normal thoughts

“A moment in our hands, a lifetime in our hearts.”

— Ancient Chinese dildo proverb

I was gingerly picking through my hamper when I found it, lying on its side all alone at the bottom. There were several mouse turds scattered around its head and a yellow stain of dried urine on the fabric by its side.

I stood looking down at the scene stunned, and in a state of disbelief. How had this happened? How could I have forgotten it here and put it at such risk? We had been together for more than fifteen years and I was going to lose it this way? Dammit! But there was nothing I could do to save it now. That much I knew. My poor pink dildo was going to have to be unceremoniously buried in the recycling bin.

During a move earlier this year, I had stashed my dildo in the bottom of my clothes hamper, under some bed sheets. The spot had been chosen on the fly, in a last-ditch effort to spare the college boys schlepping my stuff any knowledge that mom-aged women masturbate. I had forgotten I had done this, and tragedy ensued.

The hamper had been relegated to the garage in the new place just long enough for a mouse to discover the flannel sheets and shit all over them. My poor pink dildo lay below with no way to protect itself from the onslaught of urine and feces from above.

By the time I discovered all this I didn’t have the courage to save the sheets or the dildo. My vibrating friend may have been a gift from my uncle, but no one with an ounce of self-respect is going to masturbate with anything that has come in contact with mouse turds. Life has rules. There just isn’t enough bleach—or libido-induced desperation—to come back from that.
We had been through a lot of batteries together. I was so sorry things had turned out this way.

Over the years, I had come to love my dildo for three basic principles: it was pink, it was reliable, and it was there.

Even if you had never met my dildo, you might easily discover how much I like the color pink. It is in fact my favorite color. Neon pink with glitter isn’t necessarily the ticket for me being that I am not a Rainbow Brite doll or a cabaret star in a gay club, but it still worked. I am of the mind that a little glitter and flare in the bedroom never hurt anyone.

My dildo was intrepid and down-to-earth. It almost always had something to give. I rarely had to abandon anything we planned together to go dig up fresh batteries. When things we’re winding down to fresh battery time, it would gently let me know by lacking a bit of joie de vivre on the higher end of the dial, but I was never fully abandoned. That was really nice of my dildo. I also appreciated its simplicity. Turn the red dial for increasing levels of vibration. Done. Shaped and veined like an average North American dick. Done.

I was once gifted this sleek, high-class lavender dildo. It was a real beauty and it made me feel like a dummy. It had a control console, beaded independently gyrating mid-section, and girthy user’s guide. I was dating way out of my league with that one. I never could build up enough confidence to go to bed with it. Instead, I popped it back into the original packaging and paid it forward by donating it to the Goodwill. I hope it found a new home with someone who was able to really appreciate all of its bells and whistles.

You gotta love the one you’re with. I was a twenty-something when my dildo and I found each other. I was thrust suddenly into the relationship on the filthy steerage care of an Amtrak train. It all happened very suddenly. No words. I had no say in the matter. I thought I was opening a benign travel gift from a relative and next thing I—and the 86-year-old widow sitting next to me—know is that I was ushered into the adult responsibility of sex toy ownership.

I am sure I was convinced at first that I was throwing the thing away as soon as I could. Next stop, dumpster! But somewhere along the way, I just didn’t. I don’t remember my rationale anymore. I know time can make us humans pretty damn complacent with shit we thought we would never stand for. After a while, you get used to things, even pink garish glittery vibrating things that your uncle gave you. Doesn’t seem so bad anymore. Already had a maiden voyage set of batteries in it. Was in a plastic sheath. Looked new. I was all alone. No one would know (unless I blabbed about it on a blog years later)…why not?

And now, after years of asking myself, “Why not?” I was in the garage preparing to say goodbye. I don’t know if loss is any easier when we have a chance to prepare, but I do know that the suddenness of it all sucked. But I did what I had to do. My dildo deserved that much. I picked up my pal. No more mouse turds, no more smothering bedding stifling its style. Time to cross over, rest, maybe find a new companion, someone with seriously low standards and high “Eww!” tolerance factor.

I felt gratitude for our time together and a sadness that it was all over. I also felt a bit of nervousness that someone was going to come up the road as I was making my funeral procession to the recycling bin. This was a private and solemn time. I didn’t want to end up having to wave to anyone with my hands and heart so full.

And when time has healed me and hormones have sufficiently motivated me, I am going to have to go through the work of finding a new dildo. Life gives us no guarantees. There will be no way to know if I would find another as well suited for me as the one I have bid farewell. Then again, perhaps my dildo knew it was time to cross over and leave me to a new toy and it had all worked as it needed to.

Rest in peace, dear friend. May you find fresh batteries and warm hands on the other side.

… Preliminary record rainfall for Paso Robles Airport today…

As of 515 am PDT… Paso Robles Airport has received 1.16 inches
of rain so far today… with nearly one inch of that falling in
one hour. This breaks the record daily rainfall for this date..,
July 19th… which was 0.01 inches set in 2012. It also sets a new
record for the most rainfall on any calendar day in July. The
previous record was 0.58 inches on July 9th 1950. In addition… this
rain brings the total rainfall for July 2015 so far to 1.24
inches… making it the wettest July since records began in 1948. In
the previous wettest July… July 1950… 0.59 inches of rain was
recorded.

– posted originally by Stacey Warde of The Rogue Voice, http://www.theroguevoice.com

The storm that moved through here last night was in-tense. It was a long night. Thunder and lightning flashed and pounded for several hours. Some of it so close it sounded like a giant zipper was tearing open the sky. These tears would end in such jarring rumbles, they reminded me of the first jolt of an earthquake. I’ve lived in California all my life, and I haven’t seen anything like it here before.

I don’t especially love thunder and lightning. Big storms make me feel nervous and vulnerable and like maybe spontaneous combustion of me could happen at any electrically charged moment.

Photo credit: Brett Levin Photography, Creative Commons

As the storm gained strength outside, anxiety formed its own front and moved into my chest cavity and stomach. There was no use trying to lie in bed any longer. I got up and scuttled into the dark bathroom. I poop when I’m nervous and last night I was nervous. Afterward, I sat on the floor in my bedroom with my nervous pup panting and shaking in my lap.

I rubbed the coarse hairs on his little chest and tried to think back to where my unease of thunder and lightning began. I leaned forward slightly and winked my right eye closed so his little warm darting tongue could clean my lashes, and flashed on sitting at the foot of my mother’s hospital bed not long before she died. I was seven, she was thirty seven. I could plainly see myself perched on a footstool in her small bedroom, situated off of her parents’ kitchen. I was seated there, doing my best to hold my arms out from my body. Earlier in the evening I had gotten a glass thermometer out of the medicine cabinet so that I could take my temperature. I often felt sick. I worried I would die before I even understood that that was my mother’s fast approaching reality. I had broken the thermometer in my hand before I could use it. I remembered at some point being told that the mercury inside was poisonous, and though I was pretty sure I hadn’t gotten any on my skin, I was being extra vigilant by not letting my hands touch my body – just in case. I guess I was too afraid to realize that if mercury was on my hands, it made no difference if I got it on any other skin on my body.

My mother noticed something was up and turned from the show playing on her small dresser top television to look down the length of her bed at me. In the darkness her eyes softened and her head tilted, “What are you doing?” she asked. My throat tightened and ached as I recalled the tenderness in her voice. I was eager to explain what had happened. I was afraid and I wanted her to make me feel better, reassure me that I wasn’t going to die from mercury poisoning. But when I started to speak, lightning startled us both as it flashed through the windows behind her. In the brightness I could see the mustard yellow and white knit cap on her head and the dark half moons under her eyes. Then the thunder boomed, taking away my words. She hadn’t heard anything I had said and I didn’t know how to begin again. Soon after, she fell asleep. I sat quietly in her room, under the tv glow until my grandparents came home and found me there. They put me to bed. I cried until I fell asleep, lightning illuminating all the colors in the stained glass windows of the guestroom where I slept at the end of the hall.

Another bolt lit up the sky and I was brought back to the present as the plug in my bathroom let out a small hiss. Rattled, pretty sure I was headed for combustion after all, I started naming things for which I was grateful. That shifted me into a more relaxed state as I took solace in the rain, my this-too-shall-pass mantra, and the crickets.

Every time the thunder would back off, I would hear crickets faithfully playing their tune over the soft backdrop of the rain. It reminded me of something I had read once about how the musicians on the Titanic had all perished with the ship because they stayed to play music as long as they could to keep all of the passengers calm.

The crickets were bringing me a sense of calm. I often meditated on them at night by focusing on their song in an effort to let all my other brain trash fall away. I was grateful that they played this night, while the storm unmoored me.

It felt like it may never happen, and just when I thought maybe I couldn’t take another flash or bang, the sun did start to rise. The sky looked a little less ominous as the first little hints of light filtered in behind the clouds. My rooster – the faithful Pep-a-chew – started to crow and that’s when I knew I was probably going to live. No mercury poisoning, no spontaneous combustion. I crawled back in to bed and slept until the sun was high and everything was quiet.