I'm not Mad at You, I'm Mad at the Dirt. Wait, Maybe I am Mad at You

It is, as so many things are, all my mommy’s fault. When I was just a wee little duckling, she had me store my toys in separate boxes, one for my cars, one blocks, one for Legos, you get the picture. So now when I say I cleaned up my garage I don’t mean I sort swept the bigger pieces of dirt into the corners and called it a day. O baby, no. I hauled every single item out, tried to talk myself into throwing it away (up to and including our car) and if I absolutely couldn’t, I shoved it, neatly, under the stairs where I can’t see it.

I understand my goal of having an empty garage is a futile one. The purpose, after all, is storage, and yet the thrill of big open spaces is so powerful. I don’t want a garage, I want the steppes of Russia.

The best part was that R Man and I were able to work together on a project without me turning into Baby Jane. I do not play well with others. On jobs around the house, I tend towards snarky bitchiness and my sweet, sweet boyfriend has borne the brunt of this way too many times. So to be able to successfully hang up a ladder (hoo hoo) without swerving towards Divorce Court is more of an accomplishment than it might sound.

Boyfriend was so relieved to come out of it with his skin in one piece, he even allowed me to dump the ratty little dresser he’s had for decades. He found it on the street in the French Quarter and dragged it home (just like me!) and has kept it ever since (just like me!) It served us long and well, but time to go is time to go and thanks to craigslist, it’s gone. So farewell, loyal bureau, godspeed, and may the underwear of others repose in your semi-sturdy embrace for years to come.

On a separate note, go immediately to Fabulon and watch the Official Fabulon Video http://thombeau.blogspot.com/2007/07/official-video-of-fabulon.html . The thrill of a glammed-out Dame Shirley Bassey covering one of the great anthems of our time is not to be missed.

Details, details, details

First, I want it clearly understood having Detail magazine in my house is Not My Fault. It’s one of these subscriptions thingies where you join one thing and suddenly your home is the target of a barrage of odd magazines, like Details and Golfing Today and Forward Thinking Feminists and Knit Now. Anyway, having Detail thrust on me did force me to see the horrifying cover of Clive Owen this month. Is there a more gorgeous man than Clive, anywhere? Oh, you know there isn’t. Could you tell it from this cover? Nope. But then, it’s, you know, Details.

I Gotcher Box Right Here, Baby

I want to go see “Stardust”, don’t you? Everyone who agrees with me that the prospect of seeing Robert De Niro in cancan drag is too fabulous to pass up should plan on getting in line behind me. And it has Rupert Everett (who was probably trying on the cancan underwear every time De Niro took it off) just in case there isn’t sufficient poofiness.

I cleaned out the garage last night in a burst of suburban housefrau madness which I am so regretting now as I sit here achy and tired and even crabbier than usual. The garage does look pretty tidy, I must say. It’s very gratifying. Plus, along with a bunch of stuff destined for the Goodwill limbo, I found a big stack of moving boxes, so I offered them on Craigslist for free and suddenly my email is full of new friends, lusting after my boxes. That’s very gratifying, too.

I gotta go.

We Got the Beat

We just had a drum brigade go down the street outside our office. Of course. Middle of the afternoon, San Francisco financial district, drums. Silly me, I don’t know why I wasn’t expecting it. They were very good, too. Three bass drums, a couple of snares, some tom-toms, hit the cadence, baby. I think I’ll go down to the sidewalk in case strippers show up. You never know.

Plus I can't log on to the wonderful blog Fabulon (http://www.thombeau.blogspot.com/) so I need strippers.

I gotta go.

The Wonderful World of Stuff for Sale

When my colleague Kathleen asked me to come with her to buy a microwave for our office, I jumped at the chance since a) I’m always up for an excuse to flee my cube and b) we were going to be shopping in a restaurant supply house. I adore these kind of oversized, odd stores filled with weird merchandise that has no relation to your life but which seem to imply they could solve all your problems if only you could figure out how to utilize a commercial grade margarita blender.

Much along those lines is the bizarre store in Chinatown on Stockton near Green Street. I don’t know what its name is, or even if it has a name; we call it the World O’ Crap Emporium. Long rows crammed to the ceiling with teetering piles of both flotsam and jetsam. Chinese comic books and plastic washtubs in very unnatural colors and sandals that would probably self-destruct the first time you hit the street in them and those very cool red and gold spirit houses you see in cheap Thai restaurants and car repair tools that, possibly, did not come straight from some fence and god knows what all. That’s the beauty of it, you cannot possibly take it all in, let alone see it all. Plus you just know if there’s an earthquake while you’re in there, you will die in a rain of knock-off ginzu knives and be buried under a heap of silky Quiana ladyboy underpants, three for a dollar.

I’m also a big fan of thrift stores, but who isn’t? Well, R Man, for one. He refuses to enter one without sulking and considering how mediocre the ones here in San Francisco are, it’s hard to blame him. Our dear friend DianeinTexas tries not to make me feel bad about how much better the pickings in Austin are, but even Thrift Town on Mission St. and Community Thrift on Valencia (which are the best we have) are but pallid shadows of the ones she has at her fingertips. Not that I’m bitter. Sort of.

I gotta go.

Psychic Boyfriends Network

R Man and I have the luxury of having separate rooms to dress in each morning, which is great, but today it lead to my coming out and discovering that we were both wearing pink, oxford cloth, button down shirts and medium brown khaki pants. I informed him we could not go out of the house looking like we belonged to an odd religious cult that had elevated the Land’s End catalogue to an icon, but he refused to see the logic of my point. He’s like that sometimes. Most times, in fact. I had to go change my shirt.

Things like this just happen a lot when you’ve been together as long as we have. We met 26 years ago in the back room of a really sleazy, but beloved bar in New Orleans and now we finish each other’s sentences. It happens. I adore him, he’s my best friend, but I still think he should change his shirt when I tell him to.

I gotta go

In the training center, no one can hear you scream

OK, I’m back from the stupid, stupid training and O sweet jeezuz, was that bad.

Not only were the classes irrelevant, poorly presented, boring, and designed to draw out the surly personality I thought I had left behind in high school, but the facility itself turned out to be the real problem. Built somewhere in an odd 70’s period when right angles in architecture were considered passé, the whole damn place was some stupid 45 degree angle with no straight lines and the doors cleverly concealed in the most inconspicuous places. If you ever managed to break out to go from one building to another, you couldn’t then figure how to get back in. Conversations among my fellow students centered on how lost we constantly were. The building reminded me very much of some bad sci-fi movie with Adrienne Barbeau running around looking all busty and stuff.

I gotta go.