TastyTrixie.com

Archive for the ‘aging’ Category

I’m not a huge fan of photos of the sunset, but I’m posting one anyway as a way to share just ONE beautiful thing we experienced today:

Sunset tonight (June 5th, 2010) from our backyard.

Today we took a walk in the same woods where we took Nico for her last forest walk. It’s the first time we’ve been there since then so it was hard not to think of her, but not necessarily unpleasant because of it. Delia identified birds by their calls:

Olive-Sided Flycatcher.

Orange-Crowned Warbler.

Swainson’s Thrush.

At home I asked her what the birds were in our closest tree:

Cedar Waxwings.

And then over a dozen of them rushed out of the tree right by us.

She’s identified them for me before, but I never remember any of it. I might be cultivating a mental block on purpose because I love having her tell me . . . I like asking her and having her answer. I like being almost completely ignorant and dipping into her body of knowledge and having it be too much for my brain to absorb. I like feeling overwhelmed by the world of birds and having their names sound as new as possible to me each time she pronounces them.

I’ve never been “into” birds (though I’m a big fan of chickens, crows, and owls — all for different reasons, of course — plus some other raptors) so paying any attention to them at all is sort of other-worldly because there are so many of them this time of year and most are so different from anything I remember noticing growing up. They’re kind of a revelation to me, so tiny and animated and enchanting. It’s kind of sickening how much they delight me in the same way I’m slightly grossed out by the way poetry and jazz have grown on me in the past year or so. Like, what the fuck is happening to me?!?

*****

In case you’re wondering what this poppy looked like when it opened, here you go (taken the morning after I took the other ones):

One of the poppy’s sepals thrown off:

Poppy's thick, fuzzy sepal thrown off onto the ground.

In bloom (with another bud below it):

Salmon-colored poppy in bloom.

Oh, and I’m in a much better mood than I was in that other post. I haven’t been getting my B-vitamin shots; I thought I was getting too much because I got headaches a couple of times after getting them (which is part of why I *get* those shots, to *prevent* headaches), so I’ve been taking a liquid form instead and I don’t think it’s quite doing the trick. Anyway, whatever the cause(s) I’ve been a little more anxious and moody lately, among other things, but overall am fine and am working on it. I’m going to take more of the liquid B’s and am refocusing on maintaining a stable blood sugar level and increasing my insulin sensitivity by eating fewer bad carbs. I also did a good job of taking care of myself and a headache on Thursday and Friday without feeling guilty about it because I knew how much work I’ve done this week and that I could afford to get some rest and work a few less hours on those days. Yay for keeping track of hours worked and stuff accomplished instead of only looking at the undone stuff on our long-ass to-do lists!!

*****

We do have porn stuff going on at home and in our members-only areas, I just haven’t been blogging about the sexy stuff as much as I should. But it’s all in there! You can check at TrixieAndFriends.com for some previews.

My girlfriend is getting bigger boobs!!

Yeah, old news to some of you, but I don’t think I’ve blogged about it yet so I’m taking this opportunity to celebrate and share the news with you. We’re taking a trip next week for Delia to get consultations with a couple of out-of-state surgeons so the reality is setting in that THIS IS REALLY GOING TO HAPPEN and I’m getting very excited about it.

Yes, I love the puffy-nipple hormone titties Delia has now and I was very VERY excited about those growing in, but I surprised myself by feeling sort of conflicted about her little puberty-boobs. And you can kind of see why, can’t you, when I go into dirty-old-man-speak like that, right? You know I am a sucker for taboo role plays and the idea of pert buds of breasts, but sometimes I gross myself out getting off on that when they’re so REAL. It feels like I’m doing something criminal when I fondle them and I haven’t had the time or courage to really work that out yet. And now? I DON’T HAVE TO! Because my girlfriend is getting implants!! Unambiguously GROWN-UP boobs!

Underneath the cherry excitement of having a girlfriend about to get big fancy titties, there has been a foundational experience making it possible: having a special donor/philanthropist/able investor/friend come forward and send Delia THOUSANDS of dollars. And when none of the Pacific Northwest docs friends referred her to would do boob jobs on transsexuals and seeing that things were going to cost more? He stepped up and sent THOUSANDS MORE so we can make this trip and find the right doctor and make sure she gets the beautiful jugs she deserves and I dream she’s dreamed of.

I feel like I’m exploiting Sweet T. by publicly talking this way about the money he sent, but trust me, I do it with adoration and a wriggle of shivery delight (and imagine the words “adoration and a wriggle of shivery delight” being spoken in his delicious accent). I know this is the kind of story that makes chicks feel excited, happy for each other, and not just a little jealous. It’s the kind of story you WANT to read in a webwhore blog and know that it’s not a lie or crazy fantasy someone made up.

Some of you might be too jaded to appreciate this with purity, but it’s honestly an experience that reminds me (again) that there are people with money (some more, some less) who really want to use it to make people happy and give someone they admire something she longs for. Yeah, there’s the bonus of seeing the new boobies and having a hand in crafting an element of someone else’s experience, but with something as straightforward as boobs . . . I don’t know how to describe it without using the word pure. It’s very tangible and direct.

It’s exciting, because of the gifts AND because we’re sharing the excitement with someone else . . . it’s magnifying the experience, drawing it out of the mundane of doctor appointments and personal responsibilities and worries that would otherwise bog it down. Knowing that Tom is excited about the outcome and taking care of the most worrisome aspect of it leaves us free to enjoy the process and look forward to the results. It’s like a fun movie or fairy tale or something . . . more like what I think people outside of our internet porn world IMAGINE our lives are like all the time as chicks with our own porn sites. It’s affirming and a relief to have a story we can tell friends and family that actually lives up to their more positive expectations and wild imaginings (people mistakenly assume having your own internet porn site means fortune and large numbers of fans).

Note: I do not want to discount all of the people who send us smaller gifts and contributions — you are appreciated and definitely not forgotten, and there were many of you who helped with Delia’s boob job fund. The amount of people who support us and our work is profound in our lives, even if it hasn’t made us rich. All of you have made us want to keep doing it. And getting thousands of dollars at one time from one person? Just helps solidify our commitment / the feeling that it’s worth it. Again, though, I don’t want you to think we don’t notice some of our long-time members who have spent thousands of dollars on us over the years. Thank you!

Yesterday marked a very special occasion on the girl-getting-breast-augmentation journey; Delia bought her first dress especially to go with and show off the bigger boobs she’s getting. Oh good lord, that was exciting. Maybe more for me than her . . . I was practically fucking salivating thinking about how gorgeous she’ll look in that dress and what her tits are going to look like in that flimsy fabric and WHAT THEY’LL LOOK LIKE AFTER I POUR WATER ALL OVER HER AND GET THEM DRIPPING WET AND YOU CAN SEE HER HARD NIPPLES THROUGH THE FABRIC and then Delia started laughing at me because I was pawing at the air in circles, middle finger tracing her erect nipples in the sky, as I described my enthusiasm for these near-future visions of hotness.

So yeah, buying the dress to go on the new boobs definitely amped up my giddiness. Weeks ago I actually wasn’t sure if I wouldn’t rather be able to go to Disneyland instead, but the dress clinched it — boobs totally trump Space Mountain.

*****

I don’t know if posts like these surprise people who think I’m all “NATURAL BODIES OR DIE!!” (and take the culture thieves at Disney with you!) I do wish for more acceptance of and appreciation for natural bodies (and especially less open revulsion/disgust) and I do think cosmetic surgery is very problematic and dangerous and worth thinking/talking about critically (meaning with your thinking cap on, not just negatively shredding apart) and overall WAY WAY WAY WAY TOO COMMON, like it’s fucking endemic to being a first world woman over thirty, but oh man, I do love some artifice and craftiness, too. I’m not saying it makes all or even most women look “better” (not at all), I am just acknowledging that it makes them look different and I am not bothered by those differences as a default. And sometimes I really admire the differences and appreciate that plastic aesthetic (and would a lot more if it weren’t so fucking ubiquitous).

What I mean to say is that when Delia got her first (and only so far) Botox injections a few months ago IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME. Even though I was there when she did it and should’ve made the connection, about a week afterwards and for a month from then I was blown away whenever I looked at her, like OHMYGODyou’reSOlovely I COULD WEEP! And I didn’t recognize it as “that botox is really working wonders”, it was just that she looked like she always does but with a special softer glow. It was like a really subtle, masterful, living-and-breathing photoshop effect. She only got it around her eyes, brows and bridge of her nose and it was really cool. I don’t know why they’re saying Botox is going out of style, because it seems quite splendid to me.

But I know it’s really terrible to spend money on that when there are children starving in Africa everywhere. On the other hand, it is our job to be attractive and Delia never got to be a young woman while she was young, so fuck that guilt.

*****

I was also going to blog about Delia’s internal penis bumps, but this entry got out of hand length-wise so I’ll save it for next time. I know, I utilize the most erotic turns of phrase to keep you checking back for more.

Over the weekend (on May Day) the members area of my site (TastyTrixie.com/members) turned eight years old!

Here are some pictures from this year’s and last year’s May Day galleries:

Wearing a white corset outside: May Day 2010

I *loved* these pictures last year; they made me fall in love with myself (an important state of mind to be in for a webwhore):

It's like magic! And cleavage! And whirling!

My freckled shoulders, curly hair and big natural boobies!

This year’s set wasn’t so good, but it was all worth it to get charming shots like this favorite of mine:

Spreading May Day cheer!

So after eight years you might wonder how the indie porn site business is holding up, and the answer is NOT SO GREAT! I’m still optimistic though because there are so many things I know I could do (or do better or do more often) to boost business.

The only “problem” is I’m becoming more realistic after all these years and recognize I can’t do it all and maybe it’s not really possible for us to do more! better! and more often! It even got to the point where I seriously considered focusing solely on promoting and shooting for DeliaTS.com and putting updates and promotion for all of our other sites, including TastyTrixie.com, on hiatus. We are trying to do the jobs of too many people.

The past few weeks I’ve shifted my approach to work a little bit by

1) using to-do list software (both Swift To-Do List and Daily To-Do List). It’s helping me prioritize and sort my ideas and tasks.

2) making a 40 hour work week a goal / forcing ourselves to take days off like normal people expect to do with good jobs.

I use a timer with a stopwatch to keep track of when I’m working. In the notes section of Daily To-Do List I keep track of the hours I’ve worked and what I’ve accomplished. Yes, it’s very wage-slavey, but it’s more manageable (and more rewarding) than feeling like WORK IS NEVER EVER DONE! BITCH, KEEP WORKING KEEP WORKING TEN TWELVE FOURTEEN HOURS A DAY YOU KNOW YOU CAN’T REST BECAUSE THERE’S JUST SO MUCH!!!

I am beginning to accept that if we can’t succeed by working a humane number of hours and allowing ourselves time OFF that IT ISN’T WORTH IT.

And that’s where the fear/knowledge comes in that I am going to have to give up doing some things I’m very attached to because it isn’t realistic to think I can do them all. Spiritually (? or emotionally or psychologically or whatever word you’re comfortable with) this is an important confrontation to have with myself and reality. I suspect there might be a life of bliss (with lots of time spent checking out books at the library and reading in the grass) awaiting me on the other side of this confrontation but I’m still balking at it and refusing to let go.

I wonder if it’s normal to take a decade to resolve this conflict between what you WANT to do and what you CAN do and still be healthy. Ten years sounds like a long time, but I think it might be about right. I figure I still have two or three years before life finally batters me into submission so for now my site is not on hiatus. Who knows? Maybe my timer-and-to-do-list-software scheme will actually make me more productive because I’m not so psyched out and overwhelmed trying to do everything all the time.

One thing I did let go of is driving myself crazy trying to be RELIABLE at posting a new picture gallery or porno video every week in my members-only area. Instead I’m focusing on posting more frequently (multiple times a week) in my new members-only blog with more uniquely personal and candid stuff like vlogs, webcam snaps, behind the scenes stuff, fantasies and other intimate thoughts I don’t want to post in the open here in my free blog, etc. Things got interrupted a bit with the dog dying and some other stuff we have going on (that I may or may not blog about here, but you can hear all about in my vlogs) but after a couple of months of doing things this way I believe it will take off and be more addictive/unique for members.

Obviously I will still do the regular porn stuff of high res photo galleries and videos but I am releasing myself from the pressure of thinking “reliable” is more important than “personal”. Because in the long run I’ve NEVER read a testimonial like, “I’m very aroused by the way Trixie is so RELIABLE.” I have, however, been told a number of times that people would maintain their membership even if all they got was the blog (and/or the spycams).

I pretty much think my “porn” is virtually worthless without the personality, especially with so much competition online, so that is what I’m going to make top priority on my site and the feeling of it being alive with more frequency and easily-digested candid content (albeit with *possibly* a *little* less standard porn site fare POSSIBLY . . . we’ll see how it plays out — I think it will wind up being the same quantity in that department once I get on a roll). The people who love me and my site tend to gravitate towards the bloggier, vloggier, twittier, webcammier, embarrassing confessions, taboo weirdness and daily details stuff (along with panties panties UPSKIRTS and panties!).

Over the years it’s started to feel like I had to make porn to meet porn industry standards — to be digestible in a standardized (though less consistently hardcore) way — so that porn site reviewers and other people promoting our sites would be able to sell my site. It has gotten to the point where we shoot HUGE galleries of a zillion photos less because we think that’s what our members want or because it’s more valuable that way, but because we need to have more promo material and because that’s how people assess the value of porn sites: how many pics are in your galleries? How HUGE are the pictures? How many formats do your videos come in? How often do you add another HUGE photo gallery? It’s pretty fucking boring and totally ignores the CONTENT of the content. And what is the point anyway when all of those things are the easiest to steal? I want to focus on the stuff people can’t steal or is less desirable to the people who steal content. I’m sick of feeling like we’re shooting things to make webmasters happy instead of ourselves and our members who really dig us (fortunately there are some webmasters who dig me/get me as is).

Sometimes I look at the stuff I did back in 2001 when I didn’t have a clue what a porn website was “supposed” to look like or offer, and I miss it/love it/want to do it that way again (but better and less stupid in some aspects). I can’t find the earlier version of this that talked about wanting my site to be like the magazines you’d stuff under your mattress, but I want to get back to that. Here’s one old version though (which of course I would change in some ways, but want to revive the spirit of in other ways):

One of my first attempts at a members-only area

I do not, however, want to repeat some of my earlier horrifying uber-cheesy design mistakes like this one from 2001:

I was *so* proud of my red licorice design!

What can I say? It was the turn of the century! And they didn’t even let our screen names be long enough for me to spell my name correctly! Aahh, those were the days . . . and all these years later the porn industry STILL doesn’t “get” camgirls which is how they’ve managed to destroy that platform for us as a way of making really good money and connections. Yeah, I’m getting off track and onto that bitter old webwhore lament . . .

Anyway, the point is that I want to pull some of the purity of my old personality porn into 2010 and approach working in a realistic way that’s personally rewarding. I’m not sure if it’s possible, though, considering how much time I have to sink into promotion and the technical aspects of maintaining our sites and cams, etc. Just as one three example(s): there is nothing pornographically fun or personally rewarding about spending hours dealing with Blogger pulling the rug out from under those of us who FTP our blogs or with searching high and low for my router password so I can modify all of the settings because our cable company decided to fuck with my IP address AGAIN or with getting set up with additional payment processors because one of them is scrubbing so hard you think they’re trying to erase you from their roster of clients. There’s precious little time left over after those kinds of bullshit that I am TOTALLY FUCKING SICK OF. It’s not all sex and games and horny-girl-diary-entries here, it’s a lot of technical minutiae.

I think I blew all of my really-hard-working years (nonstop, no personal time except for ramen and sleep) working for other people and on not knowing what I was doing. I’m almost forty and I’m done with that.

Note: I have a feeling this post might be stupid, but part of being realistic is hitting “publish” without trying to make every fucking thing perfect. Thanks for understanding and putting up with years of me wrestling with these same challenges of self-employment as an internet sex worker and webmaster.

Nico was fifteen years old and people STILL frequently asked if she was a puppy — so pretty and smaller than people expect Siberian Huskies to be (even though she was normal-size for a female husky). But if they watched her walking from the hind end they’d understand she was an old girl. She started to look like an elderly woman hobbling doggedly with a walker, dragging her hind legs stiffly forward one at a time after reaching forward to brace herself with her two front legs.

Eat as Many Treats as You Want!!

There *was* a choice of whether or not now was the right time to put her to sleep. I’m aware that there are people who would’ve put her down a lot sooner and others who would have let this stretch out forever with doggy diapers and thousands of dollars in vet bills. I’m aware that we might have made this decision for ourselves as much as for her and that I’ve been able to absolve myself of any guilt because she was really Delia’s dog and her decision to make based on twice as many years with her and a lot more love. I’m also aware that Delia gave her a good life and that she’s a HUSKY, and she couldn’t do her husky things anymore – there hadn’t been ululations for a year or more and her sickle tail was permanently drooped into brush-mode. She was confused (at times heartbreakingly comically so, like when she would stand at the hinge of the door waiting to be let out of the bedroom when the door was already open INCHES away from where she’d fixed her gaze – it WAS funny, though sad) and her mobility profoundly decreased. She’d been losing her balance (or her legs just gave out) while she pooped and would often fall over then finish pooping while lying on her side.

Anyway, there was a lot of stuff and seeing blood in her gelatinous-with-mucous diarrhea Saturday night was the clarifying symptom that it was TIME even though it hadn’t been that many days since she ran through the house as much as she could, yipping both in pain and excitement, not able to NOT force herself to go as fast as possible even after wiping out twice trying to navigate the corner between one hallway and another. If it were any other kind of dog you’d think I was describing a very fit and healthy animal, but huskies are just that awesomely driven to RUN and defy every limitation imposed on them.

So we decided to make her last two days full of good things, like her last walk in the woods. It was very very slow and the smallest hills were like giant mountains to her. She even looked at one incline so wearily that she turned around, like “just take me back to the car because I’m DONE”.

Nico's Last Walk in the Woods

During and after making the decision I’ve felt a variety of emotions: excitement looking forward to freedom and possibilities, relief, uncertainty, guilt, confusion, sadness, loss, worry . . .

Our beautiful companion's fur, walking slowly

Two women came to our house to do it after Nico had two days of walks and lots of her favorite soft peanut-butter treats and lots of love and attention lavished on her. The vet and her assistant were loving and gentle and pleasant and thoughtful and smooth and patient and respectful.

Small and short-lived.

The hardest part was the hour before they got here when we were waiting. Everything was ready, Nico was totally worn out, and there was nothing to do except know that she was about to be gone and didn’t even know what was coming (I think Delia felt more confident that Nico did actually know and was fully prepared and welcoming – either way is actually pretty sweet).  I wouldn’t trade that hour of waiting for rushing around or not experiencing that weird duality of tranquility on the outside and guts churning on the inside, though.

Waiting for the vet to come

During the process I felt a fast cycling of emotions of calm, euphoria, gratitude and resignation sort of like when I was in a car crash and had a few seconds to emotionally prepare myself to die and then was elated when I survived. But with this there were also overwhelmingly intense guts-in-the-throat needing to bawl emotions like when I was with my dad during his death.

How beautiful and floppy and light her dead body looked wrapped in a blanket with her gorgeous face exposed and then her front legs tumbling out. The looseness and complete lack of worry. The weird exciting sense of potential like you could reanimate her, so fresh and ready with all of the soreness and stiffness she’d been suffering from magically erased. She really did look like new life (and none of these pictures are communicating the reality of any of this, or at least my perceptions and experiences of these days). She was so so so beautiful.

No more breath, no more heartbeat.

*****

Helping Nico die and being present for it helped me with my dad’s death, to process it more and remember it and grieve more freely and more fast. It’s been eight years, but I really didn’t know a lot about how to be with his death and my feelings about it so it’s been a very long and protracted experience. Watching Nico die — feeling her die, touching her dying and dead — I feel spiritually more at ease than I did when confronted with my dad’s final moments. Maybe my idea of peace is wider and simpler than I must have wished for back then. Maybe my expectations for myself are lower than they were then. I don’t know, but I’m glad for it.

I am an imperfect witness, not a bumbling guide stuck with the horrible responsibility of having taken someone I loved on a journey to a brick wall on a dead end. Maybe I’m getting to be okay with nothing being perfect and not being in control and just appreciating the long moments I’ve had to absorb the profoundly ordinary in all of its individual rarity and treasure it and bask in my blessings. My dad is one of a few people I’ve had telepathic experiences with (even if they were probably more accurately described as intuitive communication or whatever) so maybe I thought I failed by not knowing what he was trying to tell me at the end or that I failed by crying and possibly making him sad or worried during his last minutes of life. There’s a lot less pressure with a dog and it was more okay with me that we were all together but alone at the same time.

The Incredible Machine

Like with my dad it took a number of minutes for her to stop all the way. “She’s not breathing anymore but she still has a very faint heartbeat”. For like four minutes. When we were kids Daddy bought us lots of National Geographic books. One of my favorites that may have impacted my worldview more than any other was “The Incredible Machine” about how humans are all electrical and mechanical and stuff. I never absorbed facts and information the way my sister could (it’s amazing how we had the same books at home and the body of knowledge her brain constructed out of them is so vastly different — and more vast in general — than mine) so what I retained from it is just a philosophy that I might not find in it if I were to read it today, but that might have been the first book I ever read to give me a celebratory nontheistic way of looking at life that was deliciously SPACE AGE eighties-style, like 3-2-1 Contact and synthesizers and stuff.

While Nico was dying it started raining and we were glad it waited until then, not starting until after her last three walks and other quiet time outside. That night the smell of the evergreens after the rain was magnified to supernatural proportions and for a minute I enjoyed imagining that Nico bestowed an enriched sense of smell on us as a parting gift.

Then I stopped wasting brain juice on that and just focused on vacuuming up as much scent as I could with each inhalation, tasting wet green dogless walks in the future moonlight, just me and my girlfriend.

*****

Delia and I have been living together for almost eight years (the first time she told me she loved me was the day my dad died). It’s a significant chunk of time as far as human measurements go but also . . . brief. Losing Nico is another transition for our relationship and maybe I have the feeling like I will contribute more as a partner now. Nico was rooted in so many years of history and two other serious relationships for Delia so she was never really “my” dog; I don’t mean that in a bitter or unloving or detached way . . . it was my way of copping out of taking care of her fully so that I didn’t clean up as much poop or let her in and out as often or get her food ready. I’m excited that we’re entering another stage together and that it’s happening now.

Pair of Trillium

I can’t complain . . . I really can’t complain or regret this loss or wish for any of it to be different. I can’t say that I wish we didn’t have to go through this or that she could have lived forever. Of all the ways of dying and lives and chunks of years of experiences out there to be had, I’d say this death and these years and our lives have been blessed, relatively comfortable with relatively little pain, and filled with pleasure. Am I still bursting into tears? Yeah, but I can’t complain.

I totally have spring fever. We can go anywhere! Do anything! The light in our house looks different. The pretending-to-be-a-grownup feeling is back when I go into my office. Maybe just because everything is intensified after so many intense days? I don’t know, but this is the first time in all these years we can leave the doors wide open and not be afraid that Nico will run away. It’s not that a husky doesn’t love her people, SHE’S JUST PROGRAMMED TO RUN AWAY FROM YOU!!

*****

Check out Delia’s post with more pictures of Nico and background. Contrasting pics of her in her younger days really shows how much she changed physically over the years, plus it’s really interesting to read/see more about Delia!

*****

Note: I feel EXTREMELY fortunate we had a way to pay for her to be ushered out so gently with at-home euthanasia; not everybody is so lucky. Humanely ending an animal’s life is really expensive for most people and doing it yourself is something most people aren’t equipped for (and legally/socially is a prime example of some really interesting double-standards, misunderstandings and class differences in our country). Anyhoo, if you love your pet and can afford to do it this way when the time comes, I’d recommend it as being well worth the extra money (if you can swing it) to have that special time at home and is worth finding out in advance what vets (or other people?) can help you with this when the time comes. I also feel extremely fortunate that my dad died in hospice which is much more like dying at home than like dying in a  hospital, but better than dying at home maybe. I loved it, and think it’s hugely important to be able to spend time with your dead loved one for hours, if you’re lucky enough to have that option and the kind of death you get to see coming.

Just a quick note:

We’re spending a little quality time with our dog while we can, plus our main internet connection has been down all day (apparently I am the only one in our town with this problem) so most of our cams have been down with it. We still have spycams up in the bedroom on this page on the last profile (scroll down to SpyOnUsGals), though.

If you happen to see crying, well . . . that’s life. We’ve also got some doctor appointments for ourselves coming up and a bunch of serious housecleaning we NEED to do, for a variety of reasons (example: our dog is SICK). I’ll post more later, etc. In the meantime I’m not really doing much with email, twitter, the phone, etc. so you probably will not be hearing from me this week. There is some newish stuff in my NEW members-only blog, though!

A couple of random notes:

I accompanied Delia to get her first Botox injections today. I was kind of jealous and can totally understand how some people get addicted to those kinds of procedures. I thought for sure the doctor would try to sell me on something as long as I was just standing there, but the only notice he took of me was after his juvederm speech to look over at me and remark, “your cheeks are awesome. You will never need fillers.”

I’m not sure how to handle some compliments (like this sweet one comparing me to Kate Moss), but compliments on my cheeks or cheekbones always make me happy. I think because it’s a remark on something that seems very objective and sounds like a structural analysis. It seems very specific and rational, almost impersonal, so I can accept that kind of flattery. Plus I think it’s accurate. I believe that I *do* have awesome cheeks! Note: I can also graciously accept compliments on specific ways I am “weird”.

*****

Do you wish I would now talk about how I feel about cosmetic surgery and enhancements and stuff? Maybe another time. Or do you wish I’d sputter about how Kate Moss is a bad role model for young women? Oh gosh . . . don’t even get me started. It makes me really fucking irritated when people jump all over her skinny ass like she’s personally responsible for all of the eating disorders in the world. I don’t think we’re healing women of insecurity by rabidly insisting that skinny women aren’t “real”, which goes back to how I feel about cosmetic stuff; no matter how much silicone you put in your body and how your skin is moved around and your fat excised, YOU ARE STILL A REAL PERSON and should be treated as such. Yeah, I think it’s all very problematic and stuff, but whatever. It’s all too fascinating to blog about in depth right now (no, I’m not being sarcastic: this stuff FASCINATES me though it does sometimes bore the fuck out of me, too . . . I’ve even felt a kind of spiritual awakening reading about people who are extremely addicted to cosmetic body mods). Personal request: PLEASE don’t make any assumptions about me or my beliefs based on this paragraph; I just don’t have time to go into the complexities and nuances right now.

*****

The second thing I wanted to mention is that Charmin Ultra Strong toilet paper is THE BEST!!! It’s advertised as being applicable in situations where you want “a Dependable Clean” but it’s also marvelous in settings where you merely want a soft and delicious dry. I highly recommend this toilet paper to anybody looking for a thick luxury wipe or cheapskates who limit TP rations to two squares per job.

One of the things I dislike about shaving between my legs is that the stubble shreds lesser toilet papers (MD) and I’m left with little wads of white all over my vulva. CUS has solved this problem for me. Honestly, the quality of my life has been significantly improved by giving Charmin Ultra Strong a spin. This is my personal testimonial . . . I’m not receiving any kickbacks from Charmin for it. It’s just a very important consideration for someone like myself who takes great pleasure in pooping, etc.

I know there are more important things in the world to concern myself with, but toilet paper is the only product that interacts with me in an intimate way multiple times each day.

Yes, I know this post is BEGGING for your PUNNY comments!

Nico is getting senile. We think her vision and hearing have both become impaired. The good part is she seems in good spirits most of the time. I guess it’s both fortunate and unfortunate that she wants to go in and out of the house about fifty times a day and has taken to WHINING and barking madly if we don’t comply with these requests. You think fifty is an exaggeration? Okay, at least twenty-five times a day. AT LEAST. It’s insane.

Sometimes I do lose my patience with her and feel so frustrated not knowing if it’s our fault for giving in to her or if she has genuine need (or perceived need) to go outside so often. This morning after she woke Delia up WAY too early to let her out and back in she then ate and pooped on the floor. She never does that (poops inside). I think she’s just totally confused and can’t get comfortable so she paces around. Then when she goes outside her rope gets hung up on rocks or stiff tufts of grass and for some reason she can’t pull free of those tiny hangups anymore and just starts going apeshit for  us to come out and rescue her.

Lately she can’t find the doors she wants and we’ll see her in the bedroom waiting at the closet door or the bathroom door (this makes no sense). Last night she was stumbling around in the dark doing god only knows what. This makes me wonder if it’s not really a vision problem, but something else; if it were her vision, wouldn’t she still have the layout of the house memorized?

So I asked Delia, “do dogs get Alzheimer’s?”

Delia’s response: “no, but they do get Barkinson’s.”

*****

In other mundane, un-sexy news of real life, we had to take one of our beater cars to the shop today. It is going to cost over $900 to fix it. We can’t afford it, but the main reason I felt compelled to go ahead with the repairs is that we’ve been really lucky with our vehicles for the past couple of years (aside from getting pulled over for having a stolen car, but that’s a totally different story) so I felt like it was time to pay tribute to the gods of car or whatever. We got this car for free and it should continue running reliably after this so . . . yeah. Goodbye, thousand dollars. Or rather, “hello, maxed out credit card that I was trying to clear room on to pay taxes”.

I also found out my mom went to the hospital last night. She’s (relatively) fine — it was an anxiety attack. One of those things we know is a serious problem for her but that she is in denial about. The only treatment she’s ever had for it was years ago when her way of describing the problem was that she had trouble sleeping. So our pill-happy family doc/gp prescribed her Xanax. Which she became addicted to.

Fortunately she kicked that addiction all on her own. Unfortunately, she has never talked much about that and never did anything else that I know of to deal with her problems that she doesn’t really acknowledge. It’s not that my mom is reluctant to talk, or to talk about problems, but getting to the root of matters and deciding to make really important changes that start with herself? Not so much. Instead she’ll be like, “if I could just catch my breath for a couple of days and get that goddamned garage cleaned out it would help so much!”

How do you get a woman to realize that her problems go ever so much deeper than A FUCKING GARAGE? You can try, but it’s extremely ineffective.

So last night at the hospital she was prescribed Ativan. An anti-anxiety med that’s even MORE addictive than Xanax! And the doctor flat-out lied to her about what it was. He said it was a muscle relaxer she should take when she’s feeling dizzy.

Someone tell me again why pot and prostitution are illegal. I think someone misfiled RATIONAL THOUGHT in this country.

Anyway, I have a billion related and unrelated thoughts on this stuff and life in general and my direction in life and wants and desires and loves and blessings, small and large, and ways I’ve been ministered to online and off in beautiful ways and inspirations and insecurities and religion and porn and coming out and staying in and spycam projects and activism and writing and music and dancing BUT there are so many awesome books and six feet of girlfriend to go to bed with that I’ll leave it at that.

Last night I couldn’t steer my mind away from crazy people so I decided to do the only thing that could compete for my brain’s attention: googling the shit out of my ex-husband.

We’ve been divorced for a long time (ten years? I can’t remember exactly) and haven’t spoken in almost as long so it worried me to get a couple of phone calls for him this month from anonymous business entities. I can only guess that our credit reports are somehow still linked so I worried (even though it’s not my place to, unless it’s going to fuck up my OWN credit) that he’s in some kind of financial trouble.

I found a picture of him skydiving and his wife doing something similarly adventurous. Pictures of them on a cruise. Memberships to outdoorsy clubs. Evidently he has a Really Good Job (phew!) and so does she. I felt relieved and happy for them, and sort of relieved for myself that I don’t need to feel guilty for wasting part of his life; it all seems to have worked out for the best.

As I kept digging I even started feeling like an incompetent lazy-ass. Here I make money on taking pictures, but it’s my ex-husband who seems to know everything technical about cameras, including machining his own fancy-ass lens and accessories. They have all kinds of detailed, finely-crafted hobbies requiring expertise and ambition, things I do not possess. The only thing I remember him making while *we* were together was chicken with rice.

Okay, I’m exaggerating slightly, but it was a good reminder of my own weaknesses and flaws and how my own personality negatively impacted our relationship. There are so many things that I blamed on incompatibility and HIS personality and problems that were really ME BEING AN ASSHOLE. If he was depressed and lazy, maybe it was partly because *I* was depressing and lazy. I’m not saying I regret our marriage ending because I do NOT, just that I’m glad to be able to learn something from it even now. Glad that we are both, I hope, better people now because of mistakes we made together. We are both first-borns which is a recipe for a shitty relationship; we probably just brought out the worst in each other.

Still, I wish I didn’t find out one of their hobbies brings them to our town sometimes. Dude, you LIVE IN ANOTHER COUNTRY NOW! Why do you need to come to *OUR* small town to recreate?!? This is *MY* territory!! Not one you ever had any designs on before! Not a place you have any claim on!

It’s hard to believe that he’s almost fifty now. Wacky. Fingers crossed that the phone calls stop and were just marketing fuckers or something like that. I hope it is smooth sailing and skydiving and whatever else they like to do for the rest of their lives.

I wish I’d have appreciated my 18-year old body and taken care of it when it was close to perfectible.

That’s what I was ABOUT to tweet, until I realized it’s a lie. I *did* appreciate my eighteen year old body. I’d been appreciating my maturing body for years in front of the mirror, naked. Or in this one awesome pair of yellow string bikini panties, very eighties style, with the tiny triangle and the extreme V sitting up high on the hips. I remember the brand was “Eve” and I got them at Lamont’s. I danced around in those and fondled myself . . . admired myself from all angles.

When I finally got my own room at eighteen I took it to a whole other level. With privacy, I could light candles and make a whole elaborate masturbation ritual out of it. I’d put music on the stereo I bought myself, one component at a time from Crutchfield, and stand in front of my white mirrored dresser (an antique handed down to me from my mom) rifling through my panty drawer and meager selection of “sexy” stuff.

I almost always wound up pulling on a hot little ivory Christian Dior thong: lace in the back and satin in front with, again, a sweet dip down in the front punctuated with a tiny circle of faux-pearls. Then I’d have to choose between my two pairs of elbow-length gloves: white satin or white lace. You have no idea how much gloves turn me on. It’s not so much the wearing them (though I do like that, too), but looking at them on someone else.

So I would look at myself in the mirror but from a vast distance. I so wanted my gloved hands to be like other teenaged girls’ gloved hands: hot, with the satin stretched TIGHT and their soft, fleshy girl hands emanating sweaty uncomfortable heat. The other girls didn’t like to wear gloves, but FUCK I *loved* them and I wanted to be able to squeeze their hands and never let them go and stroke up and down their arms with my own satin gloves, or bare-handed, and have them squeeze me ALL OVER. Hot, fat, filled-out shiny satin arms and fingers over rustling dresses.

Anyway, my hands never looked that sexy in gloves — they looked thin and insubstantial like flat playing cards. But my arms looked delicious with the satin pushed down just enough to make wrinkles. In addition to being extremely turned on by gloves, I’m also extremely turned on by tight, wrinkled fabrics on long, slender girl arms or legs. Or fat girl arms or legs. WHATEVER. Point is, I still got very, very excited putting on my gloves and admiring myself in the candlelight.

I often switched back and forth between the two pairs of gloves. The lace ones reminded me of the Billy Idol White Wedding video and THAT brought to mind long-festering taboo fantasies of someone who looked (to me) just like him, but better . . . and worse. Rebel Yell, Eyes Without a Face, Sweet Sixteen, White Wedding, Dancing with Myself . . . yeah. Billy Idol fetish planted when I was way too little and he was way too recognizable for me to think it was silly or to resist it or analyze it.

Not that I thought about him when I masturbated. Not very much anyway. I mean, it would only have taken a few seconds of thought allowed to stray in that direction. What I would do, though, in the buildup, is I would arrange the candles in such a way that my shadow was projected on the wall. I’d inflate my chest to highlight a profile of my breast, then I’d have my hand come at it from an unnatural direction, like my boob belonged to someone else. I’d reach in and trace the silhouette of my breast. I’d pull away and reach back to touch and fondle it, over and over again, spying on this other person’s boob being teased and stroked. It’s always been WATCHING my breasts being touched that really initially arouses me. Without watching the hands on my boobs, the sensation of having my breasts touched is actually pretty boring a lot of the time.

I’d mount the corner of my mattress then, again with the candles arranged so I could spy on my shadow, and hump the edge of my bed until I came, over and over again. Sometimes I could just drag myself against the flat of my mattress and that would work, too. I’d watch the shadow of my boob hovering there, and dip myself down to make my nipple touch the mattress. It wasn’t part of the position that made me come, but the sight of that woman’s body touching and being touched made me very excited.

At that age I did feel lonely and wish I could do some of these things with a guy (which kind of doesn’t even make sense when I think about it). More than that, though, I felt a sense of loss that I was young and the only person who was admiring my body. I did feel very strongly that it should be worshipped and felt like the time to do that, the ripe teenaged time, would be over before anyone did.

Many times I felt like someone was standing outside spying on me. I even felt like I could hear them. But I tried to tell myself I was being paranoid and not to worry about it, because every time I tried to catch them, there was no one there.

As it turned out, of course there WAS someone there. Many different people at different times. Everyone from the guy I lost my virginity to, to the village idiot, to the felon who supplied the highest cop with pot (at least, that’s what we figured when we did eventually catch him outside my window and the cop said it was no big deal — he was just standing on cinder blocks he’d stacked up to peer through my blinds “to get high”). It was horribly embarrassing to think about, so I tried not to because there was nothing I could do about it. They’d already seen everything (even more than the masturbating) and knew all of my secrets. Except for the Billy Idol guy that was only in my head. I mean, they knew him too, but not that I thought about him that way.

*****

If I could go back I would nail up a billion blankets over those crappy fucking blinds. I would find a way to make it fair, to make myself paid and worshiped. For me to be the one in control. I know that because of the other things they saw me do, I was like a weird freak show to them, but they were total fucking freaks too and somehow that means I have a weird bond with them for the rest of my life.

I can still remember one of them, the one I had sex with, laughing at me when I was humping his leg without me knowing why he was laughing except that I guessed I was doing everything wrong, even though that was what was going to make me come. It wasn’t until later that I realized he was one of them and all the things he saw. It makes no sense how humiliated I still feel remembering him mocking me when I know now what a dangerously fucked-up individual he was/is. He had such an unfair advantage over me, but he probably thought the same thing of me just by default since he couldn’t last more than twelve pumps. Which of course I actually enjoyed, or WOULD HAVE enjoyed if he’d have gone again. But he never did. Of course, he DID go down on me, but I totally didn’t get that — it was such a foreign sensation that I’d never planned for even though I’d masturbated so often to images of other women’s pussies being licked. I don’t think I understood that I was more interested in going down on chicks than having anyone go down on me.

When I was young, the only true pleasure I experienced on my own terms was by myself. I guess I wish I would have accepted that, made myself more powerful (both physically and . . . spiritually?), and found the confidence and the people to negotiate those terms for myself. I know it’s shallow, but now that I’m older and I can see my body starting to disintegrate and loosen into loose flesh and little balls of fat and poison, I wish I would have ran as fast as I could for miles and taken dance classes and learned how to stretch and spent many many MORE hours in front of not just one mirror, but a fucking roomful of mirrors.

I wish I’d have known about getting paid to stomp on men. I wish I’d have had sex with women sooner. Like that hot Belgian pharmacist with the leather skirt I worked with.

SO MANY MISSED OPPORTUNITIES.