snowed in

people pretend to despise extreme winter weather and particularly being "snowed in". they are lying. people in north dakota/minnesota have made this situation into a ritual. it is tradition. i think that sometimes our meteorologists invent terrible blizzard predictions so people can justify locking themselves in their homes and doing less than nothing. once the prediction has been made and the "no travel advisory" has been issued, the deal is clinched. families flock to grocery and video stores in droves. and only junk food is allowed. chips, popcorn, chocolate, cheese in an aerosol can... these are snowed in foods. you can't get snowed in and eat fresh asparagus or a leafy green salad. you have to buy food that matches the weather. heavy snow, heavy food to make heavy people. it's the law. even if the weather is considerably better than expected, everyone stays home. and when you are home on a "work day" or a "school day" there is absolutely no expectation that any home tasks will be accomplished. after all, you should be at work. the vacuuming wasn't going to be done today. it's as though achievement on snow days is universally banned.
i was snowed in this week. and i followed all of the rules. expected it. planned to enjoy it. confirmed the presence of chips and cheese in the house. checked out the saved episodes of svu on tivo to be sure i had adequate entertainment. called a friend who likes board games. i was ready. kind of. then the power went out. then it came back on. then it went out again. then it came back on again. on off on off on off on off on off. and finally it was just off. we all know this to be a significant element to being snowed in. it is always a possibility. and initially while we run around the house gathering candles and flashlights and food and blankets and cell phones, it is kind of exciting. an adventure. but soon it is just fucking cold. so you shiver and pout. and it sucks. and when you finally free yourself from the imprisonment of the blizzard and re-enter society, you have to suffer 1500 random strangers introducing their presence with: "cold enough fer ya'?" perhaps i shouldn't have shoveled my way out.

secrets

my computer access is quite limited. when i get to a computer with an acceptable connection speed, i frequently follow a fixed routine. i check email, go to my blog to find out if it is a blogging day or not, and check my regular websites. many of them are listed in my sidebar. the one that i consistently visit is post secret. i am quite intrigued by this site and i can't help the voyeuristic draw. i have been observing this site for several months. some of the secrets make me laugh myself off my chair. some of them stun me into silence. in response to some i find discomfort in my understanding. still others make me weary of our society and suspicious of every person i encounter. sadly, one of the most common themes seems to be a deeply rooted desperation that manifests as a passive desire to die. often submissions to post secret suggest that people are spending a significant amount of time fantasizing about dying, imagining different ways to die, wishing for an effortless death, or actively contemplating suicide. the premise to the site is that the secrets revealed are secrets that have been kept from every person the artist knows. i imagine they spend as much energy grinning their way through each day trying to not reveal their innermost yearnings for release. many suggest that everyone around them thinks they live a perfect trouble-free existence. these people have spoken of their morbid thoughts to no one. how sad is that? and who are they? there are a lot of them. i wonder if i would know if one of them was my good friend. i wonder if people who have such persistent painful ponderings would recognize each other upon encounter. how many of the people i interact with, randomly or intentionally, have spent time that day dreaming of their own demise. i wonder if it ever goes away.

wild turkey

occasionally when i am driving down the gravel road that leads from my driveway to the highway, i encounter a small group of wild turkeys. this is an alarming experience to me because turkeys just don't seem like the kind of animals that should roam freely across roads and highways. when i see them roaming about it makes me wonder where i live. it also makes me wonder about the wild turkey population in my town. it appears to be quite high. it is also alarming because they are horrifyingly grotesque creatures. i am afraid of wild turkeys and i am a little tired of waiting for them to cross the road in front of my car. sometimes i wonder what i would do if i were ever outside and in the same space as a group of wild turkeys. it would be a surreal and freakish experience, i think. i have seen other wild animals roaming about while i am outside and i did not feel particularly frightened, but there is something about turkeys that terrifies me. i have never before discussed my fear of wild turkeys, because when does that opportunity ever present itself?
i sat with my friend troy tonight while we ate dinner and he turned to me and said "did i ever tell you about the time that my friend was attacked by a wild turkey?"
"what!?" i knew there was a reason to fear those bastards...they do attack!
then troy said, "yeah, it was the weirdest thing. she and her boyfriend were rollerblading (yes, he verbed a proper noun) on a trail by the river and they ran into a whole bunch of wild turkeys."
i am stunned. how terrifying. but i am also intrigued, it must be so rare!
"one of the turkeys must have felt threatened," troy continued, "and it jumped up and grasped her shoulders." at this point troy begins to flap his arms wildly, indicating that the turkey flapped its wings, simultaneously smacking his friend on both sides of her face. this makes the story all too real to me and i begin to cringe and beg him to stop talking about it. troy views this as an opportunity to disturb me a little more and he stands behind me and attempts to grip my shoulders in a fashion suggesting that he has talons rather than fingers. i am not very welcoming of this kind of interaction and say "no thank you, i think i understand." then i said, "i am going to go on break." and i came to this computer to write this post. because how many times in one's life is one just one degree separated from a person who gets attacked by a wild turkey? that's awesome! and i hope it's like winning the lottery...if it happens to someone you know, it will never happen to you!

Tuna's on Sale

my father is a thrifty man. when i was a child he operated an underground stock-up mission that targeted every major grocer in town. he was ruthless in his desire for "more for the price of fewer". we had a food pantry in my house that could have kept us alive until the christ child once again walks the earth. i blame this partly on my dad's desire to offer as much to his children as possible. i blame it mostly on being raised to prepare for the next depression. whatever the reason for his hoarding, it had a strong impact on my life and unfortunately, the lives of my friends.

a sunny saturday morning i would rise from my dreamy slumber and stumble out to the kitchen where my dad would have 14 different boxes of cereal for me to choose from. if i appeared to be having difficulty choosing just one, my father would begin to sing the names of the cereals to me. he did this because he is a sweet and playful man. he did this also because it never failed to amuse him that i often woke up grumpy. he enjoyed aggravating me until i was about to implode and just when the annoyance was too much and i lashed out at him with my potentially vicious tongue, he would recoil and look very sad. "i am just trying to help! golly, you sure are grouchy!" i felt bad every time this happened. i knew that i shouldn't be grumpy, but my mind insisted that he should also know not to ack like a jackass all the time! i am 30 now and he is still a silly weirdo who makes up songs. he still thinks i am the mean one. by now i think i agree with him.
so he would be done singing and i would be half-way through the green clovers when the announcement would come. i would look up at him and glare at the colorful ad flier in his hands. the words that i had come to hate more than almost any others sprung from his lips with such glee: "tuna's on sale! 3 for a dollar! limit three." the 'limit three' part was a code. a message just for me. loosely translated from bargain speak to colloquial english, it meant: call sara and kristi and whomever else you were going to play with today. i think my dad wanted kids largely so he could get more cheap stuff. he must have moved to south 22nd street because he heard that there were at least 10 other little girls approximately my age who could be coersed into trips to piggly wiggly. his plot was successful. very few of those girls missed out on the opportunity to help my father subvert the limit system at piggly wiggly. why on god's green earth anyone who did not rely on this man for food and shelter would have ever agreed to this job was and continues to be a mystery to me. sara did it most frequently. due in part to her ever-presence, but also, i think she secretly really enjoyed it. i did not.
so dad, shelly and sara all piled in to the blue bonneville to head to piggly wiggly for tuna. often he would convince us to take the trip with him by saying things like, "there's a candy bar in it for anyone who comes along!" and this was true. there was a candy bar. for me and sara and (fill in the blank). we always got candy bars, each of which must have cost at least as much as each can of tuna. even as a child i tried to do the math. it did not seem to be a cost-effective bargaining chip for him, but he never seemed to mind. i guess as long as he was getting more tuna for his money, everything else was detail.
once inside piggly wiggly, my anxiety level would start to climb. i think that i perceived "limit two" as some kind of city ordinance and i was under the overwhelmingly dreadful impression that if we were discovered in our undermining stunt we would be arrested and read our rights on the spot. i was like 8, i just knew that my dad said to "Shhh" about the whole situation. what did i know about limits at the grocery store?
we would get to the tuna aisle and dad would hand each of us three cans of tuna. we would dig in our pockets to retrieve the single dollar bill that he had given each of us in the car. we didn't want to look suspicious! as a very shy and scared child, the next part was the worst of all. we would have to walk off in different directions and each choose our own check-out lane. i HATED this part. there i was. all alone at the check-out, apparently expected to project the image that i am just your average 8-year-old girl who decided to go shopping for some food today. but only for tuna. and only with one dollar. sometimes i would try to act surprised when the tuna discount was revealed by the check-out person. as if i just happened to have a hunger on for tuna and it was my coincidentally lucky day that the craving came on this particular day of tuna specials! i remember so clearly standing in line, waiting my turn and trying not to look at sara. i can't give them any indication that we are involved in a tuna conspiracy. the three villains would meet back in the parking lot, three dollars lighter and 9 cans of tuna heavier. i don't even like tuna. if i were going to take a random shopping trip of my own volition, i certainly wouldn't be buying tuna. but this was not about my personal choice and motivation. this was my father's game and i was but a pawn in it. back into the bonneville we would climb so dad could drive us to the next piggly wiggly.
over the years i have grown to hate tuna more and more. and i have grown to find a great deal of humor in the weird things my dad made us do when we were young. my mom thinks it is the most hilarious thing she has ever heard when sara and i get together and talk about tuna. my mother recently admitted to me that she felt a little bad for us when we would have to go to the grocery store with dad. then where were you? but i suspect that she is just very glad he never asked her to do it. i asked my dad one time why it always seemed that sara and i had to go shopping with him. why didn't mike and sean have to go? "mike wouldn't do it" comes the flat response. this was optional? i could have refused? perhaps some day i will discover that i learned something important from this.

I Hate Fiction

i have been at the coffee house now for nearly 10 hours. i worked for 7 of those hours and for the last 2.5 i have been concocting a story about my friend Kristi. it is not a story about her so much as it is an accidental trip into the pathetic frumpiness of my imagination. when i started this task, i said that i was excited to make up a story about Kristi because i have never done that before. i have never made up any kind of story. i have been known to put a bit of a fictional spin on true stories, but that's only necessary because i have a terrible memory. chalk it up to interpretation. i learned this afternoon why i have never made up stories. when i do, i am no different from an 8th grader who suffers her first creative writing assignment in english class. the jokes are the same, the humor is equally as immature and the story is basically a stream of consciousness with a few proper nouns sprinkled in to masquerade as plot. i am like everyone else. 98% of first time fiction writers would write something as lame as i did today and one story would be indistinguishable from the next. all would rely on curses to force a pseudo humorous response. All would include mental illness of some kind. someone gets drunk in each story and several of the characters use terrible grammar. perhaps there is a misunderstanding or a moment of great danger that reveals the true inner self of the protagonist. everyone would include a mean teacher. the only thing i missed was a poop joke, but i did use the word "butt". what the hell was i thinking? i have to stick to telling stories about my funny family and dumb experiences. i am not going to make this mistake again. i write like an 8th grader and i make up the same stupid jokes as everyone else. in a writing submission one could only hope for fingerprints or anxiety-induced sweat droplets on the papers to tell us apart. DNA makes me special. and no one will ever read about Kristi's fake life. this certainly puts to eternal rest any question about the creative writing class.

destination: no where

health clubs are such a fascinating world. there is so much going on at any given moment in any given room one must just marvel at the possibilities. even those of us who are not insane-addicted-obsessive-neurotic-fixated with physical appearance require some amount of psycho-babble self-talk in our minds to help finish a difficult (or in my case, boring) workout. while on the treadmill at the Y tonight i glanced around at the anorexic girls and with each of them pondered "what is going through her head right now?" one young woman in particular was working herself so hard and looked so miserable i couldn't help but feel incredibly sad for her. she was so hungry. and so tired. she was the kind of person you just want to hug. she was the kind of person you could wrap your arms around twice if you did. i wanted to cry a little bit because i was having so much fun doing my workout and i knew that this has never been fun for her. she was not enjoying herself, she was just doing what was necessary. as i pondered her situation, i thought to myself: while working out in the gym, if your head is not full of motivational speeches, which mine never is, the only thing you can do is look around at all of the other sweaty visitors and assess their situations. everyone has a story and some of them are mysterious. so i wondered, who am i to these people? what do the bulging 'roid boys think when they see me in the weight room? what about the women who have societally normal lives with husbands and a grown daughter who has blessed the family with a handsome successful young husband and a lovely grandson who is to be baptized on sunday at first lutheran? what do they think when they look at me? and as i ran for 25 minutes, destination: no where, with the anorexic girl behind me it occurred to me who i am for her. with my man-back and a healthy layer of cushion, compliments of 20 years of a sordid love affair with fried cheese, i am her reverse trigger. i am the girl in front of her at the gym about whom she obsesses "keep going keep going, you don't want to look like her." she may have even created a mantra of this or a very similar phrase. to look at my not-exactly-sleek thighs and the parts of me that jiggle a little when i run helps her reach her goal. when caloric energy is unavailable, one depends on visual stimuli and sheer self-hatred to continue. i have no idea how i feel about this. not bad or embarrassed. insightful maybe. it's not about me so next time it will be whomever else is there whose bones are not visible through their skin. her relationship with me, or rather, my imperfections, expires as soon as the stairmaster beeps to indicate that in direct violation of all rules of energy utilization and physical intake requirements she has finished her workout. her life is a never-ending battle and every person or object she encounters is but a pawn in her sad story. a symbol of something safe or something bad. she'll encounter the scale when she gets to the locker room. the toilet and the television will provide their own challenges. once "safely" in her car she has all of the restaurants and drive-thrus to grieve on her way home. and once home alone, the battle really begins. health clubs can be very sad places. and often one must acknowledge the misnomer.

mystery machine

site hits are a complete mystery to me. mostly because i have no idea what is really going on with anything computer-related, but also in part because i don't understand how other people surf the blog world. do they jump from random blog to random blog skimming? do a lot of people utilize the "next blog" button? and what does that even mean? how are they ordered? do they repeat or is there one fixed list? since i have an abundance of questions regarding blog site activity, i made two concerted efforts to get some answers. i added a counter which tells me a few things that mean nothing to me, and i added a poll which i had hoped would give me more information. thus far this has not been the case. allegedly nearly 200 different people have opened my blog at some point. to learn more about who these regretful souls are, i asked the very simple question: do i know you? which for all intents and purposes can be interpreted "why are you here?" i thought that this would teach me about how people use blogspot. not so. whoever you are, you don't seem to be the most cooperative bunch. 200 people, 6 answers. that's just rude. please please, give me something! i like to have a reason to stop by my blog page and check out some stats. please oh please won't you answer my question? i love you!

i would like to report an assault...

an awful awful thing just happened to me. i was sitting at the computer at work, writing some answers to some questions posed by our VP when i got bored of that and decided to check my email. i did this and then i checked the midwestern position for any updates on sara's world. it was while i was commenting and googling christopher meloni that the crime occurred. first, a porn pop-up that provided a more intimate image of two strangers than i ever needed to experience. oh my god! was the thought in my head. i must get rid of this. why is this happening!? click! i hit the "x" in the corner. another pop-up, this one more graphic. click! does this one go away? NO! another one pops up. jesus christ!!!!!! i have a pile of about 9 porn windows on my work computer and i appear to be powerless to make them disappear. anxiety! my reputation is questionable enough around here. this is the stuff that rumors and meetings are made of. shortly after recovering from the porn-induced stroke, i was able to click and close all of them but now i sit and type and suffer the post-traumatic stress disorder that will forever accompany the google search. does this have something to do with christopher meloni? that perv.

what happened?

i got an email from sara yesterday complaining that i have not posted in a few days. there is a good explanation for this...i work 4 day weekends and my shifts are 11 hours long. there is little computer time during these days and i am generally just too tired to do anything but work and sleep. today i have some time to post, but i am afraid something terrible has happened. i don't have a subject. i usually write about the exceptionally uninteresting and uneventful, but there is at least an experience that triggers some kind of interpretation that i must share. today. nothing.
but i would like to continue to discuss the on-going goal-setting behavior which has recently overtaken my life and mind. i seem to have tricked a friend of mine into obsessive achievement of the mundane and now we have a notebook which we are feverishly filling with individual and shared objectives. it all started because she read my post about goals and she wanted to learn all of the words to "one week" also. so i immediately assumed that she also wanted to become insane and obsessive with me and that she loves to set herself up to feel like a miserable failure as i apparently do, and i said, we should write down all of the things we want to do and keep them all together in a book! as of yesterday, we have ourselves participating in things like "Tae Bo at least twice per week" (AFTER WORK!). "after work" is 11pm when we're lucky. so we have committed ourselves to bouncing around and punching the air for like an hour after approximately 10-12 hours of work. who does Tae Bo in the middle of the night? morons. and sweet intelligent people who happen to be easily misled into poor choices by morons. in our situation, we have the added problem of our shared tendency toward incessant conversation. so on the first day of our new goal, we went into the basement of our place of employment and began a Tao Bo workout at approximately 1:00am. a strange behavior, but it was fun, so the goal shall continue. and it can only get better from here. the element that i had failed to consider was that Tae Bo is freaking hard! i mean, it's an excellent workout and makes me sweat, but that is not the kind of hard i am talking about. i am talking about the exercises and punches and kicks. i can't do all that shit! i was in the weight room destroying my joints while my friends were in dance class. whatever it is that makes people able to keep up with Billy Blanks and Jane Fonda (in her day) i do not have. kim has it. she knew what they were doing and she was punching in the right direction and her feet moved at a pace indistinguishable from the beat of the music. this girl? i was just glad to only almost fall down. i have always avoided group fitness classes exclusively because of the performance factor. my mind has certainly not been changed as a result of last night's performance. but i do think it is good for people to force themselves to do things that they are not good at or have no experience of. keeps us human. every now and then i like to be reminded that in 99.999% of skillful activities, i am a spinning idiot. i feel like a better person because of it. but i think i will still keep the audience to a maximum of one.

is it really time for this?

i had to go to the mall last night. few things make me as irritable and temperamental as a trip to the local mall. while i was at the mall i had to go to hallmark. i have never liked hallmark stores. i can't exactly think of all of the reasons for this, but i know they are plenty. on a good day, hallmark is little more than a people trap. try to go into the nearest hallmark store and keep the trip to under 30 minutes. can't be done. i can't even do it and i want nothing more than to get out of there. but reading greeting cards is a trap that only the truly skillful or anti-social can escape. i went in there for a single birthday card for a friend who was celebrating her 29th birthday. before i knew it i was reading get well cards and happy 80th birthday cards and some sweet nauseating poem about how much the author loves and respects her father. how does this happen? is it everyone? is it an OCD thing? once i have read the front or even part of the front of a card, i am so strongly compelled to pick it up and read the inside that walking away or moving on to the appropriate card section is not even an option. each card i encountered was more insultingly stupid than the previous one and i couldn't freaking stop myself. damn it! and what is up with no more shoebox greeting card section? i circled that damn store three times, not a shoebox to be found! that was the hallmark's only redeeming factor for so long. jokes like: having another birthday? now your boobs are going to fall down! are not funny. aging or gaining weight or graying hair or eating too much birthday cake or lots of candles burning the house down...none of these things are funny. they are stupid and simple and not funny. i feel insulted at hallmark. and that makes me angry.
in addition. i know that i may be in the minority here, but yesterday was november 10 and when i walked into hallmark i was immediately assaulted by red and green and traditional christmas tunes. i just don't think we need this yet. i love christmas as much as the next gift-toting, santa hat-wearing, jingle bells-humming former christian who chuckles at any suggestion that this is still a religious holiday, but how long should christmas be, really? it has officially claimed all of november, and it doesn't seem interested in occupying very much of the early months since, contrary to it's own self-perception, it is actually a very traumatic and disturbing time for most u.s. americans (especially the ones who are constantly trying to change the appearance of their bodies or spend the other 11 months of the year recovering from the influence of their families) and by the time january first rolls around we are all ready to take a bic to the big tree in the family room. since the expansion conspiracy only seems to be moving in one direction i am beginning to get very nervous about my best day of the year, october 31. is there a day in our future when i will be blathering on from inside a padded room "what happened to the calendar i once knew? remember when "dress up day" was a day when we were allowed to wear something other than santa suits and elf tights? and why are all those children walking from door to door carrying christmas stockings? who changed the rules!?!?" i think it's coming. and i will protest and in protest i will decorate my big green tree in orange and black and i will go to the mall in a witch costume and tell the children that santa is still too exhausted from the last christmas so this year i am coming to their house to steal things and cast spells and summon the spirits of their dead ancestors. season's greetings.

?

when people with whom i spend a lot of time begin to read my blog or any other thing i have written, invariably they turn to me and say "you write just like you talk!" on four separate occasions, individuals whom i have recently met have said to me: "you talk like you're writing." these insights are equally perplexing to me. how different should the two be and which is more desirable? to write like you are speaking or to speak as though you are writing? is it weird if there is no difference? i don't think there has ever been a difference and i am sure i was fully unaware that there should be.

clothing optional

in 1998 i went to the michigan womyn's music festival. i was more likely then than i am now to use words like "womyn". now i think words like that are not much more than invitations to be interpreted and treated like a parody of ourselves. i have a hard enough time distinguishing between my actual self and my many characters, so i have to try to keep things as simple as possible and if that means conventional spellings, so be it. the festival itself was one of the defining moments of my life. it was amazing! and weird. under the category of amazing: music under the stars every night, vegetarian food every day, freedom to determine whether or not to wear clothing from moment to moment. too warm? take off your shirt! still warm, take it all off! and then go to meetings and sessions like that. intimidated by your own nudity? stop by a body paint tent and "cover up". for every meal i could each chick peas and tahini. when i was hurt or sick i could go visit people who could make me better. these people resided in a tent which was referred to as "the womb". i know. even then i had a hard time with that. whatever. i went to concerts every night: indigo girls (of course), sweet honey in the rock... readings from her then forthcoming book by alice walker...drum circles outside my tent every night to help me fall asleep. ~and group showers~ that was a bit of an adjustment. it was one thing to walk around half-naked all day encountering hundreds of women wearing only breasts and sarongs. eventually, that kind of thing becomes very normal. after all, i have breasts, i know what they look like, there was no major adjustment to make. standing next to those same women while they chatted and washed their vaginas is another thing entirely. people have shower routines. i have a shower routine that is the same every single day ( surprised?) and it is fairly standard, accomplishing all of the things that need to be accomplished. but this routine is quite personal and private and it requires quite a nerve to perfom said routine for dozens of strangers standing either next to you or in a line waiting to perform their own soapy act. the line may have been the most uncomfortable part of the whole process. picture it if you will. there are 20 shower heads sticking out of poles with crossbars. hundreds of women need to use them so there is a sizable line. when standing in a line, it is customary to face in the direction of the desired goal or location. it would be awkward to direct one's attention elsewhere. if we all did this, how would we ever know when it was our turn? so given that we really need to face the group shower in order to wait for the group shower, it was really nothing more than an audience of 300. think on that for a moment. for whom is this more uncomfortable? glance around, gaze off in wonderland, it doesn't matter. at some point you must stop yourself and realize "i am standing here surrounded by naked people and i am watching 20 of them wash themselves. and soon they will all be doing the same to me."
~moving on. there were meetings for every kind of life experience you can imagine at the MWMF. 12 step programs for EVERYTHING! meetings for people in the adoption triad, political movements, y2k discussion groups, writing groups, religious groups, music groups. yes indeed the MWMF has something for everywoman. i was there for a week and would have stayed for the rest of my life. until i learned what "the womb" considered emergency medical treatment. as we were packing up our tents and bags on the last morning i stepped on something sticking out of the ground and tore the skin off of my heel. it was freaking disgusting and nasty and painful. every time i looked at it or thought about it i would start to pass out a little. my friends determined that, while we were all quite content to survive a week of naked wooded bliss without having to revisit the womb, my foot probably needed some attention. so i hobbled to the womb. this was a difficult time for me. for the first time in my life i had to suspend my strong belief in medicinal items such as pain killers and anti-biotics. i had to believe in the potential healing powers of nude strangers with plants. i felt as though i was going to bleed to death from my heel and i was not doing well with this situation. i got to the womb and the wombmaster? (i have no idea who she was, but that is a fun term and i like to make stuff up) says to me: "oooh, yeah, that hurts quite a bit, i'll bet." she was speaking to me as though i were five, but in retrospect i may have invited that. i sobbed: "uh-huh, it hurts bad!" (read in child-like pathetic injured voice) "we'll get you something to make that better, okay?" "o. kay." now even though i am five years old in this moment, i am fully expecting some kind of cleansing solution that will burn like a mo fo because that's how you know it's working! i also thought that there might be some tylenol in my near future. also, because i was practically hyperventilating as a result of my complete lack of ability to handle broken skin on my body, the wombmaster said: "we'll give you something to help calm you down too." wow. i thought. fun! i have been to doctors in buildings before who have given me things to calm down and those things are FUN! a few minutes later the wombmaster returned with some raw cotton and what i am quite sure was witch hazel. she also had some kind of ointment but i didn't ask for a name. i assumed it was aloe and i was comfortable with that. and to help me calm down? camomile tea. i tried to play nice, but i had my doubts. really? i am having a freaking panic attack because i have a big skin flap on the back of my foot that won't stop bleeding and dried flowers in water is going to make me better? it didn't, but i wanted to be a good sport in granola lesbo land, so i pretended that it was the most effective medicine i had ever tried. i guess i should just be thankful that the ointment was covered in actual gauze rather than a leaf tied to my foot with hemp.
at the womyn's music festival there are a lot of lesbians. and it seems a fair number of ftm trans women. apparently the only requirement for attendance is that one was born female and at the time of attendance is still biologically female. i am not sure this is the rule, but there was strong evidence to suggest it. (how much more information do you want?) this meant a lot of facial hair. and a lot of very butchy women. i mention this only because after a week of knowing that every single person i was seeing was female, regardless of features suggesting otherwise, the brain flips a switch. i love butchy women. i think they're hot. and it was fun for me to watch for the butchiest of the butchy. eventually, of course, i had to leave and for weeks after i left i remember looking at every person i encountered as if s/he was female. i could have come across grizzly adams and i would have tried to find features that suggested womanhood. it was weird. and it was common. one day i was walking through a public building with one of the women with whom i attended the festival. i glanced at hairy men and said, "okay, i have to talk about this, i keep trying to make a woman out of every person i see." she started laughing hysterically, knowingly. she'd been doing the same thing for weeks. for the record, you can make anyone into a woman if you set your mind to it. and it's a fun game.

delete

before i was even finished editing and adding pictures to my previous blog, i had an anonymous comment on it. this person, who chose to remain nameless, read the post and determined that i was basically a self-loathing, self-centered, unhappy little self who would be much happier if i spent some time thinking about other people and less time hating myself. interesting. from my BMI goal, s/he deduced that i need to learn to like myself and that changing my body isn't going to make a significant difference in my self-esteem. i should make an effort to reach out to people and make friends. that was the advice. to that random anonymous person i would like to say two things: first...if you read the description of my blog, you will note that this is my place to rant about all things irritating and aggravating to me. this is not my venue for sharing all of the good things i do with my time and life. that stuff is boring and no one wants to hear about it. i have plenty of friends and a healthy commitment to my fellow human beings. that is why things piss me off so severely. second: issues, i have plenty as can be witnessed in previous postings. body image: not one of them. i strain to imagine how one could be so humorless as to mistake a post of such ridiculous proportions as a cry for help. i deleted it. not because i can't handle the feedback. i actually rather enjoyed it, typos and all. i deleted it solely because how many times in one's life does one have the power to completely annihilate an inaccurate assessment of one's self? delete!
p.s. is the analysis that i am less than gleeful on a daily basis really a breakthrough discovery?

a girl needs goals

lately i have discovered a relentless pattern of energy deficiency. i lack motivation more today than i did in 8th grade when all of my teachers would call my parents and tell them "shelly is a very intelligent girl, she just needs to apply herself more." i didn't really get around to "applying myself" until college. i was very applied in college. it faded again by grad school and now i have no ambition to accomplish anything. it's not a sad, tired, depressed kind of deficiency, i just can't think of anything i really want to do. so i have been trying to invent things to achieve. so far, i have come up with very little. and i can openly admit from the onset that there is a very significant chance that my new goals are just a smoke screen to help me avoid all of the things that i know i should be doing. the things that matter to me deep in my soul and psyche-the things that intimidate me so much that i lose the ability once again to "apply myself".

my first goal is to memorize all of the words to "One Week" by the Bare Naked Ladies. it's going to be difficult, no doubt about that, but i think i can do it. and before you start laughing, give the song another listen and check out the lyrics. this is tricky business! i'll keep you posted on my progress.

another goal that i am half-way to inventing is related to my body mass composition and requires some explanation. i work out at the YMCA regularly. for the sake of this post, i need everyone to be willing to agree that "regularly" can mean once or twice every three weeks. i have a motivation problem. we've already established that. so a few days ago, i received in the mail my brand new baby blue armband to hold my ipod nano in place while exercising. it is just about the cutest thing you've ever seen and i couldn't wait to use it. i learned this week that workout accessories can be a motivating factor for me. this fact evidenced by my two trips (saturday and monday) to the gym. i absolutely love going there and i would spend all of my time lifting weights if it were physically possible, but i struggle to drive myself to the gym. it is easier to sit at a computer and think about or write about how much i love it. moving on...yesterday my armband and i were in the fitness center (a room that strongly resembles what i know to be a weight room, but perhaps that term is too antiquated for today's young muscle heads) and i saw a flier that offers a body composition test. it had never occurred to me to submit to a test like this, in fact i flat refused them in high school, as this seemed to me to be information that no one else could possibly need. but recognizing my lack of motivation and knowing very well that mirrors were not going to help, as i could give or take whatever the mirror offers, i decided that i could set goals if i had numbers. something has to entice me to move my body and since i enjoy both a slim firm physique or a bouncy squishy little tummy equally, i will have to rely on numbers. so on thursday i will learn how much of my body is made of fat and how much is muscle and then i will decide which direction to take my new goal.

i need a third goal. some people may be thinking: shelly, you need a first goal. you people can just shut up, these goals are real enough for me. i was thinking that for my third goal i would attend a writing class. again, something i have never done but always wondered about. what do they do there? is it fun? is it scary? do they laugh at each other? i am not sure if i want the answer to that last question to be yes or no. i don't think that i would enjoy being laughed at very much, but i also couldn't take the pressure of being in a context where laughing is not allowed. so i began to consider the writing class (my favorite is when they are called "creative" writing classes. what kind of writing isn't? technical writing i suppose, but that already has an adjective in its nomenclature. everything else is creative so i want to find a class that calls itself a writing class.) it seems like a good idea. however i have to stop and contemplate: who takes these classes? what are they writing about and why? it seems embarrassing. and most importantly: to what end does one participate in a writing class? does everyone stumble in embarrassed and intimidated on week one and spring out the door, handwritten certificate in hand, on week 12 ready to submit to their publisher and looking for an agent? what do you do with the information and experience from a writing class? does everyone just want their journal entries to be more impressive? or are they hoping to finally get their letters to the editor published in the local news rag because goll-darn-it people need to know about the neighbor who shovels his snow too early in the morning or the traitor who refused to lower her flag to commemorate the passing of ronald reagan. these things are important! i am not going to take a writing class. i prefer to hide behind a computer monitor and post only to complete strangers in blogland. my plan to deny that i wrote any of this nonsense will be very effective since no one actually saw me do it.

i need a third goal. any suggestions?

off

well, i am here at the computer again trying to find words, but the attempt will likely be in vain. i am a little off and i have been for a few days now. i am suffering an internal disillusionment that tends to annihilate all ability to respond to the world around me.
on friday night, i went to a play. it was incredible and important and beautiful but it completely wrecked me. when my words come back, i will write a post about it.
on saturday night, i went to North Country. rage. i will never have words for that.
i am activating my internal censor and recognizing that i should wait to write/post until such a time as i can be sure to not regret or be embarrassed by my behavior.

not exactly the same

here is a photo i found while searching the other day and i just couldn't resist adding it to my series of photos inciting childhood memories. this isn't exactly a memory, as i have absolutely no idea what kind of important event we were attending when this photo was taken, but i can deduce. we are not wearing jeans so something rather significant is occurring. we are in sara's backyard, so it had something to do with her family. it is sunny and not snowy so it is between may and september. sara appears to be forcing a smile and i am not sure what is going on, so the event must have been in honor of her brother. if it were about sara, we would be able to see it on her face. i am going to go ahead and assume based on our ages and all aforementioned elements that this photo was taken at sean's high school graduation party.

here is my favorite thing about this photo. on your left, you will observe a girl in a pink flowered dress who grew up to say things like "hullabaloo" and "midwestern sensibilities". white tights, white shoes, there is probably a bow somewhere on the back of her head and i would bet it is white. she represents for you, then and now, "the midwestern position". or at the very least, plays it well. (i am not completely convinced) i wonder if, now that she lives in philadelphia, sara spends time watching herself in the mirror, straining to move her mouth in ways that encourage the persistence of the accent we've all come to be so proud of, props to frances mcdormand. seated next to the midwestern position, you will find a girl dressed in fruit. and what is that hair? if i didn't know my own past better i would swear that fruit girl is hung over. nope. just needs a chance at a second impression. i am wearing a black rayon shorts set with large pictures of fruit. some of which i am not sure i can identify. if i remember correctly (and it is not with pride that i announce this) i believe there is a black elastic belt somewhere in there. i don't know what i might have been thinking or why my mother allowed this, but i will pass it off as one of those fashion accidents of the early 90's. the 80's were ending, people were searching for something. we couldn't stack multiple layers of colored socks to enhance every hue from every outfit anymore. we couldn't fall back on the baggy sweater/tank top combination coupled with black stretchy pants and slouch boots to dress it up. we were a lost generation. this girl turned to fruit. this girl's friend turned to laura ingalls wilder. i should take this moment to remind myself: when confronted with a choice, always take the simpler or more muted path of expression. the photos would be less embarrassing. congratulations on your graduation, sean. with love, from carmen miranda

yuck

today i am cranky and impatient. i haven't been like this all day, but it has been setting in for a couple of hours now. everything that happens kind of annoys me and i sense that the whole world is a very distasteful place. people who are happy are just too predictably happy about things that really aren't significant enough to evoke emotion. i have decided that those people are stupid. people who are sad seem pathetic and yearning and i feel like they should compare notes with real people with real concerns. people who play pretentious make me want to throw things at them. like the woman who needed someone to open her *twist off* soda because she's "just not very good with that kind of thing." what the hell is that? work it out, bitch. or the wealthy white men who don't think that standing in a line is really the kind of thing they ought to be doing. lines are for places like customs and ellis island. these white men have places to go and god damn ought to be able to get there quickly. i hate them. i like to slow them down as much as i can. when i lived in new york, i would watch them weave in and out of sidewalk traffic as though the concrete had been laid earlier that day just so they could get from the bank to the whole foods market. i would contemplate how a person becomes so ungodly self-centered as they step in front of (or on) children, women, families, strollers; cutting everyone else off with their proud strong shoulders totally unaware that they had just knocked lunch out of the hands of another human being or that their briefcase, no doubt full of essential documents, critical for the continued success of this country, had just destroyed an entire flower display which was probably a significant part of the day's income for the family-owned shop, as they brisked by. totally unaware, but disinterested as well. the world just gets in the way of these men. the rest of us should just have our own sidewalks built, i guess. once when one of these assholes walked right into my friend nikki, glancing but not bothering to acknowledge verbally that he had likely injured her, i kicked him in the back of the ankle. it was my sole moment of aggression in my life and i loved it. i wanted to push him down and then keep walking as if i hadn't noticed his existence, but in manhattan you can do anything you want except push a white man to the ground. people go to jail for that kind of thing.

worry

since i have already revealed more about myself to this public forum than my own mother is aware of, i guess i may as well just keep going. today i would like to revisit the days and nights of worry i experienced as a child. i would like to talk about worry and checking behavior, and if it's all the same to my 18 unique readers, according to the counter i installed yesterday, i would also like to mislead others into the presumption that i am talking solely of past behavior. and for the most part i am. the kind of normal "did i turn the coffee pot off?" and "why the hell would i leave the house with the dryer running?" anxiety is nothing compared to the mind plagues of my life as a little girl.

by the age of 7, after completing too many rounds of standardized testing it had been firmly established that my intellectual capacities were suitable, and my gross attention to detail ensured that precision in academic achievement should not be a problem. but i attended viking elementary school from 1980-1987 with one thing on my mind. what the hell am i going to do when i fail a grade. it wasn't even called being "held back" then. not even the neutral "repeating". my anxiety came from an absolute knowledge that i would fail a grade eventually and what would i do then? it was just a matter of time. in grade 2, i did not earn any grade lower than the little kid equivalent of A's. in grades 3 and 4 i earned a total of 3 B's, otherwise A's. but i would lie in my bed at night, my brain refusing sleep because i had to worry. i wasn't even working out solutions or precautions, just worry. what will my mom say? my dad will be so mad! mike will make fun of me. all of my friends will know that i am supposed to be in a higher grade because they all live on my street and we have always been in school together. i am a miserable failure and no one can help me. tears. millions and millions of tears shed over the inevitable failure that was my academic life. (i just had an epiphany. in a later submission, perhaps i will attempt to tread the gloomy stagnant waters of my current academic phobias and discuss the obvious self-fulfilling prophecy, revealed 20 years later than expected). i remember so clearly the night that my incessant worry climaxed into what was surely the most troubling concern for me in my limited life experience. if i failed second grade in regular school what happens at Sunday school? would i go on as if they are two separate entities entirely? or would the sunday school director recognize the confusion in being in 2nd grade elementary school, but 3rd grade sunday school? can you fail sunday school? it seemed like you couldn't. but how was i going to deal with the shame of being the first child to present the problem to the sunday school department at calvary lutheran church. i lost sleep over this question for years. i worried about it until my brain became convinced not just of the looming possibility, but that the day had arrived and i had to register for a sunday school class. i could hear the whispers. the stammering voices of the church mothers who only showed up to volunteer on sunday school sign up day in the fellowship hall because it gives them a better edge on the race to heaven and they have a nice new skirt suit from casual corner to display for the other mothers. how do we sign up the dumb girl? if she can't handle second grade she is obviously not ready for the mental damage of our third grade religious imagery. or would it go like this: well, she did finish all of the second grade lessons last year, we can't make her do the same book over again. i couldn't decide which would be worse, i just knew that one or the other scenario was at my metaphorical doorstep.
this was the kind of thing that kept my pillowcases stained with tears for all of the years of my childhood. no one knew this, and during the day i was quite the happy little camper, full of energy and love and fun.
i remember my mom telling me at a very young age that "everything seems a lot worse at night, it will be better in the morning." no truer words have ever been spoken to me. these days i keep a stock pile of sominex on hand. rarely do i have to use it, but it makes me feel more comfortable knowing that it's there should the worries ever set in. take two of these and rest, dear, it will be better in the morning.

this one's all sara!

as i was rifling through scores of old photographs looking for the pic of sara hiding in the stuffed animal kingdom (which i found and uploaded to its rightful post) i discovered an impressive pattern in my birthday party/sleepover photos. through the years, the clothing styles change a bit and random friends, some of whom i can't identify to save my life, gently glide into and out of their respective ugly phases, but some things remain the same. sara will always be right at my side and apparently she will also always be leaning into or against me. i had never before noticed that she had this tendency, but as i consider the implications i recall sara frequently discussing her intimidation and immense shyness when she found herself surrounded by larger groups of often older friends. i had no memory of her behaving in a way that would have indicated this, but she always said it. she always seemed very confident and self-assured. she always wanted to beat up randy! shy girls don't beat up randy. okay, that isn't exactly true. my entire childhood is based on foodchain aggression and every kid is aware of it. not every kid is aware of her/his place in it, but we all knew the deal. the big strong mean kid picks on the weaker kid who picks on the ugly kid who picks on the fat kid who seeks out for destruction the poor kid who has at his disposal the theater kid who, fearing discovery tries to humiliate the obvious gay kid who is left with two options: kill the younger siblings or wait 15 years and display a more impressive vocabulary and sense of fashion, better social skills and far superior intellect. and of course the kind of confidence and passion for decency that only a lifetime of battles from the bottom of the food chain can inspire. it is important for me to understand my world in this way. i will not be convinced that things are otherwise. at any point in the chain of aggression, there are numerous "sweet" kids who at any time could fall victim to any of the other kids because they are easy targets. sara wasn't bad and randy didn't deserve to get beat up. he was just too sweet. he was obvious prey on our block.






okay, back to my point. as in every part of my childhood on south 22nd street, sara secures a starring role in all of my birthday photos. in one, she is even positioned on the little green couch seemingly providing some prop handling or gift arrangement of some kind. the couch is clearly otherwise reserved for the birthday girl, party-goers looking on in suspense (boys in the back row, it would seem telling if we hadn't been at that age when every girl reserves the 'back row' of her life for the boys her mother makes her play with). each child wondering who was going to give a better present than the one their mother picked out yesterday without consultation. everyone waiting intently...sara, hand her my present next! wait, no...not yet. what if kristi's present is better? do i want mine to come before or after the best present...wait...i don't know what to hope for...maybe i was the only child who experienced this agony at birthday parties. but i doubt it. this array of photos also reveals that sara and i, or more likely our mothers) mistakenly believed we were identical twins. matching yellow dresses, pink pants and white shirts, matching headbands with bows which i think we would both admit today never should have happened upon any child's head.
upon close observation, one will notice that sara even occupied the seat of secondary royalty at mike's birthday party once. i don't appear to have been invited and sean must have been mad at mike because i don't see him in the picture either. it is clearly mike's birthday party and there sits sara and her little round piggy tails and little round cheeks. clearly they were destined to be married some day. for the record, i think sara just liked to be closest to the cake and the presents, and according the documentation my mother kept with her ever-present polaroid camera, she consistently positioned herself with skill and precision.