With love all things are possible. Unless you're really stupid.

The course of true love never did run smooth.
- William Shakespeare

Goddamn Weatherman.

Weather-women, too, although I may be out of my time and missing out on proper use of the word “weatherperson.” Hope not. Sounds like a post-punk band.

And more: Goddamn that jet stream. Where I grew up, on the West Coast, the jet stream was something I heard about the same way I heard about “Nor’easters”, which sounded like another band, maybe the opening act for the weatherperson.

Here on the East Coast the jet stream is like the tail of a dog who drank a lot of coffee – it wags like a wildly uncontrollable whip and leaves us wondering what’s coming from the skies, sitting blank-faced and staring at those charts and maps behind the “weatherperson” on the television, their little arrows and lines and isobars and shit slashing about like so many Crayola marks on an epileptic child’s doodle pad, denoting weather that, we understand all too soon, may or may not happen.

The jet stream carries this weather, whatever it is, to us. Stands to reason it also carries it away. And since it’s like that tail of a giant, happy, hyper dog, it goes wherever it goes with little rhyme or reason.

Today was supposed to be a “snow day”. In Charlotte, North Carolina, this means there is visible snow on the roads, quantity immaterial. A billionth of a goddamn angstrom-thick layer of snow means the buses, the cops, the schools, the Starbucks, the businesses, the banks, the whole city of Charlotte slams shut as loudly and vigorously as my first girlfriend’s legs when I told her what I was about to do (for the first time, ever. Her exact words: “um, no, thank you”).

Damn, if it isn’t beautiful outside. Chilly, but sunny and headed for 45 toasty degrees. I am at my desk, in my office, at work in Uptown Charlotte, and my children are not in the den watching Spongebob, they are at school. I like working in an office again – having been work-from-home for years I started to miss other human beings – but dammit, I wanted to be home today with fuzzy bunny slippers on for my meetings.

Hmm. I just realized I am whining. I take it back. Sorry, everyone. I need more coffee.

Off to Prudieland. Whenever she does these “My boyfriend/girlfriend is SO perfectly awesomely great, but…” letters the IQ of the known universe drops into petite pants-size for a day or two. It’s worse than turning on “Jersey Shore”, which I suspect can transform otherwise regular human beings into semi-functional, mumbling dolts in a fraction of a zeptosecond.

Originals here, if needed.

***

Dear Prudence,
My boyfriend and I have been together for two years, and I absolutely adore him. He's wonderful to me, treats me like a princess, and is the love of my life. When he and I have sex, I don't feel anything. What I should do?
-  Frustrated

Dear Frigid,

You hate men, don’t you? No, you say? I still think so. It’s okay, you know. Watch “Ellen.” She’s cute and funny and everyone likes her, and her wife is smoking hot.

How can you say you “adore” the “love of your life” when he doesn’t make your nipples hard as goddamn diamonds when you’re getting a hot injection of his muscled manly meat missile? You describe him the same way you’d describe a puppy. In fact, I think he’s better off at a different kennel, and you simply need to come to terms with your lesbianism.

***

Dear Prudence,
About a year ago I met a man 15 years my junior (I'm 50) and had what I thought was a one-night stand. The next morning I told him I would like a friends-with-benefits arrangement. We have fallen in love. He has said he would marry me if not for the age difference. Should I wait to see if the relationship evolves into marriage? Or should I listen to what he says about the age difference and get out before I get in any deeper?
-  Accidental Cougar

Dear Mrs. Robinson,

Look, it ain’t getting any better than that story. You’re 50. He’s pre-Viagra and has some stamina left in him. Life is pretty goddamn good. This is not a problem.

He needs to know, however, that Menopause will knock you down like a roaring, flaming Messerschmitt over the Channel in 1941 and no matter how “good you look” it’s all surgery from here on out. Maybe he needs to know that hot flashes are NOT cute and funny and silly; they make some women want to take a goddamn baseball bat and smash a puppy’s head in (see the post above, gramma), and it will dry up your formerly-moist girl-parts into something resembling a post-bloat seven-day-dead wad of unidentifiable roadkill. He’d go bankrupt buying K-Y in five-gallon tubs, if you didn’t kill him first with the baseball bat.

If he still doesn’t get it, Loverboy needs to understand that one day soon you’ll look like Jessica Tandy (at the end) and he’ll look like, um, someone really younger than Jessica Tandy (at the end). Explain it to him, with pictures if visual aids are useful to him. She was so cute, wasn’t she? She was also Paleolithic, and couldn’t take a flight of stairs without having a nap after.

If he still doesn’t get it, for Christ’s sake marry him and bang the living shit out of him day and night until you die or lose interest. You don’t always have a chance to rob the cradle, Lucy. What a lucky duck.

***

Dear Prudence,
My boyfriend and I have been together for one year, and now, as is natural, the urgency is dwindling. I don't get all the attention I "need." I've explained this to my boyfriend and he tries to accommodate me, but I need help banishing my unrealistic expectations, because it's unfair to him and causes me distress.
- Clingy

Dear Freaky, Dangerously Psychotic Chick,

Please, get the fuck away from me, scary girl. You are some kind of fucked up there, Nelly McNeedy, and if I were him I would be terrified you’d turn into Little Miss Stabby with a Knife at 2:00 AM after a cuddle session went off, but with a few minor timing and touching errors.

Familiarize yourself with the following: Butyrophnones, Phenothiazones, and Thioxanthenes. These are commonly prescribed antipsychotics. Side effects may include itching, irritability, fever, headache, vomiting, dizziness, uncontrolled bowel discharge, tooth loss, hair loss, excessive nasal discharge, and unexpected flatulence. Do not take if you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant, if you are taking MAOIs, if you have excessive pubic hair, if you like kittens, or if you own a Mazda manufactured before 1997, except the Miata, of course. But not a blue one.

Oh, call your boyfriend and threaten to soak his dick in lighter fluid and light it on fire while he sleeps. This will scare him off and sever all your ties quickly and cleanly, unless he’s one of those guys who thinks he needs to “rescue” you, in which case, well, have at him sis, he’s all yours. Bon apetit.

***

Dear Prudence,
I am engaged to a wonderful man, except for one issue. He placed a picture of his late wife and a small container of her ashes on a side table in the living room. Part of me is creeped out and wants us to have a fresh start without his former wife in the next room. What do you think?
- It Is Always Something

Dear Something or Other,

First of all, we are ALL wonderful, except one or more issues. Grow the fuck up.

This letter of yours is so flavorless, unremarkable, and uninteresting I had a hard time staying awake for the whole thing. You need to either cope or not, and he’s the one to talk to, you goddamn dipshit, not Prudence. Gawd.

Meanwhile, you need to know this: she can hear you.

That little box…she’s in there. She watches you masturbate. She watches you vacuum. She watches you wipe after you use the restroom. She knows everything you say, everything you do. She thinks you’re a bloody uneducated slob, and she hates your hair. She cannot believe your whole face actually looks like that. She knows her ass was nicer than yours, and she was way better in bed. She is not afraid of you. She can kill you while you sleep. Given enough time, she can control you, your actions, your thoughts. She’ll make you strangle him while he sleeps, because he’s cheating on her with you. She’ll make you forget the roast is in the oven and try to burn the house down. She’ll make you dress like she did, and woe to you, ‘cause nice ass or not, she had really shitty taste in clothes.

She is going to fuck up your shit, bad.

Soon.

Tonight.

That’s all I have to say. Now you go on, have a nice evening…

***

What little time I have to myself recently is jealously guarded, and I cannot do the Tooty-Prudie dance every week as I’d like. I hate this, since DP-scream therapy remains my most effective form of sanity self-maintenance. I mean, you heard me whining up there, yeah?

As for all that pitiful whining about the weather, I need to be grateful I suppose. A very dear Flyster comrade of ours resides in the lovely, somewhat northerly city of Chicago. Weather right now says she’s living the dream amid a toasty, sunny temperature of 1. Former Californians like me cannot understand temperatures that are represented by only a single digit. It scares us, the way it would if we discovered the world was flat after all.

Break out the green paisley Snuggie, Messy. PM your address to me as well, and I’ll send you a bottle of small-batch Bourbon. Owe you one, I do.

Cheers, Flysters. May the stupid goddamn jet stream carry warmer climes your way soon…
STC =^oo^=

5 comments:

  1. Ah 'Cat, you know me so well! I've got out the fuzzy jammies, there's a movie waiting to be watched and the red wine is open already. Because it's cold outside. Really, really cold. Your beloved spouse knows about this kind of weather. I just don't like the reminder.

    Message coming your way.

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  2. Hey Schuyler you're back! Snow in North Carolina! What's the hell going on? Did Santa lose his compass? I've heard from my friends in Atlanta that when there's snow, everyone rushes to buy all the foodstuff from the grocery stores and particularly all the booze in town -- you need to keep warm with one inche of the strange cold white stuff on the ground!

    Hey, menopause (the female kind, don't know much about the male kind, though I'm told it also comes with hot flashes...) aint so bad, some women practically don't get any symptoms, particularly those with a young lover full of vim and vigor where it counts. So I would advice that lucky lady to keep her lover boy, marry him, or whatever it takes....

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  3. Hey Messy, that one degree temp. seems pretty scary, and then there's that famous Chicago wind... brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

    Here, we have rain rain and more rain. We're beginning to wish for snow even though we usually get floods when it melts....

    Keep warm with your fuzzies and wine = best medicine (warm the wine with a few spices for the cold --or how about a cup of hot tea with rhum and honey?)

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  4. Kati..how DARE you do that to good wine? *gasp* The Boy is still recovering from his faint!

    You can always tell how cold it is in our house by the positions of the cats on the bed. The colder it is, the closer to the pillows they try to sleep. I guess it IS like the furnace guy said, "If you want to find the warmest spot in the house, look for the cat."

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  5. a cat beats a heating pad everytime!

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