"drop that rope!"

when i was in seventh grade i had an english teacher who was incredibly supportive and loving. some of my childhood anxiety issues were, at the time, blossoming into adolescent depression and insecurity and this woman seemed to be among the first to recognize the need for some added support. one of the ways that she did this was to try to convince me that i had some talent and natural academic ability. a fact that had not yet occurred to me or anyone in my family at that time, and frankly, wouldn't re-surface for at least 8 more years.

my clearest memory of that class is a short story assignment. the stories were to be compiled and reprinted as a class collection, the audience for which, eludes my memory. we all wrote autobiographical stories which would be used to practice the editing process. first the outline then the rough draft then the re-writes and finally the polished, finished product. we were assigned to small groups to read and edit each other's stories. a suggestion that would have spawned a major stroke had this not been a few years before i took up smoking and sitting as full time hobbies. the idea of a peer reading something that i wrote and then being encouraged to critique it was so much more than i could handle. but i didn't tell anyone this, i just stayed up all night worrying about it and trying to let re-runs of saturday night live distract me into peaceful slumber.

when the day came that the first drafts had been read by the teacher and the students arranged into short lists on a piece of paper in her hand, i began to imagine ways to avoid accountability for how terrible my story was. i was sick when i wrote it. i didn't really write it. i was under the influence of nyquil at the time. and my all-time default explanation: i didn't really try very hard. i was ready to pretend that i don't suck that much even though the proof was right there in her hand. my teacher handed back the stories for us to glance through before we were told of our group assignments. i opened mine and saw only a few red marks. (yes, this was eons before the use of red marking pens became the kind of thing that mandated reporters have to disclose to county social workers.) oh great! it's worse than i thought! she didn't even bother to mark all of the mistakes, she just gave up! the teacher read the lists of small groups and told everyone where to position their desks. my name was not called. i didn't have a group. i had nowhere to re-position my desk, no stories to read. there was a lot of mixed emotion attached to this situation. on one hand, none of my peers were going to be given an opportunity to read my story and say mean things about it. on the other hand, i have to accept now that i have completed the task so poorly that i need one-on-one help from the teacher. i wanted to melt. my teacher pulled me aside and said, "shelly, your story was written well enough already, i don't think that having your classmates read it is going to be necessary. i just want you to make these few changes and it should be fine."

the story was called, "Drop That Rope!" it was a story about the first time i went water-skiing with a friend whose family had a lake cabin a few doors down from my family's. the story described, in grotesque detail, falling down and losing one ski, then the other, and forgetting to let go of the rope and being dragged through and under the water behind a speed boat and continuing this activity for some time before finally realizing that i would float in my life jacket if i just let go of the rope. my teacher provided all kinds of praise and acclaim. she went on and on about how the story describes the incident so well that the reader could practically feel the water and sense the fear that i must have felt while being dragged under it.

of course, for this girl who is terrified of water and boats, being dragged by a rope under lake water is unimaginably terrifying. and as i re-read the story i too could feel the anxiety and dread. the anxiety and dread that i know i would have felt had i ever been dragged behind anything on any body of water. but as it was, the story was a complete fabrication. one of my pathetic attempts to be perceived as normal. all of my friends liked to waterski, so i wrote a story describing what would have happened had i ever tried it. but regardless of the effectiveness of the detail that my teacher was so impressed by, not a word of the story was even remotely true. my mistake, however, was that the characters in it were real people with whom i had daily contact. i think i was in college when i finally stopped feeling anxiety over the possibility that i would be caught and revealed as the fraud that i am. one simple assignment. 12 years of life from which to choose one small event to write about. one big lie that was stapled to a stack of my classmates' actual autobiographical stories and provided for all of the school and every parent to read. a public lie. the anxiety nearly killed me. and the great irony is this: now i can't fabricate a story to save my life. everything i write is autobiographical. and true. at least more true than "drop that rope!". truth is relative. whatever. i strongly suspect though, that if you ever find yourself in a situation like the one i pretended to have experienced, it is probably a good idea to drop the rope. that part is true. and this story is true. i think.

vicious circle

i have never been much of a tourist. i don't care all that much about popular places to go and i have no desire to climb to the top of the statue of liberty. she looks the same from battery park as she does on tv. i don't care much about the empire state building except that to stand on the top of it provides a rooftop view of economic injustice that can only be seen, not described. i never did go into the world trade center, because despite its tragic and horrifying demise, its purpose irritated me and its tourist magnetism was sad to me. but today, as i surfed around the net reading more about my own personal hero, i find myself in deep regret over never having participated in the "dorothy parker's new york" tour. i spent countless hours on most of the streets that are covered in the tour, but i never knew where i was while i was there. i knew that my favorite place to drink and play pool was an original beat hangout, but it never really went further than that. why? i have always felt so strangely connected to places and things through their known history and i have always been so intrigued my the early beat generation and particularly by some of new york's most spectacular women...dorothy parker, zora neale hurston... why didn't i bother to find those places and learn about them and feel the intensity of the historic spaces where so much of what i have some to love and cherish was created and shared. i did go to stonewall like the good little queer that i am and i went to the the tenement museum on orchard street (which when i visited, was under threat of destruction by a greedy landlord who wanted to make more money off of the property by renovating and leasing). so i did a few of the second or third rate tourist attractions. the ones that are more depressing and/or educational than suits your average traveler. the ones that offer a window into new york that has fewer bright lights and a lot less flash. but i forgot to seek out the next tier. the layer of history that includes the people who valued the importance of those stinging elements of reality while they were happening. i should have sat at the algonquin and imagined myself as a 1920's intellectual with short hair and long pants and a smelly cigarette blathering on about whatever is was that pissed me off that day. (that part of me wouldn't have been different no matter my generation). maybe i would even be making eyes at the older woman across the room from me whose hair is even shorter and voice a little deeper. i do love to blog, but honestly, i would take a moleskin journal, a telescopic cigarette holder and a circle of angry friends over almost anything.

who are these people?

sometimes people present themselves in such a way that i want to say to their faces: "by the way, you are my next blog entry. and that is usually not a compliment." two of these young women came in to the coffee house today. one of them initially seemed fairly normal and even gave me some knowing and apologetic glances for her friend who appeared to be extrememly intoxicated and kept trying to order a whiskey coffee. ("like the kind you used to make me" she would say to the normal one.) eventually the normal(?) one ordered something that did not involve a label identifying the "proof" value. as i walked away to make the benign beverage, the less normal one kind of snapped out of her intoxication act, after laughing hysterically at herself snapping pictures of the two with her camera phone, and the one who had initially presented in such an acceptable manner, stopped talking about alcohol and started singing "ri-ise and shi-ine and give god the glory glory, ri-ise and shi-ine..." what the hell? i immediately recognized this as a child's bible camp or sunday school song. i know it well. i do not, however, wander through my life singing it out loud! no person over 11 has any right exposing the outside world to these lyrics and this happy little tune, yet this young woman (old enough to have the credit card with which she paid for the drinks) offered no explanation for her sudden outburst. she just kept singing those words, on a loop, until she walked out the door. not a word. acted as though this were normal and acceptable. if i recall correctly (and i always do) this song claims to give god the glory glory, but its primary utilization is as a weapon against children who don't wake up in time for morning devotionals or kitchen patrol or whatever kids are starting their bible camp days with nowadays. this song is mean. mean because it so frequently awakens precious little ones from a quiet and innocent slumber. mean because once it is performed in the presence of another human being, it is a "gift" that won't quit giving. ever. i promise you, three weeks from now, i will just be going about my life and i will find myself with "ri-ise and shi-ine and give god..." stuck in my head and falling out of my mouth. it's like a sugary virus. this poor young woman must have picked it up from someone who knows someone who is under the age of 9. she must have contracted it innocently because, as i mentioned, she gave no explanation for her impromptu solo. no "i teach sunday school." or "we just had a campus crusade for christ weekend retreat." not even a "that damn song has been stuck in my head since i went to camp 14 years ago. any of these things i would have believed and any of them would have helped me. but nothing. and so here i am: a thirty year old agnostic lesbian barista drifting through my day dreading the moment that i forget to lock the subconscious gates and "ri-ise and shi-ine and give god the glory glory, ri-ise and shi-ine and give god the glory glory RISE. AND. SHINE. AND..." is once again unleashed on the unsuspecting public, only to mutate and carry on its destructive cycle.

grrrrrrr...ammar

i hate mispronunciations. like "mispronounciation". i hate wrongly constructed words with unnecessary prefixes. or incorrect prefixes. like innecessary. these things are intolerable to me and it requires every drop of restraint to not correct these kinds of blunders when performed by near-strangers. and it changes how i perceive people. (as i write this, i am beginning to think that i already wrote an entry about this issue. but no bother, i am irritated enough by the situation to write about it regularly.)
occasionally i will find myself utterly disillusioned by a person i had previously believed to be brilliant standing up and publicly declaring that something is the way it is irregardless of something else. WHAT?! but i respected you! how dare you?! why haven't any of your intelligent friends told you about this faux pas? i feel particularly irritable when i am speaking to someone who insists on giving every word significantly fewer syllables than it is supposed to have. (not LESS syllables, thank you!) and why can't target get that right. 8 items or less? what? do they mean 8 items of "stuff" or less "stuff" than that? and don't even get me started on the superfluous apostrophes (apostrophe's?) present in the english-speaking universe. anyway, the syllables. if someone offered some serp to put on your pancakes, would you know how to reply? is serp something we like or something we don't like? i don't know. and realater? what is a realater? is it a person who sells a house? or some kind of diet drug? (relacor, for those who don't watch as much cable television as i do) why is it so hard to pronounce words in a way that respects the letters in the order in which they appear? and don't tell me that you "shoont" have to or "coont" have done something. a contraction makes two words into one WORD not always one syllable. occasionally i encounter the extra syllables. equally annoying. when i was younger, i was quite an athalete. impressive. i want to say "and how were you at the more academic elements of high school?"
i could go on for days. but instead i'll just write another entry about this issue at a later date. for now i will conclude with the confession that i try as hard as i can to avoid the use of the words "that" and "which" because i know there are rules dictating their appropriate applications, and i have never known those rules. well, one time my friend Mac taught me the rules, but there were also 2 or 3 bottles of wine involved... but "supposably" i knew the rules for a day.

* special note* grammatical annoyances not included in this criticism include: refusal to capitalize, beginning sentences with "and" or "but" or "because", the use of periods other than at the end of complete sentences, and any other inappropriate usage i might demonstrate on a regular basis. when i do these things, i choose to declare my inalienable right to poetic licensure.

drivetime

sometimes i do really bizarre stuff while i am driving in my car. some of those things show up on my guilty pleasures confessional, but there are so many more than could ever be named there. one of the major problems i experience in my car is the dilemma of entertainment. sometimes i listen to my ipod and that is always a winning choice. usually i listen to minnesota public radio and that satisfies me about 80% of the time. but occasionally, i find myself in a dire predicament. MPR is playing either some dude talking about money or some very annoying person who speaks only in the form of questions (usually the call-ins, not often the actual guests) even though the content of their sentences is strictly declarative. this is what happened this morning. annoying call-in on MPR, too lazy to reach for the ipod, so i had to surf. this is easy at night when i can just switch it over to the AM dial and listen to art bell or some randoms in beulah rambling on about the huge animal they shot last weekend and the expression on the animal's face at the time. gross, i know, but the conversation is extraordinarily entertaining, so i can look past the grossness. but in the morning, i have to get creative. so one of my favorite things to do when i have few choices is to listen to genres that i hate and try to imagine what it would be like to be someone who thinks this is good music. so i switched the dial to OUTLAW COUNTRY! they have a point, this shit should be illegal. i think that i have created a country-free bubble around myself, because whenever i do this, i always hear some song that i think is outrageously hilarious (which, in the country world, also means quite sad) and i try to learn it. for example, while driving to williston one time, jan and i learned of this song called red-neck woman. (she ain't no high class broad) we were stupified. beside ourselves. what is this music and can any other human beings hear it right now? so, proud of our new discovery we arrived at our destination and tried to tell people about this crazy song we had just heard and how bizarre the lyrics are and who the hell records this stuff. we mustered up a few of the lyrics that we could remember and suddenly everyone else begins to sing the whole freakin' song! everyone (else) knew this song! we learned that what we thought to be a true treasure of a find on some dusty radio station was actually pretty much the most popular song on the country charts. pathetic as that is. over time, we have had similar experiences with lyrics like "praise the lord and pass the ammunition" "she's my little whiskey girl" and something about a dusty red road and drinking beer and having sex. i know, that really narrows it down, right?
so i try to build personality profiles around these lyrics. what kind of person truly admires a song called "praise the lord and pass the ammunition"? and what would it be like to be a woman who loves to listen to "She needs somethin' with a little more edge and a little more pain She's my little whiskey Girl My Ragged-on-the-edges girl Ah, but I like 'em rough" i just can't imagine being someone who longs for characteristics reflected in that song. or who longs for a man to sing about me as "his" little girl of any kind. who is flattered by this shit? i listened to a song this morning that was about "something to be proud of " or "a life you can hang a hat on" or something like that. i didn't listen too carefully because i kept trying to picture hanging a hat on life and i didn't get it. it was a loose and lazy metaphor and i lost interest. then a woman started to sing about "do ya still love me or am i the biggest mistake you ever made?" do ya', do ya'... blah blah blah. here's what i'm thinking: one ought never to spend that much time offering possibiliities like this. perhaps the audience of this song had never thought about it, but now that you mention it, you ARE kind of a big mistake. thanks for pointing that out. god, i hope jan never hears that song! basically, the bottom line is this: i can't stand country music. there was a time about 15 years ago when i did, but it was different then.. people were playing in rivers and fighting over lovers. and little poor girls were growing up to be whores. eventually, i lost my taste for all of that and have spent the last 15 years wondering what the hell i was ever doing with all those tapes. now country music is even more disgusting. and more misogynistic. and more reflective of cheap patriotism. and more xenophobic. and i hate it. and it strongly affects my mood. i start to think that i should just pull out my hair in fistsful because at least then i wouldn't be focused just on the sounds of the "music". i bet that if i wore my heartrate monitor while an entire toby keith cd plays, i would eventually be burning fat, my heart rate would rise so high. i am going to try it. i'll let you know...

where's the incendiary department?

jan and i contribute pretty evenly to the "target shopping list" and when it gets long enough, whichever of us has the most free time takes the list to target. often this is me, since i am the one with random days off during the week. without fail, every time i take the list to target, one of the items that jan has added eludes me entirely. yesterday was no exception.

if someone asked you to go to target and buy some wooden matches, to which department would you go? i didn't know either. so i tried the obvious places first: camping/cookout gear. nada. firestarter logs and other such fireplace material. no luck. at this point i was stumped. there is no "matches" department in target. in fact, as my memory serves, i have never in my life purchased matches. bars and gas stations have provided for all of my matching needs. i had never been asked to purchase them and i have never found myself in need of them so i had no idea where to look for them. but by now it is a challenge. after a significant lack of success in the two obvious aisles, i became a woman on a mission. but sadly, a woman with no real destination. i looked everywhere in that godforsaken store. nothing. at one point i found myself thinking things like: "these are the things that i would have in the same drawer if i had matches in a drawer at my house." as logical as that seems, it did not help me. i even considered the possibility that matches are a random enough product that one might find them in the impulse buy display just before the checkout. no such luck, again. think, shelly, think. this can't be this hard. matches come from somewhere. people must buy them. and since super target now has EVERYTHING, they must have damn matches! my next strategy was to consider what people use matches for (besides camping grills and fireplaces). so i wandered down the candle aisle. lighters. no matches. and that is my status still: no matches. there are stores that are more obvious choices for wooden matches, i know this. but now i am committed. i am going to locate matches in target if it kills me. any suggestions would be greatly appreciated at this point. if you were told to buy matches at target. where would you go?

H 2 NO 2

i don't know if my father was ever fully aware that the entire time he was doing his best to make a swimmer out of me, his beloved son was working twice as hard to make water my most persistent phobia. by the time i was in my later single digits, i had developed a bit of confidence and if there weren't too many people in the water (and if mike was NOT one of them) i could often step into a swimming pool and stand several feet from the edge without feeling absolutely certain of my impending death. but mike was a sneaky little bastard and he always found a way to bring horror and pain into my world. just as i was starting to get comfortable waving my arms around and bobbing a little (to get the ends of my hair wet-- it increased the normalcy factor) and trying to restore regular breathing, there he would be. i would spot him either not at all or way too late. slithering along the bottom of the pool like the snake that he often was, my darling brother would grab my ankles forcefully and yank me down under the water. since gasping is the natural response to this kind of surprise, i always came up drooling and coughing and making throw-up sounds. tears and snot, hopefully indistinguishable from pool water, would pour out of all of my facial orifices as i cried and flopped and tried to sprint through the cruel waters to get out of the death trap. sometimes i would see him just before he struck. cheeks bulged out with air and eyes bugging out all over the place. damn it! often he would grab on and just hold on for a moment, knowing that the anxiety of knowing what was likely coming was worse than the shock alone of being dragged under. my father's hard work was once again undone. 4 hours of trying to leap from the side of the pool. 4 hours of trust-building around water. gone in one swift trip-line maneuver. as i sputtered and coughed and begged the atmosphere for just one more breath, mike would swim away and laugh and laugh and laugh. i knew from the 9 years we had already shared a home that verbal responses only made things worse, but i had terrible self-control when i was mad at him. "it's not funny! i couldn't breathe!" as soon as i would say it i would know i had made a terrible mistake. "i can't breathe!!" uttered in a desperate panic was my brother's favorite thing to make me say. and he freakin' loved it! "I can't BREE! i can't BREE!" he would shout as he mocked me with the ever watchful eye that ensured my parents weren't seeing any of this. it was important that they didn't so that when i finally dug my fingernails into his forearms in self-defense, he could claim the attack was unsolicited. he even used to bury be under blankets and sit on me until i would finally scream "i can't breathe!" then he would relent and run around mocking me until my parents came around. his favorite game was to make me cry out the words 'i can't breathe'. what kind of sick twisted mentality is that?

i am 30 now and he is 34. i still can't swim, nor can i stand in a body of water with a lot of other people in it. and if today i found myself in a situation in which my brother was in a swimming pool and i was invited to enter, i absolutely would not do it. not because of some kind of weird PTSD thing (although i won't rule it out) but because the boy hasn't changed that much. i am absolutely certain that he would swim up to my ankles TODAY and pull my head under the water just to watch me sputter and drool. and he would be doing it "for old time's sake". and he would laugh. and he would say "i can't BREEEEEE!!"

H 2 NO

i have a few phobias. anyone who has known me for more than 10 minutes can likely vouch for that as they have had ample time by then to have witnessed my fantastic response to any one of the offending stimuli. one of my longest-lasting issues has been hydrophobia. i was not born with it, but i acquired it at a very young age and it persists to this day. the story that i have heard all my life from the people who were old enough to formulate and file memories at the time goes something like this:
it is early in the summer of 1978 (actually more like late spring, but the story seems like a summery event, so it is summer in this re-telling). my parents, their two lovely children and my mother's mother are on a long vacation, by car, through the southeast. the precious family of four plus a grandma stops for an evening at a campsite. (previously, i told this story with the stopping place identified as a motel, but having recently viewed photos of the vacation i have deduced that we must have been camping our way across the country.) while perusing the campsite for entertainment and probably food, the family (i am unsure of the specific members represented, at least little shelly and her daddy) comes upon a swimming pool. small shelly had no previous experience with such a thing (being just 2) but was immediately intrigued. this is the part of the story that strongly suggests to me that i was SUPPOSED to be a waterbaby, naturally compelled to swim and frolic in the water. without warning or permission, tiny shelly plunges into the pool (the deep end, even) and as may be expected, begins to sink rapidly to the bottom of the pool. super-daddy finds himself lurched toward action and reaches down to scoop the small pudgy blond baby from the cruel and unrelenting waters. i would love to say at this point that i have feared water ever since that moment, but unfortunately, i wasn't done exploring. as my mom tells it, i did exactly the same thing later on that same trip. once again daddy to the rescue. as a child i told the story with my father having to dive head-first fully dressed to retrieve me from the bottom of the pool, but by now i have no idea if that is true or if i just pictured it like that when i was 7. the trip culminated with a visit to my aunt and uncle's house in south carolina where i, contrary to all apparent attempts to avoid it, celebrated my third birthday. i have in fact feared water ever since the SECOND plunge. incidentally, i have never returned to south carolina or any part of the southeast with the exception of a layover in miami on my way to guatemala courtesy of american airlines. it is entirely possible that all of my phobias began on that trip. i still can't swim, i am fearful of the south in general and the southeast in particular, and i associate that region of the country with enormous insects- the only thing on the planet that frightens me more than water.

bless my father's heart he tried so hard to cure me. my childhood is filled with memories of standing on the edge of random swimming pools all over the country. my dad would spend hours standing in 3 feet of water with his arms poised as if he were overwhelmed by the power of the savior surging through him. "just jump, i'll catch you!" most of my memories are of long stand-offs at the edge of those pools. me with my knees shaking and jaw clenched, shivering as the water that i acquired while stepping slowly into the pool and slowwwly submerging myself up to my armpits. the neck and face are strictly off-limits (to this day) which is why jumping in is so terrifying. no matter how smooth the transition, water in some form will land on my face. maybe a splash, perhaps an accidental brief submersion. it will happen. but my father just waited. generally speaking, i eventually worked up the courage to take the leap, but the only way i truly felt the event was successful and my father was trustworthy was if he caught me in the air and i was fully secured before even touching the water. sometimes i would start to feel a little more confident (for unknown reasons, most likely because my brother was not around) and i would agree to try to jump into the water toward a large floating beach ball. the idea was that i was supposed to time and aim my leap just right so that my upper body came down on top of the ball and i was supposed to be coordinated enough to latch on and use the ball as a flotation device. which, by the way, the ball itself explicitly says NOT to do. this was never a good idea and each time the result was the same. chlorine throat.

my father's commitment to my swimming success persisted even if i increasingly lost interest with each terrifying plunge. by the time i reached the age of 14, his loving, trust-building, promise-to-catch-you ploy had mutated into thinly-veiled threats and a special kind of how-can-you-humiliate-your-father-in-front-of-all-of-these-people shame. at a hotel pool in maui, my father offered another in the life-long series of swimming lessons. he was wearing street clothes, mom and mike were away in the rental car, i was sunning in my neon green and black bikini. (it was 1989) my dad threw the hotel key into 9 feet of water and kindly informed me that unless i dove down to get it, we weren't going back to our room. it was mid-afternoon. there was a sizable audience. i hated him for putting my inability to save my own life in 4 feet of water on display. i hated him more for acting as though the whole situation was embarrassing to him. this whole scenario seemed entirely unnecessary to me. submerging the key served no vital purpose. he was just trying to help me in one of those fatherly ways that i hope never makes sense to me. it was a stupid, mean game and he knew it. and he had the audacity to demonstrate shame. of me! for a good long time i just pouted and slumped in my lounger, waiting until i knew he felt very bad about his behavior and was certainly regretting the impulsive action. that was the image i was trying to project and it was mostly true. but i was also trying to muster up the courage to jump into the beastly body of water to retrieve the damn room key. i could see it on the bottom of the pool. mocking me. shimmery reflections contorted the image, but i could see that it was there. and it wasn't going anywhere of it's own volition. not only did i have to retrieve the damn thing, but my goal was to make the jump appear as natural and spontaneous as possible. i was desperate to retain some level of dignity. but since flat-out refusing to get it wasn't an option as the look on my father's face strongly indicated that he and i would never speak again and i might be checking the classified for an apartment when we got home if i didn't satisfy his profound need for me to be normal. eventually i did jump in. kind of. i plopped in and then tried to figure out how to manufacture the necessary force to propel myself toward the bottom of the pool. there was no answer to this question. i got out, casually, and then i jumped in, keeping my back to the majority of the strangers so they couldn't see that i was plugging my nose. the only thing that scares me more than water getting in my nose is the dreadful thought of a bug doing the same. not plugging was not an option, but my dad's embarrassment of a teenage daughter who can't swim was contagious and i wanted so passionately to look normal. once in the water, i quickly recalled just how not normal it is for me to be in this predicament. i reached the bottom of the pool and reached around frantically. (for those who are swimmers, it may not have occurred to you that we non-swimmers have never even considered opening our eyes under water. water touching our eyelids is terrifying enough!) it seemed like i was searching for that key forever when my lungs demanded oxygen. i bobbed up to the surface and deliriously paddled toward the edge of the pool. doing this a second time was tantamount to eating one's own vomit, but i glanced at my dad and knew that simply trying was not enough. i dreadfully pressed on in my unwelcomed task. i jumped in again, flapped around again, reaching for the invisible lost in the unknown with the hand that wasn't protecting my nostrils and, ultimately, my lungs from the chlorinated monster that is pool water. when i finally found the key, i was experiencing what i was sure was the beginning stages of accidental self-induced suffocation by imposed nasal restriction and fell into a straight up panic. i HAD to get to the surface of the water NOW and i could be dead if i waited for my natural (but unproven) buoyancy to draw me upward. so i pushed off as hard as i could from the bottom of the pool and rocketed through the water creating quite a bit of resistance against my head, my shoulders and my bikini top. my head burst forth from the waters as though this was a re-baptism in the river jordan. i was free to breathe, to rub the water droplets from my eyes and see the sun again. i had survived this awful ordeal and i was going to be able to get back into my hotel room. i emerged as a person who has plunged into waters deep and lived to tell the story. and my bikini top was around my waist. and the crowd had not dissipated. the first image i experienced was that of two twenty-something men who, despite their compassionate efforts to disguise the fact, had definitely just witnessed what had happened to me. they weren't the only ones, but the last thing i was going to do was look around and make eye contact with the rest. i don't recall a time that i felt a deeper desire to melt away from existence. and now it was me who was considering issuing an embargo on communication between myself and the man who dared call himself my father.

what i did today

it's my day off. completely off. i don't have to work at either of my jobs and i don't have to meet anyone, anywhere until 8 o'clock. free as a bird...
so here is a list of the things i have done with this wealth of free time:
dishes
laundry
cleaned up dog poo
scrubbed the shower
watched 3 episodes of SVU (2 of which i had seen at least twice before)
formed 11 little creatures out of air-dry clay
ate two meals
put on clothes
answered 4 calls on my cell phone

i am quite sure that this list confirms that i am the least interesting person in the U.S. of 'Mer'ca. i have so few days off and so many things that i want to do with those days, and somehow this is the list of activities that i actully accomplish when given the wide open opportunity. admittedly, it is a longer list than it would have been a year ago at this time, but those were entirely different circumstances.

every time i have some time i think that i can fill it with all of my new hobbies and make contacts with old friends and think of a way to make 100,000 dollars and bond with my little doggy who poops on the floor and go to the YMCA and buy some clothes on clearance and occasionally shave my legs and answer all of my email messages but this never really happens, because the hours on days off are significantly shorter than work hours. and there is always vacuuming and dusting to do. i think i should prioritize. for now i will concentrate on finding 100,000 dollars. what's a creative way to beg? does the likelihood of gaining this dollar amount increase dramatically if i try to present as a more interesting person? or is pathetic the way to go? does the cosmos look on me with compassion if i cry a lot? what about oprah or ellen or rosie? think they would spare a dime for my cause? that would really free me up to hone my hobby skills. i guess for now i will just go to work again. that seems the most responsible way, but it ain't gonna get me 100 G's.

happy valentine's day

it went like this...

i am lying on the couch absorbed by an SVU re-run on TiVo when i lift my eyes to glance at the clock on the VCR. it is 12:07.
"honey!" i shout to the kitchen, assuming she is in there because the coffee mill is running and the dogs don't know how to turn it on.
"yeah?!" comes the human reply, as expected.
"happy valentine's day!"
"happy valentine's day."
"ok, can we be done with this holiday now?" i plead with the woman i know was already hoping for the same.
"definitely."
"so you won't be expecting any gifts or chocolate or flowers or any of that shit?"
"nope. but this means that you can't go out and buy stuff either!" replies the love of my life.
"i won't!"
"you always do! and then i feel stupid because i didn't."
"i promise. we said 'happy valentine's day' and now we are done. besides, i love you every day. not just today."
"i love you every day too."
"ok, it's a deal."
"no cards?"
"none. i promise." and i returned to olivia and elliot and munch and fin. she continued to grind. (the coffee.)

this is really how a lot of holidays go in our household. for three years in a row, we both forgot our anniversary until about 7 pm. we've only had 5 anniversaries. and honestly,. i don't recall whether or not we remembered the other two. it's possible we are 0/5. we love each other, but we aren't really all that interested in hallmark drama. the pressure is too great to do it just right and to make each year better than the last. it's hard enough for me to remember anything for more than 3 days, i could never recall what i did a year ago from today. one cannot handle the pressure to make sure that the best restaurant, the clearest communication, the tastiest chocolate and the best sex happens on one specific day of each year. or even 2 or 3 or 4 specific days for that matter. perhaps i could build one gigantic card at the beginning of the year and wish her a happy new year's valentine's day birthday anniversary halloween christmas and president's day all at once. but that would probably disappoint the folks at hallmark, so we just ignore it altogether. it works for us and we never have to deal with getting in trouble for forgetting. we both expect it and we both do it. and the "i love you every day" line keeps everything on the up and up.

**and for the record, the bullshit located at the top of this entry is all the reason i need to never participate in this holiday. how would one still look someone in the eyes after receiving such a stupid piece of shit.

among the addictions...

i'll tell you the situation, you tell me if it's weird.

for the three days that i was sick last week (and every other sick day of late) i have been sprawled out on my couch catching up on the 31 episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit that are on my TiVo list. i watched approximately 24 of them. that's not the weird part yet. i had seen every one of those episodes at least twice before, with the exception of the two that were from the new season. that's still not the weird part. now, hypothetically speaking if someone were to watch a television show so much that when s/he isn't watching it the following thoughts run through his/her head: "i haven't spent any time with elliot and olivia lately, i should do that." "i wonder what munch and fin are up to?" or let's say that person has watched so many episodes so frequently that one starts to feel as though s/he knows those people. those people who are fictional characters. hypothetically speaking if that ever happened from watching FRIENDS so much that chandler's sarcasm became annoying in a way that a close friend's sarcasm might be annoying, one would have taken a break from that dvd set.
is any of this weird? i want to be sure to not blur the line between fiction and reality. but i just can't stop watching that show! they are such good detectives.

i could have been a detective.

life is just a series of addictions

okay, not really addictions, since none of the objects or substances that i partake in are addictive by nature. but i do tend to find something i like and go with it, religiously. for example, yesterday i had white chocolate mousse with chocolate chips for dinner. i was hungry, and i just couldn't think of a better food than white chocolate mousse with chocolate chips. it's just so good!! that marks approximately the 6th time i have indulged in that item in the 8 days since i was reminded of my affection for TCBY. can a girl live on frozen yogurt alone? well, no. i still had my triple mocha for brunch, speaking of addictions. but i have a strict policy of only eating things that i like and only when i am hungry for them. if i only get hungry for white chocolate mousse with chocolate chips, there's nothing i can do about that. it's just so good!! i think that my life should be a commercial for TCBY. i could be like that Jared character on the subway commercials. only i wouldn't be quite so annoying about the whole thing. i would just provide action footage of my frequent consumption. shelly in her car eating white chocolate mousse. shelly returning to work, finishing her white chocolate mousse. shelly at home on her day off, cracking open a pint of white chocolate mousse. (although i do prefer it soft serve from the machine, not from the freezer in the previously filled containers.) people could run up to the window of my car and exclaim, "shelly! you are so stylish and groovy! what is your secret!?" or "shelly, we wish we had your fine taste for the genuinely exquisite! just give us a hint!" and i could say, "white chocolate mousse with chocolate chips, baby!" that could be my line! whatever my sole line is, it has to end with "baby!"
i am 1/5 of the way through my triple mocha. that means i am probably only about 3 hours from TCBY. yesssssssss!

things we did that were mean

every child partakes in some behaviors that would be frowned upon by responsible kind human beings. some partake more than others. i was an infrequent but effective offender.

• one time sara and i made a smaller child named myra eat pizza spices because somehow we were able to convince her that they were candy. she cried. sara laughed. and her mom called bette. i think we got in trouble, but i remember thinking: who falls for that? candy doesn't smell like green salsa and it doesn't look like seeds. she made that choice because she was dumb. that's not our fault. besides, sara thought of it.

• my dad used to fall asleep in his recliner a lot. he also snored a lot and often his mouth was wide open. that's just an invitation for deviance. i remember the day i imagined how funny it would be to wake up with something round and flavorful in your mouth. my dad did not seem to agree with my assessment. when he woke grumbling and spitting, the little orange cheezball, soggy with sleep drool falling from his mouth and tumbling down his chest, leaving a slimy trail of yellow #5 in his chest hair, he did not laugh. not that time and none of the subsequent times either. i think that was the first time he called me a "shit bird". i still don't know what that is.

• we must have been very nice children, because other than the masking tape in my brother's hair, which he deserved, i can't think of any more mean things. if i think of more, i will add a second "mean things" entry.