February 2015

 “You like dags?” (Snatch)

Something happened.

Ya, just the one thing. It was weird, but not a harbinger.

I let the dogs out the front to door and went to grab firewood.
My little ‘un bolted for the road.
Car comin’.
Fuck.

Normally I would freak the actual fuck out.

Not today.

That was my only thought, ‘not today’. She stopped just short of the road, suddenly having to pee.
Car went by. We came inside.

Got me thinking, ‘how is a raven like a writing desk?’

Kidding.

How is a having a relationship like having a dog?

No, not how are men like dogs. That’s been done.

Once upon a time I worked at a Lodge in the Muskokas. Beautiful place. I only had tiny dog then. One night, there was a bear in the woods. Of course I posted about it on Facebook. A woman I know practically ordered me to keep Alice (tiny dog) INSIDE, locked down, forever.

Um, no.

Where is the quality of life there? Keep her in a cage, only taking her out when it’s safe or convenient. Alice came to every cabin I cleaned, slept on the porches. Her saddest times were alone in our cabin when I worked dinner service. She didn’t know she couldn’t go hang out in the dining room, learned that the hard way. She has some boundary issues, all laps are hers. All day every day she was free to roam. She disappeared a few times, but she always came back.

On average, relationships last the same amount of time as a dog, either in actual linear time, or you can whip out the age calculator. Same same.

The more fancy/popular/high maintenance the dog, the shorter the lifespan. The yappier, snappier ones? They don’t last long.

I have 2 dogs. Alice I have had since she was wee. I did everything right with her, she went with me everywhere. I left her behind for a few months when I got divorced. She picked up some bad habits in my absence. I refuse to give up on her as I am the one to blame here.

I have a rescue. We call her ‘Black Dog’. Not like Winston Churchill’s black dog, this one brings joy.

Black Dog is hand shy, broom shy, stick shy, vacuum shy, or she was. She had the tiniest accident one day and started screaming like she was on fire. I have never heard a dog scream before. She thought I was going to beat her. As soon as I realized what was happening, I dropped to my knees and cried with her until she stopped, I cried longer.

It’s been a long road. She is alright now.

My job is to love, feed, play, keep them healthy and safe. 

I am their caregiver, I don’t own them, I will not keep them on lockdown.

They do as they please and this pleases me.

I don’t dress them up either, Alice has a ‘Thundershirt’, but that is different.

(My KINGDOM for a Thundershirt for the Man.)

How are men like dogs?

They forgive and forget at lightning speed, unless it’s a grievous wrong, then you just cry with them until they trust you.
They are always happy when you get home.
They hump your leg.
They know when they are safe and loved.
They keep you safe and love you back.

They do not want to be jammed in your purse while you have wine with the girls or go shopping.

Just give them a bone and leave them home to nap in the sun.

Picture if you will (the narrator from The Twilight Zone saying that)

A crowded Chinese restaurant. There is a couple at a table. 

Over the din of clanking plates and drunken rhetoric you hear this, spoken in that angry clipped tone reserved for sullen children.

“I cannot believe you wore that out, you look cheap”

“Why did you order that? Aren’t you fat enough?”

“Why are you looking at the server like that? Are you flirting? You are an embarrassment. What is wrong with you? Oh sit down, you aren’t going anywhere.”

What do you do?

If it’s a woman talking to a man like that, statistically, you do nothing.

It happened to me, I was on the receiving end of said barrage. I got rescued by a rugby team, took me over to their table until he left and made sure I got in a cab safely. I was lucky. Sorta, that was one of the culminating incidents that led me to leave the soon-to-be rapist. I still went back after, but for one night I was safe. Thanks rugby guys.

That is not what this is about.

Once upon I time I answered the phone.

‘Help me, I need help’ smash bang boom.

Dead air…dial tone.

What the actual fuck?

Check the call display, it’s a friend.

“Get your coat honey, we gotta go”.

Jump in a cab, arrive at friend’s house. Door is busted.

Call out hello, walk in. My first thought is burglary. The house is trashed. Get a little further into the apartment, my friend is crouched in between the kitchen table and the wall, bleeding.

All of a sudden I get shoved hard into the table. Turn around and it’s his girlfriend, holding the house phone like a weapon.

All of a sudden his bloody nose and the phone call make sense. So did his insistence on wearing long pants and long sleeved shirts in August.

She beat the shit out of him, for a year. And when he couldn’t take it anymore, he called me and boyfriend. Not the cops, the shame was so immense.

I know exactly how he felt, a few years later, the morning I escaped the rapist, I called his best friend to come get him out of my house.

I watched a video on Facebook the other day. It was a montage of women hitting men. How is this thing circulating without these women being found and charged?

There is a Battle of the Sexes and fuck me, we are all doing it wrong.

I have borne witness way too many times to my friends, male and female being financially, emotionally and physically abused by the partners they are with.

When did we replace the word love with ownership?

No one has the right to terrorize another person or control their actions.

You don’t like what your partner is doing? Fucking leave.

Didn’t we learn in kindergarten to keep our hands to ourselves and use our words?

2 things happened.

I should probably just assume all y’all know it’s always two things.

I rarely have a singular revelation. Ima Gemini.

If I ever do, you might want to duck and cover for it is the coming of the lesser known horseman of the apocalypse, the Lone Epiphany.

Everybody knows good cop bad cop, yes?

Let’s extrapolate. Good wife bad wife.

Now make those into one woman, yes me. (It’s always about me).

Walking around in the same body, daily playing that dynamic.

It was ugly, told you Anthony earned his sainthood.

I read an article http://www.sunnyskyz.com/blog.php?blogid=610%2FI-Wasn-t-Treating-My-Husband-Fairly-And-It-Wasn-t-Fair#T4zo3tOvJZXJc5ry.01

I saw myself in it. I didn’t like looking in that mirror at all, it reflected the screaming nagging harpy I was.

Now on what planet is it more important to be right than to love the one you are with?

Apparently I visited said planet and brought back a parasite, I never want to go back.

My nagging had purpose though god dammit. I had to be as unlikeable as possible so he had to prove over and over that he liked me because I had a GIANT hole in my ego that needed filling.

I grew up in a house where the squeaky wheel got the grease. I fell back on what I knew.

Ya, that makes all the sense.

I have the ability to look back at everything I ever did, objectively, and see where I went wrong.
I also have the ability to apologize and adapt.

I read another article.

It’s a thing I do.

2-1+1=2 but not the same 2 as you started with.

Follow my logic.

First article ‘I found myself berating and attempting to change my husband until he looked like a little boy being punished’.

Second article ‘sorry I keep sleeping with your boyfriends but um, I just act like myself and take an active interest in the things they do and shazzam, we fuck. Sorry about that, so sorry’.

It’s easy Not to nag when you are the mistress, too busy fucking. You don’t really have time for that.

If one of these dudes would just see what a diamond she is and put a ring on it, I think she would make a fabulous wife. She gets it. She just doesn’t know she gets it. Because other women say things like “she needs help”, or worse, “she needs a slap”. Go team (sarcasm)

So…Can anyone really and rationally tell me you know exactly how much time you have on this planet? And that (if for some reason you can) that you have definitely been granted some good quality ‘spare’ time to nag and control your husband. The man you chose to marry and share a life with. 

Life, as I know it, is too short to freak out over muddy boots or beers with the boys.

You want more time with your man? Buy a case of beer, make a pot of chili and have everybody over on game night. Wives included. Be the damn change you want to see. Practice kindness at every opportunity. Please believe me when I say, being kind feels so much better than being right. Besides, he doesn’t really think you are right, he just wants some peace. No one is winning here.

I think margarine and diet coke are the fruits of the devil. I won’t buy them, but past a quick explanation as to why they are really bad for you, I don’t have a hissy fit if the man I care about choses to imbibe. His body is not my body. It’s not mine to control.

We had a pretty big war over the owning of slaves, we all collectively decided it was a bad idea. So why treat your marriage like that?

That being said the words ‘I love you’ can take many forms. “Fasten your seatbelt”, “grab a hat its cold out”, “here is some butter”.

To me that is what marriage and relationships are about. Contributing to the well-being of another being of your choice, and the sex, and the snuggles.

Hold each other up, don’t tear each other down.

Happy wife happy life? Whoever thought that up should be slapped.

How about HAPPY SPOUSE HAPPY HOUSE.

This rant is far from over, but I am over my word count…to be continued

I have been pondering a blog post about the vilification and disappearance of the Warrior Class for ages now.

This isn’t it.

2 things happened simultaneously, as they often do.

I wrote half a piece about ‘waiting’. It was the wee hours of the night and sometimes I forget what I have written, that is when my muse takes over, she is always welcome.

The next afternoon my psychic friend wakes up from a nap and messages me out of the blue.

“Who is the soldier?” he says.

“What?”

I’ll spare you the hour of back and forth before I opened my documents and saw what I had written.
There was a grand and glorious joyous noise unto the Lord. Sounded a lot like me laughing.

Instead, here is what I wrote.

There is a thing I believe in, and it happens because I believe it, not the other way around.

They say lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice. Ask the Eiffel tower, she’ll tell you that is a lie.

If you live a monumental life the strikes of light and electricity are bound to be frequent and spectacular. Especially if you are always reaching up into the heavens, emulating and taunting the gods. The hits just keep coming. Sometimes all you have to do is be walking through the storm. I love to dance in the rain.

My matriarchal legacy dictates the following is absolute truth.

The women in my family, for generations, have seen “him”, and that was it. He was the one, they were just done.

I believe it (as undeniable fact) that this was my destiny, I had concrete proof that, ‘yes, this happens’. It’s not a concept I adopted, it is an integral part of how I was raised. Some day I will meet the one and I will just know it.

Amazing right? They write books, movies and music about this shit. 

This is poetry and art.

Most people go their whole lives and don’t get anywhere close to this.

Wait for it…

This legacy I was conceived from has a disclaimer, not a price, but a disclaimer.
“You can have this, but you gotta wait for it”.

Cue 2 wars, my dad and grandfather were soldiers, met my Mom and Nana before they went overseas. These women waited.
It is why I am here.

I met a lovely girl online, her love is a soldier.
He has “war is the answer” tattooed across his back. She has ‘love is the answer’ across her chest.

I think they are gonna make it.
I want them to make it.

I feel strange using the war analogy now, this woman Jena and her story have altered me.

I think I glorified the idea of being an army wife. 

Yes, I am loyal and yes I love my free time, I hate goodbyes but I love hellos.
Patience does not come easily to me.

I am not that brave nor do I stand idly by very well. It is much more like me to take up a sword and fight beside him than to keep the home fires burning.

 “What is he whose grief bears such an emphasis, whose phrase of sorrow conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand like wonder-wounded hearers? “

(Hamlet, the answer is Hamlet)

I always remembered the last line as “wander wounded heroes”.

My wander wounded hero. My wanderings have wounded me too.

Sometimes lightning just strikes.

Luck isn’t a thing to be earned, it just happens.
Just exist, that is enough.
Conquer what you need to conquer, I’ll wait.