Let’s get down to brass tacks: Love is for suckers.

So the other day I found this article about signs you might be headed for a breakup, and I decided to pass it on for your edification…along with a few embellishments of my own, of course.

In honor of Valentine’s day, I figured it was the least I can do.

Some people might find this romantic, but a sight like this would seriously freak me out.

Love is elusive, but wanting to kill someone with your bare hands is, thankfully, less so.

1. You stop relationship-building behaviors. Maybe you stop kissing each other goodbye or stop texting each other during the day. Instead of adding things to the relationship, you start to resent each other like two five-year-olds who stop sharing their crayons.

2. You have really bad thoughts about crayons. You not only don’t want to share your crayons, you would like to stick a fistful of crayons into every orifice in your significant other’s body. And set them on fire. And you wonder whether their blood would be more torch red or wild strawberry?

3. You don’t understand each other anymore. The fighting escalates to a place where you no longer feel like you’re understood by your partner. Physical intimacy stops, communication stops, and you are living like roommates.

4. There is a roommate-like person in your house that you’re trying to pawn off on someone else. Look, let me level with you here, the reason your old friend from college won’t have an affair with your significant other is because you already told her way too much about him. Consider setting up a match.com or eHarmony account with their (Photoshopped) photo and some slightly-improved personal details.  Find someone new to deal with their bullshit.

I wonder what kind of test he's planning to cheat on?

5. You start punishing each other. When you get to the point of no longer understanding each other, what happens is that you end up just kind of coexisting in the new dynamic. Resentment builds and you get in your head too much. You are no longer about feelings, and you start punishing each other. “Well, he hasn’t done this for me, so I’m not going to do this for him” are the kind of thoughts that take root.

6. You start trying to kill each other. Seriously, the head-shaped dent in your frying pan is the first clue. So are your attempts to import poisonous cobras from India. And when you find yourself absent-mindedly researching which states’ penal codes go easiest on ‘crimes of passion’, well, who do you think you’re kidding anymore?

7. You fight less. When you get to the breakup point, you actually fight less with your partner. You fight less because in your mind and heart you start detaching yourself from the other person, and you don’t care as much anymore.

8. You don’t give a rat’s ass. When you’re past the breakup point, you actually don’t care whether your partner lives or dies. You forget their name and any reason you ever liked them because they’re dead to you now, and nothing ain’t ever gonna bring ‘em back.

9. You’ve taken the time to think it through. If you don’t think the relationship is going to work, or you know you’ve already disconnected based on how things have been going, then you might want to consider walking away for a few weeks. When you’re in the thick of things, they never seem to be able to work out.

10. You’ve taken the time to get a new identity. So you’ve faked your own death and are living in another state under an assumed name and stolen social security number? Let’s face it, things are probably over.

Thanks for playing.

Better luck next time.

Today has been a strange day.

Mostly a bad day. Or maybe not.

I don’t really know anymore.

One probably shouldn’t blog in a melancholy mood, but at the same time – if it’s authentic and real – why the hell not?

So let’s see: Last night the dog attacked the cat and really – pardon my French – f*cked him up. I wasn’t actually in the immediate vicinity, but as I understand it, steak was involved and the (very food aggressive) Malamute noticed that the (very food aggressive) Himalayan cat was moving in, and he tore him a new one. Literally.

Fu’s chin is covered in stitches and he’s missing some fur by his left eye. He’s also QUITE emotionally traumatized.

As am I.

Add to the mix that not one, but TWO people I consider very close and important friends called me out on the carpet – separately and without much padding or candy coating – on all the ways I sabotage myself and make excuses and hold myself back and stay stuck in patterns that aren’t serving me.

This had nothing to do with the cat.

It just also happened to happen today.

So ouch.

Is there anyone that’s ever happy to hear this stuff about how we’re our own worst enemy? Even when we know it’s true?

Don’t get me wrong.

These were lectures given with love.

And they weren’t off-base.

Maybe the worst sentiment of the whole day was something along the lines of, “If I came to you with these excuses, you would kick my ass and give me really good advice and totally straighten me out. Why can’t you do that for yourself?”

Double ouch.

And yet…

I have been saying “the book will be done in a week or two” for…

I don’t know?

Ten weeks?

Twelve?

And  some of it is legit – my friend died brutally of a brain tumor, and I made a conscious decision to be there with her in those last months, and I’m so glad I did – but some of it is bullshit. In truth, I keep finding new ways to distract myself or chase other rainbows and what I really, really, really, really want to do – deep down and with every bone in my body – is finish this last editing and contact agents and sell this damn thing and realize a lifelong dream and make some money and effect the future of required reading lists and change the world, but I think I’m also totally scared and terrified and vulnerable and dealing with all that by sabotaging myself.

So my plans (to attend the Isha Yoga Inner Engineering program in Seattle this week) have been nixed, and I will – no more excuses – finish the book and contact at least a handful of agents by the end of next week.

I have to.

This has gone on long enough.

I’m so close it’s absurd.

Which is what I guess is what spawned the WTF!? lectures delivered at both 11am and 11pm today.

Or maybe it’s just some weird alignment of stars in the universe?

Either way, it worked.

Anyway, it just got me thinking about how we cling to our ways – good, bad, and indifferent – and this really sweet song by Cy Coleman (as sung by Fiona Apple because that’s what I could find on YouTube) about just that.

To anyone else out there getting in their own way: I can relate, and if you can’t do it for yourself, I wish for you that some dear friend comes along and gives you a dose of tough love sometime soon. Or if they don’t or if your friends are too polite, send me enough information that I can do it for you.

It’s no picnic.

You may cry.

It hurts…but in a good way.  xo

I’m losing it.

I’m starting to think that I am the caretaker. I’ve always been the caretaker. Grady ought to know. He’s always been here.

Okay. Maybe that’s a slight exaggeration.

Early in the day. Not happy, but not yet crazy.

I’m tired, and I’m sick of editing, but I can see now that it is soooo necessary (seriously. The delete key is wearing out in some instances) and thus (hopefully) worth it.

In other words, now I know why I was avoiding this: It’s hard friggin’ work, and not particularly fun.

Meanwhile, since it feels like pretty much all I do is read my own writing and tweak and hone and re-craft every paragraph, sentence, word, and syllable, my brain has decided to use the much-needed downtime otherwise known as ’sleep’ to torture me with wacko dreams.

Maybe it’s trying to entertain me or something?

I may have told you this already, but I actually had this idea to start a blog where I recorded my dreams so that other like-minded dorks could come and comment or do the same, and I even bought the domain name…but then I remembered I’m too dumb to figure out how to host that blog on the same server this one is on (even though my service contract clearly states I can host up to ten. They just don’t tell me how.) So, seeing as I’m clueless, I suppose you’re just going to have to put up with my dreams here.

And if you don’t like that, then too bad.

I’ve been editing all day, and I’m in no mood for your guff. I eat three of you for breakfast. So put a sock in it…and enjoy!

I call this one “A lot of stuff flying overhead, and none of it is good.”

So I was in this really nice, large, modern house, and it had a section that was like a high-end atrium. The entire wall was windows, as well as a significant portion of the ceiling, and it was attached to the main part of the house. I was standing between the kitchen and the atrium area when a hawk came flying down the stairs and toward the windows.

There were some other people there and we were all kind of alarmed by this, and I ended up running to one of the wall windows and cranking the top of it open so that the bird could wriggle out. It made it outside, and I quickly closed the window back up.

I turned around to marvel at what had just happened with the other people, when there was a terrible racket. I looked up and at least a dozen huge birds of different varieties were banging on the ceiling glass. There was another hawk – a huge one this time – and something that looked like a vulture, as well as a pelican and god knows what else, all banging on and swooping toward the glass.

It startled me, and I ran from the room. Then, just as quickly as they arrived, the birds flew away. I went to my computer and Googled a few inquiries like “Hawks in house” and “Why hawks in house” and “House swarmed with birds.” I found some stuff about birds getting in the house, and also a bunch of links to the military and different operations and things like that. I ignored those.

A few minutes later, there was a loud roar, and I looked out the overhead windows to see hundreds of planes flying together and in an extremely close formation and quite low. It looked like they were only a few hundred feet over the house.

When's the last time you saw a gold-plated TIE fighter overhead? That's what I thought.

In addition to your standard fighter planes and some larger jets, there were six or seven stealth bombers and at least a dozen gold-colored  Star Wars starfighters (I know, stupid right?).

It was completely crazy, and I yelled for everyone to come and see this. The planes just kept coming and coming and I got my camera and took several pictures, particularly of the starfighters.

A little while later, we all went to bed. I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when there was a disturbance in the hall. I came out into the hallway and seven or eight military officers were standing there. Two men came and cornered me into a hall bathroom and pulled out a weird gadget that they placed over my eyes.

When they turned it on, I could see all this bizarre and haphazard stuff like military plans and charts and all sorts of haphazard words, and then behind that was a scene of a man walking down the suburban street with lots of green grassy yards. Across the bottom of the screen was a bar that had started out orange and was getting redder and redder.

I realized I needed to calm down, and forced myself to open my eyes wider, relax, and breathe deeply. Slowly, the bar descended back to yellow and then became greener and greener. One of the men said something about “You did that just in time.”

It suddenly occurred to me that failing that test would be a bad thing. At the same time I realized I wasn’t wearing any pants…or underwear, just a tank top. I was slightly horrified and excused myself, and they allowed me to run and grab some shorts.

When I came back out, they led me to the couch where they were questioning all of us. I kept turning to the other people and whispering, “Did you do something? Why is this happening!?”

Although I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong (intentionally), I had an instinct that the Google searches I had done had somehow triggered all those planes. I asked one of the military men if that had been them flying overhead, and he said it had. I could only figure it had something to do with the word ‘hawk.’

They quizzed us for a while, and then took every electronic device we had – including my cell phone, camera (there went my gold TIE fighter shots. Darn it!), and my computer. I was pretty stressed about that, especially when they headed out the door with all of it and informed me it could be months before I got any of it back.

On the upside…no more editing!!!  ;)

Thoughts? Insights? Alarm and concern for my mental health?

In conclusion, and in unrelated news, I think I might be Facebook friends with a Catholic priest.

After six or seven grueling hours..

He’s actually an old childhood friend and my first big crush (in second grade at Catholic school. I was ready to maim anyone on the playground who even thought about holding his hand or any such thing. He was the best drawer in the class – besides me – AND he had a newborn baby sister. That’s attractive stuff. What can I say?)

Anyway, every day he posts status updates like the following (copy/pasted):

Jesus, You’ve captured my heart, and Im not letting go

Jesus, help me to take a stand against temptation

Jesus, pour out your mercy over our hearts

Jesus, there is freedom in your name

Today – without thinking it through – my status update (via Twitter) was:

Saw this headline: “KoRn Guitarist Gets Jesus Tattoo To Stop Himself From Masturbating.” Good luck, pal. My Moses tattoo did not work at all.

I figure it’s a matter of hours before I’m ‘unfriended.’