You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October, 2007.
Right now, things are a little weird and awkward at my house. Marriage = not so sweet all the time. But, whatever. There are two things at my house right now that are not so awkward. That are, in fact, awesome and need to be tried at once.
Thing one: cranberry cheesecake ice cream. No, wait, don’t be grossed out. I know, it’s a scary idea. I like my cheesecake plain, usually, but this? This is manna from heaven, people. I have sampled many an ice cream and know that of which I speak. Try this shit. You will not be disappointed.
Thing two: Earth: A New Perspective. I picked this book up at Borders today, on sale for $5.99, and have been staring at it randomly since. It is just so gorgeous and amazing, and there is also learning and science and your kids will love it (if you have them. And, I guess, if they like science).
Lastly, a brief note on my weirdness: I realized today for the 8 millionth time that even though I no longer have cable, I tend to have a TV quote for so many things I do and so many things that happen. Every freaking time it rains, literally every time, I think of the Simpsons Halloween episode where Homer’s hand gets stuck in the toaster and he goes to alternate dimensions, and there is the one perfect one where Patty & Selma are dead and the Simpons are rich and Bart & Lisa are all polite, but Marge has no idea what donuts are. So Homer runs screaming back to his toaster and then, outside, pink-frosted donuts fall from the sky and Marge says, “Oh, it’s raining again”. Every freaking time.
Every time I use soap in the shower (well, okay, this one has actually gotten better over time and doesn’t happen every time now. Just sometimes.), I think of this one Friends episode (and I hated Friends, I only probably saw this one episode) where two of the characters are discussing sharing soap and one says “Well, the next time you take a shower just think about the last thing I washed and the first thing you’re washing.” (more or less). I’m not even sure I get that line, since I wash my arms first and use different soap for my face, anyway. But I still think it when I pick up my soap.
And often when someone says “Dammit!” I think to myself “Janet” – even though I am not; I repeat 100% NOT one of those Rocky Horror people. I just can’t help myself. Lastly, every time my husband says “What are we going to do today?” I have to respond with “The same thing we do every day! Try to take over the world.” Which makes him crazy, because he hated this show. But it cracks me up every time, because I am simple like that.
(Oh, Wikipedia, how I link to thee. The love, let me count the ways. The wasted hours following random links, let me not count them. They are embarrassing.)
Last night I dreamt that I won on this crazy magic scratch ticket. I also had to park in Boston and was driving around and around trying to find a spot. This somehow tied into the dream of swimming and sea turtles and bookstores that I had a while ago – I guess I was parking so I could get to the bookstore? But there was also some sort of intrigue and mystery, too. Someone I followed into an ice cream store for some reason. I don’t know. All I know is that my dreams are weird lately, and I’d like the lottery part to come true – I’d like it to be prophetic – but I don’t want the rest to come true, because dreams tend to be weird and disjointed and scary, and life is weird and disjointed and scary enough.
Also last night, while making dinner, I ran out to get ketchup and coffee and cream (because you can’t have morning without creamy coffee, and you can’t have hamburgers without ketchup), and as I drove back from the grocery store, pondering how to make two yogurts and a box of granola bars last for lunches for W and I all week, listening to reports of bombing someplace faraway on NPR, two girls drove by blasting music and yelling “Wooooooo!!!”. I felt so old. That used to be me – I used to drive around with my friends, yelling because I was young and everything felt so freaking good. And now I am 3 years from 30 – which, granted, isn’t necessarily old, but isn’t necessarily young either – and instead of listening to music, I’m listening to the news; instead of thinking about money for new Bath & Body Works crap (my teenage obsession) or pot (ahem), I’m thinking about stretching the groceries out and working more overtime, and about donating blood today, and about why is my car making that noise. I want things to be simple like that again so badly, and yet it’s times like that when I actually do feel like a grown-up, when I feel like I’m qualified to be living my life and responsible for tiny people and all that.
And also, without NPR, where would you ever hear a story like this. Seriously, I wanted to sit in the car and finish listening, even though it would have made me late for work, because it was just so freaking funny. I love the human interest shit they throw into the gloom’n’doom of the regular news.
I’ve been thinking how freaking awesome it would be to have a Magical Makeover Power. There’s this one girl in accounting who I pass every day and think “god, some concealer and a good volumizer and you would be so cute! I wish I could tell you that without sounding rude!” But if I had Magical Makeover Powers, I could just sort of casually wave my hand at her and either she would become volumized and concealed, or she would suddenly and magically realize those two things. I’m not sure exactly how it would work. Either way, the hilarious thing is that I bet people look at me at work and think “wow, if she lost a whole tonna poundage and worked on not picking at her face, and maybe got a haircut once in a while and threw out all her clothes, she could be cute”. Though, of course, maybe nobody else is as starey and judgey as I. Maybe other people don’t even notice these things, unless somebody has really cute shoes on or has half an inch of underwear hanging out of the back of her pants – you know, more obvious stuff than lack of good concealer.
That is a crappy thing I realize daily about myself – I am so judgemental! And of course so many people look better than I do, so I get all jealous and sigh and wish I was that girl. I have an awful girl-crush problem – not girl-crush in a sex way, but girl-crush in a way I read about once in Cosmo or something. The kind where you latch onto someone who seems to Have It All Together, and then you daydream about how awesome it would be to be her. I remember this girl in high school I was semi-obsessed with. She was in my German class, and it’s not that she was popular or amazingly hot or anything, but something about her spoke to me – something about her just seemed so together and confident, and I wanted to be her. I never talked to her, I was too shy, but there was one time we were both at the same club seeing some local band and were outside smoking at the same time, and she smiled and said hi to me, and it made my night because I had been recognized!
Which, in retrospect, is lame, but is also how I was in high school. I was very, very weird. I used to bring crayons and a coloring book to school with me and I would color Sesame Street or 101 Dalmations at lunchtime or in the back of class. And if people talked to me, I would turn all red and hide behind my hair. I look back and think about how cute I was then, and how much fun I could have had if only I had realized and stopped being so damn shy!
So, anyway, internets, please tell me: do you have the starey judgey problem, too? Do you have the girl-crushes? Or am I a total freak?
I’ve run out of medication, and every time I move there is an electric “zing, zing, zing!” feeling in my head that shoots out through my whole body, so that I’m sure everybody is looking at me and wondering why I’m twitching. I know people can’t see it, but somehow it might be easier to deal with the weirdness of the feeling if it was out in the open – if I could put a sign on my shirt “crazy and twitching, please be gentle” or something like that. If I sit still I feel almost fine, but then I do something crazy like answer the phone and I feel incapacitated by the weird, electric dizzy feeling that shoots through my head. Apparently, I am very sensitive to medication and its myriad side effects – when I went off Zoloft a few years ago, I tapered myself down to 12.5 milligrams every other day and I still had this same buzzing, twitching feeling when I finally stopped taking it. It’s strange, because I’m not normally a delicate flower type, but I guess my poor brain has been zapped so many times that it can’t take the tiniest flux in chemicals and retreats into zingyness.
I guess today is also brought to you by the letter C for Complaining. I need to find some cheerful and shoot it up.
On another note, things I wrote down that I wanted to blog about but don’t have a whole post’s worth of stuff to write, so I am putting them here (ala Mighty Girl):
*There is something really comforting to me about clean floral sheets on your bed. Other sheets just don’t feel the same.
*I like walking to pick W up from school and wish I could do it more often. It changes my whole perspective. I don’t feel like you really live in a place, you don’t really know it, until you’ve walked its streets. Plus the Spanish moms who always seem to be walking in front of me sound so much like birdsong –such a pretty language when its spoken fast and high by women – and I love that the crossing guard stops traffic for us to cross the street. We are so mighty, stopping traffic!
*”Recognition” is an awesome word. I love being able to see exactly where it came from spelled out right within the word. Because I am super-dork, I am so interested in words and where they come from, and I get the Merriam-Webster word of the day emailed right to me every day and wish that the etymology part was more interesting than it tends to be.
Actually, looking back on those bullets, I think I’ve brought this to you by the letter D for Dork, because, seriously? Etymology? Floral sheets? Dork
You know it’s going to be a good day when you wake up with 10 minutes to get ready, dragging yourself out of a weird dream in which a pregnant woman you know (who isn’t actually a real person, you don’t know any real pregnant people) either dies in childbirth or has a baby who dies in childbirth (in the dream, this is unclear, though somebody definitely died at some point). Then you put your pants on inside out and wonder for a few seconds why they seem hard to button, when surely yesterday you managed this just fine. Then you stumble out to pour your coffee and blearily realize that you are already late leaving, because of the pants debacle. You run to the car and put it in drive, nearly tire-tracking your lawn, despite the fact that you put the car in reverse every freaking day to back out of the parking spot. Luckily you manage to drive to work while only spilling a little coffee on your husband’s hat that has somehow materialized on your car floor (where you spilled the whole cup of coffee last week, so probably the hat smells caffeinated already), and you get some mascara on and conceal somewhat the lovely period zits you are sporting, all while driving and drinking coffee and endangering others’ early-morning lives. NPR annoys you with the whole “give us some freaking money, you cheap bastard, this service isn’t free!” and makes you want to give them the finger, because while they are yelling about money? There is no service. You don’t want to pay them for the “service” of “give us money”. (note: while I told Jen yesterday that I have used up my air quote quota for the month in my email to her, apparently air quotes and I are good buddies this week. Hi, air quotes! Let’s get coffee! I could use some!) Anyway, now I am eating oatmeal and I need to use the bathroom and don’t want to, because pooping at work is a) embarrassing and someone always comes into the goddamn bathroom while I’m using it and b) annoying because this Bloodhound Gang song always runs through my head while I’m doing it, and I get fucking SICK of hearing that song in my head all the time afterward. I mean, I listened to that CD constantly for about 3 months back in 1998, can it just go away now? Seriously? 1998 is over and I am ready to move on. And poop in silence. Is that too much to ask?
I was reading at lunch today, and came across this passage, and stopped reading – because this is me, this is how I feel.
What stops her, what puts it all out of her mind, is what she sees when she looks at herself… here, now, only a few hours later, she doesn’t quite recognize herself.She sees someone so much bigger than the person she thinks of when she thinks of herself. She sees someone who looks so much worse than she could have ever thought of herself. And she hates what she sees. She wants to look, and to be able to see accomplished, competent, driven. She sees lumpy, she sees looming, she sees so much more than she wants. It is only right here, right now, that he word substantial has become a bad one. She wants to look and to be able to see herself and think any number of things, but all she can think is That can’t be me.
This is what happens every time I look in a mirror – That can’t be me. Because that’s not what I look like. That’s not who I am. Shouldn’t my physical appearance say something about me, something other than “lazy” or “incompetent”, something strong and appealing and beautiful? Shouldn’t it speak out that I am a good mother, and I’m smart and I’m funny, that I knit badly but keep trying, that I love animals and riding horses and fall leaves, that I go sledding and swimming and can’t dance or keep any sort of rhythm? Shouldn’t who I am shine through? But it doesn’t. I look in the mirror, and I look slightly unkempt, uncombed, like someone who throws on the same shirt a few days a week and doesn’t bother with makeup sometimes, someone unremarkable and forgettable. Someone unimportant. And worst of all, someone very large.
I never think of myself as fat. I imagine that I am slimmer than I am so much that it always surprises me to look in the mirror or to try to slip through a small space and not quite fit. It astonishes me when I go to pick out clothes and see the size of my jeans when they’re not on body, or when I look at my thigh compared to someone next to me. I forget that I am fat, because that’s not who I am. It’s not really me. And I know I have rehashed this to death again and again, I know I spend so much time trying to convince myself that yes, I am fat, yes, that is me – but it hasn’t sunk in yet. I can type and type away, I can remind myself of my stomach before I face the mirror, and still I am surprised and slightly appalled at myself. This has gone on for years now, so why can’t I just get it? Honestly, the only solution is to lose weight and become who I think I am. Shut up with the “too tired, too fat, not enough time, no place to exercise” and just do it, just become myself again.
