2005-06-13

Transfer

If Man's Best Friend is a dog, and Dog's Best Friend is Rawhide, simple logic dictates that Man loves Rawhide just as much as Dog loves Rawhide.
Why?
Because Dog will chew on Rawhide instead on Man. I love my dog but for the love of humanity, pleeeeeeease stop chewing on my softly feminine fingers.
The lock-down went well. They got time off for good behavior and Maggie is coming and going freely, sleeping in her spot inside at night. Grace spent a good 48 hours in my closet, yelling at me from the top shelf and then grinning ominiously from the second-to-the-top shelf.
Honestly? She started to freak me out a little. She's so long and so white and she has a big head and tall ears and umm... I'm not fool enough to cross her. She could fuck me up. Actually, she did. While I was trying to point her toward her freedom - a wide-open window, she clawed and I bled. Out of my neck.
Classy.
But not quite as classy as coming to work after having zero sleep because you were otherwise occupied with a man whom you can't keep your hands off of; seriously, I've had no sleep and I'm not telling you why in any sort of porny pants way. Let's just say that my reasons for being up all night have nothing to do with insomnia and although I am shaking, tunnel vision, not-hungry exhausted, I feel great.
There's something undeniably visceral about midnight meetings. Even more so when one party calls late at night and then gets in the car and drives very much out of town to get to you. That's the stuff.
Arizona is of course famous for its beautiful highways - scenes that put you, the driver, in a movie regardless of whether or not you want to be in one or not. A perfect Southern Arizona night is cool and calm and the sky is clear. You can see forever out you car window, in any direction, and only the occasional car catches up and then passes you.
It's a surreal quiet at night here. The stars at everywhere, blocked only by the dark masses of mountain. If you don't know that mountains surround you, you might think that clouds are moving across your stars but when you are just the littlest bit familiar with the mountans, you know that around the next corner, the stars will be back and you turn up the stereo and roll down all of the windows and breath in the stillness of that desert night.
You really feel like you might be the only person in the world. When that midnight drive is a trip to see a lover, you might feel like your lover is the only other person who is still alive in this almost post-apocolypsal setting.

Then you get to your Sugar's ghetto-ass neighborhood and you might be afraid to leave your car in the driveway because there are Sketchballs grilling out at 2 am next to the primer-colored Buick boat that is blocking the sidewalk to your Lovah's door.
I have this neighbor who is lovely by herself but she allows people who look like they just busted out of prison (shut-up) to do things like haul a junker into the drive and work on it.
Not for one day.
Not for two days.
This shit has been at it for four days.
SHOO!
I have no idea who this person is but I can tell you he creeps me out. He never sleeps. (Tweaker. Shut-up. I would never touch that stuff. When I can't sleep it's for reals, over-riding the drugs that have been prescribed to calm the ever-running brain.) He doesn't wear a shirt most of the time, and not in a good way. He looks away when you walk by.
Ummmm... hello?
I live here.
You don't.
I'm just so sick of wondering who the hell is over there and how it's possible for so many people to fit into one very small apartment. I have sympathy for a bunch of my friends but you bet your sweet ass that not one of those fuckers is going to use my driveway for more than one day or when I'm not home. There's not a snowball's chance that I'd let someone crash in my apartment for more than 3 hours.
I suck at sharing. Get over it. Sarah Wides don't play that.
Maybe I like that I come home and there are just pets. There's nobody watching TV beside a neatly folded pile of bedding that was used last night on the couch. There's no trash that I didn't leave when I went to work in the morning. There are no shades open that I like to have closed, no plaintive eyes looking up at me when I walk in the door, looking to me to be the Entertainment or the ride to Circle K.
Maybe I'm projecting.

It's not like I own the place and can dictate what my neighbors will do when I have something super romantic going down, totally spontaneously and totally without my usual reservations and condescensions. But seriously. This whole "You can crash at my place" thing that's going on next door is under my skin.

I was going to do this whole "99 problems and a bitch ain't one" post today but I realized I only could come up with, like, 8 problems and that's not going to cut the comedic mustard. So far, my boss being located DIRECTLY across from me is not a registering as a problem the way, say, roachy white people creeping around next door does. Strangely, the Relocation Situation may be one enormous positive.
I realized that she would now be able to hear every phone call that I make. The downside to that is of course, I will no longer be able to wile away an hour talking openly about sex with my best friend, "And then he what??????"
"Oh yeah."
"Well, I don't think that's weird."
"Ohhhhhhh. Huh. No, I've never done that but I'll ask."
"Did it hurt?"
Since I'm not in the habit of posting an hour of lascivious exchange with The Chippers during working hours, there is a bigger upside.
She can hear all my calls and people, I am a MASTER of the telephone. If it was 1938, I would be the Number One Operator at Ma Bell. I have always loved the phone, specifically, talking on it. Ever since Andrea Snowman and I had the chicken pox in first grade and were home from school the same week and she called me to to see how I was feeling, Telephonic Cupid has had an arrow full of love lodged firmly in my heart.
Like my grandmother, Mimi, I set up on the couch with my snacks and a variety of beverages and I talk for hours. These days, I set up with both my cell and my land lines but frankly, I probably talked more when I was in the Dark Ages of No Cell Phone.
Talking on the phone reminds me of being a pre-teen and thinking that I was cool in front of the family because I could talk on the phone alternately with Emily Arthur and Vicky Selkowe for the better part of the two, non-consecutive hours between ballet, dinner, and homework.
It reminds me of being at college and hearing the phone in the middle of the night, falling out of bed to answer it, and being near tears when the voice at the other end was Jason Gleason, who back then was a best friend at a college closer to home. He later shunned me in an attempt to erase from his mind his indiscretion with work, pot, and my sister.
It reminds me of all the times I have called my best friend, quivering with anger or bereft in sadness and listening to her say, "SarahStar, you'll feel better. Get some sleep, I'll call you in the morning."
She was a nanny for a billion years and rather than feel all talked down to when she pulls out the Kid Voice, I will totally cop to understanding that I need to hear that soothing tone.
After all of this idol worship at the alter of Alexander Grahm Bell, I am un-fucking-believable on the phone.
What do you need?
I'll get it for you.
What's the problem?
I can fix it.
The tone of my voice and my carefully chosen words, even in a high-tide of frustration with a beligerent carrier who won't pay a claim or who is telling me something different from what was said yesterday, I have a plan for the phone call and I execute it.
Sometimes I plan to play the Heavy.
Sometimes I'm all movie-cool, "Well now you've upset me and neither of us wants that, no do we? Do WE?."
After some thinking, it's probably great that she can hear my calls because now, she will be able to hear that I am a kick-ass asset to this party in the corporate jungle.

Oh!
I just heard my name!
Call's coming through!
It just got transferred to me!
Sweet!

arizonasarah at 12:21 p.m.

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