You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January, 2008.
Did you ever sort of want to write someone a really threatening letter – the kind where you tell them you want to gouge out their eyeballs with spoons and then feed them to them, or something in that similar over-the-top mobster-type disgusting vein? Damn, do I wish I could write a couple of those letters, but I don’t have the balls, I don’t want to deal with the fallout. Also if you write those to customers, even customers who yell at you for their own stupidity and then hang up on you, you probably get fired. So I am holding it in, ignoring the phone this afternoon, trying not to bring on the vitriolic nastiness to people. I am being civilized, instead. I am drinking tea and eating homemade banana bread and blogging.
So, I have been on another hiatus and didn’t get to say, hey, it was my birthday! And my blogiversary! All in one week! So I will say those things now.
I am so childish about birthdays- I need to be queen for the day and be spoiled rotten, and I spend days before reminding everyone about how, gee, did you know that my birthday is coming? I don’t care if I’m getting older – I realized that if I keep my act together, I will be thin(ish) and have my BA by the time I’m 30, and what more could a girl want? BA equals better-paying, hopefully more interesting job. Thinnish equals the joy of smaller thighs and no belly rolls along with the extreme joy of cute clothes. 30 equals who cares, it’s just a number. I have two years left and I’m not finding myself freaking out, even though I’ve always sort of thought I would get hysterical at the idea of being so close. I still feel 16 inside, though, and I doubt that will change much, so I’m not that worried about how old I am outside. I’m still not grown-up, not really.
Two quick things:
1) Things with E are good right now, I think. They feel… different than before. Like there’s progress toward a resolution. I hate to jinx myself, but there’s a sort of peace that we’ve been missing going on right now, and I’m pretty happy with the direction we seem to be going. Though I’m still not getting “I love you”s, which is a little heartwrenching.
2) I emailed Holly of Nothing But Bonfires about this post of hers, and OH MY HOLY, she replied to me. Not only that, but replied like THE NEXT DAY. So not only did I get my little brush with an awesome celebrity blogger, but she didn’t blow me off for months. I’m a little bit in awe and a little embarrassed for being so awestruck and excited, but I’m going to keep going with it, because it put a shine on my day to receive her email.
*oh, and the post title is from a Bishop Allen song which I recommend running out to listen to right now. Though I’m not sure how they are live and can’t see YouTube stuff here at work – (access denied!)
Lately, I feel like a transient on a stopover in my own life. I sleep on the couch, I use my cell phone as an alarm clock, I’m driving someone else’s car, I keep my medication in my purse. I feel like I could just pick up and sleep on any couch, anywhere; take out my phone and my cold pills, my water bottle and my book; and be at home. It’s strange for someone so hooked on stuff, on having my own things around me, to feel this way. It makes me feel so out of place, so ungrounded. I’ve also become that annoying person at work who takes a walk every day at lunch, comes back all rosy-cheeked and windblown and asks if you’re going to come with tomorrow. I’ve been walking two miles with one of my coworkers every day, and it is so not me – the fat girl, the girl who always read a book sitting on the sidelines instead of joining the kickball game at recess, the girl who will always lie down when there is the chance. But it feels good to get up and move after sitting at my desk all day – just the way when I was shoveling horse shit for a job, it felt so good to stop moving my body and lie out in the far-off fields and have a cigarette.
The weather the past few days has been perfect walking weather – cold and crisp and dry, the residue of snow at the edges of the road all full of little twittering birds hopping around, the footprints of deer off in the woods, the wind bracing but not overwhelming. We start moving and immediately my sinuses start to drain, I’m blowing my nose every two minutes, but my head feels clearer than it has all morning. By the end of the walk, I feel whole again, like I have energy and I can face the phone and the keyboard with renewed patience, like I can figure out dinner tonight without crumbling into a heap of “why doesn’t he love me? what am I doing wrong?”. Funny how that shit they throw at you about exercise and depression and endorphins and blah blah blah is really not so much shit, after all.
I’ve also realized that the things you dreamed about when you were young – about finding out you are adopted royalty, about being discovered by a casting agent and becoming a model/actress/etc., about being some sort of amazing prodigy – all those dreams go sort of kaput as you get older. In the past few years, my dreams have become so mundane – me and my family, a house by a lake, a big slobbery dog, a beautiful remodeled kitchen, laughter and card games and squishy couches and piles of books, walks in the snow holding hands with my husband, birthday parties with squirt guns and laughing children… Suddenly all I want are the things I disdained 10 years ago, when I swore I would never live in suburbia. Oddly enough, now that my dreams are so simple, they seem so much less attainable, so much harder to grasp at, so much farther from real life. I guess because they are things I’ll have to bring about myself, while the other things I wanted – the archduke coming to my house with the royalty letter, the casting agent with the contract ready to sign – are passive, they’re things that happen to me without any effort on my part. Now I have to work toward the house and the lake and the dog, now I have to facilitate my own dreams.
1) Never drive to work in a wet mushy snowstorm with a head cold that makes it feel like your sinuses are moments from exploding, your eyeballs all scratchy and dry and ready to pop right out of your head. Especially never do this if you are not fully caffeinated, because you will almost drive into a jersey barrier. Twice.
2) I realized two things about myself over the past two days. One, that I am much more inclined to buy lottery tickets when I am poor, like because I have no money but I do have four quarters, perhaps a scratch ticket is a good investment! Because why would I save that dollar for something like, oh, say, laundry? Two, I am a huge freaking baby when I am sick. Right now I feel like I need a fainting couch to flop dramatically onto, because fucking CHRIST, my fucking HEAD, people! It is swollen! I swear you can see the fluid build-up behind my eyes. And my nose is stuffy and raw and all red, my eyes are scratchy, my body aches, my throat and ears and glands and lungs are all hurting, and woe is me, I have a cold and I’m a delicate flower. Someone run out and buy me a gallon of OJ and some of those tissues with lotion and an economy sized bag of cough drops and some DayQuil, please. I am near to death!
3) That last realization? It makes me realize yet another thing, which is that I am really, really annoying sometimes. And probably not very likeable. And immature. But, luckily, since writing this yesterday I have obtained the Good Drugs, the ones they keep behind the counter because I could cook them up and make meth. And apparently the meth people are onto something, because there is a lot less pressure in my head right now.
4) I have lost 17 pounds on this new diet/exercise thing. I put on jeans yesterday that I hadn’t been able to wear in a couple of years! But because this is about complaining, not celebrating, I’ll have you know that there are problems with the loss of 17 pounds. Problem #1 being that those jeans I couldn’t fit into are pretty much Mom Jeans, ones I got on super-sale at Old Navy without realizing how high the damn waist was – or perhaps just overwhelmed by the lies on their sale signs, I grabbed a pair and ran. I don’t remember which. Problem #2 is that now all my other pants, the ones I’ve been wearing, the ones that are cuter, are all too baggy and fall down dangerously at the waist. This would be swell if I had money and could buy new pants, but, alas, I am stuck with too-big pants that sag at my ass weirdly. I am planning to do some creative waistband sewing sometime soon, since of course I couldn’t have had foresight and bought pants with belt loops.
5) I don’t know if it’s related to being sick and therefore having my threshold for stiff upper lip lowered, or if it’s just the way things are, but dammit if yesterday wasn’t one of those super-depressed, wish I could crawl under the floor and cry myself to sleep kind of days. I am so fucking lonely and it’s so hard, with him being right there and yet so distant. I want so much for someone (for E, really, not just anyone) to reach out and hold me, to come up behind me with a hug while I do the dishes, to curl toward me in bed at night and spoon me. I want to be held. I put a lot of stock in physical affection and without it I feel bereft, adrift in the giant empty space of not-touching that is around me – an E-shaped space, actually, the space his body used to occupy next to mine. And W is huggy and kissy and very sweet, but son-love is so different from husband-love and is no substitute, and then I feel shitty for hugging my son and wishing he was my husband sometimes. Fuck. Now I need to stop before I tear up again, I hate this so much.
Can I first just say that I love the spam comments that are caught up in my filter here? Because ” largest plump tail german adulteresses” and ” giant swedish senioritas with bums” are both pretty freaking hilarious.
Secondly, I have drunk a whole 6-pack and it’s not even 9:00, and I feel sort of decadent and yet shameful, like I should have curlers in my hair and a half-ash cigarette hanging out of my mouth and be swatting my kid (who is at my mother’s having a sleepover part-ay, hence the beers) with a wooden spoon. But I also feel sort of woozy and wobbly and realize this is why I tend to nurse my beers. This, and New Year’s when, in my vodka haze (when I discovered that, yes, Victoria, there is a good vodka if you pay more than $10 for a bottle!) I was sure the fireworks somebody was setting off were thunder and got all confused. Ahem. This here is why we do not post tipsy, people. LET THIS BE A LESSON TO YOU. I know I had Wisdom To Impart, but this is not it. Really, I did, I had a post and it got lost in that last sip as I pondered Go Fug Yourself and the pants that god should never have allowed to exist. Seriously, click that link. You, too, will forget what you were just doing and have to drown the sorrow of those pants in beers. Though, damn, I wish I had those thighs. Damn!
I’m so embarrassed of myself – I have written at least two dozen posts in my head and told myself “today is the day I will sit down and actually type up this post! today I will blog again!” and then they’ve all fallen by the wayside. I sort of wish I could hook the computer up to my brain and channel all that stuff out here, except that anyone reading might OD on crazy….
But today I absolutely have to post, because I have a post up on Indie Bloggers! And I need to look like I actually write in my blog sometimes, in case anyone comes over! (Hi anyone from over there!)
The thing of it is, now that I am sitting down and typing (peering repeatedly over my shoulder to be sure my boss isn’t standing behind me; witnessing my lack of working skills and perhaps reading back to see that I belong in the nuthouse, not the office…), I don’t recall any of those posts. I know I meant to do my ten favorite albums of 2007, a la Sweet Juniper. I know I had something about New Year’s that I wanted to say, but that feels just silly at this point. I know there was something about smoking, and maybe rain, and certainly some “me and E” updates. But all of it is sort of floating around in this weird haze in my head, and all I can think is that it is raining so hard and I wish I was curled up on my red couch with a big cup of English Breakfast and a book and my silly cat, feet up on my husband’s lap, kid snuggled up with us, rain pouring outside.
