Way better than a Benetton ad, but with that same multi-culti, feel good vibe, if Benetton were less pretentious and encouraged bad dancing and unselfconscious glee.

Where the Hell Is Matt

Sometimes I’m not very rational. Ok, often. Maybe even always. I tend to obsess. My imagination runs away with me, locks me up in a magical tree in the forest from which there is no escape because it’s guarded by flesh eating trolls and gigantic crocodiles. See what I mean about imagination? I start thinking, and then I think some more, and then I wind up paranoid and I’ve thought myself into a corner where everyone hates me, I’m a miserable person, and Lancelot is dead in a ditch. Because when my imagination runs away with me, Lancelot is always dead in a ditch. Or fucking someone else. Which amounts to the same thing because if he’s fucking someone else he’s going to wake up dead in a ditch.

Since Saturday, Lancelot has been fairly uncommunicative. Typically when he’s gone, I get a “hello sweetheart” text message in the morning, a call in the afternoon, a smattering of random text messages, and then a call before bed. But this weekend up through Tuesday? Not so much. We were at a phone call a day and maybe a text message. He was distracted, worn out, monosyllabic. I felt like I was pestering him, and when I feel like that I just pester more. And then some more. And then a little bit more for good measure. Because I’m irrational and like to sabotage things.

So, yesterday the trend of nonresponsiveness continued. I waited, not at all patiently, until 5. When he hadn’t called by then, I sent a discreet text message. No reply. No biggie, right? Maybe he’s in a meeting. Maybe he’s napping. He’s probably still taking his test. I waited another couple of hours, then called. No answer. I thought, well, maybe he went out with some coworkers since it’s his last night in Atlanta and he’ll be coming home tomorrow.

And then I stewed, because dammit I want to talk to him and I need to talk to him (about nothing at all), and he should be fucking calling me and this not calling me shit has gone on long enough. I made dinner and thought of all the reasons why he couldn’t answer his phone. It’s not charged. He left it in the hotel room. He doesn’t want to talk to me. He’s been abducted by aliens. He’s dead in a ditch. He’s fucking someone else.

When I was just at the peak of my huffing and eye rolling and “I’m just going to ignore him, then, the bastard, when he calls, IF he calls,” (which I never, ever do because it’s physically impossible for me to ignore him) when I saw lights in the driveway. Lancelot had driven home a day early, because he missed me and wanted to be home with me, and he wanted to surprise me.

And I am an asshole of monumental proportions. As usual.

Lancelot comes home tomorrow. For good. No more weeks in Atlanta, no more driving back and forth, no more training.

I’m ecstatic. I can’t wait to see him, I want to maul him as soon as he walks in the door, I’ve missed  him so much, especially this last week and a half since he wasn’t able to come home on the weekend. And even though he’s been distant this week and I’ve felt like I’ve had to track him down and force him to communicate with me and I’d like to slap him for that, I feel all eager and anxious and hyper, waiting to see him, wanting to see him.

But.

Just like having him away for two months of weekdays was an adjustment, having him back will be one, too. I have my routine down. I do things when I want to do them. I watch what I want to watch, eat what I want to eat, go where I want to go, do things in my own time, and haven’t had to consider meshing my life with someone else’s for a while. I’m prepared for the struggle of knitting our lives back together again, so it’s even and comfortable and seamless.

I anticipate mixed messages, crossed purposes, missed connections. I’m fairly sure I won’t say what I mean and he’ll fly off the handle. I know we’ll have problems balancing alone time and together time, and he’ll want to pull away just as I’m wanting to hold him close.

I want so badly for him to be home with me, to have our routine back, to have our lives on play again instead of pause. But it’s also been really good to have this time to remember who I am, what I like, what’s important to me outside of what’s important to him, to us. I want him back, but I’m glad to have a little more of me back, too.

Cockaigne \kah-KAYN\, noun:
An imaginary land of ease and luxury.

A wonderful word, no? Look at it. It even has “cock” in it (which, speaking of, I wish I did, but whatever). And it kind of sounds like cocaine, which is all kinds of luxurious and easy. Ok, not so much, but still. Cockaigne. Look how it just rolls off the tongue, all Frenchified and wonderful.

In the spirit of word-of-the-day-ness, what would my imaginary land of ease and luxury include? Well, for starters, it would include me, minus about 60 lbs. And Lancelot would be there, of course, and he’d be stricken with some strange and beneficent malady that meant he had no desire whatsoever to hog the remote. He would defer to me in all tv watching matters.

My Cockaigne would be an island surrounded by gorgeous blue water with great fishing and incredible, record-setting weather. And on that island would be a fully staffed spa, including a makeup artist to do me up every morning. Preferably she’d be skilled in airbrush makeup because I hear that shit rocks.

Every day at 5 in my Cockaigne would be Daiquiri Time  (chips and salsa included).

We would have an outstanding kitchen with magically stocked pantries that included whatever Lancelot wanted to cook at any given time.

And of course we’d have a housekeeping staff. Of course. Because luxury does not include scrubbing toilets, I assure you.

There would be cake in my Cockaigne, with buttercream frosting. And there would be an endless supply of Lays Kettle Cooked Salt & Vinegar potato chips. And every week we’d get pastries from Ladurrée.

In my land of ease and luxury, I want a fully stocked library and a full stocked porn room, and I want a Coke Zero dispenser and a game room and a boat.

But most of all I want a huge, comfy bed and soft sheets and black out blinds and the susurrus of fans and Lancelot to tangle around and a full eight hours of sleep every single night.

Word.

What’s in your Cockaigne?

So, who wants to hear me bitch and moan and whine and sob some more? No one? I didn’t think so.

Instead of worrying about my fuzzy babies and missing Lancelot and bemoaning my utter lack of funds and the fact that it feels like we’ve been spinning our wheels for three years, I’m going to put on a happy face, suck it up, and tell y’all something funny.

Just as soon as I think of it.

Oh! I know. I will mortify myself with the tale of Helmet Head. This all happened back when I had very few sexual scruples and would pretty much sleep with you if I was in the mood, which meant I would pretty much sleep with you full stop. What can I say? I was horny and not terribly picky when the mood struck me.

So, enter Helmet Head. I don’t remember where we met him. Out. Somewhere. Drinking. That’s about all I know. Anyway, he was cute enough, but he had the world’s worst addiction to hair gel. It was lacquered so stiffly that I’m pretty sure he just took the whole thing off at night and put it on a bedside table under glass and highly sensitive alarms.

The hair didn’t bother me so much because he did whatever I told him to and was pretty well enthralled with me for whatever reason. I remember, though, that my friends and I talked about his hair right in front of him, in Italian, “Ha capelli realmente brutti” or some such. We did this rather a lot in those days, pretentious little twits that we were. But he caught on to us. Didn’t seem to bother him, though, so apparently he knew he had this problem. Maybe he was in a twelve step program for Dippity-Do, I don’t know.

We made out a couple of times, with me avoiding that whole running my fingers through his hair thing for fear of pulling back a nub, and one day he invited me over to his house to “watch a movie.” Clever, wasn’t he? Yeah. So we’re watching the movie, which of course means making out on the couch with background entertainment, and he manages to make it to the boobies and whoops! He came. In his pants. From boobs. I was at once incensed and flattered, in equal measure.

He assured me that, never fear, he’d be ready to go again in no time. So we retired to his bedroom, where we discovered that, no, he really can’t be ready again in no time. I’m pretty sure I assured him that it was no problem, that these things happen, while I internally fumed that I’d put up with his Helmet Head and was getting a whole lot of nothing in return and the least he could have done was get his little helmet head to salute again. Or go down on me. Alas.

I never saw the guy again. I bet he’s bald by now.

This is an entirely different Helmet from Helmut, of “He is Helmut” fame, which story I might tell later in the week, only it’s not so much a story as an inside joke, so maybe I won’t tell it after all. Although it does include Austria and mammoth beer steins, so maybe.

I haven’t drowned under the waves of anxiety that have been rolling over me for the past week and a half. Not yet anyway.

George seems much improved. We hope the meds are doing their job and that he’ll stick around for a bit longer. He wants to play and run around, but we’re trying to keep him subdued while he heals. He doesn’t seem to know anything is wrong, which I’m terribly grateful for.

Having Lancelot home this weekend helped so much. This separation just drags on and on and it’s bringing us both down. If all goes well, this will be his last week of training, and he’ll be back home for good next week. Halleluiah. I need him home with me. For the past almost two months it’s felt like everything has been put on hold, and I’m ready to start having a life together again.

The first several weeks were kind of fun, really. A little holiday where I got to have control of the remote and reconnect with him on the weekends and have dirty “lord how I missed you” sex. But by about the half-way mark our nerves started to fray and tempers flared and things kept having to wait until next weekend and then next weekend and now it’s just getting old. Real life is settling in again and the yard needs mowing and I want a little help feeding the dogs and taking out the trash and I miss so much having him to roll over to.

So I’m going to be here, treading water for another week until Lancelot comes home for good and we can start paddling together again.

George was my mother’s dog, but when she moved away to go to seminary school, she couldn’t take him to live with her in student housing. So, Lancelot and I took him in. He’s a dapper little apricot poodle, with sweet eyes and a nervous disposition. He’s 12 now, and we’ve had him for 11 years. He’s been our little sweetheart, our love bug, our snuggler extraordinaire.

This past weekend, George started passing out. We took him to the vet, and he was diagnosed with a bacterial heart condition. He’s been put on antibiotics and diuretics and a low salt diet. Although he seems to be improving, it’s hard not to expect the worst.

And I have been a mess. I stayed home with him yesterday because I couldn’t bear not being able to look at him at any time, to check his breathing, to gently pet him, to tell him I love him. With Lancelot in Atlanta, it’s even harder.

But George is ok. He’s not in any pain, we’re doing all we can, and he doesn’t seem to know anything is wrong. It may be that he’ll live a while longer. It may be that he won’t. Either way, I don’t want our days with him to be filled with tears and sorrow. There will be plenty of time for that when he’s gone. But it’s hard not to despair when my little fluffball is fading, when my faithful friend for the past 11 years may have to go.

Yesterday I took a picture of the parking lot where I first gave head to Lancelot, lo these many years ago. I then sent it to Lancelot.

Classy, aren’t I?

I was out running errands on that side of town at lunch and decided to pull into Wendy’s for some french fries, and there it was: that fateful parking lot.

Mem’ries! Like the corners of my miiiiiind. Dirty, naughty, trashy mem’ries! Of the slut I was! Scattered beer bottles, strewn across the parking lot, on my knees while I blew you, behind the speaker box. Can it be that I was so easy then, or was it all the wine? If we had the chance to do it all again, tell me, would we? Could we? (Yes, yes we would.) Mem’ries may be embarrassing and yet what’s so shocking to remember we simply take pictures of for posterity. So it’s the asphalt I will remember, whenever I remember, kneeling in that parking lot.*

Ahhh, good times.

*H., I’m sorry I mangled Babs. Forgive me?

When I was little, I wanted to be Daisy Duke, Ming’s daughter, and Melina Havelock.

When I was little, I sprinkled baby powder on the hardwood floors of my bedroom and slid around in my socks, dancing to Madonna.

When I was little, I wanted to be a cowgirl ballerina.

When I was little, I stole my father’s Playboys.

When I was little, I ate carrots dipped in sugar.

When I was little, I made drip sand castles on the beach. For hours.

When I was little, I stripped my Barbies, cut their hair, and made them scissor their legs with Ken’s.

When I was little, I thought the sky was a bubble.

When I was little, I pretended to be asleep so my dad would have to carry me in from the car.

When I was little, I hid my mother’s keys in the kitty litter box.

When I was little, I swam for hours and hours, getting pruny and brown.

When I was little, I could do the best splits.

When I was little, I wanted to be in Cats.

When I was little, I thought Hee-Haw was hilarious.

When I was little, I wanted to marry Luke Duke or Magnum P.I.

When I was little, I thought Cabbage Patch kids were stupid.

When I was little, I humped my stuffed animals.

When I was little, I unraveled paper clips and put them on my teeth, pretending they were braces.

When I was little, I always bought candy cigarettes.

When I was little, I never fed my goldfish and they always died.

When I was little, I preferred dresses. I thought pants made me look like I had a penis.

When I was little, I broke my leg on a trampoline. When I got the cast off, I was sure the leg wouldn’t be there.

When I was little, I stuck peanuts down my ears and had to have them removed by the doctor.

When I was little, I stole an ET figurine.

When I was little, I thought if I dangled my foot off the bed, something would eat it.

When I was little, I wanted to learn how to skate backwards.

When I was little, I wanted to be a Solid Gold dancer.

• Since you asked, yesterday’s menu: stewed tomatoes, fried sweet potatoes, collard greens, chicken and rice, green beans, fruit salad, hoe cakes, Dove bars for dessert
• For a good portion of the day today, I had my underwear on inside out. Oops.
• I cannot wait to see this show (trailer here, although it doesn’t seem to be working presently). Joss Whedon is my Flying Spaghetti Monster.
• Yesterday I bought a box of wine. Judge me.
• I haven’t watched TV — actual TV — since Sunday. Why? Because I’ve been overdosing on British costume dramas. Hard core. You don’t even want to know how many others I’ve got in line at the library. Also? Thank god for libraries.
• I’m a plurker and I’m not afraid to admit it. You should be, too.
• This looks interesting: Religulous. “Do you smell something burning?”