2/7/2009 - Thrifty

Yesterday I found out that all the clothes that fit my weirdly-shaped body have been stored - all these years - in the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store on 23rd Street.

As soon as I walked through the door I was exhausted. Shopping in general wears me out and shopping in any kind of thrift or discount store is exponentially worse since nothing is particularly organized or neatly displayed. Instead of browsing you have to sift through racks and racks of mismatched clothes in search of the single gem in the proverbial haystack. (So I mixed metaphors; sue me.)

I had come this far, however, so I started in on my task. Minutes passed. More minutes. And just as I was about to lose hope the clouds parted and the heavenly choir struck up a chord and a beam of ethereal light shone down upon a pair of straight leg brown corduroy pants.

Now, if you have to know anything about me and fashion, you have to know these three things:

1. I sported (and immensely enjoyed) straight-leg pants long before they were in fashion.
2. Brown is one of my very favorite colors.
3. I love corduroy; maybe too much.

Now I was on a roll. Some additional sifting unearthed a green, double-breasted, polyester suit jacket and a brown corduroy purse for $1.25 (I didn't buy the purse, but finding it was a sort of personal victory). I screwed my courage to the sticking place and tried my wares out in the "fitting room." This place, a PVC pipe construct surrounded with heavy curtains, provided privacy enough, but then there was nothing to stop another unwitting shopper from whipping open the curtains while I bent over bare-assed. I was not exposed, however, and the jacket and pants fit like a polyester/corduroy dream. Again, the angels sang.

In the end I smugly signed off on the receipt for $5.25. As someone who believes that no piece of clothing (jeans, suit jacket, formal dress, etc.) should cost more than $10, this part was particularly gratifying. I'm about as poor as they come, but there's nothing about two items of clothing for less than a tank of gas that isn't worth my hard-earned bucks. 

2/4/2009 - Off Book

I've got scripts. Scripts for when I have casual conversations with casual friends; scripts for when I talk to higher-ups in any given echelon; scripts for talking to teachers, talking to bosses, talking to waitstaff and librarians and co-workers. All these manuscripts are stored in the attic of my mind and when we talk I venture up the stairs and choose the one that most closely pertains to you. If you get wily and stray from your lines, well, then the joke's on you because I will trip all the hell over my tongue and mire you in a mess of words that neither of us can save ourselves from.

If I don't play a conversation out in my head before I have it, it's a lost cause. Something as simple as ordering a sandwich can really get weird.

During the pivitol transitions of adolescent life (going from middle school to high school, for example, or from high school to college) I always imagined re-inventing myself as a more open, talkative person. Any one of my current acquaintances can you tell how that worked out; and now, as I look warily toward the Great Transition In The Sky (from college to the real world) I realize it will never happen.

It's sort of a relief knowing I can remain the way I am, knowing that this is the way I operate. When I need to trick people into thinking otherwise, I'll just grab for the right script and give it a whirl. Sometimes it gets weird, but I realize its probably weirdest for me. And I can stand that.

2/3/2009 - NPR Smackdown

I love when NPR talk show hosts tactfully put down crazy conservative* callers. Below I have completed a rough (at least vaguely accurate, I hope) outline of a conversation that just took place on the daily current-issues talk and call-in show, Talk of the Nation:

Caller Trent: [Yakka Yakka...something to the effect that if we legalize gay marriage one thing will lead to another and soon we'll all be hugging pedophiles]

Host Neal Conan: I see, so you're talking about the slippery slope theory. Though homosexuals are not like pedaphiles.

Trent: Yes, they are.

Neal Conan: No they're not, Trent. But I accept your point. 

Trent got hung up on. The conversation got continued.

Something about this - this little thing devoid of hoopla or fanfare - makes me feel really, really good about the world. No tolerance for the ignorant; civility for all.

* Not all conservatives are crazy, just some; there are probably about as many crazy conservatives as there are crazy liberals. 

2/1/2009 - Capital H

Humanity looks nice when it's been edited into snippets - the way you do in music videos featuring songs about how We Are One and Love Will Conquer All. Humanity (capital H) looks unique, then; scruffy, perhaps, but kind. Lovable despite the obvious flaws.

But then there's WalMart on Super Bowl Sunday. This is a whole other sort of Humanity. This is a parking lot full of people who have all decided to come together at the same time to buy gross quantities of food. This is ladies with frightening amounts of makeup, pajama-clad college kids with unwashed hair, screaming children around every corner and faintly stomach-turning aromas emanating from unidentified sources. Humanity, then, is not cute; certainly, there is no sense of kinship or We'reAllInThisTogether-ness. 

Maybe from a distance I could take them; distill each one for scrutinization, appreciate them for their kind hearts, their quirky tastes and their quiet demeanors. All together it seems too much, however. I feel immersed and trapped in something giant, swirling and oddly-scented.

2/1/2009 - Betwixt

Shortly after 8:00 a.m. on Friday morning Scott rolled over in bed and wrapped himself around me. My heart simultaneously rose and sank, for there is nothing more wonderful (to say nothing for warm) than being enveloped by your boyfriend's drowsy limbs, and it just so happened that I was sandwiched in by my equally warm and wonderful cat who lay stretched out along my stomach; however, as it was shortly after 8:00 a.m., getting out of bed and preparing for work was a high priority. 

I stayed in bed for as long as I possibly could, then gingerly extracted myself from betwixt my captors and slipped off to shower. I had to pack my breakfast, but I made it to work in time. 

I would give many a thing for every day to begin just that way. 

1/29/2009 - The Cheesiest

For lunch today I had a quesadilla. Cheez-its were my midday snack. And for dinner? Thick n' creamy macaroni and cheese. I whole-heartedly fear that there may be something seriously defective with my inner wirings. 

And it's in my head, too, these serious defects. In a fit of laziness I stayed laying on the couch after The Office and 30Rock (re-runs; suck it, NBC) and watched Private Practice. I will hand it to you that these night-time soaps are engaging - if not down-right addictive - but you will never catch me saying that they are written with any great degree of skill or integrity. That said, I get particularly harried when I find myself really feelin' a monologue; like, if I weren't being a lazy couch-bum I would be nodding my head vigorously, if not standing up and pumping my fist. 

It makes me question my very being. Here I am groovin' on how much holier I am than this lousy nighttime drama stuff, and then I find myself really going along with it. I don't know how I'm supposed to maintain my lofty and emotionally shut-off position when hit prime-time television shows keep speaking to my soul.

I struggle with this. In the aftermath of a middle and high school career marked most prominently by moody journaling, I live with a complex about my emotions. I question what I really have the right to be feeling and what I'm trumping up to the cataclysmic levels of Grey's Anatomy (where everybody cries about everything, all the time, no matter what); I wonder whether what I feel is good and true emotion or just me searching for attention. 

Sometimes I comfort myself by thinking about The Cosby Show. The one where the wife (what's her name?) finally goes off about how a woman has emotions and she can express those emotions however she wants and whenever she wants because no matter what, they're inside her somewhere and she's feeling them, which means they're legitimate. This comes at the climax of the show, once she's had her fill of all the male characters ragging on her about how she's moody because of her lady-times. 

I want that confidence; it seems like it would do me well. Even if I was moody and weepy and the sort, at least I wouldn't feel bad about it. At least the feeling of emotion at all wouldn't wear me down. But then, I figure (if for no other reason than to wrap this up neatly), that's what I've got the cheese for: to cushion the wiring. 

1/8/2009 - My Hawaiian Ass

On a rock in a tide pool at a picnic area on the beach in Hawaii I slipped and landed - hard - on my sorry tuckus. Jostled into a momentary stupor, I watched my sun glasses fly from their perch atop my forehead and land in the shallow pool in front of me. My breath was momentarily knocked from my chest and my skull wobbled clumsily atop my neck. 

Even as extreme pain shot through my lower regions,  I was thinking to myself that I had just pulled a truly tourist-class stunt. Admittedly, I was a tourist; but a tourist, nonetheless, who had grown up around oceans and tide pools and really ought to know better by now than to wear rubber-soled shoes while walking on wet ocean rocks. 

I stole a glance at my family happily picnicking on a grassy knoll above the tide pools, thankfully oblivious to my wipeout. I bit my tongue, gingerly transferred myself to a more purposeful-looking seated position atop a dry rock nearby, and began the task of pretending that my coxis didn't feel like it had hordes of munchkins pressing on it from all sides.

Earlier that same day we had visited a place, the significance of which I do not know; all that I can tell you is that it involved a view of a staggeringly high cliff, the ocean below. The scene from the road along was breathtaking in the  looking-at-this-I-feel-tiny-and-insignificant way, not the I-just-bit-it-on-a-wet-rock-and-now-I-might-never-walk-straight-again way. Perhaps more than the view, however, I enjoyed spending a few choice moment patting this fine fellow - a true Hawaiian Ass:

Today (a good week later) climbing stairs no longer induces quite the same degree of burning pain, but there is a definite sensation of having pulled my left gluteus maximus. This makes ascending stairs, bending over and standing on one leg all very uncomfortable. I never noticed it before, but as luck would have it it is my habit to simultaneously bend over and stand on one leg every day to put on my skivvies, socks, pants, etc. Never before have I so desired to remain naked in bed. 

For all that it is humid and warm and green and beautiful, what I liked best about Hawaii was the fauna. Tiny green geckos with red spots and blue gecko eye shadow, hefty wild turkey-looking things, herons grazing with the cattle, sea turtles, wild cats, giant snails, mongooses, striped fish, dolphins, crabs and any number of exotic creatures captured my fancy more than anything else. I feel funny about this, since being hung up on the creatures of Hawaii seems like I'm neglecting to see the forest for the mammalian trees. 

I think there's a little light somewhere in the back of my brian that snaps on when I get around animals, though, and animals were around virtually every Hawaiian corner. Risking sounding like the crazy cat lady I am destined to be, I feel more calm around animals; I think it's the simple act of being in the presence of something that does not speak and that does not expect me to speak to it. 

I like to be quiet; to be in the presence of quiet beings.