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Dear Internet,
I must confess that I am writing to you while not wearing any underthings. No one is here to care, and I’m sure you don’t mind, but I just wanted to clear the air here. What you also can’t see is that I am in my pajamas post 3-day shower hiatus cleansing shower. (I realize this sentence is awkward and may not make sense and I’m sorry, but I am slightly giddy with pajama-clad freedom) Why get dressed if you don’t have to? That’s a philosophy I’ve subscribed to since I was young and weekends involved no jeans until at least 5 p.m. when it was house-leaving time. Being a night shift employee only accentuates those tendencies, and I used to spend whole weekdays in my pajamas playing rule-edited Monopoly with a toddler. Now that getting dressed is a necessity 7 days out of 7, today feels wildly decadent.
Internet, I must also confess that I have missed you with a raging passion. Only I didn’t realize it, because I have been too busy to step back and realize how lonely I was without you. I spent this morning reading the blogs I haven’t had time to catch up on and commenting on many of them. Commenting! I used to obsessively comment and now I haven’t in weeks and weeks. My head was so full of unsaid unhilarious replies to posts that I couldn’t clickety-click out of there, and it was getting crowded. Now that I’ve freed up that space, I spent the hour after blog time watching TV. But not just one show- no, internet; unfettered TV time can’t be wasted in that way! I watched the beginning of a cheesy horror movie whose title escapes me – the one with the girl my cousin once christened Lightbulb Head when she was in Noxema commercials starring in it – and then part of the Royal Tenenbaums, which I now realize I have to watch again soon; and then slices of several home decor/remodeling shows and some Ina Garten pasta recipe and a commercial with a cute dog rolling over.
How does anyone get anything done with both TV and internet at their disposal? I have 6 chapters of textbook and a short essay to write before tomorrow, and I have cracked the book and set out my highlighters and pulled out a notebook and a pen and moved no further. So now I need to go do that and stop linking to silly shit and posting silly shit (though did I mention the missing of you, internet? You are dear to me and I am so happy to see you again!)
Love,
Melanie
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 just realized that I’ve been wasting my time reading celebrity blogs for almost a year now. I should probably be ashamed, especially since I just listened to all 3 of the newly leaked Britney Spears songs.
But I’m not. Man, that shit is entertaining. (Not the songs, which are awful**, but the gossip.)
**caveat – I’m sure if I liked pop music, I’d like them. I’m just not That Kind of Girl.
I took W to the playground today for a picnic, and he fell off the monkey bar-thingies and bit his tongue, and there was some blood. But, for him, the worst part was that the other 3 kids on the playground didn’t come over to comfort him. He sat in my lap, sweaty and teary, and told me he wanted other people to be sad for him, not just me. I’m not enough. The kid needs an audience for everything, even his own pain.
At the same time, he was so utterly shy, just watching these kids play and staying to himself. Sometimes he is like this, sometimes he is all barging in and practically climbing other children. So half the time I worry that he is too overbearing, maybe even too self-confident; and the other half the time I worry that E and I are passing our shy loner genes down onto him and he will end up like me, reading a book on the playground at recess and cowering from anyone who tries to talk to me/throw a ball to me. I guess I worry so much because the introvert-extrovert continuum has been such an issue for me throughout my life, and I have the same problem. Sometimes I force myself past it and say things that are inappropriate, or talk without being able to stop and end up rambling incessantly; sometimes I hide out in a corner behind a big magazine and hardly look up when someone talks to me. I don’t really have much of a happy medium, and every time I see him flip from one extreme to the other I worry he’s going to end up like me. (There’s also the whole Crazy Watch, seeing as how a bipolar dad and a depressed mom tend to equal who knows what for the kid. I’m always on Crazy Watch.)
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This has nothing to do with anything, but I was listening to NPR coming in to work today, and some senator or somebody got arrested in a Minnesota airport bathroom. Is there anything that could possibly feel as depressing as that must feel? “Oh, man, what are you in for?” “Well, actually, it doesn’t matter. My arrest was punishment enough. I was arrested in a Minnesota airport bathroom.”
