 Edel Rodriguez - NY Times 2009 Where is the pen and where is the writer? I thought this as I sat at the edge of my office desk looking around me, doing nothing much but breathing. Have a good look at this place, I thought. It was the day I got the first paycheck with my raise in it - because yes, one result of January's Ickdom was a promotion and an increase. Normally this would be heralded as a triumph, instead I'd received it quietly, some might even say rather matter-of-factly amidst the congratulations and pats on the back, as well as at least one very loud resentful sniff from an unsupportive party.
I'd glossed over the email announcement, writing two short words back to my bosses. "Thank you." was all I could say with real sincerity. I'd been doing the work after all and all this, which in other circumstances would've had me calling friends and family for a victory dinner, had left me both grateful yet still in thought. My mind couldn't leap to all the newfound future things I could anticipate indulging in, instead it felt much like receiving a long awaited marriage proposal just at the moment you realized it was for the best you weren't asked in the first place. I was thankful yet uneasy. And I'd gone home to call the Lovely Libran who quickly understood and confirmed my thoughts.
Well, wouldn't you know it - Femmeruthless.com is an Aries. I should've known, given the predominance of blood-flash red, pointy weapon-like heels and the generally lusty Mars-humps-Venus vibe on this site. Where is the pen and where is the writer? It can be hard to feel like I have anything semi-coherent to say in pupa. Yet the occasion is too momentous (to me at least) to let pass without words and presence.
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/alicepopkorn/ Yes on this day last year, I finally published this blog. It had taken years of Getting In then Out Of My Own Way as well as writing for everyone else under every guise possible. Dry as dust technical sheets, peppy marketing blurbs, litigiously toned demand documents for action and atonement, sassy little posts in Other People's Blogs, tender letters of Like to Men Who Disappeared, once even an epic eulogy I was later informed tipped the entire funeral party into relentless sobbing and of course, mind-bending erotica for private consumption (to be clear, not mine).
In all the months I've been writing this blog, there is but one month missing. November 2011. The month most associated with Scorpio, Pluto and Regeneration. It's also the month where we here in the Northern Hemisphere plunge deeper into the
 Phoenix/Exidos dark of fall, when the sky turns a black soot, earlier than expected it always seems. When the physical quietude, the sudden silence that turns trees bare and landscapes white, remind us how the Earth folds into herself, removing all evidence of her usual promise. We're distracted by Thanksgiving, then by Xmas - I'm convinced these holidays were so timed to force us into a tradition of togetherness, which we need as the world around us winters.
Pluto. The Phoenix. Transformation. These are all words I deeply associate with, mainly as years of being Sewered and the ensuing recovery remanded me to the mines. I'd learned the hard way that when your astrologer says Pluto Transits are achingly slow, they are not kidding. I drafted the following paragraphs on November 1st as I listened arduously to an inkling that seemed too hidden in the loam for naught but a low hum:
"I suppose all these thoughts of Pluto, sex and healing are all apt themes on the first day of November. Adjacent to that is lucre, since Pluto also rules mining and riches. Something I'm a bit preoccupied with at the moment, though I'm more at the grizzling and flopping down helplessly stage rather than the actioning-a-plan stage. To reduce the problem into it's simplest form, it is thus: I am at a crossroads work wise.
The effect of all this turning was noticeable even at mid-morph. In Mexico, the Lovely Libran looked at me with tempered panic as she withstood the Olympic flirting that occurred in my wake. Well, that and my lack of apology for it. I suppose it
 http://www.zazzle.com/get_your_flirt_on_card- didn't help that Latin men live up to their Rico Suave reputations, and boy did they Suave it up. She tut-tutted in amused horror even whilst we were on a pedicab ride back from one of the cenotes and I'd wistfully commented on how the Mayan driver's labored panting made me miss New Man and how I'd hoped to hear more of THAT when I got back.
She laughed tolerantly at my mischief, still careful to keep a watchful eye on me. I reassured her it was all harmless and that it was likely I'd lost Rotational momentum over the trip and the Thanksgiving holiday. Not so I guess. Instead, my return from Mexico had been greeted with queries from Kentucky, a few atypically tender gifts from the Well Hung Uranian (WHU) once again on his normally scheduled back orbit and a disturbing email from one of the Sewer's former right hand men, the Chocolate Toro. Even B in his coupled state was attentive enough to send me a sweet Thanksgiving message.
As I'm sure it's been pondered, no, I have not lost the queue for the Rotational. Except now what I thought reserved as a Spring Phenomenon seems to have become an All Season occurrence. I had floundered a bit after realizing B was finally coupled, it was transitional floundering but floundering nonetheless. Sadness and happiness sitting side by side. I'd like to be unadorned about that, without nailing myself to the coffin of relationship ineptitude or casting the protective glow of feigned confidence around me.
This is what irritates me about type casting. The roles are limiting. You're either the girl brought home to mother i.e. Jennifer Garner, the perennially sad single girl i.e. Jennifer Aniston, the party babe i.e. Tara Reid, the hard core bitch-slut i.e. too many to mention, etc. - there are multitudes more convenient boxes we get slot into by either ourselves or others. As I'm sure most of our college pictures attest, as well as the hushed up stories we keep from way back when or horror, that loud friend we hope will never visit our current life, we can be all those things to different people at varying stages in our lives. There isn't even an arc of logic we can rely on.
 http://teenagefashionaddict.tumblr.com Because life is messy, timelines get diverted and we're individuals who do what we will with what we're given. As women, however, we're exceptionally hyper-conscious about how we come across. We've all been at some point, over-ruled by impressions we anxiously anticipate we've made on others.
2011, and it's the last day of the year. I should perhaps predictably write down some touching thoughts in conclusion, maybe a wrap up of sorts. But the truth is I find all of that dreary. I had no plans tonight, and I confess this with the knowledge that apparently I've acquired a stalker on the blog, who could very well be reading this right now. Yes, a stalker.
 Unlike most of my stalkers (obviously you're not living a full and modern life without at least one), this one's female and she reads me with no interest as to the strains of wisdom I painstakingly mill from my quiet yet unusual life. She reads me because she thinks me to be a Jezebel. No, make that Jezebel!!!! The name just begs to be shrieked out loud.
When I first learned she'd furtively observed me for some time, I was annoyed, disturbed, pissed, you know the usual run of emotions attributed to unwelcome observation. Am I writing this for her? No, not really.
But if she does spend the time reading this and more importantly comprehending it - unlikely but let's be magnanimous, I hope that rather than using it for clues of how I am in fact the prominent figure in her betrayal fantasies, it somehow occurs to her that being "Jezebel" is a necessary rite of passage in every strong and authentic woman's life.
We bore this tide of echoes with lightness, attributing most of it to having lived in a country with a similar history of Imperial domination, down to the same conquistadores. But who didn't Spain touch when she was in her hey day? It was evening by the time we left the cuotas (toll roads), navigating through small towns and villages, till we were finally in Valladolid where we'd stay the night.
I'd summarily described it to the Lovely Libran as "you know, it's like a small Spanish town" deliberately leaving out most of the details to surprise her. The evening had done my efforts better, for we'd arrived on the night of a fiesta. The streets had garlands of lights, flags and flowers hung everywhere, and there was that general buzz of celebratory excitement.
It's so true. At least for me it is. I suppose it has to do with how a good part of my life is in my writing. Hence my absence usually means I've succumbed to the silence living requires that trying once again to articulate insight from a moving canvas
 of emotions can be preemptive, even false if not allowed to ripen. While I'm on both twitter and face crack, I have as yet to develop a significant presence on either. All this means is that I'm not quite convinced I have anything of value to say in 140 characters or less that doesn't involve the words, "Fire", "Watch Out", or "Duck".
I'm told it's an eminently useful tool in keeping followers in touch, and I believe it is. But what if my silences are just as important as what I have to say? Take fruit cake for instance, no one questions that it has to sit there for a while, marinating in rum or brandy or whatever liqueur it is that's meant to make it a masterpiece.
My mother used to make fruit cake in August so it would be ready by December, and opening the fridge we all teetered at the promise each well-wrapped lump of foil would later yield. The indescribable satisfaction of nut, fruit and dark cake, moistly infused with brandy, which was her choice of alcohol, all of which we could only enjoy when the holidays were finally upon us.
In her country, fruit cake was also the traditional wedding cake. Surprising I know, considering how we now associate wedding cake with the fluffy, creamed sponge tiers of sugar nothings majestically decorated in full bridal regalia. A recipe that's statistically telling. But yes, aside from Christmas, fruit cake was reserved for the day a marriage was sanctified. Apt I guess, because of the time it requires to gel, to finally make sense so to speak. Eating my mother's fruit cake was also one of the few occasions I could taste alcohol without getting ill and embarrassing myself publicly. Well, not so much myself as others, I usually don't remember much after I'm sick from it, being unable to ingest it uncooked.
Yes, despite my having been the Muse of the Yucatan and the past month and a half having gone at warp speed, I'm still very much here. Except I'm entertaining the should be strange yet really not at all odd feeling that I'm not who I was when I left.
 www.twistedphysics.com I'd sent off a birthday gift to the Pegasus in a mad rush this week, only to have her write back excitedly buoyed by both the gift and how I'd divined her old stomping grounds in Delayed (Adelaide), a city I'd never been to, "A Spa on Halifax, I used to live there! Are you psychic? And did this happen to you after the Yucatan??"
If I WERE psychic, I think I'd be at the nearest shop buying Powerball tickets this very second. I suppose these sort of resonant coincidences happen more frequently during certain times than not. I'd asked the Lovely Libran sister to descend upon me in the last two weeks of November, and together we decided to conquer the so-called jungle.
We'd been on trips before, some we started together, others we just arranged to coincide at certain points, easily going our separate ways when the trip ended. But this was northeastern Mexico, the farthest flung one could get in that country before you had to say you were in Guatemala. And it was only for six days.
When I first read Slim Smith's post three years ago, I wasn't quite sure if it was real. The panic certainly seemed to be, but was this guy serious? I stopped when I realized how most people listen to my own story incredulously. Slightly altered for his own protection, this is what Slim Smith wrote on that fateful night:
 "My wife and I are married 3 years - our sex life is "alright" i suppose. A few days ago, I was looking for a book I needed in our spare bedroom, and started looking in the closet only to find a box buried under some clothes that had a silky pouch...which had a large black sex toy in it. I was shocked!
Her ex-boyfriend was black, and even when we were dating I'd make fun about the "size" thing. Still she always said she was ok with how mine was. Usually after we're intimate, she'll hang out in the spare bedroom to watch tv, I just wasn't sure why - now I know!
Yeah, I'm a little hurt she's got it hidden there.. part of me is embarrassed she needs "more". The thing is HUGE. I can't sleep thinking about what I should do. Like, should I confront her about it? Or just forget it and play dumb? Where did she buy it from?? We share all our credit card statements, I think I'd have picked it up if she got it online. Sure, we'd kid around about her maybe seeing her ex if I allowed her to, am I supposed to be grateful it's just a toy instead of an affair? So my questions are:
Guys: what would you do if you were me?
Ladies:any thoughts on why you'd hide something like that from your boyfriend or spouse, instead of just being open about it? "
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