tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23916040655016899122024-03-12T19:58:39.183-04:00It's either this or therapy.Wendyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14624265716673146009noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391604065501689912.post-48819190732992277862012-11-26T02:25:00.003-05:002012-11-26T02:28:06.346-05:00Vegans, this is why people sometimes hate you.<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Today I went to Bloomingfoods, which is our answer to Whole Foods (except for being local, co-op, and one millionth the size.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Also Subarus instead of LandRovers in the parking lot. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">No wine tasting or dessert bars. No chefs wanking about with big knives. Etc.).</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I roamed about the store purchasing needfuls such as fresh local eggs, organic veggies, vegan baked goods* and soap that smells like my college dorm. Before I checked out, I decided to get breakfast and headed for the hot bar.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">AND THEN: Jesus smiled upon my locavore shopping basket, and </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Lo! he let there be sausage gravy [LOCAL PIGS. LOCAL MILK! LOCAL LARD!]!</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> And LO! He willed that there would also be-ith the biscuits! Praise ye, Jesus and all of your little baby animals that frolic ghostily round the hems of thy robe!<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I was waiting my turn to scoop some delicious gravy into my takeout vat, when I realized that the woman I was behind was YELLING at the top of her lungs the following:<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">"WELL THIS IS RIDICULOUS! WE'RE JUST NEVER COMING HERE AGAIN! THIS IS THE WHOLE ENTIRE REASON WE COME HERE ON SUNDAY!! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO EAT?! THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO EAT HERE NOW!!"<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I could not help staring at her, because: INSANE. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Also: IN A GROCERY STORE. Nothing around BUT things to eat. On the hot bar itself, in addition to the heavenly gift of sausage gravy, there were:</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">1. Eggs</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">2. Cheese grits</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">3. a terrifyingly grey "tofu scramble"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">4. two kinds of soup, one of which is always vegan</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">5. lovely salad makings</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">6. Vegan HOT cinnamon rolls</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">7. More eggs</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">8. Some kind of casserole described as "breakfast" which had nothing that I could readily identify in it, except the words "casserole" and "breakfast"</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Now, I did not point out all of the many other choices on the bar, or the food stacked to the ceiling in the rest of the store. One should avoid criticizing the Public Crazy. Sometimes it makes them even more crazy. Sometimes, they then direct all the crazy at One. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> But I think that I probably did look at her, and then looked at all of the food springing forth from every crevice of the building, and then look back at her with a slightly critical expression on my face. Which, I admit, I should have had the maturity to NOT do.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">But, I didn't. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">And so she yelled at ME:<br />"THEY ARE OUT OF THE VEGAN SAUSAGE GRAVY!! I CAN'T EVEN BELIEVE THIS!!! THIS IS RIDICULOUS!! ALL THEY HAVE IS THE DEAD PIG CORPSE GRAVY!!!"<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Yes.<br />She did say "CORPSE GRAVY".<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">So, I did what any reasonable, part time sort of vegetarian would do.<br />I laughed really hard. I might have even choked out "Did you just say corpse gravy?!?!" </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Whoops.<br />NOT the right choice.<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">She kept going ON and ON about how UNBELIEVABLE this was, and how "IT ISN'T FAIR THAT THEY HAVE CORPSE GRAVY WHEN THEY DON'T HAVE THE VEGAN KIND!! SO INCONSIDERATE!!"<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I said, like a sane person not chanting <i>corpse gravy</i> repeatedly under my breath: "Well, you know, it is almost 1pm. They probably just ran out. Did you ask someone?"<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">"OH, THE STAFF HERE DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!! THEY ACT LIKE THEY DON'T EVEN CARE! THEY DON'T CARE THAT I CAN'T POSSIBLY EAT ANYTHING IN THIS WHOLE PLACE NOW!!" </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">[this last, of course, was directed at the stony faced staff members behind the sandwich counter, who I would like to take this time to commend for their incredible patience, tolerance and ability not to stick this woman with sharp tined forks designed specifically for meat eating] </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Then a teenage boy pushed in front of Corpsie and started to spoon gravy onto his plate. Apparently, this was her son, because now she directed her spewings at him.<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">"OH JUST GO AHEAD! FINE! PUT THAT DEAD PIG ON YOUR PLATE!! I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS! THAT IS SO DISGUSTING! I'M NOT PAYING FOR YOU TO EAT DEAD CORPSES!! THINK OF THE FACT THAT YOU ARE PUTTING GROUND UP DEAD BODIES ON YOUR PLATE AND THEN YOU ARE GOING TO EAT THEM!!! AS SOON AS WE GET HOME I'M MAKING YOU WATCH THE PETA MOVIE AGAIN!"<br /><br />Seriously, this is Bloomington, and for a minute I thought "Wait. Are these people rehearsing a scene from a play or a student film or something? Maybe they're sociology majors doing research?"<br />But then I realized, No.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">This isn't a scene from a play. Because no playwright would create a character THIS ridiculous. "CORPSE. GRAVY."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Those are not words that should ever be put together. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">They should especially not be shouted in a place that sells food.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Even film students, as pretentiously horrid as they can be, have SOME standards. Usually those standards are subsonically low, but they ARE standards. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The teenager just shrugged his shoulders and said "Yeah. Okay. This looks really good. I'm eating it." And then he smiled at me as if to say "What are you going to do?"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I felt so sorry for him and also at the same moment I was so impressed by him. If I were a 15 year old boy whose mother was having a screaming public meltdown over corpse gravy, at the very least I would be rolling my eyes and pretending not to know her, or even throwing corpse bits in her face on my way out the door. But this kid was respectful to his mother even while holding out for his right to eat corpse gravy, and even though he clearly found her annoying, he wasn't mortified by her the way most teens are by their parents' very existence. So as I waited for my turn at the gravy coffin, I said "Just leave me some of that dead pig, ok?"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">And he laughed really hard, which might have been bad but at that point his mother was screaming at another employee. The kid said "You know, I really do feel bad, because I like pigs, but...."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">"They're just so delicious?"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Then his mother came back with more of her offspring, who were much younger, and proceeded to tell them as loudly as possible to stay away from the deadness, and to NOT use those horrible huge takeout containers like SOME PEOPLE....</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">like the one I was holding.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I knew then that if I did not leave ASAP that Corpsie would take her food crazy on to the next logical food nazi soap box, about how horrible and fat people who eat meat are, and so I immediately paid and left. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">And I laughed, out loud, all the way to my car, and have spent the rest of the day saying <i>corpse gravy</i> over and over in delighted horror.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">*Only because I've found that the vegan cookies tend to use more sugar to disguise the fact that they don't have much flavor</span></span>Wendyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14624265716673146009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391604065501689912.post-80451126969987241212012-08-07T21:15:00.004-04:002012-08-07T21:15:48.197-04:00STOP WRITING THAT NOVEL.I spent an hour or nine perusing the fiction shelves at Barnes and Noble this week. I might not be a practicing librarian anymore, but I still care about books. Only halfway through the fiction section I realized that there were only about 15 different plots in use. Also, I hate almost all of them.<br />
The point of writing fiction is that YOU GET TO MAKE STUFF UP!!<br />
Meaning, YOU CAN MAKE UP NEW STUFF! THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD OF!!<br />
Or. You can just write about the Tudors and vampires and knitting groups. But, please, if you're going to do that, stop. Stop right now. Step away from the vampires. Open your mind to something besides the zombie chasing you, and create something that does not involve any of the following:<br />
<br />
<br />1. Zombies.<br /><br />
2. Vampires.<br /><br />
3. Vampires and zombies in the same book, especially if producing hybrid Zompire/Vambie offspring<br />
<br />
4. Zombies and vampires in the same series, such as<br />
Book One: <b>Suck it, Vampire</b><br />
Book Two: <b>Eat it, Zombie!</b><br />
Book Three: <b>Suck, eat, have sex with it, and make it undead, Vambie Love Child!!</b><br />
<br />
4. Zombie apocalypses where the remaining humans must fight off the brain eating hordes and save the world. Or something. I don't care. If I see one more book about zombies, I'm going to eat my own damn brain in self defense.<br />
<br />5. Anne. Fucking. Boleyn.<br /> Yes. She seduced a king. He
chopped her head off. How many books about this must we suffer? Why must we make them all into bestsellers? Straight people, is this really the only romance in western European history that catches your eye/groin?<br />
Here's the plot:<br />
Henry VIII marries brother's widow, Katherine of Aragon, who's crazy religious and does not smell nice. <br />
Young Anne twitches around court, catching H's eye, which is wildly roaming anyway looking for someone without heavy gold crosses worn as chastity belts.<br />
A says Put a Ring on It, Big Boy! You ain't getting up in this unless I'm queen!<br />
H tries to shake old woman loose.<br />
Waa, waa, mean old Pope, excommunicatey blah blah blah, <br />
Me King! Me Also Pope!<br />
Detaches old woman, finally.<br />
Yay Anne! So:<br />
Puts ring on it.<br />
Soon, takes head OFF it.<br />
And there you have it, or rather, if you're Anne, you don't.<br />
<br />
6.
Any sort of book that is derivative of Jane Austen, i.e.<br />
<b>What Mr Darcy Did Next</b><br />
or<br />
<b>What Is In Mr
Darcy's Pants?</b> <br />
or<br />
<b>What I Did With What Was In Mr Darcy's Pants</b><br />
or
even<br />
<b>Mr Darcy's Pants: A Country Ramble With Animal Husbandry Tips!</b><br />
<b> </b><br />
Jane Austen is dead. She will write no more. <br />You will not improve on her. You will not even come close to her. Unless you are Barbara Pym, who is also dead, and who, thankfully, did not write about Mr Darcy or his pants, which, in my mind puts her AHEAD of Miss Austen-- but I digress.<br />
Reread Austen all you like, and, if you must, whack off to
Pride and Prejudice, or Sense and Sensibility--but hopefully, not to Mansfield Park because that would be weird. Better you do it at home, without pants, than
in print, with pants, and unleash it on an innocent and unsuspecting public.<br /><br />
7. Anything that has zombies, vampires, AND Jane Austen.<br />
(<b>What Zompire and Vampie Sucked Out of Mr Darcy's Pants</b>)<br />
<br />8. 50 Shades of anything. Ever. Shall not waste one extraneous word here. <br />
<br />9. Anything that has anything at all, ever, to do with Dr. Who. Please, Jesus. Make it stop. Television is enough--nay. It is already TOO MUCH. MAY GOD AND JESUS AND THE GREAT PUMPKIN STRIKE ME DEAD BEFORE I EVER, EVER HEAR ONE MORE DAMN WORD ABOUT DR WHO. EVER.<br />
<br />10.
Any subject that requires you to ever even consider using the phrase
"young buck" in reference to any creature that does not have four legs
and antlers. Trust me here.<br />
<br />
11. Teenage witches<br />
(For some reason, witches are more popular in teen lit than adult lit, which I am sure is all because of that movie The Craft, which after all I totally get because Fairuza Balk was way hot in that movie) <br />
<br />12. Teenage vampires<br /><br />
13. Teenage zombies<br />
<br />
14. Anything centered around a knitting group. <br /><br />
15. Anything centered around a knitting group with witches, zombies, or vampires in it. Or teenagers. Or teenage witches, zom--ok, you get the idea.<br />
<br />
16. If your name is James Patterson, any topic that occurs to you. Ever. Full stop.<br />
<br />17. Anything centered around an "inn", which I have always referred to as a hotel, but then again I do not write romance novels. Or anything revolving around a restaurant. Or a yarn store. A bakery. Florist shop(pe). Or anywhere else that a bunch of random middle aged women come together, with at least one studly man, and then, someone gets cancer, and everyone rallies around except for that one woman who is all shirty and aloof who, of course, has already had cancer seven times, WHICH NO ONE KNOWS! SHE HAS A SECRET!! and has lost everyone she ever knew to cancer and so she knows the pain all too well!! and oh, actually, she IS dead, that's why she seems so nasty until that scene where all is revealed and she gives her spleen and most of her brain to the other cancer person In The Most Noble Gesture Of All and everyone is all, "Whoa, she isn't such a bitch", but of course, eventually the other cancer patient dies, and everyone learns a lot of stuff about how Life Is Short, so the plucky single gal gets it on with the one studly man and then there's redemption and pie.<br /><br />
18. Related to Number 17 is the always popular Child Gets Sick, teaches lots of lessons to all the people around
him/her, even that old curmudgeon who hates children and owns a dusty bookshop on the corner which happens to be worth eleventy zillion dollars so he sells it to get the money for the Dying Child's treatment but tells no one for he is the character meant to show us How To Do Things For The Right Reason; also naturally the Dying Child's estranged parents come back together in sorrow and learn things in the Face of Death like, So what if you had sex with my poker buddies at the lake cabin? And, honey, it's no biggie that your are the father of my sister's child, because Love Is Eternal And It Is All We Have Because Soon We Won't Even Have Our Kid etc etc etc.<br />
Dying Child dies, slowly and meaningfully, preferably with at least a chapter devoted to child's Last Words which are so wise and wonderful that someone should probably be transcribing them as a Guide To Life for everyone else; Oh, and it's fucking Christmas, so that there can be a doll or a teddy bear or a toy stripper pole to remind everyone of The Christmas We Would Never Forget Anyway Because It Was So Depressing That We All Converted To Judaism Just So We Would Never Have To Celebrate It Again. <br />
<br />
<br />
19. Then, there's the always bestselling: Teenagers fall madly in love, are separated, reunite briefly many, many years later, preferably when one is on verge of death, and they both realize that those two weeks in the back of a '57 Chevy were the best ever, even after having long, fantastically successful lives packed with other loves, family, and probably a few million dollars in the ensuing six decades. Set in the summer so as to have plenty of time for sneaking off to have sex, and probably takes place in small Southern town so we can Learn Lessons About Tolerance when one of the teens has a black, brown, or maybe even just deeply tanned friend who is of course killed off by the fourth or fifth chapter, and whose death is all tragic and horrible except apparently NOT tragic enough to prevent the teen lovers from humping the springs out of the back of that Chevy. Of course, in the touching, heart rending denouement, one of our tragic duo dies, so other one can be left alone, hopefully crying until they, too, expire, not one damn second too soon.<br /><br />
20. Death and teens is ALWAYS a winner. Like, where the mother dies and the teenage daughter experiences
the five stages of grief while being pretty and popular and also loses her virginity, which is all her dead mom's fault and now
she not only doesn't have a mom, she doesn't have a hymen, but that's ok, because she gets into Yale. <br /><br />
21. Anything about a group of college friends growing apart, or getting
closer, or planning one member's funeral. You will not improve on Mary
McCarthy, even if you throw in some dying children and knitting and a
zombie.<br /><br />
There are more. But after writing these down, I'm so sick of the printed word I can't even type. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Wendyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14624265716673146009noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391604065501689912.post-42034528514232278722011-06-06T14:55:00.000-04:002011-06-06T14:55:52.257-04:00Things I Meant to Do Before My 20th College ReunionI am going to my twenty year college reunion this weekend.<br />
<br />
TWENTY.<br />
<br />
As in, TWENTY YEARS AGO I GRADUATED FROM COLLEGE.<br />
<br />
Which would mean that I started college TWENTY FOUR years ago.<br />
<br />
How did that happen? I don't feel that much older. I'm sure I don't LOOK that much older. My hair is still red*. I have no wrinkles**. I may have gained a little weight***, sure, but hasn't everyone?****<br />
Fine, I probably look every day of my 42 years, but since I am an artist who lives in Granolaville, I don't even think about that most of the time. If I want to feel pretty, I just go to Walmart***** for twenty minutes.<br />
<br />
But I honestly don't feel that much different than I did the day I graduated, or even the day my parents dropped me off at the Vassar farm and I realized I was alone in a state where I literally did not know one single person. I was a clueless 18-22 year old with very little idea of what I wanted out of life, and I spent the next five or six years going to school for a degree I finally realized I did not want. So I spent another year in school to get a degree in library science. With my MLS, I partially supported myself for the next decade and a half. Unless you are married, independently wealthy, or enjoy living in a wigwam made of empty packing crates, there is no way to support yourself on a public librarian's salary. But the nice thing about being a public librarian is that the whole time you are thinking about applying for food stamps, you can keep telling yourself "But My Job Is Important. I Am Helping People. I Am Making A Contribution To Society". <br />
<br />
I was able to be a librarian Contributing To Society mainly because my parents were contributing to my bank account.<br />
<br />
Being a librarian was possibly the only time in my life since I was 17 that I viewed the future without ongoing nameless dread. I hated college at first. I was homesick, I missed my family, my friends, and most of all my boyfriend. Eventually I settled in and by my sophomore year I loved it, had friends, was involved in activities, and was sorry when winter and summer breaks interrupted my life. Junior year was more of the same, but by senior year I realized, "Hey. This ENDS." <br />
<br />
I had no idea what to do next. Hence, the misguided grad school years, and falling into my library career mostly by accident. <br />
<br />
Now, packing for my 20 year reunion, I still don't know what to do next. I thought I'd have accomplished a lot more by now. I definitely did not think I would be living in my parents' basement without any appreciable income, single, childless, and somewhat crazy. My classmates all seem way more advanced in Life than me, but then, on some level, they always did. The whole time I was at Vassar I kept looking around me thinking "Who are these beautiful, self assured people? Has there been some kind of mistake? Why am I here? Did the admissions committee just need someone from the Midwest for this class?" <br />
<br />
You'd think that someone who felt that way then, and still feels a lot like that now, wouldn't even bother to go to a reunion. And believe me, I've agonized about it plenty. Part of me is dreading it. But that's why I feel like I have to go. If I don't do, aren't I just admitting that I never did fit in at Vassar, and it was all a big mistake that ruined my life? <br />
<br />
I do not believe "Things happen for a reason", in fact, I think that's one of the most offensive statements ever invented, and mostly amounts to blaming the victim.^* So I don't think that I Went To Vassar For a Reason, because if so, that reason might just as well have been to destroy any thoughts of a musical career and ruin my self confidence almost beyond repair as anything. And when people say that things happen for a reason, they usually don't mean something icky as the end point. They mean that something bad happens to clear the way for something good....well. Maybe it just hasn't happened yet, but I still think this concept is bullshit.<br />
<br />
But I do feel the need to reconnect with my alma mater at least one last time, and see if I can figure out exactly how it fits....or doesn't.... into the rest of my life. After I lost my job and realized I'd have to sell my house and move home, I re-evaluated my life as harshly as possible, and I did not like most of what I found. It scared me to realize that most of my failures could possibly be traced back to Vassar. Such as quitting the cello, because of an asshole music professor with an inferiority complex. And quitting acting, because I wasn't pretty enough to be taken seriously. And never taking a studio art class, because the artsy things that interested me were sneered at as crafts. Giving up on singing, when I'd always wanted to be in an acapella group, because I had one bad audition and never tried out again. Never taking a writing class, because I was too scared. <br />
<br />
College is supposed to be a time to expand your horizons, but I felt so insecure at Vassar that that the main expanding I experienced was that of my waistline. Which only made everything worse, since I now felt out of place, untalented, AND ugly. And, after years of being one of the top students in the class, suddenly I was near the middle at best. I'd never felt stupid before. I'd never written a paper longer than three or four pages, and had it not been for taking classes at I.U. my last semester of high school, I think the academic work load alone would have sent me home. <br />
<br />
What I did do was develop a political consciousness, and I spent most of my time on some form of political activism, which I don't consider a complete waste.....except, I'm not sure if it's done anything except make me an angrier person. I did make wonderful friends who I treasure. But I wasn't much of a friend to myself during college. So I guess I'm going back to see if I can figure out what made me stop liking myself, and if its too late to start again.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
*As red as the first time I dyed it...actually, probably redder now. Seeing as I used to put the color over dark brown hair instead of white.<br />
**I highly recommend extremely oily skin and being fat if you want fewer wrinkles with no botox. Works like a fucking charm.<br />
***Hey, at least I don't have wrinkles, haters.<br />
****At least those of us who can't afford lipsuction, personal trainers, or surrogates to bear our three or four sets of twins<br />
*****No, I don't buy anything. Not only do I hate Walmart and think they are the devil, I also don't have any money.<br />
^* Yes, I do have a standard, full blown rant on this topic. Please contact me if you need the full version. Especially if you feel like getting smacked.Wendyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14624265716673146009noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391604065501689912.post-77000643884625873922011-02-23T01:18:00.003-05:002012-07-22T16:24:54.733-04:00Why no, I don't agree to disagree.Unless you live under a rock, or in a country that treats humans like humans even if they aren't billionaires*, you might have noticed that political sentiments are running high these days. Personally, I think this is a good thing, but then again, I've lived my entire life like this pretty much since before I understood what politics were. <br />
<br />
When I got to college, I realized that all of my opinions weren't just called opinions, they were actually part of a larger cloud called Politics. And by Politics, I don't mean, things involving government or at least, not just those things. At Vassar, in the late 80s and early 90s, your politics were much more than democrat or republican. Were you a capitalist or a socialist or maybe a Marxist? What about feminism? Moderate, militant, or separatist? Gay rights? What about bisexuality: just a stage or not? What about animal rights? Environmentalism: were you species-ist? "Politics" wasn't limited to how you voted; your politics were how you viewed the world. <br />
<br />
In other words, as we learned over and over again, The Personal Is Political. Your politics and your self are not two separate entities. You are your politics, because they are your personal philosophy and way of connecting to the world.<br />
<br />
It amazes me that in this day and age, I still have to explain this concept to people. Although, usually the people who don't understand this have never <i>had</i> to understand it. Politics become personal very quickly when, say, you have to sit at the back of a bus. Or you can't marry the person you love. Or when you need a medical procedure and can't get it because a group of zealots have chained themselves together in front of a clinic. <br />
<br />
<br />
As most young people do, I assumed my college experience was fairly typical. Of course, it wasn't then, and it certainly isn't now. I think the one thing all Vassar grads agree on, especially as we get farther from it, is how atypical our education was. There are people who graduated from college around the same time I did, who even went to small liberal arts schools, who hardly gave politics a thought. And since I graduated in 1991, young people seem to have moved farther and farther from politics as student activity. I've lived in college towns all of my life except for when I was actually in college, and the activism seems to be almost non-existent. Which, if it isn't needed, is great. Although I'm not sure that's the case.<br />
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I fell out of my strident political activism sometime after the mid 90s, when I finished grad school. I got a "real" job and played at being a grown up for a decade or so. I thought it was time for the next generation to take up the banners for a while.....but apparently they didn't. I was shocked when I started reading "feminist" magazines again a few years ago and discovered that in the 21st century, the main issues twentysomething feminists talked about had to do with the politics of bikini waxing and knitting in public. No more Take Back the Night marches, apparently. <br />
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Maybe part of the reason politics were so important at Vassar at the end of the 20th century was because, after years of being the most liberal of all the Eastern schools except for maybe Brown**, Bennington***, and Sarah Lawrence****, we were inundated with a a new breed of students. These were people who apparently couldn't make it into their first, second, or even fifth choice schools. By which I mean, schools where you could be rich, mean, loud, conservative and fit in seamlessly. At Vassar, you could definitely be mean and rich, and you could even be Republican and mean and rich. But combine all of the above, and you stood out so much that your only hope was to create your own clique so you could have some friends.<br />
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You think I'm joking? Do the names Richard Miniter or Marc Thiessen ring a bell? No? What about Liz Murdoch? Her dad's first name is Rupert, by the way. <br />
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I cut my political teeth at Vassar, and it should be no surprise that then, as now, I was on the opposite side of the barricades as my wealthier, more infamous classmates. While Rich and Marc wrote for The Vassar Spectator, a newspaper funded by Liz's pop, my friends and I wrote for and published a feminist newspaper called Womanspeak. We didn't have any billionaire dads helping us out, so our little rag wasn't as slick as the Spec. What we lacked in funding and layout programs, we made up for with intelligence, good writing, and sheer obnoxiousness....and for our trouble, got smacked down in many a Spectator editorial. It might have been all in good fun, except, those people have been and still are shaping the political discourse of the far right. <br />
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So maybe I've had a little longer to think all this through than everyone else, because I came up against their hateful rhetoric earlier than most. We were college kids back then, and we were all, quite honestly, kind of assholes. The difference is, the members of Womanspeak aren't feeding the right wing monster that's destroying our country. <br />
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Which brings me, at long and tortured last, to my point.<br />
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So often, I hear liberals/progressives***** say things like "Oh, well, we can agree to disagree!" or "Let's just not talk about politics!" or something like "No matter what you believe, I'll always love you!" <br />
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And I honestly want to smack those people.<br />
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Not the Teapublicans. No. Their need for smacking should, at this point, no longer even need saying. The Republican party has made it very clear that they hate gays, that they wish to restrict not only access to abortion but to health care for women in general, that no one but the wealthy deserves to have health care anyway and now, with their blatant union-busting, they've made it all too clear that in this America, working for a living means that you should scramble for the few crumbs the corporations are willing to toss your way, and you should be delighted and eternally grateful for the privilege.****** <br />
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No, the people I'm annoyed with in this instance are the supposed liberals, or should I say, progressives. <br />
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<i>Side note</i>:<br />
I've noticed that those of us who still use the word "liberal" tend to be a lot less apologetic about our politics. Maybe that's because we're old or something; I don't know. Maybe it's because we just think "progressive" has too many s's. Maybe it's because "progressive" doesn't always mean "progress" in a good way, it can also just mean going forward in time, without any real benefit. Like a cancer that progresses, because it is growing, but that isn't a positive kind of growth. <br />
<i>End of side note</i><br />
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Whatever word you use, I'm just plain, flat out tired of always being expected to act as though ALL points of view are equally valid. Because, newsflash: THEY ARE NOT. <br />
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I know. I have just broken an essential rule of liberalism, which is to always respect other points of view. But, guess what. If you're a bigot, and hateful, and spend most of your time trying to keep other people down, then I reserve the right to tell you to fuck off, no explanation needed, and NO APOLOGY.<br />
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I'm done with other liberals making me feel like I'm somehow not liberal enough because I don't want to play nice. <br />
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Why the hell SHOULD I play nice with people who would like nothing better than to see me and most of my friends even worse off than we already are?? And in the name of all that is decent and right, why the hell would I want to be FRIENDS with people who believe the things I enumerated above? There are lots of things you can agree to disagree about: Sports teams. White after Labor Day. Spit or swallow. Beatles or Rolling Stones. Toilet paper over or under. Beets as a food. <br />
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But why in the world would you want to be friends with people who disagree with you about basic tenets of life? Why would I want to be friends with people who think poor people don't deserve to have health care? Who hate gay people? Who think Glenn Beck has anything worth saying to anyone, anywhere??? What possible redeeming quality could someone like that honestly have that I would want near me by choice?<br />
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I understand that you don't get to choose your family. But, you CAN decide how much contact you have with your family. Because, you see, I also know plenty of people disowned by their own families. So, because their families didn't agree with them, in this case usually their sexual orientation, they were unchosen by their families. Because it is more important to please an imaginary man in the sky than, you know, love your own son. <br />
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And you don't get to choose who you work around. I am all too aware of working in close quarters with fucking crazy ass republican fundamentalists. Even I tried to keep my mouth shut, but in my case, I would have had to remove my entire head for that to help.<br />
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But all of that is different than having friends you choose. <br />
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Now, I hear lots of you saying "But...but...but". Let's look at your butts. I mean, your buts.<br />
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BUT<br />
".....what about learning from each other?"<br />
"...what about reaching across the aisle?"<br />
"....what about working together?"<br />
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Really? Do you see Republicans as being willing to do any of these things?? Ever? This is a party built upon lies. This is a party filled with hate, and which sees nothing wrong with discounting enormous groups of people based on nothing except bigotry. Why would you WANT to learn from them? <br />
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And, again, if there are people who still call themselves Republicans when by doing so they throw themselves in with the worst of their kind, yet who don't necessarily agree with some of the most radical views, well, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr: <br />
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He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.<br />
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So, lets look at those "buts" again, and see where you can agree to disagree:<br />
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BUT:<br />
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"What about my jogging partner, Susie, who thinks all fat people are stupid and lazy? Can't we agree to disagree, even though my best friend is overweight and I know she's not lazy or stupid?"<br />
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"What about my friends I have coffee with on Tuesdays who all talk about how Jews control the media? Can't we agree to disagree about that, even though I think anti-semitism is wrong and horrible?"<br />
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"What about my neighbor's friend who is running for office on a union busting platform? Surely we can agree to disagree on this, even though I belong to a union and without it, I'll lose all the money I've paid into my pension?" <br />
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"What about my friend Joe, who thinks gay people should be sent to camps? Can't we agree to disagree on this, even though I have a gay son I adore and support?"<br />
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"I know WalMart is responsible for the destruction of the mom and pop grocery store, like the one that my family friends ran for 40 years until WalMart came to town. Can't we agree to disagree, and they won't be angry with me for shopping there now that they're homeless and live in a van?" <br />
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"What about Aunt FooFoo, who works for Operation Rescue? Can't we agree to disagree, even though I would have died if I hadn't been able to have a mammogram at Planned Parenthood?" <br />
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If you are one of those people who can, somehow, agree to disagree, well, good for you. Know that I am not one of you, and I never will be.<br />
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And I'm fine with that.<br />
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*Hint:not this one.<br />
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**lots of drugs,but still an Ivy<br />
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***very, very rich; student body mostly expelled from everywhere else because of drugs<br />
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****close enough to Manhattan to get really serious drugs; also,too small to matter<br />
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*****whatever term we're trying to use to not upset conservatives too much these days<br />
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******Oh, and just in case you want to have one of those "discussions" where you tell me that I shouldn't paint all Republicans with the same brush, because it isn't fairrrrrrr because they arrrrennnn'tttt ALLLLLL like that, and how maybe I don't know that because I'm a complete idiot who needs to have things explained to her in words of two or fewer syllables, well, just don't. Because I guarantee you, I've had that conversation with other people AND myself about seventeen million times. Starting about 20 years ago. And I've probably thought about it in way more detail than you have, because I'm totally comfortable with it, and you're still trying to "discuss" it. When a party has become so crazily far to the right, if you stay a part of it, well, you ARE tarred with their brush, and you deserve to be. If you aren't part of the solution, people, you most certainly are part of this problem. <br />
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I can go on about this. At great, unwanted, frighteningly mind numbing length. Way, way longer than this, and I can tell you're already annoyed. Believe me. This is nothing. Stop now, while you have a chance to escape.Wendyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14624265716673146009noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391604065501689912.post-57683766484845584772009-08-25T18:39:00.002-04:002009-08-25T18:43:15.996-04:00Twelve Steps for Dealing with the Republican MenaceNote: I originally published this on the "Notes" section of my Facebook profile. Since then, many people have forwarded it around, and since there are still people without FB accounts, I thought I would post it here as well.<br /><br />My thanks to real twelve step programs for their inspiration. Feel free to forward and repost as needed, just leave my name attached. I wouldn't want anyone else to get in trouble for my smartassery. <br /><br />TWELVE STEPS FOR DEALING WITH THE REPUBLICAN MENACE<br />by Wendy Bethel<br /><br />A friend of mine wished that there was a 12 step program for her to do so she could stop trying to argue with Republicans. I agree that this is a vitally urgent issue, and so I've tried to oblige. These steps are only the beginning.<br /><br /><br />You must:<br /><br />1. Admit that you are powerless over using logic on Republicans. You cannot argue with people in a language they do not speak.<br /><br />2. Come to believe that powers not possessed by Republicans can restore you to sanity, including but not limited to compassion, intelligence, and reason<br /><br />3. Turn over your energy wasted on speaking to Republicans to a high power, such as to the electoral college, or really, any college.<br /><br />4. Take a fearless moral inventory of yourself.<br />For instance, do you believe that gay people are the same as pedophiles, those who practice bestiality, and rapists? Do you think that poor people are poor because they made “bad choices”? Do you believe in less government except when it applies to your enormous tax cuts? Do you care passionately about the rights of the unborn until the cord's cut? Do you believe that access to health care for every citizen is a big socialist plot, since you and everyone you know has really good insurance?<br /><br />No? Then you don’t have to worry, because you are NOT a Republican and therefore you HAVE morals.<br /><br />5. Admit to yourself the nature of your wrongs: You CANNOT reason with a Republican. See Step One.<br /><br />6. Ask your higher power to remove the desire to reason with those who have defective characters, such as Republicans<br /><br />7. Ask your higher power to remove Republicans from your life.<br />Trust me. It’s better this way.<br /><br />8. Make a list of those who have been harmed by Republicans. This will be a long list. It may be quicker to simply make a list of Republicans, and then write at the top of it “Everyone except the following:”<br /><br />9. Now, instead of wasting time, breath, and energy trying to speak to Republicans, make amends to those who have been harmed by them, including yourself, through volunteer work, community organizing, years of painful psychotherapy, living with compassion and integrity, and obviously, voting for Democrats.<br /><br />10. Continue to take personal inventory and when you are wrong, admit it. It will not be easy to stop speaking to Republicans all at once. Sometimes, they seem almost normal until you’ve known them for a while. You may have to move, get a new job, find new friends, disown a child or two, and/or obtain a divorce. In the end, it is worth it.<br /><br />11. Continue to practice empathy, reason, and love in your daily life. You could ask God what he wants you to do, but all too often he claims you should vote Republican, carry concealed weapons, hate the gays, bomb the brown people, and prevent women from entering clinics to get cancer screenings. Therefore, do so at your own risk. If I were you, I'd just make sure I was working on Step 10.<br /><br />12. Now that you know how to free yourself of the Republican menace, carry your knowledge and support to others seeking to free themselves of the struggle.<br /><br />And remember to take it one day at a time.Wendyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14624265716673146009noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391604065501689912.post-79423827815068868852008-06-27T00:10:00.002-04:002008-06-27T01:06:12.579-04:00There's only so much of the earth I care to save.....So my friend J. is deserting me for the summer. Since he lives in Manhattan and I live in the middle of Ohio, one might think that he has already deserted me by refusing to live anywhere that I might possibly ever think of visiting for longer than a week. One would be right about that, but in this case I mean that he's spending his summer out of cell phone reach.<br /><br />This makes me frantic. <br /><br />I have known J. since I was 20, which means, frighteningly, that I have essentially known him for half my life. Ever since the first night we bonded he has been one of my top five people on the planet. Others may rotate in and out of the Top Five, but he always manages to hang on to one of the spots. Aside from having all three of the Most Important Qualities in a Man [Funny. Smart. Gay.], he also understands me in a way that almost no one else does, and yet STILL LIKES ME. Plus, he shares most of my deepest, most crippling insecurities, and yet makes me feel like I shouldn't have those insecurities even while still maintaining them himself. That, grasshoppers, is the kind of friend you don't find every day.<br /><br />J. is one of the only people I will talk to about my weight, because even though he is very tall and lanky, I know that he is at least as insecure about his own appearance as I am about mine. For instance, I admitted to him a few years ago that I was really sick of hearing about people who've had gastric bypasses, because they've become so common that I really believe that people are looking at me and whispering to each other "Why doesn't she just get The Operation and be done with it?"<br /><br />He laughed insanely for about an hour, and then said "Yeah. Why don't you just get The Operation? What's WRONG with you?" and then went off in another fit of laughter. If anyone else said that to me I would secretly think "See, he HAS been thinking that, and even though he SOUNDS like he's joking, he REALLY MEANS IT". With J., I know that he's laughing because he's impressed that just for a second, I've managed to sound even crazier than usual and he's laughing at my ridiculousness. <br /><br />A few years ago, he was working for a large company that produces a product that most Americans carry with them at all times. He was doing very well, outselling everyone in his office, and making lots of money. He transferred to another office and suddenly found out why the Gays mostly stay above the Manson-Nixon line. Within a year he was forced out of his job and found himself living in a strange city with no job and a massive case of depression. He pulled himself out of it, though, and turned his life completely around. Now he has a job with summers off and lives in New York. So, after the year I've had, he's pretty much the only person I've been able to talk to who understands what I've been through and who I can trust not to judge me when I whine about how bad daytime TV has become and why going to the bank and the grocery store can fill up an entire day. Even when I've had times when I couldn't bear to speak to anyone, he would always call me and force me to talk, and then make me promise to call him even if I felt so bad that I couldn't speak, because then we could at least watch TV together over the phone. <br /><br />And now, when i'm just starting to feel like a human again, he has the gall to take off into the wilderness for the summer, to some retreat in upstate New York where they force you to eat vegan food and learn self actualization through silence, meditation, and the gas brought on by raw diets. He will be living in a TENT for two months. Not one of those nice tents like they have at summer camp, which are up on wood floors and have canvas sides that you can roll up. No. A tent, on the ground, big enough for a sleeping bag and a pee bottle. It goes without saying that there aren't phones. No e-mail. And NO CELL PHONE RECEPTION. So I can't even TEXT him obsessively.<br /><br />I asked him, what the fuck is the point of living in Manhattan if he has to leave it to sleep on the ground and pee into a bottle for two months of the year?? After all, he cannot understand why I persist in living in flyover country, and yet I have NEVER peed into a bottle outside of a doctor's office. And the last time I went camping, which was in 1993, I forced my girlfriend to drive me home during the day so I could take a shower, and then made her drive me back home the next day so I could attend a Mary Kay party*.<br /><br />He went on about how he would be able to center himself, and reach self actualization or some such nonsense; I wasn't really listening because I was also watching the Denise Richards reality show and besides, as soon as he brings up his new agey spiritual stuff I generally tend to become deaf in that ear. I realize that I am spiritually crippled, as I will never achieve self actualization because it requires introspection and honesty and why bother with that when you can watch reality TV instead? I also don't think that I have an inner child because that would imply that I have an outer adult. <br /><br />I guess I can't look down on J. for wanting to become a better person, although I admit I don't want him to become too much better, because then he might not need me as much. I just don't understand why people can't find their inner children at home, in central air conditioning, with cable and internet access. My inner child becomes an inner demon if I am forced to come in contact with nature for more than ten minutes at a time. I once made my doll club give up a perfectly lovely meeting space because in order to get to it I had to drive far enough outside of the city that I passed a barbed wire fence. Barbed wire is a reminder that you've left civilization and are now relying on rusty sharp things to demarcate the boundaries that we leave up to socialization in the city. <br /><br />So, as only a truly co-dependent friend can do, I started listing all of the problems with this scenario. I asked him about the food. Would he be forced to partake in the raw diet cleanse that overflowed the lavatories one year? J. hates anything and everything to do with The Brown Word, so I thought this might work. No, he reminded me, he has a digestive system of cast iron. Nothing sticks to it, but nothing slides through too fast either. Next, I ruminated on the weather. What about the heavy rains the rest of the country has been having? Won't his tent float away? Annoyingly, this didn't work either. <br /><br />What about the constant insistence on being green and recycling?? Even though we went to a fancy eastern school and both vote Democrat, neither one of us really recycles. It's just too much trouble, and besides, we don't have children. What do we care as long as the earth lasts through our lifetimes? He claimed that he could stand it for the summer, because really, it was easy to do there since everyone was used to it.<br /><br />Aha. I pounced. "But what about TOILET PAPER?? Aren't you afraid that they'll pull a Sheryl Crow and tell you to use only one square at a time, or worse, make you use rags so you can RECYCLE it???"<br /><br />There was silence for a moment. Then he replied, "No. There's only so much of the earth that I'm willing to save".<br /><br /><br />Yes!!! They'll definitely kick him out after a week or two!!!<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*Yes. That<span style="font-style:italic;"> was</span> my lipstick lesbian phase, as a matter of fact.Wendyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14624265716673146009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391604065501689912.post-54859038789457482562008-06-21T23:52:00.008-04:002008-06-22T20:02:33.475-04:00Shut Up and Eat SomethingI think I may have mentioned before that I am, shall we say, Rubenesque. Heavy. Larger. Whatever you call it. Just not thin.<br />I am actually ok with this, because I have never been thin, and don't know what its like. Also, and this makes people mad, I have NO health issues. Perfect blood pressure. No diabetes. Slightly high cholesterol, which is hereditary because both my parents have it. It's not from my diet because I eat almost no red meat, cheese, and only allow myself to have eggs like once a month, if that. And I'm fit enough to take my stupid dog for a walk, which means that she pulls as hard as she can on the leash and I have to run to keep up while having my arms yanked out of their sockets. No joint problems. I am in general ridiculously healthy. <br /><br />I've been on a healthy eating plan for the past month or so, and have lost 20 pounds, which is good because all my old clothes fit again. And I'll probably lose some more, just because I don't want to hit 40 and suddenly develop all the health problems that the medical profession believes I should already have. But I know that I will never be a size 2, or a 4. Or probably even a 10. I am just not built that way, and even when I was in grad school and lifted weights and worked out to the point that I had <br />muscular definition on my torso and like, sculpted upper arms, I still wore a size 16. I looked a lot smaller, but contrary to popular belief, women can be shapely, muscular, and not emaciated. <br /><br />I would be delighted to be back in a size 16 now, and would feel very, very thin if I were. But even if I wore a 16, I would still technically be considered huge in a world where size 2 is now the optimal size for women. I'm sorry, but when I was in high school and had the same measurements as Marilyn Monroe, I wore a 12. I look at size 2 jeans and I think, what would it be like to be so small? To take up SO little space on the planet?? I mean, how do those Hollywood starlets who expand to an enormous size 4 during the 8th month of pregnancy carry those giant fucking purses without just toppling over?? How do women that small pick up their kids, or push a loaded grocery cart?? How can they do normal everyday things like take out the trash, or buy a bag of ice and carry it to the car?<br /><br />I guess the answer to a lot of those questions is, they simply can't. I think it's really disturbing that the ideal woman's shape today is that of a skeletal, tiny, bird. How did we go from women taking more of an equal place in society to women just wanting to physically disappear? <br /><br />I'm thinking about all of this today, because this afternoon I was, once again, witness to a conversation that made me want to scream fuck you, smack people, and just generally remove myself from the company of women completely. Or, let's be honest, heterosexual women. I've never heard lesbians have any form of the following conversation.<br /><br />I was with a group of women who were discussing piercings and tattoos*, and the talk turned to bellybutton piercings. Personally, I think piercing your bellybutton is really, really odd. I mean, basically you're punching a hole in the place that once connected you to your mother. I guess I also don't see navels as particularly sexy, either. To me, they're mostly just kinda weird. Especially outies. They look like some kind of malformed genital that just didn't work out. <br /><br />Anyway, one of the women present had had her navel pierced. One of the other women present, who is extremely thin, said that she was planning to pierce hers as soon as she got her "6-pack" back. She asked to see the other woman's piercing, and of course, there was a lot of giggling, and then that time honored conversation between women that goes something like this:<br /><br />"Ooooh nooo, I can't show you cause I'm so fat!!" [slapping of nonexistent stomach fat]<br />"Oh nooooooo, you're not fat, look at MEEE" [pinching of three millimeters of excess skin on stomach]<br />"You guys!!! You look great!!! Look at my huge roll!!!" [Exposure of tiny fold of skin caused by sitting.]<br /><br />"No way, you are all soooooo skinny!!!! Look at this huge muffin of mine!!" [Pulling up shirt to display half a centimetre of skin over tiny waistband.]<br /><br />giggle giggle giggle giggle.<br /><br />And I have to sit there, in complete shocked silence, as all of the participants are at least 50 lbs lighter than me, and not one of them could wear anything bigger than a size 10. <br />These women were thin. And some of them were the kind of thin that would even pass muster in Hollywood. And they're all trying to basically out-FAT each other???<br /><br />I mean, what the FUCK???<br /><br />And I remembered all of a sudden why I don't have many straight girl friends.<br /> <br /><br />I mean, what am I supposed to do when this conversation takes place around me?? <br /><br />Laugh, and point at their imaginary fat, and say "Oh gosh, yes, you ARE grotesque, please cover that up before I vomit??"<br /><br />Make retching noises and run out of the room??<br /><br />Suggest emergency liposuction???<br /><br />Cover my face and scream "Stop raping my eyes with your cellulite!!!"???<br /><br />Point and chant "PIG PIG PIG"???<br /> <br /><br />Shriek and giggle along with everyone else and assume that they can't see me?<br /><br />Or am I supposed to be the jolly fat girl who says "Come on guys, look at ME!! Now don't you all feel so much better???"<br /><br />Could that be what they really WANT?? Are they really that cruel??<br /><br />It wouldn't surprise me. Because that's certainly what it felt like.<br /><br /><br />I don't know. I mean, what if we were all sitting there and one of us had only one leg, or no legs, and then the others started talking about how ugly their legs were? <br /><br />Or what if one of us was bald, and everyone started talking about how much they hated their hair?<br /><br />Or what if one of us had cancer, and everyone else started talking about how sick they felt after having that cold going around?<br /><br />Or if the person with cancer had had a double mastectomy, and everyone started talking about how their own breasts were too small, too large, or otherwise unsatisfactory???<br /><br />Would they have understood that they were being horribly insensitive and hateful then?? <br /><br />I'd like to think so. But I'm not sure. Because being party to that conversation felt pretty terrible to me. Just for future reference, no matter what you weigh: if you're with someone who clearly weighs quite a bit more than you do, please don't start complaining about how repulsive you are. Because the message to the heavier person is, "My God, if they all find themselves so disgusting, WHAT DO THEY REALLY THINK ABOUT ME???"<br /><br />I mean, while watching my tiny, tiny friend pinch at the quarter inch of extra skin on her miniscule stomach and proclaim herself "huge", all I could think was, Is she blind? Is she retarded? Does she call me pig behind my back and snort when I walk out of a room?? Why does she even like me??<br /><br />I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't understand women. And at times like this, I'm glad about that.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*Okay I have to be honest. I don't fucking get it. I was trying to talk to a really nice, brilliant, otherwise lovely woman today and I could not hear one fucking thing she said because I could not stop staring at the ring through the middle of her nose. Why the fuck do women want to look like they are livestock?? And i'm sorry, I know you thought that little butterfly on the back of your neck was really cool in college, but what about when you're 75 and it's sagged to the middle of your back???Wendyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14624265716673146009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391604065501689912.post-86109070925999105702007-12-08T03:05:00.000-05:002007-12-08T03:09:35.265-05:00Why can't we eat dogs instead of cows??I have been up for almost 20 hours. And even though it is nearly 3am, I cannot yet go to bed.<br /><br />This is because my dumb ass of a dog will not come in the house. I have been trying to lure her inside for the past hour and finally gave up and decided to completely ignore her.<br />Every five minutes or so she yips and scratches at the door, which means that I must then go open the door ostensibly to let her stupid ass in--at which point she runs away from the door and starts barking while running sideways with occasional mountain goat leaps into the air. I think this must mean "Hey Mommy!!! Come out and play with me in the disgusting slushy and muddy yard!! Pleeeeeeeeez Mommy play pleeeeeeeze!!!!" Which I am not going to do, because it is fucking cold out there in addition to being slushy and muddy. So I am then forced to walk part way into the yard, while hissing "LUNA! GET IN HERE GODDAMIT!!!" which of course doesn't work, so then I switch to my most dulcet, dogcharming tones and say things like "Come here you little shit, get in the goddamn fucking house before Mommy skins you and makes you into a nice pair of fur lined boots!!" <br /><br />I hate golden retrievers. <br /><br />It is now officially 3am and she is still out there. Making the most pathetic little whines possible. Which at one point in my life as a mommy could catalpult me out of an absolutely sound sleep. And which now are making me feel really, really murderous while wondering if perhaps the Koreans have something to teach us about dogs as food.<br /><br />What makes this even more annoying?? She did the same goddamn thing LAST night.<br />Last night, I let her out at 1:30, which was already late, and she proceeded to elude capture until 2:54am. And last night, it was not raining but it was also less than 20 degrees out there.<br /><br />I am so afraid that the only reason my neighbors have not yet called the police on me is because they are too busy filming my pathetic efforts and putting it on youtube where Keith Olbermann will see the ridiculous spectacle of a grown woman in an oversized flannel bathrobe trying and failing to outsmart a golden retriever and decide that it is the perfect thing to highlight on his Oddball segment.<br /><br />Hate dogs. Hate winter. Hate complete lack of dog-parenting skills.<br /><br />I wonder if anyone will call Dog Protective Services on me if I just leave her the hell out there and go to bed. I'm willing to risk it.Wendyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14624265716673146009noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391604065501689912.post-62238749239972222952007-12-01T01:34:00.000-05:002007-12-01T02:21:22.854-05:00Something I Do Not RecommendHave you ever seen what two pounds of pork looks like after it's been inside a golden retriever?? <br /><br />No??<br /><br />Consider yourself deeply blessed, then. <br /><br />I have seen, and worse, smelled this. <br /><br />I was sitting at the computer rambling on in yet another entry about my pathetic lack of a love life, when suddenly I realized that the dog was no longer in the room with me. <br /><br />I heard one, tiny quiet rustle of plastic. DAMMIT!!<br /><br />I lurched into the kitchen to find the dog's head buried in the garbage bag I'd been meaning to take out for the past three hours. I yanked her head free, and executed a savvy motion intended to push her away, grab the garbage bag with my other hand, and lift it above my head. Instead I fell face forward onto the kitchen floor and my hand landed in something that looked like jello. Made out of blood. Hmmmm. I then heard a strange choking, gagging sound and twis<br />ted to see the dog sitting in a hunched over position with her poor head stretched out and drool coming out of her mouth. <br /><br />Unfortunately, I recognized this pose. It's what she does right before she throws up everything she's ever eaten.<br /><br />In her entire life. <br /><br />All at once.<br /><br />Somehow I got her into the yard, because my vet has told me repeatedly that dogs don't like to throw up in the house.<br />Well. <br /><br />I don't like to dwell on the next ten minutes in too much detail, except to say that if you have ever had a golden retriever you are probably familiar with the fact that when they do vomit, they immediately try to eat it, which causes them to vomit again immediately, which makes them eat it, and so on. I believe the reasoning here is, "Hey, I already ate that once, and dammit, I'm going to eat it again [and again, and again] until it's good and eaten!!"<br /><br /> Since at this point I had NO IDEA what was making her so violently ill, I was particularly worried. And so ensued a period of time in which she ran away from me heaving wildly, then vomiting, then energetically chomping at whatever was trying to exit her mouth while I screamed "STOP IT!! STOP IT!!! DON'T EAT THAT AGAIN!!!" and flew around after her like a giant plaid flannel loon in my bathrobe and bare feet. <br /><br />Once, when the dog was only about four months old, we were out in the yard enjoying a lovely spring day. The sun was shining. The sky was blue. The leaves were that lovely shade of spring green. And a mama bird was teaching her adorable little baby bird to fly, right there in the yard! Mama would make odd little cheeping noises and push Baby away from her, and Baby would flutter her little wings and get a foot or so off the ground, and then Mama would rush to her and preen her feathers as if to say "Good job, Baby Bird!! What a good smart little Birdie you are!!"<br />Suddenly out of nowhere a blinding yellow flash swooped down on Baby Bird and with one giant bite, scooped her up and took off running. For a minute I couldn't understand what was happening. Then I saw the feathers hanging out of my sweet puppy's fuzzy little muzzle, and heard the horrified squawking of the mama bird. "No!!!! NOOOOOOOO" I screamed, running wildly after the dog, who delightedly took off even faster at this new fun turn of events. What a good game!!! She zigzagged around the yard like a downy yellow demon, and I stumbled wildy along, continuing to scream "NO!" and "DROP IT!" and many, many other things which had absolutely no meaning to the dog except "Wow, Mommy is getting really excited!! I'll run faster!!!" <br />Finally I thought to yell the one command she did know, SIT!!!.<br />And she did. And as she sat, and I finally reached her, she GULPED.<br />And that dear little baby bird was no more. <br />In horror, I grabbed my puppy and instinctively rammed my fingers down her throat, where, unbelievably, I could feel the bird wings still fluttering. I tried to grab them and pull, but another GULP and down went the birdie. <br /><br />This was a lot like that time, only this time it was about 20 degrees outside and well after midnight. I bet my neighbors don't even have cable anymore. They can just watch me and my idiot dog instead. And this time, when I managed to get to her and force my hand into her mouth to make her stop chewing, I came away with something brownish with a spot of bright red jello like substance on it. Oh no. What can that BE???<br /><br />Finally the heaving stopped, and so I brought the dog inside. Where, damn that vet, she began to vomit for England. Since I was in my pajamas, I hopped into a pair of pants and grabbed the leash, thinking, that's it, she's dying, we're going to the emergency vet. Suddenly the poor dog gave a great heave. A flood of foam came out of her. I thought I might faint. "This is it, I am watching my dog die right here, and it's all my fault because I am too damn lazy to take out the trash. I've killed her. I've murdered my dog!!!<br /><br />And then, before I could move, she gave an even greater heave and deposited the unchewed, undigested remains of the pork roast with cranberry chutney that I made on Monday night. Which had been in the garbage bag. It, in fact, looked exactly as it had when I put it into said bag, except the cranberries [Aha!!! Blood jello!!!] were gone, and it was coated in a rather sticky film of mucus. <br /><br />With awe, I looked up at the dog, who shook her head as though to clear it, burped, and then began to wag her tail happily and sidle towards the now twice cooked pork.<br /><br />She's fine now. I am definitely going to become a vegetarian again.Wendyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14624265716673146009noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391604065501689912.post-42650401780091125212007-11-29T23:17:00.000-05:002007-11-29T23:52:59.916-05:00Twenty One Things Best Not Mentioned, ReallyOkay. So, to review:<br /><br />1. Live in a circle of filth<br />2. Have less self esteem than a small writhing self-esteemless thing<br />3. Totally incapable of choosing romantic partners who are literate, nice, or sane, regardless of their gender<br />4. Own more animals than is normal or non-pathetic<br />5. Am possessed of more books than most used bookstores and still have nothing to read tonight<br />6. Have many artistic talents which are greatly underused and probably overestimated<br />7. Am approaching the physical age of 39 while emotionally not quite 13<br />8. Am completely incompetent dog owner as 2 year old dog still barely understands rudimentary commands such as "Sit", "Come" and "Stop eating your poop, goddamnit!!!"<br /><br />In addition, I<br /><br />9. Am continually on the brink of financial ruin even though have "professional" "managerial" type job due to having chosen<br /><br />10. World's most wildly underpaid profession which unfortunately I totally love and cannot imagine not doing, esp at current position which is absolute dream job where I float around wondering at my luck in spending my days doing what I'm doing, and loving where am doing it in spite of being paid so little that literally am half supported by parents.<br /><br />11. May be going completely insane as last night dreamed that I was breastfeeding a baby all night long which on closer inspection turned out to be a pug puppy, which in the dream was a big relief as could not remember actually bearing the child/puppy and YET was producing breastmilk [dream breastmilk, not actual breast milk] which was perfectly normal [????] and somehow woke up at least relieved that it was not as disturbing as other recent dream in which I<br /><br />13. Actually gave birth to 13 golden retriever puppies and felt the labor pains, which in the morning discovered were actually<br /><br />14. Menstrual cramps, which also had this morning, leading me to believe that perhaps in spite of all efforts since early childhood to deny such, actually DO have a biological clock, which<br /><br />15. Is ticking frantically, although, disturbingly, for wrong species as last I checked am still mostly human.<br /><br />16. Should be doing nothing except sewing, knitting, and beading as Christmas is coming and have finished precisely none of the approximately 507 gifts I am planning to make, on top of the other projects I am obsessed with working on yet am<br /><br />17. Not doing, because I'd rather be enumerating lists of my own shortcomings to distract myself from the fact that<br /><br /><br />18. Am still single and<br /><br />19. Don't particularly want to be because<br /><br /><br />20. Am in throes of worst crush have had in a good ten years which is extremely embarassing and lame and on someone so inappropriate that must stop writing now for fear that even thinking of said crush will cause someone to guess who it is which will result in horrible things such as being laughed at, rejected, or, worst of all,<br /><br />21. Liked in return.Wendyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14624265716673146009noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391604065501689912.post-91882356554102704522007-11-27T21:26:00.000-05:002007-11-27T21:46:21.016-05:00The Circle of FilthI know that from that last entry it may sound, just a bit, as though I live in a rather chaotic environment. That’s because I do. I am physically incapable of being neat and organized, and no matter what I do, I seem to live in a continual circle of filth. Although it doesn’t actually consist of dirt--its more made up of books, yarn, beads, and okay, a lot of dog hair.<br /><br />“Circle of filth” is a term coined by my sister in law, who first used it to to describe the mess that my father is capable of creating around himself in five seconds flat. He can enter a lovely room with everything in its place, sit down, and a few minutes later there are empty cups, spoons, floods of newspapers, and bits of paper towel. And, on Wednesdays, nail clippings. He gets very, very angry at the fact that we all noticed years ago that he has a specific day for nail clipping, because he hates for his OCD to be noticed. One might say, he’s almost compulsive about it. You would think someone as OCD as he is would be neater, but sadly that is not the case.<br /> <br />When David Sedaris described growing up with his parents as akin to “being raised by a pair of housecats”, I felt a chord resonate deep within my cluttered and dusty soul. Because that’s what growing up in our house was like. We didn’t do things like eat around the dinner table every night, and we certainly didn’t have stupid rules like other kids about bedtime and keeping our rooms clean. I like cats, and I like my parents. And actually, I guess comparing my parents to cats isn’t quite fair, because cats are very clean animals. Its just that cleaning was never a priority in our house. I don’t mean for it to sound like we lived in squalor, because we really didn’t. It’s just that my family has always had a lot of stuff, and by stuff I mean books. We vacuumed and washed the dishes and all of that, but actually putting things away was not a goal. Although every so often my OCD father would decide that he was tired of the various bookbags and shoes lying in the entryway and simply throw them into the yard. <br /><br />I once toyed with the idea of putting my house up for sale, and had a realtor walk through it. Since my house is very small, this took only about four minutes, after which the poor woman had to sit down and be brought a glass of water and the smelling salts. Well, not really, but if I’d had any lying around I would have waved them at her. When she regained the ability to speak she said “PODS. We’re going to need at least three PODS just for the books!!!” I said “But why? Can’t I just kind of, you know, organize them or something? Maybe actually put them all on shelves?”<br />She explained to me that when you sell a house, you want the “lines” or “the bones” of the house to show, and that mine was too full of books to even designate actual rooms except by saying “that’s the room with the craft books” or “that’s the room with all the holocaust memoirs”, and that furthermore, having too many books can confuse and intimidate buyers. ??????????????????? What? Confuse and intimidate them??? But there are mostly democrats in this neighborhood! Republicans wouldn't fit in here!!!<br /><br />I didn’t sell my house after all, mostly because I was going to sell it to move in with a woman who let slip during the process of making an offer on a place that the downstairs spare room would be a great place for her 75 year old ex husband to “stay in”. !!!!!! <br />The house hunting and the relationship ended shortly after that. It’s one thing to get involved with someone 20 years older than you are.....quite another when that person has an ex spouse who is 20 years older than HER who she’s not only still in touch with, but whom she’s thinking of caring for in his twilight years!!!! IN YOUR HOUSE!!!! See: Why I Am Still Single. <br /><br />Anyway. One of the reasons I obsess about my cluttered house so much is because everyone else in the world seems to care so much about having nicely decorated homes with color coordinating throw pillows and I just cannot for the life of me understand it. I choose my homes by the amount of space they have for bookshelves. I don’t care about things like breakfast nooks and closet space and whether or not my hardwood floors are red oak [actually, they might be: don’t know, and don’t care]. <br /><br />I care about how much uninterrupted wall space I have for bookshelves and stacks of books. I also need room for craft supplies, but even those are secondary to the books. <br /><br />This is how I was raised. I do not trust people who don’t have lots of books in their homes. I don’t think they’re normal, and I know they’re boring. And while I know there are people who read who don’t actually buy or keep books, I find those people rather suspicious as well. Because I suspect that those are people who read for a specific reason, such as spiritual growth or impressing other people, and I don’t trust them either. Reading should be done like anything else that’s truly worth doing, because you love it and because without it, you feel empty. People who read books only for specific reasons, well, they’re usually just performing a chore, like Oh, i have to pick up the dry cleaning, oh, I have to get my pelvic exam, oh, i have to read oprah’s latest pick so I can talk about it at the playground with all of the other soccer moms. Retch.<br /><br />I read like a fiend as a child. I still do, but I literally always had my nose in a book for the first ten or so years of life. I brought books everywhere. We were always driving somewhere, and at that age I could still read in the car. I would take walks and read while walking, a skill which has proved particularly useful in my choice of career. I hated going out to eat, because that meant I couldn’t read at the table. Since at home we rarely ate around the table, I always read while eating, a habit that I’ve continued, much to the horror of all the weight loss experts. I read before bed, but never had to use a flashlight under the covers because as long as I was in bed, my parents didn’t care. I was the one who had to get up in the morning, and if I stayed up too late and was cranky in the morning, that was my problem. <br /><br /> Every room I had from the first grade on was dominated by bookshelves. The house we lived in when I was in the first and second grade had a white built in waist high bookshelf that ran the whole length of my room. I don’t remember much else about that room, but I remember that bookshelf, which was already overflowing by the time we moved. <br /><br />By the time we moved to the house we lived in from the time I was 10 until I left for college, [and then returned to after college] my bedroom had two full sized bookshelves stacked sideways and double with books, and endless stacks of books on the floor. My college dorm rooms always consisted of a single mattress on the floor, as many bookshelves as I could squeeze in, and more stacks of books. <br /><br /> This is what my entire house looks like as an adult, except now the bookshelves are in every room except the kitchen and some rooms, like the study, have 5 or more full sized overflowing bookshelves. There’s no bookshelf in the bathroom, but there are books stacked against the wall, and the living room only has one shelf but the opposite wall is simply stacked full of books. I live alone, except for my mentally deficient dog and assorted cats, so there is no one to tell me to stop acquiring books, not that I ever really listened to those who did. And yes, some actually did and more unbelievably, I listened.<br /> <br /> In graduate school my girlfriend made a big deal about how annoying it was that I had so many books. She owned a mattress, some clothes, and a TV tray. Our house was furnished with my furniture, my pots and pans, my washer and dryer, my dining room table, chairs, sofa, television, and computer. Since she used all of those things on a daily basis, that was fine; I could have those. But the books meant nothing to her, because she had never actually read a book for pleasure, and, as it turned out, was with me primarily because she could barely read them for school and I in fact wrote almost all of her papers for the two years we were together. Why was I with someone who didn’t read??? Well, she paid attention to me, and so far, that’s been my main requirement for a romantic partner, apparently. <br /><br /> I had a good friend in library school who once came over to our house, and I said something self deprecating about my messy bookshelves. This lovely young man turned to me with wide eyes and said seriously “But Zoe, this is one of the coolest things about you; I mean, your bookshelves are actually sagging under the weight of all these books, and you’ve actually READ most of them!” <br /><br />I remember very few things that that girlfriend said, but I always have remembered that her reply to this was, “Ugh, I HATE all these books”. Later on, before we broke up, we went to a couples therapist [goddamit. I hate lesbian relationships] and again, she talked at length about how she hated my books. The therapist told her in no uncertain terms that if she didn’t like my books then she shouldn’t be with me, because even the therapist knew what a reader I was. the therapist also made the point that my girlfriend probably hated my books because they made her insecure, because she wasn’t as smart as I was [am]. Then she proceeded to tell my girlfriend that she was emotionally abusive and told me that I should kick her to the curb, in front of the girlfriend. <br /><br />That therapist was fucking awesome. <br /><br />Then, there was the crazy homophobic boyfriend. Did i forget to mention that he did not read either? i think, in the 5 years we were together, he read perhaps 5 books. To be fair, he was sort of dyslexic, but that didn’t seem to affect his ability to look at endless discussion lists on the internet during his extended unemployment. He also hated the books, and before he moved in with me he said that I had to get rid of enough books so that all the remaining ones actually fit on my bookshelves. <br /><br />I am ashamed to say that I did this. <br /><br /> Even after the de-dyking episode which i’ve already mentioned, I still didn’t have enough room on my bookshelves for all of my books. So i did a personal weed and got rid of so many books that I got over a hundred bucks in cash from the half price bookstore. They pay about twenty five to fifty cents a book. Maybe a dollar. The load I took over there filled the back of my Subaru hatchback. [I know, I know. Straight women don’t drive Subarus. I know.]<br /><br />Then, once he moved in he made a rule that I had to get rid of a book for every book I purchased. Really. Never mind that any book purchased was done so with MY money, and brought into first an apartment that I paid more for, and then into a house that was in MY NAME. Never mind that in a relationship it is not up to one person to decide what the other person can and can’t have when that person isn’t allowed to say shit about how many old cars the other person drags home and parks behind the house. <br /><br />Of course all this made me do was buy books in secret and then sneak them into the house while he was at work. Never mind that all of my books stacked together in one pile would not have taken up as much room as one of the three vehicles he owned, four if you count the motorcycle. It takes a lot of books to equal a 59 fucking cadillac and a fullsized pickup truck. <br /><br />His main hobby, other than criticizing me, was watching TV. He was serious about this, and spent a great deal of time honing his craft. It was not uncommon for me to leave for work, with him sprawled on the sofa watching TV, and then return home 9 hours later to find him in the exact same position, the only evidence of any interim movement being the trail of crumbs stuck in his chest hair. He would then pry his eyes away from the screen, ask me what was for dinner, neglect to ask me about my day, and then take a firmer grip on the remote in case I got any ideas. So, i would come in, change, speak to him only during commercials, prepare dinner, and then after dinner I would settle myself in a corner of the sofa and read while he watched more TV. <br /> <br />Anyway. My last significant other told me that she didn't see any future with me because she said that she felt there was "no room" for her in my life. Since I had given up most of my spare time, friends, personal goals, and almost my house for the two years we were together, I found this a little difficult to process. I asked her just how I could go about making more room for her.<br /><br />Without batting an eye she said "Well, obviously you have to start by getting rid of a lot of your books".<br /><br />I got rid of her instead. And haven't regretted it for an instant.Wendyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14624265716673146009noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391604065501689912.post-29515916733408545102007-11-26T00:23:00.000-05:002007-11-26T00:25:32.344-05:00A Day [really, an hour and a half] in the LifeOkay so I really, really like my family. As in, my parents are cool and incredibly supportive and even if they weren't my parents, I'd totally want to know them. And my siblings are awesome and I would completely be friends with them even if I weren't related to them. So. I am way, way luckier than at least 90 percent of people. Also, we are not assholes. There are some families who love each other and who are really happy to be related to each other but whom everyone else hates, because they belong to some weird religious sect, or they are obsessed with some disgusting hobby like hunting, or they're Republicans. My family, thankfully, is not like that. Pretty much every friend i've ever had has tried to figure out a way to become my parents' adopted child, and i've had more than one ex try to stay friends with my siblings. [Sorry. Not gonna happen. I know they're cool, but they're MINE.] <br /><br />Still, when you live alone, you forget what its like to be part of a family, like, on a day to day basis. So when I go home for the holidays, I'm always totally excited, and I can't wait to get there, and I load up all my books and craft projects and pajamas and dog, and drive like a demon towards southern Indiana. I love my hometown. Love it. I don't think I'll ever live there permanently again, for a variety of reasons [No jobs. No bead store. Roving bands of white supremacists in the countryside, but I digress]--but I adore visiting.<br /><br />So why then is it that every single time I go home, after three days, I can't WAIT to get back to my "real life"? It's not my parents. I am that rare person who wishes that my parents lived on the same street as me, so that I could see them every day. I would happily give them a key to my house [if they wanted one, which, um, they don't] and let them come and go at will. It's not their house, because it's amazing. I will never be able to afford a house like theirs, which is actually a good thing since I would set about filling it as I do every living space, with a messy hodge podge of craft supplies, books, and cats, and then end up only using maybe three rooms on a daily basis. It's not the town, although I admit, about 6 days is as long as I can stand to be in a place that has nowhere to obtain craft supplies except joann fabrics and [retch] hobby lobby. I just don't feel that creative when I have to purchase needles and thread while listening to muzak hymns. <br /><br />I think the reason I get stir crazy after about three days is the fact that when you live alone, you never actually have to tell anyone what you are doing, or, more specifically, WHY you're doing it. Because I find that when I am around other people on a continual basis, they are interested in what I'm doing, what I'm going to do next, what I've already done, and then they want to know WHY. It's not that I'm usually doing something that odd. But I guess when I start narrating my normal day, it can seem kind of strange. Let's try a typical day:<br /><br />7:20 Alarm goes off. Hit "snooze". <br />7:22 Listen to dog whine gently<br />7:23 Feel wracked with guilt at not jumping up immediately and feeding dog, letting her out, and playing fetch with her for 10 minutes before work<br />7:24 Fall back asleep so soundly that do not hear alarm for fifteen minutes<br />7:45 Realize it is 7:45 and must leave for work in 30 minutes.<br />7:45 Realize that really, 30 minutes is plenty of time when you consider I already know what am wearing [everything else dirty or ugly or lost in closet], and already took a shower yesterday, or was that the day before?<br />7:46 Hit snooze again<br />8:12 Wake up to dog barking wildly while simultaneously realizing that snooze cannot go off if alarm is already turned off. Three minute to feed dog, dress [myself, not dog], do something to hair, find a whole pair of shoes, and leave house<br />8:13 Trip over shoes and laundry on way to let dog out; curse; stub toe; curse more; let out dog who leaps directly onto throbbing toe, scream in agony; knock over large tub of dog food and then have to restrain wildly excited dog from eating 20 pounds of food rolling into far corners of kitchen while trying not to let her stomp on mutilated foot yet again<br />8:15 Throw enormous writhing mess of dog into yard. Realize absolutely no time to pick up 20 pounds of scattered dog food, so pour cup of three day old cold coffee and attempt to drink it while trying to find clothes I was going to wear<br />8:17 Drip large drop of coffee onto only clean shirt<br />8:17-8:20 More cursing<br />8:22 Find dress to wear as means only one piece of clothing to decide on; put on while trying to find shoes to wear with it that don't make me look like insane 80 yr old woman<br />8:23 Give up and put on Doc Martens. Hope they look "funky" rather than "retarded". Remember sister's insistence that the white sock/black clunky shoe thing is OVER and has been since 1997. Hope that it is at least less over than argyle kneesock/black clunky shoe thing as that is only other option besides black tights, which seem to remember have taken on curious mohair woven effect from amount of dog hair sticking to them<br />8:25 Go in bathroom and recoil at sight of hair. Stick head under faucet, as only way to tame it is to wet it into submission and then apply copious amounts of product marketed for african americans and labeled "FLAMMABLE: DO NOT SMOKE OR GO NEAR A SOURCE OF HEAT UNTIL HAIR HAS FULLY DRIED"<br />8:27 Try to get dog back in house. Since it is pouring rain, she will not come in as she loves to be wet only slightly less than being completely covered in mud. Is currently both, and only way to get her in is to go outside into the rain, and chase her until she turns and chases me, and then must make clever, weaving maneuver so that dog does not catch me but instead runs into house. This does not always work the first time. Today it takes three tries and while dog does go into house finally, it is not without first leaving two large muddy pawprints on skirt of dress. Which is also soaking wet.<br />8:29 Curse<br />8:30 Enter house to find dog nowhere in sight<br />8:31 Go back to bedroom to find absolute worst backup outfit only worn in cases of extreme emergency such as no clean clothes and dirty pawprints.<br />8:32 Find dog happily ensconced on bed, dripping rivulets of muddy water onto pillows, expensive down comforter, and [DAMMIT] library book.<br />8:33 Since dress is already ruined, haul dog physically back to crate, shove her in, and lock it<br />8:35 Officially should have been at work 5 minutes ago. Still have to find horrible back up outfit.<br /><br /><br />See, that's only one very small part of a perfectly normal day. And writing it down proves to me that not only should anyone never have to hear about it, but no one should ever, EVER have to see it. Because in person it's just that much worse. <br /><br />Oh well. At least I'm home now, where I can be quietly, completely crazy all I want. Well, quietly except for the cursing.Wendyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14624265716673146009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391604065501689912.post-21940692942089470022007-10-08T04:30:00.001-04:002015-07-30T23:10:53.779-04:00In which we delve into my romantic pastPart of the reason I started this blog was to figure out why I am such a fuckup when it comes to relationships. I can have them, but they always last about twice as long as they should, and I am almost never friends with my exes, because I don't actually like most of them very much. It seems to me that you should LIKE the person you are in love with, but I never quite manage that. I figured that if I forced myself to write about my issues with relationships it might help me to work through them. Or at least provide entertainment for more functional people.<br /><br />So, I guess I should explain my checkered romantic past. And when I say checkered, I mean, varied, as in, male, female, black, white, and so on. <br /><br />My very first serious crush, and I am NOT making this up, was on Robin. As in Batman and Robin, the horrible TV show version from the late 60s early 70s. I couldn't have been more than 5, and I loved him. I would lay there at night before I fell asleep and imagine him saving me, and carrying me around in his arms. Possibly this was the first instance of my falling in love with a gay man. <br /><br />My second crush, which came on the heels of my love for Robin, and I am also not making THIS up, was on another cartoon character. Speed Racer. Oh how I loved him and his monkey, and his fast, fast car. And the way his lips moved out of sync with the words. And his dark, poorly drawn hair. <br /><br />After my first two cartoony loves, I don't remember another crush until about the 3rd grade. From then until middle school I would always have a crush on some boy or other. Except, the summer after 5th grade I went to girlscout camp with my best friend. And there i developed a HUGE crush on a counselor. A female counselor. I knew exactly what it was and I was totally confused by it. At this point in my life I do not think I had any idea of what "gay" meant. But I loved that counselor. I was so pleased that I managed to get a photo of her, and I took it home and kept it for years. <br /><br /> In the 6th grade I had an extremely vivid dream wherein I kissed my best [female] friend on the lips, and I promptly went to school and picked a fight with her because I was so disturbed by this. We made up, and I never had that dream again, but I did spend most of that year pretending to have a crush on the same boy that she liked just so we could talk about him at length.<br /><br />I had my first boyfriend in the 6th or 7th grade; a serious, geeky boy. I don't remember much about him except that he was a fabulous kisser. After we broke up I dated his best friend for a while, who was not such a good kisser. <br /><br />In high school I had a boyfriend; a real, serious boyfriend, the kind you think you will love forever and ever. We met in drama class and did a scene from Barefoot in the Park together. One day in drama class while watching someone else's scene he picked up my hand and held it. We were together for two and a half years. But we had no future together, I thought, because I was going away to college and he wasn't going at all. We tried to stay together when I left for school, but it didn't work out.<br /><br />Then I went off to college in New York and fell ass over heels in love with someone else. Who happened to be my roommate, which was convenient. She happened to be female, which was surprising, but I adapted quickly. At my college, part of the liberal arts curriculum involved sleeping with people of a variety of genders, so I was just fitting in. I fell in with a group of lesbian feminists and gay men, and proudly declared myself a lesbian feminist. THat worked out wonderfully until my relationship ended after sophomore year. Then I realized I was not such a good lesbian by falling hopelessly and completely in love with my dearest gay male friend. I adored him so much anyway, and one day I woke up and realized I'd dreamed about him all night. In a non platonic way. Then followed several really uncomfortable and embarassing months, wherein the rest of our clique knew about the crush, and tried to keep it from him and keep me from telling him. Except, one night I decided I HAD to tell him which I did by showing up unnanounced in his dorm room at midnight, after he'd gone to sleep, telling him how I felt, and scaring him half to death. We did stay friends but that took a while. <br /> <br />After that, I busied myself during part of junior and all of my senior year by developing an intense crush on a straight man. He was straight, so that was good, but he was also over 20 years my senior and extremely strange, which was not good. He returned my feelings, but could not get over the age difference and all the other differences between us....which were many. We used to go out drinking together, we studied together every day, and one memorable night we even kissed....but after that he really did freak out and left me alone and I decided to give up on him for the most part.<br /> Thank god I graduated and left the state, because I think if we'd gotten drunk together one more time we might have ended up actually having sex and then, being Italian and Catholic, he probably would have thought he had to marry me.<br /><br />In spite of spending the past 2.5 years of college obsessed by different men, somehow I still thought of myself as a lesbian. <br />And after college, I returned to my hometown and lived, proudly, in my parents' basement for two years. The first year I worked at a pizza place and took graduate classes part time at the university, and hung out with an old friend who was also home after getting his BA from a college only a little more prestigious than mine, and living in his parents' house. We hung out all the time and so, as is my wont, I developed a crush on him. Luckily, he moved back to NYC before I got brave enough to actually do anything about it. <br /><br />The next year I entered grad school in earnest, and won an internship in a university office which paid my tuition and a small [miniscule] cash allowance. I promptly fell in love with my boss. A woman! Yay! This was a crush to rival the best of them. I hadn't been so hopelessly in love with someone so unattainable since my gay best friend in college. She was 20 years older than me, in a relationship [although, to my delight, it was somewhat unstable], a pillar of the local [sizeable] lesbian community, and did I mention, my boss?? Once again, all the cards were stacked against me. I was starting to wonder if huh, maybe, just maybe, I was purposely attracted to people I could not have, just so I wouldn't actually have to go to the trouble of getting actually involved with them. Maybe. <br /><br />Being me, I managed to charm this woman into not just being my boss, but also my friend. I am remarkably good at making friends. I am even better at making friends with people who have no intention of being my friend. We went out socially, to movies and for coffee. I got involved in the local women's community and saw her out and about, and becamse good friends with people who had known her for years. We became such good friends, in fact, that we even took a couple of trips together. Once we drove out to washington DC together and spent the night with a friend of hers and went to museums and even went to stay with her family for a night. Thinking back on it, it occurs to me that she probably did like me a heck of a lot, but, again, I was 20 years younger and worked for her. This all went on for almost two years. My crush faded because it became clear that nothing was going to happen, and because I lived in a town where there were a LOT of lesbians having sex and I was tired of not being one of them. <br /><br /> Then I met a woman who I wasn't that in love with, but who pursued me so flatteringly that it took me a few months to realize she was at best crazy and at worst fucking crazy. I went out with her because I hadn't had sex in about 4 years, and for once in my life, I thought, what the hell. Also, she was beautiful. Tall, blonde, and just gorgeous. Then I realized that she was, as I said, fucking crazy. She had this little problem with masturbation. As in, she did it constantly. I'd be talking to her on the phone and realize she'd been masturbating the entire time. We'd be studying at her apartment and I'd look over and realize she had her hand in her pants. It was really quite disconcerting. <br /><br /> I got out of THAT one because she graduated and moved to New York. Not quite sure what it is about me, relationships, and New York, but it definitely is in there somewhere.<br /><br /> Soon after that an old friend from high school introduced my to her ex girlfriend and that person's current girlfriend. In true lesbian partner swapping fashion, my old friend and this woman had been together, had a threesome with another women, and when they woke up a new couple had been formed. Also in true lesbian fashion, they had all stayed friends!!!** <br />Anyway, the ex was now with another woman, they had just moved to town together so that the ex could attend college. Yep. Within 3 months, she'd moved out of her girlfriend's apartment and into mine. That relationship lasted about 2 and a half years, at which point she moved out of our apartment into her next girlfriend's place. <br /><br /><br />After that I took a break from relationships. At the time I considered myself a lesbian, and so, just to ensure I couldn't date anyone even if I wanted, I moved away from my homosexual haven of a hometown to a little town in a neighboring state where, if being gay wouldn't get you beaten up, it would at least get your tires slashed. That lasted a year and a half, seeing as how I require more than Walmart as a cultural activity. I was single, not looking, and had basically decided to just add to my collection of cats until relationships were never an issue again, because no one wants a crazy cat lady.<br /><br />So I got myself a job in the big city, and moved here, fully intent on my career as a librarian/catlady. About a month after I'd moved here, I started dreaming about the high school boyfriend again. Which was completely bizarre, because I had not even thought of him in years. Occasionally I would think of him, but these dreams were so vivid. It was like I had just seen him. I even remember mentioning it to a friend at work; how odd it was that I'd been dreaming about my high school boyfriend, who I hadn't seen or heard from in 11 years.<br /><br />The next month I went to my sister's high school graduation. And, across the crowded stadium, there he was. The high school boyfriend. He looked pretty damn good to me. We met for a drink that night. And then made out in my car til morning. <br /><br /> Maybe not such a lesbian after all. I hate to be one of those stereotypical bisexuals who says "I just fall in love with PEOPLE", or, Colbertesquely, "I don't see gender". But apparently, that's what I am. <br /><br /> This led to 5 years of a relationship that was so fucked up on so many levels that I have blocked most of it. Luckily J. continually reminds me of it, such as the time the boyfriend found all of my diaries, read them, and then systematically unpacked each box in my house in order to see what was in it. I was actually forbidden to see J. because he was gay, which would [obviously] remind me of the lifestyle I was "missing", and also because he was male, and therefore I might accidentally sleep with him, which might turn me gay again. Hey. I didn't make that up. <br /><br />That relationship probably requires its own entry, as this is already way too long and it was so fucked on so many levels.<br /><br /><br /><br />**this is one reason I will never be a good lesbian even if I end up with women for the rest of my life. they really DO stay friends after that shit.Wendyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14624265716673146009noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391604065501689912.post-77581884799409839022007-10-08T00:11:00.000-04:002015-07-30T23:10:53.782-04:00A Tale of HormonesI guess I wasn't kidding when I picked the URL for this blog. I do seem to get here about once a month. Although this month's ovulation rage has passed already and I am already into the lovely bleeding. There, that should scare away all but the most dedicated readers. <br /><br />So I've realized that my entire life is ruled by hormones. First, I bleed. The first day of THAT, I am so tired I can hardly move about. But, I am usually in a good mood. Good mood lasts through that week, and then the next. The third week brings the RAGE, which my friend J. and I dubbed "ovulation rage" a few years ago. PMS is bad. Ovulation rage is about four steps past the worst PMS. Since it's not actually pre-period, but halfway between, we realized it was something else. Then we realized, huh, one OVULATES halfway between. If I ever wanted to get pregnant, ovulation rage would make it very easy for me. I would simply pick the day where I feel like screaming and smacking people the most, insert semen, and bingo, that would be it. The rage itself varies from a generalized misanthropic rage--and not misandry as in man-hating*, but rather humankind hating--to picking fights with friends, co-workers, family, and people in public places. Since I at least know that I'm a complete bitch during that week, I usually try to avoid as much human contact as possible with anyone who might possibly get on my nerves. Unfortunately, that's mostly everyone. <br /><br /><br /><br />Anyway. After ovulation rage comes the week of depression and anxiety. Then, I have two or three days when I am so anxious about money that my mother will simply just hear the tone of my voice and hang up on me and send me a check. Then, thankfully, the bleeding begins again. <br /><br /><br />Yes, you read that right. I only get three weeks in between blood. It sucks. I was once on what I like to call the white trash shot, aka depo provera. It was so wonderful because for almost 4 years, I didn't bleed at all. I still had something of an emotional cycle, but NOTHING like without the depo. I would usually just find myself very irritable for a few days without knowing why. But since I was involved in a relationship during that era with a man who would not speak, cook, clean, or do anything but watch TV 23 hours a day, I was only surprised I wasn't more irritable more of the time.<br /><br />Now, of course, I've learned that they believe that the white trash shot may postpone menopause, which makes perfect sense, seeing as you don't release eggs while on it. Great. I may bleed for another 30 years. Wouldn't THAT be a joy? <br />At this point in my life, I can't imagine actually ever giving birth. Aside from the fact that I'm 38, which is old anyway, I have a relative with Down's syndrome. My chances of having a down's syndrome child are something ridiculous like a 5 or 10 percent chance at my age. That's a big fucking chance. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br />[I did try, briefly, in college, to be a manhater, but stopped when I kept getting in trouble for sneaking my many male friends into the college Women's Center which was a "womyn-only space". Rather like my womb at the time.]Wendyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14624265716673146009noreply@blogger.com0