The lovely Diane Mandy of Martinis For Two tagged my for this meme. Unfortunately I am not unfashionably late, just plain late…but not that kind of late. I have been ass-over-tea-kettle-busy. Good busy, not bad busy…not that anyone wants to hear about re-grouting the shower.

On to the meme!

Archive Meme Instructions: Go back through your archives and post the links to your five favorite blog posts that you’ve written. … but there is a catch: Link 1 must be about family. Link 2 must be about friends. Link 3 must be about yourself, who you are… what you’re all about. Link 4 must be about something you love. Link 5 can be anything you choose. I think this is a great way to circulate some of the great older posts everyone had written, return to a few great places in our memories and also learn a little something about ourselves and each other that we may not know. Post your five links and then tag five other people. At least TWO of the people you tag must be newer acquaintances so that you get to know each other better….and don’t forget to read the archive posts and leave comments.

1. Family: I have a tendency to vent on my blog when things aren’t going well. Contrary to content posted here, I am not estranged from my family, nor do I dislike them. I admit they frequently embarrass me, but what good is family if they don’t humiliate you with regularity…this post isn’t about that. It’s about feeling the energy.

2. Friends: I have a long history of transient friends. Maybe you know the type. They tend to be high-quality. You can call them for damn near anything. The problem is they are only in your life for a limited period of time. Every moment you have them, they’re a gift.

3. I rock: Actually I just roll with the punches, utter something irreverent and wait for the next one. Sometimes you get surprised and something good happens.

4. I love: Big. That places you at risk for being hurt, big. My relationship with my better half is like mountain road. You never know what’s around the blind curve, but it’s worth taking the risk for the view.

5. My favorite post: I don’t know about favorite, the word sounds too absolute. The post that says the most about the kind of person I am is this one.

Encased in the clarity of an erotic dream, I slept soundly into the late hours of morning. East coast time minutes before noon, but body time moments before sunrise. Our flight had arrived two hours behind schedule. Bad weather. After closing down a local bar, we crawled into bed around 6AM Eastern, 1AM island time.

Dreams are often signified by the presence of someone from my past. Deb was there. We went to college together. She once stitched the pee hole closed on her boyfriend’s briefs for an April fool’s gag. She waited for a response for three days…and nuthin’. That taught us a lot about the limited functionality of male undergarments, and the absence of male patience. Uh, anywho Deb was there, but her capacity was limited to ordering pizza. There were three pepperoni, three supreme, three cheese, and one with anchovies. There was a group of us sharing a dinner meeting in what I suppose was someone’s living room. I don’t recall the details, only that the context shifted and suddenly Deb, the others, and all the pizza were gone.

I was stretched out against the Mister on the sofa. I like laying on my side with the pillows at my back and my head against his chest. He usually watches television, while I doze lightly to the sound of his heartbeat. Drowsily, I moved closer to lean against his shoulder. We stare at the TV at an inappropriate commercial for erectile dysfunction. We laugh at the absurdity of it and I move against him to nuzzle his neck, and I could fill the softness of his shirt against my exposed tummy. The touch felt real and tingly. There was a tactile sensitivity seldom present in my dreams. As we kissed, he touched my exposed flesh with his warm hand and I felt breathless until….my temple shattered as if someone had struck me with a wooden mallet.

Mister Hombre’s fucking, or should I say fuckless, cell phone, ruined the moment with the abruptness of a car wreck. He quickly left the bed in search of the offending device. I sat up with a throbbing temple verbally bashing the cabinet contractor who I assumed was calling two hours earlier than requested. I’m pretty certain I didn’t use words as respectable as, cabinet ,or contractor, at the time. I might have called him that goddamn son-of-a bitch. Sorry, Randy!

Now I begin processing the Mister’s voice. He’s definitely not talking to the cabinet man. In my left-hanging, six hours of sleep stupor, I can’t process that the entire world is not completely cognizant of my time zone. The bastards! How can the world not know it’s 6:45 in the morning here. After all, it’s always all about me when I too sleepy to conjugate verbs (a.k.a. as before morning coffee).

I hear the Mister’s voice say,”No you didn’t wake me” at which point a part of me wants to yell, “Liar!”. Next, I hear him say,”yes, she was asleep”. After that, I hear a distinct laugh from the other end of the line. Yes, of course. The Second String Cat Sitter is having trouble getting into the house. I wander into the bathroom, while the Mister clears up a miscommunication.

When the I return to the bed, the Mister notices my disgruntled expression, and asks if I’m feeling okay. I explain the inconsiderate timing of the phone call, and clarify that I am not suffering adverse side effects from consumption. He laughs about the dream, and calls Cat Sitter 2.0 to see if the situation has been resolved. Then he enlightens her that sleep was not only thing she interrupted. She gloats in a manner that only a woman without needs can gloat… I gloat knowing the day stretches ahead of me, and I will not be confined to an office, though I would be late for breakfast.

This sparked a series of counter posts. These are the responses I know about: Bob, Meno, Bob again, and Julie Pippert. If you know of others, send me the link and I will add them.

The thinking person’s argument has been carefully weighed, and I’ve nothing to add. I believe each scenario is unique, thus so are the solutions. Put your marriage first, and choose the approach that best honors you and your partner’s relationship.

I had a husband once, before I met the Mister. By had, I don’t mean a sexual relationship or a marital one. He was a former classmate. He was married, I was single and we were friends. During his “salad days” he worked as a firefighter and his wife waited tables. I crashed at my Mom’s house most weekends, and he frequently dropped by because he was off work 48 hours at a time. The friendship was founded on loneliness and availability.

We hung out watched movies, built bird houses, or walked plowed fields. This was nothing like my female friendships. There was a blunt straightforwardness about it that didn’t require me to stay up into the wee hours of morning discerning if he said what he meant or if he was attempting to drop a hint, or respond to something delicately. It was strictly what-you-see-is-what-you-get.

Our friendship wasn’t public knowledge, but his wife was aware of it, as was my family. We didn’t spent time together independent of his wife when she was off work. She was never excluded from the relationship. If she was off, the three of us would spend time together. She was not a jealous person, and trusted both of us unequivocally.

She endured her share of trash talk. If we ate dinner where she was employed, another server might say something catty like, “Your husband is here with you girlfriend..” Invariably she would walk over, speak, then return her customers and work mates as if this were perfectly normal. She handles drama with unflappable grace. If I had felt their marriage was compromised at any time, I would have abandoned friendship without protest.

My family was amused. They often referred to him as my husband. He was present for family dinners and adopted into the fold. If anyone suspected any impropriety, it was never discussed with me. Regardless of appearance, the nature of the relationship was never inappropriate.

There are good reasons for partners to be mindful of opposite sex relationships. There was an incident when the tension was palpable. Neither of us acted inappropriately. We quietly disengaged and he went home. We never discussed it. It’s possible, I was the only one who noticed. I respected the trust I had been granted by his partner, and I continued to honor it.

Over the years, I played the “what if game”. I suppose it’s human nature to ask those questions of yourself the better you know a person. It was nothing more than a mental chess match, but I later discovered I hadn’t played alone.

It was an open conversation, instigated by him. It was handled in the same matter-of-fact tone we used when we discussed cutting plexiglas. I suspect the object of his concern, was my not having a mate. He was very happy in his union, and he wanted the same for me. He feared that my advancing age (24) might make me difficult to market, but he did marry at nineteen. He told me if I didn’t find someone, he would take care of me when I was eighty. He also asked if we would have been a good a match, if he hadn’t met his wife first. I concluded two people who possess the same flavor and degree of stubbornness would be unlikely to bring out the best in each other in a long term relationship.

After I met Mister Hombre, I spent less time with my “husband”. The Mister had trouble grasping the nature of the friendship even though he had platonic female friends. The friendship I shared was more intimate than those he had established.

Today my friendship is an acquaintanceship. Life has a way of changing and our needs evolve with it. When I became involved with the Mister, his oldest was about to marry, and his youngest was eighteen. The firefighter and his wife were expecting their first child. Our paths were beginning to diverge.

The Mister never asked me to forfeit the friendship. I chose to taper it myself after watching both men engage in competitive chest puffing. I concluded spending time together didn’t bring out the best in either of them. It was like watching alpha males compete for territory. Maybe that’s a standard masculine practice to engage in before males get to know a competitor another guy. Loving two people isn’t enough to make them like each other and I wasn’t sure if I could witness the tension between them.

If I had to relive the moment again, I would change little. I had a valuable friend during the years I needed him most. I never allowed my feelings to compromise his relationship or my own.

If only it were always so simple.

Majority rule only works if you’re also considering individual rights. Because you can’t have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.
~Larry Flynt

When I met Marsha*, she asked my political affiliation. It wasn’t one of those rude, “well certainly we all believe the same things, so let me hear you say it out loud” questions. It was an innocent inquiry from a member of a political minority seeking volunteers for the next fundraising/campaigning season. My answer, “Anarchist”.

************

Government is cumbersome. It doesn’t adequately protect individual rights or reflect the will of the masses. I don’t understand why officials waste tax revenue passing non-binding resolutions, or why we need so many laws. Is it so difficult to do the right thing that it requires legislation? And why are the citizens who pay the taxes deprived of social services while their dollars are exported?

The lawlessness that descended upon New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina is enough to make ALMOST anyone reconsider the notion that anarchy is anything more than a fight for survival. Obviously, society needs order, but do laws really deter bad behavior? I’m skeptical about the effectiveness of legislating morality.

***********

Three weeks ago, Marsha* called.

“Ms Chica, have you ever wondered what it would be like to work at the polls?”

Long pause.

“Marsha*, I can honestly say the thought has never crossed my mind.”

I agreed to clerk on Super Tuesday. Yes, I’m still an anarchist, but a passive and pragmatic one. I pay taxes, observe traffic laws, and return my shopping cart to the buggy corral. I may not believe in the effectiveness of government, but I have benefitted from some of its efforts.

When I told the Mister, he almost fell off the couch laughing. “Do they know about your, uh political leanings, or that you’re not registered to vote?”

So there you have it. I might be the first person to clerk at the polls who wasn’t a registered voter.

************

Our Board of Elections liaison told us to expect 100 - 120 voters, and we served 230. The goal was to try and vote everyone who showed up. The exception being, voters who arrive at the wrong precinct. Those individuals we were given directions and instructed to go to their assigned precincts. Voters without proper identification or whose registration was not able to be verified either via database or the Board of Elections are allowed to vote provisional ballots. Provisional ballots allow 48 hours for discrepancies to be rectified before they are counted.

We assisted one couple who had not voted in thirty years, and a woman who was voting for the first time at age forty-five. When I consider the reasons they chose to cast their ballots now, I wonder if too will change my mind one day.

I know why I should vote. You forfeit the right to complain when you don’t participate in the process (when has that ever deterred anyone?). As an eligible citizen, I have one voice and the right to one vote. One vote that counts the same as everyone else’s. With the electoral college still in place, and the politics behind super delegates and unpledged delegates, I feel like my voice has laryngitis.

It’s unlikely I will change my mind soon. The last twelve years have been littered with candidates I wanted to vote against, not for. An exceptional candidate or a constitutional amendment might rouse me from my stupor, but not today. For now, I am willing to work the polls. I might not have much hope for my voice, or finding a candidate I agree with more than 20%, but many people still believe and I think they should be heard.

It’s a paradox, but I don’t feel torn about it. I’m glad everyone doesn’t share my opinion. Diversity makes this country a better place. I don’t need government to dictate what is acceptable societal behavior and what is not. I understand it is up to the individual to accept responsibility for his or her actions and see that groups unable to stand up for themselves are not trampled on by society. Some need those parameters so we have government.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all others that have been tried.
~Winston Churchill