I'll just be taking leave of my senses now

And with the phone call, the Greek hangover begins:

B.I.G.: Hi. How are you?

The G: Running around like crazy.

B.I.G.: Trying to get everything done you should have been doing the past week before you leave tomorrow?

The G: (hearty Greek laughter...I swear it's possible to laugh with an accent) Yes. It's the Greek way.

B.I.G.: I'm a big fan of the Greek way. Are you going to be around the friendly neighborhood tavern tonight so I can send you off with a glass of wine and...um...uh....

The G: I would really like to be sent off with a glass of wine and...um...uh.... I'm going to try to, but I'm taking off early tomorrow....

B.I.G.: I know. It's a shame you're not going to be around Saturday. You know how last Saturday when you were driving me back to my car, and it was drizzly and dreary, and you said it would be a good day to lie in bed and watch bad porno, get up and make some soup, go back to bed and fuck, then watch more bad porno? This Saturday's my birthday. That would be a great way to spend my birthday.

The G: Oh no! I'm sorry I'm going to miss your birthday. Next time I'm in town we will do that. We don't need a reason to celebrate.

B.I.G.: No, we don't. We'll have another "one more time" the next time you're in town, then.

The G: Yes. I'll call you if I'm going to be out tonight.

B.I.G.: I hope you do stop by. If I don't see you, have a good trip.

I wanted to add, "Go back home, to your woman who loves you, and try not to break her heart."

But I couldn't bring myself to.

now THAT's frightening!

Apparently hosting a party takes at least a week and a day out of my life, as I notice it's been that long since I posted. I was working on a post about neighborhood crazies showing up at meetings and disrupting speeches, but I suspect there's more interest in what happened at the Halloween party than in one nutty old lady's whacked-out opinions on creating walkable streets and more pedestrian-friendly communities.

So, on to the show.

First off, I went a little crazy at Costco. I've put off buying a membership there because I'm only one person, how many rolls of paper towels do I really need to buy at once, plus, it's clear up in suburbia hell, where I never really want to go, and furthermore, there's just a lot of crap there I don't need.

Like a 1/2 gallon container of minced garlic. Which I now have.

Or 4 cases of beer, 2 big bottles and 5 regular bottles of wine, some Captain Morgan's and some vodka. And a case of chicken broth. For the chili, you know.

It took 10 trips with the wheelbarrow to get all the groceries/beer/ice from the car to the house. Discover's fraud prevention unit called to make sure some raving drunken lunatic hadn't taken my card.

Nope, I said, this lunatic has her card right here!

Btw, I have a LOT of beer and chili left. Stop by for dinner sometime this week. Please.

All in all, the turnout was good for having given people a week's notice and having it on an evening when everybody and their undertaker is having a party. Zorro and the flamenco dancer were the first to arrive, followed by a vampire and the Crazy Cat Lady, who proceeded to creep the fuck out of everybody by doing things like standing in a corner alone, playing her recorder:

In short, hilarity ensued wherever she went.

Then the youngsters showed up, on their way out to the bars in Broad Ripple:

Hope made an appearance, the youngsters and Crazy Cat Lady/vampire left, and then Hope, too, was gone.

I was patting myself on the back for being a responsible party host, and having a party that ended at the respectable hour of 1:30 a.m., and not with me sprawled out on the kitchen floor.

That's when Colts safety Bob Sanders (or a reasonable facsimile) showed up, wearing his dreads and carrying the Vince Lombardi trophy:

Now, I know Bob from a neighborhood group I volunteer with. He's cute. And single. And he thinks my jokes are funny. Which is more than I can say for at least 90 percent of the men I come into contact with. So I opened one of the big bottles of wine and Bob and I sat down to get to know each other better.

I mentioned it was 1:30 a.m., right? Did I also mention I'd spent the previous 6-1/2 hours doing my part to reduce the overpopulation of beer in my fridge?

The bad news is that, unfortunately, Bob is not looking for a woman to date. He is looking for a wife to bear his children. Clearly, SuperBowl ring or not, Bob is going to have to look elsewhere. The good news is that by the time we got 3/4 of the way through the big bottle of wine, I seem to recall being quite honest about my voluminous emotional baggage, commitment issues, views on marriage being an outdated patriarchal institution, etc. I quite distinctly remember giving him my disclaimer, "I am probably way too independent to ever successfully be married."

So, I shouldn't have to worry about the bad news!

Sigh. It seems like just Friday night that the Greek was telling me that I'm hard to handle. I have no idea what he meant.

I just got an e-mail from Bob. He left the Vince Lombardi trophy at my house, and apparently I sent him home with a bowl of chili, because he wants to drop off the bowl and pick up the trophy. Yikes.

Opa!

Yeah, I'm totally catching up on posts today. I'm sure that's impolite blog etiquette or something, but it's an excuse to lie in bed with the dogs on a Sunday afternoon, so I'm taking advantage of it.

Speaking of lying in bed with dogs, it's been an interesting weekend.

Friday night I had some weird-ass dreams. In one of them, my dog caught a mouse straight from the innermost depths of hell and there was a lot of thick, gloopy blood like oozes from walls in horror movies.

But even weirder was the dream in which I walked into a flower garden full of blooming butterfly bushes, gorgeous white and yellow butterflies flitting gracefully about as they sampled the glorious nectar, sun shining, sweet smell of flowers in the air.

Then, the butterflies attacked. It must have been a swarm of souped-up South American Killer Butterflies, because each of the suckers weighed like 10 pounds a piece, and they kept flying into me on purpose, hitting me about the head and face. It was awful! I woke up screaming and flailing.

The dream stuck with me all day Saturday. What was my subconscious trying to tell me, throwing out images about the blurry line between that which is good and pure and that which is dark and sinister?

By 7:30 that night, I had my answer, thanks to an informant. The Greek. Spotted the night before at a friendly neighborhood tavern near me.

By 10:30, my ass was on a barstool having naughty things about it whispered into my ear. I was working the phone trying to find some rather exotic cigarettes. If I'd had some notice, I would have been prepared, but that's not how this recurring fling works. We don't talk in between his visits. He doesn't call when he gets into town.

"If it is meant to be, it will be," he says. "Fate."

He does not know that Fate sends text messages.

He was talking big before I got there. "I've been living with this girl, and I've been faithful to her," was his story.

Then, to me: "I'm living with this girl, and I've been behaving myself since the last time I was here in town. ... Who am I kidding? I can't do it. What's new with you?"

"I've been forced to conclude that boys are scared of me."

"Scared? Of you? Why??"

"I think they think I'm trouble."

Hearty Greek laughter. Then head lowered, impenetrable dark eyes peering over the black frame of his glasses, eyebrow raised. "And are they right?"

"Maybe. But I don't see what that has to do with it."

More laughter. "Forget about dating. Just [edited for graphic content]."

We couldn't get the pay-per-view at the Super 8 to work, but I was not in a different part of the state when the sun came up this morning, as has happened before. Of course, that might only be because I had guests staying at the farmhouse. And the roommate was home this weekend. How is it, exactly, that I own two houses and yet had nowhere to take a boy last night?

There were other things, like weirdness with Dead-to-Me's friends Friday night, and the "accidentally hit the call button on the phone" call from the ex Saturday evening, which resulted in a 3-minute long message of his conversation on an apparent date with a woman who has a couple of kids. But enough of this lying in bed with dogs, I have things to do.

ch- ch- ch- chia!

Hot damn! The grass has sprouted and my front yard is all, like, fuzzy and shit!



For the first time, I can almost--almost--understand the national obsession with lush verdant lawns. They're such cute little blades! I am SO proud of this grass, I am going to be the best lawn caretaker EVER! I will never let its waving blades be marred by dandelions, ground ivy, violets or crabgrass. I will fertilize twice a year, and I will never, never, allow it to grow so tall that I must cut off more than 1/3 of the blade height.

Unless, you know, I like, get busy and have a lot of other stuff going on.

Best damn lookin' porch in Southern Indiana!

I can hear you asking, "what color did you paint the trim at the farmhouse, B.I.G.?"

No? That wasn't you? Oh. Sorry, must be the damn neighbors acting up again.

Anyhoo, here's what color I wanted to paint it:

Can't really tell there? How about here:

Yes, it is a lovely bluish-gray, thank you! Unfortunately, very little of it is covering the god-awful green, because Big Head Dog wound his chain around the entire gallon of paint, which my sister left open and unattended on the porch, knocking it over. When I returned to the scene, Big Head Dog was so happy to see me, he wound the paint-covered chain around my leg.

The resulting conversation went something like this:

Me: aaaarrrrrgghhh! You big stupid, you left the paint open!

Sister: Your big stupid dog knocked it over!

Me: You're the big stupid!

Sister: Nuh uh! You're the big stupid!

Me: Fuck it, let's have another beer.

Sister: Good idea.

Since the entire gallon of paint was then on the porch, we really had little option but to spread it out. So now the top-of-the-line exterior paint I bought (charged to my ex's account, whatever) is covering a concrete slab porch. I can't wait till the first time somebody tries to walk on the damn thing when it's wet--it's gonna be slicker than snot on a glass doorknob.

A guy walks into a bar...

A good shouting match just ended in the neighbor's back yard. I couldn't catch all of it--that's the bad thing about arguments, multiple people tend to all talk at once. Plus, all the windows were closed, so it took me a while to figure out that the best place to listen was at the back of the house, lights out, window cracked enough to stick my head through.

What I finally got, though, was that the beau of one of the Crazy Sisters came home late. And really drunk. Once D got Crazy Sister in the house, I heard him pleading his case to the guy who's been over there painting.

Apparently he was out with a buddy and kept telling him he couldn't hang out all night. The buddy took him somewhere, and at that point, according to Drunken Beau, "I said, man, I can't leave you here, this is the ghetto hood! I ain't gonna do ya like that!"

In other words, his excuse for late drunkenness, or drunken lateness, whichever, was that he was in too bad of a neighborhood to leave, so he had to stay there and drink.

I've heard worse excuses. Maybe even made them.

All we are sayyyyy-ing.....

Question: Who am I? "Well, I lost the bid to lead the free world in a highly contested election. I guess I'll just go win the Nobel Peace Prize."

I don't want to get all political and shit on this blog, but Christ! Has there ever been a bigger "Up yours!" in the history of political contests? Really, I'm asking! You can argue that Gore wouldn't have been the best president in the history of the country, and I might agree, but can anyone imagine Dubya ever--EVER--winning the Nobel Peace Prize? Snort! That cracks me up.

So that puts Gore in the company of Jimmy Carter. Another question: why can't Nobel Peace Prize winners make good U.S. presidents? If I had one right now, I'd light a fatty and contemplate that while listening to John Lennon.