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That is what the Seal did this morning. Yes indeed. She shit a shirt. Well, part of one. Which makes me wonder where the rest is. Time will tell, this I know.
We were at our unofficial dawgpark this morning and I was throwing a ball and she was bringing the ball back to me over and over… and over again. Just like we do every morning. And every morning, at some point in all of this terrific fetching fun, the Seal’s bowels get a little jump start on the day. Unbeknownst to her, this is actually the main purpose for this too-early-in-the-morning activity. That, and to run her little ass off so that she’ll be too tired to eat things that are not food. Like shirts.
Oh yes, the Seal has found a new interest in interior design. Her nest, as we refer to it, is in the living room and it is her favorite place to be, except for the couch, where she is not allowed. And the only way to keep her off of the couch is to put the coffee table on top of it before we go anywhere. This nest makes the Seal very happy. She spends a lot of time keeping things about it just right. She will circle around and around… and around in it, getting her blanket and stuffed animals just right before she flops down, grunts and takes a little snoozer.
But lately, for unknown reasons, she has found her nest a bit empty, a bit drab. And so, she has been taking it upon herself to decorate it while we’re away. You know, to add some pizazz, a little splash of je ne sais quoi, give it that little something to tie things together. And occasionally, as I discovered this morning, she taste tests her decorations.
To date she has tried a fair amount of décor options. We have come home to find the Seal’s nest decorated with different combinations of things like: wooden spoons, toilet paper rolls, 2 pound bags of nutritional yeast, opened up and scattered all over the fucking place, you know, for that fun yellow accenting. Dirty dishes, toothpaste, spaghetti noodles, measuring cups, coffee filter complete with used, wet grounds, for that earthy-sustainability-feel, scarves, sponges, dvd’s, various paper- turned-confetti, for that spontaneous-party-feel, a baseball hat, a bag of apple, a six pack of ginger ale, pens, hangers, dishtowels, ear plugs, bobby-pins, dirty socks, t-shirts, and on and on I could go.
Every once in a while it does look kind of nice. Cozier. And with decent color themes, which is impressive seeing as she is color blind.
A few days ago the Seal’s décor choice was so avant-garde that Violet and I both couldn’t help but to gasp when we first saw it. Kind of like that art piece that just hits you by surprise. This was followed by Violet covering her mouth, shaking her head, mumbling, “NO. No, she didn’t! How?” which really made the Seal sit up tall and proud.
The Seal’s decorating style had finally gone over the top for our taste. And I am so glad, and will forever be so glad, that we didn’t arrive home with company in tow. We came home, opened the front door and there was our proud little seal pup, tail flapping, tongue dangling, big smile, sitting in her nest amongst a variety of the previously mentioned objects and, this time, including what we had thought was a well hidden toy-bone-looking-object that is in fact a toy of sorts, but not a bone and not for dogs. No. Not for dogs at all.
So, now the routine is one of two: Put everything away. Very, very away. Super away. Away squared. Up high or in things that close and preferably that lock -or- Take her with us every time we go anywhere.
Both options have been time consuming but the Seal’s need to decorate is unstoppable and her style-choices are simply too bold for our taste.
This week’s Cherday was sent to me by Leo MacCool. The email said that I was probably “all over this news like a rash…” And although the idea does make me itch with excitement, in fact, no, I hadn’t heard this rumor yet. Let this be a lesson, jljj readers. If you know something about Cher, don’t just assume that I do too – send it on over. I love to be Cher topped. Love. It.
So, here it is: Cher to Play Catwoman in the next Batman movie!
How utterly delicious. And although it seems that this is a brilliant myth rather than a perfect truth what a wonderful visual I have swirling around. And (as I duck my head to not be hit by fans) I care about the Batman movies about as much as I care about baseball (still ducking, the truth hurts, I know). But, come on, how hot would that be!
“Batman! Watch out! HoOoOOOooooawah! (with that downward lilt that is OhSoCher, as she tosses her hair to one side, straddling the Batpod). Simply delicious.
Listen Batman film maker people- You want the queers in that theatre for your next comic book movie? Well, give us Cher and we will come in endless droves. This I can promise.
Ooh! or Hillary! I could get pretty excited about that one too. The costume would have to be a black leather pantsuit of sorts, but this could work.
Happy Friday eve, all. Happy Cherday!
-jj-
I hadn’t considered not having the internets, any of them, for our entire trip to Boston. It was as strange as it was refreshing. Do you even remember when you didn’t check your email every 10 minutes? Every two minutes? Or waiting until you got home to see who called? I sure didn’t.
Our trip, in a nutshell for now, seeing as my being absent from work was not easy on the folks here and I am quite busy (i.e. job security):
- The red-eye flight over was as miserable as I had thought it would be. However, sitting next to a swarm of fresh-outta-boot-camp-marines on the way home was almost as unpleasant. Minus the cute blond marine from Houston that sat right next to me. He was very sweet and answered my many, many vodka tonic(s) induced questions with the grace of a southern gentleman. Everything was answering with a “yes, ma’am” or “no ma’am”. I’m not sure how I feel about ma’am, but it was sweet, none the less.
- Boston was busy. Very, very busy. But nice. But Seattle is better. It fits me. I just like knowing that my yogurt is guaranteed to have more milk than corn syrup without reading the labels, but that is just me.
- The itty, bitty, very gay, very Jewish, flight attendant, Sparky, will get his own post.
- We made it to P-town, after an all day venture that will also probably get its own post. The trailer would include: getting hit with exploding cans of coke, grilled cheese and tomato with no cheese and no tomato, little bugs drinking more of the “water” than we did, and meeting !!Cher!! – Well, a drag version, but holy shit, did she do Cher almost better than Cher! Even Cher said so. My heart was all a flutter.
This is all for now. But I did miss you, internets, every single one of you.
Violet is on the east coast. They needed the big boss over in Boston for business, and so off she went. I’m following her tonight, on a red eye, for pleasure. No, we’re not sneaking away to get married. We wouldn’t do that. I want the center stage of it all and she wants the gifts. Eloping offers neither. A little shallow? A little showy? Maybe. The point is, unlike my parents’ sneaking suspicion for this random get away together, we’re not off to get hitch. Not.
Violet called this morning, while i was still sound asleep, or should I say, while I was still thinking with my eyes closed:
me: Hello?
V: jesse.
me: Ya?.
V: You are my girlfriend.
me: I know.
V: Ok then, little sleepy shrimp mushroom jessaronie bologna man, talk to you later.
::click::
I got caught looking at cleavage. And I mean caught. So caught. Caught squared. And (here’s where you throw up your hands and stop listening) I didn’t mean to. Jerry Seinfeld taught me years ago that “looking at cleavage is like looking at the sun.” YOU NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT IT. You look a little to the side and then away. Repeat as necessary.
Violet and I were at a bakery. While sipping coffee, enjoying pastries and each other’s company, I took a bite of my croissant, turned my head right as this woman was walking by our table. I was sitting, she was standing. There was no escape, really. My direct line of vision was totally bombarded by boobs. And as my line of vision did start somewhere in the midsection, as it proceeded to work its way up to the eyes, it got a little tripped up by this dangly, wrap around shirt thing that was barely, barely hanging on. And so I got stuck there for a second. A mere second. But by the time I made it all the way up to the eyes, fully prepared to offer that friendly ‘oh, hello’ grin, she shot this look like, ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ Followed by this, ‘I am so disappointed in you’ head shake.
And seriously, I’ve been avoiding direct cleavage glances for decades now. And I’m usually pretty stealth. I should have known better. I could have done better. But I didn’t. So, all I could offer was a tucked tail as I made my last attempt at redemption and tried to pretend like I was actually just looking at the bin of dirty dishes next to her. Um, fail.
So then, just to keep myself in a downward spiral of white-tall-femme-is-wrong-with-you-dude, I waited for the woman to leave and then immediately told Violet what had just happened. (Some of you are probably pulling your hair out, yes?) Sometimes that line of girlfriend and best friend gets a little foggy… or something. But basically I ended up with two women shaking their heads at me in total disapproval within minutes of each other.
And as I continued to try and explain myself to Violet I suddenly realized that I was doing that thing where you’re leaving a voicemail and something goes wrong so you try to fix it by over-explaining, only to work yourself deeper into that dark hole of why-haven’t-you-shut-the-fuck-up-yet? So, mid-sentence I just stopped. We both continued to sip coffee and chit chat. And then, I leaned in and quietly said, “I love yours the most though.”
Dude. Seriously. Shut up.
Computer? Check. Blanket? Check. Deadly Seal pup? Check.
This photo was taken mere minutes before the chicken chasing escapade. I had just gotten everything packed up for the weekend when the Seal slipped out through the front door, bolting towards me, yelling, “Waaaaaaaait for meeeeeeeeeee!!!
As you can see, she settled right in, cool as a cucumber, and said, “Ok then. Cool. Ready. Let’s goooo, dude. C’mon and drive, jesseman. Car’s not gonna drive itself, is it now?”
(UPDATE: As of 8.9.08 jljj is no longer attached to the smokin hot purple dress)
This is one of those crazy things about the world, the wide and the web that i don’t get. The mystery: Why did jljj have a pretty large surge of visits over this last weekend? Could it be that dykes that only write about goldfish, raccoons, seal dogs, Cher and their girlfriend suddenly became en vogue? Turns out, is not the case. Still, most of the folks that stop by here know that I don’t usually post on Friday and, to date, have never posted on the weekends. This means that the amount of folks that visit the blog-home of jljj dwindles remarkably on Saturdays and Sundays. This weekend, was not the case.
Somehow my blog has been attached to a photo of Jennifer Beals from the post Yes, that word.
If you Google “Jennifer Beals” and then click on the second auto-generated image of her (in that dangerously smokin’ hot purple dress) you somehow end up in my archive for April. And when even Sinclair couldn’t tell me why this was so I knew it was noteworthy.
How? Dunno. Why? Dunno. Who? A lot of people. Advice: If you are going to start a blog name it after a sexy famous person.
The first post that shows up in the archive is cap’n who n da’ crew - and now I have my fingers crossed that, in the millisecond that all of these Beal photo hunters are spending on my blog, that someone leaves a comment or sends an email proclaiming (honestly) that either they 1.know who these boys are. Or 2. (best case scenario) They are one of them!
(Here’s where I incorporate Cher into the mix… it is Thursday after all) That would be one of those things about life that would make my head explode a little bit. Like that time I met a girl who told me she had once served Cher a scoop of ice cream at a Ben and Jerry’s and Cher thought the scoop was too small and then asked if she could come back there and show her how it’s done. Cher then proceeded to scoop ice cream for several customers. Gawd, I love that story. That must have been such a great day for so many people! Anyway, the world, the wide, and the web are all capable of who knows what – so, who knows. Maybe, just maybe, Jennifer Beals will solve the mystery of cap’n who n’ da crew. I will certainly keep you posted.
Cher wants YOU 
to have a good Friday-eve. Happy her day!
Dear Violet,
3 years ago today, in a few hours exactly, I met you. And the only reason we met is because your friends dragged you out to a bar while you were in town for the weekend and I was there, randomly, from out of town too. I saw you walk in. Without the ability to avoid clichés or mush here, all of a sudden all of the space in between us felt empty. I had to meet you. Had. To. You were the prettiest girl in the room.
Eventually, I found my nerve at the bottom of a beer bottle and asked you to dance. And we danced. Twice. I caught your name, touched your tummy briefly (score!) and then your grumpy, grouchy, scowl-faced, party pooper friend made you leave. I (very seriously) considered locking my arms around your ankles to make you stay, but the floor was sticky and that grossed me out. Also, that would have been creepy and not cute (there is such a fine line between romantic and totally creepy sometimes, but not here).
I asked for your number and you gave me a funny look. You had never done that before. With a bit of reluctance you scratched around on an empty matchbook. You gave it back with some stuff scratched out and some numbers scratched in. I dialed the numbers the next day and it turned out to be a real phone number. I wanted to hang out with you before you left town. You didn’t want to. Whatever.
I called you again a few weeks later on your birthday and we talked. You called me the next day and we talked some more. I called you the day after that and we talked. All of a sudden we were talking every evening, usually for hours, a few states apart, until one of our phone batteries died or one or both of us fell asleep.
It quickly came to be that talking to you was what I looked forward to most in my days. Somewhere in most of our conversations you’d to insist that we wouldn’t know each other for very long. You’d say, “jesse, let’s just be real about this for a second. We’re not even going to know each other a month from now.” I continued to insist that I felt differently but regardless, “I’ll’ take the time we have now and never complain.” And then we’d move on. Again and again… and again.
3 months later you came to visit me. We spent a few weeks together and it was kind of like a two week long first date. It was magic. The whole thing. The whole time. You were, again without the possibility to avoid mush, the single most unbelievably amazing human being I had ever run into… ever. The fact that I was falling in love with you was unstoppable, undeniable and it was something I tried really hard to keep down while you were around. Full knowing that after our two week date ended you’d be catching a flight to France – for a year… at least. And you did.
You called me when you got to Paris and told me that the hickey I had left on your neck was not cool. This is true. Hickies can be pretty gross. Sorry about that. Good that it was cold and that you love to wear scarves. I called you the next day. And the next. And all of a sudden we were tens of thousands of miles apart and I was still spending more time with you than with anyone else. We emailed, wrote letters and talked on the phone – a lot.
I came to visit you a few months later. And when I very awkwardly asked you, late one night, in that tiny little French kitchen, if you wanted to be my girlfriend you giggled and said, ‘ok.’ Just like that. Ok then.
After I got back I spent my summer running around trying to get a scholarship to study in your little French town. I got the scholarship and then I got sick. It was a devastating roadblock, but that’s all it was, a block.
I flew to see you again 4 months later for a few weeks. We overbooked and overextended ourselves into a foggy exhaustion – and then I flew home. It was a whirlwind trip and it tested our relationship immensely. And we passed. Beautifully.
Two Novembers ago you flew into Seattle to maybe possibly live here, maybe. We agreed that we would have our own places but that you would stay with me until you settled in. You settled in alright. Eventually we found a place for all of your stuff in my place and that place became our place.
This winter we found a little bigger place to move into, together, and we did. And now you, the Seal, Fraidy, (sometimes Marcus) and I have a home. Together. And I know you think we don’t have a very good shot of getting into the New York Times Wedding Page, but it’s not a bad story, Violet. And this is only year three. Today. Right now. That’s not bad, baby. Not bad at all.
Happy anniversary. And thanks… for, you know, everything.
My intention to spend most of my weekend with the fish happened… for 15 minutes on Friday. The rest of the weekend was a creative combination of total chaos and dreamy moments of lazily lying around with Violet and the Seal on warm, sunny beaches. The moments of complete chaos were short lived and far enough between that the recovery time of lying around in the sun with Violet tucked into me while I threw the ball over and over… and over, for the Seal to swim to and fetch feels like the majority of my moments. But the majority of the reason for feeling so utterly exhausted still come from the several fleeting moments of White-Tall-Femme-is-going-on-here?, all of which the Seal hand delivered.
We were house sitting for some friends this weekend. Friends with chickens and goats and a cat. And due to the extent in which detail would be exhaustingly necessary I really don’t have the energy to try and recreate the whole weekend. Let’s just say that the Seal’s new nickname is chicken-chasing- cat-licking-goat teasing-couch pissing- bread-stealing-deadly-killer-Seal-pup.
You could fill in your own interpretation [here] and no matter what order or exact scenario you come up with, if it involves a lot of desperate squawking, a few rolls of paper towels, goats refusing to milk, and having to go out to breakfast due to the slobbery in house options, you are very, very close, if not right on.
As we were driving home late Sunday evening Violet said, “You know, maybe we need to drive by the pound every once in a while. Slowly. Just to remind her.”
me: Hey Violet, have you ever shop lifted before?
V: Noooowah! Are you serious? No way, jesse!
me: Geez, I’m just asking.
(a few minutes later…)
V: Oh no!
me: What?
V: I have!
me: You have what?
V: You! You made me a thief!
me: What the hell are you talking about, Violet?
V: When we go shopping at the co-op.
me: Yeah?
V: When we go grocery shopping and you snack on things from the bins, like those little chocolate covered almonds. You’ve offered me some before and I ate them!
me: Oh my gawd, Violet, everyone does that. That’s not shop lifting.
V: Did we pay for those almonds?…
me: (Speechless and smiling)
V: (looking quite proud) …Mmm hmm. Thought so.
me: You’re a risk taking rebel, Violet.
V: You! You’ve corrupted me!
m: Straight to hell… now we both shall go. Isn’t that cute, Violet?! Won’t that be fun?
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