The Apple Of My i

Last Tuesday something magical happened to me, I fell in love. I’ve been in love before, but this was something different, something unique, something truly special. Around six on Tuesday evening I received a mysterious call. The caller ID read “unknown”. This is always frightening, but I still picked up.

“Hello, this is Sarah.”

Silence, muffled background noise and then...

“Hey Sarita, how ya doin’?”

It was my sister. I guess there’s nothing so mysterious about that, but what she said, those awesome words, made me ever so happy.

“I have your new phone.”

This was joyous news! My old phone, the phone that had jostled around with me for the last two years, was all but dead. It still turned on, I could make or take a call, but the battery life only lasted an hour or so and it liked to freeze at just the most terrible moments. Like when I’m just about to play a sixty-eight point word on my Words-With-Friends game. GEEZ, didn’t my phone realize it was reeking havoc with my life?

The little box she handed me contained some packing material and more importantly my brand new fancy little iphone 5. I named her izzy, and as she stared up at me with that fresh phone glow, I just knew that we would be fast friends.

izzy is awesome, but for some darn reason she thinks her name is Siri. Oh well, maybe someday she’ll agree on izzy. She almost instantly downloaded my entire itunes library and she took it upon herself to know practically everything about me. She knows my name and if I ask her who she belongs too she says, “I believe this iphone belongs to Sarah!” and then a little screen pops up with my picture, name, address, birthdate, and facebook handle. She’s a genius!

Of course, the clan of us have been a little naughty. We’ve asked her things like, “What do you look like naked?” She answered us with a robust ding, “You humans are so preoccupied with external appearance.” We’ve told her that we hate her and she said, “Well...I’m still here for you.” These things make me sad, I truly don’t want to hurt her little ifeelings, When I finally expressed how sorry I was she told me, “You are the wind beneath my wings.” She always answers with either an apologetic voice, a joke, or just the right answer. I love her, she’s so kind and helpful.

If ever there was a phone for me, izzy is it. She’s everything I ever wanted and then some. Thank you Apple.

To Pee Or Not To Pee

That is the question I often ponder when faced with a urinary dilemma. In the best situation I will often search out the nearest sparkling clean, zesty fresh Starbucks, however I am not always in the best situation.

While meandering this thing I like to call life, I have somehow developed a stellar memory. Unfortunately, I am unable to remember the important things like where on earth I put my car keys or exactly how to get to my best-friends house, however I seem to have no problem recalling what I was wearing last Tuesday, what you were wearing last Tuesday, or just what theater I saw Superman in when I was four.

The other thing I seem to have an uncanny memory for are public restrooms. You name the place and I can instantly tell you wether I’ve used that bathroom and just what it looks like. It’s an amazing talent that I know all of you are envious of. Who knows, maybe some of you have this sensational ability yourself.

While doing research for this blog I asked my assistant (aka my sister) if there was some glamorous way of going to the bathroom. Her response was incredibly close-minded. She said, and I quote, “There is know such way!” The audacity and know it all air she put forth was tiresome to me. I knew I just had to prove that little bitch wrong.

There are seedy, filthy, bathrooms in this world. I have personally seen many of them. There are also luxurious pristine toilet palaces with golden thrones that never run out of toilet paper and have an endless supply of soap. 

For $128 you can sit upon Donald Trumps golden toilet, is anything more glamorous than that? To hear about something so ridiculous, instantly makes me imagine The Donald sitting upon that golden seat. Too bad I couldn't find that picture.

I was lucky enough, in my quest to create a knowlegible blog on excellent places to pee, weird pictures of celebrities sitting on toilets. I enjoyed them so I thought I’d pass them along to you. There is Ozzy sitting upon the porcelain dias showing us how well read he is and Jude and Ewan confusing us in an artsy way. Is there anything more sexy than two men in a tub? Rub a dub dub boys.

Suffice it to say, sometimes you have no choice were to “go”, but wouldn’t we all prefer something sanitary, with soap, papertowels, and a place to hang your purse. Seat protectors are always a bonus too! Pee on my friends, pee on. :)

Songs Of A Silly Girl

I read a blog the other day written by my longtime friend’s daughter. It was her second blog post and it contained the lyrics to a song she wrote. Her song was about women being strong and standing up for themselves. It made me reflect back onto my own long ago song lyrics. 

This first little ditty was written on the floor of my bedroom around the age of nine. My besty Jeanette and I wrote it. We, as I’ve stated many a time, had no real idea of sex, but we thought this was the ultimate lovesong.

I think I thought I was Madonna here with Jeanette back in 1986

Two Country Girls 

Just two country girls 

In love with you 

You made it all seem right 

When we’re with you 

It’s worth all the time 

To care and love 

You’re so special to us 

We just want to hold your heart 

And love you until the end of time 

(hum) 

The first time we kissed 

You set a fire in our hearts 

And now we’re not sure 

It’s still going 

If it is 

We’d like to put it out forever 

(chorus) 

We just want to hold 

Your heart in our arms 

Love you til’ the end of time 

(hum) 

If you really love 

Prove it 

By a sacrifice 

Need I say more? We probably wrote this for our love George Michael, but who knows? Sacrifice? Really? 

When I wrote this next little number I was very into Stacey Q. Again it has a crazy reference to a less than stellar relationship, and I have a semi-embarrassing yet vague memory of singing this song to virtually the entire school during one silly recess. 

 Madonna again? Halloween 1987

Tell Me 

Last night I had a dream 

I dreamt that we were lovers 

Last night I had a dream 

I dreamt that we were forever 

Oh tell me 

Do you still love me? 

Oh, tell me 

How much you care 

Baby, tell me 

We’ll run away together 

Tell me that you’ll always be there 

My last lover was cruel 

He treated me like a fool 

Well I’ll always love you 

Tell me that you still do 

Oh, tell me 

Do you still love me? 

Oh, tell me 

How much you care 

Baby, tell me 

We’ll run away together 

Tell me 

That you’ll always be there 

I actually sort of adore this next one, I believe it is my homage to Tori Amos, it’s quirky, yet oh so spiritual. 

Me at 17 ala 1993

Can You See God? 

Come join the band now 

They’ve all left the room 

Her in his grey sweatshirt 

Him in her underroos 

Why’d she go on underneath that blanket? 

If only to hide her wandering hands 

until she bleeds 

Like so much nothing 

I can’t seem to understand it 

But why not? 

Can you see God there? 

I can’t see you from here 

But when I close my eyes (oh) 

I can still feel you 

The wanting is endless 

I used to call him Jesus 

I try to look out 

When it’s over 

But I can’t understand 

Can you see God from there? 

I can’t see you from here 

But when I close my eyes (oh) 

I can still feel you 

At this point you can probably understand why I didn’t pursue song writing as a career, but darn if it isn’t so fun to look back at yourself and see almost exactly who you used to be. I guess I wasn’t going to join Lilith as a female powerhouse ballad singer, but I can rock the living room xbox karaoke. There is a part of me that looks forward to the day when I can look back at the me I am now and laugh and think what a silly girl I was.

This is how I rock it in the livingroom

Ethan Hawke, More Than You Think You Know

I’ve always wanted to read an Ethan Hawke book. I guess it was the bit of teenager still left in me. I first saw Ethan on the big screen in Dead Poets Society and I found him captivating. In adolescent-jive that means I found him drool worthy. I did however tend to get him mixed up with Chris O’Donnell on a regular basis. 

I know very little about the mysterious actor. Ethan Hawke, I do recall, used to be married to Uma Thurman, he was fantastic in Before Sunrise, and then he did some weird movies and I lost track of him, but there was still something in me that occasionally thought “I want to read an Ethan Hawke book.” 

His first book, I spied on the shelf of a Barnes and Noble back in the 90’s and I was intrigued, but too poor at the time to shop for anything outside of the bargain isle. Still, the book has haunted me. I could see it’s cover of dripping green in my mind from time to time, and I wondered what was written inside.

Almost twenty years later, I was driving back after an awfully long road-trip when the book once again popped into my brain. It was a sweltering August day. I was traveling endlessly down the winding roads of Oregon when I started thinking, once again, about Ethan’s book The Hottest State. The overwhelming feeling to look it up had me pulling off onto the shoulder of the road right there, whipping out my Kindle and googling (in the Kindle way) for Mr. Hawke’s novel. Dammit, The Hottest State wasn’t available for Kindle, but it seemed that Ethan had another book out and it was available. The book was called Ash Wednesday.

Sometimes you find yourself pulled by that wonderful unknown force, the entity compelling you, and in that moment you know that you are walking down the path that you are one-hundred percent meant to be on. This was the overwhelming sensation I felt tugging at me when I clicked my little Kindle buy button. I was so lost in that single moment that I didn’t even take the time to read the synopsis. I was about to enter the world of Ethan Hawke utterly blind. I don’t think that I was entirely sure what I was about to get myself into. 

Halfway through page one I realized that the writing was spot on, the voice distinct, the character disturbing and that was all I needed. I was now on this crazy journey with Jimmy and Christy, and their cat Grace. I forgot about Ethan, I forgot about teenage drooling, and I was submerged in the fantastic, sometimes less than pretty, life of these two main characters. I felt like a voyeur sitting in the backseat of Jimmy’s Chevy Nova and the greatest part was Jimmy and Christy had no idea I was there with them. That is a true testament to how real the writing is.

Go get this book, you won’t regret it, and when your done devouring it go get yourself a copy of The Hottest State. I’ve already got my copy coming from Amazon, can’t wait!!!! 

BTW, what's your favorite Ethan Hawke movie? Leave it in the comments below or on Facebook. :) 

A Tale of Two Sisters

My sister and I are so close that we finish each other’s sentences and often wonder who’s memories belong to who. We decided it might be fun if we each wrote a common topic on our blogs to see how similar (or not similar) our memories really are.  Our first topic: What a sister means to me. 

Read on!

________________

my mom and her sister with my sister and me

My mother had sisters. Close sisters. Sisters that she called on the phone constantly. Sisters that were her best-friends. At family gatherings they were always by each other’s side, baking together, each one doing her assigned task like a dance, chatting up a storm and singing. The singing was magnificent, voices rising and falling as one into perfect melody. True sisterhood and true love.

When my sister was born, I was just four days shy of turning two. Everyone told me that she was my present. She came home from the hospital on my actual birthday and we opened presents and ate cake so I knew it was true, my mom brought me a baby for my birthday. 

She was practically the same size as me from the start. There are sweet pictures of me holding my gigantic little sister and I swear her perfect round head dwarfs me. She was a beautiful baby, very round, and very blonde and they named her Shannon Renee.

Shannon loved her Johnny Jumper and I loved pushing her in it. When no one was looking I would push her just as hard as I could and scream, ”Wee baby!!!” As she flew through the air she would giggle and giggle, until she smacked into the wall, then she would cry. 

From the day she was born, I had a constant playmate. We fought like cats and dogs a lot of the time. Often accusing the other of “stealing” each others friends or my sister has a bad habbit of borrowing things “forever”, but she was always my confidant. 

When our mother died, her death brought us even closer. In a way my sister is like a mother figure to me and though I’m older I think that Shannon is the bossier of the two of us, although she just might tell you that I’m the bossy one. 

To sum my sister up isn’t easy. Shannon is the best mom in the world, the worst laundress. She breaks washing machines like a bad habit. She is remarkably talented, the person I go to for good and bad advice. She is my chauffer when I just can’t drive because I’m crazy afraid of driving, and she is my rock.

Thank God we were shown by my mom and her wonderful sisters the true meaning of sisterhood. In truth if you ask me what my sister means to me, all I really have to say is EVERYTHING! 

Me and Shannie

Click here to read my sister's version.

Why I Love Gay Men, And Always Will

For some reason I’ve always been drawn to gay men. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s because, I’m going to be stereotypical here, they generally have better taste in clothes and music than any of my girlfriends or perhaps, because they weren’t trying to get into my pants, they looked at me and not my boobs. Refreshing, any girl can attest to the uncomfortable high school years when we don’t really seem to have faces to boys, just body parts. 

My first mad crush was a pretty little blonde boy named Trevor. In reality Trevor was so charismatic that I believe that everyone fell instantly in love with him upon meeting him. Trevor was outgoing and spontaneous and terribly vulnerable. His vulnerability was what really won my heart. 

I have loved gay men even before I knew they were gay, maybe even before they were sure they were gay. Every crush I had in high-school with the exception of one guy, you guessed it, was gay and Trevor was no exception. We’d spend hours talking on the phone every night, talking about things I actually cared about - music, kittens, and John Hughes. He read Jackie Collins, I was in love!

The problem was, so was everyone else. Girls draped all over him everywhere we went, they stripped down naked and changed their clothes in front of him and asked him to clasp their bras. Trevor lived a straight boys wet dream I’m sure, but to him it was all normal. He’d sit goofy-sweet and ask if he could borrow their jean shorts or quickly hand them something else to put on.

Trevor was my first sweet love, we went to our first ever Madonna concert together, spent endless hours perfecting our Vogue-moves, and he even let me take nude pictures of him for my school photography class. We were a match made in heaven.

By the time he “came out” I pretty much already knew.  He said the words and my automatic reaction was a heart crushing, “It doesn’t matter to me.”

His response will stay with me forever. He just looked up at me with big moist eyes and said, “but it matters to me.” 

There are moments in life that are so utterly profound, they shape you and that moment with Trevor is one of them for me. In an instant I felt transported into his world. I can’t profess to know what things were really like for him, but I know they were rough. He was teased and harassed constantly through high school, now we’d say bullied. Then I think we all tolerated too much, we even expected it and sadly a lot of those “bullies” were adults and even teachers.

One night while he walked the block and a half from his job at the movie theater to his home he was shot thirty-two times with a BB gun. At midnight, in the dark all alone on a city street. How terrifying. Twenty-one years later he’s still picking the pellets out of his back. That’s a lot of scars, outside, but especially on the inside. 

He moved to Georgia towards the end of high school. To the bible belt, and sweltering summer heat. The next time I saw him he was a man, but he was still wearing some borrowed jean shorts and humming Madonna and it would be a good guess that he is currently humming some Madonna right now as you read this. 

Trevor is still one of my homies. He’s my partner in cleanliness, and occasionally my arch nemesis, but forever my friend.

Michael Bolton, And The Lost Loves Of My Life

Michael Bolton

My sister has been lying to everyone for years. And not a little lie either, but a giant-humongous-terrible-life-changing LIE. Like finding out that that Coke is actually Pepsi or that fingernail polish and toenail polish are the same thing!  You see the girl has a deep dark secret and I, being so sweet and sisterly, am about to share this secret with the world.

The girl that most of you believe is wholesome, kind, and a tad aloof is really a closet--and I mean closet in the doors locked, lights out, headphones on kind of way--FAN. My sister’s very first true teenage love was Michael Bolton. Yes folks, Michael Bolton. She loved the mullet of fine, slightly-balding ringlets and the southern rasp, and if she happens to hear the melody of 'Georgia On My Mind' to this day you can forget any chance there might have been of sanity in her eyes. The tears will come, and they will come aplenty, pelting her cheeks with little blue trickles until she must must must grab that Kleenex because those are Bolton tears.

Wham!

Lucky for me, I have no “closet” loves. I love them out in the open like the true dorkette I am. Glee recently did an episode about all the songs we all secretly love titled 'Guilty Pleasures.' It was fabulous, of course, because Glee is fabulous (I’m not biased or anything). The first song on the list was 'Wake Me Up Before You Go Go' and the damn thing brought me to tears (albeit, cooler tears than my sister's; Wham tears for gosh sakes). You see, I’m not a closet Wham fan, I’m an in your face nothing is better kind of Wham fan.

When I was little my BFF Jeanette and I would stay up all night watching Night Tracks on TBS praying for a glimpse of 'Careless Whisper.' We would watch George race down the boardwalk in his little white shorts and lust in the way ten year old girls lust. I imagined George was my guy. (Why I was drooling for, according to the video, a lying cheating scumbag is excellent fodder for my current shrink, but that’s another story.)

River Phoenix

George Michael, aka Georgy Michelle (hey I was ten and those Night Tracks video info bubbles faded away fast). I thought his name really was Georgy Michelle so I would fall asleep imagining myself marrying Georgy Michelle when I grew up. But something inside of me must have known he was gay because I also imagined myself throwing red cowgirl boots at him while we were fighting at the beach (also excellent fodder for the shrink) and that we would break up, staying friends of course, and then I would steal my sister’s husband, aka River Phoenix (I know, truly sick), but that wouldn’t last because River and my sister were building a summer house in the mountains and he needed to help her with the baby pigs they were raising. Forgive me, I was ten and, by the way, my ten year old brain didn’t know about sex. I didn’t know about sex until I picked up a copy of Anne Rice’s Exit To Eden when I was seventeen (I was a slow learner).

Kirk Cameron

My true love back then was Kirk Cameron; we would meet, he would fall madly in love with me, and I would debate with Georgy whether or not I should give him a shot. Truthfully, I loved Kirk for years. I taped every episode of Growing Pains and I bought every Teen Beat I could find. My bedroom walls were lined with posters of him. Kirk in leather, Kirk smiling, Kirk drinking water. I was pathetic like most teenage girls.

Kirk and Chelsea

Celebrity heartthrobs are safe. You can dream, but they don’t break your heart until they marry Chelsea Noble and Growing Pains gets cancelled.

We all have strange loves in our lives. Perhaps they are real or maybe they are our childhood fantasies, but they shape us and help us in ways they will never know. All the Ricky Nelsons, and Justin Beibers of the world help us to feel safe and free and in control of love. So next time you feel yourself starting to secretly hum a little Bolton, remember that first loves, whether they are in the closet, out of the closet, or on our TV screens are important and meaningful and no one needs a shrink to tell them that.