I was a mermaid at White Party, and according to the buzz, I was "fabulous." The photos don't do me justice, probably because I photograph like an overweight, wrinkled old hag, whereas in real life (or at least in my mind and mirror, I am none of those things.
People, let me tell you, life is worth living when you are swimming in the warm seas of admiration from gorgeous men who tell you things like "you are so working it, girl".

Yas, yas.

I was wearing the most glamorous gown in the history of me. My sweetie, Paul Gallo, of the fabulous house of Gallofornia, made a silver lamé halter dress with a tail, and fringes of kelp in silver and white and seafoam. I had on yards of faux pearls (also known as Christmas tree garlands) and an Art Nouveau crown of beads and mylar sequins (also Christmas tree garland). There were fake eyelashes with glitter, and glitter all over my exposed parts. There was way too much eye shadow in silver and teal and teal with glitter eye liner.

Opera length gloves. Silver shoes. (Sensible flats, of course, because it is just exhausting being fabulous.) I perched (ha, fish joke) around on things and flapped my tail.

I had a million photos taken with a million beautiful men. I took a tumble down a flight of stairs (bump, bump, bump on my butt) and allowed as how it was only my dignity which was damaged, whereas I have a bruise the size of a grapefruit on my ass. Hokie smokes, Bullwinkle, it hurts like a booger.

And most fabulous of all, I got to meet, shake hands with, talk briefly to and be photographed with the most fabulous Miss Yoko Ono.

She is tiny, tiny, tiny. She was wearing this fantastic straw hat, which I would have bet money was a Phillip Treacy, but which she swore was not. Her skin is absolute egg-shell porcelain, and let me tell you, she has not had any work done. She is just that delicate and flawless.

I said hello, as part of the Board contingent, and couldn't help myself... I had to swing right around and go back and gush admiration, devotion and outright awe for her works, art and philanthropic and then told her it was an unexpected honor to meet her. She looked me in the eyes, said thank you and shook my hand, and didn't make me feel like Wayne before Alice Cooper, sobbing "I'm not worthy", but in my heart, I felt that stupid. Didn't matter, I do adore the woman, and had enough presence of mind not to say "I never believed you broke up the Beatles, it was that skank Linda."

Probably would have made more of an impression, I imagine. (Ha, John Lennon joke.)

I promise that I'll post photos as I find/get them. And more stories as I make them up remember them.

No, really, it hurts. A migraine woke me up today at six. It felt like there was a band halfway around my head, just at eyebrow level. It was squeezing tighter and tighter, and trying to pop the top of my skull off.
Three Motrin, several icebags, one dark room and many hours of restless sleep later, I am awake and tentative about the state of my brain. The ice bags were a particular help: I put them over my eyes until I could feel the entire eyeball cooling from the inside and that seemed to help my head.

Too much information?

Well then, how about this: I am thankful today for the many friends I have on this amazing thing called the internet.

When I finally got out of bed, and turned on my computer, there were messages of care and warmth from friends I've never met: a woman in England who shares with me a love of cats and quilting and baseball, a message from New York, and another from California, and yet others from around Florida.

The essay I was going to write, the one about the empty places in my heart and at my table this year, that essay fell away, replaced by the love that spilled out of the laptop's screen.

Thank you one and all. May we find our hearts desires in this coming year. And may the fucking Miami Dolphins find their way out of the football equivalent of the cellar.

I'll be out of pocket for the rest of the weekend, as White Party Week is upon us. Don't worry, though, there will be photos and stories when I get back.

Took the surrogate daughters to see Rent yesterday. What happened to American musical theater when I wasn't looking?
OK, so Broadway has been gentrified and Disneyfied and all that, and Lion King and Beauty and the Beast are hits... But so is/was The Producers, and that was original. Avenue Q... ditto.

But Rent? I mean, aside from the fact that it's a lame ass grunginization of La Boheme, the book itself was awful. Act One drones on and on and on in what must surely be real time as it tells the story of one fateful Christmas Eve in a New York City that is no more real than the Disney version of Times Square.

AIDS, trannies, lesbians. Whoo-hoo. Was I supposed to be shocked or tittilated, or even interested? And the performance art piece at the end of the first act... help me out here, someone. The way it was played yesterday was as a really bad attempt at art by someone who seemed like an art-school dropout from Scarsdale. I thought the character, by other descriptions in the play, should have been played like Courtney Love: a desperate train wreck, but talented.

Anyway, we had fun on the ride home, when I taught Daughter2 the anal game. That's where you put the word anal in front of the car model: Anal Discovery, Anal Probe, Anal Lancer.... If you really want to get into the game, then you have to say what that is: an Anal Discovery is when you get the x-rays back and it's a coke bottle....

Hey. It was the high point of the afternoon, OK?

Dear Mr. President of the Hospital Where I Used To Work,

I'd just like to say what a pleasure it's been working at the hospital. I'd like to say that, but I'm afraid that I can't. You see, in the last twelve years, this institution has gone from one that made me proud to work there, to one where I cried on my way in, every day.
It was getting to that point when you came, so I can't blame you for the depths to which it has sunk. Many people do, but that isn't fair. No, the seeds of its destruction were sown many years ago, and I'm afraid that you are merely bringing in the sheaves.

Some of the senior management you inherited was incompetent and corrupt. Some of the senior management you brought in to replace those people were even worse.

One of the most recent casualties of your reign was a man I've known for twelve years. He was down in the pharmacy when your man came in. Your man tossed him out. Your man then went on to overbill the hospital on a regular basis, and even put in for reimbursement on his trips to strip clubs and fishing get-aways. My friend would have seen that and blown the whistle in a New York minute. That's why he was sent away.

What reason is there for sending him away now, after that particular whistle has been blown, and blown by someone who was left in nominal power because he was thought too insignificant and weak to do what he did?

Some of the most incompetent and stupid of the senior management you inherited, you let remain in power. Your PR director, for example. I have had a long and bitter struggle for integrity and devotion to duty with that particular bitch, and every time, she has won.

What does that say, that your PR director's position on talking to the media is "If you don't talk to the press, they can't misquote you." This institution has devolved into a bunker mentality. Is it Hitler in the Eagle's Nest, or merely Nixon praying in the halls of the White House?

I guess that I'm particularly bitter about the PR director, because it was she who told me, all those years ago: "Nobody wants to hear what you have to say. All you'll do is tell us what we're doing wrong, and it doesn't have to be done right, it only has to be done."

You were supposed to be our saviour. You were supposed to come in here and pull this institution up from the waters it was foundering in, and bring us back to fiscal health and management well-being.

I'm not seeing it. I never saw it. The old president may have been barking mad there at the end, but he always cared. You and your team have treated us like less than dirt. That was why I laughed when my VP told us that those of us who were going to be laid off were going to be treated with dignity and respect. You didn't treat us like that before you laid us off, why should we believe that dismissing us would improve our lot?

I had been ordered to put together a team to do volunteer work for Hands On Miami Day. Nobody asked if I wanted to, I was ordered to do it. I was livid with rage, that I should be asked to shanghai people to do field work on a weekend when we were all waiting for the ax to fall on our necks. I wasn't allowed to refuse, but neither did I work it like I had the first year, when I offered to do it.

Two days after Hands On Miami, I was laid off. My VP knew that he was throwing me away, and yet he still expected me to happily organize an after-hours event for the public face of this hospital. Oh yeah, respect and dignity, all right.

And while I'm venting about respect and dignity, let me tell you about my last responsibilty. My manager, oh he of little brain and pointy hair, had dicked around with the servers for a good nine months before we finally got my new content management system installed. He installed it while I was sitting at my father's deathbed. No less than 15 minutes (FIFTEEN FUCKING MINUTES, DO YOU HEAR ME, YES I'M YELLING, 15 MINUTES) after my father died, my asshole boss said, "While I have you on the phone, could you walk me through adding a row to a table in HTML?"

Is that respect? Is that dignity? Is that even fucking human? Huh? Anyway, I came back to work from my father's funeral and was given 3 months to convert the entire web site over to the new system. Yes, the PHB had taken three times that long to install the software, but I had three months to convert the site. By myself. Working longer hours, maintaining the existing site, creating hundreds of PDFs for secretaries who couldn't do it themselves, and never complaining. I did it in the time alloted too, which is ridiculous. Nobody should have been able to do it.

For my efforts, I received a thank you note from my boss. I was nominated for Employee of the Month. I didn't win, though. That honor was given to some gomer who sat in the server room during a hurricane that never hit and never disrupted power. When I finally did complain about that, the director of my department said that Employee of the Month didn't have anything to do with work, it was a perk that was doled out where and when needed for morale in any particular group.

Respect? Dignity? I don't think so.

Imagine my surprise when no less than two months after I finished that conversion, the PR director decided to outsource the web. Why another department was allowed to cut my job is something I don't like to ponder too much, but there it was. She also cut my counterpart in her own department, the lovable Loogie, my editor and bane of my existence. Imagine how much greater my shock when Loogie called me at home yesterday to tell me that she wasn't fired or reassigned, after all. She's going back to the PR office to oversee the firm that will be doing the web. She was given that news by the PR director one day after I had been separated from the company.

Respect? Dignity? Not having to do with individuals? Yeah, right. Tell me another one. I have some dry land out in the Everglades for sale, if you're interested.

In conclusion, let me say that I think it's really nice that those good old boys in management still have their jobs. My boss, I see, has been updating the web in my absence. I can tell, because it isn't done right.

But then, it didn't have to be, did it? It only has to be done.

Yours truly,

A bitter, bitter, bitter ex-employee

I was called for jury duty yesterday, in the district court, civil division. One day or one trial. Sworn in to tell the truth. I swelled with civic pride and duty. Unlike most people, you see, I love jury duty. It's a good thing, too, because I must get called every year.
Of course, I wasn't actually chosen for the trial. I think the defense attorney would have wanted me on the case, but the plaintiff's attorney couldn't throw me off fast enough.

It was a medical malpractice case. Negligence on the part of the primary care doctor. The plaintiff had bladder cancer. I could see, by the questioning, where this was going. So I answered those questions as honestly as I could. Even those questions that were unasked, but implied.

I was potential juror number 14, which meant that I got to listen to a lot of answers to the same questions before they got to me. The question was "What do you think about cigarette smoking?" Most of the other jurors answered that they didn't like it. Or that it was a nasty habit. One or two people said they smoked. I said that it was a matter of personal choice, but one that carries with it personal responsibility.

Danger. Warning. This person thinks. Whoop, whoop, whoop.

They asked us if we would be capable of judging a doctor, of holding one accountable. I said yes. I did NOT say that I'd be even more capable of holding lawyers accountable.

They asked how we felt about large money awards. Most people said, of course, if they're called for. I said: "I'm ambivalent." GAH!!! That juror used a multi-sylable word. Danger! Warning!

Could you elaborate? I could, and I did. Pain and suffering are pretty subjective things, no? Sometimes there is merit in the claim, but there are a lot of frivolous lawsuits in this world.

Have we ever had a problem with a doctor? Yes. Elaborate. I did. But then, I allowed as how I was very young and naive, and never sought a second opinion. By the time I did, years later, for what the first doctor claimed was a relapse, there was no sign of the condition the first doctor wanted to do surgery on, nor was there any sign that I'd ever had the condition. I fired the first doctor. I never looked back. And (although I didn't say this)neither did I sue.

What about cancer? Family members? Yes. And close friends. By the time I'd finished my list, the whole room looked a little dazed. Uh, OK, so this is something you might have strong feelings about?

One attorney asked about Monday morning quarterbacking. The young man to my left didn't understand the term, nor had he ever heard of 20/20 hindsight. The lawyer explained the concept and then turned to me... And you? Can you look at the facts and not be a Monday morning quarterback? I snorted, C'mon, anyone who's been a Dolphin fan as long as me knows the futility of that exercise. The room cracked up.

Good. Leave 'em laughing. We were interrogated a little more, and then the lawyers settled in to pick the jury. It came as no surprise to me that I was not selected.

When they say a jury of your peers, what they mean is, someone who has no opinion and never reads the paper.

I got up early, again. Figured out why, though. The pounding of the caterpillar truck next door, crushing its way through the coral rock as they prepare to lay the pipes and foundations of the new, million-dollar strip mansions.

Then it was off to do errands, where I was forced to consort with the riff-raff that lives in this city.
I have a new pet peeve: people who cut in line, with the excuse that they only have a question. Or one item. Or any other damn thing that they thinks makes their time more valuable than mine.

My Clie has a burnt-out screen, and I thought I was still within the year warranty, so Cicuit City was on my list of places to go. When I got there, I saw that there were two registers open at the Customer Service counter and both were occupied. There was also a woman standing a discreet distance behind them, clearly (to me, at least) in line.

I stood behind her. Some antique Jersey skank came up and parked her skinny, badly dyed, leathery self at the counter, beside the woman who was being helped.

The woman in front of me said in a timorous voice, "There's a line here." New Jersey Skank said, "Oh, but I'm not buying anything." As if that made a difference.

I said "That makes no difference. You are asking for the clerk's time, as are we all. There is a line. Behind me." I’d like to note that I was firm, but polite and didn’t swear or use demeaning language. The timid little woman in front of me turned to me and said thank you.

NJS got in said line, protesting all the way. She didn't let it go, either and bitched volubly the whole time.

And then, the next one came up. This was an Hispanic skank, also of a certain age. Also with time too valuable to stand in line. I remarked to her as well that there was a line. She allowed as how she knew that and was standing in it. I told her she was not, and pointed behind the NJS. She said that the line wasn't where she would expect a line to be, it was too far away from the desk, (Yeah, a polite distance, giving the people at the counter privacy, and the people wandering around the store, an aisle. Apparently both were foreign concepts.)

Now I had the two of them behind me, commiserating over my bad manners, ill dress and questionable upbringing, that allowed me to speak to such obviously fabulous people as them in such a manner. “Oh, the mouth on her,” the NJS kept repeating… loudly.

By this time I was at the counter, and I had had enough of those two. I turned around and said in my teacher voice:

“Oh, you two haven’t begun to hear the fucking mouth on me.”

They gave it their best, trying to be supercilious and tee-hee, oh aren’t you quite the lady, but they just didn’t have it in them. I turned and gave them one last glare and shut them up. And the Jersey Skank? Just for the record, her “I only need a second” was still in process when I finished my business, found and collected the RLA, and walked out the door.

Hmmmph. The fucking nerve of some people.