I like throwing away things whose time has past...your basic crap, like, old magazines, lotions, weird gifts (or, I can regift), and clothes. Usually, clothes are the most liberating since I believe clothes carry the energy of the experiences I had while wearing them. That black sweater is so Boyfriend X, or that dress reeks of my best friend's wedding where I felt like a single freak, and so on (great for my shopping habit). Anyway, the point is that when things are old and done, I'm not one to hang on to them for sentimental reasons.

And that's why I'm so happy to say good-bye to 2007. I can try to build on what was good and chuck the sucky parts, but whatever I do 2007 is never coming back.

Happy New Year's!

Just for today, I can bring in the new year.

I think it's the time of year. All I can think about is what to eat, chocolate (related to the first and, yet, deserving of its own category), and the passage of time (sort of in that order).

Just for today, I'm low on inspiration.

I spent a good part of the day in Wireless Coffee Shop Land with my very articulate friend, Professional Communicator. [She's so good at communication (it's actually her job) that one time I had her write an email to an old boyfriend. She told me to rewrite it in my own words, but I just sent what she wrote because I liked it better.]

Anyway, This Is My Day Job guy was working behind the counter (I've never actually spoken to him but have decided that he's the bass player in an indy blues band from Minnesota...). Yes, flirting with guys who make minimum wage...(how have I stayed single so long?)...

Enough with the sarcasm, time to list the highlights of my trip home.

Highlights of 2007 Holiday Trip Home

1) The absinthe (read blog below).

2) Watching Fozzie Bear in the dummy sketch (Muppet Show Season 2) with my mom and sister (I have a big crush on him).

3) Telling my dad that my issues with him can't possibly be a projection of my father issues of him because he is my father.

4) Witnessing the creation of delicious tamales (since I didn't really do that much, I can't really take any credit).

5) Giving the exact same scarf to my aunt that she gave to me (we think alike).

5) Eating lots of good food and drinking lots of wine (absinthe is not wine).

Just for today, I can enjoy the holidays.

I deserve to be sent to blogger jail for the pathetic amount of entries published in the month of December (the month in which I have been unemployed and, therefore, had nothing better to do than the one thing I tell everyone I'm doing), and, especially, over the last week. The only blog I posted (other than this one) was written while under the influence of an "after dinner drink" (absinthe), a substance I have since discovered has the highly dangerous effect (for me) of making one feel that everything she says and writes is nothing short of genius (I'm, clearly, not responsible enough to blog in such a condition, as I just re-wrote the post below that I do recall thinking was high-larious)...God, only knows what kind of political babble I spewed out to my friends (thankfully, they knew me in my Mall Bangs and Make Up days and so nothing I do now could really ever shock them).

I can only blame myself, the pervasive experience of food coma, and my strange new level of relaxation during this month of Post Corporate America Detox. Now, that I'm not working, I have no idea how I managed to function in such a chronic state of stress (salsa). I can't believe how plugged into the matrix I was. I'm sorry, but no amount of pedicures is worth feeling like an orange being cut and squeezed into a juicer for every last drop....I guess there's a reason why people take vacations.

Just for today, I can relax during the holidays (and still maintain my commitment to blogging).

Starting with what I had to drink tonight...

Geez, there's nothing like basil and tamarind flavored absinthe to take the sting out of an aging childless woman (Ok, so at $75 a bottle, it's not ghetto, but it also wasn't mine...). I spent the evening sipping this stuff with two people who've known me since I was 12 and who happen to be Genuinely Happily Married Couple. We reminisced about everyone we knew in those hormonally challenged days (a state highly exacerbated by other chemicals) . One fellow is in jail for life [thankfully my taste in men has since improved (I think), although, that's not saying much].

The ghetto part of my Christmas was my budget. Like the $.99 wrapping paper I bought from Target (Targae). Let me just say that it's better to spend the extra $2.00 for paper whose color doesn't disappear when it's folded (cuz you gotta crease wrapping paper). It makes for some pretty ghetto Christmas presents.

I'm so glad I told everyone at my father's holiday party that I'm writing a book based on my blog...(what's a career, husband, kids, and house when you have a BLOG to talk about at holiday parties...I don't think Nixon did nearly the amount of explaining I feel strangely obligated to do once a year...I should just wear a sign that says "No, I'm not married.").

I hope this stuff doesn't give me a brutal hangover (it probably will).

Just for today, it's a very ghetto Christmas.

I've been out dancing salsa for the last five nights in a row. This morning I realized that salsa is great for the arms, legs, heart (the physical as well as the emotional one), soul, and spirit. But it doesn't do a lot for booty flab (at least not mine).

A few nights ago, a group of Salseros/Salseras took Salsa Guru out for his birthday to his favorite Cuban place and then went out dancing. He had sprained his ankle, so he spent most of the night teaching us moves, steps and 'tudes ("dance like you're a stuck-up bi-otch"). It turns out that I'm not the only who has suggested that he get edu-macated. But, as my therapist would say, he's "attached" to the struggle (she says that about me all the time), i.e., this image of himself as a child of the ghetto (I'm sorry, El Segundo is not the ghetto). He consciously chooses to say things like "militry" instead of "military." I never recognized before how easy it is to invent excuses to not move to the next level in life.

Yesterday, the plumber came and snaked my kitchen sink for fifty feet. About twenty years of black sludge came out so that my sink would drain. I can certainly relate. I think it's just that time of year.

Just for today, I'm ready for a break.

I take back everything I said below about the holidays.

When you find yourself sick from inhaling a Sage Blossom candle or Avocado Ginger Spice soap (are we supposed to eat it or lather ourselves with it?) and desperately wondering how many times you've given these items as gifts to your relatives, it's time to put down that Apple Spice incense and step out of the store. In other words, I'm done shopping (and I have WAY too much time on my hands).

Last year I gained 7 pounds over the holidays. This made post-holiday shopping not so fun. I don't know why I thought that holidays don't count as days when sugar and flour converts to thigh and booty flab...I guess I still believe in a Santa Claus who will deliver me a high metabolism for Christmas. So long as I continue to close down salsa clubs (me and Japanese Salsera were the last girls to leave last night), I can eat a slice of Pecan Pie and a few brownies...just not every day for a week straight.

Just for today, I can survive the holidays.

I'm kind of enjoying the Holidays so far (hey, what's not to enjoy about Target?!). Maybe it's the lack of structure in my life right now, but I think I'm getting a little too into it. While in the past I've been known to call it The Annual Exchange of Crap, this year I've gone so far as to consider buying my therapist a Sigmund Freud action figure. Seriously, what use could she possibly have for a gag toy? Somehow, I don't think it would mesh with the Matisse print in her waiting room (not to mention that odd tray filled with sand and rocks...still unclear about its purpose). I have to say, I do get off on finding The Perfect Gift, even amidst the storm of crying children, banging shopping carts, and obligatory spending.

I have to say that my Christmas Tree goes down as one of the most adorable pieces of life cut before it's time to enter my apartment (it's staying till March).

Just for today, I can enjoy the holidays.

When I said that I wasn't going to have an existential crisis this round of unemployment I was naiive, in denial, and high on egg nog latte. Without getting into the gory details I will just say that it's dangerous for me to not make my bed in the morning.

My therapist says that we all need to accept the uncertainty of life. I told her that I refuse...my life is going to be certain. Of what?...I'm still figuring that part out.

It's not that I have a problem working for The Man (in all his various incarnations). It's just that it seems His soul is deteriorating faster than the American dollar is dropping (coincidence?)....and just because you plop a foozeball table in the middle of Corporate America, that doesn't make your company any less corporate or not in America...

After being denied health insurance by four companies for an irregular pap smear (despite perfect health), watching Michael Moore's inspiring and reality-checking "Sicko", and being all but bitch slapped with the words "young and hip" by every would-be employer (seriously, do genuinely "hip" people have to tell you how cool and hip they are?...I think my lady doth protest too much...), I'm ready to pack it in and move to France (any single Frenchmen out there?). Truthfully, at 35, at I'm entitled to some justifiable outrage at the soulless condition of our "democratic" society. If I were 20, you could tell me that I was spoiled undergraduate who doesn't understand the cost of living. But having lived on my own for the past 13 years, I would much rather pay the taxes treat someone else's health condition, than have the extra cash to buy $400 jeans, or whatever crap I'm supposed to want...

I'm unplugging from the Matrix (even while I listen to Journey in Wireless Coffee Shop Land) and it's kind of scary.

Just for today, I can have an existential crisis (even though I said I wouldn't).

I can't say these are earth shattering life markers I'm hitting...but seeing as I'm in a in place in my life where I discipline myself to make my bed right away as a preventative measure to not get back into it...I have to say, I have accomplished quite a bit today and it's not even 2:00 pm (as I write this)....

1) For the first time in the TEN YEARS I have lived without a parking space (a miracle in itself...you have to live in my neighborhood to truly understand the degree of skill, faith, and adaptability this circumstance requires), that I was home (i.e., not at work) on a street cleaning day, I REMEMBERED TO MOVE MY CAR BEFORE GETTING SMACKED WITH A $45 TICKET (trust me, this is huge)!!!!!!!

2) Less ground-breaking, but important nonetheless: I did my laundry, and hand washed my delicates (boring, and, yet, so necessary).

3) I bought a REAL CHRISTMAS TREE (another first)!!! And we're not talking some Trader Joe's little bush, this is a genuinely cut-down, tree that's going to get dry and brown and shed needles all over my apartment till late January (my life rocks)!!!!!

4) Made it to Wireless Coffee Shop Land before 1:00 pm (yet, another first) (the earliest I have managed to get here, so far has been 3:00 pm).

Just for today, I can have a successful morning.

Between Salsa Dance Team guerilla-style rehearsals and performances [we never know where or when we're performing/rehearsing until we get the text message five minutes before we're supposed to be somewhere...I've been instructed not to "think" about such details as we are on Latino Time (i.e., whenever it happens)] and my ever-growing List of Holiday Shit To Do, and Internet searches on Jennifer Love Hewitt (ok, so I'm not that busy), and getting angry with all the flack she's getting for being a human female with a changing metabolism (thank God there's no media when I gain twenty pounds), my days seem to go by (could this sentence be any longer?) as an Unemployed Salsera (of course it can).

I don't know why I thought that if I didn't have a job I'd have all this free time, but there is no such thing as empty space, only vacums...

This weekend I danced with Surgeon Salsero. He likes to dance the night before he's going to open somebody's body up and start re-organizing their innards (why didn't I go into surgery? I'm good at organizing...oh, yeah, that med school thing).

"If I were having an organ transplant would I want my surgeon out till 2:00 am the night before?" I asked him.

"Absolutely," he answered. "It relaxes me. I even play salsa in the operating room."

Little do his patients know that the vibration of salsa is being injected into their organ (or someone else's organ that's now in their body). Having known some surgeons, I can say there are worse things he/she (so politically correct) can do the night before an operation than dance...

So many interesting people from diverse backgrounds dance salsa. It's become my unofficial, currently unpaid occupation to know them.

Just for today, I am Unemployed Salsera.

I neglected to blog yesterday (sorry), even though I committed to doing this every day (in case you don't know what I'm talking about...all five of you who read my blog regularly - FYI, I really appreciate it).

I must be the busiest single, childless, unemployed woman in the world. To be fair, I am looking for work which takes a lot of time. And then there's things like closing down salsa clubs every night, and lunch dates with friends (aka, "networking")...but, really, what am I going to do? Wait till I have a six figure savings account and/or am 80 years-old to enjoy my life (hopefully, it won't take that long)? Sit in my apartment and do dubiously productive things like scrub my bathtub till it sparkles so I don't have to accept the fact that regardless of how much money I ever have in the bank we will all, ultimately, get old and die?! (Hate to break it to you). No, thanks. Been there, done that.

It's taken me years to learn that I have to live NOW. And by live, I mean be happy. I get that love and joy are mandatory health requirements. Much more important than vitamins, or whatever that stuff is they put in my drink at Jamba Juice. And, that has made me busy.

Still, it's important to keep my commitments. So, maybe I should make them a little more realistic, like, promising to blog five times a week instead of every day. Let's see how that goes...

Just for today, I can make realistic commitments.

Salsa Guru was the first person I spoke to this morning. I would normally wait till I've had my coffee before I even think about salsa, and I thought I could get him off with the momentary "can't currently have relationships with non-Verizon users between the hours of 7:00 am and 9:00 pm Monday - Friday" state of my cell phone bill, but Salsa Guru is a Verizon carrier (hey, can I get some free minutes for this plug?).

Somehow the conversation got around to the "level" of my salsa. I wasn't thinking about how to get the next "level" in my salsa career (I never knew there were levels to dancing, never knew I wanted to attain them, nor that I would be pursuing any of this at age 35...and I still don't know if I am). But I was talking to Salsa Guru without coffee, and last night we were both at the same tiny underground club with about ten other people till 1:00 am (did I mention that I'm unemployed and single?) and, like him or not, he is Salsa Guru...offering salsa instruction is like breathing.

"Don't smile when you dance." (He's told me this before. The classic salsera is supposed to own her power with stoic nonchalance).

"What if I'm happy?"

"Look as if you're in the military for now, and later you can add some 'flavor'." ('Flavor' = 'personality').

Then the conversation went to whether or not I'm worth the investment of his Yoda-like mentorship. The issue is my age. All the women/girls he has "mentored" were under the age of 20 when he worked with them. After that, I'm not sure what happened. They became Godesses and he was left with the reputation akin to a great Acting Coach, Socrates, Mr. Miyagi...

"It's easier to teach someone when they're under 25," he said.

"True. But if it's something I want to learn, I don't see why I can't."

"But it's just not as easy. You have to have the fire."

"You're saying that I have no fire?"

"No. But you have to want it more than anything."

I don't know if it's "Fire" so much as "parents who take care of all my shit" that really makes up the difference between me now and at age 20. At age 20, I didn't think about things like health insurance, rent/mortgage (haha...I still don't have a mortgage), IRA's, cell minutes, tune-ups, tax receipts, cable bills, organic vegetables, dirty dishes, etc. The logistics of survival take up so much space in my head, I have to flee to Latte Land to escape (though, I can do my laundry there if I so choose).

"Just practice a little everyday."

Like I don't already. I have the damn Fire, fucking Salsa Guru. It just gets put out every now and then.

Just for today, I can make sure The Fire doesn't get put out.

I've already flaked on my own promise to blog everyday. At least I'm honest about it. I could go and post retroactively about what a blissfully lazy Sunday I'm having watching 80's movies. But no, my new commitment is to embrace pointless honesty for the sake of redeeming the fact that I woke up at a quarter to 11:00 today...(good thing I don't have a job to go to).

Speaking of which, I've also decided to embrace unemployment. After all, there's really no need to descend into an Existential What Is My Life Purpose? Identity Crisis because - let's face it - I've lived there for the last thirteen years. Existential What Is My Life Purpose? Identity Crisis has been my identity - job or no job, boyfriend or no boyfriend. I've spent so much time searching my soul that I've managed to methodically organize it with the same obsessive energy that I've applied to my closet. If I need to find my yoga pants, I'm not going stand there and cry about the utter impermanence and seeming futility of life. I'm just going to open the bottom drawer, pull them out, and ask myself where I get off advertising my booty flab to the world...

It's not just that I'm too old for the twenty-something existential drama (although, I am), but at this point in my self-absorbed life, I have to admit to myself that all my worrying and whining has really just been an unconvincing foil to avoid the unavoidable C-word...Commitment.

And, like all self-manufactured drama, even existential fretting gets boring (actually, it's especially boring all the time).

Just for today, I can embrace my unemployed life.

I'm in the Laundromat/Coffee Shop again pretending I'm a committed writer (someday I might convince myself). However, it's just too distracting. I spent half an hour deciding if I should spend $5 on an egg nog latte (I can only drink one a year, not just because of the calories, but because once a holiday season is enough), while simultaneously trying to figure out what the guy behind the counter does in his non-latte-making time (he's kind of cute in a Never Had A Real Job kind of way)...real productivity going on here.

I ordered straight coffee. I decided that he's a bassist in a blues indie group he formed in his hometown of Minnesota in 2004...too lazy to find out the truth.

Just for today, I can try to work on a Saturday.