J.P.

The jet black hair betrayed the age shown by the rest of her outward appearance. She had leaped out of the passenger side of an old Mercury that was parked right next to the front door of my favorite Dunkin Donuts. In fairness, the Mercury sagged more than she did, but I think they both wore garments of wood grain.

The Mercury was parked in a spot that was traditionally reserved for foot traffic, but in a snowstorm such as this, anything goes. She was just getting to the counter as I came up behind her to wait in line for my turn to place an order. I could already see my iced tea being assembled by the very capable counter people.

“I’ll have six dozen donuts, mixed”, the woman with the jet black hair barked out. I realize that I say “barked out” a lot on my blog, but she didn’t have a quiet voice nor did she have a pleasant voice. Barking something out is how I hear a lot of people place orders in establishments such as Dunkin’ Donuts. To me it sounds something like the canine variety of sounds typically heard when dogs are gossiping with one another. Barking is not a condemnation, it just appropriately describes how I hear this woman in wood grain.

“SIX dozen?” the girl at the register asked.

“Yes, six.”

“Oh, having a party tonight?” Pleasant conversation is always a good path to take when trying to have a pleasant retail experience.

“No”, she said. “My husband and I are worried about the snow storm tonight and we want to make sure that we’re stocked up.”

Apparently someone had already purchased all the loaves of bread and gallons of milk at the nearby Mini-Mart.

“They say this storm could last through tomorrow.”

I stifled a knowing laugh. People think I’m critical of the folks that live in these parts. I’ve been accused of being downright ridiculous. But this blog entry was just writing itself.

“Make one of the dozen all jelly!” Ok, the bark was replaced by a bit of a squeal with that one. Delight should always be recognized.

“Is today a cookie day?” My iced tea was ready and I was being herded over to another register while the six dozen donuts were being assembled.

“Not today”, I replied. “I have cookies at home.”

We’re ready for the storm.

I have never been one to enjoy talking on the phone. I don’t like calling people. I always feel awkward when I’m on a phone call. It’s ironic, because I work for a telephone company and I spend a good share of my week on conference calls, but I really don’t enjoy the sport.

Because I work for a telephone company, there’s motivational marketing messages hung around the building showing teenagers all giddy because they’re talking on a phone in their bedroom. The ads remind me of those ads from the 60s and 70s when Mom and Dad were rich enough to spring for a second line and a princess phone for the daughter, where she could talk from her bedroom. The kids of poor parents resorted to stretching the telephone cord across the kitchen and into the broom closet, where they could enjoy privacy. I have never had the urge to sit in a broom closet and the only excitement I feel about having a phone in the bedroom is that nowadays it’s usually a gadget phone so laden with extraneous features that it could double as a bidet.

My sister and her family are currently living in Italy. We have relatively affordable international calling plans on our phone but I’d rather just exchange email messages. In fact, I’m most comfortable exchanging email messages on most occasions. Sometimes a chat on an Instant Messenger or a video chat on Skype is nice, but in reality I’d just like to sit down and type what I’m thinking and then wait for a response at the leisure of the other party. I prefer email over Twitter direct messages and I really prefer email over Facebook messenger or whatever the hell that annoying thing that pops up everywhere is called. Email is starting to become the written letter of the 21st century; it takes time to sit down and write a coherent email that is worthy of attention. I write a couple of emails to Earl everyday. I usually sign them “Fondly”. He can feel the warmth and that gets us through until we can see each other.

I’ve never figured out why I don’t like talking on the telephone, by the way. I don’t know if it’s because of too many screwed up Chinese take-out orders or if it’s because I was called “ma’am” on one too many occasions prior to puberty or what because phone calls in general feel intrusive to me, but it’s something that I do because I must, not something that I enjoy.

Don’t tell the telephone company I work for that I don’t have a princess phone in our bedroom. I’ll have to hide in the broom closet or something.

As I move into my mid 40s this year (because 43 is not a mid-40s age, it’s still an early 40s age) I am slowly coming to the realization that my completely out-of-step existence with the rest of the world is becoming increasingly apparent; not because of my somewhat different thought processes or eccentric behavior, but rather because I think I’m getting too old for the ever-young gay demands of the community.

When I got home last night there were two stereos blasting in the house. Jamie listens to music that is not really my thing; I just hear gargling, shouting and guitars, but that’s just my take on it. There’s nothing wrong with the music, I just don’t go and seek it out, and because of the age difference between the two of us, I don’t find this surprising.

In the kitchen I heard the chipper jingle of “Kiss 108 FM!” After the chipper jingle all I heard was blips and bleeps and moaning sounds that were autotuned beyond any sort of musicality. I felt like someone was holding seashells up to my ears and then making trilling noises into a hole on the other side. I refrained from saying anything about this because it was obvious that Scott was enjoying Kiss 108 FM, heck, I enjoyed the station very much when I lived in Boston from 1988-1990, and I didn’t want to impede any efforts at supper that Scott was making. The thing is, Scott is a couple of years older than me and I couldn’t understand a word the robot on the radio was saying but Scott was singing right along. I couldn’t find the necessary capabilities within my brain to comprehend the electronic gargling sounds. I felt left out, old and obsolete.

Supper was quite tasty though.

A couple of weeks ago when Earl and I went on that really long ride in the Jeep, I actually looked at my watch towards the end of our dinner and made the claim, “Wow, it’s getting late!” It was 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday night. Ten years ago I would have been readying myself for a night of DJing at the local club, where I’d do my thing until 2:30 and then possibly go to an after-hours party after helping get the bar cleaned up. I’m sure that’s what the kids do today.

When did I become so obsolete?

The other night I watched a clip (in error) of “Bionic Woman”, that awful remake of the 70s show where Jaime Sommers wasn’t really acting like Jaime Sommers. The show was dark and menacing and Jamie seemed very angry. When she jumped up onto a building using her bionics, the camera pulled back so that you could see the leap of 30 feet or. The entire leap was shown from ground to roof and it was embarrassingly obvious that there were cables and harnesses involved that had been computer-erased from the scene. What happened to using a little bit of imagination when we are only shown the beginning of the leap and the landing on the roof? Though this is a poor example, is it bad to think that it’d be better to engage my imagination while watching a television show instead of painting everything in such an obvious manner, however poorly executed that demonstration might be?

And while I’m talking about harnesses; I look at these pictures of young guys on the internet wearing leather harnesses that just go across the top of their chest and around their shoulders. All I can see an ill fitting halter top like you’d find on a beach near a trailer park. I don’t find anything hot about these new, mini harnesses. My understanding is if you’re going to be wearing a harness, you’d better be ready to be hauled up into the air by it like some sort of Cirque du Soleil Sex Act. And am I completely obsolete by thinking of Mary Lou Retton (which most people these days would seemingly say, “Who?”) because I thought of a dismount eligible for scoring if you’re engaging in a Cirque du Soleil Sex Act? If I barked out the name Mary Lou Retton while DJing in a club today, people would look at me like I have a propeller on my head. I know, if I barked out “Lady Gaga” people would either get all breathless with excitement or throw sides of beef at me (I know she does something with eggs and meat) but I couldn’t name a song of hers outside of the one where she sings her name a lot.

Maybe I’m more nuts than obsolete.

I woke up this morning feeling sniffly and run-down. I couldn’t really call off from work today because I wasn’t feeling like I was on death’s doorstep or anything; I’m just feeling like I’ve been working and playing hard and I need some downtime.

Good thing the weekend schedule looks relatively empty. And the fact that it’s Thursday makes the weekend schedule situation look even better, because we’re thisclose to the weekend. And that’s a beautiful thing.

Earl is out of town on business tonight so I am going to hit the hay early and hope that I don’t awake to a bunch of snow in the morning (forecasters are saying to expect anywhere from nothing to something with various inches in between tonight, but I don’t buy it). I read an article this morning that talked about human sleep patterns and how an eight-hour night of sleep may be contrary to our evolution. Studies and historical documents seem to indicate that our ancestors may have slept twice each night; sleep around four hours, up for an hour or two and then sleep another four hours or so. Their bodies did this naturally. I find this interesting because my body has been trying to do that sort of thing for years but I get all panicky about the fact that I’m awake in the middle of the night and I need to get as much sleep as possible before my alarm du jour starts clanging me awake. Perhaps tonight would be a good night to try the on-off-on approach to sleeping, since the bed will be empty (aside from me) and I wouldn’t be disturbing my husbear with my latest sleeping experiment.

Life is more fun when you treat it like a science experiment.

The bright side to my “I’m not sick but my body thinks it is” feeling is that I don’t feel sad or depressed, I’m a happy, sniffly person all the way. There’s always a bright side.