Posts Tagged ‘Life Is Awesome’

Dorian Gray was back in town, and I have made it my mission to show him one of my favorite restaurants each time he visits.It’s awesome that he is totally on board with Project Restaurant.

Last night we hit my fave Indian joint, and had a lovely dinner, then went for coffee at one of the fifty million places to have coffee in Seattle, although neither of us had actual coffee.

Apparently, the secret to DG’s youthful look is not bathing in virgin blood, as I have previously surmised, but hot green tea.

I had black tea, because any other kind of tea tastes like, I don’t know, plants and shit. SHUT UP, I know tea is a plant, I just don’t want the planty taste IN MY MOUTH.

Plus I am well known for my dislike of hot beverages, so my tea was iced.

It was, as always, awesome.

So today I get to have my boobs squeezed between a variety of metal plates while some tech takes radiation pictures that may or with my luck, may not make me sterile.

Being 42 is awesome.

Actually, being 42 IS awesome. I realized yesterday that I am having way more fun these days than I did in my twenties, and that’s even taking into consideration the fact that I barely remember my 20′s on account of the massive quantities of booze, pills and other illegal and yet highly available substances I ingested.

I spent most of my life in the grip of anxiety and the panoply of mental illnesses I am afflicted with. I didn’t have many friends, or much of a typical childhood and my teen years, what I remember of them, are mostly me wracked with social anxiety. And drugs, lots of drugs.

We also moved A LOT, which kind of made everything else much more challenging.

These days, most of that is under control. Not gone, because I’m not sure that such an integral part of me can ever be gone, but I manage that shit. I learned, over time, that while fear ran my life, I was not going to be happy or have fun.

Fuck that shit.

So now, no matter how I feel, I take my meds. I go to meetings. I make plans with people and most of those people become friends.

Even when I am having a bad day, a day when I feel worthless or hopeless, I can recognize that it’s just a feeling. Feelings aren’t facts, and they will pass if I just keep doing the things I need to do.

That, my friends, is a fucking miracle. And is directly responsible for the really great life I now have.

Ok, enough if this feelings stuff. So over it, dudes. Let’s talk about something else. Without feelings.

So.

Last year, the internet gave me a Kindle. This was awesome,  and not just because my friends are awesome, but because reading is like breathing, it must be done regularly and the Kindle makes it far easier for me, especially with the rheumatoid arthritis. I have the arthritis, not the Kindle. The Kindle doesn’t have joints. At least not diseased ones.

ANYWAY, I love my Kindle, which I call Robobook, and I take it everywhere with me. I took it to New England at Christmas, and while there I noticed that there was a spot on the screen. It also started taking a long time to load, and it was getting…quirkier by the day.

Also, the front and back were starting to separate, obviously ungood. I sent an email to Amazon, and they sent me a number to call, but I kept getting sick and having surgery and such, and so only got around to calling them today.

ANNNNNND the warranty ran out on the 23rd.

But, and here is why I have a deep abiding love for Amazon, they are replacing it anyway. And no, I didn’t yell at them or anything, they just said that is what they were going to do. And they are sending me a pre-printed label to return the old one.

And this is good because a life without my Robobook is a life not worth living, dudes. SHUT UP.

So, my friend, Cheryl, went to London with her wife, AK, and some other family members. She wrote that she was going on her blog, and showed a poster that was red with white letters and said KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.

I fell in love with that poster.

Now, Cheryl is a fabulous author and we have known each other on the Internet for many years now. She is one of the few blog friends I have met in the Real Life, since she swept through Seattle on her book signing tour, and her novel The Lilac Mines is a lovely read, and something I highly recommend.

I love Cheryl and AK. I remember when they first were dating, how excited Cheryl was, and I am so pleased that they are happy.  They are awesome, and I love to read of their adventures.

Having said all that, I kind of blatantly hinted that I wanted them to bring me a copy of this poster. I am unprincipled in this way, but I never really expect people to lug stuff home for me. That would be kind of sociopathic.

So imagine my delight to find a tube with that poster in my mailbox. OK, not really in my mailbox, it’s a friggin’ tube and my mail box is tiny, and I almost just wrote “my box is tiny” but it seemed wrong somehow.

Also, it came with a flier that talks all about the British propaganda of WWII, which I am seriously interested in. And a lovely note from Cheryl, telling me that they lugged the poster all over Bath and York, and by the way, Cheryl’s handwriting is pretty fucking meticulous. Very readable, and what not.

Anyway, I would take a picture and show you the poster, except I am leaving it in the tube until I can get it framed. So, you guys are SOL.

And the point I am trying to make is, Cheryl and AK went to Britain, and what I got was this awesome poster.

There are some people in your life who, if you called them and told them you had a body that you needed to get rid of, would sigh and say “Where should I bring the shovel?”

My friend, Dorian Gray, is one of those people to me and to Fathead. Dorian Gray isn’t his real name, of course. He has a career and a family and stuff, none of which would benefit by being tarred with the brush of Kaply, Inc.

But I’m calling him that because, 25 years after I first met him, the bastard has NOT AGED ONE DAY. It makes me mental. I’m pretty sure there is a picture of him in some closet somewhere that is aging at an astounding pace.

So DG was coming into town and had time for breakfast, so I took him to Glo’s, which is a local joint known for  eggs benedict.

There are very few people for whom I would forsake the cozy awesomeness of my bed, and DG is among them. SO I crawled out of bed at 6AM, brushed my teeth and even took a shower.

And it was totally worth it.

One of the things I miss about Maine is having people in my life who have known me a long time. DG and I have known each other for 25 years, and there is something about that length of history that is reassuring and gratifying. We have each changed a lot in that time, and yet there we were, laughing and talking like we see each other every day.

Plus he was totally suited up, AND he bought me breakfast. You can’t beat THAT with a STICK.

Of course, now it’s like, 10 AM and I’m completely gakked out on coffee, but it was still worth it. SHUT UP.