Sleeping on the Diagonal

PREAMBLE

Annie C. is sleeping on the diagonal tonight and most nights, kicking the sheets off in a tangle when her feet get too hot.  She’s just trying to work out this mysterious life through the power of language that she loves so much.  To stretch and bend the living words, to share the moments that make her her and hopefully connect with some readers that feel a kindred to the communal core behind the personal stories (even if they aren’t a mid late 30’s single woman with a hard, crunchy shell and soft, gooey center like Annie C).

Ostensibly the purpose of Sleeping on the Diagonal is to examine dating and living in singledom as a strong, independent woman who has been told she can be intimidating to the typical man, though she really isn’t sure why. She tried to touch upon it briefly in the first post Sleeping on the Diagonal: A New Box, the coming out party for this blog as such:

I am a 35-year-old never married (gasp!) woman who owns her own home, loves a big wine glass (though my liver probably hates me) with a low tolerance for bullshit. Oh, the low tolerance is probably where the still single part comes in. I think the rules for dating are fairly simple:

1.  Don’t be a jackass.
2.  Be interested or go away. Let’s not waste our time.
3.  Please refer to #1                       

Seems simple, right? The smart girl in me thinks so. The 20 years of dating girl says “Whoa there Tonto. That’s a lot to ask.”

So, of course there will be stories galore from 20 plus years of dredging through the trenches, including detailed accounts of these teasers from A New Box:

It’s that one time I brought a date home and my roommate was drunk on the Tony Little Gazelle (a post unto its own) or the one and only time in my early twenties a boy left me in a bar by myself and I shook so hard in anger I couldn’t drive (I’ll title that one “Pothead smokes away his manners”)

And some more recent accounts like those detailed in Rogue Tuba: A Brief Interlude involving a tuba, a baritone, a pirate costume and a certain carpe diem attitude.

But hopefully it will evolve into more.  More than just exploring why Annie C gives almost all her previous dates, lovers and others nicknames.  More than ruminations on discovering the whole bottle of wine almost fits in her biggest wine glass and why learning how to wield a power drill like a BOSS should be mandatory training for any woman by the time they reach 30.  This is Annie’s space to ponder, the place where she can be totally herself without having to compartmentalize personality according to where she is and who she’s with, to think freely about the why and lay out the honest truths she has trouble saying out loud.  Sometimes it’s an irreverent look like My Uterus is Elderly (But She Still Likes to Party), sometimes a bit more serious as in Fear Inherent.  Perhaps she’ll find some kindred souls.  Perhaps there is one reading this right now, tipping back a big wine glass, thinking “I can totally relate”.  So feel free to scroll down to explore a few posts because if there is one thing Annie C has learned in this life it’s that we’re all just looking for some kind of connection.