Conversational Angst

I always feel uncomfortable when I'm with a group of people and the conversation turns to dieting or exercise regimens, and how much everybody wishes they could lose those last two or three pounds.

I sort of feel like adding to the conversation with my own personal experiences. Things like, "Did you know that, if humans were like amoebas, I'd probably already have divided into two people by now? Maybe three if they were particularly svelte?"

Or, "Yes. My darn gravity well just keeps getting deeper and deeper. I think if I have any more of this chocolate cake, I'll probably become a black hole."

Or, "Hey, do you see this softball rotating around my middle? It's a small moon I acquired just last week. It's the latest in plus-size accessories."

But instead I sit there, looking like a human beanbag chair, nodding sympathetically as people talk about elliptical machines and only being able to muscle down two bites of the incredibly sweet dessert that I've already had two servings of. As if I know what they're talking about. As if we're even from the same universe.

My back aches all the time, my ankle twists with great regularity, and I will probably die of a heart attack at age 39. Now. Can we please talk about something else? Books, I hear, are very nice conversational topics this time of year.

A Lizardbreathian Year in Review

So, I only have about 33 minutes left of 2009 as I type these words. By the time I actually send my post out to rest on the thin strands of the interwebs, it will likely be deep (aka minutes) into 2010, and this year will be behind me.

So I feel like I owe you all, my tender and devoted readers (Hi, Jill in Romania!) a kind of recap of what this year has been like for me.

And I will do it with a list. Because. I feel like it.

1. Unemployment - So...the economy has been a little low lately. Although it's showing signs of perking, kind of like the plant you thought would be okay for the three weeks of vacation you took in the heat of midsummer with all the air conditioning turned off in your house, and you come back and it's basically a vaguely green puddle collapsed around its pot and you pour about a gallon of water over it just so you can tell yourself that you did all you could to save it, and so water seeps out the bottom and gets your tabletop all wet and after about a week one of the leaves starts lifting itself up just a little, as though the force of gravity was almost too much for it to bear. Yeah. The economy's been like that. And, unfortunately, although they're being used more than ever, libraries currently seem to be on the list of non-essentials when the funding pie is getting dished up, leaving the hefty slices to go to crazy things like fire departments and schools and stuff. (Ahaha. Of course I know that these services are essential. Pleasedonotsendmehatemail.) And the library gets that piece of burnt crust that's left over in the pan after all the other pieces are taken out. So, they're naturally not able to hire new librarians, so the recently graduated librarians (aka me) still remain jobless. Sigh.
   
2. Job Hunting - This has been my task for the past many months. Although, I have liberally sprinkled the in-between-hunts bits (and the avoiding filling in yet another lengthy and unnecessary application bits) with watching all five seasons of Lost and doing some freelance writing for my bro-in-law, who is a fantabulous foot doctor and is being way kind enough to pay me for it.
3. Whining about being unemployed and having to spend my time job hunting - This is an activity I engage in whenever people ask me how I'm doing. I'll kind of make a wry little grimace and then proceed to harangue them with anecdotes about libraries that are closing all around the U.S. and about how there are on average 2.5 billion applicants for every library position and that the human resources department are now using resumes as an alternative fuel source to save on heating bills. So, sorry folks. You know. If I've ranted at you for awhile. You're forgiven for clamping your ears shut and running away.
   
4. NaNoWriMo - I completed this for only the second time (although it was my second attempt as well, so I've won every time I've attempted it--yay me!) and I was, to put it frankly, totally proud of myself. Of course, I haven't touched the novel since. It's currently sitting at the point just after what I consider to be the most exciting scene I've written so far. So it's been kind of scratching at my brain, trying to get me to write it. And I'll probably give in. In January.
5. Family - Despite being jobless, and despite getting bouts of severe anxiety every time I remember that I have to pay over $500 a month now for the next ten years to repay my student loans (all this without a job...hmm...), I actually really, really love being here. I do get twinges of missing Boston now and then, particularly the awesome folks I hung with out there (shoutouts to school, work and church buddies!), but I'm loving life in the West. And I'm loving catching up on Gilmore Girls with my mom. And seeing an entirely adorable baby niece get progressively chubbier cheeks. In short, I may complain, but life's pretty darn good. So, I guess I can say 2009 was pretty darn good, too.
   

Airport tripping

I love taking people to the airport.

Except, I actually hate it.

But, really, I love it.

I love it because it's that last chance you'll see someone before they go off to Maine or Texas or Indonesia for a few days/weeks/months/years, and it's such a smorgasbord of teary embraces, promises to write (emails, nowaday, I guess...or texts) that really won't be kept (or if they are, by only one party), and maybe, depending on the identity of the driver and/or departee, some good smooching might go on.

Not for me, but hey--I recognize that it's a perk for some.

I hate taking people to the airport because, inevitably, bad airport karma comes and surrounds me like the dust that orbits Pig Pen. If I am the one doing the departing, this means multiple days of delays and foul weather that threatens to strand me in Omaha, Nebraska until 2012, when the world's going to end anyway, so it won't really matter anymore. If I am the one doing the driving and delivery, this means that A: The actual travelers will misremember their departure time and thus leave for the airport a full hour after they should have, or B: There will be a massive accident on the freeway that backs traffic up for approximately 400 miles. (Although, I gladly and gratefully admit that it is much better to be caught in traffic than to be in the accident that caused the traffic. The one today was a doozy.) This traffic will make the driver (me) frustrated, snippy, and also reckless, and the travelers will try to calm me with words of comfort and possibly medication.

So, to my dear sister and bro-in-law, I say this: I really hope you enjoy your few days away from the doldrums of regular life. Also, I'm sad we didn't get that teary farewell as you left, since by the time we finally got to the airport, the combination of our lateness and my crankiness made you ready to pretty much rocket yourselves out of the door the moment I pulled up to the terminal. (Glad you remembered to snag your luggage.)

Also, I will be more than happy to drive you or anyone else to the airport at pretty much any time in the future. Except, I think I may in the future demand that we leave a full 24 hours in advance. Just to be safe.

My lack of a job is starting to interfere with my night life.

Some of you may be shocked when you read this entry, namely because I did not indulge in Pirate Speak during the writing of it. Or at least not much. Arr.

But try to rein in your discontent for a moment. I wish to write of a matter of vital importance.

I am sleeping really weird(ly?) lately.

Not that my dreams are odd, or rather are no more odd than usual, but my sleeping schedule seems to be slipping further and further away from the norm (as defined by what normal people do during normal hours of the day, as opposed to what imaginary people like me do).

For instance, take yesterday. I woke up at 11am. As in eleven o'clock in the morning. I ate breakfast while my parents had lunch. And then I played video games. (So much for job hunting.) And then I went to bed at 4am this morning. And woke up about five minutes before noon today.

For a while after a moved home, I was still on Eastern Time. On early-rising ET, even. When I lived just outside of Boston, I would frequently get up at 6am so I could get ready and out the door and on the (unpredictable) T and arrive at work on time and have the library all nice and open when patrons started showing up.

So, just to point this out to you, I would frequently get up at the exact same time that I went to bed this morning. So, basically the slippage has now shifted me ahead the amount of one entire sleep schedule.

Not cool, me peeps. Not cool. Especially because when I start sleeping this late, my dreams get really lucid and. Disturbing. Like ex-boyfriends visiting a woman in a prison and killing her with fishing tackle and leaving her for her little boy to find. Oh, and same dream: day-old soft-serve ice cream cones that have somehow retained their shape, but are room-temperature and stale.

So, no more domestic (in-prison?) violence in my dreams, please. No more stale ice cream cones. I needs to get me a job. Pronto.

Look, I won't trash your traditions if you don't trash mine.

Every family has its holiday traditions.

Every family.

And I know that in some families holiday traditions consist of who is able to belch the loudest during the commercial breaks of the Rose Bowl. Still others celebrate holidays by dredging up all the old family dirty laundry that's been comfortably buried in piles of other dirty laundry for years and years and is now crawling with mildew (yes, mildew would crawl in this situation) and possibly young families of mice.

Others carol, tell tales of the histories of their people, light candles, swap embarrassing and heart-warming stories about the childhood exploits of blushing siblings, take road trips, watch movies, put together puzzles, do enormous amounts of baking, visit neighbors and elderly relatives and soup kitchens and heck, maybe even animal shelters.

My family does a lot of that too.

But our most persistent holiday tradition?

We get sick. Very, very sick.

And this year we played out our ol' familiar tradition in style.

The sickness can come from any direction, really, and it doesn't have to be any kind of sickness in particular, just something that knocks the majority of us down for at least a day or two, just enough to significantly reduce the amount of quality family time we're able to spend together during the holiday season (that is, if you don't count competing over who gets the highest recorded fever as 'quality family time').

This year, my older sister and her family got sick first. They all started experiencing some significant abdominal distress a couple of days after my youngest sister's wedding (the last of the girls to marry--other than me--hah!) but thought it had moved through and on by the time they came to my parents' house on Christmas Eve.

So they came, and we played and laughed and watched movies and ate cake and caroled around the piano and told embarrassing (and sometimes heart-warming) stories about each other. And it was great. We even thought we had escaped a general family sickness, since my older sister's family appeared unlikely to pass it on, and although my mom had been quite sick with a flu-like cold during my sister's wedding, (extremely unfortunate, but she fought through it like a trooper), the cold didn't appear to be spreading.

This is why my onset of nausea after eating Christmas dinner was somewhat distressing. But even more distressing was vomiting bits of turkey and mashed potatoes out of my nose a few hours later. And hearing everyone else vomit their assorted semi-digested eatings later that evening, in the middle of the night, and into the morning and afternoon of the day after Christmas, including my two-and-a-half-year and six-month-old nephews. (In fact, probably the worst part was hearing my six-month-old nephew crying because he was hungry, but couldn't eat because A: if he did eat, he was likely to throw up and B: my sister hadn't eaten anything for about 18 hours, and thus didn't have any mammary-produced sustenance with which to feed him.)

We're all feeling pretty okay now. A cleansing of the entire system (the entire system, I assure you) and plenty of ginger ale, juice popsicles and an assortment of bananas and toast has brought most of us back to about 90% of normal. And my sister and brother-in-law (parents of the two nephews) who had intended to stay with us only a few days have now spent many more days with us, due to being all sick and unable to get up and stuff, so that's been a boon of sorts.

And you know, I've been thinking. In all honesty, I'd take the 'puking and/or feverish colds every holiday season' over 'family fights and not speaking to each other every holiday season' any day.

So, I guess if we have to pick one terrible family tradition, this one isn't the worst. Maybe, when it comes to holidays, something that 'isn't the worst' might be pretty good after all.

Merry Christmas, everyone. And a happy, HEALTHY, new year.

A little hefty bit

Let me be frank: this semester has been dang hard. It's been hard scholastic-wise, social-wise, personal-state-of-self-wise, hair-wise, glasses-wise, pretty much every conceivable -wise possible.

Well, actually, that isn't true. I've had no difficulties with, say, species identity. I'm pretty sure I'm Homo sapiens. Also, my fingers have given me little trouble over the past few months. And hey, my continual acquisition of books has gone swimmingly.

But other things have been hard. When I say that the semester has been difficult scholastic-wise, I don't want to imply that I haven't enjoyed it; it's been one of the most enjoyable semesters I've had here. In fact, I feel that during this semester I finally got into the meat of what I hope to do as a professional librarian: reference work with children, preferably ages birth (yes, we do provide library services to babies) through 8th grade or so. I learned about programming for children, during which time I got to both construct a box of resources for a themed story time and later use someone else's box to perform a story time in class. It was, frankly, extremely awesome. Particularly the whole reading-picture-books-and-singing-songs in graduate school thing. I learned about children's literature, including how to write reviews and analyze the library's current collection to better meet the needs of the community. I spent hours and hours and even more hours getting familiar with reference source after reference source. It was intense, but oh-so-informative.

I guess that's the point: this semester's schoolwork was pretty heavy, but I feel like I learned more, or at least more valuable, pertinent-to-me information than I'd learned in any previous semester.

So, school was actually pretty good. Stressful, HECK YES, but good.

Let me just breeze through a few of these others before I get to the real meat of this: my hair is currently way too long and frazzled at the end. I needs a trim. This equals hardship for my poor self. My poor straggly-haired self.

Glasses: lost a screw. One of the lens frames is now held together with a fashionable piece of copper wire. I dare you to try to spot it without knowing about it beforehand. (And now you know about it! So you lose! Automatically! Dang, I'm sly.)

Personal-state-of-self. Dude. I consumed a ton of cookies tonight. I ordered Chinese food and pizza and I'm down to one pair of jeans that fits properly. Which makes me feel that I stink as a human being.

Which kind of leads me to the point of this whole post, the subject that I'm kind of reluctant to discuss, mostly because it reveals my really real deep inner flaws in a way that makes me intensely uncomfortable.

You see, this last semester, I also withdrew a lot from human contact.

It's not as bad at the moment, so I know have to write about this in a looking-back sort of way, rather than an I'm-in-this-right-now sort of way, so I don't know if I can fully recapture all the things that've been going on in my internal parts these past few months. Frankly, I could probably recapture it best at about 3:00 in the morning, with the occasional murmur of a single car passing outside my window making me feel, somehow, not less alone, but more so.

But, my roommates are home, and in and out of the room, being friendly (which is great) so let's see if I can grasp on to this slippery feeling that settled on me like a film of soap this past semester...

I have a feeling that my withdrawal from human contact has stemmed, to a large degree, from my growing dissatisfaction with myself. It's manifested itself in different ways: I can recall, for instance, sitting in church and feeling so unable to deal with people and the crowds and the press and the noise and the pressure that I had to escape outside in a near panic. I think I couldn't stand being around other people because, in part, I couldn't stand myself, or rather, I couldn't stand how I was sure other people viewed me.

So, I got out. And I kept getting out. And I kept not connecting with people, and I kept shutting the door to my room when I got home and I kept not really talking to people in class and.

And I just drew myself in and encrusted myself with as much armor-thick I-don't-care-ness as I could muster.

So, I had only myself to deal with. And, reluctantly, rarely, other people. When they absolutely refused not to be admitted. Which some did refuse, thank goodness.

And yeah, my relationship with God suffered too, mostly because I didn't take time for anyone besides my own brain. And, as crazy and entertaining as my brain can be, it can't provide insight into tremendously difficult life problems or answers to questions about the nature of the universe and our place in it (although it can come up with hecka-awesome dreams).

And. Good grief. NONE OF THIS explains really what I've been feeling or thinking or anything. And it's already too long by about 458%.

I guess, suffice it to say, I've had the door to my room closed far too often and for far too long. And I'm starting to reemerge back into the world, but it's hard. And I feel vulnerable and shaky, particularly because I'm still not entirely happy with myself, and because I'm afraid that other people can see the flaws in me that I can see in myself and that they scorn me for it.

But, you know, I'll still get up tomorrow morning. I'll still put on my skirt and those ugly brown shoes that are nonetheless comfortable and I'll wrap that blue scarf around my neck and button my slightly-too-tight coat over my bulgy self and I'll sit in church and listen to people talk and maybe even make a comment or two. If I'm feeling particularly daring. And it's even possible I'll feel the spirit. I hope so, because that's why I keep doing it.

And maybe, this week, and this next semester, maybe I can work on some of the things that have lately made me so unhappy about myself.

Maybe I can start to leave the door to my room open. Just a little bit more.

Forgive me, Mother.

Mom, I know you will cringe at this post. I know you will hate it and shiver and that it will be horrible. And I am very, very sorry. Know that I feel your pain.

I went into the kitchen this afternoon to get a glass of water and found a fat little brown mouse crouched on the mat in front of our sink. I was startled (and disgusted) and became very surprised when the rodent didn't move when I approached and told it (very firmly, I might add) to scurry, dang it! (It was so that I could forget it was there for a little while and then later bring up the subject with my roommate to see if she had any leftover traps from our last mousy escapade, if you must know.)

But the mouse didn't scurry when I told it to. Perhaps it didn't speak English. Or perhaps...it was DEATHLY ILL??? Because it didn't even run away when I tried moving one corner of above-mentioned kitchen mat, I decided that I would try to scoop it up with an empty pizza box. (I had pizza last night, people. We don't leave pizza boxes around for days, or anything. Yeesh.) At that, it seemed to object, and scurried (at last) in the crack next to the oven.

Okay, I thought to myself. Now I will try to get a trap at some point so we can catch this furry marauder.

So I went to my room to read a little and shudder. Later, I came back into the kitchen, and the mouse was once again on the mat. What the heck?!? I thought to myself. I tried again unsuccessfully with the pizza box, but this time I noticed that the mouse was walking oddly, and kept swaying as if it were drunk. Had it gotten into my roommate's wine?

When I came back into the kitchen again, after having left said pizza box open on the floor in the (stupid) hope that it would crawl in and stay in while I surreptitiously shut the lid on it, I found the mouse lying prone on the floor, little paws stuck to the side, tail laid out along the tile like a fallen streamer. Oh, heck. Let me be realistic. It looked like a dead worm attached to an even deader mouse.

I looked closely at the mouse. It was not breathing. So, choking back my gag reflex, I used one of the ubiquitous Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons we get in the mail, and scooped it into the pizza box. I noticed that rigor mortis had already set in, since the thing didn't bend at all when I was doing said scooping. I took the whole ensemble down the stairs to the dumpster, all the while wondering what the thing had died from and, more importantly, whether the disease was likely to kill me too.

Things like, you know, bubonic or pneumonic plague (except that I'm not sure if mice died from that? or even carried it? was it just rats? and did just the infected humans die?) or, I don't know, some sort of feverish horribleness that spreads via seeing weird drunken-seeming mice weave around your kitchen mat.

So, if I start developing flu-like symptoms or buboes in the next few days, just drop me off at the local emergency room, warn them that the next pandemic (and possibly the end of the world) is now at hand, and oh--would someone be kind enough to take notes for me in class on Tuesday? I'm not sure I'm going to make it.

Panic attacks, inexplicable rashes and other disturbing events

So, the title of the post preeeety much says it all.

Had kind of a panic attack a week and a half ago on Sunday. Never had one before, so it was kind of weird. And disturbing.

Then, the past few days I've had this craaazy rash that pops up, makes me itch like mad, then goes away within a few hours. Could it be eczema? Could it be an alien species about to burst through my skin? Will we ever know for sure?

So many questions. And so few cookies.

And the Olympics are unexpectedly cool. But I can't watch 'em 'cause I have to go to work in the morning.

Eh. Sorry I don't have much to write. I've been having a hard time motivating myself to do much of anything lately. But I'm hoping I'll improve. Oddly enough, being in school will likely make me want to work on all sorts of stuff, like blogging, writing stories, making little villages out of toothpicks and rubber cement. Stuff like that. But I won't have time, of course.

Oh, well. I guess life is just like that. Now isn't that profound?

P.S. I really, really, really love this video of my nephew(s).

Alexander's day had nothing on this.

So you've probably all read the story. And you know of course I'm exaggerating.

But I must say that very few things are as horrifyingly, stomach-churningly, teeth-grinding-down-into-tiny-nubsingly awful as realizing that you're not going to make your flight. Or rather, the feeling that maybe, if that train would just come now and if the hordes of people in between you and the door would just somehow vanish, and if you maybe could manage NOT to get on the wrong shuttle bus to the terminal, that you might just maybe make your flight, if you run very fast. Possibly faster than a photon. Which, you suddenly realize (because you've been reading The Elegant Universe, of course, and are thus familiar with Einstein's Theory of Relativity) is wholly and completly impossible.

And also, the train doesn't come, and the hordes of people are horribly present, and you do in fact manage to get on the wrong shuttle bus, and you finally realize (as you make your way from the wrong terminal to the right one) that it's just time to give up. To give in. To get a different flight (paying lots of money for the privilege, of course).

Lots of people miss flights every day. Airlines deal with it. People deal with it. And in just a couple of hours, the feeling of angry, gut-clenching, bone-warping impotence begin to fade.

But when you're in the moment, checking your watch every two minutes, trying to figure out if you'll maybe, maybe make it, and feeling your toes start to curl into your ankles from the stress, it's kind of hard to think that Alexander could have had it any worse.

P.S. I feel I should add, just for clarity's sake, that it was not my flight that we were missing this afternoon--it was my parents' flight. I was just along to help with the luggage. And generally impede our progress. (My fault on the wrong bus to the terminal.)

P.P.S. They're even now en route. They're fine. Just so you know.

Two things:

First, have you noticed how the way people write and the way people talk don't always coincide? I mean, I think of myself and see the way I put words together while speaking to someone face to face, and I so often stumble and backtrack and hesitate. While, for some reason, when I sit down to write something, I'm usually able to at least approximate how I feel. I wonder why it's so different. I wonder how I can have these two different voices that are both somehow mine; it makes me wonder which is my real voice.

The second thing is this: it doesn't matter how often you're reminded that wishing for something doesn't change reality; there's always something convincing about the power of longing when it comes over you, as though it should bend the world around you until it's shaped to the form you wish it. You become convinced that there's something to it, that all that power must change some corner of the world and surpise you with goodness.

Once, when I was very young, I drew a picture of a fantastical animal. I named it, and wrote the name beneath the drawing. I became convinced within myself that if I just remembered to put the picture into our mailbox on my birthday, that animal would become real, and would come to me and be my own forever and ever. Of course, when my birthday came, I forgot about the drawing amidst all the festivities of the day. And afterwards I always wondered what would have happened if I had left the drawing in the mailbox.

Longing is like that; it convinces you that reality must somehow conform itself to the shape of your hope. And then it doesn't. And you remember that you really are just one solitary human being, whose feelings, though powerful and real to you, are confined wholly within your own frame, that others cannot sense them, and that the world must function according to its own rules, and cannot change itself for one individual.

What a selfish thing it is to have these feelings. What a selfish and foolish and vain and wonderful thing.

And I still can't help hoping that I'll walk around the corner someday and see that strange and beautiful and completely make-believe animal waiting just for me. I know I never will, but it doesn't change the longing. Not even a little.

Sigh.

Oh, well.

At least I have nice hair.

What I cannot understand:

I can understand a city's need to jackhammer certain areas. I'm sure, walking around on the sidewalks as I commonly do, that if there were no jackhammering of said sidewalks and other places, that things would be in serious disrepair very shortly indeed.

I can even understand a city's need to do said jackhammering at a time when foot and vehicular traffic is minimal, such as weekends and at off hours.

But jackhammering at 3:30 in the morning almost directly outside my window for long enough that I, even I, deep sleeper that I am, am roused enough to not be able to get back to sleep for the life of me?

That.

That I cannot understand.

Or, at least, I absolutely refuse to.

Sometimes I just wish I were a boy.

The other morning, my brother woke me up and showed off the beard he's been growing over Christmas break. And I became pretty jealous.

I mean, women can't grow beards. (Well, some can, but...not me. Seriously. NOT ME.)

And I just laid there in bed half-awake and thought about how nice it would have been to be a boy. I would have been able to grow beards, sport hairy legs without shame and pee in the woods with ease. (That last one has made me envious so, SO many times.)

Other advantages?

Well, let's talk about dating. Ratios? TOTALLY in guys' favor. Also, there's something about the female role in dating that's just so darn passive. Makes me crazy, really.

Also.

No. Periods.

Reason enough, eh?

Yeah. I thought so.

So, while we're on the subject of controversial topics...

Today in library school we talked a lot about intellectual freedom.

Which, basically says that censorship is never a good thing. And also that, as librarians, we should not restrict anyone's access to any information, whatever we happen to feel about that information personally.

I find this topic very interesting, and the discussion in class was wonderfully enlightening and very stimulating.

However.

That is not the topic I'm going to address in this blog post. (Although, I suppose you could argue I've already addressed it.)

The topic I'd like to discuss is much more controversial and much deeper and much more important and stuff. It is this:

Why do I feel I am a woman who can not pull off pink? Or even that I am a woman who does not want to be able to pull off pink? Who would, if she could, pull off pretty much any other color including dark browns and olive greens and rusty reds along with pale blues and teals and bright dandelion yellows, but who is unfortunately unable to do so due to her being an 'autumn' and thus not really looking all that hot in blue-toned stuff. Apparently. (As if she looks hot in 'autumnal' colors, but whatever.)

But seriously--what do I have against pink? I mean, pink is fine.

I sometimes think of it as a bit frou-frou, a little too much a blond feminine cutesy sort of girly girly thing, but then, I'm a female. I'm a girl. Why should I object to girls being, well, especially girlish?

I guess I've never really been into the whole girly thing, even when I was a kid. You see, as children, my siblings and I loved play-acting, and because we had no brothers (then) the four oldest siblings (all girls) would play together and I would usually play the boys. Because they got to do the cool things like rescue people and swing swords and go dashing over hillocks and stuff. (Lucky boys. With their lucky hillocks.)

I rather scorned the girl toys. While I still played with dolls, I preferred the toy monsters our next-door neighbor (a boy) got to play with, or the He-Man action figure said neighbor also posessed, or the cool transformer toys and...the toy my cousin had: some big machine type thing made up of little cat machine type things that all fit together...something. Anyway--that was cool too.

And not pink.

Or. Well, I think maybe one of the cat machine things was pink because it was operated by a female character, but STILL. That's my POINT. Right?

Or maybe it's not. Because if this female character was hooking up in her little pink machine with all the other machines to form one big machine (part of which, necessarily, was pink) then that shows that pink, and thus a pink-loving female, has power, even if it's a power that's part of a larger male-dominated entity.

Yep.

So, the reason why I'm even writing about this is that I have a pink coat. It was left by the gal who lived in my room before I moved in. And it's a very nice coat. It's warm, and it fits pretty much perfectly (which--hey--a FREE coat that fits PERFECTLY is not anything to shake a stick-sword at) and it's pretty much winter here in Boston now, with its icy sidewalks and its skin-slicing winds. Aaaaand...

The coat is pink. It is pink. It is pink it is pink and...wearing it...I just feel like a pink girl. And I've never really been a pink girl. So...

I just need to wrap my mind around it. And appreciate the pinkness. And find joy and power in being pink-coat-wearing-girl.

That's nothing to be ashamed of.

Right?

P.S. I also read banned books. And they rock.

I Fail.

At life, at human relationships, at whathaveyou.

Yep. Yep, I do.

And I'm all frustrated with myself because I Fail.

So, okay. Let me list some of my more recent foibles for you.

Yeah. So, opinions? I should just not have them. And, I think perhaps, one reason why I am so wishy washy with said opinions is that when I finally do have an opinion on something, a good and solid and glorious opinion, which I am so happy to have because normally I am an opinionless blob of nothingness and slobber, I get so excited about this opinion that I go blazing off about it and just kind of blare said opinion to anyone willing to stand still and not hit me over the head with a stick to put me out of my misery long enough to let me get it out.

However. Problematically. Other people have different opinions. In fact, they may have opinions that they cherish muchly and deeply and fully and when I go blaring out my own spectacularly loud opinions I think I sometimes and maybe frequently cause pain.

And that is probably the thing I hate doing most of all.

I think sometimes that if I could agree with everyone I would because then everyone would be happy and no one would be uncomfortable or hurt and there would be flowers and sunshine and chocolate pudding for all.

So, for example, if I read a book recently that I happened to find...not quite my cup of tea...but it came highly recommended from someone and I happened to tell someone else loudly that I had a low opinion of the book, completely forgetting or not even thinking about the presence of the recommender-person nearby, I would feel pretty darn crappy.

Sort of, in fact, like I Fail. Miserably and fully and.

Just.

I hate hurting people.

Stupid. Bad.

BADbadbad. Dumb.

Also, I stink at writing papers.

The End.

What I write when I don't feel like writing anything:

Over the past however-long-it's-been-since-I-posted-last, I've had numerous little blog topics swim up into my consciousness, bask in the light for a bit, and then plunge back down into the deep waters of Stuff I Have Forgotten.

So while I've had oodles of spare time (mostly spent reading books and eating and watching Simon Schama's A History of Britain) I haven't really written anything, mainly because those swimming and diving ideas tend to dissipate in my enthusiasm level even more quickly than they dissipate in my memory.

Maybe I'm just in the doldrums: the semester midpoint, when the fresh ardor for classes has worn off, and the manic frenzy of finals has not yet set in, when the sky is gray and the sidewalks are wet and the only thing you really feel like doing is curling up with a long succession of mugs of steaming hot chocolate and books as thick as your rapidly expanding midriff.

And so, in a brief bow to mediocrity, let me present to you a poem I wrote the other day. Or perhaps the other week:

He holds the book one-handed,
other hand fingering a cigarette
which,
smiling,
he brings to his lips
as he turns a page,
back curved in a graceful arch
under which the book rests
like a door.

(And also, just so you know, I have not drowned from (the storm formerly known as) Hurricane Noel's potent fury.)

A conversation with myself

(From last night, after feeling frustrated by my thinking abilities (or lack thereof) during class:)

I feel like kicking a puppy.

No, no. I feel like leaning down and petting a puppy. (Aw. Puppies!)

I really feel like kicking a rock. Yeah. Preferably while wearing thick boots so I don't hurt my toes.

Inexplicable? Or is it?

I slept for around four hours yesterday afternoon. Also, I slept for about seven hours last night.

So tell me: why am I getting all drowsy while reading an assigned article for my class?

Badgering the witness

Isn't it true that I'm only really interested in myself?

Isn't it true that my head is currently presiding over a body whose stomach is roiling with anxiety about things which are too numerous and nebulous to list?

Isn't it true that I hate to socialize in the same way that a brilliant chess player hates football? Or a really burly football player hates playing chess? Or...a really inept analogy-maker hates making analogies?

Isn't it true that I just watched Mystery on PBS and thus am trying to ask a bunch of questions to which I already know the answer sort of kind of maybe?

YOU decide.

More about me (but then, what isn't?)

I miss people today.

I just thought I'd give you all a head's up, in case I suddenly decide to call you out of the blue and ask, "How's that family history coming?" or "Did you ever take those pictures of pinecones like you wanted?" or "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Or maybe I won't.

Maybe I'll just continue to lie here on my bed, curled into a comma, book propped up just beyond my throw pillow while my eyes move to and fro, scanning the text.

And missing you all the while.