Bad, sad and glad

The Gay Pride parade yesterday reminded me of a 4th of July tradition in Columbus, Ohio called the Doo Dah Parade. It's the anti-parade parade that celebrates the freedom and liberty to satirize anything and everything in as flamboyant a manner as possible. One year I marched in the Doo Dah Parade as a coloratura soprano with the Columbus Mime Opera. Photos do exist, as does a video tape, but they are all in storage in Ohio. I'm not certain my mother would know which box to paw through to find the evidence, but it's there.

As I was looking for links and current information on the Doo Dah Parade these days, I received an email that a local ham, George Lockhart, died yesterday morning. He was on my mind yesterday morning and I wondered if he had died. He did. Another interesting and generous person who gave of his time and talent and resources is gone, having lost his battle with cancer. He is another silent key (ham speak for ham who has died) I will write about in the newsletter, something that is becoming increasingly necessary for me to do.

But I have something to be thankful for. I received an email today that has solved all my problems and proved my mother right, as I'm sure she already knows. The clothes spilling out of the hamper, the things piled in my relationship corner and the lack of pink in my house are the reason I am still single. I thought it was just because the dysfunctional men who pass in and out of my life are in fact dysfunctional and unable to make a choice about the future or be sincere about having a relationship and all the time it was because my feng shui is out of whack. And it's so simple to fix. All I need to do is hang pictures and buy statues of couples, paint my bedroom pink and either keep the clothes in the hamper or do laundry more often and my perfect mate will walk into my life and stay. My tendencies toward clutter and leaving stacks of books in my relationship corner keeps me from letting my perfect mate know that the nest is feathered and ready for him to move in. Something is wrong with this picture.

First of all, in the avian world it is the male bird who most often builds and feathers the nest to attract a discerning female willing to mate and lay eggs. Somehow or other humans got it backward somewhere along the way. Could it have been during the sixties that the human male of the species stopped wanting or needing to provide a secure and cozy home to attract a suitable and willing female? Could this be due to equal rights? Don't get me wrong. I am all for equal rights: equal pay in the work place, equal treatment in the political arena, equal numbers of women running and occupying political offices and certainly equal sharing of household chores. I'm not, however, for feathering the connubial nest just to attract a mate. I'm past the mating age to begin with and I don't see how feathering my own nest and letting some lazy and opportunistic mate come in and take advantage is a good thing. Who needs a mate or a man if I can do it all for myself? I had the idea that two people coming together was to blend the best of both of them into a cohesive and productive whole that allowed them to share the burdens and the joys, but if I have to do it all myself I might just as well get BOB* out of the trunk of my car to keep me company.

The whole feng shui method of bringing a relationship into my life sounds an awful lot like geisha training. I can't let Bill and Bear know or they'll makeup rape me again and keep doing it until some lazy, hapless and most likely dysfunctional male oozes through the door and makes himself at home. I know someone else who will be laughing her tuchus off when she finds out the one color I refuse to use for decoration is the one color guaranteed to bring love into my life. I hate to tell you, but blush and bashful still look like Pepto-Bismol to me. Pink is watered down hot and sassy red. If red is passion and pink is watered down red... Well, who wants watered down passion? I can get that from BOB for free and I don't have to worry about clothes not properly placed in the hamper.

In order to prove this whole thing wrong, I am going to have to grit my teeth, close my eyes and give it a whirl, but I absolutely refuse to paint my bedrooms walls pink. Wonder if the gods and energies of feng shui will go for peach instead of pink?


*BOB = Battery Operated Boyfriend