me a preview to the 30-slide powerpoint detailing her supervisor's shortcomings for an upcoming meeting with upper management. Apparently she didn't take my advice.

So, she was fired. They were kind enough to give her two months severance and even a letter explaining WHY she was being dismissed (incompetence tracked over a period of months and an excess of unauthorized days off from work). Kimberly wouldn't open the letter until I started getting upset since she swore she didn't know why she was fired. In addition to the termination letter, there was also a pile of mail at her home, including several letters from her landlord explaining she was 1, 2, 3, then 4 months behind in her rent. I suggested she wake the baby early in the morning and g to the food stamps office and subsidized housing and take a portion of her severance check to the landlord and beg not to be evicted.

Then, predictably, she told me just how much was needed to keep the eviction from happening. But, really, could I afford to give a $2000.00 gift to a marginal friend who is down on her luck due to her own mismanagement? No, I couldn't! So, I volunteered to take care of the kids while she went out job hunting. Instead she checked herself into the UC Chicago Psych Ward and I got a 3 a.m. call from her unintelligible husband mubling about could I take the kids for a few hours until some other relatives could take over. For a week I babysat two children, both toddlers, with little discipline and master manipulation skills.

So, for Christmas Kimberly took a vacation at Club Med (turns out whenver the sh*t hits the fan, she checks herself in for a little breather) and I spent the holiday wrestling with car seats and cranky babies.

Famous Last Words

spoken by Eliza day-after-the-Santa-Shindig:

"Clark isn't that bad." Now, i will admit, he was charming and witty and attentive to the fiancee throughhout the holiday. it was a REAL CHANGE from his former behavior of roughly the past 5 years in a row - big change. "Hey" I thought to myself, "maybe committing is really what he needed, maybe he's really getting his act together."
Then came sunday. ah, you can take the drunk out of the city, but you can't take the drunk OUT. me and my newly engaged cousin spend the day making social calls, our male attendants go to a football game. Clark was very excited. he even picked out his clothes for the event. hurrah!
At the game, Tim reports, Clark had about 10 drinks. then Tim had to go to the hospital so he dropped Clark at a neighborhood eatery that had the different football games playing and Clark commenced to getting well and truly SHITFACED. oh, but it did not stop there. he made some "friends" at the eatery and asked Tim to give them rides across town to another bar. Tim reports that in about 10 minutes Clark threw down another 10 drinks. Tim estimates that in a 3 hour period Clark went through about 36 drinks.
On the way home Clark passed out in the car, which was something of a relief to the good doctor who was afraid the drunk would reupholster his vehicle interior. then Tim got home and the drunk came concious again and started getting a wee bit mouthy.
He detailed the miscellany of creole heritage and social responsibility i.e. getting drunk at every possible opportunity. he also detailed the "creole allure" as in every woman wants her a creole but only a few can have them. as an example, he used me. on his report, i fell hard for his little pudgy drunken friend in chicago and was positively devastated when i got dumped. it played out in the reverse, but i don't argue with drunks.
Enter Mrs. Carnegie and the newly engaged cousin after a day of really enjoyable "girl time" and the acquisition of an actual mattress for the Mrs. Carnegie's smashing new pad. We walk in on a slurring, staggering, belligerant mess sitting on the couch. we go through not a little trouble to show off the newly fianceed girl's new semi-formal strapless dress, in which she looks divine, and the drunk heckles her while trying to decode the mysteries of using his cellphone to order a pizza he may or may not have ordered before.
Since the cellphone was a bit much for his muddled state he started making demands of me (our hapless heroine, Mrs. Carnegie). as in "why don't you call papa johns and order me a pizza!" and "i said call the papa johns, i want pizza!" and "shit it's your neighborhood and i want pizza." everyone can just take a moment and guess how successful this line of reasoning was.
And did i mention that my living room REEKED. You know how once you reach your saturation point the alchohol starts coming out of your pores? first thing i smelled upon entereing the house was vodka. it was a veritable potpourri of alchohol.
Eventually, having noticed Tim was nauseated and thoroughly exhausted and not a little ticked off, the clueless fiancess was displeased and i was inching my way toward "grab the cast iron pan or a pot of of grits" i let our little household drunk know it was bedtime for those of us with gainful employement and a purpose in the world and the hospitality was shutting down.
He'd figured otu the cellphone by that time and called somebody who swore theyd din't have a pizza order for him and he needn't worry about cancelling the order.
He lumbered upstairs and down, upstairs and down and even stopped for a moment to ask me "has anyone ever told you you read too much cause you got books all over the place." i answered in the negative. he stood there, happily sodden, goofy smile plastered on his face waiting for me, i returned to my book.
so yeah, Eliza, he isn't so bad if he's SOBER. and for the record, Clueless Fiancee, i don't hate him, he's not worth that much effort on my part - i just hate him FOR YOU.

Good Morning, I'm Broke

A highly amusing story from wild and wooly world of Holiday Pageant in America:

"My office held the gift swap today. Of all the crappy presents I have ever received in my entire life, this was the worst. We had a $20.00 minimum and it was "Secret Santa." So, in good faith i go buy a gift card to French retailer Target. Well, my Secret Santa wasn't nearly so considerate. I even know who it was based on what I received because they were all items from her house. In a recycled Christmas bag from gifts all of us were given by a student last year! I already had the bag and this one had gone through the washer a few times! She even regifted the lipsticks we'd received in the bag. She included a sample size of hospital/nursing home lotion, which she had from her mother - who is in a home - I'm sure. There was a two or three year old Mariah Carey album she probably took from her daughter's collection. As I pulled these things out I kept expecting to come up with some dirty socks, that's all that was missing. And she had the nerve to complain when she received a gift card from someone else to a retailer. I wanted to tell her I'd take her gift card and she could take her crap from home right back where it came from, but my boss was in the room and I didn't want to raise a scene. The final item I pulled out of that bag? It was a worn book she's been carrying around in her purse for the past 6 months, the cover is dirty and a little torn. I mean, I understand re-gifting, but just taking stuff from your house? I would have better appreciated a nice Christmas card with a small "hey, I'm out of money right now" note and an IOU. That would have been classy, this, this is NOT classy at all.
"Of course this is the same woman who tried to pocket the birthday money we pooled for another employee's present and had to refund everything after she gave the birthday girl a pair of used fake-gold earrings. I should have known better than to suggest she be included agains the wishes of everyone else. I've learned my lesson. That's my holiday story."