RULES

muffin top.
it's slang for the roll of fat between your hips and waist that gets leveraged out, up and OVER the waistband of your jeans when you won't admit you need to downgrade your body image to a LARGER pant size.
It's also how I define the mixture-of-self-disgust-and-'yuck' feeling that I get when I realize I've willfully committed myself to making a soulful gesture that has inevitably played out as a lewd farce of mediocrity. Basically, a 'muffin top this' or a 'muffin top that' means I've embarrassed myself once again, and 'shame on me' as I can generally smell a flop a mile a way, and end up following through with it anyway...perhaps out of a twisted need for desecration ....you know...to make the divine really "POP"....or maybe just so I can have misadventures to squawk over with girlfriends. My guess is as good as yours.
muffin toppin', in my case, usually occurs in the romantic sector. It's all very Bridget Jones. I end up kissing some so-and-so, to whom I am COMPLETELY unattracted, to the point where I'd choose to be demonstrating blow-jobs on a banana to my whacky virgin roommate or hiding in our walk-in closet when he drops in unexpectedly rather than see him again. For the record, that guy was a perfectly nice, super smart, funny, attractive college mathematics major...he just gave me the 'muffin top feeling.' I've also been stirred by the disturbing emotion in question when waking up for the first time next to a dude I didn't luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuv. It's funny how when you heart someone big time, back zits are charming (especially if he lets you pop them), but how if you don't .....they just make you wish this stage of your life had a do-over. Muffin top also springs to mind when I think of the awful set-ups I've been on....the awk cab ride home at 3 am friends insisted you share, or the dude pals hooked you up with who was later revealed to be married with a kid. zing. muffin top. Less comical is the rejection flavor of muffin top when you've been overly honest with someone to whom you thought you had an intimate emotional connection....only to find the bond was 100% ONLY IN YOUR HEAD.
Currently, I'm ranting because I'm backed into a corner. I'm getting a lot of shit--from all angles--about being in the "PAYS D'AMOUR", and not finding love, a fling, a hottie with an accent, a French feather for my cap, BLAH BLAH BLAH. Also...I'm starting to feel I'm approaching that invisible line after which talking about an ex-boyfriend, let alone admitting I still love him will qualify me as pathetic and out-of touch. I gotta change my ways...because any day now...my emotional reality will qualify me as a freaky minus-one-cat lady with a dried up vag and a shriveled organ of reason. My back's against the wall, so I'm telling social expectations to FUCK OFF. Probably, I should relax. It's flattering really, everyone telling you to "get out there, you're a catch!" But truthfully, they don't understand: I can't be spontaneous, or make myself available because I'm a walking muffin top. A clown. True, comedy takes more talent than tragedy, but FRANKLY, I've had my fill of humiliation. You know what I want? Some mother fucking pride. I want to look put-together as opposed to totally.....here I would be tempted to make a hurricane katrina analogy, but won't, so as to avoid egregious insensitivity and plain wrongness. Down with sham-y love! No more 'A's for effort,' no more 'building character.' I'm a big girl now, and I want big girl toys.
When I was a kid, I lived my live by the 'don't do something you'll regret,' or 'do something you'll regret NOT doing it' mottos...they served me well. Along the line however, they were thrown out, judged impractical, untrendy even...making choices based on the probability of their confluence with the muffin top feeling is a consuming process, one which requires painstaking time and observation. I regret discarding this personal manifesto....especially in matters of the bedroom....that was stupid. Also, I regret not taking time with my heart. That was stupid-er.
So, after a detour, I'm back to the muffin top moral compass. Which is why I'm all cloistered. SO FUCK OFF. I'M IN THIS TO WIN BIG....AND I DON'T WANT ANYMORE FUCKING CONSOLATION PRIZES. AND YES....I'M TOTALLY HUNG UP ON YOU-KNOW-WHO AND WHO FUCKING CARES. FUCK FUCK FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKY PEER PRESSURERS, YOU ALL CAN GO FUCK YOUR FUCKING FUCK FACE JUDGEMENTS.
I feel better now.

Hex

My cat ran away.

He slipped out under iron shutters and through metal bars and disappeared into Paris on Wednesday.

I made posters: CHAT PERDU, with his description on it, and some sentimental touches. I put them up all over the neighborhood, and in the shops. Most business owners are nice; 3 offered to hang my flyer but never did.

I H. A.T. E them.

I wish them small personal tragedies of a similiar nature.

I also hate the street cleaner who, each day, removes the overturned flower pot I've placed beneath my window so the cat can reach the ledge and return. FUCK YOU, you FUCKING STREET CLEANER. If my cat doesn't come back, I hold you responsible.

I've called animal control. I've notified every vet in the quartier. In the early morning and late at night when the small side street is quiet...I sneak into the private gardens that surround and call his name while I shake a bag of tuna and beef flavored treats. Today, I put my other cat in a CAT LEASH and brought him along....thinking maybe he could smell out Hex...or leave a pee scent for the lost pet to follow home. I only succeed in pissing off the good cat, and upping my reputation as a scary cat lady.

Every night, I put the remaining cat in the bathroom with his box and his treats and his nip, and sleep with the window open and the light on. This makes me feel guilty. I'm not getting much shut eye. I jerk awake each time I hear a scratch or a thump that could possibly be attributed to a feline.

So far I've had three dreams about him. In one, I'm waking from a dream to see him entagled at my feet with Marshmallow, the two twined into a fuzz-ball tucked between my shin and the wall--their favorite spot to rest and groom one another. Another night, I peered over the high garden wall of the house to see the cat slinking down the street toward me at just before dawn. Last night, a woman came to the door with a cat she believed to be Hex, and when I greeted her, I saw not my brown and white domestic shorthair, but a mini cat-leopard with spots and all. In this dream I remember thinking the woman was a STUPID BITCH for 1. getting my cat's markings wrong when the flyer boasted a color photo and 2. getting my hopes up.

I cried a lot about the cat at first, but don't much anymore because it would be shameful in spite of the fact that everyone keeps telling me it's 'jut a cat.' The children I care for have begun to forget, and my boss even told me that I needed to spend less time looking for my cat, and more time looking for a boyfriend.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that until now, I've had more luck with cats. Or that the stupid cat was a boyfriend replacement to begin with: I wanted to keep him because a CAT can be kept, plus they make your bed-for-1 feel a great deal less empty.

I keep hoping he'll come back.
Because the sad truth is I'm paralyzingly lonely,

And brokenhearted. Which was a condition, I admit now, his presence helped to bridge, and one which his absence rips asunder... in painfuly obvious ways:

I'm a lonely, unconfident, type A, plan B girl...on the chubby side, who's reached the god-forsaken point at which I put more faith in animals than people. The point at which I rely upon the goodness and steadfastness of ANIMALS for the courage to pounce on everything that's not complete in the world, or in myself.

I'm holding a vigil for this cat, even though I'm sure he's moved on to exciting allyways, or a family that doesn't stick a thermometer in his anus when he's sick (vet recommended).

He's never coming back but I'm holding vigil.

As for how much the holding hurts, I don't know if it's the pain or the embarassment that does the most dammage.

I'm holding vigik because,

"A cat is like a love story." This is what an old lady smelling of booze with matted easter-egg red hair said to me while looking over my shoulder as I fed my announcements into the photocopier at the printers.

Most other days I would have laughed. That day though, I don't remember anything except the life being knocked out of me by a freighttrain of thought, an epiphany really, on my emmotional midgitism.

A cat is like a love story. At this point I guess then ...someday in the near future...I'll have to get a new one.

The thing I wonder now is, does that make my life Tragedy, or Comedy?