Leahy wants Rove to testify over the fired prosecutors. My heart be still. And here is one of the loves of my life, Frank Rich, on four years. Read the Barbara Bush quotes. She’s a model of compassion. It’s a Select article so read it quickly
My new blog will have a place for rants and for articles so I don’t have to muck up the post. I will copy the select articles as I pay enough.
The silent auction was held in an overly dressed hotel reception hall that made Delilah
feel as if she were choking.
It was very noisy as the dinners with stars, and weeks in far away villas hadn’t been auctioned yet. When they were the room would still be noisy as most people attending were stars who owned far away villas.
Delilah made the opening speech. She was the only senior nursing home staff member who wouldn’t stammer and lose their ability to speak.
Or yell out “oh my god, there’s Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick,” or scream about how horrid rich people were.
She didn’t want to be here. Her voice was hoarse from crying. She had made the biggest mistake of her life six days ago and it couldn’t be rectified.
Her eyes weren’t puffy as she had kept real cucumber slices bended around her eyes for hours.
Delilah loved to look pretty for just herself or a crowd. Especially one that included Kevin Bacon and her long time girl crush, Kyra Sedgwick. She loved to get her hair done, have a special mani/pedi as opposed to the $19.99 Monday-Wednesday specials that seemed now to cost $50 with tip. Might as well have Joan of John Barrett’s at Bergdorf’s do it.
Delilah loved coming home and slathering her newly facialed skin in La Mer as she sat in the steam shower. She loved putting make up on and off until she achieved just the look she wanted, as she loved putting on a beautiful dress and admiring herself.
Tonight her co-admirer wasn’t there to tell her how beautiful she was.
Co-admirer? Was that what Drew really was? Had they been a mutual admiration society for twenty years, fifteen of them married?
Drew was everything Delilah wasn’t. Sturdy. Respectable. He managed a hedge fund downtown. He had nerve. Lots and lots of steady nerve.
She hated to admit that one man was her rock. Delilah believed that every woman should be able to live well on her own under any circumstances. But Delilah had never lived alone. When she was a teenager she married Rick, and they remained married for fifteen years.
Did she come with a fifteen year marriage expiration date?
The milk carton was way too old and spoiled now. Only Delilah would think of love in terms of milk cartons. She kept telling herself this wasn’t normal.
To think of wilted roses with thorns or something inspidly romantic, was normal. Delilah wasn’t a romantic. She was a fool for love. And a fool, she thought.
Drew had been having an affair for over a year. He told her. He said that it had been stupid, and it was over. That Delilah was always at work or working, even on their wedding anniversary, and he felt slighted.
She didn’t care what excuses he gave her. So she hadn’t been around on their anniversary? Drew had worked a few himself. She hadn’t had an affair because he was “emotionally unavailable.”
When did men become so expressive?
Wasn’t that the province of other women, not her? To drag out discussions and use psychobabble? Maybe she should have this time.
She was not “emotionally unavailable.” They were both busy with Blackberry filled lives. Oh she detached herself often. Maybe, just maybe his words had some validity.
Why did she have that knee jerk sick reaction? Why couldn’t she accept his apology?
He did admit the affair. If he told her didn’t that mean he wanted her to kick him out?
She hadn’t told Rick about her affair with Drew until they decided to leave their spouses and get married.
Drew’s first wife contested the divorce and didn’t want him to share custody. Rick wanted half of the assets though she had brought in much money.
Getting married had been hard.
Staying married was easy she had thought until last week. Maybe that was it. Maybe she had taken it for granted. She truly believed that she was with the man she was meant to be with.
Delilah believed that a person was given one real chance for happiness, and she blew it. She had never stated this belief. It was against everything a good post-feminist should believe in.
Life with Rick had been hard. They had differing expectations. Life with Drew was easy. When she sang loudly off key, he would join in. If he wanted a dinner party for his clients and associates, he took care of the details.
How could she fault him when they slept together the first time they met?
Rick was away. She and Drew sat staring at The Water Lillies in the old Museum of Modern Art. It turned out to be something they both did when feeling stressed. They found that out when they went to the Sculpture Garden cafe and shared a carafe of Merlot. Then they shared another….
They kept a huge Water Lillies print in a guest bathroom, and a small one in their bedroom, and told nobody of its significance.
They naturally adapted to each others rhythms without any explanation. Sometimes she thought there was a god, and god was at MOMA that day.
How could she have thrown him out and have already seen a divorce lawyer? The world was filled with lonely women and she didn’t have to be one.
She loved a man and he loved her. He made a mistake and she made him pay.
Really she had forgiven President Clinton for more; a faux affair with a woman beneath him in status. Drew had slept with a managing partner of another firm. Two equals. If she could forgive Clinton, and talk about the Impeachment being over a blow job….
Her parents would have told her:
“Sex, Delilah, it was about sex. He felt guilty. He ended it and confessed. End of story.”
But her parents weren’t here.
Drew was the best lover she had ever had. He pleasured her….the thought of Drew making another woman moan was sickening. But the affair was over and had been for three months.
Delilah had told him she was cancelling some engagements so they could go to Drew’s friend’s wedding in Venice.
He looked so strange that she asked if he was sick or in horrible pain.
No, he just had to confess something she really didn’t want to know about.
When he told her she had to act. Every bit of her scholarly, over-educated, graduated college in the 70’s, womanliness was at stake.
Stupid, she was so stupid. How could she be so stupid. She couldn’t stop obsessing over her stupidity.
Delilah wondered if he was as miserable as she was. Was he staying up all night smoking endless cigarettes, something they had both given up years ago?
Was he spending the time he was pretending to be working watching his mind circle over his head thinking endless repetitive thoughts about true love.
True love? She never used that term. They just were good together. He was the crushed cookie in her ice cream Or she was in his….
She always thought things like that and never understood who went where. Maybe because they just went together.
Damn she missed him watching her get dressed tonight. She missed watching him get dressed. She missed him, OK, she just missed him and wanted to end this whole stupid divorce. Even the lawyer had told her to wait several months, but she was getting ready to formally separate. She had to move quickly.
Delilah was always decisive and fast. She never wasted time mulling decisions. Until this week she hadn’t made one she regretted.
She should have told him to sleep in the guest room that night. Why punish him at all? He confessed to something that was over. She knew it was because she and the woman had a friend, Liz, in common.
She should have screamed at Liz for not telling her, but she wouldn’t have told either. Liz said she knew it was a fling. The woman was constantly crying because Drew was obviously in love with Delilah.
Delilah knew her speech went well because there was a lot of laughter and applause. She gave the speech by rote as she was busy castigating herself. As she never wore contacts when giving a big speech, she couldn’t see the attendees..
When she left the stage, and walked to her table, her friend Rosanna greeted her:
“I thought you and Drew were filing for divorce, but we were supposed to tell everybody he’s away?”
“Ha?”
Then she saw him sitting at the table. For a second she wanted to be angry.
Four years on Monday. May G-d or whoever forgive us. No more American deaths or injuries.
Monday will be four years since we have been in Iraq. That’s a year longer than World War Two in Europe and a bit longer than WW2 in the Pacific. That war served many good purposes. This one? American lives are lost for what? American brains are damaged for what?
Without the Bible, he asked me, “how would you know not to steal?”
Would we murder our parents if the Bible didn’t say it was wrong? This is a sickening article about American greed to get rich quickly or make Russ Whitney richer.
I tried to put it in a Times permalink. I don’t care about Whitney, I care about the people who truly believe that most people can make money easily by going into debt, and paying people like Whitney too much money to learn the “secrets.”
This is what happens when I’m stuck at home with actual deadlines, people to call, and things to do. I get crazed and write in my blog. I guess it’s better than getting hooked on The View I wouldn’t know I have never watched it. My sister who won’t watch soaps is hooked on it.
I’m writing a novel or series of very interconnected stories based on characters in my fiction posts. Before I began to do Bone’s 3WW’s, I never knew that I could write fiction, or really what the components of fiction are. So I guess I owe him big time.
I’m also working on my memoir. Though I’m ADD’d to death, it’s easy for me to focus once I find the proper space in my head, and when I’m not blog obsessed or obsessed with making sure that I have all 40 1099’s for very little money each. I actually found the missing pivotal one, that can’t be found online–it was right there. Only took two weeks for me to see it. I was just going to call…
I’m doing a big blog makeover. It will still be pink and have the pinup. I’m doing this because I live for change and hate to stagnate, in all areas of my life. I’m doing the blog makeover for me not for Web 2.0, whatever that is, or because blog gurus dictate that content is king.
I will have space for 250 word daily rants and a space for newspaper articles that sicken me, so I don’t have to sully posts like this one with them. I wish that I didn’t care. Life would be so much easier.
Courting’s always been about content. I had Lisa design it the way it is now because it reflects parts of me. I’m a deco and glass person. I’m also steel in all forms and some light wood.
I have been reading about blog design, usability and writing in general until my head begins to whirl. The only thing I seemed to have ever done right was write in small paragraphs, and still people read it.
If there really is a real way to make money, not dimes, not a dollar but say a thousand dollars a month off a blog like mine, will somebody let me know?
Because I read inarticulate kind of techie but really nothing blogs complaining about making $1200 a month off a blog, in passive income I believe, and I think that’s a nice chunk of change just for adding another widget to my tool bar.
I added widgets to my toolbar, and don’t have the slightest understanding of them. The people who are screaming “content is king” now are some of the same people who promoted viral marketing in the fall. It’s as if they have just found out what I have always known. Give people things to read. Wow, so insightful.
I always thought that’s what blogging was about, and then I added building communities because it seemed to be natural, came so easily to me, and was my undergrad major when I aspired to help change a small corner of it. But then came PC’s and Mac’s and it seemed as if the whole world could come together, one blog at a time. That is condensing a lot of history.
I still do believe that.
Today’s Valerie Plame’s day to speak to Congress. Karl Rove’s being implicated in trying to get rid of 15 to 20 % of all federal prosecutors who didn’t address voter fraud quickly enough.
Something was wrong with the picture when he helped steal an election and yet wanted to fire attorneys for saying that Democrats were committing voter fraud. Gawd is something wrong with that.
I should be happy. But I have lost all faith in people and in this country.
From now on, it’s all about me, and my personal goals. I have big life decisions to make, and I can’t make them staring at an empty computer screen.
However, Tuesday is emergency contraception day. You think that I really want to believe in that? I was a mistake. I was adopted. But I very much believe that women, all women should have access to contraception. That it shouldn’t be left up to the pharmacist to decide if he thinks it’s moral or not. It’s legal, as are guns which I might hate….
But more than legally, birth control methods should be available. Mistakes happen. Incest and rape happens too often. It’s morally right to offer women, all women choices.
I guess see this country moving backward. Since people are all in it for themselves, I’m going to give it a try.
After the rally on Monday, and the contraception post on Tuesday and Valerie Plame gets to be vindicated. And Karl Rove, he’s mine to kill, metaphorically speaking, because I saw how evil he is long before most people.
He committed the ultimate sin when he came into my city, the city that had been attacked, and said that we wanted therapy for terrorists. He didn’t wait five or more years after the attacks to make that announcement.
He said it when the wounds were still raw, and most of us jumped at fireworks, and looked askance at strange planes or really any plane flying over Manhattan
I hope that this Congress, this Democratic lead Congress does the right things, but as I said, I’m fresh out of faith and hope and dreams. It’s not too late to have an Impeachment hearing. One for matters much more grave than lying over a blow job.
Strangely enough I still believe in bloggers. Weirdly, under it all, I still feel hope that American’s will see the light, the one that bends just a bit to the left
I’m really suffering from this damn winter came too late and is lasting too long syndrome, and would it kill people to comment? syndrome. They’re very tied together because if the weather was nice I wouldn’t be here right now, or would have taken a long walk in the morning
I’m going out into the city’s single windiest block–I don’t think so, but many have told me that, and I hate having to put on layers upon layers of clothes just to make it to Broadway
If I survive until I’m 90, I will stay be looking for the answers to life’s mysteries in whatever form is popular then. That’s just who I am
As I spoil a great fiction post with everything else, or spoil a great everything else post with fiction
I hate having to make big life decisions when all I really want to do is write. So will a book contract appear out of nowhere with me making absolutely no effort to get one?
One last thing. I believe that we have exactly the country we deserve. When I try talking to people that I know about sub-prime loans; about the millions of people who bought houses using no money down or ten percent and then not being able to afford it, they put it back onto the people.
It will be different for them. They’re going to buy houses, sell before the mortgage comes due or magically pay off the mortgage quickly. Maybe that is the real world now.
Maybe if I don’t work on my goals but visualize them coming true, they will.
Love it as always but as I have consumed a liter of wine while watching basketball games all day with friends I fear that I can’t say too much.
Drew and Delilah.
Castigate is one of wombats favorite words.
God I am so addicted to this story.
“blackberry filled lives” i love that line (and am glad I don’t have one).
The line about her believing she had one chance at happiness and had blown it–too many people believe that and they can never be happy.
I was glad to find him at the table.
Great story - I love coming by and reading what you have to say! Can’t wait to hear more!
Keep the new blog template as simple as you can, that’s my advice, for what it’s worth. I get driven nuts by flashing lights.. Some blogs are enough to give a person a seizure.
And I am totally in agreement about the right to birth control and emergency contraception as I’ve needed it myself a few times. My life would have been totally wrecked if I’d have had a kid, and so would the kid, having a mother like me! I am far too neurotic to raise a child.
And why is it that the same people that espouse the rights of dividing cells also don’t mind killing hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq with guns, or in Africa, by spreading superstition and misinformation, telling them not to use condoms to protect themselves from Aids? Where’s the love and compassion in that?
Anyway, I am also hooked on your story, and you have a way of keeping my goldfish ADD brain engaged. I think it is the short paragraphs.. lol
That’s a wonderful fictional piece, but it ended too soon! So, does she make up with Drew? Agree with Sage, too-I immediately liked the “blackberry filled lives.” That’s really good.
We got snow here today, and yep! It’s a bummer. March is really the cruelest month.
She never wasted time mulling decisions. Until this week she hadn’t made one she regretted.
For some reason, this stuck out at me. I guess because it’s easy to not think back on decisions we’ve made if we never have regretted any. Lucky woman, to have no regrets save one.
Good story this week.
“He looked so strange that she asked if he was sick or in horrible pain.
No, he just had to confess something she really didn’t want to know about.”
Loved that paragraph. If you’ve never felt that sickness, it’s a God-awful feeling.
Pia, this is one of the best things I’ve ever read from you!
I’m floored.
You show us the imperfect, human side of what is unfortunately, a farily common occurrence.
PS: Sorry I wasn’t by earlier, but I’ve been watching Valerie Plame over and over on CSpan
I like these stories, too. They’re good real people stories which I could never write. I hope that one of us will organize the stories somewhere so they can be read straight through. I’m starting to see these like Armistead Maupin pieces, except that your femininity comes from chromosomes,