Archive for November, 2007

What I didn’t say

November 29, 2007 | Filed under: Socially Awkward Barbie™, Sucks like a vacuum

“Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.” ~Margaret Lee Runbeck

On Friday a family friend’s 17 year old son died in a car accident. One of those accidents that is played and replayed on some loop by stations around the area, analyzing and updating to the point where on the third day of seeing the story in the A-section of the paper, I threw the entire paper in the garbage in a fit of anger and annoyance because all I could think of was his mother.

His wake was earlier this week and when my mother mentioned going I promptly ignored the emails and her phone call with the trepidation usually reserved for meeting new people or being pulled into a closed door meeting with a boss. I hate wakes with the burning passion of a thousand blazing suns. I would rather be on a life long diet of cottage cheese and cooked carrots, my two most hated things, rather than go to a wake. But of course I attend, I always attend because it’s one of those times that no one really gives a shit about my intense fear of a dead person being a few feet away from me because it isn’t about what I want or don’t want to do. It’s about being there and supportive and feigning understanding even when I know that I would give my left arm not to experience that type of emotional pain.

A wake is the time when my social awkwardness comes out in full force and I literally have nothing to say, because what is there to say? The mother hugged me and I said nothing. The siblings smiled at me and I smiled back. The grandfather said “It was nice meeting you” and thanked me for coming and I mumbled a “You’re welcome” and gave a weak smile why he was welcoming. I feel like a simple I’m sorry is too trite and saying ‘My prayers are with you’ sounds fake and like I’m forcing it.

I don’t know what to say without sounding like a complete asshole but I figure that I can’t be that much of an asshole because I was there and that probably means more than anything.

A moment

November 28, 2007 | Filed under: Comes And Goes, Socially Awkward Barbie™

“Misfortunes one can endure - they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one’s own faults - ah! there is the sting of life.” ~Oscar Wilde

I’ve been chastised for having my door shut and for shutting people out in general. Apparently it comes off as me being too private or plotting something or being a bitch. Even though it’s not a community door and there is no need for me to defend myself, I’ve been explaining it over and over again because I’m not plotting in here with blueprints of how to case the joint, I’m sitting in here leaned back as far as my chair will take me. My door is now wide open so people can watch me do the really exciting act of staring off into space and biting my lower lip while tapping the top of my coffee cup. Riveting.

Even when nothing is wrong something ends up being wrong and I feel at unease. Mornings have been for shit lately though I did surprise myself when I was sitting at my desk at nine AM and ready to take on the world at about 11:15. I know what needs to be done and I have to be reminded by others that things are not that bad and it’s not like I’m picking cotton so there really is no cause for complaint. I would say that I hate myself for being all ‘woe is me’ and shit but at least I’m honest when hit by the one two punch of ennui and petulance.

By next week I’ll be back to my normal, happy, wine drinking, table dancing, throwing up the finger to piss poor merging drivers, self. But for now I’m just eh and I really needn’t defend myself for needing a moment, but there you go.

Arrivals

November 26, 2007 | Filed under: Oh The Stupidity You'll See, Planes trains and automobiles

“I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine.” ~Caskie Stinnett

My first trip to Europe was a weeklong visit to Rome to visit friends of mine who were studying abroad. Being beyond giddy about going somewhere that wasn’t Canada, I was full of endorphins upon landing. The rush of the sights and sounds carried me from the airport to Trevi Fountain to my friend’s apartment where I promptly saw a pillow and swore I would have it’s babies if I could just rest my head on it for a few moments. I felt like every fiber of my being, anything holding me upright, was being sucked out of me via my toes and my body was languishing and about to toss itself off the nearest precipice if I didn’t shut my eyes soon.

It seems that my body is a bit of a delicate flower and does not handle time change well. Yet I feel the need to keep pushing and pushing it by pretending that I don’t need to stinkin’ rest. It’s like I’m seven years old again and my bedtime is at 7:30 PM yet I just can’t sleep even though the need is made evident by my repeated thrashings against my bedroom door, but I fear missing out on something exciting by sleeping. Such is the reason for why I thought I was a bad ass my first day in Spain and instead of sleeping, like I so desperately needed, I stayed up until 2 AM learning the hard way that euros are worth more than dollars and drinking sangria. I woke up the next morning in tears and promptly fell out of the shower due to exhaustion and the worst hangover I have ever experienced since the night after my 21st birthday.

Before I left for France I knew that when I got back I would have a 36 hour turn around in NY before going to the west coast to Las Vegas and San Diego. My mind was all “FUCK YEAH!” and my body was all “You are such a dumb bitch. I’ll get you, my pretty.” The initial descent into Sin City was just fine it was the subsequent all-nighter that had me in the fetal position ordering room service for three days straight while everyone else ventured off to Mexico and made light hearted banter over cocktails in the hot tub. I spent four days in San Diego barely able to say my first and last name together. I spent four days known only as Heather from New York. Heather with no last name. I was like fucking Madonna.

Anyway, I’m back now and back into semi-top condition having spent the last week laying in bed or watching Weeds or sitting in my office with the door shut having a ‘moment’. Attempting to recoup several lost hours and days of my life that at this point are nothing but a foggy memory of pictures and sliced words and bits of paper found in my pants pockets. Each one reminding me that I went somewhere new, ate something and from the number of receipts from bars and the perpetual feeling of fuzziness, I’m pretty sure I had a good time.

I bet you think this post is about you

November 19, 2007 | Filed under: Blogology, Great moments in narcissism

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” ~e.e. cummingsYou know what is funny? Narcissism. How perfectly pot/kettle black of me for pointing that out given that I’ve spent the last two and half years meticulously documenting every moment only to write about it and share with several thousand people. The funny narcissism is from those who do not realize that they are behaving as such. Like perhaps those that make disparaging remarks about a blogger and say “Watch out what you say to her in a conversation. It might end up on the blog.” Well ho, ho, ho, isn’t that rich? To automatically assume that anything said to me is going to be blog fodder. Especially when the conversation is between myself and someone that I a) can’t stand b) don’t even know and c) occurs between the hours of 9 AM and 6 PM. The chances that a conversation about printer usage and effective pedagogy are going to increase site traffic are pretty slim to none. Actually, it’s just none.I’m at a reception the other day when a coworker asks me to tell him the calamari story. A really disturbing story about eating calamari then drinking several glasses of pinot noir and then puking up the calamari to find that the calamari had turned purple. A story that I told while speaking at BlogHer this summer and then kind of forgot about. Well this coworker hadn’t and when I asked what he was speaking of he said “Well you wrote about it on the blog” and I subsequently had several margaritas and a panic attack. Though I must admit that the best time to find out that one of your coworkers has perused your archives is with a very large drink in hand.Even though it has become common there still is that shock, tightening of the chest and then sphincter clenching that inevitably comes when someone you deal with from nine to five and nine to five, only, is reading some very intimate details of your life. Like the way too much vodka makes you cry or that you have a bipolar disorder. The following question would be “Then why are you sharing if you don’t want people to read?” There is an interesting dichotomy there, on the one hand, I do write publicly about some personal things but nothing that I’m embarrassed about, yet there is just something very odd about a colleague being all up in your business, especially when others have been particularly cruel about it. I don’t care that they read, it’s comments like “You better watch out what you say to her, it might end up on the blog” that make me want to ask someone just how important they think they are in my life, because the answer would be not at all. Which means the odds of me announcing to the world every minute detail of our conversation about ink cartridges are far less likely than me announcing the world that I hate your hair or that you probably haven’t gotten laid in years, in public. Now that? People might find interesting.Thinking about it now, I suppose that those who find blogging to be somewhere out in the realm of UFO sightings and eating Foie Gras, might be bored with their lives. They need someone else’s life to make fun of and dissect as if it is their own. They are rather small people who obviously need to get some ass or perhaps enjoy some wine that doesn’t come in a box. But I guess now I’m becoming just like them by being judgmental though I can always pride myself by saying at least I never tattled on them and told their mothers, because I can be a judgmental, honest, bitch, but at least I moved away from my five year old tendencies like 19 years ago. And the next time I get drunk I’ll be sure to share every intimate detail like puking up a veggie dog on my bedroom floor. You can thank me for that one later.

For posterity’s sake

November 16, 2007 | Filed under: Humdrum

“A smile appeared upon her face as if she’d taken it directly from her handbag and pinned it there.” ~Loma Chandler

There was something I had planned to say but now cannot recall and for once I wish that it stemmed from one too many vodka sodas. It actually stems from pure exhaustion. I hit that “I feel great! I’m wired! Let’s play roulette!” point at about 3 AM and since then it has been a slow descent into madness. I stepped off the plane from Las Vegas to San Diego into thick fog with a twitch in my eye. Every time my Eritrean cab driver started to tell me about the trees and the resort I’m currently hold up at, I thought my brain was being stabbed by a freshly whittled piece of wood. By the time I arrived, my brain was actually leaking out of my ass.

It was one of those nights where contemplating becoming a stripper or at least a table dancer in a Las Vegas hotel is serious conversation. Like how long would one be able to dance on a table top in platform boots before their back gives out? One of those nights where Pamela Anderson sits right next to you at a bar and then Jon Stewart comes over to chat and is as funny and charming in real life as he is on television. It was just one of those evenings where I spent a lot of time surveying my surroundings wondering who the fuck let me in here and then tipped toed around blackjack tables in flip flops and wondering what “Single deck” play means and weak cosmos, beer and a buffet fill me up to the brim.

Last night was one of those nights when I was asked if I missed what I had before and the answer is yes, I do. Because last night was one of those nights where I can just sit back and say, “Holy fuck, now that? Was fun”