Knee Deep in Bitches, Birthdays, Basketball and Beer...

Wow, long time no write. This working 40 hours a week thang (so not Old French Whore, oui?) is seriously cramping my writing style. Oh well, c'est la vie. Bitchez gotta buy shoes and lotto tickets, non?

The first full week of my new J-O-B was very exhausting and exhilarating, believe it or not. First I was thrown into the shallow end of the pool, and of course I emerged with nary a wet hair (on my head anyway) and then I was thrown into the deep end of the pool, and I emerged from that a little short of breath and completely soaked, but successful none-the-less. In any case, I didn't fucking drown, catch my drift? So then on Friday, my new boss (who thinks his truck-driver-style cussin' is all that. Wait 'til I get comfortable and go all reservation on his ass and start spewing some 'Shit My Uncle Joe and Uncle Dan Say' all over the place. He'll tremble, I'm quite certain.) throws me into the ocean. Without a life-vest. Just off the coast of Japan. I'm dog-paddling, pretty sure I'll survive, but I will probably require medical attention when it's all over.

Last Friday I had 23 years clean and sober. That was one hell of a St. Patrick's Day in 1988, let me tell you! No need to go strolling down that particular memory lane, but I drank my entire life's quota, and yours, well before I ever quit. Slow learner. I celebrated with a bunch of my sober friends at a local restaurant where they serve desserts as big as your head, and I had deux (2). Well, it was my 'birthday'.

Then on Saturday I and several other intrepid family members ventured over to my brother's house - the brother with 5 kids! No not Mormons. Just careless. Kidding!!! I kid. A lot. Aaaanyway, their youngest turned quatre (4) Saturday and she finally realized recently what that means. It means PRESENTS!!!! And CAKE!!!! And MORE PRESENTS!!!! This would not have been a problem but for their 6 year old. That child came out into the world kicking, screaming, biting, scratching, hitting, tasering, exploding, selling crack, dealing arms, smoking a cigarette and swearing. I SWEAR. She came out of her mom and yelled, "FUCK ALL A YOU MUTHER_FUCKERS!!!" I was there. As you might well imagine, a child like that has issues with other, smaller children getting gifts and attention one day a year. Well, on a good day over there it is pandemonium. This was not a good day. For the 6 year old. But there was good cake (thanks Polly!!!) and good weather and good food and good fun. Really. My 4 year old niece (Children are completely insane. All children. No exceptions) looked up at me after opening all her fabulous presents and said, "Aunt Kate, are we in heaven?" I said, "If this was heaven I'd be shoe shopping with Javier Bardem, kid." As usual, children look at me like I have trois (3) heads ( I only have deux (2)) and then walk away. Like I'm the crazy one.

The rest of that day/evening was a blur of NCAA basketball viewing, beer drinking (not by me, just some of, ok most of, the siblings, their spouses and our visiting cousins), and guitar jamming (there are some musical types in my clan). Of course I'm the designated driver. And of course the hard-drinkin' cousins all want to stay at my house. Why? Because I don't drink and my house is clean and tidy and sweet and comfortable, and they know I'll have to drive back to it eventually, and that way they won't get DUI's. It's good to be needed.

By the way...anyone else out there a little concerned about the sudden seeming silence of the media with regards to the impending complete and total nuclear meltdown happening in Japan??? Now it's all, Libya! Basketball! Charlie Sheen! Lindsay Lohan! Why aren't they talking that shit up? What are they hiding NOW??? I'm very concerned, not just because I live on the west coast and could conceivably be as irradiated as the produce at Safeway one day soon, but because, to paraphrase my fiend, er, friend D, Japan + Earthquake + Nuclear Core Meltdown = Godzilla. Every fucking time.

By the way, the 'Bitches' in the title refers to moi.

The NIght the Lights Went Out in Tukwila...

First day of work and already the curse has found me...an ex-boyfriend once said of me,"The U.S. government should just hang you underneath a plane and fly you over North Korea if they are really serious about dismantling Jim Jong Il's nuclear program, because whatever it is about you and your electrical field, it wreaks havoc on electronics!" This after the umpteenth time of me causing the TV & DVD player to just stop running merely by looking at them. So I go in, they say go talk to the I.T. guy and give him your name & how you want your email to look. I go in there & he starts futzing around with his program and BAM! He's locked out of his own mail server. Then I go meet with the boss to have a computer aided run-down of the company's work plan for the project I'm going to be working on, and their data base structure, and BAM! that computer went T.U. He finally got it up and running, then BAM! all the power went out to the whole building and I'm thinking, "Holy fuck, did I do that?" But no, even I am not that powerful, it was a mudslide that took out a transformer or something. Unless my superpowers now include "Cause mudslides with her mind". I stuck around long enough for my new boss to buy me lunch (I'm crafty like that) and then we came back to the office at 2:30, everyone else had left, and he said, "OK, go home, see ya tomorrow."

So far I love my new place of employment, except they DON'T HAVE A COFFEE MAKER!!!!!!!!! What the fuck is that??? I'm bringing my french press tomorrow, they do have hot water. They also have a decidedly less formal mode of attire than yours truly. I mean the (gorgeous!!! young!!! sweet!!! smart!!! I hate her already) receptionist was in jeans, and it isn't even Friday! In fact almost everyone was in jeans. They had me sign a "Confidentiality Agreement" which is a good sign from a business standpoint, but really, I'll only ever divulge their secrets if my life is on the line & my only option for survival is to try and bore someone to death.

One reason (besides the unmitigated greed of the Wall Street bankers who ground this country into the economic dust) that a lot of architecture firms failed in the last couple of years is that architects are notoriously bad business people, which doesn't make sense to me since they are also the most anal-retentive (like me!) of all the design professionals. Plus we're good at math. Architecture school is brutal and abusive. And the people (like me!) who actually made it in and then through it seem hell bent on perpetuating that particular brand of brutally abusive madness within the profession. These assholes (like me!) actually brag about how hard they work and how little they sleep and they (like me!) are always poor. I think it might have to do with the massive egos needed to make it to and through school and then cling desperately to the illusion that they are making a difference in the built environment. When the earthquake struck Haiti, I was joking with the receptionist/marketing/graphics genius at the firm where I was employed about starting an "Architects Without Borders" group, but that it would have to be made up of architects without egos, so it would never work...He laughed and said, "Yeah, architects without egos. I'll file that right next to 'Unicorn'." Sad, but true.

Hopefully tomorrow my superpowers will keep total destruction at bay, and I'll be able to work a full 8 hours. Wish me luck.

JEEZUS! Already What A Day...

OK, so I had therapy this morning. I gits my mental health (and medical/dental!) needs covered at the Muckleshoot Reservation (I LOVE those guys) because of this whole Native Reciprocity thing, (if a member of a tribe lives in another tribe's county, that tribe covers you, which doesn't suck. In this case only on Wednesdays, but still). Normally I pretty much cry through the whole hour, but today I only cried through half of it! Progress. And this was AFTER my car wreck!!! I was going to drop something off at my friend Liz's house before going to therapy and I was driving along on an arterial, or a thoroughfare or whatever the hell street it is that DOESN'T have stop signs, bounded by cross streets that DO have stop signs, and I get the "There's a spider crawling up my leg!!!!" feeling, glance down for literally 1 second, and boom! There's a guy in the intersection who didn't see me (I didn't even have my cloaking device turned on) and I T-Bone him!!!! SHIT! FUCK! CRAP! Now normally this would have just pissed me off. But last March I was a passenger in a car that was rear-ended by some young hot-head, and me and the driver of the car are still being treated for our injuries. So I'm painfully aware of how much damage a vehicle can inflict on a human being. My car (The Dark Angel. Yes I name my cars. Don't you?) is much bigger and stronger than his (well it IS American!) and even though I had the right-of-way all I could think was "Oh my God, I hurt someone with my car!!!" I have a little bit of extra soreness in my left side of my neck and left shoulder, but nothing too much more than the usual chronic pain I've been dealing with for the last year. What really really really pisses me off, besides the fact that this poor dude didn't look where he was going, is that I get the "There's a spider crawling up my leg!!!" feeling periodically ever since last year's wreck. I am unreasonably afraid of spiders (well if being afraid of something that skitters and crawls and creeps and bites and is ugly & has 8 legs isn't reasonable, I don't know what is) and they all know it-I remind them periodically so they will stay out of my sight so I don't have to kill them. But my reptile brain takes over for just a second before my rational mind can say, "You're in your car and there's no spider crawling up your leg." I doubt if I could have stopped completely before hitting that poor fella, but maybe I could have. Maybe 1 second is all it would have taken for me to avoid the accident. The guy said he wasn't hurt but you never know. My car has a bent license plate and some paint transfer. His looked totaled. But if I was never hit last year I wouldn't have these damn phantom spiders periodically crawling up my leg and spewing mayhem all over the place.

So I start my new job tomorrow. Just a little stressful, but nothing an OFW hasn't handled before. I sent an email out to all my friends to inform them I got a job so they can stop taking up collections for me (just kidding. I didn't tell them to stop) and one of my gentlemen friends said, "Pole dancing, I hope." Honey, that ship has sailed. Besides, OFW's don't pole dance, that sounds a little too much like exercise. Everyone else posted something like, "Details please!" Really? How boring is another person's job? I mean if I was going to work for the C.I.A., or going to be George Clooney's right-hand gal-Friday in Darfur, or host E News Daily or something, I could see the interest. It's just a job, people. Something they have to pay people to do, like most jobs. I'm grateful to have it and it sounds like it's right up my alley, but honestly I don't know how to make it sound even remotely interesting to another carbon-based life form. If something funny or interesting happens, I'll blog about it. Promise. 'K?

Well, I'm feeling hungry and uninspired so I'm gonna go eat something and maybe even take a nap! I never nap, but it seems like a good idea today...

I'd Like To Thank The Academy...

...and my dear, sweet, capable, clever, handsome and hee-larious *IT* guy "D McG". Take a bow, D! He's the one who got me started and has tweaked the site to make it so much more purdy than I could do on my own, what with all his html black magic and computer source(code)ry. Somebody bring me my smellin' salts...

Just When I Start Blogging, I Get a Job!

That's right, Whore-mongers. I got an email from someone I emailed on the advice of a friend this morning about a job, and had an interview and got hired. I start work on Thursday! I'm thrilled about this, but I wonder, is the Universe trying to tell me I suck at blogging and trying to get me off the ether ASAP? I choose to think, "Mais non, mon cheri, l'univers loves moi! It wants me to do both!" I am like a fundamentalist Christian republican that way, in that I ignore the obvious and plow blindly ahead. I, however, can do no real harm here and it's not costing good people their jobs or their lives or their pensions or their unions or their health, so wtf, right? And if you are a fundamentalist Christian republican knucklehead Tea-Bagger, oops, Party-er,  and you are offended, I have 3 things to say to you: 1. I don't give a flying fuck about you, and 2. Why are you reading something with "Whore" in the title, fundamentalist Christian? and 3. Why are you reading something with "French" in the title, republican knucklehead? I'm just sayin'...

Broccoli for Breakfast - YUM!

That's right, I like my fiber in cruciforous plant form, not in a pill dissolved in water. I heart Trader Joe's Organic Broccoli Florets. Already cut up like an OFW likes 'em! Sadly, this does not mean I am a vegetarian. No true OFW really is, in her heart. I am a carnivore through and through. I loves me some little animals and big animals and fishes and birds, but I love to eat them more, I guess. I tried going vegetarian when I was in my 20's (doesn't everyone?), but my hair started falling out, my skin lost its luster way earlier than it should, I started wearing Birkenstocks with socks and bathing a patchouli oil and smoking clove cigarettes and...my dad (mostly Native American and partly French-Canadian - hence the rockin' French surname. It is rockin' - you'll just have to take my word on that) said, "Honey, we can't NOT eat meat-we're Indins!". (He was born and raised on a reservation, so he gets to say 'Indin'. You, paleface blog reader, do not. Sorry, I don't make the rules, I just enforce them.) Alas he was right. And yes, vegans, I ate plenty of legumes and shit, no lack of protein. It just wasn't animal-based and even my guru who is an Indian from India said my people need animal-based protein, so there. At least that's what I heard. It could be a crock of shit but I'm still hangin' my hat on it. And yes, of course OFW's have gurus! You can't BE a guru and not HAVE your own guru. That's like recovering alcoholics in AA sponsoring people and NOT having a sponsor themselves. It's done, but it's WRONG. But that's another topic altogether.

So what, you may ask, do I need a guru for? Thanks for asking. I need one for my mental/creative/spiritual health. I practice Transcendental Meditation and I couldn't have learned it in a vacuum. Well, technically, I could have learned it in a vacuum* (if you want to get all quantum physics technical-which I don't) if I could navigate my way there and back succesfully and sit around and figure shit out for myself. I cannot. I am not Guru Dev** and I don't have time to sit around in caves in India for years on end figuring this all out, and the Universe finally figured THAT out ('bout time, Universe!) so it created this guy who DID have the time and the desire to sit around in caves coming up with a technique that even a simple human like moi can use to find profound rest, bliss, even transcendance. And if the OFW can do it, anyone can.

OK well, gotta go. I'm telling ya, nothing works like raw broccoili!

*not a Hoover, like a Zero Point Field kind of vacuum.
**Shankaracharya Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, who passed it on to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who passed it to my teacher, who passed it on to me. Jai Guru Dev.

In the beginning...

... there was a young French whore. Probably. Somewhere. But that wasn't me. I'm American, although I do sport a French surname with a certain jaunty insouciance. But as I grew older in this world which is at once stupendous & stupid, insane & oddly logical, unpredictable & sometimes predictably cruel, I developed a sensibility that seemed to be summed up perfectly in "Old French Whore". I did not invent the term. There have been Old French Whores for as long as there have been French Whores of any stripe, but my dear friend "S" came up with the term as it applies to women of a certain age, namely "S" & I. Many of our friends qualify as OFW's, but alas, many do not.

What this blog is not about, (sorry freaks!) is pornography. I'm not anti-pornography, what kind of OFW would I be if I was? I just don't care about it. I don't want to write about it. And the pornographers of the world don't need my help making a buck, so they can write about that if they want to.

About moi: I am an unemployed woman of said certain age with a little time on her hands and I thought, well, if Charlie Sheen can do it, (via twitter) why can't I? Admittedly, tiger blood does not course through my veins, but I have been accused of being part wolverine on more than one occasion. And us Old French Whores usually hail from Venus, not Mars, but well, you get the gratuitous topical reference.

"Us Old French Whores", you say? Oui, I am not the only one. I may be the only one currently blogging, but I am not alone. My philosophy and criteria for Old French Whoredom will eventually spill out onto the virtual page as my ramblings begin to flow, but since no one is paying me to do this, I'll take my sweet time, which, by the way, is a characteristic of Old French Whores.

So every day, or whenever I feel like it, I'll write about whatever in the hell I want.

Debut of Old French Whore

Bon jour, mes amis & oooh la la! This is the maiden voyage of the good ship Old French Whore! This is your Captain AND Cruise Director speaking.