I’m about to take leave of my inner sanctum, venture out into my big fat world on my big fat knobby tires and soak up all that’s round me on my bicycle with my lens, and see what comes of it all. It’s a holiday Friday and there’s three more days just like this, waiting to be sucked dry of their marrow.
I’m planning my morrow today: Up before the crack of dawn to finally go and photograph some of the damage inflicted by last December’s hurricane-strength storm that ripped many of our centuries-old trees up from their roots, clearcutting a swath of destruction through some of the sacred lands of this city, reminding us how insignificant we are in the face of the force of nature. I figure the irony of loss and destruction will be mesmerizing against morning light, if we’re lucky enough to find ourselves with a sunrise tomorrow. And even if there’s no rise, maybe there’ll be something special in the light, something playful and delightful, that I’ll only find if I take the chance and get out there regardless of what it looks to be delivering from my bedside window shortly after five, before the dawn.
I like to plan and scheme in life. There’s a lot to be said for spontanaeity, but also a lot to be said for the power of anticipation and hope. So, I’m anticipating getting up at 5:15 and heading out on my little scooter with my camera in hand, chasing sunbeams and downed trees and all that combines to make this land such a stunner. It’s days like these that make my life far richer than it might otherwise be, and when the principle players in my life are me, myself, and I, then so much the better for finding self-fuelled richness.
Sometimes, though, I’d rather the riches be coming by way of another. Companionship is seldom what we dream it to be, though. Most people wind up undeserving of all we offer. Most shouldn’t make the cut. Each of us is an acquired taste worth acquiring, but that’s not to say that most others have the palate with which to properly acquire us. So, we search, we hope, we hang on for more, always hoping someone worthy walks through that door. But for now, we wait and want and wish on more.
So, off I go, me, myself, my fat tires, and I. There ain’t nothing coming through that door today. Tomorrow, though, perhaps a grand entrance gets made. Who’s to say? Suspense is a thing of beauty some days.
I stumbled upon this photographer’s site, and it sort of got me thinking. Hence the above entry. This photographer‘s interesting. His take on relationships and physicality is one of anonymity and facelessness, which is nice and different. After all, when the lights go out, we can be anyone we want to be.

One more day. Then, gratitude to be Canadian & have a four-day weekend. Hurray for Easter! Long live the bunny.

My last weekend was a stupidly emotional one. My fault. Bad attitude and I let my fears get the best of me. My head’s screwed back on good and proper, and my coming weekend is going to be a self-love fest. Highly masturbatory in mostly the figurative sense, but let’s hear it for literalism, too.

Friday is a hot date on which I get to straddle a favourite friend. My bicycle, you dirty people, you. I’ll ride it long and hard and be reduced to a puddle of sweat, but I’ll be spent in the second-best way, and it’ll kick-start a great four-day weekend.

Some new-to-the-shore Asian guy asked me out today, but English is barely even his second language, so I smiled politely and declined. He was quite the sweetie, but I have a thing about being able to converse with suitors. Call me old-fashioned. It was cute — he came back to the school four times and finally sputtered his mangled invite on the fourth visit. Still, it gave me a nice grin and made my day. Very adorably flustered, this boy. It’s been awhile since I’ve gotten to fluster someone to such ends.

Seven years I was at my last job and never once was I asked out. Chained to a monitoring desk and wearing headphones doesn’t exactly render one well to the public. So, a nice change. Things are looking up there.

Hmm. The guy was kinda cute though. I should’ve considered his offer longer. Ha. Plenty of time for play in the months to come. No fear on that one.

Another 19 hours and I’ll be off for four days. Plans include: Bike, Irish pub with friends, A Day To The Self (Schedule as yet unknown — a photography & forest day, perhaps), Easter ham with the fam, and a lazy day of housecleaning and such. And in the midst, plenty of writing. It’s been a while since I’ve had a writing weekend. And, frankly, you deserve a little extra of me in light of my time off, don’t you think? (Mm. Ham!)

Hey, say “hi” or something. It’s been a long week. A little of the old readerly love couldn’t hurt any. 🙂 (Happy long weekend, fellow Canucks!)

Curse you, Cosmos!

I’ve been caught somewhere between depressed and wracked with performance anxiety these past few days. All of a sudden I look at my numbers and I’m doing 4,000 plus hits a day. Makes me feel like you people expect something or something. Good lord! You people are like termites — just crawlin’ outta my woodwork, man! Hey. Welcome to the party. I’ll have a martini.

But I’ve been blue, confronted with seemingly stupid things like scooter repairs that need doing. I probably have a thousand dollars worth of repairs to do to my beloved ride after a couple years of barely getting by, thanks to slow times in the notorious film industry and all, which I have forsaken for more stabler times.

The first reaction one (IE: me) has to the news of serious repairs needed or “silly” things like that is, “Why doesn’t my life ever improve? What’s this vicious cycle?” But I’m forcing myself to remember that these troubles I’m facing are, in the large scheme of things, relatively insignificant, and most of the negatives are cumulative damage from my last two years — just coming home to roost now that I’m facing my reality and living my life properly again. So, there’s something new in the equation: Suddenly I’m almost of the means to deal with these things instead of having to just pretend they’re not there.

I spent the weekend feeling sorry for myself and yesterday coming to terms with my bad attitude, and today I went to the gym and worked it out. Now I’ve got way-too-spicy Thai green curry with chicken cooking on the stove and I’m making a vat of Thai sweet black rice, so soon I’ll be kicking it back and enjoying myself after what’s been a tough but good day. (I also had a mini-review in which the boss’s burgeoning love for me was expressed in very clear terms. Money should follow when I have my formal 3 month review, since I pretty much told them before I was hired that I would work for less if rewards followed — and fast! Here’s hoping honesty literally pays.)

But I find it interesting how quickly we can be thrown for a loop. One little thing comes up to bite us in the ass and our mood can go spiralling out from under us. It can be hard to remember just how little a blip on the radar of our lives that little conundrum truly is, but re-finding that focus and the ability to dismiss it for what it is — momentary — is the key to finding balance and equilibrium in the midst of the tumult.

So, yes, I’m bogged down with repair woes and challenges right now, but I suspect by June I should have it easier. In the midst of all this, I’ve noticed my complete lack of interest in dating sites and the whole online bullshit. I figger I’m needing to appreciate myself right now, and I doubt anyone else can deliver what I need. The focus is entirely back on me, myself, and I. The world will follow.

Tonight I rejoined the land of gym rats and made it into the community centre. I’ll be heading in the next two nights, and Thursday night my bicycle comes back all tuned up by my cycling guru friend, Whipped Boy, and things should begin looking up again. Normalcy, and spring, and goodness. If you’re gonna be broke, be broke in the warm-air months when there’s a world of fun outside your door. Timing IS everything.

Anyhow. Back to the regularly scheduled program over the next few days — two reader emails await tackling: The young girl who’s all stressed out that she hasn’t had an orgasm six months into her relationship and her boyfriend’s all hell-bent on making sure he brings her to one. Take a wild guess at what I’m gonna say. Or don’t, and read all about it next time. Then there’s the woman who demanded an apology and was surprised when she didn’t get one. I gots me some thoughts on that one, too!

Just full of thoughts! But most have been truly self-obsessed of late, but stay tuned for the rather interesting visual of Steff yanking her head out of her ass! Truly a Kodak moment! Thanks for your patience, boys and girls. Thai green curry, anyone? (Me! ME!)

Tired of feeling like a relative of the Pillsbury Dough Boy, I’ve begun an exercise program after a few months of slothyness. My whole body’s in the Total Hurt postal code (zip code for the Yanks) these days. (I think it’s code O0H 0O0 for the postal fanatics out there.) My vocabulary may not be entirely reduced to “Ouch, oh, wah, gah!” but it’s on the verge. I’d like to see what happens to this blog if I go that way. Snicker.

They say exercise is the new anti-depressant, kind of like pink being the new black. Or did I miss the memo on black being the new black? Whatever. You know what I’m saying. Fuck Prozac, embrace jogging. And pain, as the case might be. (Ow.)

But in honour of my new exercise program, for you: a word about Kegels.

AKA: Getting more bang for your orgasmic buck.

Me, I’m a spendthrift. I certainly want more for my buck — orgasms included. I mean, hey. Life’s short, yeah? Go big or go home, honeybunch. Go… OH. There you have it. Big!

If you’ve been on a desert island for the last several decades of your life and missed the memo on Kegels, WELL, thank god you have me!

Kegels: Named for a guy called “Arnold Kegel” (now, how many orgasms could a guy with that name really have had, anyhow?), the Kegels are your gateway to better control over orgasms. How, then, do you master Kegels? Any number of ways, really.

But what in the hell do they do, you must be wondering. Well, they strengthen the pubo… blah, it’s a big long word that means “pelvic floor muscles”. You know, the muscles that help you control your orgasms. For you boys out there, that means you can make yourself last longer and prevent yourself from blowing your load before she blows her top. Yeah, NOW you’re interested.

For the women out there, it’s a way of making your love canal come with a vice grip that’ll have him swearing you fit him like a glove. You love him long time, baby. Imagine being able to squeeze him tighter every time he thrusts himself deep inside of you… you better hope he’s doing his Kegel homework too, so he can hold out in the midst of all your hard work. It’s also whatcha do when you’ve gotten all stretched out like the Gumby of sex goddesses post-child-delivery and all.

How do ya do it then? Easy. When you’re peeing, stop yourself mid-stream. Those are the muscles you’re looking to exercise. Once you’ve figured out how to isolate them, just lie on the floor while you’re watching Oprah or American Chopper, and flex and release… oh, say 50 or a hundred times. Do it every day or two, and watch your sex life get better. It’s that easy.

If you’ve been doing Pilates or yoga, you probably already know how to isolate and work those muscles. For the guys out there, the men I know who’ve done either Pilates or yoga swear it’s the best thing they’ve ever done for their sex lives. License to be the Energizer Bunny of lovemaking is what I’ve been told. Rumour has it you can go five orgasms in a row without being introduced to Mr. Softee. No, really!

One of the tricks I use is, I make sure I need to go to the washroom before I start exercising. I deprive myself and hold it in, then I exercise — lifting weights, cycling, whatever. All I knows is, it works.

Are you link crazy? Here. And here. And here.

But, HEY, if you’ve been Kegeling and know first-hand their benefits, do tell! Share, and spread the good word! What say you?

Ah, oral sex. Nothing like a mouthful, huh?

I’ve had a guy email me a couple of times about his partner’s ambivalence and distaste towards receiving oral sex. He loves to perform it, she hates to receive it. They’ve been married a while, and it seems she can’t get past her hang-ups, whatever they may be, and he’s feeling quite deprived as a result.

Part of the problem, he thinks, is that she dislikes tasting herself on him when they kiss post-delivery.

Let’s backtrack a minute. In a moment of complete hypocrisy after my last posting, I decided to post a personal ad in an “intimate encounters” section online, figuring it couldn’t hurt if I was to perhaps find a nice ongoing sexual exchange with someone who’s on the same get-some/stay-independent page as I am.

As a result, I’m all of a sudden being deluged by men who profess to love giving oral. They’re all apparently geniuses at it, too. Sigh. Of course they are. I found myself in a conversation regarding the love-of-delivery, and I asked the rhetorical question of, “Why does almost every guy profess to love delivering oral?”

I began wondering if maybe, just maybe, men love it because it means not having to worry about whether their cocks are going to behave the right way for the right length of time. After all, there’s an awful lot of pressure on men to perform at a certain level every single time they let their hound out of the gate, so to speak. (Of course there’s the up-close visuals as she gets further and further aroused, and men do love their eye-candy of all sorts.)

I’m sure it’s not that simple, though, but I certainly have to wonder if the pressure thing is a factor. Any guys want to chime in on that one?

I do digress. We’re talking about this guy and his woman. I’ve written about oral in the past, here, and probably in dozens of other spots that I’m too lazy to seek out. I think probably every woman’s a little self-conscious about whether she’s tasting the right way for her man of the moment. I could certainly understand why a woman might despise tasting herself on her guy after delivery, too. Personally, I don’t have that hang-up. I certainly have had it, though.

I remember being rather self-conscious about it a couple years back and the guy I was seeing at the time simply decided to go down on me, came back up, kissed me, and said, “So, how do you taste?” I was taken by surprise, but it was one hell of a kiss, and suddenly I just wasn’t concerned anymore. Salty, but sweet. Nifty.

But that hasn’t worked for this guy. The only thing I can really suggest is, keep mouthwash by the bed and a bowl to spit it into. If she can’t handle her tastes on you, then maybe a little minty goodness will go a long way to circumventing that issue.

Guys need to appreciate, though, that there are a lot of times women will have different infections or odor issues that can really impact how they feel about what juices they might be secreting. Unlike men, who pretty much only secrete upon orgasm, we start pumping fluids out as soon as we’re aroused.

Couple that with the reality that there are marketing machines at work in every media imaginable, trying to force us to feel shame or embarrassment over scents that are actually biologically built to attract men, and it’s not surprising women can have hang-ups about a guy nuzzling his face into our twats.

What’s the secret? How do you get past that? Beats the shit out of me. This isn’t a t-shirt, there is no one-size-fits-all solution that’ll enable you to push a magic button and nix all her anxieties.

This is also about trust issues. She, for whatever reason, doesn’t trust you’re telling the truth when you say you can’t get enough of that salty scent and taste of hers. A lot of women aren’t into swallowing cum, either, and for that reason they can’t fathom why you’re wanting to gobble their juices up instead of being repulsed by it.

All you can do is try and get her perspective on it. When she’s saying she doesn’t like it, you ask why. There’s a fine line between pushing and really wanting to know, and good luck to you in trying to toe that line.

Finally, how do you know she hasn’t got some oral sex nightmare story in her closet? I’ve known a couple of guys who’ve told me how they responded with utter disgust upon getting their first real whiff of a woman’s vagina, and they’ve told me how they high-tailed it outta there (and felt riddled with remorse later, but wouldn’t have changed a thing on their reaction, oddly). I even had one guy friend tell me about how he tried going down on his girlfriend and vomited between her legs shortly after he began to tongue her. Turned out it was food poisoning, but it was the end of that relationship. So, who knows their history?

All you can do is keep on trying. Always ask them “what can I do to make it a more comfortable experience for you?” But sometimes there’s just going to be no solution that’ll make you happy. Some of those hang-ups are legion, man. It’s a rough thing to overcome for some women. All I can say is, good luck with that. Keep trying. It ain’t an easy problem to solve, and I’m at a loss for suggestions. Anyone have anything they’d like to suggest?

(Drinking tropical fruit juices, like papaya and pineapple, is great for changing the flavour of ejaculate, and might give just the right twist to her juices so that a post-delivery kiss may change the reaction she has. You can certainly try that, too.”

welcome to spring, aka: rainy season redux, here in vancouver. today’s forecast is some 80mm of rain, give or take a little. (that’s about four inches for you Yanks.) the alleyway behind my place is a veritable river, an inch or two thick of water streaming downhill without end where the lane dips down in the centre.

i awoke to discover my time of the month had begun, which accounts for why i’ve felt like such a cunt for the last three days. gotta love PMS and the license to bitch it grants. but the Red Tide on the Rise means i feel like being lazy in the face of the inevitable cramps that come with. i tackled dishes and made some homemade toast with fried eggs and a French press full of coffee, which i enjoyed while beginning the movie i’ve had kicking around my kitchen table this past week. i’ve paused it for now because there was a bitter-sweet moment of beauty-cum-tragedy, and i know the tragedies are only just beginning… fitting for this world awash in tears today.

it’s a Chinese film with subtitles, Kekexili, “Mountain Patrol” in English, about vigilantes trying to protect the sacred Tibetan antelopes that had been senselessly slaughtered for a couple decades but are beginning to rise again (if you can call a recent headcount of 150,000 versus the former millions that once ranged those high Chinese/Tibetan plains a “rise”). the movie’s pretty beautiful and tragic at the same time, but it’s nice to be enjoying a quality foreign film. some days Hollywood’s fare feels a bit too much like an enema for my tastes.

i posted something earlier this week that’s had me thinking a lot: the photo in which Kim asks, “so why not be the best Kim i can be?” and i began to wonder, “am i being the best Steff i know i can be?”

the answer’s a glaring no. i’m doing better than i’ve been in a while, but i know the distance that lies between here and there. some of it’s very superficial — my clothes aren’t fitting right (getting loose, which is good), i need a haircut, and i want to get out to the gym. i also want to be a tidier person, too. aside from that, i’m somewhat pleased. being more social would be good, too, but i know that i’m social with the seasons. it’s hard to have positive thoughts about waiting in the rain for 20 minutes for crowded buses or hopping on a scooter to rage through rain and get to where the action is, versus enjoying a quiet drink on a comfy sofa in my beautiful home (see the inset for a photo of my sweet pad).

this new job thing takes a lot out of a girl, though. i’m performing very well, and i know it, but it’s draining, and i’ve made the mistake of overcommitting to my old job, too, and it’s all adding up to be very thieving of my time. when i’m too busy, i like to slack off and enjoy my solitude. tomorrow i’ll work at my old job for the last time for an indefinite period. i will instead work overtime at the new job (snicker… how defeatist is that?) in order to bank time and then i’ll work banked days off at the old job. it postpones the arrival of riches but might ultimately be more rewarding. as i wrote in an email to a friend just now, “it comes down to deciding that my loyalties must lie with my present and my future, and not my past.”

this is a good time of year to be overworked in Vancouver, though. the rain comes in waves, but it’s here more than it’s not. soon i will cease working extra altogether in order to enjoy life and meet new people. my gameplan is to join a couple social clubs — a film group, since i’m a cinematic junkie, and who knows what else. the granola girl deep down inside would like to join a drum circle (i have a djembe that is woefully underused, and i won’t even tell you about my guitar!) so i’m considering the merits of drumming on beaches as the sun sets and weather warms, and the merits seem aplenty.

but i figure that if i’m swearing off this e-dating thing, it needs to be replaced with something else: socializing for the fun of it. i haven’t really tried to meet new people in a long time. my last attempt last year wound up being rather freakish and weird since i met a few people that seemed to want to know me for all the wrong reasons (long story there and one i’m too polite to share) and were very ingenuine with me. i decided i wasn’t in a place where i could handle that weirdness, thanks to the depression i was battling and all of that melodrama that has now faded away from me. they wanted me to be someone i’m not, and the trouble with depression is you forget who you are. i decided to rediscover myself instead of trying to be what others wanted back then.

i tried the e-dating thing during the winter and met some guys who were in the right place at the wrong time, as well as a couple of wackos, and now here i am — about to kick the can one more time, but in a different way and for all the right reasons rather than the wrong ones.

meeting people is an interesting dilemma for me. i’m seemingly good at it, because i have a heck of a personality and a razor-sharp witt, i’m told, but i’m also an intense girl with a lot of strong opinions, and i sometimes don’t know how to water myself down for greater public consumption. i’m also apparently quite inimidating to some, which is not something i try to be and i’m surprised to find that i am. my e-dating tag used to be “an acquired taste… entirely worth acquiring”, but not everyone likes tapenade, tripe, or sushi, so it stands to reason i have select personal appeal as well. which is fine, but sometimes frustrating.

i also have very high standards for the people in my life, and it may sometimes seem somewhat unforgiving, but it is what it is, and what it is is something i deliver on. any standards i have for others are standards i meet and beat at my end. my demands of others recently caused a friendship to fail when the other person couldn’t accept that i needed more from the friendship than they were able to provide. (silly things like communication and actually doing shit together is apparently too much to ask of some people. c’est la vie.) and while i might pay the price from time to time, the friends i do have, i keep for years and years and years. i’m quietly yet fiercely loyal, and they know it through my actions and my words, i suspect.

so, am i the best Steff i can be? hmm. as i sit here in my soiled housecleaning t-shirt and Joe Boxers, the answer’s a dubious “sort of”. i’m the best i can be today, but not the best i will be. and i guess that’s all a girl can do… know who she is at the present and where she’s gonna be in the future, and love ’em both. easier said than done but worth trying to do.

I was reading Vancouver Magazine a moment ago and almost laughed out loud before I found myself nodding and pondering a statement by the always-quoteable local music magnate Bruce Allen:

Oh, I so hear ya, Bruce.

Bruce, though, was talking about civic politics. Me, I’m talking about dating.

Today’s the first day of Spring and it’s oh, so very welcomed by yours truly. But with this season comes this renewed ambivalence and nonchalance towards dating. If I was to meet some hot guy on the street tomorrow and the flirting ensued, then great. I’d be all for that. Hell, I had a cute bald insurance boy hitting on me before dinner tonight. Oh, if only the boss wasn’t with me!

E-dating, though, has really begun to lose its allure. It’s so full of bullshit.

Fortunately, as I said, Spring is here and soon the weather will also be arriving. With that comes a great deal of freedomin the world of Steff, and being alone becomes a GOOD thing.

I wasted most of my spring and summer last year on a relationship that went nowhere and met a bad demise, not to mention also spent it working in a job I hated, with no windows and in the poorest part of town where there was always a scent of warm piss on the ocean breeze, and I found myself angrily resenting the shit out of it all.

Now, though, I’m working near the ocean and love the job, I’m single, and the season of freedom’s on the verge. So why waste my time on some of these fucking dimwits who aren’t even worth the words I can screw together?

You see, e-dating has its place, but there’s this highly disposable, impersonal nature to it, and the players within seem to just not care at all about the persons who may or may not reside behind the profile they’ve just blown off. Everyone’s in it for themselves, and there’s very nearly no karmic backlash, it would seem, for shitty behaviour. Emails get exchanged, and for whatever dumb, small reason, the recipient then decides there’s no sense in responding to the person, so instead of doing the polite thing and saying, “Sorry, but I think I’m not interested,” they do the dickhead thing and just not respond.

I’ve done this e-dating off and on for, what, five or six years now, and I’ve noticed a downward spiral. More and more it’s becoming this dehumanized, inconsiderate, and almost degrading way to seek companionship. Sure, it works, some of the time. Now and then you’ll luck out and meet someone great, someone who might even be worth latching onto long into the future. The trouble is, you need to be patient enough and have enough of a thick skin to wait it out… because there are an awful lot of shitheads out there you’ll need to get past before you find the gold in the dark mine you’ve been digging through.

Oh, and trust me, it’s not just one gender being afflicted by this lack of empathy out there. For some reason, the computer screen and this sense of anonymity almost seems to give license to behaving in ways that society once wouldn’t tolerate.

And Bruce is right: There are no consequences. There’s no Ghost of Christmas Past who’s going to float down your chimney and scare the sense from you and guilt you into better behaviour. There’re no social police who’ll come and imprison you for your crassness. There’re no fines, no “human decency” penal code, nothing.

The trouble is, the people getting shat on say nothing and do nothing. The people who do get pissed tend to fly off the handle and have nothing constructive to add to the mix. It’s a world full of self-indulgent people with senses of entitlement, and being gracious and kind to others, it would seem, just doesn’t pay.

Am I cynical? No, I just believe I can do better. I believe good people are out there and I believe they’re sick of the online shit like I am. I may be tough enough to do the online dating thing, and while I’ve had nothing I’ve cared to report to you of late, since I don’t like slagging people, I’ve had some pretty awful dating experiences since last fall and the whole thing seems like a waste of my time. Ironically, before I got into my relationship last year, I’d been dating up a storm and getting some action and having a great time doing it. This past winter has been a bust.

One of these days I’ll have to share.

But Allen’s right. There are no consequences for being an asshole. Yet. So here’s my request to you:

Tomorrow, start making people accountable. If they’re an asshole, call them on it. But, at the same time, you got to give props to those who make life a more pleasant place to be. Sure, there are no consequences for being an asshole, but there seems to be little pay-off in being kind, too. It’s up to you to make sure both occur. Then we’ll finally have balance.

This outspoken, brazen chick you see on here’s the same fucking girl I take into the world, you know. If anyone’s out there exacting checks and balances, it’s yours truly. I tell people when they’ve done right, and I make sure they know when they’ve done wrong. It’s not worth my time in e-dating because being alone isn’t the nightmare sitcoms and date flicks would have you believe, and, besides, being alone’s starting to feel nice again for the first time in a long, long while.

Please, for the love of life, start living like you believe in karma. Start believing there are cosmic consequences for your behaviour. It makes the world a better place to be, and god knows it could use a little improvement in this shallow age of the new millenium.

I found myself catching the end of the Nature 25-year retrospective on PBS tonight, with a story about Shirley the elephant. Confined for her past 22 years in the small, but caring Louisiana Purchase Zoo, Shirley was absent the companionship of her kind.
Finally, upon realization that they were doing her more harm than good, the caregivers at the zoo decided to free her to a wide-open sanctuary two states away in Tennessee, where Shirley was coincidentally reunited with a friend, Jenny, from a circus some four decades previous. Against all probability, the two recognized each other. The force of shared emotion in the reunion was so great that the two spent that first night trying so hard to get to each other that they bent the massive steel bars of the gate that separated them, something none of the caregivers had ever seen nor heard of in all their years.
At long last, a sanctuary worker managed to pry the gates apart and the two collided upon each other with great adoration and showering of physical affection. Images followed of the two walking step in step across the sprawling fields, lying and splashing in the small ponds dotting its landscape, and generally just being happy in each others’ company.
Goes to show you, as much as we might think moments are deep in our past, there are moments, places, and others that simply never escape our recall.
I’m not much of an animal lover, but I’m a lover of love, and that was as powerful a display as any I’ve seen.
Sadly, Jenny passed away in October of last year. Found on the sanctuary’s website was this portion of the eulogy on her passing.

At 6:35PM CST, on October 17, with her family at her side, Jenny’s breathing slowed and became shallow. She released a deep guttural sound from the base of her trunk, bringing Bunny and Tarra immediately to her side. Shirley had moved away, painfully sensing that Jenny’s death was very near; her sorrow was heavy. To lose Jenny for a second time was more than Shirley could bear.

Wow, so here’s a week of friendships with exes! On top of that, I had a conversation with a coworker yesterday in which she was saying the old Harry Met Sally line about how men & women can’t be friends, and that you certainly can’t be friends with an ex-lover. Then this posting happens. Ooh. Spooky things afoot!

My ex wanted to be friends after we broke up even though I wasn’t crazy about the idea but promised to try. But the weird thing is, we’ve only seen each other once or twice in the last year since we broke up. We had “soft” plans this weekend since he seems to be totally non-committal about making plans of any kind, and at the last second, sent me an email saying “I have to bail. Maybe next weekend.” Again with the “maybe”!

So I emailed him back saying the ball was in the court, I was tired of making all the effort to get together. After all, he’s the one that dumped me! I’ve already been rejected once and in a huge way, so yeah I’m tired of making the plans! I emailed him back, saying it felt like I was the one making all the effort. I said even when I do get a response of possibly doing something with him, his responses are non-committal and not very enthusiastic. Then I told him the ball was in his court now.

He emailed me back “Have a nice life” and that’s it! I think the friendship is dead. I’m pretty pissed about it and I just deleted all the emails and I think I’m washing my hands of the whole thing. The question I have is, am I overreacting? Is he? Is it too much to ask that your friends make an effort to see you, too?

Ha! Yeah, like it’s so much to ask that both people in the relationship make an effort to make plans. You say this guy dumped you, so I can certainly see how you’d feel awkward about making plans in the first place. It sounds like he never initiates making plans, so I’m not so sure he’s really comfortable being your friend anyhow.

Maybe he doesn’t even know how uncomfortable he is with it. Maybe he fell harder for you than he ever admitted, and the friendship was harder than he thought after he broke it off. Maybe he has regrets about that decision. Maybe he has more going on in his life than you’re aware of, but there again, if he’s not communicating with you, how are you supposed to know?

Personally, I’ve had a few friendships where people just don’t carry their weight. They don’t make plans, don’t suggest them, don’t contact me, yet they seem to really value me. Like my mother always said, “You sure have a funny way of showing it.”

In my life, I’m an avid blogger, so this puts me at a greater disadvantage. Everyone in my life can read my blogs and knows exactly where I’m at on almost any given day. (I have this blog and my more personal one, the Last Ditch, where it’s more of a daily journal and the goings-on in the life of Steff.)

This means they can fall under the delusion that they’re really plugged into my world, ergo it must go both ways. My friends often say “I think I told you that X happened to me at Y”— but the truth is, I don’t know jack. It’s frustrating. They often don’t clue me in. I have one friend who’s awesome at dropping me update emails. He’ll comment about things he’s read on the blog, give me props or offer support, depending what he’s read, then he’ll tell me everything going on in his life with him, his wife, and baby boy. It’s no substitute for the real thing, but it’s an effort, and I love it.

So, yeah, I make some effort to see people, but I get frustrated at times. I think this guy of yours just doesn’t get it. Friendships need to be give and take. One person can’t be making all the plans or doing all the talking or calling especially if there’s been a relationship between you and he’s the one that ended it in the first place. How often can you possibly sign up for rejection? Sounds to me like, in this case, rejection’s an ongoing status quo for you, honey, so sooner or later you need to decide you’ve had enough.

There’s a possibility, however, that something big and bad has happened when people disappear. I have a doozey of an example. I’d just gotten into communication with one of my old best friends from when I was 13-17 recently. Funny story – she and my brother met on an online dating site and had a date and realized they’d both had connections to me. They loved it, laughed about it, and had an awesome time together. She got in touch with me by email when my brother clued her in. We exchanged some emails, began making plans, and then she disappeared. I was wondering if I’d pissed her off when I brought up how insensitive I was in my teens when she lost her mother to cancer. Later, I tried again (twice) to email her. No response. Well, my brother was in the same boat. Last weekend she finally gets in touch with him and says, “Yeah, well, a week after our date I was diagnosed with cervical cancer.” Oh, fuck.

Normally my advice to my brother would’ve been “Forget about it, she’s not into you” but wow. My teen best friend has cancer. Her mother died of it. My mother died of it. And now she has it. My head’s been trying to wrap around that. But it’s a big reminder that sometimes people just disappear for their own reasons and that we can’t just stop trying to contact them.

But you’ve had a year of non-committing, non-responsive friendship with your ex. It sounds to me like you’ve been making an effort, and for some reason this guy’s feeling all martyred now that you’ve called him on it. He’s pissed and is washing his hands of it because he fails to see that he’s actually in the wrong this time. Sure, you can try to placate him and beg to be his friend again, but sometimes people just need to accept that they should have done more.

The question is, can you live without this person in your circle of friends? Oddly, it’s actually a trick question. The answer is, you already are. Grieve for the final loss of your friendship, have a drink, and move on.

Bloody hell, people. I’m sorry! I forgot to update you.

All right. My coworker’s husband pulled through. He had been tragically ill years ago and his adrenal gland has never really worked since. Thus, if he gets ill at all, bad things can happen — or so they’ve now discovered.

The doctors told him late Saturday night that his blood pressure was so abysmally low for so long that they felt he couldn’t survive it. Then, suddenly, presto! He began to improve. They’d given him nine bags of saline in the first day, and pumped him full of some form of adrenaline.

He’s been lickin’ the curb all week with zero energy, and the wife’s had the flu and a stomach bug. We chatted today and she complained how she’d been wanting to go to the hotsprings over spring break. I suggested her and the hubby get out and shop for some nice foods, have some breakfast, go for a walk, and hire a maid to clean the house top to bottom while they have a relaxing morning. Then they could be homebodies all week and rest up. She loved the notion, so it looks like a plan.

It was apparently one hell of a weekend, though! Monday she told me he had originally wanted to go to work and she told him what a fucking idiot he was, heh, so he stayed home. We told the story to another woman and she commented, “Men! They won’t go to a doctor, but they’ll go to work!”

Ahem.

Oh! And if he ever even gets the sniffles again? He’s to immediately go to emergency. Apparently he’s left with nil as far as an immune system goes. Sucky, to understate things drastically.