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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

Why would you spell "biscuit" like 'biskit"?

Two points today, one is sort of somber and the other is the usual frivolous tomfoolery that I have convinced the internet to indulge me in. I should probably be devoting a greater part of this post to somber concerns since I spent the better chunk of the weekend at a memorial service, but that would smack of chronological relevance and I certain can’t have that.

One comment about memorial services though, before I forget and move along to equally irrelevant discussions. On the drive home my main squeeze and I stopped for dinner at a brew house and discussed our respective funerals. We both decided that people would be hard-pressed to think of nice things to say about us and that we didn’t want to put anyone to the trouble of fiction; ergo, we probably shouldn’t have funerals.

Admitting the attractiveness of not having a funeral is a funny thing when you take into account how popular the funeral fantasy is among teenaged girls. I know it seems crazy at first-glance, but it isn’t actually that morbid. I did this, and while I don’t paint myself as the model of mental health, most of my friends did this also. You merely imagine the reaction to your great tragedy and enjoy the professions of affection that are heaped on your coffin/hospital bed. If you can manage it, feel free to throw in a plot twist that means your death secures your revenge on that chick from second period.

Honestly, I’m not making this up. Most teenaged girls think more about what would happen at their funeral (or better yet, if they were hospitalized in some serious but attractive way) than they do about Twilight, and that’s saying something.

I am going to move along to discuss what I intended to discuss today, first the somber thing and then the cheerful thing so that everyone leaves on a high note. The somber discussion is a another reflection on the class that I’m taking. Yesterday we all had to rewrite a boring story and then read it aloud to the class so that we could understand how personal voice/detail make an essay. I liked this exercise in theory, but I hate reading aloud with a fiery passion, so the whole process made me glum.

For the first few minutes of the read-along I couldn’t listen because I was too busy being nervous and later I was distracted by my profound relief, but I eventually started listening to people reading their stories. I’m glad that I did because listening to other people read their work always reminds me that putting words into sentences isn’t a particularly difficult task – not nearly as difficult as I make it out to be. I putter and struggle with words and sentences and (above all) having the motivation to sit still and focus without succumbing to the many temptations of the internet. (Today I am doing fairly well. Or I was. I am running out of self control.)

Anyway, it is always humbling and motivating to know that putting ideas together is an easy thing.

So here is the joyful thing that I promised to bring this whole situation to a cheerful close. My question for people who make popsicles for a living: Why do you bother to put jokes on the sticks with the answer embedded in the frozen juice? Do you think that kids need more motivation for eating popsicles? You are just throwing away incentives on kids who love nothing more than a drippy dessert. Save your jokes for something that people hate, like the bottom of a box of Chicken in a Biskit.

Same goes for you, Mr. Cracker Jack.

As a point of interest I might be changing my blog quota to 3 X a week, throwing Sunday in the mix. I hate doing actual work on Sundays but I always find writing on Mondays so shocking that I figure that I shouldn't late my brain completely atrophy over the weekend anymore. I know what you are thinking and yes, I do think that this blog helps rather than accelerates the degradation of my brain. If not the writing then trying to remember how to keep this sucker for being double spaced and ragged-right....all ragged-right alignment is a blight on humanity.

2 o'clock block

The wall I hit at 2 p.m. is a hearty one. All progress halts as I consider unnecessary snacks and conpulsively check my email. Compulsive email checking for unpopular kids like me is a waste of time and ego; I could check that thing every ten minutes all day long and never get an email that wasn’t a misguided Facebook alert about someone who commented on a status that I also commented on.

Hitting this wall is very disheartening for me everyday, but especially so on Fridays. On Fridays I have a strange desire to earn my weekend through hard work and perseverance. It’s a freaky throwback trait to my 9-5 days and a real indicator that my brain hasn’t fully grasped the fact that I usually work on the weekends now.

Today started off well enough. I was productive from 8 a.m. to noon, and then I ate some food and then did a little more work. I was relatively pleased; I started a new story that might have eventual promise and then hacked away at some unpromising story for about an hour. But as 2 p.m. neared, the barking of the neighbor’s dog became more pronounced and I suddenly became aware that my own dog was licking the floor in the kitchen and producing rending tongue-scrape noises.

I figured that killing my neighbor’s dog would be slightly less PC than the time that I read aloud from the Wikipedia entry about skinheads with the windows open (and I’ve a very carrying voice, you know) so I satisfied my own angst by asking my dog if she wouldn’t mind not licking the floor anymore. My dog, of course, interpreted this request as an invitation to stand beside me and breathe laboriously. And that, perhaps, is why I am writing this blog.

I’m trying to recall if I had anything else of note to mention while I am on here. I haven’t read much lately that hasn't been pointedly instructive and my television (cough, internet, cough) time has been divided between a bad British miniseries about scullery maids and an unforgivably raunchy HBO show about kings.

Something weird that I learned today: In some states there is a wolf hunting season and Montana’s closed today after the 12 wolf quota was met. That brings a tear to my Julie of the Wolves lovin’ eye.

My please-employ-me voice

The best parts of being unemployed:

- Shopping in an empty grocery store at midday.

- Never sitting in traffic.

- Not seeing other humans.

- Eating lunch at 10 a.m.

- Bonding with my dog.

- Getting to read the news in “full screen” windows.

The worst part of being unemployed is:

- Looking for work.

Seriously, it is the worst part. I could say that not making money is the worst part of not having a job as everyone knows that I’m a greedy miser, but I venture that currently, as my savings is not yet overly diminished by my activities, actually looking for a job is worse.

Take today for example. I went to the Safeway a few hours ago to get some mexi-cheese for taco salads. As I walked out I noticed that a nearby Pete’s Coffee had an abnormal number of colored leaflets in the window so, always vigilant, I sauntered in that direction. Sure enough the one of the leaflets was advertising seasonal hiring. I debated going inside for a few minutes because I was in a my usual slob attire but I rationalized that Pete’s pretends that it services the hippie demographic and so I just went inside.

I strode up to the counter and in the differential voice that I’ve acquired over the last few weeks said to the disinterested kid behind the counter, “I saw the advertisement in the window that you guys are hiring.”

He nodded. I smiled ingratiatingly. When he didn’t take the hint I asked with the same quiet tone for an application. He handed it over. I thanked him dramatically. We stared at one another for a moment.

“So,” he asked with an air of impatience. “What can I get you today?”

I bought a guilt-coffee because I couldn’t think of how to properly articulate that I’d only wanted the application and that my entire casual demeanor was an act.

Also, I just realized that the last three posts have revolved around coffee shops. What sort of puesdo-bohemian loser am I? Obviously I need to get a job, like, pronto.

PS, this post is dedicated to my favorite bro who is my only blog fan and is also seeing a doctor today (in the biblical sense).

The Mall of America is the worst part of Minn.

A few months ago I hastily proclaimed (I don't like to proclaim unless in haste, I make all of my well-meditated announcements discreetly) that I would forevermore buy all of my clothing on the internet.

Now, possessing the wisdom of two additional months and a few ill-fitting and downright strangely colored shirts, I am taking it back. I know I should pause here to denounce unfounded decision making and sudden personal policies, but I won't and for a single reason: it seemed like such a great idea at the time.

Buying things online means no more going to the mall. And I seriously abhor the mall. I mean, who would guess that a place smelling so heavenly of doughy over-sized pretzels could be so heinous? I suspect that my least favorite part of the mall (aside from the obvious high population of intimidating teenage mobs sulking about) is the way that a person's true personality will reveal itself during the exercise of walking the mall corridors. For some alpha personality types, walking the mall is like parting a sea of humanity with their double-wide stroller. For a squeamish sort like myself, the mall is all about false-start walking and dodging out of the way.

And so the internet seemed a perfect solution. Though by no means a spectacularly proportional specimen of humanity, I figured I was familiar enough with the S, M, L, XL system to wing it over the web. Having done more complicated things over the internet (e.g., banking, cellphone bill, buying bird feeders during the holiday season) I thought myself well qualified.

However, the other day I bought a shirt that I thought look cleverly like a sack, but when it arrived it looked like a simple non-ironical sack. And thus I may be heading back to the mall, that isolated hell dimension perched on the edge of an enormous parking lot.

Not a stained-glass cinderblock

People often tell me that when they see me driving about town I have a very intense (some venture to say, however abstractly, "uncool") look about me...or at least it seems that way as they zoom past me at a more "reasonable" speed. I usually take these observations in stride, because it allows me opportunity to gloat about how unfailingly prompt I am.

I would categorize being punctual as one of my more positive personal features. Of course it can be a little awkward to be on time, especially since I have a romantic affiliation with an equal punctual person and thus we are always the people browsing the dollar-store next to a restaurant when we arrive 15 minutes before they start serving lunch, but mostly I find it very satisfying. At several teenage-era employments punctuality was lauded as my most redeeming quality (not surprisingly, since I spent most of my time at various office jobs building catapults out of rubber bands and binder clips). And to this day I try to be on time to work, mainly because there seems something moral about it. Obviously this is a secular morality, since I claim possession of the same spirituality inherent in a cinderblock, provided that the block is of a shape and quality in no way suggestive of the facial features of certain saviors and/or key biblical babes.

A mere glimpse of my secular moral code is included below:

1. Be on time to work.

2. Don't comment when you think someone is wearing a new shirt. People in new shirts are nervous enough without you bringing it up.

3. Do not, even under the most tempting of situations, read another person's e-mail or text messages.

4. Don't yell at people in service positions, even when they deserve nothing more than to be strangled by their lanyard and left in a shopping cart to die.

5. Never drink enough that you are unable to wait until you get home to puke.

6. Give people rides in your car and never ask for gas money.

Fine and Dandy

There is nothing that I like better than a little recreational sexism. You may argue that there is no such thing as recreational sexism, that each slightly sexist joke is a reflection of an evil corroded soul full of bad anti-suffrage inclinations. Come on folks, being sexist can be good clean fun.

Sure, I like voting, and being allowed to wear pants and to sue people and not having my ribs broken to fit into a corset. Empowerment is all very good and dandy. I relish the idea of independent young ladies and wives with separate checking accounts. However, I also like not having to carry heavy things, yell at mean waiters, and know remotely about plumbing.

This small prejudice of mine came up the other day at work, when a dog at the office bit the mail carrier. My initial shock was of course that a friendly dog would do such a thing (my own dog being far too lazy to undertake such a hunt), but my second shock came as I realized that our mail carrier was a woman. It had never occurred to me that dogs bit ladies.

I’m feeling a bit tired today, but I had intended to rail on further about the joys of not feeling bad about yourself when you have to ask for help replacing a windshield wiper, reveal that you are crap at BBQ-ing, or do not know about pouring beer in an appropriate fashion. I’ll just assume that you get the picture and skip to the thrilling conclusion.

The unfortunate thing is, although I partake of the joys of sexism, I do not return the favor of female stereotypes. I’m not a very good cook, I rarely offer a suave social presence and I often have a wretched coif. And so here is my paradox: I’m not very maternal, but I’d sure like to retain that status so that no one thinks of asking me to screw in some light bulbs…or join the draft.