Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

My friend Rain came down to visit this weekend.  We did silly best friend-y things like watching bad movies, drinking odd flavoured martinis (the blueberry sucked, but her tang martini wasn't too awful) and keeping each other in stitches with our often confusing and sort of not funny brand of mutual humour. It was nice. 

It made me think how much more comfortable I am around women than I am around men. I have very few male friends- I can count on one hand the amount of men I'm close to, but if I look at the most significant friendships I've had in my life- they've always been with women.

I'm really not sure why that is. I'm sure my therapist would have had some idea, but unfortunately we never really got to work on that before he passed. So I can just write it off as some oedipal thing and go with it, I s'pose. 

Either way, I'm pretty damned lucky to have the friends I have- the people who take me at face value instead of some imagined construct of who they want me to be. I used to keep just about everyone at arm's length- not letting them get close enough to me for fear that one day I'd lose them anyway. Or maybe for fear that they'd eventually 'get to know' me; the real me; and just lose interest. Either or. 

But these days, between Rain, Lauren, Carm, Robin... and the Y chromos that watch my back like Brian, Bob and Bucket- I have it pretty good.

the Valley of the Dolls

It was bound to happen, with the frequency a new piece of vinyl catches my fancy- my toy display case had reached maximum capacity and a trip to Ikea became a must.

Luckily Ikea is only 5 blocks away. With the visiting parents in tow, I made the trek and picked up another all glass display case to match the one that's already in the reading room. With little to no difficulty, I put it together and it lived happily ever after.

Ok. That's totally a lie. In all reality, I've been half in the bag and done Chinese arithmetic with less difficulty than putting together this case which, in theory, should take about 10 minutes to complete. It's a wobbly, poorly plotted out all glass deathtrap. But hell. I'm usually up for the challenge, so we do what we can.

As it turned out, I only needed one lemonaide and Jack to get through the process, which took the combined efforts of not only yours truly but Robin and the Gator to build. Once we put the finishing touches on it, it was no longer a wobbly deathtrap, but a well lit womb for my vinyl babies to show off a little for the guests.

Luck held, and the very next day my Pushead "Astrozombies" piece from Secret Base came in and had the honour of being the first toy to reside in the new case. Followed in quick succession by two amazing FRIENDS WITH YOU pieces.

Now it's just a matter of time before I start worrying about space in the second tower.

Being a toyspazz has its moments of joy.