File this under: "Items To Be Diplomatically Ignored and Not Dignified with a Response"
Text Message received on 10/2/06:
"wanna celebrate our respective bdays together in your shower?"
Perhaps the big dummy should at least get points for perseverance.
He'll never be getting laid for his perseverance, but he is an unexpected source of amusement, which does have a lot of value.
Monday, October 9, 2006
Is This Better Than the Chicken Dance?
I've spent my life sort of dancing on the fringes of things -- sort of in the circle, but not quite all the way in. I dip my toe in the water, but keep one foot safely on the shore in case I have to make a run for it. (Come to think of it, I do always have my passport with me...)
It's a kind of emotional Hokey Pokey, where I'm quite enthusiastic about putting my right foot in, and my right foot out, then wholeheartedly shaking it all about. But...
When we get to that part of the song that goes, "You put your WHOLE SELF in, you take your WHOLE SELF out, you put your WHOLE SELF in...." Well, that's when my psyche throws up its hands, mops its brow and says, "Whew! Am I bushed! Do I need a refreshment! Which way to the bar?" And smiling (always smiling, always smiling), I back out of the circle away from the people around me who are clearly less neurotic than I am, or at least better at hiding it.
A trained therapist would say this stems from my fears of intimacy, relationships and committment.
He or she would probably be right.
But hey, every day, the dance gets a little more uninhibited and I get a little closer to the middle of the circle.
It's baby steps, kid. Baby steps.
It's a kind of emotional Hokey Pokey, where I'm quite enthusiastic about putting my right foot in, and my right foot out, then wholeheartedly shaking it all about. But...
When we get to that part of the song that goes, "You put your WHOLE SELF in, you take your WHOLE SELF out, you put your WHOLE SELF in...." Well, that's when my psyche throws up its hands, mops its brow and says, "Whew! Am I bushed! Do I need a refreshment! Which way to the bar?" And smiling (always smiling, always smiling), I back out of the circle away from the people around me who are clearly less neurotic than I am, or at least better at hiding it.
A trained therapist would say this stems from my fears of intimacy, relationships and committment.
He or she would probably be right.
But hey, every day, the dance gets a little more uninhibited and I get a little closer to the middle of the circle.
It's baby steps, kid. Baby steps.
Monday, October 2, 2006
Mean Streak
Every now and then, I want to walk up to an obviously anorexic chick, pretend I know her from way back, and then comment, "Wow! You've really put on some weight!"
Holy Consumer Hell, Batman!
Saturday afternoon, feeling motivated and also a little peckish for some shopping, I realized that, hmmmmm, yes, I am ready to start dating.
You know what that means, ladies.
New underwear. You buy new underwear when you are ready to dive into a new relationship, or to even put yourself back on the market. God forbid you should take someone home when you're wearing last year's grayed-out Lilyette with the underwire that's been poking you under your boob for six weeks. Or when you're down to your last pair of underpants and are forced to wear the granny gutchies that you keep hidden in the back of your underwear drawer. (Why do you have them, again?)
So I'm feeling a little, I don't know, hungry or something. Not necessarily for a relationship, but for something. Regular companionship. Regular sex, for god's sake.
Natale doesn't count. He was a test relationship, total time spent together over 7 weeks, approximately 36 hours. Not really a relationship of any kind. Not to mention, the sex was a disaster of epic proportions. How is it that you can be completely physically attracted to someone, only to have it all fall apart when the naked happens? To him, I think I was just some person transporting a pair of tits that he was enamored with. I was their driver.
So, no, Natale wasn't enough to inspire me to buy new bras and underpants. In fact, I called him AFTER buying the bras and underpants and ended it.
(By the way, does anyone call them underpants anymore?)
So, I headed to Macy's. During a sale. On a Saturday. In the rain.
Perhaps I should have gotten stoned before I went. Maybe it would have mellowed me out.
At any rate, when you see that your favorite brand and style of bra is on sale for less than twenty bucks, you stock up. Men will never know. Once, in a fit of passion, Rocky ripped my bra off my body. What came out of my mouth, instead of a gleeful "oooh" was "Hey! That was a fifty dollar bra!"
But I digress.
Anyhow, you've got to love a new bra. When I wear a new bra, it's like I've been issued a new pair of boobs. Seriously. They just look better. Perkier or something.
The most serious mistake of the day, however, was going to the fragrance department. With the noise, smells and lights, I felt like I was trapped inside a pinball machine, being caromed from one Spritzer Person to another. They kept looming in front of me like apparitions out of a horror movie, wielding their bottles, forcing me to throw my hands up to protect my eyes. Finally, all I could do to protect myself was blurt out to one of them, "Michael Kors!"
Like I said, I shoulda been stoned.
You know what that means, ladies.
New underwear. You buy new underwear when you are ready to dive into a new relationship, or to even put yourself back on the market. God forbid you should take someone home when you're wearing last year's grayed-out Lilyette with the underwire that's been poking you under your boob for six weeks. Or when you're down to your last pair of underpants and are forced to wear the granny gutchies that you keep hidden in the back of your underwear drawer. (Why do you have them, again?)
So I'm feeling a little, I don't know, hungry or something. Not necessarily for a relationship, but for something. Regular companionship. Regular sex, for god's sake.
Natale doesn't count. He was a test relationship, total time spent together over 7 weeks, approximately 36 hours. Not really a relationship of any kind. Not to mention, the sex was a disaster of epic proportions. How is it that you can be completely physically attracted to someone, only to have it all fall apart when the naked happens? To him, I think I was just some person transporting a pair of tits that he was enamored with. I was their driver.
So, no, Natale wasn't enough to inspire me to buy new bras and underpants. In fact, I called him AFTER buying the bras and underpants and ended it.
(By the way, does anyone call them underpants anymore?)
So, I headed to Macy's. During a sale. On a Saturday. In the rain.
Perhaps I should have gotten stoned before I went. Maybe it would have mellowed me out.
At any rate, when you see that your favorite brand and style of bra is on sale for less than twenty bucks, you stock up. Men will never know. Once, in a fit of passion, Rocky ripped my bra off my body. What came out of my mouth, instead of a gleeful "oooh" was "Hey! That was a fifty dollar bra!"
But I digress.
Anyhow, you've got to love a new bra. When I wear a new bra, it's like I've been issued a new pair of boobs. Seriously. They just look better. Perkier or something.
The most serious mistake of the day, however, was going to the fragrance department. With the noise, smells and lights, I felt like I was trapped inside a pinball machine, being caromed from one Spritzer Person to another. They kept looming in front of me like apparitions out of a horror movie, wielding their bottles, forcing me to throw my hands up to protect my eyes. Finally, all I could do to protect myself was blurt out to one of them, "Michael Kors!"
Like I said, I shoulda been stoned.
This Book I'm Reading
Well, actually, there are about 4 that I've got going right now.
But I picked up CS Lewis this weekend (yes, *that* CS Lewis, the Narnia one) "A Grief Observed." Yeah, yeah, go ahead, say what you want about the nonbeliever picking up a book by a Christian writer. Just because I don't believe in God doesn't mean that I don't believe in great writers who believe in God. What can I say? I'm a literature whore, a slut for the well-written word. One of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott, is a self-described "Jesusy" Christian.
A little background -- I was shocked by hard I was hit by Mark's death in July -- it actually plunged me into a deep, deep mourning. I thought I was depressed but came to realize that I was GRIEVING. And grief is something we, as a culture, treat like a head cold -- you know, you've had a couple of days to be sad, now get over it, move on, aren't you finished being sad, YET?
Why are we so uncomfortable with our own sadness and mourning? We're bombarded with messages that we are supposed to be happy all the time. And if we're not, then there must surely be something wrong with us, so take this pill -- no, this pill -- no, try this one! We fail to recognize that grief is a process to be gone through, not a thing to be discarded or distracted, or a disease to be cured by magic pills. We are so uncomfortable with others' sadness or depression or weltzschmerz or whatever you want to call it, that we WANT people to pop the little blue pills that will make them more appropriate. Well, I ask you this -- since when is it inappropriate to show that you are sad when you are sad? We have become so uncomfortable with the cycle and circles of our own emotional thermostats. Somehow, the belief has been perpetuated that the emotional temperature should always be 72 degrees and sunny, with no humidity.
Well, folks, I like weather. All kinds of weather. It reminds me I'm alive.
A week after his death, my sister went back to work. Simply because she did not know what else to do. Rattling around their house, in which they had lived for just one month, in which Mark was so happy to live because it wasn't an apartment, because he had a lawn to mow and a driveway of his own, was just too overwhelming for her. So she did what we women in our family do. We go to work. A few days in, one of her young co-workers said to her, "What's wrong, Carol? You seem so quiet today." (Oh the insensitivity of the young.)
"I'm not quiet. I'm mourning and in grief. Mark DIED. This isn't the flu. I'm not going to get over it in a week and have my life go back to normal. He DIED." I actually have to feel pretty bad for the kid. She probably felt terrible.
Anyhow, I picked up this book at Barnes & Noble -- there I was, lurking like a pervert in the Christianity section of the store, hoping not to see anyone I knew.
I flipped it open on the subway, and began to read:
"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."
My throat began to feel tight and breathing became difficult, and I could only put my head down and weep silently all the way to Lorimer Street.
But I picked up CS Lewis this weekend (yes, *that* CS Lewis, the Narnia one) "A Grief Observed." Yeah, yeah, go ahead, say what you want about the nonbeliever picking up a book by a Christian writer. Just because I don't believe in God doesn't mean that I don't believe in great writers who believe in God. What can I say? I'm a literature whore, a slut for the well-written word. One of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott, is a self-described "Jesusy" Christian.
A little background -- I was shocked by hard I was hit by Mark's death in July -- it actually plunged me into a deep, deep mourning. I thought I was depressed but came to realize that I was GRIEVING. And grief is something we, as a culture, treat like a head cold -- you know, you've had a couple of days to be sad, now get over it, move on, aren't you finished being sad, YET?
Why are we so uncomfortable with our own sadness and mourning? We're bombarded with messages that we are supposed to be happy all the time. And if we're not, then there must surely be something wrong with us, so take this pill -- no, this pill -- no, try this one! We fail to recognize that grief is a process to be gone through, not a thing to be discarded or distracted, or a disease to be cured by magic pills. We are so uncomfortable with others' sadness or depression or weltzschmerz or whatever you want to call it, that we WANT people to pop the little blue pills that will make them more appropriate. Well, I ask you this -- since when is it inappropriate to show that you are sad when you are sad? We have become so uncomfortable with the cycle and circles of our own emotional thermostats. Somehow, the belief has been perpetuated that the emotional temperature should always be 72 degrees and sunny, with no humidity.
Well, folks, I like weather. All kinds of weather. It reminds me I'm alive.
A week after his death, my sister went back to work. Simply because she did not know what else to do. Rattling around their house, in which they had lived for just one month, in which Mark was so happy to live because it wasn't an apartment, because he had a lawn to mow and a driveway of his own, was just too overwhelming for her. So she did what we women in our family do. We go to work. A few days in, one of her young co-workers said to her, "What's wrong, Carol? You seem so quiet today." (Oh the insensitivity of the young.)
"I'm not quiet. I'm mourning and in grief. Mark DIED. This isn't the flu. I'm not going to get over it in a week and have my life go back to normal. He DIED." I actually have to feel pretty bad for the kid. She probably felt terrible.
Anyhow, I picked up this book at Barnes & Noble -- there I was, lurking like a pervert in the Christianity section of the store, hoping not to see anyone I knew.
I flipped it open on the subway, and began to read:
"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."
My throat began to feel tight and breathing became difficult, and I could only put my head down and weep silently all the way to Lorimer Street.