the Heart Approaches What It Yearns

From a chat conversation with a friend, who (I am thankful) doesn’t read this blog (or does she? better check the hits log):

Never thought of that. So, after taking a few minutes to check my lucky Merriam Webster’s Used Student Dictionary (and the online version) and finding that definition #4 supporting her claim, I replied:

Just as I was logging out last night, KK sent me that photo she took Saturday night, out back in the drizzle. Porch light on, but it’s fun being at least a mile away from any other neighbors – and half of them were inside listening to Monsieur’s Combo du Jazz Hot.

Tom-Tom the drummer was going in a rhythm that made me freaking randy as all hell, and Monsieur played guitar and Mistah Floyd sat in on piano. Monsieur and Floyd both sang. Monsieur sounds cool when he sings jazz, like he wears a fedora and trench coat. I got up to bus the room and KK helped, then in the kitchen I looked at her with a gleam.

“Got your camera phone?” I asked.

She pulled it out of her hip pocket. “Beaver shot?” she asked, hopefully I’m sure.

“Not this time, love,” I said, and we slipped out back.

It was a little chilly, can you tell?

Happy Half-Nekkid Thursday.

I didn’t mention it but a few weeks ago I sold my Saturn to pay off a credit card. I felt like it was the smartest financial move I have made in a while. After all, I’m always hauling 3 kids around so I might as well use the family minivan. I don’t go into town to work at the restaurant job anymore, right? And it makes me feel close to Maggie – it was her van.

But yesterday the oil seal on Monsieur’s car melted/vaporized as he was doing 75 mph on the highway, (why do they still use oil seals? why can’t they use a more reliable sea mammal?) spraying oil into a fine mist all over the inside of his engine compartment, and causing the engine to “throw a rod,” whatever that means. Monsieur found out about it tonight from the mechanic.

He told me about it after kids’ bedtime, and said that it will be a hardship. Maggie – well I don’t want to dwell on it but she was manic depressive. When she was manic, she didn’t choose wisely in her spending decisions. When she was depressive, she didn’t want to be around the world and (I say this with all the love for her I have) the world didn’t want to be around her either.

The short story is that when she passed away, she left over $28,000 in consumer debt.

Monsieur’s primary goal right now is to get out from under that, and he sat me down at the living room table with his bills and my bills and we basically figured out that there is no room for a car payment right now. We’re going to be a one-car family out in the country for a while. His look of utter embarrassment confused me, but I think he really thought I would freak out or there would be pouting or an argument or something. And there wasn’t. I said, “well, you take me and the kids to school, and I teach and you pick us up as soon as you can. We get up a little earlier. We plan trips carefully. And, oh yeah,” I remembered, then I picked up my VISA card and a pair of scissors and cut it in two, “we all do our part.”

There was a bit of a pause and he said, “I really was more concerned with my financial situation than yours – although that is often a wise thing to do.”

“My financial situation is intertwined with yours, “ I said, thinking, Shouldn’t this be obvious? “Monsieur, I don’t want to be at this table looking at a similar mess this time next year.”

We talked a bit and he admitted to feeling bad about being under this mountain of debt, and told me of his troubles looking for additional contract work, attempting debt consolidation, talking to neighbors to see if they would be willing to take parcels of his property (they aren’t; these “gentleman ranchers” are about as cash poor as it comes).

“Don’t sell the farm,” I said, remembering my daddy’s troubles back during the 90s farm crisis.

“Oh, cherie, it is hardly a farm.”

“It’s your kids’ house. They got to live somewhere.” He looked at me. I nodded. “We’ll work it out. It’s what we do best.”

I think the thing that was really making me feel good about it all was the fact that he was not just telling me about it, but including me in on it. I was in the loop. I was part of the family, and not just a live-in nanny-with-benefits. He was looking at my bills, too, as part of the family debt. I felt like, well, like a domestic partner.

I put my hand on his knee. He looked at my hand for a minute, and then he covered my hand in his. “I have somehow felt … not as romantic … partly because of this worry,” he said.

“I can understand that. But you know, if you had no house, and no car, and you lived in a tar-paper shack out on the prairie, you’d still have me trying to put my hand on your knee.” He looked at me for a minute, and I said, “maybe even further up.” I smiled, sliding my hand even further up his leg, then resting it there.

“Are you quite sure of this whole situation?” he asked, so softly I could barely hear him.

“This whole situation?” I asked. “Well, no, I’m not sure of everything. Not the whole situation. But I’m pretty sure I’m here to stay.”

“Of that particular situation, I would be in agreement.” He moved my hand even further up. “In this particular situation, I am also … in agreement.” I smiled. I leaned over, kissed him slowly, and thus emboldened, I slid my hand up and in my hand, I cupped the thickest, fattest hard-on that my hand had ever cupped.

“Is that for me?” I said after the kiss.

“Mais oui,” he replied, “if you would deign to have it.”

I unzipped him and got him undressed, then I pulled my jammies off and straddled his waist, before he could change his mind. Kissing him sweetly, tenderly, I lowered myself onto his thick cock and made gentle love to him, muffling my moans by biting his shoulder.

So, I lost one ride. But the one I got was all good.

Breakfast tacos.

We don’t have them in eastern Sedgwick County, and you gotta go quite a ways – at least a mile – to get them if you live in ultra-hipster Westport, Kansas City.

However, in what the clueless ditto-heads of this red state refer to as the People’s Republic of Austin, one can find that capitalism is alive and well in the form of breakfast tacos made, one at a time, if not lovingly, by small brown hands attached to that great symbol of free enterprise, the undocumented business owner in a small trailer on the side of the road. Back during the heyday of the free enterprise system in the late 1600s, the ancestors of this proud population created a concoction based on the most universal of foodstuffs, the flat grilled bread known as a tortilla. While the Cornish have their pasty, and the Irish have their soda cracker, the mighty mestizos of Vespucciland are prepared to bring the 2006 election cycle of the United States to a tizzy fed largely on what they call el breakfast taco. Stuffed with egg and potato, or bacon and cheese, or barbacoa which is, I assume, some form of native marsupial[1], these fat little mothers are what I like about the local cuisine.

I stopped in a “panaderia”[2] known as “El Churro”[3] and waited in line as everyone ordered in Spanish. There was actually no line; one simply elbowed one’s way up to the counter through the comfortably dressed. Not unlike many college age touring shows, but in this instance one was looking for breakfast, not beer or frottage with a hottie. Fat people, by their sheer ballast, had priority. I was squeezed into place before the counter almost by default, sort of a Brownian[4] motion of bodies that moved me in the direction I needed to go. Other customers were greeted at the counter with a pleasant “bueno?” but I accepted the wordless nod of the proprietress as a sign of respect for my pasty lack of melanin and my vivid freckles.

“I’d like two, potato egg and cheese, and a barbaquaw[5] please,” I said.

“¿Quieres tortillas de harine ó masa?” she queried.

“De farine, s’il vous plaît,” I replied, reasoning that, if one is addressed in a language one can speak but replies in another, then the instigator of the conversation can justifiably assume that all linguistic bets are off and may now speak Esperanto, Polish or Urdu, to the level of one’s own whim and ability.

“¿Que?”

“De farine,” I repeated.

“No, I said ju wann flour tortillas or corn?” she probed.

“A-ha! Caught you!” I said, with triumph. “Yes, please, flour tortillas.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits as she rang up my purchase, but there was a tacit understanding between us now. I knew, she knew, and I knew that she knew that I knew. There would not be another attempt on each other’s culture. From then on she would speak to me in clumsy English, and I would reply in even more atrocious Spanish. It was, after all, how it should be. De colores, and so forth.

Freaking freak fork flick fling finger food.

I’m horney again. I swear, the more I get, the more I want – and it’s not like I’m getting enough. Monsieur and I are supposed to talk about this soon. Hmppf. I can’t wait.

Meanwhile I get these dreams…

…like the one where there’s a Hot Blogger convention in San Francisco, and in one seminar, I’m being held down by Venting Housewife while her randy husband bangs me like a screen door slammin’. Or the one where I’m getting blowjob lessons from Desireous, who lets me practice on Sir (“that’s not right, honey, tilt your head back a little – Sir, can you hold her by the head and just fuck her face real steady? Mmm, that-a-girl – get to know it!”). Or how about the Introspectral Spank-You-Very-Much-Workshop, where you get your Continuing Education Certification in Applied Paddle … I’m face down gritting my teeth, ass in the air as Jack applies the paddle in an endless round of smacks hitting my naughty upturned butt … “I can’t take it,” I protest, then Jill gives me a deep kiss that melts me and gives me the strength to handle another ten, twenty, fifty smacks … then I’m being taken by Passionate Man as he vents every frustration he has on me, naked from the waist up and his fatigue pants around his ankles, my legs locked around his waist – but wait, it’s a hotel room and I’m pulling a train – I see Figleaf and Shyrocket are next in line, and the line goes out the door and down the hall, as my stats counter clicks over, another one joins the line … I wake up, soaking, look at the clock, 4 AM. Shaking my head, then spoon my soaking crotch into a sleeping Monsieur’s, praying that I’ll get some this morning. Jay-Sue, PMS is a bitch.

A while back I got a gift from a reader who checked my wish list, sending me a CD and only asked that I give an honest review of it. He’s a sweetie and kinda stuck in a bad situation. I hadn’t had time until now to sit down and write the damn thing, so with apologies for another obligation that zoomed by, here we go:

Put on a slinky cocktail dress, mix up a pitcher of martinis and prepared to let Tonic hep ya to some jive: this CD is as smooth as baby’s feet and you better be ready to swing. Tonic is a vocal quartet – imagine Manhattan Transfer if they were packing heat – and the melody rules the show. Rigorous attention to detail and perfection in rhythm and harmony both make this a great cocktail party tape. I wouldn’t know – but I love playing it good & loud while picking up the clutter after a busy weekend with the boys. My favorites: “Sammy Slick”, the story of a hard-drinkin’ private eye on the trail of a femme fatale; “Lemon Twist” for a bit of vitamin C; and “Hepster’s Jive”, with a nod of the fedora to Cab Calloway. These all are originals, but they have that authentic flavor of a corrupt Prohibition Era Chicago – sweet horns, tasty arrangements, and sax solos that are so decadent that they make you want to be the kind of woman your mom warned your brother about. I defy you to not get up and dance a lindy hop to the infectious “Second Date Stomp”. The Yearning Heart says, check it out.

And private to PM; thanks again.

I never have any doubts that these are Maggie’s kids.

Fortunately I don’t get mail asking for money from any political parties. At least, I don’t here in Texas. In KC I got them from the Republicans; I eventually stopped them by sending them a check for three cents. They spent more money trying to extract money from me than I ever could have hoped; I finally got a call from one of their telemarketers, who had an obviously rural Midwestern accent and called me“hon”. I told her that the three cents was to ensure that I would stay on their list of contributors and force them to spend even more money – to handle the check, to add me to their database, and to pay her to call me right now. I figured that they spent at least $20 on that endeavor, and that my money was well-spent.

“Oh, then,” she replied, dropping the accent and sounding more like the Yankee that my Caller ID indicated that she likely was.“Well, if you’re not going to help, then why did you send that check in?”

“Money well spent,” I repeated.“It was a check for three cents.”

She hung up on me without a “thank you”. I have not heard from them again.

Since my last post about an hour ago? Ya, sure, you betcha.

I just checked my e-mail, catching up with people I went to UMKC with; some of whom went on to grad school and some went back home to lay around and feel sorry for themselves. A “bunch of stuff has been going on” and yet it’s much the same. I feel like I’m the only one who grew up since high school.

Someone e-mailed me and asked if I totally forgot Monsieur’s birthday last February; answer is no: I made the boys carrot cake[1] and poured Monsieur[2] a cup of tea. He didn’t want any presents but I found this history of the French and British navies from 1790 to 1830 with a great collection of drawings[3]. I think it’s interesting too and while I found that, I saw a great book on women who disguised themselves as men to fight in the British Navy. Now that’s a part I could play in a movie. I always figured I knew my way around the cox.

I didn’t mention that I also offered him sex, to which he had smiled and said that would not be an appropriate thing at present. Maybe not for him – but my birthday is coming up in May and by golly, I know what I want and it ain’t socks – it sounds like socks but it has a different vowel.

Mostly, said I, I’m caring for and teaching the kids. My days are full of dental appointments and homework, naptimes, snacks, crayons and puppet shows. I do history, math, science, social studies, and civics – in the mornings. Then I do art, music, English grammar and PE in the afternoons. And, of course, it alternates – and the children are self-directed, or they wouldn’t be there. Co-operative schooling is so wonderful – you can kick a kid out for being a problem. In public schools here in the U.S. you’d pretty much have to be convicted of a felony to get kicked out for good. Even then, that’s not always enough. But in my school, the parents run the show. Most parents elsewhere don’t seem to want that kind of responsibility.

K is coming over for a visit, and I told her to remember her camera phone – so with any luck and courage, I’ll see you (or vice versa) on Thursday. No promises. Kiss kiss.

Recently I got this incredibly brilliant idea from Monsieur. Because I am a “young borrower” meaning I haven’t (yet) defaulted on my student loans or had any late payments, I get about 20 “special offers” per week to incur even more debt at a “Special One-Time Introductory Rate”. I complained about them as if there weren’t much I could do about it except shred the offers and toss them into the recycle bin.

“Why don’t you just send them to them?” Monsieur suggested.

“Because I don’t want the credit cards! I have enough debt as it is,” I protested.

“No,” he said, pouring two cups of tea, “you should shred them first, then stuff them into their Business Reply envelopes. The recipient must then pay the postage on the garbage that they have generated, and then they must pay to have them thrown away. If more people did that, perhaps the marketing geniuses would figure out that people don’t need credit until they ask for it – and even then, probably not.”

Brilliant.

Now, I’m quite sure that sending in my twelve envelopes of shredded confetti per week to Chase, Washington Mutual, and MBNA won’t amount to much in the grand scheme of things, but I do know that putting them into the outgoing letter box and hearing them drop brought a certain serenity to my mind that simply can’t be bought at any price, at any annual percentage rate. And there’s no annual fee!