Random Esquire

Tell me she doesn’t make your teeth ache.

1. I anticipated a stressful day today and guess what? Work did not disappoint. I closed the office door, put in ear plugs and spread contracts out in front of me. I know the ear plugs are odd – but I am easily distracted and ear plugs equal instant concentration for me. At one point, I heard a knock at my door and because Kennedy had just been in my office, I thought it was him, coming back to toss more BS back and forth. I said, “Yoooooo!” as way of telling him to come in. My senior manager walked in instead, eyebrows raised.

Awesome.

2. Okay, I am just going to say this: I would not turn down Kellie Pickler. I don’t anticipate the opportunity – I’m just saying it in a moment of weakness. Extreme weakness. (Don’t mock me.)

3. I grabbed dinner and drinks after work with Boss. We were both slightly tipsy by dinner’s end.

4. My neighbor (we went out for St. Patrick’s Day) asked me to come with her as she walked her dog tonight. I went to her condo and walked in just as she came dancing down the hallway with a glass of wine in her hand, singing Spirit in the Dark: “Tell me, my brothers, my brothers, how do you feel? Do you feel like dancing? Get up there and let’s start dancing…” I couldn’t resist. I grabbed her and we danced back down the hallway. I dig that kind of uncontrolled energy.

1. When Boss and I first broke up, I was just cynical enough to declare myself single for life and was prepared to dedicate my life to being every soccer moms’ midlife crisis. Has anyone let Emma Thompson know that she can British nanny me all she wants? She’s my official soccer mom crush.

2. Took Boss out to dinner last week as we still enjoy each other’s company and good food. Two of our dishes (yes, I took the pictures):

3. Little Filthy. Contemplative.

4. Little Filthy. When he was football sized.

5. The reason Boss made me stop taking pictures of Little Filthy. (Apparently, it isn’t clear what this is a picture of…um, the dog was on his back sleeping and he has two perfectly placed nipples. Need I say more?)

1. I forgot I had a steak in the refrigerator. I wasted a perfectly good meal on chicken.

2. My buddy and I disagree on when he should get to a bar where he will be meeting a date. He thinks he should arrive late. I’m not sure why. I think it’s a bit of a control thing. I told him to assume she’ll be 10 minutes late but get there 10 minutes early so that if she is on time, she doesn’t have to sit at the bar alone. Of course, the number one rule of dating:

Be Funny And Bring Money.

3. Why do people feel the need to tell me lawyer jokes when they find out I’m an attorney? I don’t get it. I don’t tell black jokes when I find out someone is black.

Yes, I realize my logic has holes.

4. And now I must be off to pick up my date. Neighbor and I are going to hit a nearby Irish pub to enjoy a pint and I am precisely 10 minutes late (the rule for when you pick her up at her place).

I am not a clumsy person. (Boss is incredibly clumsy…in fact, I am honestly surprised when she makes it from one room to the next without tripping.) I don’t spill. I don’t knock things over. I don’t bump into things. And…up until today, I could have said that I honestly do not remember the last time I fell.

But since it was just about an hour ago, it’s pretty fresh in my memory. Here’s what happened. I was heading downstairs through the back way of my condo building. The back way, which is for pets, has…cement stairs. I glanced at my phone and saw an e-mail from SingleMomSeeking about blogging. I opened up the e-mail and started to read just as my heel missed the first step down on a flight and…down I went. I had that brief thought of, “You must be fucking kidding me. I don’t fall.” The cement stairs, they beg to differ. I reached out and grabbed the metal rail and jerked to a stop.

I lay there for a moment and then thought, “Eh, not so bad.” One leg hurt more than the other. I stood up and walked it off. Then I went back upstairs. Boss was over and I said to her, “I just pulled a you.” She said, “What?!” I pulled up my jeans and took off my shoe. Long story short, my knuckles are banged up, my knee has a hole in it and my foot looks like someone dropped a 20 pound weight on it …and everything was bleeding. Nice. Throughout it all, I kept a death-grip on my phone. That can’t be healthy.

There were flashbacks to the time I got my arm mangled in the parking gate and ended up with a hole in my arm. You know, really, it hurt, but it was somewhat exhilarating. Which must be exactly why people like Steve O get addicted to their own stupidity.

I just looked out the loft window to the balcony and thought, “I bet I could jump to that tree easily and make it down.”

Whenever I mention that I do not like cats, someone will say, “You’d like my cat.”  No, seriously, I probably won’t.

I know that part of this is because a) I’ve never had a cat, b) I’m allergic to them, and c) I don’t know if they have a point.  If I was not allergic, it is possible that I might have learned to like them but I was pretty sure I did not like them before I ever found out I was allergic.  This happened when I went to a date’s home and she had a cat.  When I left a few hours later, I had to pull over on the side of the road to get ill.

Then I dated a woman who had two cats, both of the incredibly, wildly hairy type – what’s that called? Maine coon?  Something like that.  One was named Baby Boy and the other was Finnegan, which she called Finneh.  I saw one of them do something near indescribable to a wall in the house and that convinced me that cats are still wild animals.

Yesterday, I was on the phone with an ex (not Boss) who was trying to coax a cat out from under her car.  She said, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty…” and she made kissy noises.  I said, “Does that work? Do they respond to that? Actually, do they respond to anything?”  She said, “YES.  I think people just do it all the time so they learn to respond to it.”  I said, “They learn?!”

I’m not entirely opposed to cats.  I might get a cat someday.   Yes, that’s possible.  In fact, the first time I see a cat lead a blind man down the street, I will get one.

Let’s hear from you, por faplease.

1. You’re having an intimate gathering. Invite one of each:

a) one person from your current life,

b) one (known) person who has passed away,

c) one famous person (alive or dead), and

d) one person from the internet you’ve never met.

2. What is the best meal you can make?

3. Would you rather be illiterate or blind?

Edited to Add: We’re at 7 votes illiterate and 3 votes blind. Does anyone have a really strong opinion on this?

Boss and I are on good terms and speak regularly. She has a date tonight. I sent her a text message and this was our exchange:

RandomEsq: “Have a fantastic time. Don’t do that weird thing you do when you chew, though.”

Boss: “What?????”

RandomEsq: “You know.”

Boss: “No?!?!”

RandomEsq: “I’m teasing. You don’t do anything funny when you chew. But seriously, don’t smell your food.”

Boss: “Duh!”

I continue to go out on dates since Boss and I parted.  Some have been good, some have been less than so.  But I suppose it must say something that only one of my dates these past few months knows about my blog.  I think it was Ms Single Mama who said that blogs were a bit like a dating guide.  Like the books on our bookshelf, I think what a person chooses to write about is revealing.

Plush is on the road until Saturday this week for work, deliriously short on sleep.  She sent me an e-mail earlier while she browsed the airport stores and said, in part, this:

“It was here that I discovered the ultimate form of myself, what I can only aspire to and hope to one day achieve – Ultra Plush.  And entire wall of luxuriously rich products designed to remove you from your surroundings and create an alternate space of peace, calm, and absolute blissful comfort.  Thick pile socks and blankets, gel eye masks, neck pillows, anything you can imagine might make your 5 hour flight more comfortable is available in pink, tan and blue with the texture of Snuggles the Downey bear.

I want it all.  I also want to be it all.  Mostly, I just want to tear open every single package on that wall, throw every item onto the floor into a giant bed of decadence, and sleep for a week.  I’m off to find ice cream.  And coffee.  Miss you.”

Methinks Plush will need some pampering when she returns.  I think a hot bath, massage, and a good meal will be a start.  Let’s face it, at this point the airport news stand has her enchanted.  Surely I can beat that, right?

This has to be some sort of joke.

This woman sat down one day on her boyfriend’s toilet and then…didn’t get back up.  Her skin eventually grew around the toilet seat.  The boyfriend would bring her food and water and each day would ask her if she’d come out of the bathroom.  Her response?

“Maybe tomorrow.”

*blink*

Finally, he called the police and told them that something was wrong with his girlfriend.  Police found her on the toilet, sweat pants around her ankles.  She said she was fine and did not want to leave.

Let’s back up here.

1.  If a woman is in my bathroom for 20 minutes, I’d politely not notice the time.  If she was there for an hour, I’d knock and see if she was okay.  You know what I wouldn’t do?  Take in food and water so she could spare herself a trip to the kitchen.

2.  Where the hell is this woman’s family?  And did she have a job?

3.   He asked her every day to come out of the bathroom.  I won’t lie to you.  I don’t have that kind of patience.  Hey, buddy.  Red. Flag.

4.  I’m almost ashamed to say that my initial thought was of a wood-paneled bathroom in a double wide – which made me wonder if there was a second bathroom, for him.

5.   The neighbor’s response?   “It doesn’t surprise me.”