I hate everyone and everything

Apparently my car is invisible, because not once, not twice, but no less than SIX FUCKING TIMES did someone nearly make a right turn off of a side street into my car. Now, maybe I'm biased, but I do not have a small car. It is a big fat Ford ('cause I love me some big fat Fords). It has a big engine. Its engine likes to purr and be very responsive to the gas pedal. What is most fun is the hill by my house with the stoplight. It is the perfect hill, because while I am waiting for the light, I don't have to press the brakes. I am digressing.

People are fucking stupid. And they do not like to look when they are turning. And then they like to give me a dirty look, as if to say "HOW DARE YOU BE DRIVING ON THIS STREET AND GETTING IN MY WAY" so I yell "FUCK YOU RIGHT-OF-WAY DICKWEED DO YOU SPEAK IT" and this helps me a lot.

I hate other drivers. They suck.

So after posting that long entry last night, I wake up to this in my inbox.

Dear french,
Here is your horoscope
for Wednesday, June 28:

It's time to make sense of those recurring fantasies. No matter what your loved ones say, you're the only person who has the final say about your true desires. Listen to that inner voice. It's telling you the truth.

Fuck.

Emotional echo

I'm one of those people that has at least a half-a-dozen projects in the works at any given time. I've always got these great ideas, and I'll enthusiastically start them - which means I give up on the last great idea or three, putting it aside.

But today, I am going back and tying up a few of those loose ends, blog-wise.

About three months ago, I had a draft of an entry, filled with big huge things that had happened that day. There were too many, so instead I just focused on one of them. But anyway, going back to that, the first three "big things" had to do with my relationship with Jay, such as it is.

Wait, no, she's blogging about that? Quelle surprise. Maybe we should call someone.

I'd decided that I wasn't ready to be in a relationship with Jay again. That verdict still stands, as does the qualifier - "I get the feeling that at some point I will be, but this is definitely not that point."

The reasons are varied and myriad. Yes, he's become more mature in his personal life, but I don't think he's quite caught up yet. It's still too easy to fall back into old patterns, positive and negative. My parents do not approve.

That last may seem strange - after all, I'm an adult, living on my own, financially independent, etc. and so on. Why the hell should I care about my parents? Well, because they're smart people, and they love me, dammit. I got reminded of that today - I did a portion of a research study about childhood memories, and I got to talk about how wonderful my childhood was. It was far from perfect, but it was wonderful. And especially in my field, I've really gotten a chance to see what passes for parenting on the average, and have grown a huge appreciation for my parents, and the childhood they provided me.

So when Mom and Dad say that something isn't a good idea, I don't take it lightly. On the flip side, when they approve of something, it certainly weights my decision in favor of it - see also my car. If I had told my father about it, and he had said that I should run in the opposite direction, I likely would have. Instead, he said that it would be a good bargain, so that tipped the scales so that I bought it.

Same goes with Jay. Ultimately, it's my decision, and my parents will respect that. And they like him as a person - he's visited them before, and in fact my extended family likes him as well - but not as a person dating or otherwise involved with me in a romantic fashion. Their concerns mirror mine, which just validates them more strongly in my head.

Too bad it's only my head that is saying "Stay the hell away! What the hell is wrong with you." My body and heart are going "Yay! We like this." It. Sucks. How the hell am I supposed to be intelligent about this when every time we have sex, it feels like coming home.

Is it any wonder

"I'm hungry," he whines at me.

"What do you want me to do about it?"

"Well it's your house."

In response I roll over and grab his cock to distract him. As always, this works magnificently. He closes his eyes, and on his face, that little satisfied smile I know so well appears. I snuggle up closer, wrapping my body around his like ivy. My hand strays a bit lower, caressing and tugging his balls. This elicits a moan. Distraction fully engaged.

I kiss him, once, twice, gently, quick little smacks. It becomes something deeper, more open, faster, harder. His hands are on me now, tugging my nipples, sliding between my legs. I'm wet, ready, like I have been all day. He has a raider's grin, now.

I break off and take his cock into my mouth. His eyes roll back into his head, as do mine. No matter how many times I do this, no matter how often I dream about it, it is always intensely satisfying. And arousing. I lick and suck and drool and make satisfied noises all over his cock and sack, while he relaxes back and enjoys my efforts.

Soon, I pop back up and kiss him again, with a calculating gleam in my eye. The gleam stays as I lean back to caress him.

"I know that look," he says. "You're thinking."

I nod in acknowledgement; I have indeed been thinking. Lasciviously, of course.

"I like when you think."

"Oh?"

"You always think up such wonderful things."

My turn to grin now. I ask him to sit on the edge of the bed, so that I can kneel in front of him. He happily obliges, and I settle myself in between his legs. One hand cupping his balls, my mouth taking him deep. There is wetness everywhere - saliva and precum between his legs, and on my face. Cunt juices dripping from me and on his fingers. A cock in my mouth never fails to elicit this response, and he knows it. Kneeling, presenting myself to him, only heightens the sensations.

The further along he gets, the farther and farther he leans back, until I am on my knees on the floor and he is laying back on the bed again. I reach up and tweak his nipples while I suck, pinching and rolling them. He shoves his cock deeper into my mouth, groaning. He's getting close, now. I knead his thighs, taking his balls into my mouth, gently pulling. He fists his hands in my hair, pulling me back to his cock. I greedily take it in, determined to finish him. As I work my head back and forth, he bucks his hips, thrusting, panting, until finally I hear his shout and feel his cock twitch, spilling out his delicious cum, flooding my mouth.

I lick him clean, and with a satisfied smile on my face, crawl back up on to the bed to kiss him again. We curl up together, his hand on my cunt, and half-doze for a short while, sated, satisfied.

He turns to me and says "I'm still hungry though." I can do nothing but laugh.

Brought to you by the letter "D" and the number "250"

I found a potential airfare for Joseph much, much cheaper than anywhere else we've seen. I would email it to him, except I'm still not entirely sure I really want him coming out here. Then again, I may just be delaying the inevitable - I've had dreams where he shows up at my door, so I've known that he'll come visit me out here for years. Perhaps I should just get it over with. I would probably not be wrong in saying that my life would be much, much easier and less stressful if I could make a damn decision once in a while. And stick to it. Oh yes, and stick to it.

I can't help but look at other vacation options though. Skiing is far too expensive; with airfares to any country with snow well over $800 to start with, never mind accomodations and other travel, it's just not practical. Instead, I'll save up to go skiing in Canada this winter. It was the original plan, and besides, I love Quebec. I'm always looking for an excuse to go back there, and skiing is naturellement a perfect one.

Put on some make-up

Joseph emailed me this morning. I'd emailed him a link to a site where there was apparently a ticket to my place $50 than we'd found it anywhere else. However, it required an overnight flight. I emailed it to him anyway.

He's not thrilled about the overnight flight, and he's even less thrilled about the fact that he was out sick from work a few days the past week or two, and so does not have the extra cash he was banking on to buy the tickets. At this point, it's looking less and less likely that he'll actually make it out here - which is no surprise, really. Maybe I just have low expectations; maybe I just attract loser guys, but I would be much more surprised if he actually did make it out here.

It's hard to wish him luck as well, especially when I'm still so soured on the idea. There is only one man out there that gets to use the possessive on me (so far, I think I hope) and Joseph ain't him.

So instead I will make a contingency plan. If I don't roadtrip for a week this summer, I do not have plans to cry my eyes out. Instead, I will look into summer skiing options. Because dear god, I love skiing. And besides, Switzerland has always sounded nice to me.

Don't know when

I'm taking a train back to my house some time this afternoon, having spent the weekend out here with Vinnie and Mike. I've known Vinnie long enough that when he is over at my house, or I am over at his, we literally make ourselves at home. I know where things are, I help myself to what I need, I take what space I need, etc. and so on. It makes for a comfortable weekend - no worrying about being "on" in front of your hosts - being socially acceptable and whatnot.

Well, I wouldn't worry about being socially acceptable with Vinnie and Mike anyway. We're usually not. Vinnie and I are bad enough, with our snarky comments and horrible, horribly funny jokes. But Mike can really come up with some fucked-up shit. Usually in public. I feel that one day, the three of us are going to come up with something particularly fucked-up, and the wrong person will hear it. Hasn't happened yet, though, and it's not like we didn't try. So instead I'll just be happy with the being doubled-up with laughter that usually happens when I'm around them.

I also got to see Vinnie's parents, which is always a pleasure. Scattered around the country are the parents of my friends, most of whom I view as a sort of adopted parents. Luckily, they view me in a reciprocal fashion. We had a barbecue out at their house for Father's Day. In typical fashion, I forgot my swimsuit, so Vinnie's mom lent me one (hey, it was family, no need for high fashion here). His seven-year-old cousin was there as well. I remember when she was born, which is just a little bit scary for me. She's a cutie though. Thought that Mike and I were dating, which is just hilarious.

I was also the only woman around the entire weekend, including for the soiree on Saturday night. There were eight guys, and then me. I also loved that, because I wasn't there as a woman, I was there as one of the guys. We drank and played games and made stupid comments and witticisms and had a grand old time.

All in all, I needed this weekend desperately. Sure, I got to sleep in Vinnie's un-air-conditioned living room on a couch, but I got to sleep. And not use an alarm in the morning. And just relax and be me.

I'm a...

I keep mentioning my "class" that I have to take, but I haven't gone into any detail, so it's time to get that off my chest. Sure I'm on "vacation" down here with Vinnie and Mike, but they're still sleeping and I feel like blogging. I shouldn't be allowed to take my laptop on vacation EVER. Note to selves, I need a wireless card.

Anyway, as a prerequisite to my graduate studies, I have to take an introductory statistics course. I took an intro stats course as an undergrad, but it was six years ago, and the cutoff was five. So I dutifully signed up, figuring the review would be good for me, I'd get to meet some of the people in my incoming class, etc. and so on.

Now, I am by no means a stupid person (except when it comes to emotions, but we're talking academics and intellect here). I'm tooting my own horn, and I don't care, but I'm pretty fucking intelligent, and have the proof. That being said, this class is the most ridiculously pathetic I've ever taken.

There is no real math in this course. It's basically an introduction to statistical results you might see in a scholarly publication. In fact, one of the stated goals is to make people "more comfortable with reading journal articles." My instructor even asked "Have you ever seen an article, and then saw the diagrams in it, and put it aside because they were kind of scary?" and people nodded their heads. At this point, bitchy as it makes me, I nearly raised my hand and asked if I could bring in a few journal articles with my name in them and be exempt from the course.

We've had three class sessions so far. Coming in to the third, we were almost a week behind. We spent over an hour of our second class session going over the items in our first class session. Over. An hour. And then she gave us a quiz. And then, and then, one of the students, who is so frightfully ignorant that everyone hates him, was asked by the teacher to leave the class because he was asking too many questions during the quiz and apparently hadn't done the readings. He apparently did not understand that there were readings assigned, because he didn't hear her mention them the eight thousand times the week before, and hadn't seen them on the syllabus emailed out to everyone a month ago.

I actually like some of the people in the class though; they're not stupid, they're just not from the same background, so yes, this material is new and strange to them. And that's okay. They get it, once you explain it to them. And I've been doing a lot of explaining. I figure I'd rather go through five minutes of explaining now, than five hours of explaining once we all get to research methods. It's an ego boost to hear them say that I do a better job of teaching this stuff than our instructor. But this other guy, holy crap, I would never want to calculate the density of his head, because there is nothing in this world large enough to hold that number. It's pretty bad when you have social workers ragging on you.

I forsee a lot of hand-holding in my graduate studies though, which kind of irritates me. I'm fiercely independent (shocking, I know), and got used to doing things my way as an undergrad. I don't know how well I'm going to handle all this touchy-feely-ness I see coming up. Bah.

Excuse me, mister

Part of the plans for Joseph's visit were a road trip and gallivant through the part of the state where he used to live, before he moved away. In his message to me about this, he had said "You'd better have the car and the time, and if you don't have the car, you can ride a damn bus with me". So I admit, part of the reason I took the plunge of buying a car was so that I didn't have to ride a bus in July. What can I say; I am easily influenced.

When I bought the car, I called him up and informed him of this. He was on his way home from work, and we briefly talked, but he also spent time talking to one of his coworkers, who was giving him a ride. During the conversation he referred to me as "his slut" or something along those lines, a few times.

I absolutely bristled.

Honestly, I didn't quite understand my reaction at the time; all I knew was that it really put me off, and I got cranky with him, which he took as simply a reaction to the word. He tried to explain it as that he didn't mean to smash my dignity, etc. I replied that I said nothing about dignity whatsoever.

Having thought about it, I didn't mind the word so much, as the fact that it was him using it. It pissed me off. He doesn't get to call me that. I am not his. True, some of the things I've done with him can be construed as slutty, as can some of the things that I have considered doing with him. But since when does he get to call me a slut? That's right, he doesn't. Much less his. Fuck that, good sir, you do not own me.

And apparently I'm still a bit angry about it. I more or less hung up on him - although I continued to search for airline tickets for him for a bit. Maybe it's wrong of me, but I'm perversely happy that airline tickets are so gawdawful expensive for him to fly out here, because it decreases the chances that he will. And right now, that makes me happy.

Sweet jesus!

So, I'm buying a car tomorrow. I've been working up to doing it for a while, and I finally took the plunge. She's meeting me at my work to drop it off. It's pretty awesome. And it was pretty cheap. And I'm stupid excited.

That's pretty much all I have to say about that.

Stupid stupid stupid

It's stupid o'clock in the morning, and I'm awake because I have to be in at work shortly. Normally I work Thursday nights, but I'm doing the mornings all this month because of a class I have to take for grad school. That in and of itself could be the subject of an entirely different rant, but I think I'll see how this one goes before I post about it here.

Meanwhile, one of my acquaintances found a link to an online forum where apparently, bug-chasers are pussies. (If you don't know what a bug-chaser is, you probably don't want to read any further. Hell, you probably don't want to read further even if you do.) These are guys who get off on bare-backing guys who are HIV-, and intentionally trying to infect them. They lie to the guys, saying they're neg, or use condoms, but the condoms have holes poked or cut in them. There are guys who are trying to make a resistant strain of virus, by signing up for drug studies, taking the drugs the first few weeks, then completely throwing the protocol out the window. There are guys who deliberately try to get infected with as many strains of the virus as possible.

That, to put it succinctly, is some fucked up shit. And how am I allowed to say that? Because they are deliberately harming themselves and others by this behavior. Ergo, fuck them. Or rather, don't.

This hits doubly-close to home, as I've participated in an HIV vaccine trial. I can't understand the motivation of trying to fuck that shit up. HELLO, WE'RE TRYING TO SAVE PEOPLE HERE, MAYBE YOU COULD NOT FUCKING INTERFERE. Christ. When I was reading excerpts from the forum yesterday, I was starting to get physically ill. It was like the world was reminding me, oh yeah, there are some fucked-up things out there. And here I thought I was all internet-tough and thick-skinned. Obviously not.

The other tie-in is, well jesus fuck, who can you trust? Maybe I'm just a stupid girl, but I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that I am completely clean. I don't even have HPV. I got nothin'. I'd like to stay that way. And when I read stuff like this, it gets harder and harder to even think about having sex with people. How the hell am I supposed to trust them, when stuff like this happens in the world?

Anyway, now that I've ruined everyone else's day (including my own, again) by talking about this stuff, time to move on. Work calls, and then class. Hopefully this one will go better than the first; which had me so angry I was swearing on the phone with my mother, and I flipping never do that.

This is how you remind me

As I mentioned in my last entry, Joseph is flying out here for a week in July. When notified of this development, Vinnie had this to say:

Oh dear. Pills and condoms, girl. This man has previously successful sperm. And you know how I feel about sleeping with people with SO's... not your sin. Now, I'd suggest letting him make the first move (although flying out to spend a week with you is quite a first move, you know what I mean) and whatever you do, don't let yourself fall in love. If you're going to have sex with this loser, do it to resolve sexual tension. And remember, he's got a kid and a woman he should make honest, and he lives far, far away.

I love when he gets all pragmatic on my ass. And it truly is good advice, especially since I can't see myself in a relationship of any consequence with Joseph at all. Oh true, there's ye olde tonne of sexual tension there, but relationship sparks? Nah.

Then again, I do have high standards there.

Anyway, I haven't decided whether I'll fuck him or not. Probably will. Might not. Definitely dangerous.

panic!

Found out this morning that Joseph is flying out here on the 22nd July.

I asked for the week after off as well, because I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll need it before going back to work.

Predictability

Joseph naturally has dropped off the planet again. I desperately want the attention from him, but not enough to make a fool out of myself and message him or email him begging for it. If he wants to pay attention to me, fine and dandy, I would love it. I just know that I'll have to be patient for that to happen again.

On the positives side though, it does make me less crushingly-obsessed with him. It's a bit of a cool-off period so that things don't get too intense. And the thought that just occured to me is that he's doing it deliberately, so that he has the same time to cool off.

Interesting interesting.

As for me, it's back to working too much. I signed up for an evening at work today, so shortly I'll be out the door and on my way. I'm also taking a class this summer in preparation for grad school; it's shockingly easy and the people in it are shockingly slow on the uptake. I was so frustrated with it that when describing the class, I swore on the phone with my mother, which I never, ever do. It truly was that horrid on Thursday. I don't care if it makes me a stuck-up bitch, but come on, a handout entitled "How to Read a Journal Article"? Are you fucking serious.

Work calls. Damn them.

I am growing cilantro.

Jay spent last weekend over here. I'd been promising him for about a month that if he picked me up from work on a Saturday, we'd get to sleep in on Sunday, and I kept signing up for shifts on Sunday (in fact, I'm signed up for one this week as well). So finally, this was our chance.

He picked me up Saturday, and we decided to go to Ikea, because they were having a sale and I'd had my eye on some chairs there for a while, and I finally had enough disposable cash to get them. He immediately was impressed by the entire concept of affordable furniture packed to be easily transportable. I bought the chairs, some rugs, some excellent glass containers, a couple of other things. It was a good time.

While we were on our way out there, Elizabeth called me, to remind me that I'd said I was going out with her tonight. It was the birthday of one of the women in one of her grad classes, and she'd invited me along for moral support. "Mind if Jay tags along?" I asked, sure that I would get the affirmative reply that I did. So Jay stopped at his house for real clothes, and we went back to my place to get ready.

After Ikea, I kind of wanted to just curl up and sleep already, but instead I dolled up for the bar. I even wore a skirt. It was some impressive shit. Unfortunately the night was a bust, and I was home and in bed by 1.

Jay and I did sleep in on Sunday. And that's about all we did. I seriously think I was awake for all of three hours that day. And we slept in late on Monday, too. The two important things to note: that was the best, most refreshing and relaxing sleep I've had in a while, and I also had no desire to have sex with Jay. None.

Plenty of fantasies about Joseph though, hoo lord.

Anyway, on Monday night, after going back to Ikea to return some things and failing, Jay did tie me up and attempt to fist me. We came to the same conclusion as last time; namely that it likely won't work until I've popped out some kids. Unlike last time, I didn't feel the need to apologize, and the event was followed by a seriously excellent conversation and aftercare. Honestly, it's one of the most open, honest, and serious conversations I've ever had with Jay.

It was nice to be able to spend the weekend with him, and not feel guilty for being attracted to someone else, not feel torn about getting back together with him, not being unsure of where I stood. I more or less solidified some of my feelings about Jay - I care about and for him, deeply, but I am not in love with him, nor do I feel the need to be.

It's about time that got settled. It makes me a much happier person when I know at least a little bit of what's going on.

As for the title - I am growing an herb garden. I bought a kit, because I am lazy. But I am growing cilantro, even though I have no idea what I would use it for, just to get Joseph's goat. He fucking loathes cilantro. I can't wait to see his reaction when he finds it growing in my house.