Jill Rants and Raves

Second try at New Year

Amazing, how many people want to know the gory details of what promise I broke so swiftly after New Year. The general principle seems to bore them, but the opportunity of finding out exactly what I did  seems to generate a rather worrying tabloid interest!!

Alright, so here it is. I promised the woman I am crazy in love with that I would stop being angry at her over another woman in her life. That instead of anger I would approach the whole situation with one of patient empathy. That instead of throwing verbal darts I would love her for who she is rather than who I wish she were. Who the hell was I kidding???

Love is a pain in the proverbial. I really don't do it very well. I warn anyone venturing into my warm water pool - watch out for the water snakes. And working on the assumption that everyone will leave in the end, what is the point of going through the beginning and the middle - let's just cut to the bloody chase. That would be the chasing off.
Why are some people so good at the art of compromise and some of us so utterly hideous? Why are
some compelled to 'tell the truth' and 'hear the truth' regardless of the fact that, when put on the spot, no-one tells the truth anyway? Why is it that while all the evidence points to the advantages of treading softly, some of us are incapable of taking our heftiest hiking boots off when dealing with someone else's feelings??

So, that was it. I promised not to batter someone's insecurities and failed. A perfect way to start the New Year. Except that this weekend was the start of the Year Of The Dog and I think I'll just pretend that my New Years Resolution was slated to begin on the Chinese New Year, and try to take my own advice. It'll definitely be a first. And as we are both dog lovers, nay, fanatics, I see this as a good omen!

Lesbians, Subarus and Heterosexual Imposters

So, I've been a bit quiet on the western front since I started writing my blog a month ago. Sort of - am I really cut out for this sort of thing reaction - but then when I was checking something online I came across my brother Alan's blog
My older, wiser, smarter  brother that is. My other brother is wiser and smarter too, just younger. The comment - written by a nice guy called Olaf - refers to me as Alan's 'left leaning sister in Berkeley'. That wouldn't be difficult as Alan has taken a decidedly right turn over the last decade. But what really got to me was the little comment that what my blog was missing was a photograph, and that he didn't want to sound 'macho' but that's just the way it is! Below the comment are some cheesecake pics that one might find on the pages of a calendar produced by an auto body shop.

I'm not going to humour Alan's prurient readers - he is a senior editor for a huge German newspaper - by providing a pin up. Suffice it to say, I'm short, in my 50's, and not afraid to describe myself as the kind of lesbian that men do not fantasise about when they are visualising their girlfriend and themselves in a threesome.

I love my big brother. And his blog is worth reading, even if you don't understand a word of German.

But this whole thing brought up a curious thought for me. Why is it that so many heterosexual married women over, say, 55, look just like graying soft butch lesbians? And don't their husbands mind? Because when they married these women thirty years ago, they didn't look like that, did they? Why is it, that as married couples morph into old age friendship, they begin to resemble each other?

They both wear khakis, his from Macy's Men's Department, hers from Nordstrom, he wears a blue button down shirt, she wears a faded checkered shirt, both wear sneakers or loafers. They both have pretty neat haircuts, hers may include color. They seem as comfortable as an old pair of socks.

They shop at the Garden Centre together and have breakfast at SunnySide cafe in Albany with their
grandkids. They all seem to drive station wagons, and like lesbians, most are driving Subarus, the official car of the Left Leaning East Bay. You just can't tell the difference anymore - dang it...

Lesbians of course do tend to have those discreet rainbow flag stickers, the ones you can barely see unless you're on top of their bumper. Or if they aren't discreet, they have bumperstickers like: 'well behaved women rarely make history ' (yawn) or 'women make great leaders - you're following one' (groan). Recently I was relieved to see a sticker on the back of a vehicle that said 'Earth First - we'll colonise the rest later'!! Mind you, it wasn't on the back of a Subaru but on a cement truck.
And it wasn't driven by a heterosexual posing as one of us.

I think we are going to have to try harder to stand out from the crowd, and I feel this particularly strongly as I'm heading towards my mid fifties - oh my god, did I really say that? I'm going to have to work out how not to be mistaken for a heterosexual This is not something I've ever worried about in my life. I think that the two small dogs on my lap while I'm driving don't help, especially as they lean out of the window for all to see while my bigger, more lesbian identifiable dogs are sprawled out on the back seat so no-one can see them. I'm going to have to force Frank the border collie to stand up.

But perhaps the easiest way would be to just run a photo on my brothers blog site, wearing a Tshirt
that says Thrasher Magazine, clutching a Bitburger Pilsener in one hand, and holding a bumper sticker that proclaims 'Thank You For Not Breeding'. Even though it refers to dog and cat breeding, who could tell?

Oh yes, it's the New Year

New Year Resolutions are made to be broken. I broke mine within 24 hours of making it, and honestly, I feel sick about it. Because it wasn't anything so simple as quitting smoking ( I've never smoked), or stopping drinking ( I already leave half a beer in my first bottle) or losing 10 pounds on a crash diet ( I lost 20 pounds by taking up jogging and rowing), and in case you think I'm being superior about all my good qualities, let's just get this clear. There's no point in making a resolution that you know is an easy call. Resolutions are meant to be challenging. Thery are meant to signal a willingness to change. And they are meant to bring a smile to your face in case of success.
I did mean the resolution I made. But a day later, I have broken it in the worst way. I promised I wouldn't get angry at something, something that has been getting me angry for 6 months. So what was the point of it? Did I think that hanging this promise that I obviously had no intention of keeping, on New Years and the promise of a new dawn - how Californian, how totally horribly 'feel good' ish - would somehow bring it to reality?
New Years resolutions are simply our worst way of doing the same thing over and over with no real way of changing. After all, from midnight and Auld Lang Syne to 8 am the next morning in the rain not much has changed except the need to buy three calendars for $10 at the local bookstore and the endless crossing out of wrongly dated checks. And so, from the moment the New Year is born, it feels tainted. What is it that makes us repeat patterns over and over even though we know how nasty it feels immediately we have done it. In that regard we are still pretty dog like. My border collie goes into a down stay after he's nipped a puppy in the face even before I have a chance to react. He's like "I know, it was screwed up, I know. I know. I just couldn't help myself" Knowing the inevitable reaction, he still does the dirty deed. The punishment clearly is worth it. The pain and suffering obviously works or why would we keep bringing down the agony upon ourselves. if we really wanted to be pain free, drama free and different, what's stopping us?