I am never going out alone again.

When I go out, it is always on a day my husband has the girls, and it is always with my best friend, and it is always (when it's alcoholic) to a gay bar.

Decided to go out yesterday afternoon. Without my best friend. But at the same bar we always go to. Cheap drinks, and it's filled with homosexual men. The kind who'll tell me I'm beautiful without trying to get in my pants. It's why I go there. I'm technically still married (for how long I'm not clear), and at any rate am still really burned from Rob, who screwed me over thoroughly and yet honestly is one of the good guys in every thing but me. And even if I was on the market, I wouldn't be going to a bar to meet guys.

So there I am, chatting with a drunken fellow who told me I reminded him of his mother; I was apparently a picture of the '70s with my dress & hair the way they were. I had a great conversation with his ex-boyfriend as well, who I'd met before when we together bemoaned that our respective candidate is John McCain. All was well & good, even after both men left (at different times). I was sitting there enjoying my drink and the air conditioning and feeling pretty.

And then the one straight guy in the bar found me.

Drunk off his ass and quite literally old enough to be my daddy, he plopped down on the stool beside me and started, er, flirting. Or something. In between slurring appraisals of my sexiness (good to know I've still got my drunk old man fan club), he confided that he used to be "a drug kingpin" in the gay community. Before he went to prison. But that was also because he shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die. (OK, not really, but I swear that song was running through my head.)

Ignoring him didn't work. Turning my back to him didn't work.

Getting up and moving to a seat on a different side of the bar to talk with a couple of gay men about their plans to buy into the King William area did work, thank God.

It was a sort of funny/scary thing, and only went to prove what I'd been told earlier in the evening: "Oh, there are plenty of straight men here, but us queens will defend you." Thank God for gay men. And the fact that my ride showed up early.

(Yes, I know, I should've sicced the bartender on him. I'm not used to this stuff.)

Sigh.

I then went home and cut things into small pieces for a few hours on Dungeon Siege. I think I shall get back into the coffee bar circuit, and that halter dress I felt so pretty in is going to go back into the closet for a while.

(For the record, I'm not really bugged about it. I was laughing over it with my mother yesterday. But seriously, alone at a bar or not, I am still wearing my wedding rings. Maybe that's a clue.)

Damn.

I should be kept away from the delete button, apparently. Or else Blogger ate an extra post when I was trying to delete a draft. With all the stuff I've put out there lately, I'm not going to pick the post about getting my car back to delete.

Heh.

This might be one of those that only certain women can get:



From today's Day by Day cartoon.

I remember that kind of glassy-eyed look on my husband's face back in the day. (Although our running joke was "chocolate and vanilla", because why on Earth would a baby suddenly demand one over the other?)

I've seen a few women with blinkies (and if you don't know what I'm speaking of, be glad) that say something along the lines of "Making breastmilk is my superpower." I've always thought it was a little silly, but I can still identify with it. It's kind of like a Swiss Army boob--food source, drink source, pillow, pacifier, cuddly thingie...and that's just for the kid.

My soon-to-be-ex, if he is to be believed, used to brag on my breasts back on the boat: "Not only are they huge, but they WORK!" (And, being a man, he used to talk up breastfeeding in the classical male way--"You never have to get up at night to feed the baby.")

Sigh. Sometimes you realize the good ol' days were really odd.

It really should go without saying.

I shouldn't have to say it, but I will.

My children are more than a matter of economics.

They are daughters, not child support figures. Or tax deductions. Or entitlement to a portion of my ex-husband's potential military retirement, should he reenlist.

Much as I really want to be left alone to raise my daughters in peace, I don't give a flying fuck if Robert going back into the Navy nets me a "piece of a bigger pie."

Money and health insurance and, verily, even Commissary access are not an adequate substitute for a caring, present father and an intact, working family.

I'll take what I can get. But the next man who talks to me about my children in purely monetary terms is going to get a kick in the nuts. And I'm going to bust open a can of Jeremiah Wright on everybody's ass and say the following: God damn my husband's lawyer for arguing money. God damn the mediatior for telling me I should be content for my kids to almost never see their dad because it means I'd be getting more child support. And if Robert really was voluntarily considering everything from a money standpoint, then God damn him too.

Never let it be said I can't laugh at myself.

Or at my husband, at least.

Murphy did a pretty good job of making fun of us Texans a little while back. I snickered, and thought myself well above the stereotype in dress. Thought, too, that I did a good job of avoiding that same stereotype when I got married.

Then Soon-to-be-Ex showed up at my door a week or two ago in boots, a dress shirt he probably doesn't remember that I bought him, jeans way tighter than a man his age ought to be wearing (his age and, well, size), and a cowboy hat. A cowboy hat that added a good six inches to his 5'8" height.

I think he was trying to do the ol' make the ex jealous routine.

I like short guys. For reasons that aren't going to be posted on a vaguely PG-13 blog. But short guys in tall hats...

I guess uncontrollable giggling is a much better reaction to the sight of the man than the former uncontrollable crying and near-uncontrollable urge to beg for reconciliation.

But I think I hurt his widdle feelings that night, and a few nights later when I asked him what the hell he was smoking to buy a black felt hat for South Texas summer wear.

I'm not even going into the way he's now using his hats as interior decoration.

I am, however, going to mediation in an hour. No cowboy hats involved.

I've got no shame.

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I blame this one on Mark.

I'm fairly confident my cup size and kink are responsible for about 50% to 75% of that figure.

Er, I mean, I'm a good little girl who never even thinks about sex. Yeah, that's it. (Hey, I was married to a submariner, & they're quick to tell you they're the weirdest bastards in the Navy.)