Archive for December, 2007

In the year of the delta

December 31, 2007 | Filed under: Great moments in narcissism, Listy

“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.” ~Benjamin Franklin

Neil pointed out to me earlier that this year seemed to be particularly difficult for me. And it was in that purely narcissistic, how can I handle all of this good fortune that seems to have swung in my direction, type of way. I can say it over and over and over again but I do not do change well. It’s like it’s physically impossible for me to accept anything different without a lot of strenuous and unnecessary thought that only serves to making me feel far more insane than I did at the onset. I’d make up some resolution about seeing the error of my ways but I know I wouldn’t keep it. I know that by Wednesday I’d be back where I was today; slumped over in horrible posture while abusing On Demand. So instead of some intense and verbose look back on 2007 the year of the cleavage baring dresses, benzodiazepines and Southwest airlines, I figured the following posts would pretty adequately sum up my year*.

January Crush, redux

February That’s just the way it is

March Pot o’ Gold

April The Queen of Everything

May Soon to be Pooping Rainbows

June Life Changing

July A Beautiful Reciprocal Arrangement

August Sooner

September Come Hither

October Diminishing Marginal Utility

November Departure

December Sporadic Verbosity

*This idea totally borrowed from Tracey G-P

Oh days divine

December 28, 2007 | Filed under: "Oh night divine", Familia, Va-cay-cay-cay

“A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in.” ~Robert Orben

Have you ever noticed that going days and days on end of doing absolutely nothing that requires brain power tends to become physically draining? The only thing I’ve actually had to do for myself in roughly 10 days is remember to check in for my return flight from Oklahoma City, which was completed with aplomb. My next most difficult task was during my Holiday party when I had to convert from wine glass to ceramic mug just so I wouldn’t confuse my drink with others. Seriously, the sum of my life and decision making has been What type of iPod should I get and how many times is too many times to go to Sonic? That is all.

Christmas came and went sans fanfare and without a complete sensory blowout from way too much going on at once. I like to keep things very simple so that I can focus on just one thing whereas too much leaves me confused and panicked. I requested one thing; Snow tires. And unless snow tires fit into a Banana Republic box, I did not get them. Which is fine because I did get a tea stirring stick that holds loose tea but on the box it looks like some new fangled apparatus for toking on the reefer. In fact when I opened it, the first words out of my mouth to my mother were “My! How progressive you’ve become”.

I like it like this, when things are simple enough to be described as ‘good’ and no one asks 75 questions while trying to find the hidden meaning behind a one syllable answer. I like when things are just as they are.

I shall leave you with my favorite moment: My younger brother, G, first meeting my niece Melissa. He was holding her and she was doing that 5 month old I want to get down and stand thing by kicking him repeatedly in the stomach. So I sat there and watched G say “Oh you want to get down? Here you go”. So he set her down and decided that since she, at 5 months old, wanted to stand she could obviously do so without assistance because she apparently has the physically prowess of the average 16 month old. She immediately toppled over and spent the rest of the afternoon doing this baby sob thing that simultaneously broke my heart and made me laugh. When retelling this story to my mother she informed me that when I was three months old my father liked to stand me on the bed and then let me fall over. He would do this repeatedly as a fun little game. When my mother found out she flipped her shit and that was one of their first major fights over parenting. Apparently my mother was a little sensitive that her three month old was being tossed on a bed. When she told me it was like a little ‘Aha’ moment in my head. For suddenly the past act of my father tossing my three-month old tiny self on the bed explains a lot of things. Like I don’t know, half the content of this here blog.

The best I can hope for

December 20, 2007 | Filed under: Gruyere With That Wine, Mmhmm That's Right

“I always find it a little funny how things can seem so cruddy and then all of a sudden, they return to normal, or some variation of normal. It’s like we’re all set to some relative standard of balance, like a bobber in a lake. And we just bob, bob, bob our way back to okay no matter what.” - Jonniker

On Tuesday I was running ridiculously late to get to the airport. I had every intention of being up early and getting out the door on time and cleaning my bedroom floor but the road to hell is paved with good intentions so I did absolutely none of that. But I do have clean sheets so at least I’ve got that going for me.

Because of my absurd lateness and perpetual fear of missing a flight I didn’t clean off my car. I figured it was passable and went on my merry way. While driving, a police car passed me then promptly turned around to stop me because apparently it is illegal to drive around without being able to see anything out of the front of your car. Shocking. I was offered a ticket or the opportunity to clean off my windshield so that it wasn’t like driving in the dark without lights on. I obliged. When he came back to my car after running my license he asked my height and then asked my weight. I know that it is inadvisable to question a police officer even if they’re wrong as hell but I think I’d risk prison to avoid telling someone my weight, especially since I haven’t seen a scale since 1987. So, I asked why he would need such information and he gave me some bullshit excuse about filling out a ‘contact’ form to say he had had contact with me in lieu of giving me a ticket. I didn’t feel like waiting an extra 20 minutes for him to write out a ticket so I told him my weight and he looked at me as if I’d just informed him that since he was already here, he should also check for the heroin and dead body that I keep in my trunk. Kill two birds with one stone, I always say. He looked me up and down and said “Really??” in this high, you have my testicles in a vice, type pitch. Given that I had actually shaved off about 10 lbs I said “Uh, yes. Why?” then held my breath for him to laugh and call me a liar. He didn’t. Instead he looked me up and down again and said, “Wow, you don’t look it”. And then because the hood of my car was spectacularly clean and snow free, I asked him if he was in a rush or if we could do it on the hood of my car because he totally deserved it.

Needless to say this elated me. I’m taking my victories - however minor - as they come as of late. I’m generally easily pleased but the past two weeks have kicked my ass. I’m hesitant to give further details because it will come off as whining and well, I’m a HUGE asshole. It all boils down to this relentless tendency to think, analyze, talk, whinge, then rinse and repeat 17 times a day. It’s a classic case of questioning what I want and what I will do to get it. Basically, do I really deserve to be happy or am I destined to questioning my every decision. These are actually things that should be thought out over an extended period of time and hopefully without feeling like I’m at fault and yet I cannot help but think about every single scenario until I’m up at 3:30 AM because what if things don’t go as well as I need them to?

What an utterly stupid question. What if Susan’s roof caves in while I’m sleeping and crushes my torso and I can’t call for help and I die alone in Oklahoma? Seriously. If I ask all the what-ifs I am going to drive myself insane, which is exactly how things have been going for like four days straight. Now I’m tired. Ridiculously exhausted because I’ve worn myself out from all of the overuse of my brain only to come up with a conclusion that is so very easy. A conclusion that should be said very deliberately with a bit of reassuring petting: Things will be OK. I might be an asshole, I might completely fuck up, things will probably not be perfect (understatement of the decade, I know) but things always, always, always, end up OK. And for now that is the best that I could hope for. So I sleep. 

Sporadic verbosity

December 17, 2007 | Filed under: "Oh night divine", Great moments in narcissism, Planes trains and automobiles

“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.  It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.  We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”  ~Albert Schweitzer

I hate to be a downer but every time someone asks me how I am or how things are going I shrug my shoulders, sigh heavily, and say “It’s OK”. I sound like Eeyore and anyone who crosses my path half expects my tail to fall off or for me to keel over due to an extreme bout of ennui. I can’t even get into the spirit of the season without it all feeling extremely forced and obvious. I’ve baked cookies while listening to Ella Fitzgerald with a fire crackling in the background and yet I would look outside at the snow, the thing that signifies the loveliness that should come this time of year, and the only thing I wanted to do was beat myself in the head with a crowbar. Nothing says “Joy” like blunt force trauma.

I’ve actually kept most everything to myself – especially as of late - because I don’t want to be a bother and I’m boring and most people find whining to be abhorrent. So I stay silent. In general though I tend to be shy and quiet. Some call it aloof but I like to refer to it as observing my surroundings intently so that later I can write about all the drunk dumbshits within five miles. So my rather subdued behavior ends up being advantageous.What really ends up happening is that I keep it all inside, bottled up and under pressure. And much like a bottle of Brut, once the cork is popped, everything comes pouring out. Sometimes it’s messy and I end up with verbal diarrhea and tell my life story to some unsuspecting friend and other times I try to let a little out at a time so as not to frighten everyone away. And if you were wondering, several glasses of wine might cause things to spill out as well and suddenly I’m telling people about shit that happened in 1995 and apparently I am not over an incident involving my brother, a bike and a pool cue.

God willing, barring any ill winter and something I’ve been trying to keep from discussing due to jinxing it all but I just cannot hold it inside: I will be going to Oklahoma City for a brief vacation. Susan thinks that it is just to drink wine and bask in her presence when in reality so that I can unload all of the shit that has been plaguing me for months and months and months. Thankfully I’m being quite nice to her and writing everything out in list form; that way I know what I want to say and it will keep my thoughts in place. It will be a lovely way to spend the pre-Holiday: Me talking endlessly about myself, because I don’t get to do enough of that already and Susan sitting there possibly bored to death but oh so very happy that someone came to visit her in one of the reddest states in the country. For nothing says “Merry Christmas” like slowly killing the ones you love with loquaciousness.

The bane of my existence

December 13, 2007 | Filed under: Invierno, Sucks like a vacuum, This side of the Hudson

“Winter is nature’s way of saying, ‘Up yours.’” ~Robert Byrne

I got absolutely nothing done today. Every time I would open an email or clean off my desk or reach down to grab a pair of sandals that were still under my desk from like July; I would casually look outside and my chest would start heaving at the sight of the snow. There is a very funny thought in the minds of others that because I live and am from Upstate NY then of course I can handle driving in snow. Do I have experience watching others drive in snow? Yes, yes I do. Do I have experience driving myself 10 miles in roughly six inches of snow with fattest, fluffiest, most blindingly white flakes known to man? No, no I do not. Hence the white knuckled driving and need to take deep breaths and the panicked phone calls to my parents apprising them of the seven whole dollars in my bank account that they could totally have in the event of my untimely death.

 

If you ever want to become religious, drive in snow. You’ll start believing in God real quick when driving through snow as you think of things to ask for forgiveness on in exchange for making it two more miles. Today it was forgiveness for that time I called my middle school librarian a ‘fucking bitch’ and the time I stole a pack of lifesavers from Hannaford.