I wonder if that’s one of the things tonsils are for: virus targets so your throat doesn’t get damaged.

It’s a bit of a challenge to be the girl, but I’m learning.  I think that in missing him so much for so long and in the excitement of finally getting him back, I forgot some of the duty part of the role: pit crew.  He is so independent, strong minded, and strong willed that though I did pretty well at being nurturing and caring, I didn’t do so well at not being overly demanding of attention.  When I found myself having to remind him that I understood that he might not be able to call very often since I’ve been in the military too, I realized that it was because in some other ways I was not behaving as if I understood.  So I have that in check now.

It’s an important thing to be supportive of your man’s occupation and/or mission.  I have some of my own, but being female, I think like a Lernaean hydra.  I can multitask until I literally run out of energy.  At this very moment, I am giving my hands a break from  beading an Oya eleke by writing in my blog, and simultaneously composing a poem in my head for two binding scrolls while considering with what essential oils I will anoint the same.

…but mine is physically and mentally light work.  No plane is going to fall from the sky because dove doesn’t exactly rhyme with wove.  No ship is going to sink because my reading light flickers a little when you turn it on.  Nobody’s going to burst into flames because of an accidental extra bead.  If I sneeze from smoke while consecrating a talisman, the Orishas are not going to give me a dishonorable discharge.  Well, maybe  little discharge of mucous, which Eshu would find funny and remind me that for all my lofty ceremonial efforts, I am still just a mortal.

Many men’s work is so far away from that.  Lives are on the line.  My man’s work is like that, so if I’m going to be in a relationship with someone with that heavy a job to do, I have to help rather than hinder.  He has enough stress in his life.  So I’m not putting my little wants aside for him, though I’d be happy to if it pleased him.  I’m putting them aside because the work he does keeps bombs from falling on my home for another day.  On days it doesn’t, then I can be fairly sure the people who launched them will get a few back.

No, it’s not politically correct or peaceful, and yes I understand that politicians and the rich don’t give a crap about us and treat us like pawns in their deadly game.  Still, peace will take a very long time to accomplish.  Death happens in an instant.  I also don’t believe that war happens because of the politicians or how they use soldiers.  It happens because deep down, the will of the people of any nation is imperialist.  They let the politicians draw them into conflicts because that is what they want.  They want to kill their enemies/the other whether or not they are a real threat.  This is human nature.

Some people’s nature is not like that, or it’s well enough under control that they can keep a balance, but this is very few people.  Most people, like the spectators at human sacrifices of old, like to know that the government is willing to shed blood to preserve their society.  It makes them feel secure.

I can’t say I’m either average or a peacenik.  I don’t feel secure and never have under any kind of government.  I understand very well that security through institutions is an illusion.  For me, only love is security.  I am grateful to my family and friends for this.  It’s “you and me” security.  When a group with a supposed “common good” is so large that I don’t really know where everybody in its’ head is at, I no longer feel safe that my good is important.  It’s why I have few friends.

If we argue, we can work it out eventually because at some point we knew each other never really wants to hurt the other.  If we hurt each other, we know it wasn’t on purpose, so even if it takes awhile for us to find our way back to one another, we do.  Love is cool like that…a coolness with one another that conquers just about anything in time because it’s not “common good”.  It’s your good and mine.  It’s personal.

Hearkening back to a bit older post, it’s kinda freeing to know who was the bitch.  I’m not sure if I’d feel that security if I hadn’t come down off my pedestal.  It may have been just a rickety stack of palettes held together with duct tape, and straining under my weight, but it was pretty damned high.

So my inner princess has to roll up her dainty little sleeves and keep a nice, comfortable nest.  She has to sit quietly or bring snacks while her prince is watching television or at the computer.  She has to let him sleep peacefully and long on the weekends.  It’s cool.

There are so many little things that get neglected, overlooked, and pushed aside when one is unboyfriended.  When it’s just a matter of an occasional visitor who doesn’t really care much, you don’t have to care much about what they think or see aside of smelling good and shaving.  With a boyfriend, he’s actually going to see your room in the light of day and the environment will affect him.

 Then there is the state of readiness.  Though my boyfriend is in the army, and I don’t know when I’ll get to see him, I don’t know when I’ll get to see him so I should always be ready.  There’s also things like making sure one’s whole body is touchable.  I’m cool except for my heels.  For them, I might have to bring in a professional; get an actual pedicure.  I’ll try to smooth them out myself, but DIY is never the same for some reason.  Maybe it’s about the angle of attack.

Last, but not least, there is the shift from bro to boyfriend.  Some things are appropriate to joke about and discuss with or around bros that are inappropriate to go into with a boyfriend or in the presence of one.  For example, certain body functions, he should suspect that I have by virtue of my being human, but never know about from direct observation.  For as long as I can keep it so, he should think that if I do actually excrete anything but evidence of loving enthusiasm, it must be made of roses, sandalwood and vanilla or something.  Fortunately, I was not in bro mode with him long enough for him to find out otherwise.

So this weekend, I was on high alert, but things went smoothly.  Well, that is until we got some very bad news.  He handled that very well too.  There isn’t much he can do about it, but it’s very cool that he cares.

However, armed with what is now a few years of truth time, honest bro input, and a brief stint of fangirling practice, I beat that bitch to death, burned her corpse, and threw her ashes to the wind along with my caution.  I sang my pitiful truth with no expectations or demands.  It needed to be said, so I said it.

As hard as I’ve tried not to, I do still love him.  Much to my amazement, he was happy about that.  So then there was the question of what to do about it.

We were supposed to meet that weekend, but he couldn’t come.  Then there were a few days when I thought he might be blowing me off.  I was pissed off and feeling insecure, and I got a cold for the first time in years.  In a diphenhydramine haze, I posted some crap that was vague but still crap.  Then shortly after that he called me to tell me why he was out of touch for awhile.

Feeling stupid, but happy, I apologized for the bitchy relapse and have made a promise to myself not to post on cold medicine anymore.  We finally did meet on Thursday night.  Though Voodoo ceremony has to be somewhere on the list of top ten worst first dates, he managed pretty well.  Well, until one of my bros did the protective Big Gay Dude Protective Sister thing.  There was a method to his badness though.

While I cringed sitting on the edge of the balcony, the jaw dropping moment came when Diva flat out asked Papa II if he loved me.  For a split second, I was utterly stunned.  I could hear that slow motion ,”Noooooooo!” in my head, and though my brain was telling me to tackle Diva, I could not move.  I just blinked my eyes.

Then Papa II answered that yes he does.  I blinked some more.  I didn’t know what to say or do.  My heart was prepared to shatter but then it didn’t.  So it melted.

After the ceremony, we talked awhile more, and well…the details are not for public consumption.  However, I will say that what’s happening is weird and beautiful.  Maybe it’s beautiful because it’s weird.

So now I just have to not screw it up again.  This time, I’m letting him be the man because really, I have no choice.  I understand now in a way that I didn’t a few years ago, that I cannot be the man in any relationship with a man no matter how hard I try.  If I try, I’m just going to do it wrong.

I don’t have the balls.  I’m a pussy, so if I try to presume to be the leader, my answer to every upset is going to be to run and hide or start a stupid conflict that shouldn’t exist.  Those are the only tools in the female in a heterosexual relationship toolkit: escape or proactive and presumptuous aggression.

It’s my job to be there, be supportive, and be sweet and pretty unless in the process of being supportive I must be un-sweetened and get dirty in order to get the job done.  That’s a lot of work.  He can do the directing.

I just hope I got certain of my grandmother’s good genes.

She’s a good woman, or at least his only complaint is that she’s too religious (Muslim) so I’ll show mercy.

I wonder if I indirectly had something to do with their getting back together.  I really hope so.  I mean, if one is going to be the other woman or in this case, the what-he-can-get-after-a-split, one might as well do some good.  I may not be much in the general market, but in my age group, I’m alright enough to cause some anxiety.  So if I helped her in some small way to understand that his life wasn’t going to end because she got her priorities mixed up, then that’s a good thing.  One more woman has gained a bit of sense.

So now I definitely don’t have a boyfriend.  I do have a friend though.  On the other side of the abyss, I can say that and actually be able to relate to what he’s going through instead of just being butthurt about my loss.  It really is cool.

So the plan basically continues as before.  I’ll stick with the lesser evils when I’m in need, so I can stay focused on work.

So I re-established hope with the lesser evils, Hannibal and Sky.  I figured one of them would do the job of providing enzymes without making me feel like crap for it.  It might seem callous of me to speak of them that way, but I have crossed the 40 mark and completely run out of sympathy for people who consider me worth less than harpies who abuse them.

Since Hannibal was doing the best job of not dumping his sob stories on me, he kinda won.  I say kinda because just as I’d butched myself for the idea of smiling and trying my best not to be clinical, I got a message from Prince‘s daughter about why he’s been out of communication for 9 months.  Then later, I got a call from him.  The dumping didn’t happen, just travel mishaps and being at sea.  Apparently, I still have a boyfriend.

If all goes well, he’ll be in Israel again in about a week.  It might be a little crazy to date a guy I’m only going to see a couple of times a year, but it sure beats humiliating myself every week with Israeli guys who are incapable of caring about me for whatever reason.

If it doesn’t work out, it’ll be for a normal reason, and not because he believes he’s the member of the master race or some crap.

He made his decisions, and walks the path he chose for himself.  I walk the path I chose for myself.  I chose not to marry dishonestly.  He did.  His screw up is not my fault, and not my problem.  I have as much sympathy for him being trapped as he has for my being low value in his estimation.

I’m sure most guys can understand.  It’s like when a woman constantly complains about what a jerk her boyfriend or husband is, and yet she keeps going back to him after bleeding her grief all over you.  The only consolation I have is that, as a female, at least there’s some sex at the end as payment for my pointless therapy.  If I had no desire for intimacy, I’d be wading neck deep in dingaling.  As I am though, I have no motivation to listen to their sob stories about the whores they married.

Cuz’s wife tried to get him to sign over the house his parents bought to her.  Slick’s wife, I’m positive, attempted to poison him with foxglove or something similar.  His symptoms cleared up as soon as he stopped eating at home.  Yet they keep going back.

So whenever they call me trying to get back in, I really have only myself to blame for being desperate enough to fall for it in the past.  It’s just that for my future, I don’t need a guy who thinks I’m worth less than a woman who tries to steal from their children or poison them.  They’re just calling me to remind me how worthless I am to them.

In other news, I’m not selling at the farmer’s market at the auditorium anymore.  The managers made some kind of deal with the Greg cafe, and we’re no longer allowed to sell takeaway orders…and we have to tell people not to take the food into the auditorium.  Yeah right.

These are mostly older Jewish people who’ve been to hell and back.  I’m not telling them what to do with their money or their food.  I’m also not going to capitulate to a crappy cafe with terrible service and substandard desserts I wouldn’t even feed a rat I liked, much less a human.  So I’m taking normal orders again.  I like this better anyway.

I kinda want to avoid their being labelled as health food because they’re not really.  They’re just a less horrid way to “cheat” for natural dieters.  It’s a kind of, “If you’re going to do something wrong, do it right,” thing.  I hope that it will serve as a kind of “gateway drug” to get people hooked on eating naturally.  I do want to inspire some shock and awe when I tell folks that each of the spice cakes only has a tablespoon of sugar and two tablespoons of honey in the whole thing, and that was just for the sake of moisture and browning.

We’ll see how things go.  This is the first time I’m selling without specific requests.  So I’m doing some semi conventional and some more nourishing.  Even the conventional ones are going to be old fashioned.  I know they’ll sell well because it’s just like Great Grandma would make it…well, sort of.  I’m using yogurt instead of less exact soured milk.

What’s making them stink is too much sugar (responsible for the yeasty or sour rancid bready smell), vegetable, especially soy oil (dead fishy smell), vanillin, and whatever awful chemical vomit they use to make artificial grape and orange flavoring.  What’s worse is that they put some of this horrible stuff in perfumes that really make matters worse.

Summer is coming.  Please stop eating garbage.

The weather is getting warmer, so people’s smell is really starting to matter.  Since about last year, I’ve been very aware of people’s smell, and perhaps a little retroactively embarassed.  Did I used to smell like that?  How could people stand to be around me then?

Of course I wonder what it must have been like for my exes who ate more traditionally home made food most of the time.  No wonder they didn’t think much of me.  I probably smelled like a raw fish stuffed with Skittles.