Yo baby daddy

How did “baby mama” and “baby daddy” become acceptable expressions of relationships? I’m not a pro-marriage fundamentalist, but I do believe that if you make a family, you have an obligation to participate and nurture that family. Creating human life is a contract of commitment and responsibility raising the person you brought into being.

We even have other discouragingly common terminology to describe familial failure: “dead-beat dad.” Social commentators consider the phenomenon of dead-beat dads to be a source of dysfunction in child development. It may be one factor, but I don’t whole-heartedly blame dead-beat dads for the totality of family breakdown. I see many social and cultural variables tugging on the strings of the relationship fabric.

And what about the negative connotation, the social stigma, of “single mother,” or, more judgmentally, “un-wed mother”? Are all single parents necessarily flawed at parenting? In my personal experience, I know that not to be the case. I’ve known many successful families created from non-traditional households. My best friend was even raised by a single father and was rarely visited by her “dead-beat mom.”

Maybe these expressions are evolutions in U.S. speech to describe complex relationships that previously had no terminology to quantify the variables of modern families. Maybe these relationships are nothing new to U.S. society, but are getting their own parlance for the first time. Personally, I’d prefer that there be no dead-beats and no negative implication to single parent child-rearing. “Baby mama” and “baby daddy” might be handy expressions, but the implication is the absence of a missing parent. Mommies and daddies should own-up to the complicated family they created and un-complicate their children’s lives.

Fire in the belly

My astrological sign is cancer. I’m totally an invasive disease that gets in you and eats you up with anger. My symbol is the crab. I’m totally the gnarly crab nipping at your toes and making your day unpleasant. That is, if you’re my spouse. For those of you not related to me by blood or marriage, only a very few of you have witnessed first-hand the biting-ness that is Christine in full wrath mode (I’m lookin’ at Erin and Monya as my main non-legally-bound victims.) (Sorry.) (Sort of.).

I like to fight. I’m a crab named Cancer--and I’m not into that zodiac stuff—and I like to brawl. I would say that for the most part I’m mature enough to keep my rage in check, but, honestly, I’m a rage-oholic. It’s true. My favorite thing to do lately is to swear at old ladies in parking lots. Now, I’m not talkin’ about I’m in my car, they’re in their car, their bad driving makes me yell road rage obscenities. No. I’m talkin,’ I’m walking in the parking lot, she’s walking in the parking lot, and something about her very existence just pisses me off. So I curse her out. Not loudly, but not quiet either.

I don’t know where the new old lady rage came from. It seems like some sort of Freudian internalized misogyny, right? Or like I’m victimizing the helpless because it’s easy. Or maybe I’m lashing out at a vision of myself that I fear: aged, out-of-touch, fragile.

I don’t know why. I just know it’s fun. So, generally, don’t get too close to me. There’s a safety zone of about 100 feet, but closer than that, and you’re fair game. Especially if you’re an old lady.

Three is the lucky number

I just got three parking tickets. Three. All at once. On my scooter! The problem is that they were all totally legit, and I can’t contest them in traffic court.

I found this awesome bike rack on lower Michigan Avenue that was like footsteps from my office. I thought it was the perfect place to lock up. So did a few others. And that was probably my undoing, attracting unwanted attention from the law by having three scooters at one bike rack.

Ticket #1: “Illegally parked motor vehicle on sidewalk.” Unfortunately, this is completely by the book, and it is totally illegal to park any motorized thingy on the sidewalk, but I usually cheat and get away with it. Bummer I got caught. I also heard that the police were going to crack down on illegally parked scooters and motorcycles that they found on sidewalks. Places the target squarely on my bike, repeat sidewalk offender.

Ticket #2: “No or improperly displayed city sticker.” In Chicago, you have to have a special sticker on your car that is basically a tax on city drivers. For motorcycles and scooters, the sticker is impractical, so the city issues a metal badge. In the seven years I’ve been riding, I’ve never had a city badge. It’s a calculated risk, a chance I’ve been willing to take since usually the cops don’t pay much attention to scooters. Bummer I got caught. But I still saved money over all those years of having no city badge in comparison to one ticket.

Ticket #3: “Expired vehicle registration.” Yep, another calculated risk. My license plate expired in June, and we’re moving to Florida in August. I chose not to renew my plates at the cost of one year since I’ll just have to pay for another year once I move to Florida. Again, the police rarely pay attention to scooters, so I thought I could skate. Bummer I got caught.

Walking up to my bike that day, I saw the orange parking ticket glaring on my speedometer. “What?” I shouted to myself. “How did I get a ticket?” And then I got closer: “Oh my god, there’s another ticket!” And then I realized, that, yes, there was a third. Astonishment. There were so many parking tickets that the issuing officer had to get creative on where to place them. Two were tagged on my seat.

After the initial shock, I realized my husband was going to kill me. And then I thought of how preposterous it was to get three tickets at once, and that the situation was so absurd as to be hilarious. “What’s the funniest way to show my husband three parking tickets?” I asked myself. First I considered using lolcats speak from the website I Can Has Cheezburger? One lolcat construction went something like, “I can has fiscal problem?” Or maybe (“mebbe” in lolcat), “I can has cash floe problem?”

Giddy on my three-ticket problem and its absurdity, I settled on the awesomest revelation I could think of: a fan. I would walk into our apartment where my husband would be on the couch playing videogames. I would hold the tickets stacked, facing my husband, so it would look like one ticket. Then when he shouted, “You got a parking ticket?” I would fan one over so it looked like two tickets. Then when he shouted, “You got two parking tickets??” I would fan the last over, revealing that I had three tickets.

I’m not good at jokes, though, and I usually laugh so hard at myself that I can’t pull off a prank. I walked into the apartment, chuckling, with the closed ticket fan in place. As I bent over to set my helmet down, I showed the tickets in profile, which apparently revealed something to my husband: “You got two tickets??” he shouted.

I laughed, and I shook my head. I carried on with the plan. I fanned the second ticket over, and he just stared at me, mouth open in surprised anger. Then I fanned the third ticket over, and I laughed hysterically at my joke, “No! I got three tickets!”

Stunned outrage from my husband, knee-slapping humor for me. He was not amused. I told him my lolcats joke to see if that one worked better. Nope. He was not having fun with the parking tickets. I could see the little financial wheels behind his eyes turning and grinding, thinking, “We can’t afford this. SHE can’t afford this. She’s going to make me pay!” Yep. I was going to make him pay.

After he calmed down, I explained that this was hilarious because it was so outrageous to get three parking tickets at once, and he eventually saw my side of the story. We discussed the financial risks we took with city badges and license plates, and he agreed with my calculation that despite receiving three tickets, we were still ahead on the financial obligation of legal scooter ownership.

Although I enjoyed laughing at three parking tickets, it’s a joke I’d rather have skipped. The only lolcats to describe the end result: “I no has root canal munees?”

Re: Dream entry #5

Could my dream come true? According to Chicago soft news publication, “Redeye:”

“Rock ’n’ rolled”

After wrestling many a sweaty opponent during his career, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson finds himself wrestling with divorce. You decide which is worse.

The pro wrestler-turned-action star announced his separation from Dany Garcia Johnson, his wife of 10 years, in a statement to People magazine late last week.

“We’ve been fortunate enough to spend the last 17 years together as a couple and look forward to spending the rest our lives together as best friends and business partners,” the statement said.

It’s not exactly as entertaining as “If you smell what The Rock is cooking,” but he makes his point.

18 millionth new favorite website

http://www.itslikespiders.com/

I watched two videos and both blew my mind.

Cute song with art by same dude, "I Wanna Be Famous."

Music to my ears

I was just walking back from lunch, and I saw a family walking toward me. Mother, father, two very young children in a double-wide stroller. The little girl on the left, about three years old, was singing, "Shot through the heart, and you're too late!" Yep, that's my kinda little girl.

It's o-fish-o at last

Remember I said I was distracted by something going on in my life so I didn't have the energy to write very much? I can finally tell you why.

We're moving August 1 to St. Augustine, Florida.

It's been a big secret because I didn't want to jeopardize my current job or make any waves until things were more settled. Well, my boss finally knows. It's all complicated how it worked out, but I literally said to her, "I've been holding my cards pretty close to my chest; are you ready for me to lay the whole truth on the table?" She said yes. And she was actually relieved that my suspicious behavior wasn't her or the department's fault, just a quirk of fate that Team Wy is leaving Chicago.

I'm scared. I already love St. Augustine, but it's a town of only 15,000 people. Chicago? Over two million. Sure I've lived other places that were smaller than Chicago, but I consider Chicago my adult home. I was a child in Kentucky, but I came to Chicago straight from my undergraduate degree and really grew up here. I learned to be an adult in Chicago, and this city is a big part of my adult identity.

If I felt like it, I could get Korean barbecue at 2 am here. In St. Augustine, the bars close at 1 am. Granted, I rarely stay out until 1 am, I've never actually gotten Korean barbecue at 2 am, but there's lots of things in Chicago I do often that I won't have there.

Really, it's the museums I'll miss. It's the sidewalks downtown full of people rushing to eat lunch in their hour break. It's the fashionable ladies, the radio stations that always know what I want to hear, the ethnic neighborhoods that take me to different countries without going more than five miles from my home. It's the anonymity. Knowing I'll never see someone again so I can create my personality however I want for those five minutes we interact. It's the smelly subway system that can take me to two airports from which I can go anywhere in the world.

It's my friends, my community, my source of inspiration.

But I'm ready for a smaller town. I'm actually quite tired of how difficult it is to live in Chicago. It's epic to go to the grocery store, where it's crowded and understocked. What I dislike most about Chicago is that everything is so used. Everything's been walked on or touched by countless people. Nothing is fresh. No matter how many power washers and street sweepers the city employs, nothing is new. My seat on the train? Has it been peed on recently? The door handle coming into work? At least 3000 other people touched it this morning. The bathroom at my favorite Indian restaurant? No one has cleaned the walls in a dog's age.

The last time I visited St. Augustine, at a bar my friend told me, "The bathrooms are pretty questionable here." I laughed. It was cleaner than any bar I've ever been to in Chicago.

And that's what I want. A new place, a clean place, a beautiful historic place, a small place, a new community, a new way of gardening, a new ecosystem. And I'm getting that.

But I'm still too busy to blog much as we prepare for the move. Sorry about that. Soon I'll be back from my mental distraction. I'm thinking of you often, though I write too little.

Lessons in love, via e-mail

I received this quote via e-mail subscription service this morning:

"The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to
give, not our kind. -Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983)"

I felt illuminated reading that. I wasn't easy to love this weekend (not that I often am). Bristly and withdrawn, I cursed at old ladies in parking lots and loudly criticized a father's parenting skills inside a computer store. Matthew asked me, "Please don't be so angry any more." It required frozen custard to soothe my prickly soul.

But love. It's true about loving someone. Though I've been with my husband ten years, I never would have understood McLaughlin's quote before. I love, but not always the way I want to give my husband love.

Put a bandaid over my mouth

I overlook the glaring gaps in my personality. It’s my warped self-perception mirror—everyone has one—but sometimes a moment of brightness illuminates the rusted spot and I see the flaw for what it authentically is: an accident in my personality.

My friend at work just told me, “I wore a bandaid on my face and no one said anything to me about it. You know why? It was a Thursday and you weren’t here.” She was teasing me, pointing out that I point out the obvious, but it was true. If I had been there, I definitely would have asked about the bandaid.

“But I do it out of love!” I called after her.

“I know you do, and it’s out of love that I tell you that you do it,” she replied.

It’s true that if I inquired about the bandaid on her face I would really mean, “Are you hurt?” I wonder if I say it that way though? I think I do. And my friend, saying she tells me what I do out of love, I think that’s her way of saying, “I wouldn’t tease you to your face if I actually thought you were a jerk.” And she’s right. Who but the most unloving would point out someone’s flaws in a jeering way?

I think “accident” is the perfect word for gaps in my civility because they’re unintentional. They just blossom like sprongy moss in the dark corners, sending out spores. The spores populate in my mouth and exhale, “What’s that bandaid on your face?” It’s completely unconscious. I’m not aware of the annoying statement of the obvious mold, it just happens sometime. I like to think I’m naïve, not willfully stupid.

I prevented a crash of word mold onto someone’s shoes just a few weeks ago, and I was proud of myself for being mature.

I stepped into the elevator, and there was already a man riding in the car. I’m always curious about the people in my building and what offices they work in, so I gave him a casual lookover. Honestly, he was one of the best-dressed men I’ve ever seen. His suit was cut of smooth cloth so exquisitely—like nothing I’ll ever afford—and he looked crisp and perfect. I started at the collar of his shirt, looked at the perfect drape of his shoulders, the fall of his waist, and the delicately diveted cuff of his trousers --- and then his shoes.

His shoes were equally perfect in appropriateness to his suit, but they were the largest shoes I’d ever seen. The man stood quite petite, not much taller than my 5 foot 2, but his feet were of an extraordinary length. The shoes must have been custom made, or else I couldn’t imagine how any shoe would ever fit those long, thin, narrow feet.

My thoughts raced frenetically over the accidental words I wanted to say, “Those shoes must be custom!” “You have the biggest feet I’ve ever seen!” “I love your suit!” “How can you walk with those giant feet???”

And … I said nothing. I thought, “Remember how much it hurt all through childhood, every day of your life, when you tried to shrink and not get noticed, praying that this would be the day that no one looked at you and made fun of your huge nose? Remember that feeling of dread? Remember the horror of being physically different? That guy went through it too. That guy’s big nose is his big feet. He’s heard everything you could possibly say, and all you could possibly do is hurt him and remind him of every time he was teased for his giant feet.”

And … I said nothing. The light of self-perception opened, and I held in the accidental spores of incivility. I looked back up to his face, into his eyes, and smiled, sincerely.

I’ve always regretted that I didn’t tell him I loved his suit. And that I didn't point and say, "I have a big nose."

Floridian foliage

I just went to Florida to visit a friend for a weekend. We had a fab time, and I got to meet all her friends and rock out with them. But what really slayed me was the Florida flowers.

These photos were taken in Chicago's Garfield Park Conservatory:








In Florida, they were growing like gangbusters in everyone's front yards. My friend didn't notice this as exceptional, but I wouldn't shut up about it (surprised, I know). I kept pointing, "Look, look! I totally just saw that in the botanical garden!"

My friend said, "Oh, hmm." Eventually she warmed up to my enthusiasm and just laughed at my awe over Floridian flora.

Killer inside me

It seems like it's been a lifetime, but, ten years ago, my last college roommate was asked to make a cup that you couldn’t drink from as an assignment for her ceramics class. She started out with slabs and made a triangular wedge instead of a round cup. She put a crooked base on it and poked holes in the bottom so liquid would run through. Now, here’s the oddest part of the piece, she put multi-level wedged spikes all around the “mouth” of the cup. My roommate crafted a seriously intimidating undrinkable cup—maximum security all the way around the brim.

I saw it, and I asked, “What is that thing?”

She explained the assignment to me. Then she said, “The funny thing is that the cup is supposed to be a metaphor for sexuality.”

I gaped. I had never seen my roommate more aptly symbolized ever. She was bristly, topsy-turvy, and odd-ball, but those were the same qualities that made her friends love her.

At the end of the semester, the professor said it was his custom to keep one object from every one of his students. He irked me at the time, but my grown-up mind has decided it was to prepare budding professional artists for giving up what they loved to their buyers and galleries. He chose my roommate's undrinkable cup. They even argued over it, saying how important it was for her to keep it, but in the end she surrendered it to him

The undrinkable cup took up huge residence in my mind, spreading out and resonating over the years. At odd moments I find myself imagining my own undrinkable cup, and what it says about me at the time.

Today I had a vision of my undrinkable cup. A replica of a Greek wine goblet, on a tall spindle with a large, wide dish and handles at either side. The Greeks decorated the interior of their wine cups with heroic or erotic images. One image was Hercules striking down the Amazon Queen by thrusting his spear through her breast, straight into her nipple. I always hated that image, and it made me want to cry when I studied it in art history. But my undrinkable cup, my Greek wine goblet, The Amazon Queen towers over Hercules and pinions him through the loins. Holes on either side of the image would drain the wine, so no one could obscure the power of the Amazon Queen.

My vagina is killer.

Apple Green -- ha ha ha ha hah!

You Are Apple Green

You are almost super-humanly upbeat. You have a very positive energy that surrounds you. And while you are happy go lucky, you're also charmingly assertive. You get what you want, even if you have to persuade those against you to see things your way. Reflective and thoughtful, you know yourself well - and you know that you want out of life.

What Color Green Are You?

#1 is the most inaccurate, stupid thing I've ever heard to describe me.
#3, "get what I want"? Sure, I get what I want, because I take a birdshot approach to life and something I like is gonna make contact.
#4 if by knowing myself well means I know I am not upbeat but uptight, wound-up, and neurotic.

Although I do love green apple flavor candy. Yum!

My Odessey

I’m feeling my Odysseus today. Remember that scene where the crew gets stuck in Polyphemus’ cave? I feel kinda like that today. Like I might get eaten. I totally want to tie myself to the belly of the cyclops’ sheep and sneak my way out of the cavern. I know I’d make it.

Sorry Team Christine's Angels

You regulars may have noticed I'm writing slower than usual. I'm on a little mental hiatus while my brain adjusts to some new things. I'll come back with more tales of karaoke and bad lyrics, don't you fret. And in a couple-few months (that's how real Chicagoans say it) I'll explain what all the psychological hub-bub is about. In the meantime, I'm thinking about you and taking notes on what I want to say in the future.

More hair failures

Martha Plimpton was like IT after “The Goonies,” right? She was everywhere and in everything in the 80’s, and lord god did I want to be her. She was a pre-teen superhero of my desperate aspiration.

She had those short pixie cuts that I think she’s reverted back to after experimentation with Drew Barrymore locks. My mom chose my haircuts when I was a kid, and she chose the pixie cut for me several times in grade school. Atrocious. They never came out right and they hurt my already negative social status something fierce. I was lower than zero.

I remember that once my mom took us to JC Penny’s for a hair cut, trying to be thrifty, and my haircut came out so butchered that my mom had to surrender and take us back to the more expensive salon to fix my hair. Random bits stuck out all over the place. I shudder just remembering how much I was taunted for that hideous haircut. And in retrospect it wouldn’t have been so hard to fix if anyone I saw had had any skill.

I tried to Martha Plimpton it anyway. I remember seeing her in a magazine at my friend’s house, and Martha had her pixie cut parted on the right side of her head so far the line was practically drawn just over her right ear. I wanted that. I wanted to turn that bad haircut into Hollywood 80’s glam. So I tried it.

I used a similar method as the basketball hair umbrella incident. I parted my hair all the way on the right, bent over sideways to the left, and slimed half a mousse bottle over the exterior of the part to get it nice and flat.

I had the good fortune to try my new method on a weekend and wear it to my friend’s house. She asked, “What are you trying to do to your hair?” But she wasn’t actually that mean about it.

“I’m trying to look like that girl from “The Goonies.”

“Oh. It looks kinda funny.”

In the Kentucky summer heat, my coiffed hair melted under the noon sunlight. Slowly, the forced over fronds drooped to the right. It was like an ugly peacock unfolding gradually on the right side. Every so often, a layer of hair would break free and drift down by gravity’s pull to where it naturally belonged. Onion skin by onion skin, the stinky stuff fanned over, so that I had a small bush on the right side of my head and my regular flat hair on the left.

It’s a shame I didn’t have Martha Plimpton’s Hollywood stylist. I could have looked kinda cool. If you could have overlooked everything else about me that was totally lame in grade school.

"My momma told me not to use it!"

My mom didn’t teach me how to style my hair when I was in middle school. She never taught me how to style my hair at all, actually. She’s going to hate this, but I still have a tiny little half-ounce of resentment toward her inside me.

All my middle school friends seemed to have such magically perfect hair while I struggled to get my annoyingly plain, straight hair to do anything cool. My mom told me, “I would have given anything to have straight hair like yours instead of curly. I used to iron my hair flat.” My mom was into sunny-side-of-life morale boosters more than practical advice.

I tried replicating my friends’ magnificent hair on my own. And did a horrible job at it. I used half a can of Aquanet per application, but still my hair fell flat and lame. How did the other girls manage to look so chic? (If by “chic” I reinterpret hair history as being redneck Kentucky fashion with huge bangs and wavy, poofy long bits.) Mine was limp, flat, dull.

My bleakest memory of hair disaster happened during a middle school basketball game. My first boyfriend was going to be there, and I wanted desperately to impress him with perfect, magnificent hair. I prepped for hours before the big event. My method: I flipped my head upside down and sprayed my hair on the bottom with a liquid pint of Aquanet. I stayed that way while it dried. I waited, blood pounding in my ears, until at last the foundation layer had dried. I then sprayed another pint of Aquanet shellac over that. It took forever to dry.

At last I flipped my head up, and there, I had it, full hair with body. What was actually happening, however, was an umbrella effect. The rigid frame of plastered hair on the bottom was supporting my stalk-straight hair on top into and outward fan. That was good enough for me.

I arrived at the game, and my girl-rival who was after my boyfriend sneered nastily, “How’d you get your hair to do that?”

I answered, “It took an hour to do so don’t touch it.” I didn’t know she was insulting the umbrella-ness of my hair. And it turned out that gallons of Aquanet and basketball just don’t mix.

As I played and got sweaty, the hairspray goo re-liquefied and crept down my neck in sticky trickles. I swiped my neck with my hands, leaving them flaky and sticky, which should have helped my mad basketball skills except that I was the world’s crappiest pre-teen player ever.

The umbrella hair system broke down as the Aquanet dissolved. I ended up with spikes of hair frames separating from one another and creating gaps in between the hair armatures. The previously fanned, unsprayed hair slipped into the cracks of the fan, and I was left with straight hair flowing in between hair-sticks of shellacked do sticking at 90 degree angles from the bottom of my scalp.

Can you envision that? I only sprayed the underside of my hair, remember? It was beyond hideous and profoundly embarrassing. It really looked like a sprung umbrella sticking out from my flat hair. I made another player give me a rubber band for my hair, but the rigid bits were not really cooperating with going into the ponytail, while the limp bits seemed to be surrendering from apathy. I could hear the stiff bits crackling as they snapped in halves and folded into my ponytail. Now I had broken umbrella arms sticking out from a limp tail.

After the game, the rival sneered at me again, “What happened to your hair, Christine?” I finally knew I was being insulted, and I wished to fall into a pit in the basketball court and disappear forever. Of course, I was never that lucky, and instead I had to sit with them in shame while they sniggered at my miserable hair.

It’s ultimately for the best that I couldn’t style my hair; I don’t have any of the embarrassing middle school photos that could have haunted me. Instead I have emotional scars but great, timeless photos. I’ll settle for that.

A brief history of song lyrics I don’t know

In reverse chronological order:

I don’t get really picky about the music that plays in my car, except I prefer oldies, classic rock, pop, and new wave. If I can find a station playing any of those, no matter how much I dislike a particular song, I’ll listen to that station until commercial break. The catch is, lyrics confuse me.

Take for example No Doubt. Their lyrics aren’t particularly complex, right? Wrong. I still couldn’t understand them until my sister tried to persuade me I was wrong. I later received confirmation when I saw the actual lyrics on a karaoke screen.

My version:
“I’m walkin on the spider webs...
No matter who calls,
I scream my balls off!”

These lyrics made sense to me for two reasons. For one, she was as wild and predatory as a spider, crawling across her web sinisterly. I thought this fit her image as “not just a girl.” “I scream my balls off” meant that she was tired of distracting or irritating phone calls. No matter who called her, she was frustrated by the ringing phone because it intruded on her predatory spider-webbing. Brilliant lyrics to sing along with in the car because I liked screaming my balls off too.

My illusions about her bad-ass-ness were shattered when my friend sang along to the verses on the karaoke monitor:

“I’m walking into spider webs...
No matter who calls,
I screen my phone calls!”

Screening phone calls? Walking into spider webs? That’s passive. That’s avoidance. That’s not proactive screaming and crawling, it’s nuisance stalker evasion. Lame-o. Totally disappointed in that No Doubt chick.

Now rewind to a classic rock Eric Clapton staple that confused me (until last Sunday, amazingly).

“Won’t you be my four-legged woman?
I’ll try to be your four-letter man…
Rebel man, rebel man, rebel man.”

I always wondered about the animal reference to four-legged-ness, and I wondered why he wanted to be a letter-jacket jock—that’s so high school lame. And then rebel man? How can he be a letter-jacket varsity jock and be a rebel man? And why does he want to be a varsity rebel to her animal-ness? I sang along anyway, thinking classic-rockers got to take poetic license that regular people didn’t have to understand.

Last Sunday, I was playing a radio really quietly while I worked, just to have a little company while I was alone in the library. “Rebel Man” came on the radio. With the volume way down, I suddenly heard, “forever woman,” "forever man.” Mind opening. Still a pedestrian and lame song, but at least I know what it means now.

“Won’t you be my forever woman?
I’ll try to be your forever man,
Try to be your forever man.
Forever man, forever man, forever man.”

More wacky Christine-isms later. I’ve still got two more gems.

Sinister

I don't usually get the "Mondays." My work week starts on Sunday, and it always feels crappy to work Sundays, so I get "Sundays." The lord's day of rest is my day of feverish Sunday archiving. Not really fun.

But today somehow I have the "Mondays." You know what I mean, right? That weekend funover that blahs out into Monday's return to drudgery? Right? I feel that today, because it feels like I'm stuck in a trend of things going wrong.

I felt groggy and confused when I woke up this morning. I would have fallen over when I got out of bed if my dresser that is piled with clothes on top of it hadn't caught me in a soft, vertical landing. Thank goodness I'm a total slob. Then my leak proof coffee mug leaked all over me. And following that the only hard boiled egg left in the cafeteria was cracked to smithereens and soaking in standing water. OK, I'm betting the rest of my coffee and some bacon will set me to rights.

I sit down at my desk. Sinistrodextral is the way English writing moves from left to right. Somehow, my brain is dextrosinistral today, moving from right to left. I tried to type "red," and it took so much concentration to write "r-e-d" and not "d-e-r" that I wonder if my case of the Mondays isn't making me stupid. More stupid. Stupider. Dumber than usual. Mildly learning disabled. Something bad related to dextrosinistral.

This exercise in blogging (and the caffeine kicking in) is turning my brain left side to right. I think I'm recovered enough to work normally now.* Thank god my workload on Monday is always light. I can't start at the back of the papers to be archived and work my way to the front. It would be sinisterly dextrosinistral.

*I proofread this twice before I ended up with the final draft. It contained crazy mistakes, so obviously I'm still not sinistrodextral enough to be equalized yet.

Bad dreams, forgotten

I had a waking dream just as I was drifting off to sleep last night about the worst job I could imagine having. I remember thinking, “Man, I am so going to blog about that terrible imaginary job tomorrow,” and then zonking out. I don’t remember any of it, except I think I had to hold pebbles in my mouth. I’m not really good at holding pebbles in my mouth, which was part of what made it the worst job ever.

Telefun

This morning, on my way to work, I got one of those rare treats that only someone who’s a total bitch on the inside actually enjoys overhearing. A woman who I don’t like or respect, but whom I see all the time was on the phone, shrieking hysterically, “What? Does he think I look stupid? I mean, come on!” She was even accenting her telephone tirade with forehead clutching.

Glorious. Me, muttering under my breath: “Yes, you do look stupid.”

Then a tiny part of me felt bad because maybe she isn’t stupid, and I’ve just misunderstood her all along. Maybe I should have given her a chance to prove how not stupid she really is. And then that tiny part of me died as the rest of me—the bitchy part—laughed and remembered how stupid I really think she is.

B-to-tha-izzack

This makes my blahg SO much more entertaining.

My new(est) obsession

Hooping. Grown-up hula hooping. I'm taking my first class on Thursday, and I can't wait. I wish today were Thursday and not lame ol' Wednesday!

Watch some of the hooping videos on the link above. I'll let you know when I can do the hoop headstand, but don't hold your breath or you'll pass out from waiting.

Seasonal memories

My grandmother wanted me to paint yard sale signs for her. As the artistic one in the family, she thought I should be the one to make creative yard sale signs to stand out from the neighborly competition. I whined and procrastinated. I was at that age where I hated doing anything for anybody, especially something SO beneath my talent as a yard sale sign. Finally, my mom sat me down and made me do it.

They were cleverly designed signs. I planned big, block letters with jaunty slants, and I chose eye popping contrast colors to make the sign really bounce. Neon yellow and true blue. Perfect.

I was given two poster boards, which I think was actually one large poster board cut in half to save money. My aunt was thrifty like that.

First I painted the blue block letters “YARD SALE” and an arrow pointing right. Then I meticulously outlined every letter and the arrow with the neon yellow. Masterpiece. Glorious pop art yard sale sign.

The next sign I painted in neon yellow with the arrow pointing left, and blue outlining all. Pop! More artistic brilliance elevating the mundane. The opposite arrows were genius on my part, because no one instructed me on where they presumed the arrows should go. But I knew the plan was to put signs on either end of the block, so the arrows had to point in separate ways to point in to the sale. Brilliant foresight, little Christine Wy.

My aunt left to hang the signs. My mom pulled me aside, and said in her most apologetic and simultaneously accusatory voice (imagine her as precursor to Marge Simpson), “Christine, you did it wrong. The arrows point in the wrong directions your aunt said.”

Smack down on my genius. “What?”

“The arrows were supposed to point down the street, instead they point out. Your aunt just drew over them with a black marker.”

Smote my pop art signs! “But they were designed to go at either end of the street! They were designed to point in from two directions!”

“They were the wrong directions sweetie.”

Being 14 and unable to communicate rationally, I stomped off. All they had to do was switch the signs. I couldn’t believe the whole arrow concept was just gone. They patronizingly accepted my brilliant signs because they had no choice, they asked me for the sign commission, and that was what they had to work with, smiling grimly like I had messed up something simple yet again.

I worked a card table at the yard sale. I didn’t get much action. I sat and sketched in a notebook, scenes that I imagined from Pink Floyd songs. The neighbor boy had a painful crush on me. It hurt me that he followed me like a ridiculous fawning puppy, like all those stupid oldies songs I heard, “Puppy Love,” and it annoyed the crap out of me that I couldn’t shake this kid. My defense: talk so obscurely over his head with teenage angst that he’d leave me alone.

“What are you drawing?”

“A man and a woman in a fishbowl trying to get out. It means ‘fuck all that we gotta get outta this.’”

“Huh.”

“They’re trapped in their small world and they have to escape to real life, the real life beyond all this.”

“What are you doing tonight?”

“I’m going to ‘Rocky. I can’t wait to get out of here and see my real friends.”

“Oh! ‘Rocky!’ I love that movie! Dunh, du-du-du, dunh-du-du, doo doo!”

Oh god, not that “Rocky.” “Rocky Horror picture Show,” doofus. “Whatever,” I rolled my eyes. I slammed down my sketch pad and walked away. He followed. And now he had a tail of friends younger than him following too.

“I have work to do,” I growled at him, and stormed inside my grandmother’s house via the back door.

I didn’t sell anything. I had a horrible time. Nothing went the way I imagined. I imagined being the creator of brilliantly arrowed signs and charming customers as the bohemian girl with long hair and peasant skirt. I wasn’t any of those things. Instead I was bitter and angry and hid in my grandmother’s toy room reading children’s books.

After all, I was a teenager. In the words of Bart Simpson, “Making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel.” I was one sad fish.

Too sweet to be cold

Visiting the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in 2003, the Demeter fragrances exhibit captivated me. I smelled grass, I smelled mildew, I smelled tomatoes, and I read the story of how each fragrance was inspired and came to be. What subtle genius would take the most fundamental smells of my childhood and create essences that fired memory neurons I had long forgotten? I remembered my father’s failed vegetable garden that continued to sprout wild tomatoes after we abandoned it. I remembered the corner of the basement where my grandfather built his tool shed and workshop where I smelled mildew. And the smell of freshly cut grass brought back more memory than I can list, like watching clouds and listening to the neighbor mow his lawn.

In the gift shop, I wavered between buying the scent Gin and Tonic and Snow. I decided Gin and Juice was too naughty for a southern gal like me, and settled on Snow.

Snow was never quite right for me--though I liked the smell well enough--it just wasn’t snow. Snow smells crackly like ozone, it smells cold, and it smells like the absence of scent because it drapes every scent-giving thing in fragrance-retarding ice. To me, snow smells like absolute zero, a fresh scent palate.

Demeter’s Snow was sort of ghostly sweet and gentle, but not frozen enough for me. Oddly, when I sprayed it on, the scent evaporated quickly, and I smelled like regular musky me again. I thought it must be a joke, that snow is ephemeral and melts quickly, but then I thought I’d been duped by a museum fragrance that couldn’t withstand real wearing. And after living in Chicago for so many years, I know that the zero smell is what is really ephemeral about snow, and that quickly it smells like oil and dirt and garbage--probably all are Demeter scents, but not my preferred olfactory stimuli.

Vanity, thy name is caffeine

Anybody out there have any recommendations for an espresso machine that doesn't cost $400? I think I want to use pods, but if it's a great machine, I guess I'll do ground. What is $2.32 x 5 days? $11.60. x 4 weeks? $46.40. x 12 months? $556.80? I really spend too much on coffee. That's a lotta tattoo money.

Chicago: "The Wasteland" edition

I lived my life in warm Kentucky until age 21, spending even my college years not that far from home. There, in college, I first read TS Eliot’s “The Wasteland.” Like the adage of March, “In like a lion, out like a lamb,” I didn’t really feel the opening line, “April is the cruelest month,” until I moved north, to Chicago.

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

April pulls with desire for summer warmth, lures with promises of spring sweetness, but taunts with weather still cold and rainy. In April, one wants the hyacinth as a promise of respite from winter, but for TS Eliot, it was also a reminder that life goes on for the living, though grieving for the dead. Shades of the dead walk past the narrator in the poem, dragging him into their sadness, while April teases with early flowers. The narrator fears taking pleasure in life at the expense of grieving for the shades of those passed.

To me, April is the cruelest month because I yearn for rebirth in green buds and birdsong, but the weather torments me. It torments because the promise of spring is so near after surviving yet another taxing Chicago winter. Winter saps all my patience and tolerance, leaving me wicked and testy, whereas spring replenishes me and summer restores me. April taunts, “Almost time, Christine, but suffer still.”

Today, April 11, 2007,* it is snowing and raining and sleeting all at once. April spurns me. April rebuts me. “Life is hard, Christine,” April says, “get used to it.”

* 4-12-07, the tormenting weather continues.

Strawberry memory

Growing up in Kentucky, we eagerly anticipated strawberry season because all the local produce shops would be brimming with fresh-picked fruit grown just up the road. Every day, my sister and I ate bowl after bowl of strawberries, turning our lips red and our fingers sticky. My doctor even pronounced me allergic to strawberries, but I didn’t care, no fear of sudden death would keep me from strawberry season.

My sister and I used a plastic tool that scooped the top of the strawberries off, plucking away the cap of leaves and pulling out the hard part in the center. We scooped until our bowls were full and then we covered them in sugar.

After we finished the strawberries, a pile of sugar remained in the bottom of the bowl. Mine was always red and sweet with strawberry juice, and I’d scoop it out with a spoon to eat every gooey drop. It tasted sweeter and fresher than a melted popsicle, more perfect than a liquid lollipop.

My sister’s bowl never turned out like mine. She ended up with a pile of dry, white sugar crystals. My sister whined that she wanted hers to be like mine, syrupy and red with strawberry essence. I devised a method of crushing up a strawberry bit into her sugar, but it never came out the same as mine. Mine was just goo, but hers came out chunky and pulpy.

She cried to have sugar like mine, and my mom would give in and say, “Just give her your sugar, Christine.” It broke my heart to surrender my precious sweet, but in the end, it was easier to give my sister what she desired most—to be just like me.

Recent odds and ends

In hockey:
Overheard at the last home game of the season at the Chicago Blackhawks: “Sharp is kind of a sissy.”

Game winning goal shooter in sudden death overtime: Sharp.

In Japanese soft drinks:
Visiting our favorite sushi joint, there was a new soda on the menu I had to try because it was so enigmatic: “New! Japanese marble soft drink!” What did that mean?

It turned out to be Ramune, a Sprite-like soda. What made it remarkable was that opening the bottle released a blue marble into the oddly shaped neck of the bottle. It was only 6.6 ounces, so it was a little less than satisfying, there was little carbonation, and the marble sometimes got in the way of drink flow. Overall review: great as a novelty act, disappointing as an American beverage staple.

(Coincidentally, one website claims “Ramune” is Engrish for “lemon,” since it’s a lemon-type soda.)

Hands off

When I visit a museum or a gallery or any exhibit, I always end up in a loop with the same people. Groups of people moving at the same pace through a show, clump together, follow the same path, read the same signs, and, essentially, share the same experience.

I’ve been on double-dates where our two sets of couples don’t have the same pace, and the visit feels awkward to me, like we didn’t connect as deeply as we should. Invariably, Matthew and I are the slower couple, because if we’re not learning, we’re not having fun.

I’ve also been to exhibits at the Art Institute and The Field Museum where I felt extremely connected to random strangers because we were all interested in the same educational and enjoyment experiences. We walk leisurely, taking in all the historic objects that gratify our egos by osmosis, and we share that moment. I’m all for the communal experience transcending the individual.

And then, there’s the Touchers.

The Touchers are the people you can’t shake. You don’t want to walk the same pace as them—something about them bugs you to your core—but you just can’t get away. Take a turn around a corner of the exhibit, they’re there again. Speed up, they catch up. Slow down, they stop to gawk at beauty. Something happens, and they’re always there with you, dragging you down.

I call them the Touchers, because I’ve noticed that the people who irk me most are the ones that touch exhibits inappropriately. Even if the object is under glass, they’ll stroke the glass case, leaving greasy smeared finger prints like the KFC Finger Lickin’ Good Monster just sashayed through.

Today was a Toucher day. After three days of sweatpants and free HBO preview, I was hankerin to get out of the house and DO something. It had to be a THING, you know, not just go to the store, it had to be an EVENT. So, I picked a flower conservatory. Either Lincoln Park or Garfield Park, I told Matthew, whichever he chose. He chose Garfield Park because parking is easier.

At Garfield Park Conservatory, we discovered that—Oh my God—It’s Easter Sunday. I don’t think either of us really remembered all that religion biz. Many families were out strolling the Garfield Park Conservatory, enjoying the lilies and azaleas. We’ve been to Garfield Park at the height of visitors, during the Chihuly glass exhibit, and this was hardly a big crowd. We hoped to be mostly alone, so we were a little surprised to see that everyone had our idea, but this was nothing compared to Chihuly.

What did put us off were the Touchers. We ended up behind a whole family of Touchers. The Toucher Family. Toucher Family found it incumbent of themselves to crumble off dried edges of leaves. To caress everything they laid eyes on. To twiddle leaves and even poke cacti. And we couldn’t shake them.

“Toucher Family is going into the children’s garden. Hurry, turn right, and we can get away from them!”

But as we admired the agave plant (a cactus since it grows in the Americas), we lost track of speeding along the path and Toucher Family caught back up to us. Rats.

We didn’t let Toucher Family ruin our experience (see the March pictures on my Flickr site), but they gave us plenty to talk about. Maybe they enriched our lives by giving our generalized rage a focal point. A common experience that transcends the exhibit, bonding us as we travel through the education experience.

Hi!

My 200th post. I always miss milestones, so this one's important since I remembered it. Blow out the candles on the cake!

Did someone say "cake"?

Vacancy

I have a little habit that some have tried to dissuade me of, and that my husband just tolerates. Or maybe he’s surrendered because he knows it’s useless to fight me.

I check out. Mentally, physically, I give myself a little break from living. I reach a certain tolerance point for life, and then I just take some time off.

Checking out for me involves an outrageous amount of sleep, even though I don’t feel rested. It involves the barest minimum of movement, precludes toothbrushing, underwear optional, and dirt sweatshirts mandatory.

I checked out this weekend. I didn’t do dishes, I didn’t cook meals, I didn’t even throw away garbage. I just laid on the couch or in bed and lollygagged.

The problem is, none of this is actually as restorative as I imagine it will be. I’ve been checked out for three days now, and I feel worse. I always feel worse. I feel stagnant and cramped from not moving. My neck hurts from sleeping on the couch, and my left hip hurts from having the dog lay on me for such long stretches of time.

What makes me check back in is when I become so tired of stasis that I have to function again. In the meantime, I’ve failed to meet obligations, I’ve avoided all communication with the outside world, and my house has gotten even dirtier than it was to begin with.

I missed an April 5 deadline for something that was supposed to be a fun craft project. But it felt monumentally mountainous, so I used it as part of the avalanche of reasons to check out.

I’m ready to come back now. I threw away my Kleenexes from watching so many weepy movies this weekend (I even cried at the ones without sad bits), and I made a dry and overcooked stew (Keira Knightley was on HBO, I didn’t care about cooking times).

I’m moving again. I wrote this. I’m on my way back to the surface. I hate checking out, and I never feel better, but, each time preceding it, checking out feels like the answer to all my problems. Really, it just creates new ones.

Best advice

I read advice columns. A lot. I don’t know why, exactly. It must be escapism or a voyeuristic thrill because I certainly never learn anything that applies to my own life: “Happily married dog-lover seeks advice on being more satisfied with her cooking.” That would be my headline. That’s about all I need from life, better cooking skills.

The theme I see over-and-over in the dozen advice columns I read is either: “she/he broke into my e-mail and now I don’t trust him/her,” or “I broke into his/her e-mail and now I don’t trust him/her.”

There’s a whole lotta e-mail breakin' in goin' on. Alternate versions include “discovering” text messages and cell phone records. Let me tell you how much I trust my husband: he knows all my passwords.

I recently read an advice column that said two friends had exchanged “password wills” so that someone could get access to all their necessary information after their passing. That’s brilliant, and it’s the only good advice in an advice column that’s ever really engaged me. But it’s still not advice that I need.

I’ve given Matthew passwords to my Netflix, ebay, Paypal, you name it, he’s got it. He even knows the password to my e-mail, but I know he doesn’t use it, because he just never would.

Phone records? My cell phone is always on the coffee table and includes suggestive calls like “Mom and Dad,” “Sister,” and “Best Friend.” There’s nothing to hide, but even still, I know he’d never look. That’s how much I trust him and know that he trusts me.

I read so much un-trust in advice columns. Think about it. I know you read advice columns too. How many trust violations do you see? Today’s was: “he was acting weird so I found his password to his e-mail and then listened to his voicemail.” Her distrust in him caused her to act distrustfully and violate his trust in her. Trust equals negated for both parties. No one’s trusting anyone in this relationship anymore.

Instead of talking to an advice columnist, why not talk to your partner about your trust issues? Don’t dump his call logs or hack his e-mail, just talk.

And that’s my advice column for the day.

Life annoyance barometer

Here’s how much I don’t want to be in my current mental state: I thought today was Friday. I mean, I was so convinced it was Friday, I couldn’t figure out why my favorite co-worker wasn’t here.

Example: “Where are you Lily? I miss you! I need to talk to you! You’re the only one I can talk to!!!”

Silence…

As of 3:23 pm CDT, I have just realized that it is in fact Monday, and that Lily never works Mondays.

Yes, I’m that brilliant. Yes, I’m that cognizant of the passage of time. Yes, I’m that desperate for Friday.

Is sick, nice, worthy

I just tried one of those online anagram generators, and I got "Is sick, nice worthy." I think it should be "Is sick, nice, worthy." That would be better.

Other gems from this site include:
Hysteric Sick Wino
Sinister Chick Yow
Chicory Sinew Skit
Ricochet Kiss Winy

Hearts,
Sinister Chick Yow

Addictive ingredients

I have a new $5 a day habit that’s going to bankrupt me quickly. And possibly cause my heart to explode, but who knows?

Did I ever mention all the arthritis treatment I was going through that wasn’t working? The irritating but fortunately moderate chronic pain that interfered with my life? It isn’t that the pain is so severe, really, it’s more that it is constant that made me seek exhaustive treatment. Final analysis? Fibromyalgia.

The catch (22?) here is that the medicine that is working well for my fibromyalgia is causing me to be drowsy at work. If I weren’t supervised, I’d probably sleep about half of my workday away, pleasantly drooling on my keyboard and dreaming of Ralph Macchio. Poor guy.

The only thing that keeps me going is Starbucks. Listen to this:

“Quad venti nonfat ice latte no ice, please.” Even though I order it daily, it’s still hard for me to say, considering I haven’t started drinking it yet and really I’m still asleep.

I’m going to parse this for you: “Quad” = 4 shots of espresso, when the drink normally comes with three. “Venti” = Starbucks speak for “large.” “Nonfat” = skim milk. “Ice” = cold (pretty straightforward). “Latte” = espresso and milk drink with no foam. “No ice” = cold milk but no ice (because I don’t want it watered down as I sip on it for four hours). “Please” = thoughtfulness because I’m nice to strangers.

This results in confused looks of desperation from the poorly paid humble barista. “Quad. Venti. Nonfat. Latte.”

“No, Quad venti nonfat ice latte no ice.”

“No ice?”

“No ice.”

The order makes its way to the actual drink slinger, and he looks at me, consternation in his brow, “Quad venti nonfat ice latte no ice?”

“Yes, no ice. Can you top it off with more nonfat?”

Then they call it out at the bar like they’re supposed to:

“Quad venti nonfat ice latte no ice.”

Then people look at me. People waiting for drinks straight off the menu. I don’t care. I’ve become coffee high maintenance, so what? At least I’m awake.

Fighting nonplus

Last night, I picked up Matthew from Midway airport, where he was returning from another business trip. He wasn’t gone long, but I missed him. He takes up space in my life in a good way, and I know I can always count on him to balance me. But he had been gone, and I felt off kilter.

I couldn’t wait to pick him up from Midway, but we started up right where we had left off, arguing over something silly and meaningless. Actually, we argued over meaning.

“So I got to the office in Connecticut,” he said, “and the manager was surprised that I was nonplussed by New York traffic.”

“Wait. Say that again,” I told him.

“I was nonplussed by the New York traffic, and the manager was surprised that it didn’t bother me.”

“Nonplussed?” I asked, with a judgmental tone. "That doesn't make sense. You just said two different things."

“Yeah it makes sense.”

“I don’t think you know what nonplussed means,” I said in a testy voice.

“Yeah, it means unfazed.”

“No it doesn’t!” I escalated the disagreement by raising my voice and getting angrier. “It means the opposite of unfazed; it means fazed. It means you were stymied by New York traffic.”

“It means unfazed,” Matthew said in the voice he uses when I am being difficult.

“It does not.”

“Yes it does.”

“I’d like to remind you that I have TWO degrees in English,” I informed.

“Well I have a Ph.D.”

“So! You’re still wrong!”

We simmered in silence, until I said, “We can settle this with the dictionary at home.”

“OK,” he agreed, without saying, “but you’re still wrong,” but I bet he was thinking it.

I drove, silently affronted, and then we got over the whole definition disagreement. We picked up with our “I missed you” and “how was your trip, what happened, and what did you see?”

Then I totally forgot the definition of “nonplussed” incident and was just glad to have him home, back, safe in our tiny apartment. I was happy just to have him with me again, and I went about my normal routine of cooking dinner and watching the Pussycat Dolls reality TV competition.

Out of the blue, Matthew said, “Huh, you were right.”

“What sweetie?” I asked.

“You were right about ‘nonplussed.’”

So big of him to admit. I kissed his forehead and said, “I told you so,” in the sweetest, loving way I could.

God I missed that guy. God I love being right. It was lonely without the fighting.

My name is Christine Wy, and I'm on a diet

I joined Weight Watchers. It was time. My husband said to me the other night, “I’m so glad you’re doing this. Your body was making you so unhappy, but I didn’t know how to help you. I’m glad you’re able to take control of this.”

I cried. A little. I made myself not cry a lot. And he’s been so super supportive of this, eating strange new things that I cook instead of worrying about making two meals.

If you looked at me, you might say I was chubby. But I’m actually not. Technically, I’m just on the scale side of being obese. You’d be surprised, looking at me. “If that’s obese,” you’d think, “then what is the rest of America?” Just more obese, I guess.

This is my biggest (pun intended) coming out on my blog to date. I’ve always admitted to my germ neuroses, which I personally think is just over the scale of normal behavior, but there are so many secrets I keep from my blog readers. I fear the interweb monster. I know it chews people up and leaves them damaged or cynical. I don’t want that.

Christine Wy is fun, and maybe a little mean, but mostly Christine Wy laughs at herself. The real Christine, the not pseudonym Christine, laughs at herself too, but the real Christine is meaner to herself and more judgmental of her choices. Christine Wy is my escape into an ideal place where I can be silly and stupid and serious but not get trapped by reality.

Real Christine is on Weight Watchers now. I hope it’s a good trip, and one we can make together--without making this a diet blog.

PS today is my second weigh-in. I'm praying for two pounds lighter. I feel mentally two pounds lighter (hopefully my brain isn't losing weight!), but the scale will tell the truth. I'm scared and excited. I feel like I'm making good progress, but it's still so daunting.

Cerveja obscuro

My new hobby is reading this pub review: Munster Pubs. (Sorry, the page takes forever to load, though I can't see why.) Any publication that includes a toilet rating is just a personal fave. And that title is Portuguese. I don't know why. I just felt like it.

Why do they always wear clogs, or, Why do they have to sit next to me?

I took my second fiction writing class on Saturday. I think I learned enough from the first three hours or so that it was worth half the money I paid for it, but part two of the class was a wash. We read our stories and works in progress, and the instructor insisted we only say nice things about each piece to each other. Nothing negative. When the woman to my left read a disjointed story with no transitions, the instructor asked what competitions she had submitted it to because it was just so darling. Really, it was an obviously ethnic piece, and according to the instructor those are just so hot right now that if you can write it you should. I’m not saying her story was without merit, but the instructor was a little too friendly, when what we really needed was helpful guidance.

As only my second experience with a writing instructor, I feel I shouldn’t extrapolate from my small sample size to make judgments about all writing instructors, but they both shared an irritating quirk: they wore clogs.

I really have nothing against clogs in general, but these instructors slipped their feet out of their shoes and played with their clogs. When my latest instructor wasn’t standing up, she scooched her feet back then used her toes to push the empty clogs around. I just couldn’t concentrate on the few nuggets of good advice she had to offer while she dangled her clog from her toe, dispensing saccharine “good jobs everybody!”

If I become a writing instructor one day, do I have to trade my old-lady shoes for snappy clogs? What’s the deal, is it a club? I pray it’s just coincidence.

By far the most distracting element of the course was the woman seated to the right of me. She sat down and told me, “I like children’s writing because I’m still a child at heart; I’ve never grown up.” Really? Because I figured out in college that making statements that summarize your affected personality usually means you’re immature and won’t be taken seriously. By me at least.

I tried to make the best of her “free spirit,” and I joked, “Really? I’ve been told I’m childish.”

She responded, very affronted, “That’s not the same thing.”

Hmm, child-like, ne’er-grown-up, fairy-land chick has no sense of humor. I’m going to call that “childish.”

And she really was childish. She wanted to be coddled and Oohed and Ahhed over because she’s so darn precious.

She told me three times, “And look, I even have my pink backpack like a little kid, ha ha ha!”

The first time she said, I responded, seriously, “I carry a pink back pack to work, too, but I’m using my smaller satchel today.”

Then three times she told me, “And look at my little kids lunch. I made peanut butter and jelly and chips, ha ha ha!”

I looked at my lunch. Tuna salad on bread with carrot sticks. That didn’t look like a children’s lunch? It certainly looked exactly like what my mom packed for me in grade school. But I guess I wasn’t “child-like,” only Robbin, who dotted her “i” with a heart, was affectedly naïve enough to advertise her “little kids lunch” and a “little kids backpack.

Then it was her turn to read her story.

“I really don’t know what I’ve written, I’ve just been writing it and I’m not sure what it’s about or where it’s going.” Then commenced the convoluted story line of someone discovering who the biological mother is of someone else, made more convoluted by her affectation of innocence.

The instructor asked, “What’s your one sentence summary?” something everyone should be able to say about their work.

“Gosh I don’t know,” she said as she waggled her head around, loosely on it’s child-like stalk. I know, I’m judgmental, but I rolled my eyes at her and groaned, quietly.

She started reading from her 78 page rambling children’s opus, and it was all exposition. No dialog, no action. She said the first 12 pages were like that so you’d like the character. Oh god, spare me over from forced sitting through lengthy bad writing.

At the end of class, the instructor came over to her and said, “I think what you’re doing is great and you should keep working at it. You really can be quite humorous, and you’ve really got something there.”

I nearly died. Irritating, affected, “I’m so child-like,” Robbin with a heart, with her sub-amateur first attempt got the highest praise. I wish I had known in advance that this was the wrong class for me. It would have saved me a lot of time and rescued me from Robb(heart)n.

I'm just "borrowing" it

OK, so I stole this link from someone else's website, but the Stan Laurel collection project is cool! Thanks for making archivists look like fun people.

Holy update

Remember when I told you about all the holes I had poked in me? I have a new medical hole. A foot hole.

I went to my dermatologist because I thought I had a wart on the sole of my foot. She said it wasn't a wart, but that I stepped on something, and it was stuck. We opted to treat it like a wart and use the freezy stuff anyway since that would make whatever it was fall out.

The only problem with the plan was that nothing was falling out. The frozen skin developed a tough callous that just wasn't budging. And then a blood blister started building up behind it, which made it painful, but the callous still wouldn't fall off.

Yesterday, I went in for emergency follow-up. A nice guy with two med students came in to attend my foot. He ended up cutting out the callous in a perfectly inverted cone and letting the stuff behind the callous drain out. One med student gripped my arm and said, "You'd be great in surgery." I think he was referring to my stiff-upper-lip approach to foot-hole carving.

The net result is that now my foot hurts even worse than when I went in to complain about it hurting! I can barely walk. I'm hobbling around like a wuss trying not to put pressure on my new foot hole. Which sucks because I'm a reference librarian and eventually *someone* is going to expect me to get out of my chair. I have sympathetic friends to fetch me coffee, but I do have to pull my weight on the job at some point. I'll just be pulling it slowly and haltingly, staggering like a movie hunchback.

A slip of the wrist

I had an odd habit for many years that irked me when I caught myself doing it: I played with my face while I read. I’d purse my lips and squeeze them, I’d put a finger near my mouth, I’d rest my hand on my cheek, I’d squeeze my eyebrows together with my hands—any number of configurations.

When my germ-phobia increased, I forced myself to stop, realizing that I was only introducing more pathways for germs to infect my immune system.

Lately, however, I’ve been distracted by things in my head, and I’ve started the face touching again. It’s driving me batty! Or, battier! Twice in the past two weeks I’ve caught myself holding the rail on the bus, THEN RUBBING MY FACE WITH THE BACK OF MY HAND!!!! How could I commit this travesty against myself? What crime did my face commit to deserve this cruel treatment?

And then it happened again. Sitting in my doctor’s office, amidst all those germy people, I got out my book and started touching my face. Why did I slip back into that old habit? I haven’t done it in at least two years? And I tried to stop; I’d catch myself doing it, mentally yell at my hand, then seconds later, my hand was squishing my face up again.

O, woe unto me, that now I feel a head cold coming on. All the face touches, I just knew this would happen, but I prayed to the alcohol hand sanitizer to spare me over this one time, please, as a personal favor, just let me go this one time.

It ain’t happenin.

Personal (sound)space

I just overheard Jason mock-shout, “You’re typing too loud!”

The typist’s answer was a mock-acerbic, “Well that’s just how the typewriter types!”

The type-complainer, Jason, started joking about how someone actually used to tell him that he typed too loudly and too quickly, and that it was distracting this person from work. Jason’s answer: mock apologetic, “I’m sorry,” and typing louder and harder.

Jason and Kendra laughed over someone actually complaining about typing volume, and I flashed back to college.

Cinder-block dorm room painted puky blue, matched, straight rows down either side of the room: closet, dresser, bed, desk. My roommate and I were best friends, shared a major, and spent all of our time together, in and out of class. Due to necessity of proximity, we drove each other nuts, but in a loving way, I thought.

I was fortunate that, even way back in the early days of technology, my dad bought me a laptop and printer to take to school. It cost $1000, ran Windows 95, and we had to purchase the optional external floppy disk drive separately. My roommate and I couldn’t share the computer (not that I wanted to, anyway), because all of our papers were due at the same time since we took all of our classes together. Of course college students would never work out a schedule where someone actually writes their paper early, so she needed a different option.

Her parents bought her an electric word processor. The trumped-up typewriter looked odd and clunky across the way from my shiny plastic toy that still smelled like clean electrical parts, and she was always defensive about it. “It’s just like a computer, but it has a smaller screen.” I couldn’t imagine looking at that tiny 2” x 6” window to see what I had written. And revising? How could you manage that when you had to use the up and down arrow keys to scroll through every line? While I recognized that I was lucky that my dad was so wild for technology that he’d splurge on a quickly obsolete paperweight for me, I also recognized outgoing technology when I saw it. And secretly laughed at it behind its back.

I never said a word to anyone but my dad about how I really felt about the silly typewriter, but when the “word processor” actually printed the pages, it ground and shrieked and ruined the dorm room’s quiet peace so I’d have to leave. “Oh, I need to go see what Abby is doing down the hall…” I usually just went outside and smoked cigarettes. Sometimes Abby came with me, but usually she wasn’t even in her room.

My roommate and I were both odd and quirky and damaged in our own special ways, and we brought a lot of baggage for a tiny 9’ x 18’ cage. Mentally, we bumped into each other a lot, and suffered the bruises, nursing grudges. We could go from intimate friends to cold strangers and then back again, all within the span of an hour. Even though I was grudge-holder supreme, I could still love her and want to spend all of my time with her. Maybe it was wrong to fight and make up all the time, but that felt normal to me.

When writing research papers for our classes, my roommate liked to swing her legs under her desk while she typed. Although she didn’t type too loudly, the leg-swinging made me a little edgy. “Swish, swish, swish”, her jeans would saw, softly. I preferred total silence when I worked and couldn’t handle the distraction.

“Natalie, can you stop swinging your legs? I can’t concentrate.”

“No,” she’d grumble at me.

Later, when I complained again, she’d quiet-shout, defensively, “It calms me down when I work,” but we were not calm.

All right, I was willing to ignore the leg-swinging. I was making a petty grievance about a small thing anyway. But it still made me restless. I’d end up chain smoking until she went to bed, and then I’d type for the rest of the night, quietly, on my soft laptop.

We moved dorm rooms once, and that’s the point where I can say things really fell apart between us, though I didn’t know it at the time. There were so many ways and so many reasons that we flapped into each other so hard, but one illustrates well: the box.

Somehow, the box for the word processor came to live under Natalie’s desk. It was empty since the typewriter was on top of her desk, but that was where she chose to put it. This was fine until we started writing. I remember I was writing about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” and she was kicking her legs. But, now, instead of just “swish-swish” swinging, Natalie was a drum. “Kick-kick-kick,” she’d swing her legs straight into the empty box, “boom-boom-boom.”

“Natalie, do you have to kick your legs?” I’d whine.

“Yesss!” She’d hiss through her teeth at me.

“Can you move the box? It’s so loud!” I’d whine some more.

“No, there’s no place for it,” she’d hiss again.

By this point, I guess our relationship had deteriorated beyond repair. Everything we did drove each other over the edge, and not just in the “been your roommate too long way.” We were out over a cliff, and neither one of us was heading back. And then “grind, squeal, grind, squeak,” she printed her first draft to proofread.

“I’m gonna go smoke outside,” I lied.

We bumped into each other too many times. We couldn’t escape each other’s personal space: space of sound, of belongings, of desires, and of differences. We were always there, present, occupying room in each other’s lives.

While I was content to forever grate away at each other, she moved out. It came as a total blow, a complete surprise, and she wouldn’t talk to me about it. She just disappeared one day and was gone. Poof. She had new friends and everything.

Six months later, a mutual friend of ours explained what happened, and I was crushed.

“Really? You don’t know why Natalie moved out?” Heather asked me, shocked that I didn’t know. “She’s told everyone else.”

That stung. Everyone was in but me. “No, she never said a word to me. She just moved out.”

“She told everyone you competed with her too much. She said you tried to do better than her on your homework, and that you tried to get more compliments than her by dressing up nicer than her,” Heather explained.

Like a spy novel reveals all the clues at the end of the book, my mind raced to all the little incidents that added up to our break-up. The times she would wait until the last possible second before class to get dressed and then put on a skirt. I’d say, “Oh, I wish I knew you were going to wear a skirt, now I don’t have time to change!” and she’d hurry me out the door.

The time I got a compliment, “You have a beautiful smile.”

“Thank you,” I said politely, flattered.

Natalie shouted, “She wears a retainer!”

The time in class I asked her what grade she got on her paper, and she shouted, “A ‘C,’ OK?”

Stymied didn’t describe what I felt when Heather revealed Natalie’s real motivation to leave. Betrayed might have been closer. I never had any idea Natalie felt that way. I wanted to be her sister, to do everything just like her. I looked up to her and respected her guidance. Everything I wanted to do, I wanted us to do it together, even if it was just wearing skirts on the same day. I was completely oblivious that all I ever heard was the death knell, the “kick-kick-kick,” “boom-boom-boom,” on the empty box, striking down the hours left in our friendship.

In the end, my personal sound space was empty. I finally had the quiet I wanted, but I learned it was awfully lonely in silence. I sat on the floor, staring at Natalie’s empty bed, smoking cigarettes one after the other. My heart went “Boom. Boom. Boom,” in the empty room.

My new favorite quote

My favorite movie quote used to be, "Names is for tombstones, baby!" uttered by Mr. Big (aka Yaphet Kotto) in Live and Let Die.

It's been replaced.

Last night we watched The Killers 1946 version, based on Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories. In the final scene, Lt. Sam Lubinsky says to Kitty Collins, "Don't ask a dying man to lie his soul into hell."

Beautiful.

Mairzy doats

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, my favorite faux Irish ditty:

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?
Yes! Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?

If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey
Sing "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy"

Oh! Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you-oo?
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?

Now isn't that fun? My little sister taught it to me many years ago. I would sing it all the time if wouldn't drive everyone else bonkers.

Hope all your Irish hangovers are mild and well-nursed, and may the ground always rise up to meet your feet.

A date to remember

Not only does today mark the Ides of March, famous for the assassination of Julius Caesar (Et tu, Brute?), but today also marks the one year anniversary of my blog. When I started writing, I wondered what would happen. Thanks, dear readers, for making this a fabulous journey.

“I Hate New York”

I loved the Janus-faced bitch-goddess “New York” on “Flavor of Love.” She didn’t stoop to anyone’s level or rise to anyone’s level, she was her own level; love it, shove it, she was just her. I never saw her defend her actions or apologize for being herself, no matter how nasty or classy she could be. No one was scarier, no one was more unrelatable, but no one was more captivating to watch.

But “I Love New York” drove a dagger in my heart, and now every time I see it in my cable channel guide, I feel bile and disgust and quickly scroll away. “New York,” aka Tiffany, didn’t hurt me herself, but her suitors made me turn away from the beautiful “I Love New York” train wreck.

On an episode, the crew were hanging out in the pool and hot tub, trying to out-drink and out-flirt one another, and an intense massage session broke out. I laughed at Tiffany, I laughed at her ridiculous suitors: they were all TV edited stereotypes and two-dimensional fragments, what’s not to laugh at? Until the massage episode.

I suddenly flashed back to the blurry days of college and remembered all the back rubs and face massages and occasional full-bodies I gave and received, and I remembered how much I loved the constant touching between my intimate group of friends. Tiffany had group massage partners, where had all of mine gone? Who touches me like that, all the time, with only the expectation that I return the favor?

I mentioned before, how much I love touch. I love touch so much, I don’t think one person could touch me enough, hence my disgust at Tiffany’s situation, with all her suitors taking turns to rub and stroke her oiled body.

Why does such a cartoon character get all the pampering I crave? Why does someone who seems so ungrateful, looking back to her unrelentingly unapologetic behavior, get what I too deserve? I have to pay to get that level of touch, not get paid for it.

I miss those college rubdowns and the friendly, endorphin-filled, inexpert deep-tissue touches. After I clicked off the TV in disgust, I yelled at my husband, “Why don’t you massage me more?” And I realized, one person could never be enough touch for me.

I picked up the phone and scheduled several student massages at the local school. I may have to pay for it, but I’ll feel “New York’s” love.

The 80's girl band power struggle lives on

Karaoke started innocently enough, but the next thing I knew, I was listening to the radio and my iPod for next perfect song to perform. And then I was hooked. Moderately obsessed, but I swear not full-on obsessed. I haven’t started buying karaoke discs to take with me or anything (true litmus test). I did get my own microphone, but that’s because I’m a psycho germaphobe. No expectorate sharing. Practical, right, for the paranoid germ psychotic?

The reason I love karaoke so much is that my friend hosts a modified Japanese style karaoke with an American twist. He even has a snappy name for it, Jerryoke, a pun on the beginning of his last name. We meet in his home on monthly Friday nights, and we wail away in privacy, amongst our closest friends. No one to judge your song choice, no one to disdain your mediocre (or worse) singing, no one to rate how cool you are based on your performance. Unencumbered fun, no trepidation over appearance.

And I’ve found Jerryoke to be a release. “Let go,” Jerryoke says to me. “It’s OK to be your rock-n-roll car sing-along self, here, in Jerryoke’s home.”

What makes Jerryoke the Japanese cum American experience is that aside from the privacy and friendliness of the experience (Japanese), anyone can choose to sing along, not just the song requester (American). Whoever likes a song jumps up, grabs a microphone, or just shouts along without a mic, and we all sing together. The camaraderie is profound in the unified communal catharsis of singing. It’s fun.

One night, my friend--whose voice is more suited to New Order than The Go-Go’s--and I sang “Vacation” in unison at Jerryoke. He said, “Good, your voice can hide my crappy singing.” We went to sit down after we finished, flushed with conquering The Go-Go’s, and I felt so close to him.

“What song do you want to do next?” I asked Davis.

“Mm, maybe ‘Head Over Heels,’ but you do back-up.”

Woah. Davis just told me my voice was good over his, but now he wanted to relegate me to back-up? And in case you didn’t know, back-up on pretty much any Go-Go’s song is “Ahhh-Ahhhh-Ahh” and repeat.

“Really? We can’t both be Belinda Carlisle?”

“No, you can be Jane Wiedlin on this one. I’ve been practicing and I think I’m ready.” This from a 300-pound dude with a basso-baritone voice—or something rumbly and deep sounding.

It turned out we didn’t sing again that night, so I avoided the Belinda Carlisle/Jane Wiedlin power struggle. I figured he was at least slightly joking, so I teased him about it.

Feb 19 email:

ok, so our next song can be head over heels if you want. but after that, we're doing "candy" by iggy pop and kate pierson. it was made for us.

-Christine

Later, I asked him to join us at Jerryoke:

Feb 23 e-mail:

nope, can't do it tonight, but practice the harmonies on "Head over
Heels," I've been working on that one in the car.

it should be pretty easy, you just need to do the "right from the starting line" harmony and the aaaaaaaah-AH! AAAAAAAH-ah! part.

I want to learn that piano part, too. Like I can't play anything on piano but I could nail that one solo just to blow people's minds. If Charlotte Caffey can rock it while dressed up like an 80s housewife in the video with a sweater and a poet's tie and everything just so no one could tell she was a totally horsed-out stone junkie, then so can I.

Oh, Charlotte, who ever guessed that you and Gina would age the most gracefully?

Davis.

E-mail response:

i made sure to put it on my ipod LAST NIGHT! so i'll start listening RIGHT NOW!!!

we rock.

-Christine

Double woah. He’s really serious about this back-up stuff. The awareness of the correct back-up vocals locations, the deep analysis of the pianist, it all points to Dread Pirate “Head Over Heels.”

Later, he told me I could have lead vocals on “Vacation” if he could have “Head Over Heels.” What sucks is that “Vacation” was my go-to song for so long that I’m over it. I want “Head Over Heels!” And it’s Jerryoke I’m (moderately) addicted to, not karaoke—we should all sing lead vocals on “Head Over Heels” together if that’s what we want.

But, you know, if it means that much to him, I’ll learn the “Ahhh-Ahhhh-Ahhs.” I was enamored with Belinda Carlisle in the ‘80’s, but I like ‘00’s Jane Wiedlin better than ‘00’s Belinda Carlise anyway.

Just in case

I'm a nerd. A library nerd. I keep track of my reader stats (but don't worry, I don't monitor your IP addresses or anything; I don't actually want to stalk you.). I know that of my ten readers (I love you guys and gals), all of you hit my blog on Mondays. And I love you also for being so reliable, in my nerdy, uptight, librarian way.

But, here's the catch: I'm not feeling so well.

I didn't want to disappoint my Monday readers with no news or updates, but I'm feeling a little malaise. Not full-on death flu or anything, just not up to good writing.

I have three topics on my upcoming blog agenda, and they're right here next to my desk, so when I can do it, I'm on it. And they're funny, not existential. So you get a reprieve from my self-tormented angst.

For temporary entertainment purposes, here's the two new swears I'm working on popularizing: whore bag and cunt sandwich. Feel free to use them liberally--the more the merrier. Use mostly in the car, if you're modest like me, where no one can here you. Or use on public transit, where people will assume you're just a crazy. Former favorite: fuck sucker. That fell out of use when the two people I used it with most got tired of it. That was a shame.

Love you babies,
Christine Wy

It's cookie time

I just bought a box of Darjeeling black tea that happened to come in a purple box. That purple box is the exact shade of a box of Girl Scout Cookie Samoas. Every time I catch a glimpse of Darjeeling out of my right eye's peripheral vision, I get hungry for a Samoa. Fortunately, I have no Samoas, or else they would be gone by now, considering how many times I've looked at the Darjeeling box.

Part of me is sad and part of me is glad that the Darjeeling box hasn't morphed into the Samoa box. I think I'll put it away now.

Temporary spaces

I love small talk with strangers. Strangers who get that the conversation has a limited time for a few quips and details, that it has to be light and breezy, and that, most importantly, the conversation has entertainment value.

I just flew back and forth to Kentucky, and, oddly, I remember only one airport conversation, which is weird, because I find it is the second most fertile ground for small talk with strangers (in air being first). I’ve had some fabulous conversations about injection molded plastics, pharmaceutical sales, and various locales visited.

My trip to Kentucky started with me arriving too early at the airport, due to my fear of being late for flights. The first gent to sit next to me radiated a sour disposition, and—I swear—he wiggled. Like OCD wiggled. He had a newspaper and he worked the crossword puzzle. Had he been a man who radiated “airport talker,” I would have told him I’d help with the hard parts when he got stuck, which would have led to a fun crossword puzzle conversation. Nope. Not this freak-a-zoid. Instead, he stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the empty tarmac. There, he jiggled his pants. A lot. Remember the wiggling I just mentioned? He wiggled his pants. Personally, I think he was scratching his crotch. A lot. And I think he should see a doctor. Either a psychiatrist or a urologist, I don’t care which.

Fortunately, due to his standing, a woman sat next to me. She was infinitely more pleasant—she had the “good talker” vibe.

“What do you think of the new McDonald’s coffee?” I asked her.

“I don’t know yet; it’s too hot to drink and this is my first.”

I told her I thought it was OK, but still not my ideal cuppa joe.

Somehow we segued into antiques collecting.

“My friend goes to estate sales a lot, and he gets some great things, but I just don’t have the energy to keep track of when they’re happening,” I told her.

“Well, estate sales are nice, but I prefer the antique markets.”

I asked, “Do you have one you prefer?”

She said, “Oh, the one in [Samich]* is great. It’s not a flea market, it’s a real antique show, and you can get great things there.”

“Great! Thanks for the tip.” And then it was time to board. Perfect airport conversation.

This morning, I had a small talk with a stranger on the third best place for small talk, the bus.

“I wondered if anyone was going to take this seat next to me,” he said, gesturing at the crowded bus.

“Oh I wasn’t going to miss it!” I laughed. “You have to wait to see if anyone else wants it, then there’s that period of time where it’s OK to take it if no one else wants to sit.”

“Yeah, the unspoken bus etiquette,” he said.

“You know,” I said to him, “when my alarm went of this morning, I asked myself if it was Saturday, and I was so happy.”

He laughed, “Not quite. Although I can’t wait until this Saturday.”

I raised my eyebrow at him and tried to look engaging.

“I had to work through all last weekend,” he explained.

“Yeah, I took a second job to build my resume, and it’s wearing me out.”

Then we commenced the “what do you do?” part of the conversation.

We ended up talking about the nature of information and information consumption since I’m a librarian and he worked with data. Then, my stop, “Have a good day!”

“Enjoy your Saturday, ha hah!”

Perfect end to just a little small talk.

* I have no idea what word, city, or town she actually said to me.

Something I never do

I made a list of recommendations for my pal in Louisville while I was there. I never really list links here because I don't want anyone else to see that there are better writers than me. Seriously, I'm that paranoid. But as a refresher for my friend (and as a tutorial for my readers), here's what I had to say about blogs and movies:

Blogs of note:

Tokyo Girl Down Under, http://tokyo-girl.blogspot.com/
Dooce, http://www.dooce.com/
(For the diametrical opposite of my friend's anti-consumerism ideals) Stephanie Klein, http://stephanieklein.blogs.com/
Mimi Smartypants, http://smartypants.diaryland.com/
Leah Peah, http://leahpeah.com/blog/
(Not updated enough, but,) Things My Boyfriend Says, http://www.thingsmyboyfriendsays.com/
(Defunct but briefly hilarious) The Daily Lush, http://www.dailylush.com/
(Not a blog but...) McSweeney's Internet Tendency, http://mcsweeneys.net/

Movies I wish you'd see (if you haven't already):

Lives of Others
Children of Men
Departed
Lucky Number Slevin
Brick

And ... I can't remember the rest of the list.

** Addendum 3-7-07: This post contained something else I never do (or strive not to): it was titled with a typo until my husband pointed it out. All those times I've corrected his grammar just paid off.

Most Amazing Thing Ever

As a long-term reader of the blog you probably know I have long-term pain. I've been in increasing chronic pain up until it's leveled off pretty recently. The most amazing treatment you can imagine? Feldenkrais. For realsies. It teaches your body new muscle memory (and feels better than a massage).

As a pain update, the diagnosis of undifferentiated arthritis is kapoot. I'm now diagnosed as fibromyalgia. So now I have something new to research.

I never believed in fibromyalgia, it sounded like a medical excuse to say they don't know why stuff hurts, but now that I know more I think I get it. I'm starting new medicine (not exactly pain-killers, FYI), but it's making me super tired. Snorrre. I hope this is what I need to feel better.

Teens on poetry

2:57 A.M.; April, 25, 1992

Kiss of the fairy on your brow,
Kiss of the temptress on your chin.
Sigh of the devil, mark of the beast;
Precious love, the fairy can read your lies.
You appeal to her innocence – pray she won’t see;
But that was your mistake – and she won’t pay the price.
Poor fairy, see what you’ve done?
Or maybe you can’t – hardened by your foolish pride.
Her youth and innocence you wanted to taint;
But laugh at her now, she’s lost all she had.
You’ve hurt the fairy, you’ve broken her heart;
But what more could be expected, sweet fairy let you in her soul.
When did you quit loving, when would you set her free?
Had you planned on keeping her on a string – a last resort when the other could not be found?
Or had you planned, said you’d play it by ear,
But now my precious, come to grips with fairy’s fear.
Goodbye sweet fairy, don’t kiss her away,
But turn to the other, and hope that she’ll stay.

Strangely, this incomprehensible gibberish outlines pretty much all of my relationships up until I got married. I invested in the wrong guy, got played, and wrote bad poetry about it. I even remember the guy this poem was about and who he pretended like he wasn't sleeping with while we were dating. He lived on Lowell Street, in Louisville. Part of me wonders what happened to him, but most of me never thinks of him at all.

I love you

From the other room I hear, "Shgee-tee-aim?"

"Almost"

"Shgee-tee-aim?"

"No, Shje-tem"

"Oh," I think, "They're reading 'Je'taime' off the stuffed animal dog." At least someone got it right ;)

God's Rock star