fucking high

Someone was cool enough to send me the James Blunt CD after I talked about it in a previous entry. Thank you so much kind person!

I had no idea flying high was really fucking high and that's the problem with listening to music on the radio. It’s like when I first listened to that Radiohead song on CD and learned that the girl Creep is talking about is not so very special, she is so fucking special. And it makes more sense. Censorship ruins everything.

I ended up posting an ad on craigslist whoring myself out and as of 24 hours later I have received exactly ZERO responses. Excellent. And because of how these things always go, Eli, who is gainfully employed and is contacted at least once a month with offers of employment from people who want to steal him away from his current business, just got a sweet gig teaching a college class this fall. It’s a two hour lecture with a two hour lab, and he will be able to do it in addition to his regular job. And I’m happy for him of course, but it’s like he’s some kind of fucking money magnet. He doesn’t even try. While I sit here trying to figure out how to sell my body parts for cash and hating myself. I never wanted a sugar daddy, and even if Eli was pulling down a seven figure salary, I would still want something of my own.

But I have weird luck. Like yesterday, when I woke up and decided I could either work on the employment thing or give it a rest for a bit and go to the beach for a nice relaxing day in the surf. Since it was almost 100 degrees here in the city, and I was sweating my head off even before 9am, I decided to go to the beach. And lo, while I was there I got a phone call from the original company who didn’t give me the job I wanted, telling me that there is another opening for the job I wanted, and they want me to have it! Me! It makes me feel a little silly for all the self-loathing I did last week. I did indeed rock the interview after all.

So the beach. It was absolutely divine and the first time in a week where I was outside and not sweating at all. I lost at least a gallon of sweat at a cookout on Sunday from chasing Joey around in the ridiculous heat all afternoon. The kid exhausts me. But at the beach he’s in his element. He plays in the sand and swims and doesn’t run away like he does everywhere else in public, and the only bad habit he has is that he likes to grab my sunglasses off my face, pull my bathing suit down and visit with people who are sitting near us on the beach. Oh yeah, and he bit my toe once while we were swimming.

Joey makes friends everywhere he goes because he is bold and unafraid. He made friends with an old lady under an umbrella sitting near us who gave him cookies and talked to him for a long time. Then he made friends with another lady who gave him sunblock for his scalp and his own bottle of cold water to drink.

He also made friends with a little girl who belonged to a couple that Eli and I both agreed are the most beautiful couple we have ever seen. Eli and I sat there in our chairs at the edge of the water, staring at these people who cannot possibly be human, while our children played in the sand at our feet. As I stared at them, and then down at myself, I wondered how it is possible that they could look so collected and beautiful while spending a day with a toddler at the beach. I took my sunglasses off and stared at myself in the reflection to see if I was also rockin the beach with my own beauty, and I was sad to discover I was not. My hair was a mess of dreds collected around my head and reaching for the sun like some kind of gravity-defying, ocean-salt-based medusa wig. My skin and bathing suit were covered in a crust of sand, the result of being the human canvas for the sand-flinging toddler at my feet. And I looked more like something that got washed up on the beach than something that stepped out of the white sands in a glossy mag.

When I got home and took off my bathing suit, I realized that sitting prettily on the beach all day on a blanket with a book and my suntan lotion is very different from spending the day swimming, letting the waves drag me up to shore and dragging around in the shallow water with a toddler. I looked like I was wearing a sand bikini on my skin and when I brushed my hair a delicate sprinkling of sand gathered below me on the floor.

I had to wash my hair three times to get the sand out, and my highlights are looking a little brassy from all the sun and salt, but I don’t care because it was a wonderful day. And when I got home to the news that I may be working again very soon, my decision to ditch responsibility and hit the beach made even more sense. In a few weeks things like the sun and swimming and having a tan will all just be fond memories, as I begin spending my days indoors and taking on the sallow appearance of a lab drudge once again.

But at least I’ll have more cash.

Comments

[Mallika]

Woohoo!!! Congratulations on the job offer! So happy for you!

[sherry]

Yay for good news!