Fare Thee Well, Frances

Which is what I'd say when you actually LEAVE, you insufferable whore.

It's been three days now and I'm still trapped inside the Blonde Bachelorette Pad by the tornadoes on the backspin. I am the Queen of Self-Entertainment (no, not like THAT) but it's been very odd to spend over 48 hours without so much as a step outside. You kind of start to long for such luxeries as air.

On the happy-yay side, the Cocoa Beach Pier seems to have survived intact. It's a miracle, and also proof that God protects the alcohol-soaked and the fish-gutted. As a lovely parting gift, my cable momentarily blinked off but the power has stayed on (knock on particle wood desk.)

The Frances Experience has been vastly different from the Charley Party. We've been screwed by both entities, but it's been a completely different kind of screwing. With Charley, it was more of a lightening, one-night-stand, hey-I'll-call-you-in-the-morning-but-never-actually-do type of thing. You're left standing there with your hair a mess and a general sense of, "What was THAT?!" Frances was more like a long, slow, horrible relationship replete with a gradual friends-with-benefits rampup, followed by a few dinners and movies, followed by several weeks of all-consuming daily phone calls, followed by a slow falling-out marked by yelling matches, make-up sex, sobbing on park benches, and an eventual drifting away with an occasional twinge when relationship-era pictures surface from the bottom of the desk drawer: "What was I thinking?"

The entirety of Central Florida is now sitting on the couch in our sweatpants, eating Oreos and watching You've Got Mail, announcing to ourselves that we are too tangled up with our careers right now to be in a relationship anyway. Of course, we have our miniskirts hanging in our closets in preparation for next week's date with Ivan.

Greetings to Ivan may be sent to: blondechampagne@hotmail.com