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.