the hip - 100th meridian (I remember Buffalo lalala)

 (psst you're an idiot)

In April 1972, three American astronauts climbed into a spacecraft and took a trip to the moon and back. On the second day of the 11-day jaunt, pilot Ken Mattingly removed and misplaced his wedding ring. In the zero-gravity conditions, it drifted off and disappeared somewhere in the cabin. Nine days later, on the way home, Mattingly and Charlie Duke did a space walk. When they opened the hatch and slipped outside, they found the wedding ring floating in the blackness of space. Duke was able to grab it and bring it in. I suspect that in the coming weeks, you will recover a lost or missing item in an equally unlikely location, Virgo. Or perhaps your retrieval will be of a more metaphorical kind: a dream, a friendship, an opportunity.

A brief reprieve.  Open houses start again in a couple hours. I have a headache like an anvil. Sleep deprivation and fast food diet and hours of driving every day.

The new house is 2 blocks inside the city of Buffalo on the north end apx 30 min closer and 15 minutes from work. As I sit here feeling like I can't possibly manage this move without my physical and mental health buckling, I am promising myself goodies to get me through it: for the first 6 months, I am going to park the jeep in the garage and uber to work, no driving no circling for parking, curb to curb service for my exhausted ass.

I have not been this tired since the last time I gave birth. I just prayed to Jesus for help and I don't believe in Jesus.

X_x

VIRGO You're going to do the brave thing — not because you have less to lose (if you had nothing to lose, it wouldn't be brave) but because you realize more than the others do that your action is what's sorely needed.

Faculty council president this week. Every time, (EVERY TIME) I think about this.

 kings of leon - use somebody

 I am just lying here naked in the morning sun alone.

My baby. Up for adoption (wa!)

My agent thinks it so sells itself that it barerly needs any effort. Forgot the pond pics, got the year wrong, etc. Like it is chum in the water. If he is right (it IS his business) finefine. If not, I will have to rent it then fix the other one somehow then flip back here. Or take a bath on 5k deposit on the other one (can't, got mouths to feed).

Risks like these are kickass hard to navigate.

I taught Bikram today for the first time in years. First time ever on campus. How to kick your own ass to hold steady. Trust me, you will need that skill like hell.

Still totally freaking out. I can hardly believe I am doing this. I worked so hard on this house and it is so ME in all the choices I made fixing it up. Leaving it feels like being shot out of my own womb.

But. I am praying it all it works out and someone else will fall in love with MEhouse and be happy here. There is no reason left for me to be here. I have to move to move on. And I am homesick for my city too. My lentils, my csa, my theater, my yoga studio, my oldJewishpeople gym. My Elmwood strip nutjobs. If I have a hometown, Buffalo is it. In this place, where everyone has some wall decal about love and laughter, I have been given nothing but bullshit and tears. I want to go home. Where 'kiss my ass' is the city motto. Where everyone is foulmouthed and in a hurry and more kind than polite. West Seneca and North Tonowanda can both go straight to hell. Sheeple.

Divesting and cleaning. The brewery and patio set given away. Toys purged. Clothes consigned. It is picture perfect. As if I was hardly here except invisibly. Which feels about right. Like, that is my typical trace on things I have loved. My effort is just absorbed, so eventually I self-erase.

One of the hardest parts of selling a house is that you've made it awesome in order to do that. You've poured months into it, fixing and finishing.You're breaking things off just when things are in perfect harmony. It is harder than you think to do that emotionally.

But it has to be done. So you do it. Another lesson in how things go in life, generally, and that you always do what ya gotta do.

I have known my agent since my first home in Buffalo. 18 years! I love him. It is inherently valuable to know people for a very long time. To me, that has inherent value. His jeep is in the shop, the loner is a giant ford excursion. He gets here with the contract, jumps out if it and says, "I feel like the best dressed lesbian I know in this thing." He does that, makes me laugh when he knows this stuff kills me. He watches the Young&Restless, day tv soap operas, so that he can kibbitz with old ladies who are heartbroken to be selling their homes when they can't take care of them anymore. That'll be me, 2-3 more houses from now. My heart is breaking. He gives me a hug. "I have known you a long time and here is my sense: you've done very well for yourself, and this is the logical next step of continuing to do that. The house you just bought, you will make it stunning again, and it will be worth a great deal, and you'll feel good about doing that."

I sniff back more tears. And hand over the pics of my beloved pond. 😢😭

site of the illfated handfasting - new owners will be shocked and bemused to find trainwreck's lifesize rose quartz penis tucked in the waterlillies, to do with what they wilt

I am kinda scaring the shit out of myself with this house stuff. Soo much to do, every day feels 4 days long. I take it in shifts and sleep only in naps. The last time I did this, 2008, the banks all shut down right in the middle of the process over the mortgage crisis, the historically worst time to be mortgaging anything. But I wanted the house. And I wanted my Greek. So I HELD steady.

Sooo many similarities of factors. Crazy interest rate fluctuations / financial sector meltdown, two houses on my hands, and a Greek who is not my boyfriend in the mix somehow. And leaving a home I had such high hopes of happiness in, dashed, now in search of a new plotline. Homesick by half over it.

The most perplexing aspect at the moment is the Greek. I don't know what to do with that. My Greek has been 1000% fickle concerning me for over a decade - so this one's sudden adoration is just plain odd and disturbing. If he weren't Greek, he would just be a guy, who would remind me of guys, who all sucked. But this one is texting me from Kingston atm like uncanny invasion of the body snatchers. Reminding me of the only man I ever loved whom I didn't wind up knowing as a son of a bitch. Whom I still like and even admire. But whose fickleness is, truth be told, another reason I have to leave this town because sitting here at his feet at the base of Canada is pointless and annoying.

Him: Valentines day is next week.
Me: Yeah. I hate that holiday. I buy puppies I will regret over it sometimes.
Him: I don't want you to think I am a lunatic. So probably 14 dozen roses would be overdoing it?
Me:
Him: Too much?
Me: No. (Yes!!!)

I remember the little single candy my Greek gave me in 2006, grumpily protesting that the holiday was just to trap men into spending money on useless crap. I thought it was so fucking cute.

I still have it. And his smell, unlike anyone else's on this earth, stuck in my nose.

*pang*

Colorwheels are online now.

Nowadays, you can rub one out then shop colors and countertop combos right in your warm comfy bed.

This is all going to upset my sleep patterns even more. I am awake -_0 feeling the adrenaline of a million things to do.

Jasper is lying on me at every turn as if he senses change and doesn't want me to leave him behind. Not a chance buddy, love is absolute with me, I HOLD it wherever I go come what may.

Since it is quiet, I am just crunching numbers.  If all goes well, it will be a lateral move moneywise. My mortgage debt will go up but my cash out should just about match it - mortgage interest is still the major tax break for someone like me so higher debt in that category makes sense as long as for peace of mind I have several years of mortgage payments stashed just in case of...um, just in case of what I dunno cz I am a vested teacher so not rich at all but safe. Like the Greeks, more practical than greedy. And moving now means come my sabbatical this is all settled, the payments on autopay from the stash. Home base being back by my old red house in the former Little Greece blocks, but I can still go/be anywhere.

Omg moving itself, however, is gonna be back breaking. Oyyyy siiiigh.

I paid ahead of time for a home inspection so my offer could waive the right to it, a $400 longshot bet. That won it. There were offers for more $, but I gave them the best terms. I bet that Greeks are more practical than greedy. And I was right.

Need will light a fire under your ass. If you need food, you will forage. Want is more delicate than Need. Harder to identify, let alone sustain and pursue. I don't Need anything. I have been depressed, struggling with feeling just miserabley old. In a perfectly okay life, my job isn't coal mining, my family is great. Nothing wrong. But I just feel dulled and dusty. Depressed. Ya feel that way for too long, it starts to feel like dying by inches.

I got to feel like myself again this week. A person who knows how to go after what she Wants. That is what I Needed.

 back to Kansas (Parkside)

Men and houses both cost way more over time than the sticker price. The house MIGHT be worth it.

At least one of the Greeks thinks I am his future wife. Whoa man. Not much happens on the relationship front in my life. I do not seek out new men, at all. And when someone tries to flirt with me, it reminds me of the past. So, for instance, it strikes me as funny and sad what a cheater must feel when someone comes on to them hardcore 'I can't stop thinking about you' type shit. Cz who can they tell or talk to? Like, 'omg the shit he said about my eyes' or whatever. Ya know? I guess Trainwreck told his mother, chittering behind my (his best friend's) back. If you had ever loved a cheater, you would understand. Every romantic interlude makes you think something about them like that. 'I wouldn't be here if you hadn't betrayed me'. Like memory mind poison.

And tonight it struck me too: that must be how John feels about me. I remind him. So. I musta made him miserable. (I'm sorry.)

In response to my thank you note to the Greek roofer, I got back "You're welcome - you have a good taste in a house it is a beautiful house" and I got horny reading it. gigglegiggle. I am not sure if that is because his slight accent is in the grammar (blush) or if that is a surge of housepride to my panties or what.

You can't not take a selfie in here. It is like when you try to capture it, the house also captures you. I reallllly should try not be so turned on by it, it's Greek so it will inevitably play impossible to actually get. But I can't help it. I am smitten.

The real estate agent is Greek, the house is owned by the orthodox church so says the Greek neighbor old guy who came over to gossip when he saw me there again, and he decided I am 'nice pretty'. It was built by one of a set of Greek bros who built most of the neighborhood which used to be called 'little Greece' in the 40s when the Greek bros who owned all the theaters threw big hollywood parties there. There is a huge old theater poster inside w them in portrait from then. The old guy says the weird boothseat built in the kitchen is from some old movie wherein Marlene Dietrich kissed someone or other, given as a souvenier to this illustrious Greek family, all dead now. The Greek roofers offered to fix the roof and be paid later to make the mortgage easier to get, cz we have history together now and all. Then the agent offered to drive all the way here to get my offer, 'I want to see you again' (blush). On my way there today I noticed this sign just up the road and thought it was funny. But now that I see it, I see it - it is a Greek ghost town neighborhood.

I made this a week or so ago. Taught myself how to make that delicious gyro lamb spam:

It was a kind of spell, I guess, that day-long process of compressing spices and meat and milk. It did not get me what I had in mind. I got some kind of Greek-adopted instead.

Better than Polish (they're mean).

And I am awake, putting my furniture into my new house in my head, like I did before I won the bidding war on the house I am in now.

"beauty mark"

He can't meet me early because he is doing a favor for a friend. Later when I am supposed to go back through it, he texts that he will be an hour late because he has to take his mom to the dr. Finally he shows up and we go in. Mirrors are evvvverywhere in this house, like on every figgin wall there are wallmirrors, even above the stove.

Him: sorry!, my mother blabla (about some growth on her lip yadayada)
Me: I can't get away from myself in here, every time I turn a corner there I am again jeezus
Him: must have been Greek
Me: Greeks like mirrors? 
Him: a Greek man can't walk by a mirror and not look at himself
Me: haaaaaaaaaaahahahaha that is hilarious, peacock tendencies lol
Him: I am doing it right now, see?, I can't help myself
Me: ahhhh YOU're Greeeeek now I get it, the mom thing
Him: yes, I am a helicopter son
Me: hahahahahahaha o man that is funny, and now I am noticing that your belt buckle and shoes and jacket all coordinate spiffily
Him: always! you must have Greek  experience, but you're Sicilian?
Me: yup the only bummer thing about moving back to the city is never again seeing my Greek Canadian exnotboyfriend who I already never see, except that in the friendzone he is very helpful and might show up to give me a hand with IKEA
Him: lol naturally, we are very helpful in friendzones it is true
Me: I hope so because that blown light fixture is going to need replaced asap
Him: tell him he can look at himself from any angle as he replaces it
Me: lol I will try that but it is a far drive
Him: I married a Canadian Greek girl, and she is still there, 4 hours away
Me: haaaaaaaaaaahahahaha ya, it's best to let a Greek have a lot of elbow room, like their own separate nation from yours
Him: lol I do miss my 9-year-old daughter but it is kind of worth it
Me: because no offense but wow you are not good compromisers at all
Him: fair! yea I just make the drive, I take my daughter to Lewiston a lot actually
Me: (snort) Lewiston, the demilitarized zone between Buffalo and Greece
Him: haaaaaaaaaaahahahaha it is! What do you think of the yard?
Me: my least favorite part of the house but the garage would make a great Polish porch
Him: haaaaaaaaahahahaha it would!, impressive that you know the quirks of Poland as well
Me: uh huh, quite the accomplishment, hard earned
Him: is that what you got your PhD in?
Me: haaaaaaaaaaaaahahahaha kinda!

Bonkers bidding war is gonna go down and I don't gamble much. But my undercover realtor bud creamed his jeans over it too, is pushing me to go balls to the wall, with rehab greedyiggles, "fuck, all the windows are lead! offer what it takes to get this, I am telling you it's worth it!!"  I love what is hard and worth it to love. I have an eye for it.

Weekend love horoscope VIRGO: It's the look from across a crowded room that will be remembered most. (In a mirror? That could be kinda fun [snort]..)

You would have to know about construction to know how a cathedral ceiling even fits in a brick bungalow with a bedroom above half of it and the other half goes into the attic and from the attic you look down through the floor onto the roof of the cathedral ceiling as if it is OUTSIDE. This is exactly my kinda dealio, a house built in the batshit style that will surely prompt every handyman I hire to shake his head like wtf. Other fun details include a built-in loveseat in the kitchen, bonkers pink wallpaper in every room, and the gutters are COPPER painted peeling latex pink (yes the outside is also pink everywhere) with the green patina of the copper glowing inside of them.

I don't like the yard. And no clawfoot tub. So I might not bite. But I might. I am going back through with my realtor buddy to get his sense of it. If nothing else, I wanna show somebody else who knows enough about houses to appreciate it. These are the kinds of things I do miss having a man for, a mannytype man. I just love rehab adventures.

Ah well. It does need a roof right away so if I get it, I will at least be hanging with a horde of smellynice greeks again for a week (as they shake theirs heads wtf nooo doubt lol).

I maybe have found a house in the city. I have kicked the tires of many nice houses but none of them felt like mine. I was beginning to wonder if my picker WAS broken, like I had no taste for life any more. Then the minute I saw this house, blammo. My type, a one of a kind giant pain in the butt. Yummy.

The $ of it would be crazyhard and scary, kids in school nobody to help ... But, Fuck It: I want what I want. (That works less well with people than with houses.)

We shall see, I have finite resources and the house will surely go to bidding war that I will likely lose - Unlike my taste in people, my taste in impossibly built fallingdown old brick/stone houses has a hipster cache now. Like avocado toast. But it was worth the effort to feel a desire-bloom. When Want moves through me at an object of desire, it is a stronger feeling than any other. Like a surge of 'I can really hold a thought just try me' superpower.


dorothy - medicine man

my type (sturdy)