Wow.

So, just got back from Bourbon street where I got a big guy to pay for strippers/lapdances for me all night long and I just have to say... First club, met cute girl in the bathroom. Blonde. not really my type but into girls so that was nice. but moved onto second club where Stripes was dancing and OH. My. God. So cute. brown hair up, adorable natural body, whispers in my ear "we have to go do this birthday guy but stick around..." lap dance plus up on stage plus friend who says "Are you the dildo girl?" mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Loving her a LOT. K. sorry. more than a little drunk. mmmmmmmmm. strippers. Seriously, are there any better people in the world????

Things that make you go "Hmmmmm....."

Aresenio?? Anyone???

K. So, a coupla things I've noticed about the Crescent City:

1) N'awlins girls can wear the HELL out of some shoes! Damn. And the skirt/shoe/bra-with-the-good-uplift combos they've got going on out here... well, let's just say, it makes me wish I was a dyke so I could properly appreciate... oh, wait...

2) White people out here are WHITE. Like I get that we're technically in the south and I'm not saying that there's anything WRONG with being WHITE it's just interesting how there aren't any other flavors of peach. Fer instance, not alot of Italian/Irish mixes walking around helpfully giving out directions if you know what I mean...

3) Straight girls are easy. I know, this is not N'awlins specific but still, it's where I happen to be and it's where my new "friend" happens to be so that's really all I have to work with right now. (Speaking of which, how much to hell am I going that I JUST spent a full 15 minutes flirting with another straight girl presenter right in front of M's sad, confused, little nose!!! Very is how much!)

K. conference done for the day. Now I work on work stuff then it's off to the French quarter to have a drink and to listen to what my little buddy's boyfriend did to piss her off (this time.) :-]

ah.

I'm sitting here in the world's most comfortable white cotton robe, at a cute little round table sipping my complimentary morning tea and staring out the window at a beautiful old ivy-covered brick building. Life, she ees gud...!

Now then. Where was I?

1) Last week was crazy. Spent the week-end at Lake Powell with my family (including my brother's adorable sons and newly HUGE -- like a foot taller than me -- / beautiful "grown-up" daughter). The Lake was beautiful. The desert was amazing. I got to talk to my Dad quite a bit. He's a keeper that one. His current set-up though is SICK. He's living in an upscale "trailer park" (100,000 just to get a freaking lot) with a bunch of really rich people. In addition to the outdoor patio and 18 foot "shade" system, he's got a outdoor pueblo style oven, an "Arizona room" (basically a studio that doesn't have plumbing -- although some of the "arizona rooms" I saw were comparable to really nice multi-bedroom homes) the 'Vette, a golf cart and of course, The Lincoln Towncar. Oh yeah, and the boat. The complex has a "town Center" where there's a restaurant, a post office and about a million classes (things like jewelry making, ceramics and stained glass design) are offered for free. there are also four really nice pools. You're not allowed to own property there unless you're over the age of 55 so my pops is one of the youngest. He's living large out there with a bunch of insanely "comfortable" 70 year olds. May I just remind everyone that my pops is technically "poor." I just don't get it.

Anyway, trip was great. Kind of whirlwind but well-overdue. I LOVE my family and they make me so proud and happy and calm and I love that my daughters get to see their extended support system. Unexpectedly (but making a great deal of sense now that I think about it) my youngest fell in love with her super high energy cousin, J. He's the kind of kid who'll pick up a stick and start hitting a stump and twenty minutes later when you check back, he's still wacking away at the stump. Well, my kid was standing right there watching him wack. Very cute.

Back to work for the week which is slightly more bearable because we've managed to assemble a support team of consultants who don't completely suck/are not shady beyond belief so I'm confident in our ability to get at least one of our major projects done.

Pride on Sunday -- the babies and I marched with little Stevie (I do have to put it out there that my kid was looking pretty damn adorable in her knotted up "Play Safe" GV shirt) and the rest of the GV work contingent, then off to San Joser to drop off Spark with her G-ma and myself off at the airport so I could fly away to paradise and end up in this really comfy robe...!

Whew! that was alot!

K. I'm out to my conf. more later. (More which may or may not involve an update re: which traveling correspondent got snuggled by a cute "straight" girl she met at the conference last night!!)

Just real quick, mon...

I'm in NEW ORLEANS. I. am. in. New Orleans. In a really nice hotel room. (with complimentary shoe polish and oatmeal soap.) I think I've gone to heaven... K. I'm out to an con-feer-rance -- seriously, is the fact that all the names here are some tangled version of french spoken with a creole accent TO DIE FOR, or what??! :-)

The full update, tonight at 10:00 (ish)

I hate my job. I love my team though... :-]

I think I need an intervention...

Consider the following conversation:

Me: [Yawn] Hey.
Him: Hey.
Me: What can I do fer you, Mister?
Him: [Handing over folded piece of paper]
Me: [after reading] You got in! [to SFSU] Cool!
Him: [nod]
Me: Did you tell your mom?
Him: Yeah.
Me: Whad she say?
Him: She said it was cool.
Me: Cool. [pause] So... was there a reason you needed me to see this at 1-f**k-ing o'clock in the goddamn Mbbbph! [That's right folks, yet another brilliantly scathing comment cut short by the introduction of a second party tongue into my mouth]

Sigh. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?????????? I am so glad I'm outtie for awhile.

TMI...

I'm tired. ;-]

On a lighter note...

I just put together a "Cheer the f*** up!" Playlist which includes "Wish I didn't know" by Toby Keith, "All I want for Christmas is a real good tan" by the inestimable Mr. Kenny Chesney "We Really Shouldn't Be Doing This" by George -- Country GOD -- Strait and "Why'd You Come in Here Lookin' Like that" by the one, the only, Miss D. Parton! (What is it about physical/emotional exhaustion that makes a gal head straight for the New Country Stations??) Somebody stop me before I throw in some Blake!!!! Damn, that boy's easy on the eyes...

GOD!!!

Yesterday SUCKED! Maybe today will be better. :-]

LaLaLa...

Still pretending work doesn't exist... Lalalala.

So, we're going to Lake Powell on Thursdee to meet up the rest of the Magnet-brigade for a week-end of fun in the sun (I know, I know, this sort of behavior runs straight in the face of everything we've learned so far about National Security but, you know what?? I needs to see the peeps and if that means they're gonna have to step up the patrols around the AZ/Utah border then so be it!) which means that before I actually get to see any of them I have to run this Joycean (what are we thinking of all the literary references, BTW?) gamut (Think Sound and the Fury) of telephone conversations wherein each and every one of my family members pronounces with dead certainty their belief in a highly effective, completely bought-into, all-bases-covered plan which inevitably noone else has ever heard of. This is hilarious as it happens every year and yet and still we all still manage to end up in the same place fed, clothed and housed (usually on a really nice boat) and having a really very nice time. Suffice to say at the end of the evening last night, the seven year old who was privy to my side of each of the sixty million conversations remarked "Your family should learn to relaaaaxxxxx." She accompanied this remark with a sort of zen arm gesture which made me snort and fall over laughing so I wasn't able to immediately point out that they are, in fact hers too. Ah well. She'll discover the disquieting truth soon enough...

for the purposes of this post...

I am pretending to be unemployed. Now then...

Congratulations to BBQ on her fancy new job offer! I've always wanted a best friend who had top-secret government clearance so I'm glad the moment has finally arrived -- Sephora here we come!

Nextly, I'm so hugely sorry and I hope you feel better to the Baby Bees who are under the weather right this moment. It sucks being little and being sick and I wish you renewed health as soon as such a thing is possible. Best wishes and hugs also to their sleepy-stir-crazy moms who are valiantly supporting their infirmity. If there is a single thing I can do please do not hesitate to let me know.

In other news, I'm looking to buy a car. This is funny to those of you who know me and speaks in a very stereotypical way to my roots growing up in New Mex. where if you didn't have at least five cars on your front lawn you weren't really serious about driving! So, I need a vehicle with more than three seatbelts, a working set of windshield wipers and the ability to get slightly more than 1.5 miles to the gallon -- while at the same time giving up my truck WOULD KILL ME so, here I am, with one car not quite sold/doanted/left to be towed by the city, already looking for another. I'm thinking my new nickname should just be "three-car-family". We can leave it at that. :-]

My seven year old has donned a diaper in a moment of sister-solidarity, my two year old knows how to count to ten, how to say the alphabet and how to make jokey-jokes in Spanish:

me: [holding up a red shoe] What color is this?
her: Azul!
me: Are you sure?
her: [giggling] Azul! Ha-ha! Rojo...
me: Red?
her: [nodding] Rojo!
me: [holding up the other shoe] then which color is this?
her: [big laugh] Azul!!

I have a cup of coffee next to me. A cat on my lap and nothing to do today that doesn't involve hanging with my babies. Life, she ees gud!

BUSTED!

Ha! I just almost got SOOOOO busted a minute ago. See here's the thing, back when NYG and I were "seeing" each other, we had kind of agreed we weren't going to tell the respective kiddos (for a whole variety of reasons I won't EVEN go into here) so we didn't. Right. We stop "seeing" each other and it becomes a "non-issue". Then through a whole convoluted Brechtian turn of events, it so happens that entirely outside of our involvement and subsequent lack thereof, our kids decide that they like each other a great deal and as one of them has a mom who needs to be out on the town tonight with her new Sweetie and the other has a parent who is all about the sleepovers ... well, let's just say I've ended up with little Stevie Nicks here with me and the Boo tonight. SO. They're all tucked in, ready for books and bed and lo and behold, they discover, under the couch a business card with Stevie's daddy's info on it! (god only knows how it could have gotten there. eh hem...) Weird right? Even weirder given that we (me and Stevie's Daddy) aren't really supposed to know each other -- save the one or two times he's accompanied Miss Nicks to various group events. I'm sure everyone will be delighted to know that when presented with this evidence of his independent existence in my living room (on my couch) I quickly offered that it must have "dropped out" of his pocket the time he was here with Stevie for Spark's birthday! Yeah. Because cards do that, right?? Fall out of people's pockets when they stop by... eh, hem. Anyway.

---

Thanks BTW for those of you who called to offer your support vis a vis my total inability to deal with my life a few days ago. I was just kind of overwhelmed by the sheer amounts of STUFF I was suddenly having to do (work = learn someone else's job/fix about a billion really bad things that were/are about to explode in our faces and that inexplicably nothing has been done about; school = going into week 3 of 6 with two more papers due, plus four chapters of reading in a book that I got the wrong edition of - we're talking entire legal cases missing because they hadn't actually occured yet; home = sty. Pure and simple. Too much crap. Too little space.) Plus which, I got lectured to about how my optimistic little views would change once I'd "matured" a little and experienced a bit more life from a woman who turned out to be a year younger than me! She thought I was 23. Nice. Kind of threw what was left of my identity into a tailspin.

All of that notwithstanding though, I just spent the entire day with my kid out on Angel Island so I'm back, I'm good and I think I may even be able to deal. (possibly. I wouldn't go placing any bets in Vegas just yet...)

What fresh hell is this?

Jeesus, God, what have I done...???????!