We have no plans for the long weekend, apart from reading through pages and pages and pages of documents about the physical, financial and whatnot health of a condo on which we may or may not put an offer.

It’s a pretty cool place that’s definitely in move in condition with one of them gourmet kitchens with bar stools and a counter to chow on eggs in some fabled suburban morning. It has a tiny back yard. (No fruit trees, alas, yet.) It also literally costs over 10 times what I mortgaged for my condo in Cambridge. That figure fucking scares me out of my socks and skivvies. Of course that was almost a decade and a half and 3,000 miles ago.

On a complete aside to the fruit trees aside above, I’m obsessed with things that fall from trees. It may be the climate, since it turns out money doesn’t grow on trees here but many other things upon which you could survive do. Our friends have plums just hanging there, waiting, sweetening, enticing. M.’s first apartment had oranges. It’s miraculous to a girl who grew up in proximity to crab apples only, and their only use was as missiles in great crap apple conflagrations.

(One such war created a DMZ right there on our property line. Detente could not be reached and never again did the Bradys acknowledge my family’s sovereign status. We were Palestine.)

But, more than that, I have very few, very weak, very distant memories of back in those glory days when Dad was alive and nurturing a family of five. It may be a false memory, or it may be true, but the thought of fruit trees resonates.

Back before the myocardial infarction that changed the lives of his wife and five children, while taking his life, Dad was promoted within a lucrative government-contracting type mega-corporation. He loaded up the station wagon and moved his family to Annapolis, MD, one of the bastions of the military-industrial complex. The young family bought a huge house (I think we all had our own bedrooms, a largesse foreign in our own circles in New England), and I think he planted fruit trees.

I don’t know why I think this thought. If anyone knows if it’s true or false, holler back.

Anyway, of course the title of this post has nothing to do with the above blather. Nay, that blather is about M. and his ways. Lately, he’s been going to bed earlier and earlier. He’s been rising earlier and earlier. Our usual weekend sleep in, which in my mind is more of a mandate given that it’s the unofficial end of summer and its supposed relaxation what with Labor Day weekend and all, was interrupted by his up-and-at-’em bound at 8:30 or 9 a.m. and announcement he was “going for a run.” Last night, a 10 p.m. movie was too late and out of reach.

I suspect he has a herd of cows that he is seeing, and milking, on the side. In the cover of dawn’s darkness, he heads to the pasture and attends his cattle. I feel this explanation is the only logical one.

Technorati Tags: age, California, mortgage, cows, real_estate, togetherness, fruit_trees

The Democratic National Convention is off to a start. I should insert some kind of descriptive for that start, but I don’t have any fucking idea what it would be. “Touchy feely,” “earnest,” “passive aggressive,” just not fucking sure.

The passive aggressive vibe I’m getting wafts over from pundits and their dead horse flogging discussion of attempting unity. Yeah, I fucking get it, there was fighting and like, yeah, right, sure, we’re all cool now. Sure. Sure.

Only I think it’s meant to really be real despite the shit that went down in the primaries. It ain’t like the Clintons are getting any kind of Cabinet jobs or other appointed goodness out of that crazy old coot Johnny McCain. I believed Hillary’s speech, because after all she is a grown up campaigner who, apart from back when daddy’s little princess supported another Barry of the Goldwater persuasion, is a capital D to the E Democrat.

What’s confusing the shit out of me is the disappointed supporters, the demographic of over 35 women who wanted to see a chick rise up. I do fucking get the wishing a woman could become president thing, believe you me, I truly fucking do. I was a girl who wrote papers on the ERA that would never be. I’ve felt the misogyny with which I think a whole chunk of U.S. society is just fucking cool and chill and comfortable (cough, um, comedy clubs, cough).

I get it.

What jams my cortex and doesn’t compute is the not fucking giving it up with the notion that somehow the GOP candidate would be better. What the fucking fuck? McCain, that fucker, is running a commercial of an alleged Democratic Party member of the female type, who has left the part because of the betrayal and disappointment and is supporting the man. Yeah, well, pretty sure right before that decision she wasn’t getting all hardcore Dem at the anti-war, lesbian wedding, dolphin saving, homeless shelter fundraiser. But still, he’s trading off of a newly minted character study of some kind of proto-Hillary supporter.

MSNBC and CNN did their darnedest to round up the weeping, undecided, what we going to now, delegates. How, how in the fucking world, would the candidate who doesn’t even want sex ed or birth control, you know, like, available, and don’t get me started on Roe v. Wade, help you, disappointed feminist Hillary backers? How would not voting, and letting this fucking asshole win, how would that help exactly?

There was a chick on Larry King tonight, who’s name is not popping into the front part of my skull. Nope, but if I do look it up tomorrow, I’ll hold her name forever and remember her and, if I’m ever back in Boston and we perchance meet, I’ll push her in the face.

Larry was uncharacteristically dogging her on her lame answers, as she defended why she couldn’t (or wouldn’t just yet) vote for Obama. But, it wasn’t about issues, it was about some kind of weird hurt that you only ever hear women expressing. Like, he never asked her, now did he, so pout, pout, and she actually said something like, “I’m a Catholic girl from Boston, I just don’t give my vote away,” and that she needs to be courted.

And, the sad part, Larry, is no one in her own party is even nice to her. You know, she gets hate mail, and it’s ugly, just because she has a different opinion.

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, No! No. The hate mail isn’t from the different opinion. No one minds if you leave the party or whatever, vote how you fucking please. Nope, women like you, in that wheedling, whinging, manipulation, that infuriating equation of Barack as a recalcitrant boyfriend, it’s your personality that grates not the politics. Get some therapy. Pull up your knickers and act like a big girl in big girl panties.

Read up on a few issues, and realize your candidate and the nominee are actually pretty damn close. And drop the inexperienced CEO analogy you were flogging. First, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the boys from Google, not to mention little wee Zuckerberg, kind of changed that old, wise grandpa business model. More importantly, if my choice is the CEO with experience who I FUCKING KNOW will fuck me up, because that would be old man McCain, I would take my chance on the unknown young’un.

(As a side note on the experience Obama is lacking, it seems to me that word “experience” is what many a woman faced inches from the glass ceiling, as the excuses for her lack of promotion piled up. You know, a Catch 22, you can’t get experience managing, if they don’t let you manage.)

Actually, I think the pouty chick said she wasn’t necessarily heading over to the GOP. But, if Barack not asking you to vote for him (which is weird, because I think that’s in his speeches) is enough for you to not want to vote at all, I don’t know what to say. Can you imagine any news program, any interview ever, with a guy saying “I don’t know what I think, because he never asked me?”

My fear in all of this hand-wringing is that we sisters are actually ensuring ourselves another couple of decades of you’re not quite ready yet, honey, let the big men meet right now. Nothing gives the world the idea that you’re just a silly, dumb girl than acting like one.

Real women don’t wait to be asked, they decide all on their own.

Technorati Tags: 2008_Campaign, Barack_Obama, campaign, Campaign 2008, Democrats, feminists, Hillary_Clinton, women

I’m pretty sure that if you’re a certain age and a certain demographic, there was a moment in the ’70s that your mom and her friends became aware of mass-produced, California jug wines.

Among the classier ones, if I remember correctly, was Paul Masson. Those wines came in a bottle that when the one was done left a lovely carafe to classy up your vinaigrette insouciantly next to your tossed salad served in a dark wood, oiler hand-turned bowl. The height of 1970s elegance (with an accent over the a).

Here I am at a vineyard cum outdoor concert venue emblazoned with Paul’s crest. We’re awaiting Kathy Griffin.

Irish Catholic comedian of about the right age. I’m pretty sure her mom’s samples some of Paul’s wares.

Can I call you Barry? I mean, you emailed me and said I would be one of the first to know. I signed up, I sent in my number.

Behind my back, you whispered to CNN and all of the other major news carriers. And, they even tell me that I ain’t getting my text message until tomorrow. I’m the last to know, and those bad boys on the television are happy to be telling me so.

On the bright side, the answer is Joe Biden. Back early on in the primary game, I opined that for all the “experience” talk around Hillary, if that was the qualification should all us good Dems be lining up behind Joe.

I do believe Joe fills in some of the smack talk and real issues dogging Barack. Can you say Senate Foreign Relations Committee? Imagine, if you will, a White House actually looking at relating with foreigners rather than, say, blowing them the fuck up.

On a complete tangent, how does the living dead Larry King, who’s probably been defibrillated about as often as the rest of us have had our teeth clean, manage to pull questions on Biden’s health out of his ass. Old, and I do mean it, Larry conceded it was a while back, but he asked Joe how he was doing with those brain aneurysms. I’m thinking after about 20 years, it mightn’t be top most on his worries. Hell, by now, he’s gotta be sweating his prostate more.

Technorati Tags: 2008_Campaign, Barack_Obama, campaign, Politics, text, Joe_Biden, Vice_President, Democrats

M. had a little too much fun tormenting my non-conforming soul tonight. Tonight, they closed the main street again for a summer block party. Booths, vendors, Kiwanis hotdogs, antique fire engine, fundraising. All very middle-America, middle-of-the-road, middle class. Actually upper middle.

We ran into our own personal neighborhood constabulary. Officer J., who had taken my stolen bike report, and who we run into far too fucking often.

Imagine the tableau, M. and me and Officer J. chatting on the tree-lined main street among live music, balloons and well-scrubbed families. Chatting. Me, and the good po-po policeman.

We mentioned our nascent efforts to house hunt in this here town. We asked a bit about neighborhoods, including the one we like on the border of one of the statistically less desirable neighborhoods. One street in our price range looks great, shares services and actually fits into the “good” school district and other positive resale economic metrics. It’s near the proverbial tracks (or in this case modern freeway) but on the “right” side.

Officer J., though, his brow veritably furrowed. We mentioned the street and he wanted to home in on the exact block, cross road and whether left or right. “Hmmm.” He paused. “Yeah, you could do that. But, it’s still the ‘jungle.’”

For my own piece of mind, I’ll imagine that was a comment on danger not ethnographic demographics.

But, to M., I am now fully the “us” in “us” and them. The establishment. The white bread complacent society.

Technorati Tags: California, home_buying, power, race, real_estate

I watch Olympics gymnastics, but I’m not sure why. It brings me no pleasure.

Shawn Johnson. She haunts me. At 4′9″ she is the sturdy, synew and muscle, fire plug demon of my distant youth.

Of course, I’m not so fucked in the head to not realize she’s a metaphorical stand in for the real demons. She wasn’t born until the 90s. A solid decade or maybe two from when my squat tormentors leapt and twirled their gymnastic wizadry.

In my town in my day, there was a healthy, thriving sports culture and equipment galore. In fact, when the first wave of fucktarded tax-cutting propositions began crippling arts education and other shit that mattered to my little formative brain, the townspeople rallied with a boosters club to save athletics.

A silent tear falls for my no longer being privileged with baking crooked pottery in a proper kiln. But, by god, our town’s young boys had loins that were properly girded for no lack of athletic supporters and their checkbooks.

Along with the Presidential Fitness tests (with the Bay of Pigs, the worst of JFK’s legacy) we, the young, were given opportunities to try any manner of gymnastic apparatus. I remember my sister chalking up and lithely tossing herself across and between the uneven parallels.

I was built for different pursuits.

In my childhood, there were armies of petit, strong Shawn Johnsons compressed into brightly colored leotards. They rose on tiptoes to be about eyeball to my armpits. And, the only leotard I remember owning was a very sturdy, basic brown.

The uneven parallel bars were the showy perch for those armies. The bars were a forbidden zone for the tattered and splintered forces on my team. Rightly so, without infinite liability insurance, some girls, like me, were only allowed to dangle briefly before caving to gravity and more earthbound pursuits on the other side of the gym.

Among the apparati on which I was force marched to engage were the balance beam and the dreaded vault. Why a stroll on four inches of wood roughly four feet off the flooring of thin rubber mats was deemed safe is a mystery to me.

I’m pretty sure I managed to walk, albeit briefly and treacherously, across the beam. Or maybe I crawled. (Assuming I was somehow airlifted or carried or guided onto it.)

Vaulting, though. That was another fish kettle entirely.

My blurred memories are of my trotting with gusto but no speed to thrust myself at an immobile wall of leather. I have no recollection of ever heaving myself onto the other side, let alone pausing for a florish or a flip.

My sole goal was heaving. Heaving the lower half of my body. A recalcitrant, unsteady, weighty sack of potatoes.

Actually, I’ve had far greater success with potato-filled sacks.

My Olympic dream is to lie on the couch and witness just one girl run up to the vaulting horse (least that’s what they called it in the olden days). She’d run at it full steam and screech to a frozen stop, arms out reaching, a stunned look of confusion on her face. That would be the manuever they could name after me.

Nice short day at the office today. Not short enough mind you, but shorter.

Around 11 a.m. or so, actually the local “paper” (in quotes, because they’ve recently gone weekly and do the daily on the intertubes only) tagged it at 11:40 a.m., two wires touched and the lights went out. Of course, and unfortunately, my state-of-the-art workplace has tons of natural lighting and an emergency backup supply.

So, we sat sunlight from skylights and windows brightening the interior from pure gloom and shadow, as each and every worker bee still had access to his/her computer (on account of them getting plugged into special colored emergency powered plugs). Fortunately, the caterer had brought over the day’s free lunch right about when the power outage happened. So, while I couldn’t go to the usual Monday circuit-training class, as the gym was ruled an unsafe, unlit, basement no man’s land, I could eat. Everyone wiled away the lunch hour, I think, assuming the lights would come on momentarily.

Within a couple of hours PG&E had everyone but 6,000 hooked up again. Not my little salt mine, though. At around 4 p.m., they finally gave it up as a lost cause and sent us home.

Like the sad, middle-aged couple we have become, M. and I really grabbed the gusto with that spare time after work together. We napped and eventually got dinner.

Technorati Tags: Bay_Area, California, power, work

No apologies to that misogynist and plausibly syphilitic but gout-ridden philanderer, Ben Franklin, for this post’s title. I figure it’ll class him up a bit.

Just wanted to give a shout out to Olympic medal winners and grotesque elders Oksana Chusovitina, now of Germany, Constantina Tomescum, Romania, and Darra Torres of the U.S. of A. The sports/spectacle Olympic TV announcers have been falling all over their fucking selves to talk about their ages.

Oksana especially it seems with her advanced and decrepit age of 33 is unworldly and unseemly in her aging. And, she’s apparently given birth to a live human child. How could such a thing happen and yet a woman could still run, jump and play in the gymnasium just as well as a wee, bitty, I swear I’m 16, here’s my passport, delayed-pubescent girl?

Aren’t most Olympians dead by 30 or something?

The story of her son’s leukemia and the Germans helping them out is great and compelling and dramatic and just the kind of hook the color commentators seem to suck up and run with for hours on end. But, drop it on her age, for fuck’s sake. 30 isn’t the new 70.

I think Constantina gets a bit more of a pass on the marathon gold, because marathoners generally seem to be grown ups. And, apparently it’s not as shocking to think a mother could endure 26.2 miles of anything.

Maybe it’s the shelf of medals Darra already has or the shadow of her potentially terminally ill coach, but the enthusiastic exclamations of her past-40 (and still alive of all things) by the announcers seems a bit lower key. Or maybe it’s because she wears a tight, space age swimsuit well?

Anyone, note to the universe, now that we’s women got the vote and rights and all, it ain’t over.

(Of course, the absurdity of my writing this little rant is I can barely walk let alone be called athletic at this or any other fucking age in my life. But, damn it, the women above aren’t washed up old ladies.)

Technorati Tags: Olympics, women, age, Pat, aged

I just realized tonight, after a day of toil and a night of some drinking and a lot of eating, that I completely blew an opportunity. Blew it. Missed it. Failed. By miles.

The guys who say they found Bigfoot in the woods of Georgia gave their press conference down the street from where I live. The Cabana Crown Plaza Hotel in Palo Alto was the address of the opportunity I squandered. They also have a wonderful weekend brunch buffet.

Why, oh, why, did I miss this chance?

Technorati Tags: Bigfoot, Bay_Area, California, cryptozoology, press_conference

Ever since M. ran his marathon, he’s been thinking of a new outlet. A project, if one will, and, honestly, I’m not the one who will. You see, he wants the kind of project that will bring togetherness. In his mind, such a project would involve cleaning up and straightening out and otherwise working on the old department.

I, though, am as devious as I am lazy. As we talked about what to do to improve our apartment the logical question is: should we stay here? But, the old market is dropping, and foreclosures are cropping up like, well, crops. The kind of market slump that makes you think if not now (or probably early 2009), then when?

Of course, dropping real estate in this neighborhood still means looking in the realm of half a million pieces of little green paper, or their paperwork equivalent. I mean, I can think without hyperventilating about six figures or a series of five zeroes. I sold a place for that many numbers and profited in that realm. But, $400,000 to $700,000 is a fucking buttload of money.

I’m fucking praying we find something on the bottom of that scale. Only, really, because them’s a lot of 000000s. I’m just a simple girl with a tiny appreciation for small change.

One thing I’m learning on this togetherness thang, which so far has involved surfing the internet and emailing each other listings, is where to find the ghetto areas on Google maps. The key is pretty much highway placement. Instead of the wrong side of the tracks, in this state it’s wrong side of the freeway. Ain’t nothing like an abutment and fencing with razor wire to give you a feel for “coming home.”

We’ll probably meet up with a real estate chick this weekend. Even if we don’t buy something for a long time or forever, I can get my voyeuristic swerve on. Nothing beats sneering at others’ tzotchkes.

Better yet, the last time I considered real estate was 1995. That was back in those bleak, dire days, before commonplace broadband and iPhones and speed, pictures, weblogs and all. Now, every single fucking listing pretty much is pimped out with indoor/outdoor views, panoramas, maps and aerial views.

Betterest still, if you are looking on the ghetto border, the photos help you decide. I wish I could find it, the one picture that struck me. Nothing says drop cash on my pad than a real estate agents posed room shot of a mattress on the floor draped with an army green spread. It made me cry inside.

Technorati Tags: California, couples, home_buying, mortgage, puppy, purchase, real_estate