Sorry I missed your Oscar Party, but I was having a bit of a nervous breakdown

I was supposed to go to a friends Oscar Party Sunday. I missed it. He's pissed. Oops. But then today, I IM'd him just to see if we were cool and he sends me this snide little note about spending a lot of time and money and disappointed that I didn't make it or call. I apologized again with my pithy "sorry, couldn't make it" and got no response. Then when I vomited up "and my phone was turned off Sunday because my bill was over $600 and so was the cable and my dad wants me to move to dc or else he won't help me anymore and I'm 5 months behind in rent which all came crashing down on me Sunday morning. I would have been a bit of a party pooper since my best friend had to come over and do a little care for me". Only then did I get a response. WTF? I was totally wrong for not calling. But I didn't want to. I don't want to keep telling that story and it's the main reason I'm not going out anywhere.

I understand that this is one of my more self important friends, and he did put a lot of work into it and was very excited about his party.

But I'm tired of explaining to people who make shitloads more money than me that although I don't have to bring something to your house it's tacky not to. And since I'm always the one black girl (and I know race isn't a major factor) I'm always the poor black girl. And I'm not even a girl any more. I'm the poor black woman. And I wouldn't even mind that if his crowd wasn't the crowd always trying to outdo each other and making snarky side shots under their breath. And if I'd said this to my friend, would he have understood? Maybe, but I didn't really want to talk to him about it because he could be as snide and snarky as the best of them. When I'm in high times, it's cute. When I'm not, I want to punch faces.

So Sunday I was in no mood to sit around being fabulous, meeting boyfriends and not betting in the Oscar pool cause I didn't have but $20 to last me the rest of the week. I'm so tired of the ridiculous amounts of money I have from day to day and didn't trust that there wouldn't be ridicule because my conversations tend to surround that fact right now. I'm also not in the mood to justify my life and my choices to a bunch of people I don't know. I'm sure I'm reading too much into the situation, but I've been in the situation too many times to not have my trepidations. I'm not so much fun to be around with new people. I'm lucky to have a place close to me where I know the people and I can relax and enjoy the company of people I know and like and who reciprocate without judgements.

That's it Heroes

I quit you. Like my 6th grade boyfriend. Only he said it before me when I called to tell him so he really quit me (which was humiliating cause he was in the 5th grade).

I’ve watched this show since it's first episode and when everyone else was done with you I persevered. When Hiro was in 16th century Japan, I still gave it a chance. When they kept introducing characters I liked that died 2 episodes later (usually thanks to Sylar) or just never come back (Micah and his entire family) and storylines that went nowhere FOR A WHOLE SEASON (Villians).

But now, I’m tired. I already have to choose between Heroes and 24 for the time slot. I am blessed with not only superior intelligence, but also a DVR, so I can watch 24 later and rid myself of all those pesky commercials. But now I’m apparently a 24 woman all the way. I’ve even read the spoilers for Heroes so I can see if there's any hope and the one glimmer is the same thing that's kept me here this long.

SYLAR. If it wasn't for him, I’d have been gone a long time ago. He’s the only one who has both retained his initial character and grown. Everyone else seems to have amnesia. Really, you guys have powers and know what each of you can do. This season has been so full of petty concerns and squabbles, people getting powers, losing powers, acting as if their powers are way weaker than they really are. It’s frustrating when Parkman won't just create illusions to escape or search for information. It’s frustrating that Mohindar is still keeping secrets when he knows what's going on and they've all been rounded up for containment. It’s ridiculous that all Peter can do is fly when he's been around both Parkman and Mohindar and could also take their powers, why wouldn't he? What the fuck is up with Claire and her super heroics. She used to be smarter than this.

Everyone used to be smarter than they are now... except Sylar. He’s getting smarter by the day and not just because of more powers, but because he's integrated his experiences into his personality and he grows. He seeks out new information, not standing around asking the same questions of the same people or not asking and going off all half cocked (PETER!). So Heroes when you get your shit together you'll get me back. When people aren't being retarded.

under pressure

my dad has offered me an opportunity to move down to dc so i can get some relief from all of these money woes that are plaguing me here in ny. i love that he wants to help me. i think it's great. but not the condition that i move down there and live in an apt. above them. my family are the straightest people i know, next to my paternal grandparents, who also live in dc. i love my dad, but stimulating conversations would be cut to a minimum. too much fast food, too many shallow ideas, too little thinking outside of a limited view. my dad's a great thinker but he's not living the life he always dreamed about with me. and the life he's living has made him more financial secure than he's ever been but he's a different dad. he has a baby and a life that didn't exist when i came about. and the time he wants to spend with me now, he feels he can help make up for the time he missed when i was a kid. i get that. but that time has passed. and i feel guilty enough for not being overjoyed at the prospect of work and cheaper housing and some help with my discipline. but that's just it as well isn't it? He said we could help discipline each other. a lot of the reasoning has to do with him and what he wants. well of course it does darling. that's how the world works. i live so much in what i want all the time that i always question if it's what i want, don't want or don't care about.


i'd be closer to my little sister, and that would be great, but we talk on the phone everyday.

i also don't like that if feels like unconditional surrender of my writing goals and dreams. he contends that i can write down there and, of course, i can. but would i? that move's a soul killer. i'm trying to do this writing thing here which is slow as molasses, but i'm doing it. arghhhhh.

did i ever tell you about the time i went to vermont

A few weeks ago I went to Vermont with a friend of mine and her husband. They’d invited a bunch of other people because the husband who I’ll call, um "hubby" rents a house every year and goes skiing. My friend who I’ll call "friendo" doesn't ski, so she wanted someone to hang with while everyone else skied.

So we drive up the 5h and it's snowing and what I’ve heard people call "beautiful" and I call cold and snowy. I’m from Chicago. I’ve skied the French Swiss Alps. Vermont was cold and snowy. So I’m the chocolate in the vanilla once again and I’ve got to say I’m sick of it. I know, I know, we live in a post-racial world. My ass. So I’m up there surrounded by white- in a fur coat and sorrel boots. Everyone has on snow pants and I feel like the poor kid who's mom sent them out without the right gear.

When I went to France I was 12 and it was a bunch of rich black kids from the Southside of Chicago. I obviously slid in under the radar, but my mom was always good about making sure I had tons of exposure to everything. (Probably to too many things, but that's for a different day.) My mom was absent while I was getting ready for my trip, working on the railroad or smoking coke in LA, who knows. My dad had taken me to get my ski jacket. My granny got me my ski pants and luggage. And boots.

The boots.

It was January 1986 and everybody who was anybody had moonboots. And remember, they were rich so they had extras. My granny (great grandmother) was born in 1917 on a Gullah island and raised in Mississippi until she married my granddad in 1932 2 months pregnant. Right, do the math. She didn't know or care about a moon boot. The baby was going skiing and needed to be warm so she got my boots. They were a Christmas present (like everything else I got for the trip- except my Mr. Microphone) and so I had to pretend like I liked them while secretly plotting to leave them there and make my mom send me money to buy some in France.

To me they were the epitome of my particular social status. They were grey, quilted WEDGES!!! Wedges. In the 80's. She might as well had sent me out in bell-bottoms. I wore bangles up my arm and wore hot pink lace headbands like Madonna in the holiday video. I tied bandanas around my knees like ozone and turbo in breakin' (the original because the only good thing I can say about 2 is din da da). I was hip and cool and these would be the only boots I would have to represent my hipness and coolness to the French. So I wouldn't wear them. Up to my knees in snow and I just wouldn't. It worked most of the time, because we mostly wore our ski boots, but one day it went terribly wrong.

We had to go to town at the crack of dawn to watch a local baker make the bread we ate everyday. I put on my penny loafers (remember I’m cool- Michael Jackson wore them and nothing was cooler than that) fully expecting to jump in a van and go down the mountain. No, no grasshopper. We walked. By the time we'd gotten a few feet from the chalet I realized I was in trouble. There was already snow in my socks and we had another mile or so to go. And did I mention it was early? Dawn was just breaking when we left and in the Alps, it's cold at dawn in January. But my penny loafers weren't cutting it. And I felt stupid and inadequate and ill prepared. It also didn't help that my best friend said, "I don't know why you didn't just wear your boots". Because they make me stand out and look weirder than I already do. Because I haven't been taught that being different is okay. Because I want to just fit in and not think about the fact that no one in my family has bothered to write, let alone send gift baskets while I’ve been away for a month. I don't want to think about the fact that I hate these boots my granny who's at home dying bought me. I want to be a normal girl with normal problems. Which brings me to Vermont.

I always feel a little off, especially when I’m in a new situation with strangers. Especially when I’m the only not skinny not white single girl in the room. Especially when the guy my friendo told me I’d be interested in is a fat pasty thing- who's not interested in me. And when it appears all of these people know each other but I don't know any of them. I think their conversation is inane and there's one girl in particular who's doing that white girl attention getting thing that drives me crazy. She’s too loud, too silly, too showoffy. Maybe I’m just sensitive, but I decided I don't care for her. I’m the wild card in so many ways. And I’m not wearing the right gear. There’s a button missing off of my fur coat. I’m the only girl who smokes. I’d rather sit in the cabin than go hiking. (I don’t get hiking. where are we going?) I’m not going hiking and it's not because I’m afraid I’m going to get winded like I did on our walk after smoking like 5 cigs in a row and I thought we were just going out for a minute not an hour and my boots weigh 20lbs each. So enjoy your hike. I’m making myself a cocktail.

Then the dog ran out. This pampered mutt had hurt its ass and was left home. Flappy. Flapjack. Flappy the dog. So I go out for a smoke, it's whining, I let it out to pee or whatever cause I don't really fuck with dogs like that to know what his problem is. And this little mutha fucka won't go back in- FOR AN HOUR. Not only that, he's growling at me and keeps trying to run up the driveway to the road. Hubby had already stated that if anything happens to the dog he's going to kill himself and I believe him. He makes his food from scratch. He cooks chicken and makes the dogs food and my friendo hand feeds the fucking dog. Can you believe that? So here I am rationalizing with a dog that lives better than I do and it all comes rushing at me.

I’m 12 years old and just want to fit in. I just want to not be broke and unemployed, praying to get the writing fellowship in England, hoping to get some writing done between drinking wine and taking a sauna. I don't want my belly to hang over my jeans and I want to smell good. I don't want to be as hungry as I am or as lonely. Everyone else seems to be having a grand time. I just want to read. I’m not outdoorsy. Maybe that's why I’m fat. I don't want to engage these people I’m never going to see again. I have too many people in my life I want to engage but can't because of various social anxiety disorders. This dog can't get hit by a car or freeze to death on my watch. I’m not socially or emotionally equipped to deal with that. So after I’d decided to throw my hat over the dog’s head and Drop Squad him back into the house, I just started laughing. Fuck this shit.

Later when I was recounting the story and telling the group how I’d gotten the fucking dog (mindful to be respectful of this bratty pooch) into the house by crouching down and admitting defeat, I realized I didn't give a fuck about these people or what they thought of me. Sure they have not only jobs, but careers. And I’m a writer. What have you written? Nothing you would have seen. Really? Yeah, it's about blacks. That shuts them up. And I was free.

We went watch the Superbowl at a bar/ restaurant and I ordered the steak and had several cocktails. The one girl I didn't care for was freaking out about eating veggies and hubby snapped at her and then she got all solemn and weird. Another couple's car kept breaking down and that was the most henpecked husband I’d ever seen in my life. He looked miserable all the time. I had no money. I didn't care. They were all rich. I paid what I could and fuck it. I felt great. I talked to everyone I met outside while I was having cigs and between being drunk was also high as a kite in a town where I was the only black I’d seen. By the time we left, the snow was already black with grime, everything was melting because it was like 50 degrees that day and on the way out... everything was beautiful.

Money can suck it

Okay, I know I’m supposed to bless money or whatever but right now, I honestly believe that money is something assholes created to piss people off. Okay, maybe not honestly. And when I have money I look down my snobbish nose at poor people. I’m an ass. That’s clear. But this week money made me cry. To be more precise, lack of money made me cry. And my pop once again offered me a chance to come live with him, help him with his business and money up so I can go live in Paris. But the idea of being a 34-year-old woman with an advanced degree leaving my apt of 12 years to have to move in with my dad sent me bawling. It didn't help that I was cutting up my cucumber dinner. And I’m still fat. At least let me be thinner lord. But I don't really want that either. I just want something different. I want a change and me sitting up here playing poker on Facebook isn't going to get me anywhere. So I guess money isn't the one who can suck it. It appears to be me.

So I’ve not left the house since Tuesday. I went to have a drink at my local watering hole, had a seltzer and cran with some homies and had to leave because I was about to burst into tears. I was so hungry. And the place smelled like meat and cheese and deliciousness and my mouth actively began watering. And it was someone's anniversary and I thought about how I’m not just temporarily low on cash, but alone. Then that made me think about my choices. Left turns, right turns, returning phone calls, not blowing someone off, seizing an opportunity here or there. All these things got me here. Fear got me here. But that's not true either. (Oh and I’ve begun lying a bit too.)

After I cried it out and my aunt (who's also manic) talked me down, I drank the wine I had in the house and it came to me. I don't regret a single choice I’ve made. Could I have done things differently? You betcha. But who couldn't have? Really? I should ask John McCain. He really knows what it feels like to be a loser. I just feel like a loser, he really is one.

So in the Zen way, I know money's coming to me and I’m open and willing to all the money I desire, but it can still suck it right now.