Saturday, January 31, 2009

Stripped

I have forgotten my toes because I never really see them. I wear socks and clogs all day at work and I happily wear all the boots in my closet because of the cold weather. As a result, I don't get to see my toes much.

Recently, during a trip to Hawaii, I realized my work shoes had no role to fill here and boots really serve no purpose in a place known as Paradise. Only then did I realize the sad state my toes were in. I meant to redo my toenail polish but life keeps getting in my way. I kept putting it off day after day all the while telling myself I'll get to them tomorrow. I turned a blind eye to the sight of the polish first fading and I pointedly ignored it when the tired paint finally relinquished their tenacious hold and simply disappeared.

Once upon a time, I took meticulous care of my nails. I pampered my hands and my feet twice a month. The moment I noticed even the tiniest, miniscule imperction would find me immediately making my way to my favorite mani-pedi spa in Honolulu, Los Angeles or New York. I would never have allowed myself to deteriorate into this forsaken state.

Once upon a time, no one and nothing would ever or could ever hurt me. I was impervious to any and all attacks. I was fearless simply because I didn't give a fuck. The "me" I showed the world was filed away into perfect ovals. My true self was safely hidden away and sheathed in numerous layers of lacquer expertly applied to hide the true nature of what dreamed underneath. All this was expertly designed by me in order to give the illusion of a perfection that is simultaneously entirely unnatural and yet utterly attainable. This is what's commonly known as a French manicure. What an odd name. A manicure. Man-I-Cure. Hidden within its very name is an implication that man (or men) can be cured like some rare disease. How delightfully absurd. Glinting from their secured perch would be cold crystals happily breaking apart the light that fell upon them.. Etched upon the finger of my choice on both hands would either be a delicate flower, a blessing or a symbol of death.

Secreted away from plain view upon my feet would be armor of a different color. Usually, it would be a darker shade but, to be more precise, a more sinister color. No pretense of faked perfection here. I suppose I allowed my truer colors to show because sometimes my feet were the first thing people could and would see. I figured it was fair game to give them fair warning. No one was ever the wiser and that was a secret joke I laughed about all the time. My preferred shade of choice was the chameleon polish that would always shift and change colors depending on which angle you happened to be looking at me from. Tattooed upon those nails would be flowers wrapped in thorns or something equally sharp.

Today, I looked at them and realized I had been neglecting myself. The once vibrant ruby red I had painted was now tired and could only hint with a desolate sigh at the color it once was. It angered me. Red is the color of love, the color of passion and the color of life. How could I not have paid it proper attention and immediately intervened on my own behalf but, even worse, how could I willingly have done this to myself? Thinking back these past couple of years, I realized exactly how long it's been since I last let myself take precedence above others. I've slipped and as a result, I've paid for it dearly.

In a rage, I stripped off the old layer of paint. In one fell swoop, I erased the old hurts, the anger, the hate. I removed with a fury all the pain I sustained, all the hopeless riddles I wasted countless nights trying to decipher. I successfully attacked and swiped away all the useless daydreams and half realized realities I wove around myself, deluded myself into wishing for and let others spin around me in a kind of cocoon that would never allow me to leave but one that I willingly subjected myself to.

Once my nails were laid bare, I gazed upon their naked form. Finally, I have something to work with. With painstaking care, I reapplied the same shade of luscious ruby and painted into myself new dreams and brighter hopes.

I watched with a satisfaction bordering on ferocity as the polish set. Once again, my hidden heart is properly sheathed and armored but the me the world sees? It is bare by my choice for a reason all my own.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Solvang, How My LIver Hates Thee But How I Love You

I was going to write about this crazy tirp to freaking HEAVEN but it's late and I can't think that hard right now. All I know is that I learned a LOT about wine and realized that cooking Korean BBQ in the room with the door open while blitzed out of my mind on wine is freaking TEH AWESOMENESS!!

I also realized that wine = best sleeping aid e-v-a-r. As in, I passed out by 10:30 last night but I think drinking from 10 a.m. had something to do with it. Funny how something as teeny weeny and as innocuous as a flippin grape CAN KICK MY ASS TILL KINGDOM COME!!

That's right. Something purple-ish (or red...or white...or black...whatever. I'm just going to stick with purple since it's easier to say that than to try to remember all the different colors of grapes used in wine and obsessing over the EXACT color. Yeah) and the size of my pinky nail managed to knock me flat on my rear but you know what? It hurt so good although driving back today from Solvang kind of hurt in a not happy way. Good thing I drive what I do...but it's kind of a mixed blessing because I don't realize how fast I'm going because the ride is that smooth...kind of like the wines I was "tasting". Goes down like purple satin so you're tricked into thinking "Eh, this is nothing! And it's a fruit so it's good for me! I'm having lots of one of the AHA recommended food groups! They just didn't say it couldn't be in fermented form! Whee!! I'm smart!".

And then...yeah...I've passed out by 10:30. Awe-some-ness.

Best advice I heard the entire trip? This was after drinking from 4:30 p.m. when I checked in till the wee hours of 5:00 a.m. the following day...and then waking up at 9:15 to get started on a whole full day of wine tasting. Keep in mind there was a hefty glass of Macallan mixed into all this wine the night between the hours of 7 and 9 p.m.

"What? You're tired? I know what will make you feel better! Have some more wine. Come on! We're in wine country! No sleepies in wine country! You can sleep in LA!".

Dude, how am I supposed to argue against that kind of logic? And whaddya know...I wasn't tired anymore because I completely bypassed that state of mind into Happy BonnieLand. Aaaw yeaa....

I came crashing back to reality with what was supposed to be 11 bottles of wine but actually only 7 of them made it back to LA (4 were sacrificed for the greater good of Keeping Bonnie Happily Blitzed During Her First E-V-A-R Trip To Wine Country during the two nights I was there because everything was closed. OMGWTF, SERIOUSLY??!!!), a bunch of Riedel glasses etched with the names of vineyards visited, a lot of fuzzy memories, a few clear and coherent ones in addition to a very sincere addiction to good wine.

I also told a girlfriend of mine tonight that if you really are what you eat (eat...drink....whatever. I say toe-may-toe, you say toe-MAH-toe....is all good to me), then I've turned into a freaking grape but that's not necessarily a bad thing because I just realized just how hard a freaking grape can kick a person's aaaazzz, lemme tell you. Like my friend Paul PK Kim says, "It's not about size, it's about surprise!". It suuuuuure is....omg.....a freaking grape....well, to be completely truthful, it's not a single grape that handed me my butt back on a platter but a whole BUSLOAD of those little suckers. Okay. I feel better now. :D

I don't know how I'm going to ever be happy with what used to be my favorite place to get wine - the wine aisle of Ralph's. Haa haa haa omg. I can't wait to go back.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Don't Be Shy, Don't Be Scared. Come On In, The Water's Juuust Fine.

My name is Bonnie but you can call me Miss Bonnified. It's a play off of my name. It's Bonnie And Clyde meets Bonafide because that's what PattiCake, a dear friend, decided to name me because she says "I'VE FOUND A NEW NAME THAT'S SOOOO YOOOUUU!!!". I love the name and from then on, I've made it mine so now let me introduce myself. I write to remember. I write so that I don't forget. Life is too beautiful for me to only be able to recall bits and pieces of it so I try to commit as much as I can in the form of words because pictures can only do so much for you, like :


1. Providing your friends with hard evidence that you really do all the crazy things they said you did during the night/weekend/whatever but that you vehemently deny


2. Prove that you really are that crazy and no amount of "No, I didn't" will ever convince anyone otherwise. Uh huh.


Not that this has ever happened to me. No way. Yeah.


Aaanyway, I figured this is a new year so I might as well give myself a new name and a new blog to boot. I've been using the same name for so long and I've come a long a way with that name but I think it's time to try on a new skin. I'll always keep that journal but I think it's time to try something new. You know. Out with the old and in with the new except I don't entirely agree with that only because I love my old blog. I watched myself grow with that blog. I go back every now and then to see where I've come from and where I dreamed I would go. Whether or not that's where I am today isn't as important as how I managed to get here. It's because of this that I decided to keep what I have where it is. Call it a sense of loyalty or whatever you want but that's the way I am. I suppose that's also why I'm a packrat but that's neither here nor there.


The way I form memories is kind of weird so if I didn't have a place to write what I needed to, I would forget so many things that I wish I didn't. So. I write to remember. I write so that I don't forget. I also write to remind myself that there is humor in every situation if I only remember to look for it and if it not humor, then there is something beautiful. I think I'll be combining my stories from the past with the ones I'll be forming from this point on. Yeah...that sounds good to me. Kind of like a nod to the past while you revise the "what was" into "what is" and "what will be"...yeah, I talk like I know fashion..which I really don't...I just read a lot of smutty magazines and I can parrot them pretty good by now. Awesomeness.


Thank you, Tangerine, for helping me figure out exactly what the hell I'm doing. He is absolutely awesome! If it wasn't for him, I still wouldn't have this up. I think he figured out real fast that he couldn't just help me set this up because he's such a smart pumpkin pie. I'm not sure if it was the fact that I kept going "....um....sooooo....." or if it was the look of complete and utter panic he saw on my face after he tried to explain it to me. Granted, I took programming classes before (that was actually my major. Woooo....yeah....didn't happen though, people. I just couldn't deal with the fact that I had to take math classes that had no numbers. I mean, seriously. Math? With no numbers? OmgWth) and I have a working knowledge of these newfangled things called a "computer" work but uh...dude, programming classes was over 8 years ago and I'm in a whole 'nutha field now so that should tell you how fresh this stuff is in my mind. Yeah. So now you know why I have to blog. Uh huh. ....uh... I was saying something. Oh yeah. So he ended up just taking over and doing everything for me. Yaaaaaaaay!!! He so rocks. Love it Love It LOVE IT!!


So for those of you who have no idea who I am, it's nice to meet you. Step into my world but don't forget to take your shoes off first.


For those of you who have followed me from wherever it was where we met, you know the deal.


Peace, Love, * muah *, I'm out.


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