The Technological Evolution of Boyfriends

Two years ago, when I left my baby daddy, I had to get a cell phone. He had cut me off our plan. I made a pittance as a student nurse part time, was a full time student, and would require hundreds of dollars down to get my own cell phone plan at the time. I did what any reasonable ghetto fabulous newly single domestically abused woman would do. I got a Pay as You Go Phone.

It was ok, you know. It served it's purpose. I could be got a hold of, and could get in touch if need be. It wasn't any worse than any other cell phone I'd had. I still had to text a-b-c 1-2-3. It was REALLY EXPENSIVE THOUGH! Especially for what I got. I had to pay $1.00 a day just for the privilege of using it. Each text was fifty cents, if I didn't buy them in bundles. It was minimally functional, but costly, time consuming, and ultimately dissappointing. Kind of like my relationship with Mystery Science Theater (more to that later) aka My Baby Daddy.

After I graduated from nursing school, I was finally free to explore the cell phone world. So many people had Blackberries and iPhones. I wanted to play! I didn't commit for a long time. I wanted to see what my options were. Finally I settled on a smart phone. It had internet access, google, unlimited texting, Facebook. Coincidentally, I started dating a guy who was a major step up for me. He was a college grad, really cute, really smart, a hard worker. He made fun of my "magic phone", mostly my words with friends addiction. Said he wasn't into trendy stuff. Insisted it wasn't worth it, that his old regular phone served it's purpose and his bill wasn't nearabout as high as mine was. I laughed it off, considering him a hater cos he was locked in a contract with some old bobo phone.

I really loved my magic phone, y'all. So many nice features. I've spent several months getting really familiar with it, till I know my way around it without looking. Since then, the android generation of phones have come out. I have not been interested. Nothing would match up with my magic phone. It had everything I needed. I was not convinced with greater picture clarity, with access to all my favorite apps, with a better service plan. I know what I like about my set up and I'm into it.

Two weeks ago, my boyfriend cheated on me with his ex girlfriend. It occurs to me know that if he is the Blackberry to Mystery Science Theater's Go Phone, then my next boyfriend surely is an iPhone or an Android. The thing about technology (and boyfriends) is that yes! It's cute! Man, it's convenient knowing all the little details about this platform. Some of them are pretty amazing. But the fact remains that the technology out there is growing EVERY single day, and it's entire purpose in existing is to BLOW MY FUCKING MIND. And, while it's easy to hang onto this familiar little comfort zone, with all these aspects that are thoroughly explored and part of your language in life, that the new shit is really fun to play with.

It doesn't have to brag about it. It just demonstrates it. I don't have to convince it that it deserves my business. It wants me on it's plan more than anything. It needs me and celebrates my participation in it's success, and looks to me to know how it fails so it can improve. It does not blame me for it's fuckups.

So, goodbye Magic Phone. Hello, evolution.

Just Tell Him He's Ugly

My two daughters were having a very deep discussion after I picked them up from school yesterday. Audrey was complaining that a boy in her class yelled at her and was mean to her. Corrine, the elder, advised her,

"If that boy is mean to you, just tell him he's ugly. That's what I do."

to which Audrey responded,

"Well, he got in my face, and I pushed him down and then I stepped on him."

and Corrine advised, "Well that's awesome, but be sure to tell him he's ugly."

Let me take this moment to say HELL YES! My kids have al*ready* gotten ok with not letting a hater keep them down. But secondly, I'm super proud of my mini bitches. I've also come, vicariously, to the opinion, that being a bitch is one of the best things they can have going on for them for the scope of their lives.

I don't mean bitches in the bitch n moan sense of the word. Nobody likes a whiny bitch. I mean the bullshit it eschews when a woman is in possession of herself enough to carry on about her life whether or not they are approved of.

NOT chasing approval. NOT breaking down over a little speed bump in the road. NOT questioning the motivations of others. FEEDING your own growth and independence. Yes, I think it takes a bitch to turn the world around.

I'd also like to apply this to the male gender. It's recently dawned on me that men love bitches. That nice guy finish last nonsense is just that. Women chase assholes, men chase bitches. A guy I was seeing once was fairly obsessed with a girl who treated him like shit, didn't put out, and left him broken like, years ago. He was nice to me. We had fun together, but he was absolutely hung up on how he was treated by this bitch, and lets it inhibit his growth.

He's not the only one. I treated my ex like shit. I just had no interest in his efforts. He did not do it for me, as much time and effort I spent trying to convince myself otherwise. And he still makes suggestions at me, and does whatever I ask of him, and I wouldn't fuck him with Joan River's pussy.

In fact, all of the guys I know, have dated, been interested in, or even platonic friends who bemoan their relationships to me, ALL of them are obsessed with the bitches in their lives. The women who were not validated by a mere relationship state, and who are independent and proud of it. These men will get drunk and pour over pictures online, or become doe eyed saps in the presence of their exes (and currents), when the women in question were and are literally, cheating, lying, whoring, getting on with their lives bitches. And while the men themselves are doing this hindsight with rose colored lenses, the women are getting better jobs, stronger willed men, and everything they couldn't bring themselves to do with my friends and lovers.

I've been way too fucking nice my entire life, apparently. I'm taking a page out of my kickass kids' books and I'm just gonna tell him he's ugly.

Narcissism in the Morning

As an exercise, I decided to come up with thirty things that are fantastic about me. I got 32. Because I'm a narcissist, I am sharing them with you. I encourage you to make your own. It's really hella fun.

1. I named my kids after goddesses.
2. I laugh. Loudly. At inappropriate times.
3. I quit doing drugs a decade ago.
4. I have really pretty eyes.
5. I'm the biggest book nerd I know.
6. Despite a Lifetime Movie of the Week past, I'm independent and awesome.
7. I can do backbends.
8. My dancing inspired this comment recently; "Your ass does things I didn't know were possible."
9. I consider "fuck" and all it's variations punctuation. I'm still very smart and have standards.
10. I consider love a verb.
11. I survived Spinal Meningitis. Therefor, boys are fair game.
12. I taught ballroom dance.
13. I make people laugh, even when they are dying, or crying.
14. I worry incessantly.
15. I was bathing a dirty old man once when I was a student nurse. He groped my ass and died the next day. It's that awesome.
16. I can ride a horse and a 4Wheeler.
17. I'm a dead shot, but hate handguns.
18. I give blood in my patients' names.
19. I can talk myself into and out of any mood.
20. My friends trust and love me enough to testify for me if necessary.
21. I will *always* try to find the answer. Therefore, I'm always questioning.
22. I make up words. So did Shakespeare.
23. I love being a nurse.
24. I spend 90% of my waking hours taking care of, comforting, and loving others.
25. I know every word of Forrest Gump.
26. I speak fluent kitty cat.
27. I can talk to anyone, about anything.
28. I'm writing a book. Any similarities to actual people or events are purely coincidental.
29. I develop crushes easily and thoroughly.
30. I'm ok with going without makeup.
31. My teeth are straight and I've never had braces.
32. My life is fantastic and I'm excited to watch it get better all the time.

Straight, No Chaser

You know, there are only so many shots of tequila a girl can do before she's dancing, by herself, in the midst of a wide open empty floor, to booty music interludes between the emo wristcutting renditions of karaoke Chili Peppers. And apparently, that many for me is somewhere between two and seven.

I was informed the next day that my three hours spent dancing while leaving my decidedly Segzy but entirely un Byachlike designated driver to people watch and field questions from a brigade of my friends by himself, was stupid looking. A lone girl grooving by herself with every ounce of her never getting out soul looks strange when any other people who may decide to grace the dance floor are doing so in the one-two manner of rhythmless white folks everywhere. I'll take it as a compliment, honestly. I may have looked stupid but it is relative stupidity. I looked stupid only because I was rocking out, and everyone else was Rockaway. The sheer awesome of my flailing eclipsed the bored back and forth of everyone else. But I was probably too inebriated to notice at the time, anyways.

Other things I failed to notice on this particular night of debauchery include knives being pulled, a la West Side Story, my Freddie Krueger hat being pinched by no fewer than three people and the car window and STILL managing to make it home with me, that four inch stilettos and fourteen tequila shots are probably not the best mix for ambulation, and that my bartender failed to charge me for god knows how many drinks. Bless her bleach blonde heart.

See, this is what happens when you don't get out much. The buzz which occurs completely blinds you to things that totally warrant attention, as outlined above. MAN! I missed it all, but did I? No, I really didn't miss it. I don't miss it. I was doing one of the things that I count highest among my hobbies, which also included a hip hop rumba thing with an excellent and incredibly gay man. (Gay men are my favorite dance partners. I have no qualms whatsoever about getting down when being led by a skilled homo.) At any rate, how can you miss something you never were aware of? Like Scout Finch, who only missed reading when the right was removed from her, how can you miss breathing? You just do it. How do you miss amazing Brews of Our Lives drama unfold when you're busy being enveloped in your own universe of musculature manifestations?

That being said, gratuitous apologies to my DD for ignoring him, to my friends for having to purloin me from empty dance floors in order to garner my support for their own karaoke needs, and to the people who were utterly pwn'd in their attempts to dance by my fantastically fantastic interpretive art.

LOVE YOU BYACHES! <3

The Low Down from a High Horse

"Our emotions have a vibratory frequency to them. There are only two emotions that a human can experience: fear and love, while all other emotions branch out directly or indirectly from these two emotions. Fear has a long and slow frequency vibration to it while love has a very rapid and high frequency." -Erykah Badu, "Love" from her new amazing album, Return of the Ankh, pt 2.

You know, that shit just blew my mind. When I had the kids in New Orleans, we went to a play and there was this piece of art that you could put your hand on sculpture that is supposed to pick up your human energy and project it across Washington Square Park. Granted, it didn't work, but it said your hands had to be dry, and your palm had to be in just the right spot, and the Cosmos had to align on the fortieth day in the sixteenth hour, or something, but still. Dig the thought madly.

But as a concept, I think I'm on the same page as Erykah. And that's not my raging girl crush speaking. Maslow has his hierarchy, well I guess this is the Erykahrchy... Fear and Love. Each have their place and all other things are spawned from them. The yin and yang of the motivations in life. So much of how I've carried myself through this life has been motivated straight up out of fear. Fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of abandonment, fear of loneliness. But the flip of that same coin can and should be love. LOVE of potential, LOVE of adventure, LOVE of abandon, LOVE of self enough to never be lonely again. The last year gave me that love of myself. I will never be lonely. Alone, maybe, but never ever lonely. Loneliness is a waste of time and energy and the succubus of the spirit.

I love being inspired by strong women.