We got wine, and we got smug folks who think they live in the best place on earth. And, we have a multi-stage, multi-day bike race that brings folks from around the world to ride very fast on two wheels. So, maybe it is France.

The Pacific Coast Highway/Route 1 was closed right up the street from our house for a few hours on account of the cyclists for the Amgen Tour of California. Despite the pouring rain and the fact that normally I love nothing but a seep in on a Monday holiday, M. and I headed over to watch bikers from around the world.

Somewhere in these crowds, America’s cancer-surviving, yellow-wearing, don’t even suggest that he’s a doper, biker boy, Lance Armstrong, was rolling along.

When the approximate six minutes of watching bikes fly by was over, we shrugged and decided to drive down to the finish line about 75 miles down the coast in Santa Cruz.

I’m pretty sure this is Thomas Peterson and Levi Leipheimer right before Peterson pulled out in front at the finish.

And, for sure, I got to see the uber-famous rider Lance, in yellow on a yellow bike racing, #2 for Team Astana.

Technorati Tags: Bay_Area, bicycle, bike, California, Lance_Armstrong, photos, race, racing, sports, Vice_President

I’ve been ruminating on the latest mom to let loose a litter recently giving birth to eight babies.

Guaranteeing her infamy in webbish ‘blog circles everywhere, including the special snarky tag of octupussy, gaining her unwanted negative attention, with a soupcon of intelligent discussion, Nadya Suleman already had six kids. Weirdly, since I didn’t think it was that easy to get the medical hook up, all 14 of the spawn were from in vitro.

Of course, like any good American, I could shit on Nadya all day long about her being on various kinds of dole and not being able to afford her private breeding farm. But, my hate ain’t really for her. I figure there’s some stuff in her head I just don’t get at all, and I suspect requires a crack team of mental health professionals to sort.

I also have mixed feelings about the various charges that the mountains of criticism heaped upon her have to do with the classist, racist, anti-choice and sexist society in which we al stroll through our days. I don’t buy the extreme comments on the hypersensitive left that suggest as a brunette mom was being treated like any disrespected brown person. But, I can see where all sorts of shitty comments on all sort of ‘blogs and news sites by all sorts of shitty people have shitty racist, sexist, classist slants. And, to me, choice, of which I am extremely pro, is a legal construct, like no one should legislate that we can’t (or we must). That isn’t the same as saying it’s always good to have babies or always good to abort before it goes too far.

Right now, though, I’m not interesting in hating on Nadya. Nope, I hate this guy.

It’s the Beverly Hills fertility doc, who apparently sucks at his job, and who apparently stepped in with a “sure I’ll do it,” after some legit doctor told Nadya a big “no” on his doing the procedure.

I figure it this way. We are not actually as a group, you know society, up for making these kind of ethical decisions. How the fuck did fertility treatments ever come to be such an unalienable right? One thing that bugs me is a whole slew of folks say, including this chick, imply that they go for the multiple birth load of eggs, because the alternate would be throwing them away and that’s somehow a problem, ’cause they have that supposed sacred baby potential.

Here’s a fucking awesome idea. If you are so moral that you can’t fathom killing the extra embryos that result from in vitro, they you shouldn’t be mucking about with that kind of voodoo.

Seriously. IVF loads up a lot of eggs. That’s how the procedure works. And to prevent worse things than not having a baby, the process is meant to involve letting some of the eggs die or stay in the refrigerator. A few more embryos are best stopped when one takes hold. All of that is part of how the shooting match works.

Our bodies aren’t engineered for more than a couple puppies at most at once. Multiple births can fuck a woman up, what with all them heads smashing up your nerves and arteries and all. The only way the scientists have around that is getting rid of the extra.

If it bugs you, don’t go through it. Simple. Litters need not be born and ethical decisions of hand-wringing, god-invoking proportion can be avoided.

Christians don’t let Christians make embryos.

Technorati Tags: in vitro, Nadya Suleman, family, motherhood, Politics, Sex, women

Driving home tonight, I thought of something interesting and witty and just right for the writing of the blog. Somewhere between that drive, some raindrops and lying my sorry sore ass on the couch, it went away. And, when I say my sorry sore ass, I mean it figuratively not literally.

My asshole may be the one place on my body right now that is not sore. I mean sure, I like to push myself in the circuit training class on Mondays at the gym, but feeling the burn does not include anal. Thankfully.

The place of employ has a couple of different trainers come in during the week and force march those of us who volunteer to play grown up gym glass. I haven’t been going what with being busy, not giving a shit and all. Plus, I’m really enjoying the extra me that I’ve developed. (M. has been instrumental in the extra layers of me. A little while back he had the great idea of bananas, chocolate sauce and ice cream with a couple of spoons not far from bedtime. Before the half gallon was done, my ass had extrapolated.)

I’m in pain now, though, only because I just don’t like the Monday afternoon trainer. There’s something about his strut and preen in the mirror and his extra attention to the young, fit women in the class that brings out a perverse competitiveness that’s like sixth-grade gym class. Only it’s not my sixth-grade gym class, because then, in that oh so glorious awkward time of life, I was not competitive or macho. Jocks were jocks and I never ever never tried to outdo them.

But, now, some pent up, unused corner of my soul, the one I neglected in childhood where reading far outweighed sweating as a pursuit, that bit squats, stretches and pushes up with wild abandon. As though, at the end of the work out, I’m going to be able to throw the barbells down and just wail on the trainer. Knock his little baseball cap off and thrown him down UFC-style. It would have to UFC grounding and pounding, because he talks a lot about how he does all sorts of hard-ass, boot camp training like we’ve never seen with some kind of gang of mixed martial artists with whom he roams.

It says something meager and small about myself that I once even felt it necessary to let him know that I got his references to Ken Shamrock, Randy Couture and Chuck Liddell.

Here are my regrets then for tonight. If only I had been physically small when I was a little girl. And, if only I worked this hard at gym back when it was mandatory and went on my permanent record.

Technorati Tags: MMA, death, excercise, gym, work

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Maybe it’s the fog. Maybe it’s the ocean, the pounding surf and municipal pier. I think it may be the dramatic sunsets over the water into shadowy darkness and fog.

Tonight my worry may be fueled by the full moon. I fully expect that any day now, wondering the streets on my bike or running errands at the local shopping strip, that I will encounter a few young men named Corey. It’s inevitable.

In truth “Lost Boys” was filmed down the shore a little ways in Santa Cruz, but our town has a certain vampiral je ne sais pas. Maybe it’s the immortal deathless stare of our neighbors who only come out at night and have enlarged canines. Or the vast array of hoodies and hair styles and colorful attire.

When we bought this place, real estate listings and general PR touted the low crime rates and oceanside, idyllic living.

What they didn’t mention is the no less than three no-longer-living human bodies that have been found around town. Now, the authorities are suspecting that the fresh-water drowning victim on the golf course may actually have been a victim of methamphetamine and an unfortunate, cold dip in a water hazard. The paraglider entangled in ropes and nylon was allegedly practicing his sport. And, the latest woman found may have been either an accident or a suicide.

At least all of those stories are according to official reports. But, you know, and I know, it could also be vampires.

Technorati Tags: California, death, Scotland, vampires

Every now and again, I have to run through events in my head in order to figure out where I am right now.

You know the cliche about women never missing anniversaries and being all needy and wanting when annual dates come by? The comedy nugget between a New Yorker cartoon and a Cathy strip with men needing gadgets and women just harping on life’s repeating dates as they fly by missed in a cosmic representation of how their feminine feelings are ignored?

Well, I’m clearly not the chick my ovaries say I am. I can’t remember that shit worth a damn and to maintain some semblance of humanity I create crazy timelines in my head. Friendly questions like “How long have you and your boyfriend been together?” “When did your mom pass away?” “How long have you lived in California?” They create a whole parade of images in my head, before and after which things happen. Towhit:

– Pat moved back into her post-fire, restored house when the Egypt Air flight went down (October 31, 1999)
– I had broken up for a solid while with the evil ex and dated another guy until on or about 9/11/01. (Guy number 2 and I spent a weekend in New York that ended 9/9/01.)
– Pat was still alive on 9/11 (2001)
– The bad man who stopped dated me needed to be friends in the post-9/11 world
– Geoghan is convicted, the Vatican released new guidelines on ratting out pedo-priests and Cardinal Bernard Law apologizes to the victims (early to mid-January 2002)
– Pat was still alive to join the voices looking for himself to step down from archdiocese leading in Boston
– Cardinal Law steps down from his Boston gig and heads to Rome, leaving on the same day he is ordered to appear before a grand jury investigating sex abuse allegations (December 2002)
– Danny and I find the earthly remains of Pat, who has decided to leave, cosmically speaking (January 18, 2002)
– The New England Patriots win their first Super Bowl (February 3, 2002)
– M. and I have a date, it may have been Tax Day (April 2003)
– For reasons I cannot clearly explain, I performed comedy naked-style for the first time (September 2003)
– I start some pathetic ‘blogging attempt (http://homepage.mac.com/dee_rob/) , which grows into this bigger, longer still pathetic ‘blogging attempt (https://dee-rob.com/wp) (October 2003)
– M. takes off and moves to his first Silicon Valley gig. We part with no pre-conceived notion on how a cross-country love affair might last (December 17, 2003)
– In honor of America’s forefathers I have a second meeting with a psychologist and take a personality inventory (I have one) (July 3, 2004)
– My former employer and I come to an amicable agreement, I’ll go quietly in a non-crazy or threatening manner, and they’ll dole out some severance (mid-July 2004)
– The Democratic National Convention takes over the city of Boston, and I get a lot of comedy life from my Berkeley-purchased “Fuck Bush” t-shirt (late-July 2004)
– The Boston Red Sox win their first World Series since 1918 (October 2004)
– Me and my VW Beetle headed onto the highway, nose pointed west (March 8, 2005)
– M. and I sleep in our first apartment together for the first time (March 22, 2005)
– I shoot a gun and don’t become a libertarian (May 30, 2005)
– I remember I’m not independently wealthy and get another job, back to the salt mines (June 2005)
– M. and I get the keys to our real-life, California ranch house, just like in all of those sitcoms (October 20, 2008)
– America shakes itself from an 8-year, Republican-based slumber (November 4, 2008)
– I finish a crappy list to remind myself that I’ll soon be 45, my mother died 7 years ago, and M. and I have been together for 6 (February 3, 2009)

Technorati Tags: age, California, death, home, life, Pat, Red_Sox, work, writing

Undoubtedly, I’m driving M. up a wall. The thing I can’t write about, because it may negatively impact my ability to pay my half of the mortgage, is all I fucking talk about.

Here’s the tangential fun of it all, though. In the midst of a work brouhaha, I ended up having a long conversation with someone I only know by phone and only have known on the surface. One of those folks who you might chat with in a group, albeit virtually, maybe both your names float on the cc list of an email or two. The constant flow of people in your life that aren’t really in it.

Now, though, because of a little cause and effect fall out, we were on the horn swapping info and tales. Turns out, it was strangers bonding over dead mother stories. Better yet, it was the kind of story sharing where it could be alright to call them dead mother stories.

Her loss is much, much more recent than mine. But, at 93 and still of sound mind, her mother sounded ready to go and by consequence so was her family. There’s actually a great story in it. After a fall from possibly a mini-stroke, she declared herself ready to die and announced it as a done deal. Her dutiful daughter politely waited in the next room. Time passed, and then a shout of “It was a fake. I’m not going to die today.”

There’s something about the “It’s a fake” line that kills me. Not only can I imagine Pat in a state of kind of pissed off resignation making the same declaration there’s something about the wording. Although in truth shouting “It’s a fake” sounds more like my favorite aunt (and Pat’s sister).

The family email that was circulated, which my new confidant shared, has the same kind of irreverent affection I can totally get behind. I shared with her the eulogizing of Pat and her “balls like an elephant.”

In a great parallel, her mom tried to convince the mechanic to remove the airbag entirely after a fender bender set it off in her car. When he refused, she ultimately just said, “To hell with it,” and stopped driving entirely. For Pat, it was her stated conviction that her car wasn’t running right at all, despite mechanics unable to fix the problems. Better not to risk it and just stop driving.

I’ve been lazy and regretful and rueful and all sorts of shit piling on myself inside my brain about writing. I can’t even begin to sort out the blackness and inadequacy. Seriously, I suck.

But, here’s my little sun-dappled, rainbow, puppy, unicorn, smiley faced nugget of hope. Everywhere I go, I find folks who can laugh and do laugh at their own mothers, death, all of the squirming of earthbound existence. There’s a weird bond to those who have been there and chuckled.

Ironically, this connection all came up, because someone else in our mutual acquaintance can’t laugh worth shit at herself. I cry a thousand blessings on Pat and my memories for CONSTANTLY taking enough of the piss (as the Brits say), mocking and deflating just enough to realize life is short and pomposity is fucking lame. How do people who can’t laugh at themselves and each other get the fuck through the misery of human existence?

In the end, we all sleep, piss, shit, fuck and die. Cheers to the folks who do it with style, elan and humor.

Technorati Tags: death, motherhood, Pat, tradition, work, women, writing

I’ve been itching to write about work. But, you know, you know I know how that kind of shit works out. With a recession and all, I don’t want to get axed for idle shiv talk and other blade-related humor.

So, I won’t write about the workplace. I’ll write about my pathetic little emotional life. You know that pea-shaped little bit of me that I like to keep all covered up with faux bravado, of the sorts like comedy talking while naked.

Here is the emotion on which I was fixated yesterday and into today. (My emotions tend toward the partially cloud with a chance of rain kind of passing through temperatures.) Tomorrow, we have high hopes of the fixation lifting, life going on and the sun coming out, obviously while Lil Orphan Annie sings.

One thing I will never be good at no matter how much anyone pays me or how light the ditch-digging is. I will never have grace dealing with the subset of humanity that needs to work in a style of keeping you in your place. Well, not really your place, their perceived notion of your lowly place. Vocal condescension, blunt order giving, that sort of thing leaves me cold.

I’m pretty sure in a past life I was a distant bitter relation to this dude, but somewhere along the way I evolved. Now, I just am not very helpful to those sorts. If I can get away with doing little or nothing for you, whilst you stand arms akimbo, demanding, finger-wagging, wheedling, pushing, I’ll push back with the strength of an immobile brick wall.

Really, in this universe, today with video cameras and everyone being Youtube movie stars and 30-plus years passed the bullshit personal empowerment movement, does rudeness work with anyone? Actually, in any age, any time, any place, isn’t life a bit short to win the douche bag Olympics?

Conversely, I’m pretty willing to roll up my sleeves, if I get the occasional bon mot of please and thank you tossed into conversation sincerely. Funny enough, I use those words my own self, and they seem to help.

Technorati Tags: Bay_Area, CurrentTV, economy, urine

I am officially overloaded on Bay Area lifestyle. I yearn, I pine for the simple, narrow homogeneity I left behind in good old, parochial Boston. Faraway from multi-culti, rainbow, LGB&T, harmony and diversity.

Today is both the anniversary of Scots poet Robert Burns’ birthday and the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year. In the words of Toddish McWong, Gung Haggis Fat Choy.

Last night was a feast of a Bobbie Burns dinner. The food was straight up tradition–cock-a-leekie soup, a steaming haggis, neeps and tatties and generous glasses of scotch whiskey. Of course, this being the foodie land that it is, there was also a vegetarian “haggis,” honey baked ham and a crusty Obama loaf.

Delicious.

For the script, tradition was a bit bent, especially in the gender sense of toasting the lads and the lassies. And, far from the shores of Loch Lomond, one among us here in the new world sported a distant Scots bloodline, for the rest there was Irish, Chinese, Cuban and a wee bit of French representing, and who the hell knows what else, including different nations, separate from ethnicities and a whole slew of languages. Very melting pot it was. Did I mention there was whiskey? I was there for a dram or two.

Today, it was a steamboat of homemade goodness in a home full of revelers for the coming Chinese New Year. Before I left Boston, I don’t think I had a clear sense of from just how many places Chinese people could have hailed. Clue: More than just the main land. Today’s meal included Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, China, the Philippines and the U.S. of A., with food from everywhere and some fusion-ing.

Also delicious.

After chatting my way through cultures and ethnicities and countries and traditions, I’m happily lying on the couch all back in my vanilla cocoon. People and open-mindedness are fucking exhausting. But tasty.

Oh and an even better coda, and why I don’t really mind diversity. If life is all about the stories you hear, I got a good one today. A woman afraid of all betoothed mammals because of an unfortunate monkey biting as a toddler. It was impossible to say to her face how cool I thought a monkey bite to the chin story is, while she was backing off from the family dog.

Technorati Tags: Bay_Area, California, Chinese, family, food, friends, Scotland, tradition

We talked about going out and partying it up in the big city of San Francisco. And, who wouldn’t want to party for this inauguration in a town with such fine citizens as laughing squid, who document the wonderful hack of renaming Bush Street in downtown SF.

In the end, we stayed home. Bellies full of grilled steak, hearts full of good byes to George and Dick. (M. has embraced the home life and realized cheaper eating and the joys of suburban grilling.)

At my work, folks were plenty glued to televisions in most of the conference rooms (and fun it was watching Cheney’s limo drive away and Bush’s helicopter fly into the horizon in a room with people similarly smiling to see the moment take flight, as it were). A lot of people have connections, and personally, I’m pretty sure I could get quite a few foreign policy wonks who will be tapped for jobs in the new administration to return my call. However, there’s always an insider reserve going on politics wise in my place of employ, kind of a cool think, like not squealing at a celebrity and demanding an autograph.

M.’s work is at a whole other level, though. Unapologetically and un-self-conciously, they partied it up. He reported flags all around and special meals in the cafeteria. Better yet, he brought home this special munchie from the self-same cafeteria, which also sells holiday pies and such befitting various occasions, to share in our new deal in DC celebrating dinner:

Behold the Obama LOAF OF BREAD.

I think he’s speaking to M. and really moving him. Deeply.

Happy days are here again.

Technorati Tags: America, Barack_Obama, bread, campaign, Campaign 2008, Dick Cheney, elections, George Bush, Inauguration, photos, Politics