10-minute prep-time

Today didn’t start off very well. My alarm didn’t go off, there was traffic on the freeway, and through some acrobatic feat of rapid-tooth-brushing I managed to get a splodge of toothpaste on my jeans. But, on the other hand, the day didn’t start off too badly. My alarm didn’t go off, sure, but I got to work right on time, instead of doing like I usually do and getting there a few minutes early and driving the long way through the business park at 8 MPH. And a little splodge of toothpaste on your jeans is nowhere near as demoralizing as a splodge on your shirt. Yup, there was only way thing that could make or break this catastrophic but average day, and that was the investigation and evaluation of my alarm clock’s failure.

You see, today was the first day in the 12 years that I’ve had my alarm clock that it didn’t go off. It went off reliably through middle school when I had to get to the bus stop by 7:10, and in high school when I had a car and would set the alarm for 10 minutes before I had to leave. (A 10-minute prep time is perfectly possible for a teenaged girl. 1-2 minutes for pants and shirt, 1-2 minutes for teeth and hair, 3-4 minutes for finding shoes and agonizing over various zits, 1-2 for debating and deciding not to eat breakfast.) My alarm clock was a supremely reliable sort; it never failed me on early mornings when I had flights to catch, midterms to study for, or job interviews to be ever-so-slightly early for. It even indulged me for the many long years when I left the alarm on during the weekends for the pure joy of turning it off and going back to sleep.

I’m not exactly sure when I got the alarm clock, but I think it was around my 12th birthday. The clunky black plastic seems very 1998, and the sticky tape deck on the front panel matches that time period where CDs existed but cheap stereo companies were still trying to make the tape happen. Anyway, whenever it was, it was back in the time when buttons on electronics still stuck out of the main box of the item, before all of this touch-screen nonsense and the advent of inlaid, flush buttons. My alarm clock has a wire antenna that never works and an excellent sense of humor: I’ve started many hung-over mornings to the tune of Margaritaville.

I realize, in theory, that retiring an aging alarm clock might not be the worst thing. A person needs an alarm clock that can be relied upon to rouse them for work and most everyone I know has already switched to using their multi-purpose cell phone as an alarm. Finally, my alarm clock is old; the tape deck has to be pried open and there is dust between the buttons on that thing that isn’t ever coming off. It’s easy to believe that it might be giving out. Still, I feel bad getting rid of it – it was outdated practically before it came out of the box and I respect that.

Here’s to hoping that this morning was a fluke and that tomorrow will start off better --with a familiar screech from the black, dust-clogged speakers of an alarm clock that doesn’t come with a texting function.

10-minute prep-time

Today didn’t start off very well. My alarm didn’t go off, there was traffic on the freeway, and through some acrobatic feat of rapid-tooth-brushing I managed to get a splodge of toothpaste on my jeans. But, on the other hand, the day didn’t start off too badly. My alarm didn’t go off, sure, but I got to work right on time, instead of doing like I usually do and getting there a few minutes early and driving the long way through the business park at 8 MPH. And a little splodge of toothpaste on your jeans is nowhere near as demoralizing as a splodge on your shirt. Yup, there was only way thing that could make or break this catastrophic but average day, and that was the investigation and evaluation of my alarm clock’s failure.

You see, today was the first day in the 12 years that I’ve had my alarm clock that it didn’t go off. It went off reliably through middle school when I had to get to the bus stop by 7:10, and in high school when I had a car and would set the alarm for 10 minutes before I had to leave. (A 10-minute prep time is perfectly possible for a teenaged girl. 1-2 minutes for pants and shirt, 1-2 minutes for teeth and hair, 3-4 minutes for finding shoes and agonizing over various zits, 1-2 for debating and deciding not to eat breakfast.) My alarm clock was a supremely reliable sort; it never failed me on early mornings when I had flights to catch, midterms to study for, or job interviews to be ever-so-slightly early for. It even indulged me for the many long years when I left the alarm on during the weekends for the pure joy of turning it off and going back to sleep.

I’m not exactly sure when I got the alarm clock, but I think it was around my 12th birthday. The clunky black plastic seems very 1998, and the sticky tape deck on the front panel matches that time period where CDs existed but cheap stereo companies were still trying to make the tape happen. Anyway, whenever it was, it was back in the time when buttons on electronics still stuck out of the main box of the item, before all of this touch-screen nonsense and the advent of inlaid, flush buttons. My alarm clock has a wire antenna that never works and an excellent sense of humor: I’ve started many hung-over mornings to the tune of Margaritaville.

I realize, in theory, that retiring an aging alarm clock might not be the worst thing. A person needs an alarm clock that can be relied upon to rouse them for work and most everyone I know has already switched to using their multi-purpose cell phone as an alarm. Finally, my alarm clock is old; the tape deck has to be pried open and there is dust between the buttons on that thing that isn’t ever coming off. It’s easy to believe that it might be giving out. Still, I feel bad getting rid of it – it was outdated practically before it came out of the box and I respect that.

Here’s to hoping that this morning was a fluke and that tomorrow will start off better --with a familiar screech from the black, dust-clogged speakers of an alarm clock that doesn’t come with a texting function.

Neck braces!

Since I’ve been talking about my personal hygiene habits a lot lately [aside: I notice that I’ve developed an odd fondness for the phrase “a lot” also…I had to stop myself from using it about 400 times today], I’ve decided to revisit a favorite topic of mine that gets sorely neglected here: television. You know, as everyone knows because I’m a snob and I shove it down people’s throats, that I don’t have a TV. But unlike most people who don’t have TVs, I can still admit that TV is awesome and that I go through phases of mild addiction.

My live-in friend and I have lately been watching some a little more embarrassing than usual. I know, I know; you’re asking yourself what could be more embarrassing than my recent foray into the world of watching Xena. And if you are patient I will enlighten you. There is something a little more embarrassing than heavily melodramatic fantasy television with a lot of gratuitous female nudity and that, my friends, is sports melodrama with gratuitous cheerleader nudity. And what’s worse, I don’t even understand football.

So yeah, Kevin and I have been watching Friday Night Lights, mainly because Ira Glass watches it but also because we are easily overwhelmed by emotion in fake teenagers. I got a bit misty eyed when this one teenager (who was paralyzed) told the coach that he was sorry if he’d let him down. When he muttered that from behind his neck-brace my head all but exploded. Coming from a town where football was given little funding and even less notice, the idea that someone would remember that there had been a game going on during their catastrophic injury is perplexing.

But then again, I’ve never been much for team spirit and all that. Mainly I was always into jaded female warriors fighting the forces of evil. These two facts are probably related.

Breaking cleanly from the starting gate

Everyone who is anyone knows that I’ve been reading books about horse racing lately; therefore, I feel it is worth a blog post to advertise the fact that I’m stopping. I know that it’s shocking and that I’ve devoted miles and miles of cyberspace to praising horse books, but I think I finally managed to OD on horse-related non-fiction. At least, that’s what I was thinking when I woke up repeatedly last night from horse-related nightmares.

Now, to be fair not all of my nightmares last night were about horse racing. Some of them were about work and some of them were about some asshole stealing both of the bumpers off of my car. Most of them, however, were about horse racing. I’m not even exactly sure how they were about horse racing; I only know that I kept waking up in a panic, concerned over paddock boots and “break clean” from the starter gate. To make matters worse I was in that hazy intermediate state of coherence and kept having to reassure my soggy mind that there was no part of my life that resembled a horse race.

The terrible thing is that I was on such a g.d. roll with reading horse books. In the last two weeks I’d swept through three, one on Secretariat, one on Seabiscuit, and another on Ruffian. I started a book on Man o’ War last night and I fell asleep reading it. In hindsight I think it was the book on Ruffian that really did me in though…There was a lot about riding towards the light with shattered ankle bones toward the end.

Anyway, this has developed into a very belated and boring post so I’ll stop while I’m still ahead (or at least not that far behind). I’m going to retire with some very tame literature this evening – I’m thinking something about the prairie at about the 5th grade reading level. Any book that mentions the use of sunbonnets to preserve a racially-charged paleness of the skin is like a sedative to me.

In which I list the names of the drug stores that I visited

I’ll warn you right now; this is going to be a boring one. It’s going to be one of those warbling, pointless entries where I talk about my favorite boring things, like shampoo brands and deodorant scents. I’m a creepily domestic person and I know it well.

So here’s the dealio: After an evening spent grubbing on enchiladas and house hunting, my live-in person and I went off to run a few errands. It was a fairly boring affair; we needed conditioner and deodorant and I was willing to spring for some face wash and a brand-spankin’ new loofah if the price was right. Despite our scant list and our pedestrian (oh, so pedestrian) taste in beauty products, we went to 3 different stores before we were able to find what we were looking for. I’m disappointed in Target, CVS, and Walgreens today.

As it turns out, both my husband’s deodorant and my conditioner are being phased out. Phased out! Replaced under a guise of “new and improved,” as though the science of hair-care and smell-reduction weren’t already fully formed sciences. I was finally able to find my conditioner at Wal-Mart in a new snazzy (aerodynamic?) bottle, but my best pal had to choose a new brand of deodorant. I won’t succumb to the terrible temptation and point out that having to pick a new deodorant is the pits.

Puns aside, I really sympathize with my main squeeze; I’ve been using the same brand of deodorant for years. (Hint: It’s the same brand as my shampoo and conditioner. As a smell-impaired person I like to think that means all of my fragrances “match.”) And getting a new brand is stressful. In fact, I might just come out and say that deodorant itself is pretty g.d. stressful.

I remember when I first started wearing deodorant, around the time that I turned 12. From the beginning it was a fetching symbol for the murky underside of the adolescence that I was trying like the dickens to suppress; I kept my stick in my bedroom and put it on before I changed from my pjs. (Disclaimer: I swear I’m not alone in this freakish preoccupation...When I was a teenager I had a friend who stored hers in a decorative wooden box to conceal it from her brothers.)

After a few years I got over this fear and started leaving my stick in the bathroom cabinet and putting it on after I changed, trading those awkward side-of-shirt deodorant smears for small white flecks on the collar of my crewnecks. I started to take a little pride in my deodorant and the glandular regularity that necessitated it. I consider myself an avid and enthusiastic deodorant user now, but that doesn’t mean I want to go switching brands willy-nilly. When I finally switched from the brightly colored Teen Spirit sticks to my current staunchly white and powdery stick the transition was difficult and I have no care to repeat the process.

There were benefits, though. For one, I no longer smell like a pack of sweaty Skittles.

I'm a sensitive inner-person and I need a nap

This is going to be an exercise in brevity because I am determined to get my daily allotment of blogging done before I have to leave for work. Since this was my plan, you’d think that I would have scheduled time for writing it. Alas, I slept in. I have an excuse, however weak for sleeping in though. I didn’t sleep well last night and frankly I haven’t slept well in a couple of days. I think that it’s the stress of starting a new job (everyone knows that I hate being a door-hoverer and question-asker) and a few other random stressors. Whatever the reason, I haven’t been sleeping well and I’m the sort of lout who needs her sleep.

I use the word “lout” because I like the sound of it so early in the morning and because I am a little ashamed of being the kind of person who needs to log a solid 8 hours of sleep. I remember long ago when I was in high school I would always overhear my classmates talking about how they hadn’t started a homework assignment until 10 p.m. the night before and that they’d been up until 2 a.m. finishing; in college the situation was similar, only my classmates enjoyed bragging that they’d never been to sleep at all. It’s a rite of passage strewn with wasted time and 5-Hour Energy tubes.

At the risk of sounding like a goodie-two-shoe (WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?), I’ll admit that I never had much to contribute to the pissing contest of late nights. I’m not really much for planning and I’ve never been much for marathon studying, but somehow, I always got to sleep at a decent hour. I guess the sad thing here is that I would rather go to bed at midnight than eke out a few more percentage points on a test. And I always slept awesomely. That’s a lack of resolve right there.

I’ve written before about how I used to sleep in such an amazing way – that I used to just fall asleep on couches and bean-bag chairs and sleep uninterrupted through the night. Even when I met my main squeeze 3 years ago I was a champion sleeper; we would sleep twin bed in a room with no air conditioning and I would drool into my pillow as he laid wake.

Sometimes I try to reason out the difference between now and then. Obviously this was before and at the very beginning of my random night-time carpal tunnel pains; my perpetually tingling fingers and the splints (which I’m always determined to try sleeping without and then regret it) are probably factors. But then again I think it might be mostly stress. It’s easy for me to get stressed out, squash it all down inside of me as I traipse cheerfully through my day and have it erupt in random, tense awakenings. Stupid sensitive inner-person and stupid sleepless nights.

Alright, I should get ready for work. I hope that this proclamation to write before work doesn’t just lead to many entries on my sleeping habits. Those are bound to be worse than the many entries on my much-debated showering habits.

I'm sure pretty I've never washed a window

I am trying to write and I find myself very distracted by the idea that we might be getting a house sometime soon. It’s not for certain; in all honesty it’s not even all that likely. But it is a possibility and I’m the kind of person who finds possibilities very distracting. (As an aside I’m also having trouble coming up with something to write about that doesn’t center on houses and nostalgia; I have a hunch that I should be reflecting more on the world at large instead of thinking about chickens and escrow.)

I was writing recently about how I never expected to be the kind of person who would buy a house. First and most dramatically, I never expected to be able to afford to buy a house and without the fortuitous (ha!) explosion of the market, I never would have in this sunny state. Secondly, I figured that house buying was for squares with, like, kids and Precious Moments figurines. As I’m light-years away from anything so domestic, I didn’t think that buying a house was in the cards.

But here’s the thing: I’ve always been obsessed with houses. I have that misguided impression that the coolness of your living situation rubs off on you and you must strive to find a home that expresses your personality. This is total crap, I know; the kind of emotional sloppiness that sends droves of post-collegiate scoundrels wandering towards the east coast each year. It’s shallow (and we’ve been over my profound shallowness before) to think that your house has a bearing on your personal worth and that there can’t be perfectly decent human beings living in luxury condos. That said, I’m not in favor of settling.

I’m of the opinion that people shouldn’t settle and they shouldn’t buy houses for their alarming re-sale value. Everyone should get really teary eyed over their house; they should covet it and clean it and not foreclose on it even when that seems sensible. Obviously I’m feeling a bit scattered and emotional at the moment and I do believe that housing decisions should be made with the purest clarity of mind and the driest pragmatism. But after you’ve coolly and cleanly assessed your personal worth and your dividends and your credit score, you should probably gush a little bit. If you are using the words “starter house” and not gushing, you probably should stick to the emotionally stagnant world of renting.

A final thought on this topic and then I’ll leave it for the time being. I don’t think that I ever imagined that I would be old enough to buy a house. And believe me, I’m not old. I’m youthful and snooty bartenders in fancy restaurants card me to the point of rudeness. I suppose I’ve always thought of houses as a fixture of matriarchy – the family seat in the old South and all that nonsense. A home means legitimacy as an adult; it means buying a Christmas tree, cleaning out gutters and washing the windows. It means staying in one place for a long, long time.

It’s disconcerting to think that I might have my own family seat for my two-person-one-dog family. And by disconcerting I mean pleasant and absolutely terrifying.

I'll admit a lackluster effort and a fondness for baked goods

As you may have picked up from my posts here, I’m a very shallow person. I don’t spend a whole lot of time having deep thoughts or in self-reflection – mostly I get my jollies by bitching about the state of my immediate surroundings and pitching those thoughts into the cyber-void. But lately (and through no fault of my own) my house has been filling up with books about psychology and other voodoo practices of the same touchy-feely bent and because I’m me and they are free books, I’ve been reading them. And sometimes I even think about what I read after I read it. Things are getting hellsa Zen over here.

Alright, I may not be hellsa Zen yet, but at least I know what being hellsa Zen would look like now. And I also know that there are probably a lot of terrible evil feelings in side of my happy-go-lucky soul, feelings that can only be properly squashed and resolved through self-reflection. I haven’t decided yet whether I am willing to undergo said reflection, but I think that knowing that I should is an improvement.

I read a quote somewhere on the interwebs that said (approximately) that people never know exactly what they are doing; they don’t know how to dress or speak or spell. This seems rather related. Like, if people put a lot of thought and reflection into their actions/decisions they would know what they were doing instead of just stumbling around. This sounds very elementary, I realize, but as a certified stumbler I can definitely relate to the idea of living without a game plan. I’m not purposeful; I’m a wanderer, a guesser and a proficient time waster. And I’m married to the kind of person who buys all of his clothes from one store, so I have plenty of exposure to planners.

This has been an utterly lackluster post. I thought that if I started going off on the topic of self reflection and Zen I would drum up some good material. I wanted to say that I am feeling very proactive lately, despite the fact that I just ate two cupcakes for lunch. I guess wanting to think is a far sight better than trying not to think. Thursday obligation complete. Thoughts?

If this was AIM I would know what to title this.

I realized last night that I never sign into AIM anymore. The revelation came to me while I was chatting with an old friend – an old friend who I used to communicate with daily via AIM – using gmail chat. There is nothing wrong with gmail chat, of course, and we were chatting away as cheerfully and easily as we used to, but there was something sad about leaving AIM and that little yellow man who symbolized it behind. Sure, I don’t miss that obnoxious “door opening” noise, but there are other things.

AIM was a big chunk of my social life as an adolescent and young adult, as I wager it was for most people in my age bracket. It started in middle school when everyone had AOL as their internet provider (dating myself, again) and we all indulged in shy chat-room romances and petty instant message flirting. Instant messaging was revolutionary and liberating – crushes were discussed with reckless abandon without the threat of voices cracking and parents overhearing.

I was a little late to the party, as I am to most things, because my parents had an old computer and an even older phone line. When I finally got my own computer (purple I-Mac that I think that I’ve discussed here before – screw you I-Pad!) AIM was the first thing that I downloaded. Later, in college, AIM became a virtual lifeline. Those were the early days of my cell phone hatred – the pre-texting days – and I left my AIM up constantly. Because I lived in a series of small rooms and apartments, having my AIM window perpetually open meant that I was perpetually within hearing range of the little burble that announced a new message. I would eat dinner, study and nap with one ear open to my main social outlet.

I guess that feeling of social connectedness is the reason that I feel so nostalgic for AIM. Those were the days of constant chatting and bitchin’ away messages. (Really, I was a pro at away messages. I had hundreds of them and I often processed new information through an away message filter: what a hilarious fact or quote, perhaps a good away message? This is a level of creative preoccupation that I wish I could claim now.)

The beauty of AIM, at least for the antisocial masses, was its indirect quality. You could type something that you were afraid to say aloud; you could send someone a message without having to put on shoes. As an added bonus, you could usually tell if someone was around their computer (I used to have an away message that read “Working on a good idle”) and you could prep your message accordingly.

Sometimes you miss the glory days of the internet and on those days you can’t help but think that the only answer is posting something un-clever and biting on the FB profiles of people who profess a love for the medium. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be posting “*Unlike!*” under the photos of my enemies until AIM becomes retro-cool.

Hail to otters and others

I have been meaning to write something about what it means to be a person who has stationary (a tangent provoked by receiving a letter from a friend who has both stationary and a business card), but I had something of a revelation while checking my email a few hour ago and I am always willing to put a more immediate rant in front of one that’ll keep. I will also take this moment to note that I haven’t been posting with my usual hell-bent regularity, and to pretend that you’ve noticed. I’ve been busy; I’ve had a recent change in occupation and though I wrote a few things about it last week I decided that they were too dreary and self-reflective for this venue. This, obviously, is a fun blog. If it was a sad blog it would be on Deviant Art and have some dragon background. (Is even typing the title Deviant Art dating me? I think so.)

Anyway, it occurred to me while I was checking my email that I am the worst multitasker of all time. I’m expecting a couple of emails, and I thought (wrongly) that I could just pull up the email and shoot around a couple of messages while still working on an essay. But I couldn’t move forward with one until I was finished with the other – in this case until I had bantered back and forth with a few people, sent off a couple of link to the houses that we’ve bid on, and with the sudden realization that it had been 20 minutes, signed violently off.

This probably isn’t that surprising to those of you who know me personally to be the sort of person who becomes freakishly overwhelmed at the drop of a hat, but as usual, I was shocked. I thought of all of the time that I had spent multitasking in my life – in college when I would never shut down my AIM window, all of the reading that I’ve done while eating dinner and at stoplights, and the rude but cost-effective habit I have of reading my email while on the phone.

I realized, thinking of these instances, that in multitasking I was probably doing a really crap job at both tasks. That’s really depressing. It is depressing to think that you’ve done bad work in the name of efficiency or boredom, and to realize that you might be one of those post-internet zombies who needs two forms of input to stay happy. I hate the idea that I might be that sort of zombie, the kind of person who is always mentally reviewing other options and checking their messages under the table.

This is, of course, related to other recent discussions about the ways that prolonged internet use can really limit a person’s ability to sustain interest over time. We lose our attention-spans and we gain the ability to see a different picture of an otter every day of the year. Don’t get me wrong, fellas, I still love the internet and all of its glory. Hail to blogs and to free information and all that. Yee-haw for Twitter.

But sometimes even I get a little creeped out by the way that a person like me, a person who rarely picks up their circa-1996 cell phone, can get the idea that they are a great multitasker. Multitasking is assumed now, as a character trait and as a habit and we never stop to assess our actual aptitude for it. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I’m a unitasker, hardcoredly.

Strolling

I think I am getting into the habit of writing these things right before I leave for work in the morning and therefore giving the impression that I am always either at work or thinking long, dreary thoughts about work. And that is not the case. I often think long dreary thought about a number of topics. Currently I am thinking a couple of long dreary thoughts about buying houses. (I don’t know if I have mentioned that we are considering buying a house on here yet; if not, surprise!) It’s a shocker to find that after years of looking at tiny one-storey houses that you feel oddly seduced by a two-storey house. Woe to the real estate agent that must conduct us to a 750 square-foot house and a 1,200 square-foot house in the same day.

But I am also thinking dreary thoughts about the feeling this morning when I opened my kitchen door to let the dog out. It was about 7:40 and cool out, but the coolness had a feeling of brevity – I could feel the insane hotness looming just beyond the shade. I felt it when I opened the bathroom window this morning and when I turned on the dusty fan last night. Summer is coming in all of its sweaty, grimy, glory. And when it gets here I’m going to take off my sneakers and be cranky until it retreats.

I was thinking about summer the other day when I was sitting in my car on my lunch break. It was windy outside, but warm enough in the car and after I’d eaten my lunch I felt like taking a nap. To distract myself I watched the cars and the people trouping past my windshield. First, there were a whole lot of them (both people and cars) and they all seemed so shiny in the sun – hubcaps and steel bumpers were reflecting the glare off of reflective plastic strollers, bug-eye sunglasses, and embellished flip-flops.

It wasn’t like the many lunch breaks that I spent in my car during the winter. Since I’ve been working retail the weather has been mostly daunting; people fled from their cars to the Baby Gap overhang with newspapers and purses held over their heads. Watches were checked, lunch hours were maximized and people kept their plump calves and boney feet concealed in weather-appropriate clothing.

But last week people weren’t just shopping, they were making a g.d. day of it. They were strolling and worse yet, they were strolling with strollers. I remembered, idly, that when I was a young teenager my friends and I used to convince our parents to drop us off at the outlet mall for the sheer change of scenery. We would wander, penniless, from place to place admiring toe-socks and platform sandals. Sometimes we pooled our money and bought matching Sailor Moon shoelaces.

In light of this, I’m pretty sure that it is going to be a real ugly summer.

Friendly failure

Today I tried to type 16 pages and only wrote 7. That is a really crap result to what might turn out to be a very useful experiment. It is also the reason that this post is going to be so enormously boring, since that is about 4 times my daily average in word count.

Lessons learned today in this attempt:

1. My average daily work count might be too low. Only letting this mess sit and then examining it will tell.

2. Inside of people, at the point passed 2,000 words without a set fictional topic, there is only sadness. And ironically, I find this very depressing. I would like to think that deep in side of me there is resilience and a secret store of ass-kicking awesomeness, but I am pretty sure there is just a wealth of sadness. Stupid g.d. emo predisposition.

3. At some point I thought to myself that I would like to write a bunch of profiles on the freaks that I have known. Not the honest-to-goodness freaks that end up institutionalized or living off the government but the everyday subtle freaks. Because it seems to me that I know a lot of hilarious disturbed characters. Unfortunately, I think that that falls under libel or something so don’t look forward to seeing a brilliant expose of coworkers, ex-roommates and my favorite waitress at Applebee’s here.

4. Finally, I want to note that this brain exhaustion is very welcome. I worry a lot that because I am not really tired that I haven’t done anything all day. And this day, which went by in a blur, I don’t have to worry about that.

Now to find out whether 7 single-spaced pages can be pushed to16 pages with double spacing. (P.S.: I know that it can’t. I did college and all of that crap.)

And have a nice day.

Because it is early and I’m still waking up, I’ll start off with some preliminary small-talk. The weather today is rainy, after weeks of sunshine, and I am pleased with the shift, excepting some small concern over my dog and the strawberry plants that some guy I live with planted in the backyard. I’m concerned over the dog because she is a demure old lady with no fondness for getting her feet wet but she will have to spend her day (dog-like) outside because I am off to work in a few minutes.

I worked the weekend but I didn’t work yesterday, so in some absurd way this is like the beginning of my week. That’s one of the hardest things for a schedule-oriented person like me to wrap their head around: when you aren’t working a 9-5, M-F job, the week is permeable. It’s virtual heartbreak to my little compulsory-schooled, office-job-since-17 heart.

The whole thing is a little weird, though, when you consider the frequency with which people who invariably work most of the weekends ask each other what their weekend plans are. I have even heard corny “TGIF” lines being exchanged by people who will report, sensible shoes in hand, at 10 a.m. the next morning for an 8-hour shift. I like to think that this is less about being delusional and more about relying on conversational scripts to get through the day. Referencing the weekend is like a “Nice weather we’re having” for the young and fast set.

As a generally awkward person, I love having these scripted conversations. I love asking people what their plans are, how their weekend was, what they are doing for lunch, and remarking with special casualness on how many hours of work remain in the day. I prefer to let other people introduce emotionally strenuous topics of conversation in the workplace; I don’t want to seem presumptuous. (I did break this rule to express, unprovoked, my distress at having to work during the Kentucky Derby and my intention to wear an oversized black hat in protest and mourning. No wonder people think that I’m so awesome.)

The common and unfortunate side effect of these work-time scripts is that they start to be instinctive, especially when your workplace has a set of mandatory phrases for dealing with customers. In the past when I have worked in phone-heavy positions, I used to answer my cell phone with the whole spiel – giving my name and department and asking people if I could help them with something. (Again, no wonder people think I’m so awesome.)

Now that I work in a place where I largely thank people and greet them, I find myself compelled to shout a cheerful hello to any opening door. I almost bit my tongue trying to keep myself from bursting forth in my singsong voice at a coffee shop last week, as the doorbell there was reminiscent of the ding-dong of the door at my workplace. The whole thing was making me mighty nervous, but then maybe that was because I’d been too awkward to amend my coffee order to make it decaf.

Since we are on the topic of work-related humiliations, I’ve been meaning to discuss how I find myself responding to any “Thank you” with a swiftly executed “Thank you! Have a nice day!” and by looking around frantically for my copy of the receipt. This is a particularly embarrassing reaction when made to someone that you are going to be seeing regularly, as it tends to come off a bit…dismissive. Also it comes off a bit weird. And probably it makes me seem just a little bit awesome.

No grab-ass, college boy.

The title of this blog has very little to do with the content, even in the abstract fashion that anything in this blog manages to relate to anything along the borders/sidebar. Some guy said it in the movie that I watched last night (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?) and it was the only thing that made me giggle during a 2-hour tour of bug-eyed women and sailors in short shorts having heart attacks. The whole thing convinced me that my life is just an endless dance marathon of doom and that if someone rips your last silk stocking you should ask them to shoot you with a petite handgun and, provided they are a gentleman, they will oblige you.

Unfortunately, the above rant pretty well summarizes my feelings on the film, and as that paragraph is a fairly crummy blog even by my (admittedly slack) standards, we’ll have to leave the topic and continue onward.

Everyone who is anyone knows that I’m obsessed with email. When my main squeeze and I returned from our vacation last night we both crouched in front of the computer for an emergency email evaluation. We aren’t much into taking turns, so together we scrolled though my mess of job-site spam and Facebook comments, and then sorted through his digital pile of Amazon ads and real estate correspondence. Nothing was determined to be pressing, and we left the usual junk to be dealt with individually. Now, you could argue that the real estate stuff pertained to me and that the Facebook comments that I receive are often directed at my FB-free pal. But, however I phrase it, we still checked our email together. And that’s a little freaky.

There are a couple of truths that I learned from reading lady magazines that I hold to be completely self evident. One is that you shouldn’t steal anything that someone might recognize (a boyfriend, a hair style, a hundred dollar bill) from your lady friends. The second is that checking someone else’s email means that you are a super scumbag. This motto extends to cell-phone messages, instant message records and works for family and friends, but especially for gf/bf combos. I frequently tell my main squeeze (never an offender of this rule) that reading your spouse’s email means that you are a sleazebag and will eventually get a divorce.

I’m not trying to be a stickler, completely. Obviously I discuss the contents of my email with just about who will listen and especially with my spousal person. And I see the temptation of checking on someone’s email and the ways that you could write it off as your computer/your property/complete honesty ect. But I do think that having private routes of communication are important.

Here’s another angle. Our house is full of notebooks and none of them are joint-custody. When one party encounters a notebook that doesn’t belong to them, they politely decline reading it. This means seeing temptation and having to move the temptation from the kitchen table before you can sit down to enjoy your meal. This strife is particularly keen for my husband, since I have a bad habit of seizing the back of a grocery list or receipt in the drive-thru to record my sudden whims and feelings. Spousal person reported last week picking up a seemingly empty stack of sticky notes only to find on note 3 the beginning of an impassioned rant of mine from the summer of 2007. I’m not a very discrete person.

Is the whole point here that people curb their commutations to fit a certain audience? Or is it that people know when they look into something that wasn’t intended for them that they will find something that they don’t want to find? To be vaguer yet and more melodramatic, nosiness can seem almost self destructive.

I don’t know really. Mainly I was just thinking about the weirdness of joint [email] checking, private journals in plain sight and life being an evil dance party of horse-themed doom. That’s it, I guess. I don’t have much more to say on the topic – thought when I envisioned writing this while showering this morning it was a lot more poignant.

Showering, sharing

I had a hard time getting up this morning. I probably need to go to bed earlier but the evenings go so quickly and I am taunted by people who are always mentioning that they go to bed in the early hours of the morning. I wish that I was the kind of person a) capable of entertaining myself in an un-internet related way until the dark of the night and b) could exist cheerfully on little sleep. But I’m a person who needs sleep. When I don’t get enough sleep I am grumpy and I feel twitchy and sweaty, no matter how many showers I take.

(More boring news on my personal routine: For the last couple of days I have been showering in the morning. This is a catastrophic change for me, a life-time night-time showerer with long hair. I thought that morning showering would help me to wake up more easily but it usually just makes me want to crawl back in bed.)

Part of the reason that I was up “late” last night, beyond the fact that I didn’t get home from work until 7-ish, is that I have been trying to read this book about Secretariat. I’m not really one for reading nonfiction, but I do try to write nonfiction and that seems to be a horrible disconnect. In some weird writing book (I read a lot of those) the author talked about writing what you want to read, and while I am partial to short nonfiction and essays, I consume novels at a gluttonous pace. Ergo, me and Secretariat.

I know that I don’t talk about horses or horse racing ever on this blog, but as a youngin’ I was sufficiently obsessed with horses to leave a residue of obsession in my older, wiser, and Seabiscuit-desktop-background years. I grew up around horses, ridden Western with long spilt-reins of colorful nylon; always brown, always safe, always plodding, reliable and friendly.

Teenagers typically get some bee in their bonnet about rebelling, but I was a sissy and a predestined sap of the liberal arts, so I kept my rebellions sly and symbolic. As a teenager I was surrounded by faux-Western culture, therefore I wanted to be a fancy-pants rider with white jodhpurs and a red hunting jacket. English riding is about a lot of qualities that I can’t claim (calm, good posture, level eyes, neatness of appearance, and measured movements) and therein was the allure. Riding was a challenging thing for me, but the form in which I obsessed over it was definitely a classist preoccupation. Brainwashed by hundreds of girl-and-her-horse books, I wanted Thoroughbreds, white cotton saddle pads, and white picket paddocks; to me these things implied poise and stability.

I’m not nearly so silly now, but I still get a bit excited over Thoroughbred racing. I like to read about it, to hear the newscasters inevitably referring to the insurmountable “heart” of the horses, to see the pictures of these million dollar-athletes being hosed down. Plus, it’s a good time of year to be excited over it. Last year my main squeeze and I contemplated holding a Kentucky Derby party (hella Mint Juleps and big hats) but our plans were foiled. Provided that I don’t have to work on that Saturday, maybe this year I’ll have an occasion for wearing my over-sized sunhat. I need to practice my swoon.

Who in this co-op doesn't own Planet Earth on DVD?

Yesterday I was driving home after an admirable pesto-chicken sandwich and I saw a rainbow, the bright sort that elementary school teachers yearn after but is inevitably only visible from cars on freeways and office windows, stretched over a dilapidated drive-in movie screen. I was in the mood to be contemplative – it was a nice moment to be driving quietly with your radio off, with the freeway wet and the sun shining in that fashion which would be beautiful if it didn’t obscure the dotted lines between the lanes and remind you of all of the spilt oil.

“A rainbow over the drive-in,” I muttered to myself. I’m a huge fan of talking to myself when I’m alone; I react to things very verbally and it is easier on the ego to accept and cultivate my conversations with myself than to try and staunch every “Yikes!” or “Well, thanks” that pops out of my mouth.

Anyway, my mood was such that I wished that “rainbow” wasn’t such a horrifically corny word/natural phenomenon. “Rainbow over the Drive-in” has that special juxtaposition quality (natural/man-made, sensible/absurd, timeless/outdated) that would make a fine title for something, if referencing rainbows wasn’t practically as babyish as name-dropping baby rabbits and cupcakes. If the word rainbow is in your band’s name, you will probably end up dating some washed-up child star, like the youngest brother from Malcolm in the Middle. If your band title includes both “rainbow” and “drive-in,” expect to perform in poodle skirts and roller skates.

Thankfully, I don’t have a band to name. I only write things, and if the word rainbow is in your book/essay title, the light-water majesty is guaranteed to make its appearance just as hope is being restored. I’m not much for being hopeful, so that means “Rainbow over the Drive-in” is headed to the slush pile.

For the sake of curiosity and for the sake of giving me something to do as I finish my cereal, I will place before the jury the essay idea that I would cultivate if I wanted to make use of the corny lyricism of “Rainbow over the Drive-in.” I would write about how I have almost zero regard for nature and an overgrown sense of nostalgia, the elements of which, combined, make me far more moved by the sight of a dilapidated drive-in movie screen than by the rainbow stretched over it.

Having a hollow pit where my love of nature should be is nothing that I am proud of; I very much want to be the sort of person whose eyes well with tears over email forwards of picturesque sights; as things lay currently my eyes only well when there are cute animals doing unlikely things Photoshopped into these pictures, and that’s only because I’m laughing too hard.

Really, though, it’s not like I have absolutely no regard for nature. I believe in the soothing effects of a landscape and I’m going to the forest/coast next week because I think that the removal of a person to nature can be revitalizing. But even in that case I am valuing nature because it isn’t something (the mall) instead of for its innate attractiveness. Of course, I am also going because I enjoy camping for the ridiculous hot-dogs-beer-and-fresh-air aspects – I might want quiet but I won’t live a monkish existence with no condiments.

I was thinking about this indifference yesterday (pre-pesto) while I was chatting online with a friend who is planning a camping trip in the rainforest. (That’s right: I’m the kind of person who has friends that camp in the rainforest. Let me in your co-op.) I was clicking through pictures that she linked, thinking about Jurassic Park when I realized that I would probably never go to the rainforest, just like I’m never going to get stoned and watch the Planet Earth special on Animal Planet. I am pretty much a rotting corpse of a human being.

I was reading some blog the other day that listed something to the effect of “knowing that what is fun for others isn’t necessarily fun for you” as one of the secrets to happiness. There were lots of other things on the list (eat less and better, ect.) but that particular entry really appealed to me, as it would appeal to many other notoriously passive I-don’t-know-what-do-you-want-to-do folks, I’m sure. I guess knowing that some people get into a dither about rainbows and other people get into a spaz over drive-in screens is merely an extension of that.

Heathens for Easter

I forgot to blog yesterday, thus marking the end of my most successful New Years resolution EVER. I might have slacked on a lot of other things (being neater, being more productive, and drinking more water) but I was totally on the ball where my blog was concerned. And the failure is all the more alarming because I had a totally classy topic picked out: cheese whiz.

I wanted to write about cheese whiz because I used to eat it a lot; it was the kind of thing that we never had laying around the house but that my mom always put in my Christmas stocking and care packages. Now, it’s no secret that I like cheese in general. And cheese that can be manipulated with one hand while reading is my favorite kind.

That said, I don’t eat cheese whiz too often anymore. I never made a conscious decision not to eat it; it just sort of turned out that way. I’d love to say it is because I married someone who doesn’t take kindly to eating preservatives and under his tutelage I have changed my food-sinner ways, however, in addition to making me seem like a quitter, that’s blatantly untrue. Mainly it’s just expensive and I’m cheap.

Anyway, I had some cheese whiz on Monday of this week because my mom put some in my Easter basket. (That’s right, my mom still makes me an Easter basket. Every holiday is fundamentally an excuse to give gifts in my family. Sometimes they involve beer. Heathens for Easter!) I’ve never been one for turning down some free ‘whiz, so I squirted it onto a couple crackers while scoping out my blogs. It was pretty damn amazing.

The more amazing thing, however, is the feeling of strange shame that comes from eating cheese whiz alone in your home. I’m sure that the feeling of shame would be more pronounced if you were eating it in public; however, the alone-eating shame was pretty profound. It sort of made me wish that I wasn’t reading the blog of some emotionally turbulent teenager who loves to make bland “Life is Nothing”-statements. In a certain light (a glaring artificial light that made the most of the bright orange cheesy goodness), I might have seemed creepy.

Lunch would be too awkward; let’s get coffee.

If I was going to write a gimmicky book, something that would get me on the Today Show in a salmon colored pullover to explain my “inspiration” and a guest spot on Hollywood Squares, I would spend a year alternating between Peet’s Coffee and Starbucks and recording my observations. I wouldn’t waste my time on drinking the coffee or thinking about the freshness of the beans; I would go between the two devoting myself entirely to observing, cataloging and comparing the people who loiter in each establishment.

One-on-one consumer rivalry is all about promoting the lifestyle (which is how I know that Pepsi drinkers are born hooligans), and I’m suspicious of this particular dichotomy. No matter how much Celtic music they play in Peet’s, I suspect that the average patron is not discernable from the average Starbies jerkwad.

I’m not saying this because I want to knock the legs out from under Peet’s free-trade reputation or because I think that Starbucks gets the short end of the stick – I don’t have any loyalty to coffee shops beyond a personal loyalty to warm, sugary beverages and free wifi. I’m saying it because I spent the afternoon in Peet’s recently and found myself part of a mid-day ensemble that I’d thought only possible within the foamy embrace of a Starbucks. Because I have a soft spot for Celtic music and because I once saw some old guy in a sailor suit outside of a Peet’s, I was a little surprised to find the coffee-going populace so…regular.

I know that I talk about coffee shops a lot and I realize that it takes a dramatic suspension of the hypocrisy-impulse to listen to someone who hangs out in coffee shops bitch about the people who loiter there. Lack of perspective duly noted. But for the purpose of this rant, I’ll continue.

I spent an afternoon in Peet’s last week because I needed to get out of the house to recharge my faltering brain. While there I did quiet, coffee shop things like read, take notes, and drink tea. I also participated in my favorite coffee shop activity: spying.

I watched ladies in white-leather watches refer to their dogs by their first names, talk about kitchen remodels and plan birthday parties at the Macaroni Grille. I watched struggling father-son conversations where the young man stared at his cell phone and the father referenced various “hilarious” television commercials. I stared at two hipsters sitting at a table outside of the shop, plaided and bearded, with colorful Bic lighters balanced on top of their twin cigarette packs. I sat beside a young man who periodically read his (presumed) essay aloud in a whisper. Before I left I saw an old man in cowboy boots order a hot chocolate.

I wasn’t annoyed by this crowd – I’d left my house intentionally to refresh my brain – but my keen sense of elitism recognized them as annoying. So annoying, in fact, that I tried to recall the last time I’d been in a place with so many conspicuous characters. Eventually, it dawned on me. The last time that I’d been crowded in with middle-aged dames, hipsters and failed paternal bonding (“Lunch would be too awkward; let’s get coffee”) was my last trip to Starbucks.

And between those characters and the Peet’s people there was no moral or lifestyle difference that I could discern. Come on, Peet’s, throw us romantics a bone. I wanted there to at least be a substantial increase in people wearing REI-brand fleece jackets or something.

Holy crap, someone had better stop me or I’m going to discover that going to Target isn’t any different than going to Wal-Mart.

Hours without email: 3 and counting

I am going on vacation in a few weeks and I can’t resist reporting this any more than I can resist picking at the little “Intel Pentium Inside” sticker on my laptop. I understand the risk of raising the bar too high by constant discussion of the trip, just as I understand the risk of the sticky residue that will remain in the sticker’s absence to catch at my shirtsleeves. But I’m taking both of those risks today.

I am going on vacation to celebrate a year of being ball-and-chained to some guy I know (grudgingly I am allowing his attendance) and I am supremely excited because neither of us has been on a vacation for a couple of years, unless you count impromptu sleepovers at family events when the alcohol has been served too liberally. I won’t play the sympathy card – everyone knows that my wackadoodle employment status is a bed of my own choosing – so I’ll just say that the dude I live with deserves a vacation, whereas I just like going on vacation.

Because I don’t like admitting my own faults and because I can make rampant justifications here, I will excuse my lazy-man’s love of vacations by calling it a hereditary curse. My parents raised us to love vacations by taking us on plenty of them with little regard to cost or compulsory schooling. In my formative years I was always confused traveling with friends whose parents packed lunches and got up at 4 a.m. to drive to Tahoe. In my own family eating out on vacation was a given and my sisters and I never shared a hotel room with our parents after our youngest sister was potty trained. Oh yes, we were spoiled, though I like to temper that realization with the knowledge that my parents elected to vacation constantly instead of installing modern conveniences like air conditioning, a dishwasher or cable TV to our home.

These days my parents continue their vacationing cycle, though somewhat subdued by the general shit-show that is the economy, while my sisters and I languish outside of their special universe. We can’t afford to vacation with the frequency or in the fashion that my parents so foolishly led us to believe was the norm.

But I am going on vacation soon and it ignites all of my dormant vacationing genes. I’ve already thought about packing. (I know what you are thinking; didn’t I just go off about packing? I did recently, and don’t worry, I won’t do it again.)

So here’s the thing that I meant to get around to in this discussion of vacationing: the place that we are going is devoid of cell phone service because it is so close to the ocean. That means 3 days phone-free and I am irrationally excited about this despite the fact that I rarely use my phone. I think that the excitement about being without cell coverage is symbolic of a larger need to unplug from the world – specifically from my laptop. I suspect that my creative process has been hampered lately by my constant internet-use and email-refreshing. As a test I didn’t check my email at all yesterday until 9 p.m. and it was more of a struggle than I’d like to admit. (Especially when my only emails when I signed in were from Facebook or my mother; ego = destroyed.)

Occasionally we all need a break from our Bloglines…a very small break.

P.S., The Intel sticker is off and the result is a sticky mess. Why do they put these stupid stickers where they bubble up at the corners and taunt you? Worse idea ever.

Sandal Season

It might be silly to write this while it’s raining, but I am willing to overlook present circumstances in my enthusiasm for the big picture. It is sandal season and I’ve got a giant blister on my right heel to prove it…a blister from the pair of brown faux-Pocahontas flats that I was wearing in protest of sandal season.

(Always a mistake to wear cheap, plastic flats when you plan on being sweaty. Not that anyone ever plans on being sweaty, but you know what I mean. )

Man, do I hate sandal season. I like the first part of spring alright, when the sun is just warm enough to make the sidewalk pleasant to stand on and during that 3-weeks of green before everything burns to a dull brown, but I hate the summer. I hate the heat and the way that the sun reflects off the stupidly clean bumpers of the other cars on the freeway. I also hate how I never got around to getting prescription sunglasses when I had eye coverage and how little kids giggle at the way I wear my over-sized sunglasses over my regular ones. There are few things about summer that I don’t hate, and for a long time I assumed that was why I hated sandals.

But recently when I fixed the compulsive gaze of my brain on the many sandals that fill my workplace, it occurred to me that my hate for sandals is an entirely different issue. I don’t like sandals because they are so god-awfully casual and because I have never been able to affix my affections to casual things. I don’t like sandals for the same reason that I don’t like shorts or plans that involve “texting you when I get there”: beneath my attempts at being a bra-burning liberal I have a rigid, propriety-loving soul.

I love people who are overly formal and things that are structured – maybe that’s why I suck so thoroughly at being self-employed. I like people who wear slips under lined dresses and own completely needless business cards. And thus, I hate sandals, the shoes that promote foot nudity.

Or maybe it’s just because I have such pale, fishy feet. Either way, it's going to be a long, blistery summer.

3/18/2010? Whatever.

Because I am melodramatic and because I am, essentially, a glorified chatterbox I tend to enjoy finding my life and burdens very trying. There are other times, however, when I find my life hilarious. This (now, here, precisely) is one of those ignoble hilarious times.

I am sitting at home this evening (home after an afternoon working and a morning of mild Bud-Light-regret) and talking about buying a house. If you are waiting for the hilarious part, please pause further – buying a house is not a hilarious thing, it is a freakishly complicated intimidating thing, worsened by questions of river rock and character.

The hilarious thing is that I am discussing this while dining on a dinner of expired pesto (3/18/2010? Whatever.), peach pie and cookies-and-cream ice cream. The whole thing = deliciously immature.

Just when I think that I am getting the hang of being adult-like, I indulge myself in a little dessert-for-dinner action. Sure, I’m reading a novel that interchanges boring Victorian diary entries with saucy passages on an extramarital affair, but I don’t understand that serving a peach pie with anything other than plain vanilla ice cream is a crime. (What am I trying to prove with my preindustrial novel, you ask? It is only of note because I am reading a book that epitomizes the overlap of boring sentimentalism and pornographic imagery that characterizes the chick-lit market. No teen wizards here, brother.)

Oh, life.

just-for-show guy

I know that I have been writing a lot about work lately but, regrettably, I haven’t been doing much else and I have no intention of straining my brain over possible topics. I have considered just joining some Twitter-list of handy daily free-write topics and just stealing the hell out of those, but I have something of a soul left in me. And to prove it I will delight you get again with a tail from my working days that I found v. amusing. (Other things I find amusing: using “v.” as a replacement for “very.”)

So a few nights ago I was working the evening shift at work and it was fairly dead. Because of this relative deadness, I was able to pay close and special attention to a couple that came in and caught my (admittedly roving) eye. The couple consisted of an older woman in her 50s, dressed snappily in a pants suit and a weird just-for-show kind of scarf, with her glasses dangling from a fake-gold chain around her neck, and Some Guy. This incredibly regular guy was in his late-20s or eary-30s, wore cargo shorts and a striped polo and had a slight comb-over and some douchey hemp bracelet.

I should note that this couple caught my eye for two reasons. The first is that I have began making a study of the way middle-aged ladies dress because my job requires me to cater to them in a clothing sense, and because I see a wide range of classiness. I’m a plain jane sort, but I have noticed that plain jane middle-aged ladies have a real haggard look about them – it’s a strange combo of no make up, yoga-pants-and-fleece-pullovers, and low ponytails. I worry that when I’m wandering an outlet mall in my 40s, sipping water from a Starbucks cup, I’m going to look just as weary. So I stare at them.

The second reason that I took to this couple was that their relationship was so ambiguous. The man seemed too old to be shopping with his mom (lie!) and too young to be romantically involved with her, but they were obviously very comfortable together. She was holding clothes up to his neck, which is familiar and gross in the extreme.

Anyway, the couple picked out a few things and eventually made their way to the register. I went to ring them up and the lady started chatting.

“It is his birthday,” she said, indicating the man beside her. “And if I don’t take him shopping then he won’t buy any new clothes.”

I knew from the way the man blanched, which was not in the oh-wife-you-are-so-chatty-with-sales-girls way but in acute embarrassment, that this must be his mom. Only a mom can bring so much distress to an individual with such a short statement. I took her credit card and nodded blandly to disguise my delight.

The receipts rolled out of the machine and the man refused to meet my eye as I gave the coupon spiel. His mom stopped for a moment and discussed them. Where, she wondered, could she pick up something nice for herself? I pointed out a likely store on a map.

“I’ve been shopping for this one all day,” she said pointing at her son and throwing an exaggerated wink over her shoulder. She made her way towards the door and the man followed slowly behind with the bags.

“You have a good birthday,” I called and watched him hunch further. This guy obviously wanted to sink straight into the multi-colored tile of the outlet mall courtyard. What an undignified way to go.

The whole thing made my g.d. day.

portrait of the whiner as a wage slave

I’m getting a slow start today on writing because I have been doing some job stuff. I know what you are thinking, isn’t that foolish girl always looking for a new job? And I confess, the same thought has occurred to me lately. But I assure you, I haven't always been this way. In fact, until about a year ago I never had the guts to quit any job, no matter how silly the pretenses for my employment there.

But the same teeny voice that cues you to be annoyed with my renewed job search leads me to doubt my resolutions as a human being. It’s almost as if, by quitting one job six months ago, I have given myself reign to quit any job once a juicer and less-suck-filled opportunity comes along. And I don’t like that portrait of myself. I much prefer to see myself as a prolonged sufferer – a worker who is able to withstand any amount of physical and emotional turmoil. I don’t like to see myself as a professional nomad.

That’s the dichotomy, I suppose, of not wanting to let people trample all over your mush-colored soul anymore but not being willing to trample on someone else’s. I am proud of quitting my corporate stooge-hood, despite the fact that my monthly wages now come to approximately ½ of my old every-other-weekly paychecks, and I don’t want to reenter the stooge-hood from another (cough, managerial) angle. But the kicker is non-managerial jobs that allow a person plenty of free time and freedom tend to be rather demoralizing. And so, the search continues. I’m thinking of a career in dog washing because dogs never talk back and while they may inflict slobber, they never bicker over coupons.

The real irony here is that I am willing to subordinate my writing-work to search for jobs washing dogs (or the elderly). Try as I might (and type as I might) I can’t seem to let go of that capitalist greed and acknowledge that work without any monetary benefit is still work. It’s a real psychological shitstorm.

Man, I'm such a drag lately. I promise I'll be fun (i.e., rowdy) again soon.

Friar-Tucking around

This post is on posture and it won’t be amazing or uplifting because posture, like all other things, is shitty. That’s my POV today and I won’t take any flak for it, or for my use of obnoxious abbreviations to communicate “point of view.”

You may notice that I frequently describe my actions here as “hunching around.” That is because I have terrible, slouching posture and I tend to hunch over with the least provocation – tiny keyboard, little hatchback, boring book with small print or a candy bar dropped below my desk. Hunching is bad for you, in that it doesn’t shape your spine in the way your spine wants to be shaped, but it is also natural. I don’t see well, so I naturally bend at my mid-spine too scope out the interesting developments on my computer screen.

So I’ve been thinking about trying to improve my posture, first because it would make me seem a little less like Friar Tuck, but also because good posture makes people want to give you jobs. Posture makes people trust you more quickly than having a Golden Retriever.

But I feel that there is an alternate stigma against having good posture, as though good posture is indicative of being a real WASP-y son-of-a-bitch. I was reading a story by Dorothy Parker last night and the frigid woman in it lives in envy of her richer friend and has cocktails with her to flatter her into giving gifts. Anyway, this frigid, poor lady with the bad clothes and the pug-face had good posture and sat without her back touching the chair.

Well, with one slur against Golden Retrievers, another against WASPs and a final blow against the pug-faced populace, I consider my work here done. Oh, Thursday.

Cleaning the fridge of your subconscious

To continue in my vein of discussing boring things, I would like to take this moment to leap up on my soap box and proclaim that I cleaned out my fridge. It wasn’t a real “cleaning” I suppose. It was more of a search for the thing that smelled foul and was ruining my (halfhearted) appreciation of the sunny day. If you were wondering, indeed, if you are the sort of person who likes to hear disgusting things and stares into the sink as you wash your hands to observe the discolored water running off them, then I’ll indulge your curiosity. There were several rotting items in the fridge to which the smell might be attributed, but far and away the most pungent was a Tupperware of black beans.

So I cleaned out the fridge. I like to chuck out the moldy stuff whenever I go grocery shopping, because it freaks me out to think of the old lettuce rubbing elbows with the new, but that is a pretty wasteful practice. Now if you have wandered into this virtual-saloon before you know that I am no eco-soldier, I’m just a person campaigning against a bunch of people that suck atrociously. Often, but certainly not exclusively, people who are very wasteful suck. This isn’t a connection to be made between their empathy for good old mother earth and their fellow man; it’s more a signal of the fact that a person who is wasteful probably A) doesn’t recognize the value of things, B) possesses a great personal ease that grates on the nerves of less fortunate hermit-types, and C) drives a shiny sand-colored SUV. All three of these things are suggestive of jackassery without taking into account any detriment to the environment.

That being said, I like to throw things away. I find any kind of purging of possessions very cathartic, probably because I have mad hoarding tendencies. I hold onto shirts that don’t fit and have holes under the arms until throwing them away becomes a real production. I do this about twice a year with flannel pants. [Really, how can I have so many pairs? Between the free t-shirts (kept for sentimental value) and the pants, the drawer won’t close.] Some people get their jollies skydiving; I get mine from throwing away flannel pants that say “Sleepy head!” all over them.

(Speaking of flannel pants with things on them, I would like to pose a question. Why are people into the Tasmanian Devil character from Looney Tunes? He seems a frequent figure on flannel pants, the cheap kind that have a drawstring that will fuse into a solid-mass in the dryer and leave your pants knotted, forever, at an uncomfortable size. I’m not trying to showcase my provincial horizons, but my observations seem to suggest that the T.D. and that grumpy Martian are preferred by even the most hoodlum-y young adults. Is there some kind of inherent street-cred in Looney Tunes that I don’t know about?)

I’ve been thinking about cathartic things (like throwing pants away, if you lost my train of thought) a rather lot lately. 2010 has thus far been a somewhat gnarly year (with a few shining html-exceptions) for practically everyone that I know and we’ve been sharing notes on how to best cope. I do this – my rambling discussion with no hope of eventual gain – but not everyone has such a marvelously free and soothing hobby. And a person with no release can go a little crazy.

In short: We all have issues, but we don’t all have the extra flannel pants. This is potentially a problem.

Miffing

I would like to think that I am an adventurous person. I would like to think that I will spend my life seeking greener pastures and making quests, acting bravely and doing, well, things. But occasionally something happens in my life to burst that bubble with a fatal pinprick of reality. Today that bubble burst when I saw that someone in some crap SUV had parked in “my” parking spot at work.

To be clear, my job isn’t the kind of job where there is assigned parking. In fact, I’ve never worked anywhere with assigned parking, though I have worked at three jobs where the employees were considered low-priority park-ers and told to park far away. (Have I mentioned my impressive collection of parking tickets from HR departments and university police? I am also famous for racking these pseudo tickets up at apartment complexes.)

Okay, tangent time! I also worked at a place where the parking was habitual but not assigned and the sort of people who really pay attention to the parking habits of others found this very distracting. I got some flack about parking further away from the building than most, but not as much as I got for declaring that their vendetta to bully a young man from a nearby office out of their parking area by parking diagonally across the spot he usually used was a trifle unnecessary. So what if this guy was a socks-and-sandals type. Underneath that layer of wool and Birkenstocks that guy has feelings too – deep, repressed feelings.

To continue with my initial point, I got to work this morning and found that some crap SUV was parked in the spot that I’ve been using for the past few weeks, ever since I got my first “warning ticket” from the parking authorities. It’s a little spot beside a tree at the end of a row, slanted enough to occasion the parking break and far enough away that it is usually empty when I get there. I’m rather fond of it, actually. I have my lunch there every day that I work.

But today someone was in that spot, despite the amazing plethora of empty spots in the lot. Some red mini-SUV with a Jack in the Box head on the antenna and a gleam of victory in its headlights. Sure, I was a little pissed, but more disappointed than anything. I was ashamed to realize that I am no adventurer; I’m a homebody so thoroughly that I become attached to the parking spot that I frequent and I’m miffed when it is taken.

(P.S.: “Miffed” is all anyone should ever be about parking. Parking-related road rage is just embarrassing. When someone steals a spot out from under you, don’t despair. Be miffed.)

scantron sanity and misplaced quasi-political rants

I dreamed last night, or rather this morning sometime between 4:15 this morning when I woke up to use the bathroom and 6:35 when alarms started going off, that I was late to class. And this isn’t the first time that I’ve had this dream in the almost 2 years since I graduated from college. Oh, no. I have this dream a lot. And I think it’s pretty weird.

Well, I don’t think that it is ‘weird’ as in unusual, because I know plenty of ex-classmates who also experience this dream on a regular basis. I think that our brains were simply wired for so long to anticipate class-related stresses that when we don’t get that stimulus in the form of a sassy blue-and-white scantron form our brains get a little wonky. But when it comes to my specific dream, I tend to think that it’s a little weird.

First, I don’t like to think of myself as someone whose life stopped when I stopped being able to ride the campus buses for free. In fact, I’m starting to think that people put altogether too much emphasis on college, as both a requirement for future successes and as a transcendental epoch of total personal awesomeness. Obviously I think that going to college is a worthwhile educational experience and a must-have if you love school for the very schoolness of it, like I do. And a degree is, undoubtedly, something that you have for life. But it also sets you up for unrealistic expectations ($$$) and completely fails to set you up (in the liberal arts, particularly) for the harsh unfriendliness of a market flooded with young folks who can do a close-reading of Chaucer but are best suited for answering telephones and making schnazzy spreadsheets.

Don’t get me wrong. College = good. I might even go back to school. But especially with the fee increases (32% this year at my old stomping grounds) I think that it is becoming a very hard thing to justify without insuring a 32% increase in class availability, relevance, and (let’s face it) making it about 32% more challenging to get a B.A.. If it was me, I would want my money’s worth and in the case of college that means 32% more knowledge and 32% less sleep during finals. Somehow, especially in the candy-coated UC system, I don’t see that happening.

It may sound a little materialistic (yipes!) to note, but as the only member of my family with a B.A. I make far-and-away the least amount of money. And I don’t mean since I quit my corporate job; they made more than me when I was pushing paper all about.

Money isn’t the only measure of worth and it sure isn’t the best one, but I think that the UC system would do well to shift a little of the focus away from soul-bending experiences and educational enlightenment via sun-dappled Frisbee games and towards the real financial situation. For one thing, they are inflating the students’ ideas of how quickly they can pay off their loans and credit cards as easily as they are inflating the fees.

So, enough ranting brought on by watching footage of the student protests here in sunny California. My dream went like this: I was late for a class where I had to turn in a paper and my bike had two flat tires. While I was trying to borrow someone’s bike I realized that I hadn’t attended this class once all quarter (this is a common theme in these dreams) and I began to berate myself for my negligence. I finally took off running toward the building where I somehow knew that the class would be meeting, leaving my bike hidden behind a tree. Before I got there, I woke up in a mild panic.

I know that I could push it here, make some reference to dreams of the literal sense and the quickly evaporating possibility of the lower-middle class to achieve collegiate dreams, but I won’t. That would be way too liberal arts-ish.

Some American Shit

Dear guy-ahead-of-me-while-I-drove-to-work,

Hi. You don’t know me but I was behind you at about 1:15 this afternoon, headed south on Folsom avenue. You might have caught a glimpse of me in your rear-view mirror with the dice hanging from it, though perhaps not. I try to maintain a very polite distance from other cars. Hatchback and oversized sunglasses? Distinctly hunched driving posture? Yes, that would be me.

Well, sir (and I hesitate to apply this term because your age was so hard to determine from so far away and so strange an angle), I am sorry that I hurried past you as soon as the road opened up to two lanes. The moment that my car hurdled passed yours I realized the implied insult of my actions. When a person who has been following another takes the first opportunity to pass, the sideways glances exchanged are rarely pleasant ones.

I just wanted to clarify that I meant no disrespect. If you felt admonished by my haste, if the sight of my little green car puttering weakly past your window brought you any embarrassment, or if this last indignity was the straw that broke your Model-A’s back, I apologize.

I understand what you were trying to do, guy. You were out driving your classic car in the sunshine on a Sunday afternoon and you stuck your arm out of the window. You had dice on the rear-view, and I respect that. You were probably listening to some righteous jams and you felt no need to hurry. Hell, you were on a Sunday drive and that’s some American shit right there.

I’m sorry that some schmuck in a green hatchback had to pass you at the first opportunity; that I had to be the jerk-wad reminding you that your tranquility is as outdated as your vehicle and twice as likely to break down. I didn’t mean to be a jerk, but I was on my way to the outlet mall to slap on my lanyard and sell some sneakers. That also is some American shit, but with a difference emphasis.

Pack ratting

Today’s blog should be about hugging and the trials of hugging your extended family, because my own mother took the trouble to g-mail chat me about writing a “story about how you do the bob-and-weave when people try to hug you.” Everyone knows that I love shit-talking about family functions; however, it is with a heavy heart that I report that this blog post shall not be about hugging. When I started to think it out it sounded a little too much like a Seinfeld episode. And if I’m going to be sounding like any TV show from the late-90s it’s going to be News Radio, ya dig?

So, I’m going on a trip at the end of next week to an undisclosed location for an undisclosed amount of time. But it occurred to me as I was driving home that no matter how much I enjoy a vacation, there is something extremely fun about thinking about going on a trip. And I don’t mean the count-down crap that the girl in the cubicle next to you is practicing. No, I mean the hardcore thinking, like thinking about what you are going to pack and whether you have mini-sized toiletries. I wondered as I drove whether I would need to do laundry or go to the bank, and my brief outing is still a week away. I considered what to leave my domestic-person to eat and what book to bring for the plane. That sort of domestic planning really floats my boat.

But I think that I have mentioned on this blog before how I love packing. Putting everything that you imagine that you will need into a bag is very soothing for me. I like placing things carefully, knowing full-well that they will shift around and that I will end up stuffing dirty clothes in on top of them while away. Looking into a well-organized bag (you know, clothing folded, pajamas on top, toiletry bag tucked into a corner of the bag, extra sneaks set neatly at the never bottom of the bag) is like looking into a well-organized mind. I figure if I can’t have one, I might as well have the other.

Wasting my own time

This blog is an early one because I am having trouble getting started on some projects. My brain, it would seem, is reluctant to focus today. I’m not even motivated enough to waste my time scrolling through the internet. I am merely sitting, gazing at my word processing screen, yawning and fiddling. I would jump start my brain with a Pepsi, but I’m trying to avoid drinking soda in excess and, well, 9:13 in the morning seems a little excessive.

Since I’m not going to drink a soda and I am not, apparently, going to write anything productive, I guess I will discuss another form of drinking that has been weighing heavily on my mind. I am talking about the drinking of alcohol here, so if you are under 21 please do me a solid and avert your eyes.

I am an infrequent and lackluster drinker and as such I mostly drink beer. It doesn’t even matter what kind of beer, much to the chagrin of my main squeeze when we first started dating. (At the time I was in the habit of drinking Natural Lite while he drank Sapporo. Now he drinks PBR and I drink hard ciders that taste like juice.) But beer takes a lot of drinking and it’s heavy, grainy stuff that always makes my stomach upset the next day. Well, the upset stomach is debatable; there is a slight possibility that my stomach is always upset following a beer-binge because beer always encourages me to eat lots of things, like red meat or 14 mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce, that I wouldn’t usually eat. But I elect to blame the beer because if I had to choose between beer and cheese sticks, my vote would be heavily dairy.

But what does a casual drinker drink instead of beer? I have been ruminating on this for a few weeks and when the pressure is on (i.e. the waitress is staring straight into my panicked face) I always sissy out and go for a Blue Moon or a Pyramid. It doesn’t help that I panic easily in bars; I’m not the sort that a barkeep pays attention to. (I love parenthesis today! What follows is an aside on why I have a hard time ordering in bars. First, I am not very aggressive about standing at the bar and making eye contact. Second, I think I have that disheveled bookish look that says “I will pay in cash and buy one round all night.” Third, I’m not a hot babe or the hot-babe-equivalent of a tab-opening heavy tipper.)

I don’t mean to imply by all of this that I spend a lot of time worrying about what I should drink on the weekends. I just spend a lot of time thinking about pointless things in general and my official drink receives no more or no less thought than other silly ruminations like whether I am too old to continue wearing Converse sneaks or whether I should improve my mind by compulsively re-reading modern classics or by delving into the antiquities. This, to my eternal shame, is how my silly brain works.

So cocktails and my relationship with them. Mainly my interaction with hard alcohol has been the delightful days of college when everyone had a lukewarm handle of vodka under their bed and we chased it with blue PowerAid. I remember attending these parties in apartment-style dorms where the alcohol was laid out in the vanity area of the bathrooms – shot glasses and flavored vodkas arranged beside hair brushes and deodorants. The best part of these parties was that you had to pass through this vanity area to use the toilet, and so the hallways were always crowded with confused people, struggling to differentiate between the line for the toilet and the line to use that same dirty shot glass. Now that I think about it, maybe that explains why I always drink beer…

Anyway, that is the association that I have with hard alcohol. After that frenzied freshman year I never spent much time around people who drank cocktails (these were the days when beer pong reigned supreme…is that still happening in over-priced apartments around the world?). But I have an idea about cocktails that directly contradicts all of my experiences.

You know how I always get everywhere early? (I love being excessively conversational even more than I love parenthesis today.) Well I usually spend this extra time reading in my auto, slumping and sweating when it’s sunny, shivering and hunching when it’s cold. But whenever I pull up to a curb to meet a friend for dinner and realize that I have time to kill I always imagine myself going into the bar, settling myself with a drink and reading in the comfort of a booth and climate control. I am married, but now that I think about it this is how I would want to meet someone; a fellow loner in a depressing restaurant bar, drinking something with a two-part name and reading a book by someone with a three-part name.

To return to my point, in this bar/drink/book/waiting fantasy of mine I always order something that isn’t a beer, because when you are being as suave as imaginary me is being, you don’t order a beer. Whatever it is that I am ordering I hope it involves soda water because I want an excuse to buy a seltzer bottle and a bar cart. If I can’t have soda I sure as hell want soda water in a bitchin’ bottle. (Please see below.)

Yeah, I want this. Take note.