Is That Opportunity Knocking?

There is a certain record exec with a certain north-eastern indi label who-having heard the four songs on my 2000 EP including "Another Lover"-is offering a potential record deal! Now, I can't give away any more than that right now, but pray for me. This could be the second big break I've been waiting for!

He's Lucky He's Cute

If nothing else, the modeling offer is good for a laugh-at my expense, apparently.

I mentioned it to Michael and he gasped, "Have they ever really seen you? I mean, you're not a big-boobed young hottie." Had he been standing there next to me I think I'd have kicked him in the shins. Now, I know I'm not Brittany Spears but goodness knows most men know they risk some sort of bodily harm by reminding their insecure 34 year old wife of the fact. And he wants to come back, does he?

"Apparently there's a market for ugly old bags with boobs down to their ankles." I responded, my eyes reduced to annoyed little slits. At 5' 4" tall and 105 lbs I have hardly gone to pot. I hate how the media at large has brain-washed American men and women alike to believe a woman has to be 18, bone-thin, blonde and have a rack and a half to be thought of as beautiful. True, that was me in the prime of my youth-the ideal I once went to insane lengths to attain. It indeed brought me adoration but not happiness. Anorexic, bulimic, depressed and too easily seduced, I was hardly a whole woman, no matter how I appeared. I am older, wiser, and love being a wife and mother-when I'm treated well. "Short, small-busted middle-aged mothers are beautiful." I want to do this thing now if only to prove that point.

"I guess there's a market for everything." says he, safely a state away. "I bet if you took close-ups of your feet some weirdo would buy them." Isn't he just the sweetest? My pretty little nightmare. He turns thirty this year. He's started balding. When he gets lazy he fills out a bit figure wise, as most husbands do as they get older. Is he any less a man?

Oh, yes, I can see it now.... The plug for the first Official Melody Calendar....

FINALLY CAPTURED ON FILM! : Elderly Female Sasquash. Twelve months of glorious grossness for your amusement and curiousity! Buy now before she disappears again into the annals of legend and lore! Pre-order yours today to avoid the rush.

Rush, ha. Now, THAT's funny.

Modeling and Men

Life continues to surprise me.

Although Darryn and I have cancelled any plans for getting together (now that he has met and is involved with radio personalility Shannon Nicole), we remain friends. *Kym, the Canadian rock singer I spoke of earlier continues to call me and claims to want very much to come and visit me-but I hesitate. As handsome and intriguing as he is, he is involved with someone else who in my opinion deserves his faithfulness and I am still legally married. As for Michael.... he suddenly claims he wants me back. I am a bit confused.... Why now, all of a sudden is he game?

"Why, are you surprised?" he asked.
"Frankly, yes", I admitted. He had me quite convinced I was niether loved or wanted anymore and swore it was over for good. I do still love him but I have my doubts about whether it's possible to be truely happy with him. I don't think he's capable of making a meaningful commitment. He's left me three times in 5 1/2 years, hurting me in ways I can't even write down. This isn't high school. We're married adults, with a child we we're raising together. How do I know he won't leave me a fourth time, stringing me along for just a while longer, for his amusement and convenience? I won't be used. I won't be toyed with. I won't be fooled again.

It could be that the freewheeling bachelor life he anticipated with his overworked roomate fell short of his dreams. Maybe the stampede of sexy young girlfriends he was expecting didn't come. Maybe they did and he found out sex is easy to come by but love is not. Perhaps he finally realized what he had thrown away in me. Perhaps....he heard I was finally moving on and that good old male ego finally kicked in.... He admitted he was a bit perturbed when I stopped calling him altogether. What did he expect? That I would lie down and die without him? That I would join a convent and forgo sex for the rest of my life? That in the gutter I would stay, ignored and forgotten by he and all mankind?

He admitted he is lonely without Christian and I. He wants to try again. But I'm not sure I want to. He has absolutely no right to expect me to take him back with open arms after treating me the way he has.

But there is the part of me that still yearns for his touch, the tenderness with which he first loved me. I miss the sweet and silly side I know him to possess. He's brilliant of mind and artistic talent-a visionary too often taken off track. And though he can be a royal ass at times he is almost unfairly attractive, something continually brought to my attention by my female friends (and a few of the male ones!). It's superficial and hardly his most important attribute but it's impossible to ignore. It's the one that first grabs you. And seduces you. And haunts you.

"So, he's hot as fuck", Angie acknowledged, attempting to console me in the depth of my grief, not long after he left. "With a killer body and that oh-so-sexy european accent." She pauses to sigh. "So, maybe he would rather face blunt knife castration than ever see you again-At least you can say you were once married to Michael *Bardo" (I have changed his last name in these journals at his request....)
"Gee, Thanks", I grumbled, sarcastic. "That really helps. Please, do remind me how great he is in bed too while you're at it so I really sleep well tonight."
"Now, why would I do that?", asks she. "It's not like you're ever going to have him again."
"I hate you."

"I guess now I can tell you how hot I've always thought Michael is?" Tori mentioned, casually, sunbathing beside me. "I mean, he is so fine.
"I know", I muttered, flipping over to tan my back and hide my tears.
"I wonder who he's seeing now."
"Do you want me to cry?" I've heard through the grapevine he's been seeing some 21 year old blonde but I try not to think about it. These rumors are little daggers, dancing around my heart.

It is one thing to know other women find my husband attractive. It's yet another thing to hear about his exploits from his bragging best friends. And still more painful are the women who have pursued him right in front of my face. There was Anne, who during my previous separation from Michael proceeded to tell me at a party we'd aall three attended in no uncertain terms that she wanted to bag him and very nearly succeeded. I found her straddling him in a bedroom, pulling his shirt off.
"Oh, HELL no", I uttered, before going Springer on her ass. He is still my husband and I'll be damned if I'm not going to fight for him, I thought.


I should probably tell him to take a long walk off a short pier, or tell him in my best Bart Simpson voice to "bite me", but I can't. I will in my weakness probably take him back becuase I simply love him. Faults and all. But he's going to have to prove to me he's serious and earn my trust again. I am a fool who loves him I guess. Dang it. Sometimes I really wish I didn't.

Feeling sentimental, I wrote him a poem the other day, which I emailed him unexpected:

I don’t want to love you, when you’re mean or when you’re gone
I don’t want to need you, when I’m weak and you are strong
I don’t want to miss you, when it only makes me blue
I don’t want to want you but I do

There are few things I’m sure of
And one of these is this
When everything is lost
It’s the simple things we miss
The things we took for granted
Things money just can’t buy
Things we didn’t think we needed
Things no other could provide

I never knew anyone quite like you, Michael
with your gifts and your faults
and your brain and your beauty
You were the love of my life-my greatest adventure!

You were a gift from God, an answer to a prayer
And for our time together I will be forever thankful.

Be happy, my love. If not with me, then without me.
Find what brings you joy, what completes you
What makes you a better man
and -in a perfect world, what brings you back into my life.

@-----^----- I love you.

Perhaps this prompted his change of heart. Or maybe he's just looking for a puppet-toting maybe-model sugar mama to take care of him. His cryptic heart eludes me.

I have been booking myself with the puppets. I have my first big birthday party for 50 kids ages 4-14 next weekend and I have spoken to a student union officer about doing a possible performance at the University Of Oklahoma. He suggested we combine it with a larger program to bring a lot of people out.

Now, I may or may not have menti0ned earlier in this blog that I've been offered modeling work in the past and more recently-from calenders to lingerie catalogs and even propositions to do porn-all of which I've declined. I did work with the Richard Dixon agency years ago as a leg model, and gave a recent invitation to pose with a wealthy New Yorkers luxury car collection a thought but haven't done anything signifigant in modeling out of a desire to be appreciated for any actual abilities I have, rather than any physical attributes anyone thinks I may have.

I have been most recently asked to do a "tasteful" nude calender, the proceeds from which the investor suggests could finance the recording of a new cd. I gave him a run down of 101 reasons why I am not his calendar girl and he shot back 101 reasons why I am exactly the girl he needs. Having known him for years I know this man to be both reputable and trustworthy. He's addressing my every doubt and every concern in a way that has left me seriously considering doing this for the first time.

"How many men have to tell you you're sexy before you'll believe it?" he posed. One. Guess who. "If you have it, use it to your advantage. It might just jump-start your career."

I am not the prude, inexperienced young woman I once was. (I am now the occasionally naughty, slightly more experienced old hag. LOL.) And the reality is that no one is doing for me, not my parents, not my on again off again husband. I am doing for myself. I am a fighter, a survivor and I'll make a way from my son and myself using whatever God saw fit to bless me with. My ass wasn't at the top of that list but it may be that the time has come to put it to the grindstone.

PUPPET JUNCTION

Now, I've done something unexpected. I've sunk my savings not into music or into a house but into starting a professional puppet company, named "Puppet Junction". Little known to people is my great love of puppets. I sat in with puppeteers in New York, at benefits at Dowling College, and entertained children in libraries and at parties for my own enjoyment. Now I will have a whole slew of professional quality puppets I can use for a paycheck-from fuzzy moppets to a 28" George "dubya" Bush, from a bearded biker to a cowboy/cowgirl couple and their plush puppet horse. And I will still have time to write freelance and for Funusual. Now that Lynett's new single is finally finished-and let me assure you with all of her almost inconcievable talent this young woman is destined to be a household name-my work as her publicist is only beginning. (www.lynett-online.com www.myspace.com/lynett)

I hadn't intended to tell Michael about my new venture, lest he laugh and think me foolish, but his mother let the cat out of the bag and he called me, surprisingly excited.

"I told you a long time ago you should do that!", he exclaimed. "You're great with puppets! You won't even need a script. You're funny just playing with people-adults too." I about asked him who he was and what he'd done to my husband. He is so impressed that he offered to design a proper website for me-which will be an improvement on the existing one whose url you find on my home page.
"Really?" I responded. "Cool!" We talked and laughed for a good hour.... and it was such a pleasant conversation we both sighed what a shame it is that it didn't work out for us.... When it goes right it is so incredibly right it leaves us giddy.... Gosh, how I miss that all too rare joy.... I daresay he sounded like he does too.... I think, rather than causing him to lose respect for me for daring to do this, it's renewed his respect for me. "I decided I want to do something fun", I explained. "I could be dead tomorrow and I don't want to be miserable for the rest of my life. Since you left, I have been so depressed. I find that I can endure, have a life without you." He heard me excited, trying something new and I suppose that makes me more appealing. Though spending that much on a risky idea made me nervous, the night I ordered the puppets (along with some new clothes and a few video games) I enjoyed the best sleep I'd had in months, uninterrupted by the nightmares and I awakened feeling very happy and positive about life for a change.

Look out world! The puppet lady is coming!

(It's not exactly professional music but it's wildly fun-a great way to destress and express myself creatively. And, Is there anything more intoxicating than the sound of human laughter?)