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There’s too much emotion out here in this corner of the Blogosphere. I’m swimming in the stuff. I have a couple of things to say and they are prolly not things that will gain me any fans. Yeah, I don’t like lying or cheating. Yes, there are people I like who have cheated and lied. Usually, they didn’t lie or cheat on me. Well, actually, no one’s ever cheated on me. Yes, if I don’t have first hand knowledge, proof positive of something, I don’t like to rush to judgment. If the reasons for why something happened are not readily available, I don’t like to assume. I probably should have been a lawyer. I often have a very logical mind. I also have been accused of being a cold blooded, cold hearted bitch.

What are you going to believe? What you see and hear of me on this blog and the other sites I go to on a daily basis? What my kid says about me on her blog? What my sister would tell you if you met her? (She’s the one who’s repeatedly tarred me with the cold bitch label.) What do you believe about me? What do you KNOW?

Are you disappointed in me now that you know my sister believes those things about me? If I make a mistake, if I’m confused and upset and I make poor choices in my life and blog about them here, will you tell the internet that you’re disappointed in me, that I’m a liar or not what I presented myself to you as? Does my whole blogging “reputation” come down your assumptions about who I am on the inside, as misguided as that may be?

I’m not taking a stance on either side of the fence in the drama that happened. It’s a horrible tragedy, and neither of the extremes in stance that I have heard appeal to me. My sense is that the truth lies somewhere in the middle and no one but the participants really knows the whole truth.

However, seeing and hearing all the opinions about this, does raise some questions with me. I find myself looking over my shoulder, wondering what fucked up thing about me will be the thing that turns first one person, and then many others who listen to that person and allow those opinions to color them, against me. Because truthfully, I’m not pristine. I would never claim to be nor present myself in that manner. I’m a hugely flawed person, from my emotions, to my motivations, to my heart, and my soul. Which one of those flaws will one day disappoint you?

Devil’s advocate is a role I can never seem to shake. I always have to ask those questions and look at the other side. I’m eternally optimistic and practical at the same time. I have a scientist’s love of facts and digging for them. I have the psychologist’s yearning to delve into the psyches of others and understand their motivations. I like people who are real. Or are at least as real as I can determine them to be based on the information I have to work with.

I was really gonna do a Thursday Thirteen about 12 giraffe photos in my My Pictures folder. I guess my thoughts just took over and wrote this though. I don’t want to be judged by all of you, yet I know that every word I type, whether it’s funny or reveals my heart, are words that you will all judge… even if you say you won’t. I’m a big enough girl to accept that people will judge me. I learned long ago that is just another part of human nature and to rail against it is to isolate myself from the world.

So, instead, here are my thoughts for you to see, to judge, to like, to dislike, to do with what you will. I’ll be back tomorrow, whether all of you stop by or not. I’ve been through too many brouhahas and other shit in this life to let people’s feelings about me stop me from doing something I like doing. After all, you’re entitled to your feelings and reactions… and so am I.

Maybe next week I’ll do the 12 giraffe photos. You might want to stop by and see them. One of them is giraffe sex. I’m not quite sure how I found that photo. It was completely by accident, I swear. And it’s funny. Well, really what’s funny is the way Shinygal laughs at it. Yeah. I think I will post the giraffe pics next Thursday. I hope you come by to see them.

BTW… here’s the pic of me at the company picnic that Motley took with her Nikon. No makeup. All grey haired, and age spotted, with crow’s feet and bags under the eyes. WYSIWYG. If you’re not afraid of all that reality click on the photo and look at the larger version. Maybe if you look real close… you’ll see into my soul.

Earlier tonight I decided what my post would be about for Tuesday. Then I got caught up in all the blogs about TC08. (Oh, and one disclaimer before I really get started - It’s not a big pimpin’ Friday and I’m tired so I’m not gonna link all the names I drop. Most of them are in my blogroll and most of them you already visit anyway.) I checked out that Uppercase Woman blog. Several things struck me about her post, but the one thing I seriously took away with me from her blog was this - I’m not an uppercase woman. Every time I type the letter “I”, I have to backspace. i am clearly a lower case woman.

Mr. Shiny and Hilly beat me to the punch with confessions, which isn’t surprising at all. I come late to things except work and appointments. I came late to blogging, only having begun in January of this year. The internet has always been a safe haven for me. I can be all the things that Life won’t let me be in the realm known as RL. Here, on the net, I can be a person who has strength and humor, who is fearless and fun. It’s funny to find that when you’re almost half a century old, that you are still the wallflower that you were at 18, 25, 37, and 46. I know that, faced with all of you in the realm of RL, I would either say totally the wrong thing, say nothing at all, or try too fucking hard to fit in. Because the truth of the matter is that I fit nowhere. Not even inside my own skin.

My truths are not as painful as they once were. I guess the passage of years is good for something, if only to dull the edge of the pain. Venues such as blogs are my medium. I am a writer. I’ve been one from the moment I could hold a pencil and string words together. Writing is my way of expressing myself because Lord knows, I do a really shitty job of it when I open my mouth. I don’t tell my child often enough that I love her. Yet, it’s very easy for me to rail at her and make her feel bad because she won’t take out the trash. And I know, if she wasn’t here… I would be truly alone. There is a comfort in the fact that she is typing away in IM in the next room. If I died in my bed tonight, she might not know until tomorrow morning, but at least I wouldn’t be dead in my bed for weeks with no one to find me. And I’d like to think that she would miss me the way I miss my mom and dad.

I am trapped by a wealth of fears that I can escape only when I write. When Adam wrote that he spent two thousand dollars going to TequilaCon, I realized I would truly never be able to go. I couldn’t string together $200 let alone ten times that. I have a job that doesn’t have any room for growth. I have a degree that’s not quite finished, so another, better job would be a stretch. I make a measly $40K a year (and no that’s not a slam against the company I work for, but more of a testimony to my lack of earning power) and live paycheck to paycheck to put a roof over our heads. We have been homeless countless times over the past 10 years. My credit is wrecked and so is whatever self esteem and hope I had at 18. Except when I write.

Putting the words here to make you feel what i feel is all I know how to do. I do it here, and at the Bar. Now I’ve submitted my 6K words to the Pink Chair Diaries, so maybe my words will reach another audience. Still, even though I want to meet all of you, feel a huge yen to meet you… if I did meet you, I wouldn’t know what to say, or would say something heinously stupid. My mouth cannot string words together the way my fingers can here in this medium. i am afraid to meet even one of you. Here, you like me. IRL, maybe you won’t.

So my Tuesday Truth is this, even if i had the money to come and meet you, i might not. Even David from BellaDaddyBlog, whom I have known for 30 years, and whom I will always love… I’m afraid to leave my hidey hole to see him. I have failed on so many levels as a person that I am afraid to try to make friends with someone only to fail at yet another thing.

So here I sit with my words. Cold comfort, I hear someone murmur. Yes. Sometimes they are, but in the end they are all I have to show you who i am. Because if I do manage to meet you, you’ll probably have a hard time making out those words, as I mumble them around my size 9 foot that will more than likely end up stuffed in my mouth.

I love Trotter. He always makes me laugh. In a different way than Irish because, God and the sim knows, they have completely different styles of humor. Trotter is a friend from the horse racing sim game I play. Trot’s wise with a dry sense of humor and a frank appreciation for women. I whined in the sim chat that no one was commenting on my blog. Trot says, “Where’s the pics?” We all thought the same thing… Trot wanted nekkid women which reminds me of pornfest. So I decided I would talk about Trotter today. Trotter, the sim, and pornfest.

Pornfest is a creation of my S.O. Rott. Rott hooked up all the TVs in the condo to a porn feed from his DVD player. You can see porn in virtually every room in the house - he calls it Pornfest. Of course, when my kid was younger he could only do Pornfest when she went to her dad’s for the weekend or when we were gone for the day at work and school.

I used to tell the story of Pornfest in the sim chat room and most of the guys were complimentary. I mean, c’mon… what man isn’t into porn? The only ones I’ve ever met who didn’t like it were the holy rollers. And they prolly did too but just wouldn’t admit it. Just because you believe in God or Jesus doesn’t mean you can’t get turned on by people having sex.

Trotter is unabashedly male. I can smell the testosterone through the computer, I swear. He’s low key about it… not like Vett and his Girls Gone Wild attitude. No, Trotter is suave and uses his dry humor to advantage. I always think of him as the James Bond of the sim. Shaken, not stirred. Although I suppose in Trot’s case he’s stirred, not shaken! LOL So if Trot’s Bond, I guess that makes Irish Felix Leiter. Felix is the CIA agent who is Bond’s pal. He’s the Jerry Lewis to Trot’s Dean Martin. They are both hot as hell to the sim females although some of them refuse to admit it and prefer to hit on Greg. Heh.

Greg’s charm not withstanding, all the women seem to acknowledge Trot as the man about town (and the sim) that he is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one disagree with him in the sim chat. Unless we’re talking sires and breeding. EVERYONE disagrees about THAT. It’s the universal cause of discord because no two people agree on breeding except the Super guys from Del Penn. I’ve never seen such fighting as the simmers do over breeding fake horses. Breed this one over. No, don’t. This is a good breeding. No, it’s not. Dixie Union is a good sire. I’ve never had the urge to use him. And on and on. I know, if you’re reading this and you’re not from the sim you’re going WTF is she yammering about?

The people from the sim are as fierce about it as others are about porn. Some people can’t live without at least a little porn entertainment in their lives. The simmers can’t live without their fake horses and the whole sim lifestyle of breeding and training and betting. Okay, some of the simmers can’t live without porn either. Like Trotter insinuating that he wouldn’t comment on my blog unless I posted pics… meaning naked ones. Maybe I’ll post a naked Kelly Monaco just for him this week. LOL

I guess we all have our obsessions. Mine is Marcus. Ok, and the sim. *sigh* Okay, Pornfest too. You got me there. Now I’ve confessed to everything. Well, maybe not everything. Heh. Time for me to go. The hot grocery delivery guy is due here anytime with my food! Just another little obsession of mine… like the fake horses and pornfest. Only this obsession breathes. Heh Heh.

Laters peeps!

How I came to be a skank is a strangely circuitous story. See, I have this thing for Marcus Schenkenberg. To me, the man is the most beautiful man in the world. I love his chest, his hands, his dimpled chin… just everything. He is the epitome of male beauty to me. I was obsessed with the man long before the Bar came into existence.

So here I am writing in the Bar and the day comes when Jen offers me Alaric Kohl for Lex Valentine’s mate. (See the post entitled The HEA.) Her inducement to me is to tell me that Alaric is embodied by Marcus Schenkenberg. I have to admit, that was a stroke of genius on her part, enticing me with Marcus. Of course I couldn’t resist.

Not long after that Jen invites me to this message board called Zanctuary or Z as we call it. The women there call each other skanks. They give each other skank names which I think have to be earned in some devious manner. So, very quickly it seemed, I was tagged as the Skankenberg. My response to this was to make skank avatars for everyone! I’ve had various versions of my skank av but this one was the first incarnation.

So now everywhere I go I have to use a Marcus av at some point. At JR Ward’s BDB MB I’m posting pics of Marcus in a kilt… or I’m posting about him at the Dark Muse Society. He’s even on my Yahoo Instant Messenger this week. It’s an av with Marcus and the little giraffe beanie Jen sent me for Christmas. Giraffes being synonymous with Marcus now because of Alaric. (Alaric’s mom makes him take dancing lessons even though at 6′6″ she says he’s a big giraffe.)

So now I’m a skank with an obsession with Marcus Schenkenberg, an attachment to a fictional character named Alaric the Asshole aka the big giraffe, and a collector of giraffe items. All because I think the man has the most beautiful chest and hands and um… everything ever. A skank with a giraffe fetish… not exactly what I thought I’d be at my age but what the hell. I’m enjoying myself drooling so just pass the tissues and laugh at me. It’s all good… and Marcus… he’s just too damn good.

Til next time. Laters peeps!

Well, here I am. I think. Wait… if I think then … I am. Ah, fuck it. This is an experiment. A writing/research kind of experiment. You see, I’m a writer. I write fiction. Mostly these days I write in a story called The Bar. It’s a paranormal cyber serial which means it’s an online soap opera story with vampires, werewolves, and just about any kind of creature you could imagine including *cough* humans. The story is told on a message board in posts. Sometimes in first person and sometimes in third.

I’m not the only writer at The Bar. Currently, there are seven of us and one is a man. We’re a diverse group. I’m the oldest and I live in Southern California. I think Alysse is the youngest. She lives in Hawaii. Then there’s Darrien. He lives in Scotland. Laurie in Wisconsin. Avalon in Spain. Mary in Arkansas and Jen in Indiana. Alysse, Dee and Laurie are all in their 20’s. Mary and Jen in their 30’s. I am the old woman in her 40’s which leads me to the reason for this blog.

See, I was looking for hot men to be the physical representation of characters in The Bar Story. I came across this hot Romanian model named Andrei Andrei. He’s got a blog.  I started reading his blog for shits and grins one day. His English is pretty good. I was surprised. I started watching the videos he posted and really liked the last one which was from a music video shoot in Lebanon. The music sucked ass but the video… which was all him and some girl, possibly the singer… was HOT! Damn he is fine! So I did something I rarely ever do… I posted a comment. My comment said he looked hot in the video and if he ever wanted a sugar mama in Southern California to look me up. Once I’d posted the comment it preyed on my fertile mind. I kept wondering what if…

What if a woman… an ordinary woman who aspired to be a romance writer… began haunting a male model’s blog? What if she was fascinated with him and his life? What if he was amused by her comments and the bits of her personality he could discern from her posts? What if he went looking and found her blog? What if he was secretly falling for her and she for him? What if he somehow got her address and showed up on her doorstep one day? Not looking for a sugar mama but looking for the woman whose blog posts had enthralled him. What if she was 15 years older than him, shy and not beautiful? Would he still love her? Could he win her? Would he want to?

So I guess being a webpage builder and writer but not a blogger I decided I’d better figure out what the hell it was like to have a blog. You’re supposed to write about what you know so this is my research project. I doubt Andrei Andrei will come by and read it and fall in love with me and show up on my doorstep but it’s a nice daydream for about 2 minutes. I’m too old for the hot young things now but I can look at them and remember what it was like to be with one. Besides, Andrei looks like a piece of my past and a man I had to leave behind.

Whoever said that being old and boring means you were always that way? I wasn’t. I have a past. A murky one with spikes of high romance and lust and lows of depression so dark and deep it’s a wonder I survived to type this here today. I went from Hell to the Cemetery (where I work now) to this Blog. If my teenage daughter reads this she’s gonna roll her eyes but at the same time she knows… Mom lived. I tried not to let life pass me by. If living meant grabbing the ass of some hot young man… well then, I guess I’ve lived. Righteously.

Laters peeps. Until the next time…

Just click if you’re interested in The Bar Story.