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.