In a post on Facebook earlier today, I noted that I have a hard time with a mindset that harbors unresolved anger.  Which, for me, is very odd, because in the past, I’ve had no problem harboring secret dreams of revenge or feelings of ill will towards others.  I’ve struggled with it on and off all of my life.  Something about having a very close brush with death changed that, though.  I simply can’t find it within myself to be angry for very long.  Even when someone deserves said anger.

This thinking led to a very simple concept in my mind.  I simply don’t give a damn.  There’s nothing that important that I have to hold on to it and let it poison my own mind or heart.  I’ve attempted to move through the world with an open heart, but sometimes I would get bogged down with the details.  I can’t seem to do that these days, the details are just… meh.  The negative details, that is.

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As I woke up Sunday morning with the light streaming in through the windows, slowly rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, it occurred to me that it was awfully bright and would hopefully be a nice day. That’s when it hit me that something was very very wrong.

Light coming in through the windows. Sunlight. And my alarm was set for 5:30. I literally threw myself out of bed, grabbed my phone, looked at the time and went into panic mode. I had 20 minutes to get myself caffeinated, showered, dressed, packed, and get to my girlfriend’s house about seven miles away.

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Party time!

I went to bed Friday night feeling a bit of anticipation for the DC 101 Chili Cook-Off on Saturday. Slated for the day was good food, lousy beer, good friends, and good music. I opted out of my usual Friday carousing, and instead stayed in, had a beer or two, cleaned the house, and went to the store to get breakfast for the crew Saturday morning.

Last year’s Cook-Off was a clusterfuck of lines, lines, and more lines. Two hours standing in line just to get in. Another hour lost standing in line to get beer tickets. More time lost standing in the beer line. Absolute insanity. This year promised to be different, with fewer lines and more room to wander around. Remembering last year’s hassle with parking, I suggested we take the Metro in.

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Stephanie arrived today, and after we were done dealing with our own special brand of Missed Connections at the airport, we got the weekend started off on the right foot. With music and drinks all around! And a couple of cloves for yours truly, courtesy of a lovely camera wielding snap happy new friend. Almost forgot how truly sublime clove cigarettes are. *happy sigh*

Not much dancing to be done, woe is me, woe is me. But we had a fabulous time all the same and were introduced to some lovely people.

And if somebody ends up not going to the beach with his friend, looks like he’s cooking breakfast on Saturday morning. Stephanie decreed it to be so!

Hope he knows how much I like bacon…

Me: Dude, I -totally- nailed Bon Jovi!
Friend: What?! That’s just wrong.
Me: Look at that score!
Friend: Damn, you nailed Bon Jovi.
Me: *strut*

Apparently I nailed Dave Grohl too. *pfft* Wevs.

My calendar tells me that I’m going to Erie, PA from July 18th to July 21st. However, late last night that all changed.

As Lucy and I were talking on the phone, giggling about what we were going to do and fun it was going to be, we both lamented that it might not be the same without Stephanie. Sure, we’d have fun, we’d paint the town red, we’d get into all sorts of trouble, but without Stephanie, it just wouldn’t be the same. So I got this wild idea to fly Stephanie up from Florida to Erie for that weekend. Lucy and I bounced up and down at the idea, giggled a lot more, and sent Stephanie an email asking her how she felt about such a long flight.

Last night I sat on the phone with Stephanie looking over flights and what we were going to do. Finally we agreed that she’d fly here to DC and we’d make the six hour drive to Erie together. So we booked the flight, called it a night, and yours truly went to bed.

This morning I wake to an email from Stephanie saying she changed her mind.

…

Heh, sort of.

Stephanie decided that what we really needed to do was spend our weekend of wild, wicked, girls only debauchery here in DC. She contacted Lucy, and between the two of them, they completely reworked the plans. So Stephanie is still flying in on Thursday the 17th, but instead of her and I getting in the car on the 18th and road tripping to Erie, Lucy is going to come here.

With Cricket being out of town, we’ll have the house to ourselves. So we began making even further plans. We’ll go out Friday, have a bit of fun. On Saturday we’ll do the usual touristy type things that one does when one visits the capital. On Saturday night?

All hell will be breaking loose at my house with a girls only get together. A couple of friends from work, a few of my other friends, plus the three of us. The plan is simple. A little nosh, a little drink, and lots of giggling and talking smack about the things that make us tick (read: talking shit about men).

I’m sure you’ll be able to hear us from miles away. Pay no mind to the sirens, I’m sure it’ll just be a little misunderstanding.

So in late July I’m road tripping my happy ass over to Erie, PA to see an old friend. I haven’t seen her since I was pregnant with my beloved Cricket. We grew up together, had babies together, shared life and death together, and somehow managed to forget to grow old together.

She held my hand when my mother died, she was the only one there the moment I knew - that wicked dark day when I walked in the house and saw that dress. I held her hand when her brother died - as an adult probably not nearly as graceful as she had been, with my incredulous “Stop joking” as I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and stared at my phone in disbelief. We lived, loved, laughed, cried, and swore that we’d never let go. And then, because life is a bitch, we lost touch. We are fixing that, goddammit. This worn and weary heart rejoices at that thought. I have always loved her, will always love her, and having managed to somehow learn though all of this bullshit what’s important and what’s not, I will never let her go again.

—

Hopefully, if all works in my favor, I’m taking a late summer trip out to the wicked wilds of the Pacific Northwest and seeing my best girl Fran for a week of PIE. We’ll dance our asses off, party like it’s 1999, and pick up Jeannie along the way and feed her little ass! My fingers are crossed, this is a trip I desperately need to take. My dearest and most beloved friend for the last ten years, the one person with an insight to my deepest thoughts and feelings, who just somehow always knows my mood and knows how to handle me, with a trip to see someone new to me, who holds a place in my heart that no one can ever take away. Never letting go.

—

Tonight, the phone rings, and I hear from an old AOL buddy that he’s going to be in VA tonight, road tripping his happy ass off, and wanting to share a drink or two and a couple of days. Goddess knows I love this kid. We have a strange online history that can only be understood by those who have developed and maintained online friendships that surpass a couple of years… it’s been a lifetime in online years. I think I saved his life one night, and in turn he gave me something to believe in. My passion for our youth was born that night. My belief in the future of our world, the desire to save someone, anyone, anything, to salvage what is left of this horrid world was born in that moment when my heart stopped and I scrambled to get an ambulance to a house in a Chicago suburb. From Florida.

I’ve never met him. I never met his mother who met a horrible fate. I never met his father who thanked me so many times over the years I began to feel uncomfortable. But somewhere, in all of the entanglements of my life, I was connected to someone. By a force greater than me. Never letting go.

—

Over the years, I’ve had friends come and go. I’ve made fabulous new friends, only to lose them to the business of daily life, the stupidity of egos (yeah, girlie, I mean you - and me), and the simple fact that sometimes we really all can’t just get along. But every now and again, people step into your life, and maybe they step out too, but you never forget them, and never stop loving them.

Friends.

I am blessed.

One never left, I love her. One is coming back, I love her. One, unknown to him, holds my faith. I love him. And one, well, she and I may work it out after all, eh girlie? Another one I never expected to by my friend, but he’ll be there till the day I die, tattooed onto my cynical little heart. Another one, he’s just sort of coming in to all this, but there’s a bond beyond description. And then there’s the one who holds my heart in his hands. He’s… well, he’s something.

In this moment, this space right now, I feel more blessed than I ever have.

It’s going to be a damn fine summer.

If you haven’t heard, because you’ve been slacking and not paying attention to IRC or MySpace, or just because you are out of the loop, La Swan (aka DarthBitch) is having her baaaayybeeee.

Get over there and send your love and good wishes, before the Goddess Sabre - Nyx, Succubus, Chastity, Devil’s Daughter, Empress of the Known (and Unknown) Universe (Multiverse), and the Epitome of All that is Good and Right in the World - or whatever other pseudonym used over the last decade (that would be -me- you freaks), beats you down with a good old fashioned DoS.

zomg… yay!

Having recently found myself in a situation I had tried to avoid being in, it occurred to me that the reason I was in the situation in the first place was because I had chosen to overlook more things than I should have.

It started out innocently enough. A little glassing over of the eyes here, a turning a deaf ear there. A simple way of avoiding things that I felt were, while not trivial, certainly not life shattering. But it all started to get to the point where I was feeling a bit of a gnawing at my insides as things progressed. Having overlooked a thing or two in one place in my life made it far too easy to overlook a thing or twenty in a few critical places in my life.

Things I should have never overlooked in the first place.

In more places than is even remotely acceptable.

Of course, the question becomes, “Why do that to begin with?” A thousand reasons. You see a piece of lint on your jacket during a meeting and you are at a cross-roads. Do you flick it off your breast right then, drawing attention to said breast, or do you wait until later, knowing that you’ll get busy and forget and that when you do finally get to it that one piece of lint has mutated into a small army that even duct tape isn’t lifting off?

I’m guessing a lot of people would flick it off right then. A lot of people aren’t me with a keen awareness of the fact that half the people in that meeting are already staring at said breasts. So I wait, demurely, and get pulled into something else. By the time I get around to it… well, yeah. Mess.

*sigh*

This is one of the reasons I stopped wearing black jackets! Srsly!

There are a lot of you who’ve known me for a great many years… and I’ve had more than a few people ask me when the hell I became so nice. And I always answer that I don’t want to keep carrying around pieces of the past that had me seven shades of pissed off for so many years. In dealing with my fair share of nut jobs and whack cases, I’ve become increasingly more easy going, laid back, and maintain a “whatever” state of mind.

Until I get painted into a corner - as someone else would say to me.

And then I remember why I was always such a bitch in the first place. Nice guys never win and nobody likes the nice girl. Blah blah blah. You can all roll your eyes, but you know it’s true.

I had me back for a little while last winter, but I was so overwhelmed by what it took to get me back that I froze and eventually reverted to the nice girl who doesn’t deal well with conflict.

Yeah, fuck that noise. And so I’ll turn my naval gazing (I’d say mental masturbation - that’s all this type of blogging ever really is - but I know how you perverts are!) inward and make a lovely list. You could say it’s my deal breaker list. And you could say that it applies to several aspects of my life. You could also say that I expect to begin employing it immediately. In fact, I’m pretty sure some of it has already been set into motion.

You could also say I’ve had it with bullshit from several corners of my life - and that shit ends now.

This has been a Sabreland Public Service Announcement. Thank you, drive through!

…in a land far, far away, there lived three young girls from three very different types of families. Somehow, through all of the nonsense of middle school and high school, these three girls ended up becoming the best of friends. They were absolutely inseparable and managed to get into a lot of trouble together.

Oh, I do mean a -lot- of trouble.

Over the years, as they started building families of their own, they somehow lost touch. One moved on, getting far away from the miserable town they all lived in. One got married and secluded herself in a life of misery, eventually moving far away herself. One stayed behind, wondering where the other two had gone.

The one who got married (and eventually divorced) found herself wandering to her old romping grounds one day, and somehow managed to connect with the one who stayed behind. The one who stayed used her mad skills on Teh Interwebs and found the first one who moved on.

And the wheels are already turning as the three plot and plan to get together somehow… and see just how much trouble they can still manage to get into.

I’m willing to bet we can still make the earth shake. Heh, at least now I can afford the bail! Game on!