Drip...Drip...Drip...

Did you ever have one of those conversations with someone that just felt like torture?

And the only way you were going to escape was to gnaw your own arm off. This would be much less painful than hearing the person who is holding you captive in this conversation speak.

Catching Up: Part 2…. Oh Canada!

Being the wonderful person that he is, the BF made all the arrangements for the trip to make it as easy as possible on me. So he booked us a trip on the Fast Ferry leaving port 8am Saturday morning. The ship itself was impressive, it had 2 decks, an observation deck, 2 movie theatres, a little Duty Free shop, and a car hold for those people who didn’t want to use public transit when they got to Toronto. The trip wasn’t bad. We slept most of the two and a half hours it took to get there. Once we docked in the Port of Toronto, we slid through customs and into a cab on our way to the Delta Chelsea.

We love Toronto! There is so much to do and see in the city. The best part about a city like Toronto is that you find the best things when you’re not looking. By the way, I say this because soon after we got into the city the BF and I walked from, what seemed like, one end of the city to another to have the worst brunch we have ever eaten. It was a dirty little hole in the wall in the middle of one of the worst parts of the city. To give you some idea the level of suckiness of this place the dining room holds twenty people with one waiter who couldn’t keep up. We couldn’t get what we wanted for brunch because the stove blew a fuse and there was Teflon stuck to the waffles. This was praised by some website as being one of the top ten places to have brunch in Toronto. Needless to say, we left a two-cent tip and pretended like the brunch never happened.

As a matter of fact I asked the BF the name of the restaurant where we had brunch. In hopes to save other from the pain we endured, sort of throwing myself on a live omelet as it were. Go on! Save yourselves! He didn’t remember, he said he must have blocked it out. That’s how bad it was.

After “brunch” we wandered down to Queen Street to do a little shopping. The street was a live with people, music, bars, and restaurants. We saw a freestyle rap and dance competition. This performance acted almost as if it was the heartbeat of the neighborhood with people dancing, jumping, singing and shouting! It was amazing! As we made our way further down Queen Street with several shopping bags in tow, I heard a sound that peaked my interest. It was coming from a place called “The Rex” and it was old style New Orleans jazz (Dixieland, to be exact.) A bunch old hip cat was performing that sweet music and they had the place coming off its hinges. Horns blowin’, drums beatin’, and trumpets slidin’, you would have thought you were in the middle of the French Quarter as soon as you walked in. As it became later in the day we decided it was time to go to the hotel and get ready for a fun filled, jam-packed evening. Little did we know what we were in for?

Catching Up: Part 1…. Life’s little potholes.

The other day a friend of mine said, “No one has a perfect relationship. If they say they do, they’re fucking liars.” And she’s right. Relationships are tough and it’s tougher to maintain them. I realize this a few weeks back when I had a complete emotional breakdown because I thought the BF and me were drifting apart.

It was on a Sunday afternoon that my little meltdown happened. I was downstairs watching TV and the BF was upstairs reading a book. Considering the fact that we don’t see each other all week (do to my vampire like work hours), we haven’t had a free weekend all summer (because of parties, graduations, bar mitzvahs, etc.) and this was the only day we had alone together. It felt a little strange to me that we were in the same house but doing separate things. So I went upstairs to talk this situation over with him. About 5 minutes into the conversation my emotional dam had burst. It had been almost literally weeks since we had seen each other or even been alone together. My boss had utterly screwed me at work, I had received rejection upon rejection from the resumes I had been sending out and without knowing it I had reached my breaking point.

I began to cry uncontrollably for the next half an hour babbling along the way. This was shock to the BF and to me as well. It just came out and I couldn’t stop it. I usually don’t try to show any vulnerability of any kind. It hasn’t served me well in the past when I did. And when you have been through as much shit as I have you think you’re tough enough to handle anything. But once in a while there’s a crack in the armor and that’s when you find out none of us are as tough as we think we are. The BF had no idea I was capable of this kind of emotion and thought it was refreshing to find out I was just as human as him.

After my little “episode” the BF and I sat discussed what to do next. Several of our friends (who are in similar situations) suggested we get away for a little vacation. To get away somewhere, alone, to get re-acquainted and to remember why we were together in the first place. We decided it was time for a trip to Toronto!

“All the News That’s Fit to Print.”

I am a HUGE FAN of Maureen Dowd, columnist for The New York Times. In Wednesday’s paper she wrote a FANTASTIC column about the wake of Katrina and our “President’s” tortoise like response to the hurricane and her victims. I felt everyone should read this and think about how many more lives could be lost under Mr. Bush's watchful eye.

"A Fatal Incuriousity", The New York Times , September 14, 2005

“I hate spending time in hospitals and nursing homes. I find them to be some of the most depressing places on earth.

Maybe that's why the stories of the sick and elderly who died, 45 in a New Orleans hospital and 34 in St. Rita's nursing home in the devastated St. Bernard Parish outside New Orleans, haunt me so.

You're already vulnerable and alone when suddenly you're beset by nature and betrayed by your government.

At St. Rita's, 34 seniors fought to live with what little strength they had as the lights went out and the water rose over their legs, over their shoulders, over their mouths. As Gardiner Harris wrote in The Times, the failed defenses included a table nailed against a window and a couch pushed against a door.

Several electric wheelchairs were gathered near the front entrance, maybe by patients who dreamed of evacuating. Their drowned bodies were found swollen and unrecognizable a week later, as Mr. Harris reported, "draped over a wheelchair, wrapped in a shower curtain, lying on a floor in several inches of muck."

At Memorial Medical Center, victims also suffered in 100-degree heat and died, some while waiting to be rescued in the four days after Katrina hit.

As Louisiana's death toll spiked to 423 yesterday, the state charged St. Rita's owners with multiple counts of negligent homicide, accusing them of not responding to warnings about the hurricane. "In effect," State Attorney General Charles Foti Jr. said, "I think that their inactions resulted in the death of these people."

President Bush continued to try to spin his own inaction yesterday, but he may finally have reached a patch of reality beyond spin. Now he's the one drowning, unable to rescue himself by patting small black children on the head during photo-ops and making scripted attempts to appear engaged. He can keep going back down there, as he will again on Thursday when he gives a televised speech to the nation, but he can never compensate for his tragic inattention during days when so many lives could have been saved.

He made the ultimate sacrifice and admitted his administration had messed up, something he'd refused to do through all of the other screw-ups, from phantom W.M.D. and the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo to the miscalculations on the Iraq occupation and the insurgency, which will soon claim 2,000 young Americans.

How many places will be in shambles by the time the Bush crew leaves office?

Given that the Bush team has dealt with both gulf crises, Iraq and Katrina, with the same deadly mixture of arrogance and incompetence, and a refusal to face reality, it's frightening to think how it will handle the most demanding act of government domestic investment since the New Deal.

Even though we know W. likes to be in his bubble with his feather pillow, the stories this week are breathtaking about the lengths the White House staff had to go to in order to capture Incurious George's attention.

Newsweek reported that the reality of Katrina did not sink in for the president until days after the levees broke, turning New Orleans into a watery grave. It took a virtual intervention of his top aides to make W. watch the news about the worst natural disaster in a century. Dan Bartlett made a DVD of newscasts on the hurricane to show the president on Friday morning as he flew down to the Gulf Coast.

The aides were scared to tell the isolated president that he should cut short his vacation by a couple of days, Newsweek said, because he can be "cold and snappish in private." Mike Allen wrote in Time about one "youngish aide" who was so terrified about telling Mr. Bush he was wrong about something during the first term, he "had dry heaves" afterward.

The president had to be truly zoned out not to jump at the word "hurricane," given that he has always used his father's term as a reverse playbook and his father almost lost Florida in 1992 because of his slow-footed response to Hurricane Andrew. And W.'s chief of staff, Andy Card, was the White House transportation secretary the senior President Bush sent to the rescue after FEMA bungled that one.

W. has said he prefers to get his information straight up from aides, rather than filtered through newspapers or newscasts. But he surrounds himself with weak sisters who don't have the nerve to break bad news to him, or ideologues with agendas that require warping reality or chuckleheaded cronies like Brownie.

The president should stop haunting New Orleans, looking for that bullhorn moment. It's too late."

~ Maureen Dowd, The New York Times

Dear Mr. President…..

Dear Mr. President,

I would like to thank you for strengthening our country and helping us pull together as a nation, in this, our time of need. If it weren’t for a leader such as you we wouldn’t have the chutzpah to go it alone when it seems like the world is against us. Under your leadership we have learned so much about ourselves and about our place in the world.

With out you Mr. President, we wouldn’t have learned to weather the storm and rely on ourselves for support. We wouldn’t have learned the real meaning of such words as survival, self-reliance, trusting in your fellow man, and to have faith when there is none to have. We wouldn’t have learned that democracy is something worth fighting and dying for, even when it is not your own. We wouldn’t have learned that friends will forgive our mistakes and bolster us when we have fallen. We wouldn’t have learned that a dollar earned is a dollar spent. We wouldn’t have learned how to look for the conviction in what a man says and not the meaning. We wouldn’t have learned to let a smile and a wave be your umbrella.

With out you President Bush, we wouldn’t have learned that “Intelligent Deign” has scientific merit. We wouldn’t have learned that you can think you are prepared for the worst, but you’re not. We wouldn’t have learned the needs of the one out weigh the needs of the many. We wouldn’t have learned that nature is strong and can with stand human intemperance. We wouldn’t have learned that money isn’t the root of all evil, poverty is. We wouldn’t have learned that it’s good to surround yourself with people who share in your opinions and way of thinking. We wouldn’t have learned that human suffering is something we should feel really bad about but we must continue living our lives. We wouldn’t have learned our parents are there to help us with any problems we may have along the way. We wouldn’t have learned to laugh in the face of adversity. We wouldn’t have learned that talk is cheap when action is required. We wouldn’t have learned it’s the thought that counts. We wouldn’t have learned to stand by your spouse in times of crisis and step out of the way when there’s work to be done. And we wouldn’t have learned we all need a vacation once in a while.

So once again I would like to thank you Mr. President. You have taught us an absence in leadership can teach us many things. But an absent leader can teach us more.

Sincerely,

John Q. Public

* This letter was paid for by The Institute of Dry Wit and Underlined Sarcasm.

Back from the Dead Y’all!

You’ve probably all been wondering where I’ve been these past few weeks. Well, life’s little rollercoaster decided to turn inside out, upside down, stretch me sideways and twist me into a pretzel. And when I finally got off, I puked! But I’m back, still a little weak in the knees but I’m standing and that’s what counts.

I will be sharing my adventures in the next couple of weeks with all of you. Here are some of the highlights:

· Powers that be squashing my hopes like a bug.
· A total emotional breakdown. Tears -a -flowin’!
· I turned 38.
· A trip to Toronto on the back of a ferry.
· Man-sweat and a Golden Griddle blackout.
· A Dixieland band.
· The Bovine Sex Club!
· It’s a boy!
· Superman and Coldplay.
· A broken finger.
· And a hurricane.

I’ll be in touch soon! Be good and if you can’t be good be careful. And if you can’t be careful, at least don’t get caught!