I'd rather be a kitty

Negative

2007-12-01T12:03:00.000-05:00

I stretch forward, straightening my arms and legs out away from me. Pulling the muscles of my back tight around my ribs. My shoulders thrill at rolling forward after the long hours spent on my back in repose.

I try to catch the remnants of my dreams now fluttering away with the stiffness in my limbs. There were many, vibrant, colorful, but vague now in the gray light of my bedroom. One with three travelers - inexplicably catholic. A hidden fugitive pope, his Arman and Mo. I try to figure out why I've named them such, all I can recall is a joke in my dream "What are your names?" "Larry, Curly and Mo."

My travelers were fighting through a hotel in Southern Utah. I remember the place. I had been there. Where we had rested after horseback riding. Sore and exhausted we had snuck in like fugitives from the canyon and luxuriated in overstuffed leather chairs. I took in the wildlife stuffed along the walls sadly. It seemed evil to take such beauty and movement and harden it for all eternity. And my travelers were fighting that evil. Some evil, they were running toward the devil, now I remember.

I didn't stay dreaming long enough to see them through. I remember I was going to feed them country fare. The stuff my Dad used to put in front of us. Grits swimming in butter. Biscuits and gravy, chunky from impatience. Baked beans with fatback. Bacon dripping long after sitting on the paper. Food I don't eat anymore since my Dad looked at my 15 year old self critically and said "You're not going to be tall, don't let yourself grow sideways." I thought him a devil back then too. But now I live in a fear of growing stout like him. In life as in my dream I'm sure the devil won.

When I make a move to leave bed my cat stretches out like me. Her long legs straight in front of her, her back curved, her fur flat and shiny. She puts out a paw, tamping down the blanket in an effort to keep me in bed. I know all she really wants is for me to keep warming her spot. The sun is shinning through the windows and curtains, bright and promising. I can almost picture the green grass pushing towards it. The idea of going out as I am, in skivvies and bare feet, luxuriating in the warmth of the sun and the growing earth.

Finally padding to the window all I see is dying. The trees, devoid of their colorful leaves, criss- cross their limbs every which way. They don't sway and trill at the blowing of the wind now. There arms look mean, sharp. They reach out and tangle with one another, making it impossible to see where one tree ends and the next begins. Instead of letting the light through their canopy softly as before they fight to hide the bright azure of the sky. I can see it fighting hopelessly to push through the brown and decay.

I think of my dream travelers. How I left them to fight the devil alone, knowing the devil would win. How I left them hungry and with no weapons beyond my horrid jokes. Looking out on the world today I only see decay and death. I think of harvest, of empty fields and unfruited trees. I think of frosts and withered flowers. Of waste and then of wick. The promise of hidden green is impossible to me. The earth is decaying.

In a dead world it's hard not to see the devil winning.

Untitled

2007-11-09T20:13:00.000-05:00

I woke up and my heart was beating. It was a bad dream but I couldn't remember what it was about. As I stared out at the dark of my room my cat made soft noises. She was having a bad dream too, mewling and whimpering in her sleep. I scratched her ears until she rolled over against my side, hugging my hand to her stomach. I lay perfectly still...afraid to go to sleep.
---
It was time to go so I scratched his back till he rolled over and I could kiss him. I kissed him quick, before he could cough again. He called me sweetie. He calls me sweetie, kiddo, cutie. All those names you can't stand until the right person calls you them. I couldn't answer, I just kissed him again and he coughed this time. Then he snored. He snores more now, steady and low.
---
I remember when we stayed with his father, before we were married. We slept on the floor. We had couch cushions under us, but I kept sliding between them and would end up sleeping on the hard concrete, waking up to the dust bunnies. We were smushed in a twin sleeping bag of green felt. His dad slept on the couch above us. We could hear him. My boyfriend gathered me up in his arms, placing his mouth to my ear and said "My Daddy snores like a walrus."

I giggled.
---
Driving to work and my car had a snowflake on the dashboard. It was warning me there would be ice. In my head I thought "snowflake!" which is what I say when I'm cold now. Outside it was sunny, but the grass was covered in powered sugar frost. It was pretty, the bright green touched with angel white. I wondered if this was rime.
---
When I was a teenager I did a play and told a story about rime. How Jack Frost would paint the windows with art of ice. In the play I was raped. I lay on the hard concrete floor and the boy slapped me over and over while I screamed. My father saw the show and sat in the front row. The whole scene he leaned over the boy closer and closer. Then I said my line and the scene was over.
---
I'm watching the rime on the grass, on the trees. I'm passing the fire station and all the trucks are out of the garage with their lights on. All the men are standing around in front of them, stamping there feet and rubbing their hands for the cold. They all wear short-sleeved shirts. On the side of the road is a pumpkin that has been dashed against the ground. It's broken and split. It's face is pressed into the asphalt. Later, driving home, it will be just a streak of orange across the street.
---
He calls me cutie and sweetie and honey and kiddo. Sometimes, when he's really sweet, he calls me pumpkin.

Blech

2007-11-03T18:32:00.000-04:00

My husband was looking at a bowl full of tap water, destined for the fish bowl, and cocking his head from side to side.

"I think it's oil." He said.

Sure enough the water that has been coming out of our well had that rainbow-ish slick of oil mixed in it.

This house is my first experience with well water. Previously I used to think of wells as quaint holes, with a little brick walls around them, giving off buckets full of cool, crisp, fresh water. The kind of water you think about when you are really thirsty. The kind of water that tastes sweet and fills not just your tummy, but your veins, with life. Now I know, wells are a pain in the butt. They leak, they create swamps in your backyard and the water tastes vaguely of fish and mold.

The fish and mold I could deal with...the oil was another thing altogether. I invested in bottles upon bottles of water.

Today I was looking for just such a bottle. Our fridge was sadly lacking in chilled bottles of water and for some reason my line of new bottles had dissapeared. I realized I'd recently mopped the floor and could not remember where I had moved them too. But I knew we had more. We always have more. My fear of ingesting whatever else happens to live in my well causes me to forever stock bottles of water. I'm sure there is a small dragon laying eggs in my stomach right now. I am putting my faith in hydrocloric acid.

Off to the garage I went, me and my hatching dragon baby, and sure enough there was another bottle of water. It was nestled sweetly in a stack of winter tires, like a little baby bird. It would have made neat, semi-politcal art had I paint a face on it and wrapped in a baby blanket. Instead I hauled it in the kitchen and poured myself a tall glass of clean, pure, un-oiled water.

And took a sip.

Blech!! Ick! Ach! Blllllaaaaaahhhhh.

I dragged my tongue along my teeth, trying to get rid of the taste and figure out what was so familiar about it. What was that flavor? It reminded me of racing days spent watching cars spin around cones and leave sticky black marks. It reminded me of hours spent waiting for my car to be serviced. It had the vague feeling of that weekend my husband and I spent driving car after car after car and visiting dealership after dealership.

Then I figured it out.

"I think it's tire" I said.

Ewwww.

Almost a Ghost Story

2007-10-22T14:45:00.000-04:00

Part I

It was late summer. The little cherry colored sports car was made for that weather. With the top down the hot evening turned delightfully cool. The air was infused with the thick taste of cut-grass and night-blossoms. You could barely hear the buzz of the crickets and cicadas over the roar of the little miata’s engine.

Our little car zipped along cobblestoned streets, escaping the sleepy little town where our bed and breakfast was, headed for more lonely, more twisting roads. He was itching to drive, the car was itching to go and I was itching for an adventure. He took a turn northward and the faster we went the more I felt as though we were free. Delving into the back roads of the Pennsylvania countryside, leaving behind the sweet Dutch farmhouses and their cheery neighbors. As suppertime came and went and the sun started to fall dangerously low the roads got lonelier. It was just the two of us. Our conversation, started so chipper and easy - the kind of jabber that comes from being snuggled close in an unknown land – turned low and dark with the sky. We teased about horror movies, ghost stories: witches that haunt the forests, madmen who prowl for vengeance, dark houses that lure unsuspecting couples to their doom. And just as we started to giggle at our jests a building rose up out of the overgrowth of trees and bushes.

It was huge. Many stories tall, with wings that stretched wide either direction. At the top were turrets and gables, and each step down showed balconies and long hallways. And hundreds of hundreds of windows, all dark, all lonely, all threatening. It was an old resort, the chipping paint sadly showing how happy and chipper a place it used to be. The eaves of the windows looked naked without lace curtains. The lawn, overgrown and weedy, looked out of place without happy couple picnicking, happy children playing badmitton in white dresses and short pants. The big french doors to the lobby looked out of place without bellhops and butlers.

If this had been a movie we would have seen a figure in one of those old, dirty windows. A quick flash of a face or the brush of a skirt moving from room to room. If this had been a movie we would have seen lights flash on, beckoning us forward.

Instead a man in jeans jumped out of his work truck, stomping up the lonely stairway to the doors and turning on a construction light. Here too, the movie would have turned. The man would have seen us, come up to us sitting in our little convertible and warned us to move on. Not to ask questions, not stop here after dark. Instead we sat outside the gates and watched the old building in peace.

Driving on we talked about it. How a place like that ought to be haunted, ought to have a story. A grand old building still standing in the wild forests of Pennsylvania should have a history. It should have drama to match its weathered red trim and darken white walls. It should have a life. Motoring on in our little car we chattered about its size, how it’s such a surprise to find it amongst this little tiny road. We chattered so much we didn’t realize the sun was gone now and the road was narrower. We didn’t notice that the trees, which before lent a pleasing feel to the country, now leaned over us ominously making the dark summer night darker, more covered in shadows.

And we were startled to find on either side of us two small houses in disrepair. Unlike the large hotel the windows of these buildings were gone. Everything was dark, ominous. The walls leaned into weeds. The earth grew up around the houses as if it was trying to pull them down, swallow them whole. The wood was rotted, falling apart, the roof was sliding down slowly. The empty eyes of windowpanes were pitch, one could feel the hand of a witch reach out and grab you. Pluck you right in, never to return. Here there was no need of horror movie tricks. We were scared.

“Drive.” I whispered. I didn’t have too…he was already turning around.

To be continued…

Shocker

2007-10-21T16:32:00.000-04:00

"So they're all trying to be sexy for this guy with the camera, but they're drunk so they're not doing a good job. So they start showing off 'the shocker' and they are so not doing it right."

Being a naturally quiet and shy person I often find myself sitting in the middle of conversations that have a story-like quality to them. Occasionally I get something out of it. As my current storyteller went on about instructing girls on the proper "shocker" technique, and the importance of the thumb, I cocked my head.

"You look confused." A helpful musician chimes in.

"Yes" I say "I've never heard of "the shocker".

Apparently, I am very funny. Everyone has a good laugh.

"No, really. I have no idea what it is."

Being naturally quiet and shy I often find myself in situations where people think I am innocent and sweet. Unfortunately, innocent is a barrier when surrounded by men who all know what "the shocker" is, but do not want to tell me. Or, as one protested, did not know how to tell me.

They tell me to ask my husband.

Now I have to know.

Eventually, after a long stream of cryptic jokes, mostly at my expense, some at the expense of the apparently all important thumb, one rogue felt brave enough to educate me. But we had to hide behind a set of pumpkins to do it.

"So...you get that this has to do with...er...some...er...form of physical...er...exercise. Of the, you know, the sexual nature."

"Okay." I try to look knowing and experienced.

"So, here are two fingers...you know where these go right?"

I blink for a moment. I realize that people may think I'm rather sweet and innocent, because I am. Already I'm a little shy. But I play it off.

"Yes, I can guess where those go."

"And you can figure out where this goes...right?" He says, showing his pinky with the two fingers and helpfully twisting his hand into a position just so.

"Yes, I can figure that out." And I can, but my mind is having trouble bending around it. On either side of my head is a pumpkin, the rogue is whispering conspiratorially, and the rest of the men have gathered around, all scrutinizing my face as I think. I speak before I think.

"So, in that case, what is the thumb for..." I pause, the rogue has extended his thumb and helpfully re twisted his hand for me.

"Ooooooh!" I got it.

"Don't worry." The helpful musician says "Your face only turned four shades of red."

Really...I'm shocked.

Cellphone Blues

2007-10-20T20:26:00.000-04:00

Crossing the cobblestoned street of the cultural center of Baltimore. To our backs rises the Meyerhoff. To our front the Lyric. All around us are gray parking garages and red brick rowhouses. A mixture of old and new. A mixture of the modern and the historic.

And the people too. Behind me are couples dressed to the nines. Suits, dresses, heels. Ready for a night at the opera. Okay, maybe just a Loreena McKennitt Concert. But it's at an opera house. In front of me, jaywalking over two streets and in front of a rushing ambulance a man in a polo shirt and khakis.

Oh no, excuse me. A golf shirt. Not a polo shirt. A golf shirt.

Behind me the couples hold hands and giggle at the oppressively long "Don't Walk" light, in front of my golf-shirt-guy talks to himself.

Oh no, excuse me. He's talking to his blue tooth headset.

I wonder what he does, golf-shirt-guy, that he requires his headset to be on at 8PM at an opera house. I wonder if he knows his ear is blinking blue. I wonder if he realizes he looks a little crazy crossing the street in front of a rushing ambulance, talking to himself. If he wasn't wearing a golf-shirt I'd be expecting him to ask me for some spare change.

And thus it begins. Before I even set foot into the semi-modern-but-made-to-look-old opera house I've caught a case of the cellphone blues. Blues because the cellphones burn bright blue in the dimmed light of the auditorium. All around me are signs posted. "Turn them off!" they scream. "Turn them off at the door" "Turn them off in the lobby." "Turn them off in the bathroom" Turn them off, turn them off, turn them off. Even the nice ushers, dressed up in there black tuxes with crooked bow ties admonish us.

"You need to turn that off" one says to the girl sitting next to me.

"It is off," She says, looking up from her screen "I'm just texting."

I think we need a new definition of off.

A man sitting below me defines off as hiding the phone under his program as he mumbles. He looks awkward tenting himself with a piece of paper, held over his face. I can't help but stare at him talking on his phone furtively in the same way I used to hide under my covers with a blanket and read past my bedtime. It's a weird correlation to make, especially since he must be in his 50's and I was 7.

When he turns it off he makes eye contact with me for an uncomfortably long time. I feel the need to whisper "You are soooo busted". Instead he winks at me.

The girl stops texting. The man stops talking. The lights go out. And in the crowd below the eerie glow of blue cellphone screens pop up amongst the dark forms. Like faeries, flitting about, impishly pointing to each offender and saying "Here they are! The naughty ones are here and here and here."

There is a weird pause in the darkness, a new pause. Once an audience could be safe in the dark, knowing that instantly the stage would light up and we'd be transported. Now we wait, as ushers run around and help to extinguish the remaining phones...as the first musician waits patiently for our full attention...we wait...a mix of the old anticipation and the modern attention limbo.

The show hasn't even started and we all have a case of the cell-phone blue

So maybe I'm a little tired

2007-10-19T23:50:00.000-04:00

My cat and I are having a spat.

She seems to think my spot on the bed is her spot on the bed.

She also seems to think my glass of water conveniently placed on my bedside table is her glass of water conveniently placed on my bedside table.

She also has the crazy idea that my stomach was made specifically for her pillowing pleasure.

Kitty has no sense of "personal space."

Our spat came to a head the other day as I was wrapping up some emails in the office.

Kitty: meow!

Katy: What?!

Kitty: MEow!

Katy: What!

Kitty: MEEEEOOOWWW!

Katy: What? What? What?! What do you want?! Whatwhatwhat!

Kitty: Meow?

And just before I tear my hair out of my head -

Husband: Um, don't let the cat stress you out.

Okay, so maybe I'm a little tired.

Twisted

2007-08-09T17:46:00.000-04:00

It was a week of punishments. My hiking boots had seen the slot canyons of Zion. Trekked up the vertical trail of the upper pools. I had scrambled down into caves, over rocks, down into the canyon floor, to the top of the grand staircase. Driving over 700 miles across Utah, Arizona and Nevada was a mere drop in the bucket. Stones and cliffs could not stop me.

No, I am mountain goat! Hear me...bleet.

I had hiked all week. Explored every inch of the natural wonders of Utah and finally I reached the end of the trek. The final leg. The North Rim of the Grand Canyon was a mere five feet away. Just beyond the path was the great expanse of that world wonder. Just a few steps away, nothing compared to miles I had racked up in the days previously.

And I stepped.

And I tripped.

And my ankle twisted.

I had made it the entire trip with not a single blemish. I was healthy, happy. No sunburn, no blisters, no injuries. Not even a single bite from a mosquito. Heck, I hadn't even broken a nail! And now, now as I limped over to the edge of the Grand Canyon I realized I'd just been done in by an uneven sidewalk under a gazebo.

Now that's twisted.

And my ankle hurts.

Playing Dumb

2007-07-24T17:25:00.001-04:00

I read an article a few years back in the NYT by a journalist who lived for a few months in a flat with Paris Hilton and her cousin. This was back before Paris became the red carpet party queen and apparently she was a rather clever, charming young woman. It wasn't until Paris saw the promise in the "blonde bombshell" market that she started to shorten her words and play down her apparent savvy choice of books. She got a stylish haircut, some great clothes and soon
became the girl we all love to pretend we don't know anything about.

There is something a little smart in playing dumb. Certainly Paris' persona is well crafted and that is no small feat in the media world today. I've yet to run into another piece about the heiress that was so favorable. The woman must have people running round the clock to make sure no one knows about the secret, smart girl who is running her own multi-million dollar business branded solely on herself.

I wonder how much time she spent in trying to find just the right amount of dumb that would keep people interested and not thoroughly disgusted. Where did the idea to dumb it down and bleach it up come from? And how difficult does she find it to be dumb? Does she plan her "off-the-cuff" quotes? Does she study old "dumb dora's" for inspiration? Does she sometimes slip and say things that show off her incredible insight into the business of Hollywood?

I wonder these things because I, like Paris, have played dumb from time to time. I used to be quite proud of my smarts. As a child growing quickly into a young woman I spent much more time attempting to impress the people around me with my intelligence than with my looks. I had it a little easier being the youngest child in a family full of people too smart for their own good. People expected me to be smart. And I didn't disappoint. First as the girl who always had the
answer and always had her hand in the air, then as the girl who always had to challenge ideas. I loved to debate. Even when I agreed with my opponent I enjoyed coming from a new angle and wrangling a topic to death. It served two purposes. It gave me a chance to stretch an under-utilized intelligence and it allowed me to find new avenues of knowledge.

But even though I was recognized as the "smart girl" it was always tainted with those small comments girls, smart or not, always hear. "How insightful for such a pretty girl." "You're very clever for someone so sweet." "Beauty and brains…don't see that every day." Of course when people say these things they mean them as compliments. But they damaged. I realized that often people saw me first as the pretty girl and that's what drew them to me. I could have been dumb as a post and gotten the same amount of attention. It was a strange thing to know I could bat my big brown eyes and win a debate without even touching my stored away arguments. But at the same time I couldn't keep anyone from looking at my brown eyes, batted or not. My
naturally shy disposition made me hate the attention more and more. And so like the girl who developed too fast I would hunch my shoulders and try to look as plain, and as a dumb, as possible.

So, slowly, like Paris, I started to play it up. Once I even dyed my hair blonde. That was one in a string of mistakes. The latest of which came last week when I realized I may have been playing my intelligence cards too close to my chest.

I am sure that Paris did not orchestrate her trip to jail. I doubt that in her grand scheme to win the dumb game she planned to get pulled over for driving on a suspended license. Perhaps Paris, this time like me, had played her smart cards too close. Perhaps there are disadvantages to playing dumb for too long.

Last week I was speaking with someone who I rather like talking to. In an effort to not be too presumptuous, or overbearing, I often pull out my dumb card in our quick conversations. I often will ask questions, sweetly, in order simply to hear his answer. Sometimes often when I actually know quite a bit about the subject. I often wait for him to explain things I already know. It's a shameless manipulation and I am sure he's well aware of it. He, unlike me, does not play dumb. Girls use this tactic everyday. I use it simply because I like hearing people talk and lately have been enjoying hearing stories float around me.

The conversation in question though had something to do with crocodiles. In an effort to be chipper and cheery I deferred calling the crocodiles killer move a "death roll", since death is neither chipper nor cheery. I think I referred to it as a puppy roll or something equally absurd.

"It's called a death roll." He responded. I'm sure he was trying to be helpful.

"Yes. I know what it's called." I snapped back. Less helpfully and probably with a little bit of a "well duh" thrown in for good measure. I'm smart, I didn't say I was mature.

"You know what it is?" He asked. You could almost smell his incredulousness. It seemed to me that I had caught him by surprise, not by my rude response, but by the fact that I knew something. Knew anything.

I was mad. My brain took his small little sentence and inflated it into something far more dire. How could he possibly think that I was so dumb as to not know something so basic? Hello, general knowledge question for $100, Alex. Perhaps if I had suddenly come out with the
mathematical formula for a water buffalo to escape a death roll I could have forgiven his surprise. But did he really think I was so stupid as to not remember a name? Did he think my head was all curls and no gray matter? I mean if I was that stupid how did I possible survive to the ripe old age of 25? For gods sakes, why even waste his breath trying to tutor such a moron. Why even take the time to instruct me on the term for a crocodile rolling over in the water. I
was obviously too stupid to be able to grasp such a complex concept.

What a freaking jerk!

Of course all that came in the first 5 seconds and I didn't mean any of it. The second 5 seconds was me angry at myself. (If truth be told so was the first five minutes...I am kind of a jerk.) How could I have played so dumb as to let it get to this point? Was I so afraid that he'd be frightened away by some form of knowledge that I allowed him to think me completely
trivia free? What had I done? What had we discussed previously? Had I ever let him know I was smart or did I play the humble card? How many times had I asserted my intelligence? How about my shyness? Obviously there was a big gap.

"I'm smarter than I let on." I said. "I play dumb a lot."

"Why would you do that?"

Good question. I've never felt more dumb.

Nap

2007-07-20T13:44:00.001-04:00

It is one of my favorite places to be. This state of drowsy unwakefulness. This precipice between real unconscious and conscious. It's where my body sinks, slipping into the comfortable curl that I learned in infant hood. It's safe here, my body is safe here. The sounds of life float past my ears, the mumble of the newscasters, the roar of a lawnmower.

In a little while I will slip into real nap mode. My cat curled inside my curl, purring till she can't purr anymore. Soon we'll both be oblivious to the world, unaware of what is happening around our head and in our heads. Victims to dreams that will be instantly forgotten. In a little while I'll fall away from my body, not to return till someone takes my ankle in his hand and shakes me back.

But now I am aware. And not. Now my mind is open to the world, taking in all the stimuli it can give. I can smell the earth drying in the sun. I can hear the trees rustling against the wind. My house settles into it's foundations. I settle with it. Here I receive all information without processing. Here, between wide-eyed and relaxed I am filled without prejudice or thought. Receiving and sending. I pour forth my thoughts, my ideas. They fly past my eyes in jets of light. Potential bubbling to the surface without restraint. I can feel my mind, taste it, hear it, see it. There is something in here. Without my instant editing, questioning. Without the filter of speech or self-consciousness I see there are things inside me. I am not empty.

And my heart beats to my minds rhythm. My mind mends to my hearts desires. There is the future the past and the present flashing past me. My body is limp and willing. It is my favorite places to be...everywhere and nowhere. Where it is all possible and only possible because it is impossible to realize.

That's why it's Never-never Land. My favorite places to be.

Anyone want my job?

2007-07-17T13:05:00.000-04:00

Recently some one got sick in our office, in a bad way, and it was blocking a major path way. Normally that wouldn't mean much, but when you got forklifts filled with food that have to go places in a certain way you need the streets clear. As our Exec. Admin came over to charge me with building a new traffic pattern she held up her latex gloved hands dripping in god knows what and asked cheerily: “Anybody want my job?”

While everyone else balked and laughed I could hear my devil self urging me to answer. I had the wicked idea of squaring my eyes with hers and saying in all earnest seriousness: “Yes, yes I do want your job.”

Because the only thing worse than being her is being her under paid backup.

There is some confusion where I work as to what department I work for and what I actually am charged to do. There is also some confusion as to how my name is spelled. There's actually a lot of confusion as to how my name is spelled. I never knew how much drama four little letters could cause. Well...four little non-curse-like letters.

Regardless, for almost a year now I’ve been straddling between three (or more) departments. My official badge labels me Marketing. My official paycheck labels me Purchasing. My official title labels me Procurement and finally my unofficial name in the office labels me as “report girl”. This is partly my fault. When I see something that needs doing I simply go off and do it. I suppose one could call me a swing. Because I am not really assigned to anywhere specific I haven’t been “formally” trained in anything. Usually I’m thrown some sticky problem randomly and I puzzle it out myself until the solution presents itself. Never has anyone sat me down and showed me what I was working with or why I was doing it. Often I simply play a game of guess and check until I have discovered the secret.

That kind of attitude gets you noticed around departments that normally lock themselves away in some obscure corner. I have a feeling that this is the reason why when the higher-ups start looking for cover for vacations and leave my name comes to their lips. This is fine. I have no problem taking over for people who are about to go on their honeymoon. It’s the least I can do. The problem is though, people tend to leave our company for vacation and never come back. That leaves me not as the “cover” for a desk but as the actual desk itself. And my desk is getting very cluttered with a backlog of work.

Which is why I am now giddy with the idea of my own upcoming trip out-of-town.

Or I was until yesterday, when I began to scope out people to take over my basic responsibilities. I felt like I had suddenly morphed into Andrew Speaker. Though, instead of a deadly tuberculi cough I carried product expiration reports. And no one was interested. Once I found one person to cover me, they’d realize they had to use a program they’d never played with before and they’d beg off. When I found someone who wasn’t afraid of the programs they’d be afraid of the math involved in the calculations, and again I was stuck. If one liked the math, they’d be loath to work with DP. If they actually worked in DP they’d be loath to do anything for purchasing.

It’s not as though I was going to leave them blind. I have this recurring nightmare that someday I will wake up with full blown amnesia, forget my name, my age, who I am related too…yet I’ll still know how to drive and I’ll still be expected to knock out a tax category void report. (I never said it was a rational nightmare). Because of this fear I write out lengthy, detailed specific “how-to’s” for each and everything I do. They are mostly guides for me to get my bearings on bad days, but they come in handy when I am trying to show people how to do whatever it is that I do.

And I have come to learn that I am the only person that does what I do. At least here. Yesterday, as I went to my boss for the hundredth time pleading “How badly do you need this report?” I realized that I would never find someone to cover for me, nor were there enough people for me to spread out the ~~love~~ work. Yesterday I not only realized I’m the only one who does what I do, I’m doing what normally takes a team of four people. For the price of one.

So bring on the vomit and blood baby, I’ll take it!

Anyone want my job? (Seriously? For like a week…four days? Four hours? How about my lunch break….? You wouldn’t have to do any of the filing…)

Quarter Century

2007-07-12T13:03:00.000-04:00

That's right: 25.

I'm another year older and none the wiser.

But for the first time ever I'm okay with not having it all figured out and planned. I like not knowing where I'm going to be at 25.5, 26, 27. This limbo is feeling pretty good right now. I am getting used to confusion and fear.

I like this place...and will willingly waste my time in it.

Eggshells

2007-07-10T17:16:00.001-04:00

I'm standing in my hallway. The first step feels just as before. My heel clicks down on the floor, that reassuring sound of a step. Then my foot descends and I can hear the small cracks and groans of shell breaking. The ball of my foot swivels, grinding the egg shells into the floor, turning them slowly to dust.

And gingerly I step again. The floor is covered with them, my home is filled with them. Eggshells. Delicate white homes long since abandoned. They lay there open, empty, sad and lonely. A path of sharp jags and smooth surfaces. My steps are timid amongst them. I try to fit my steps between them, tread carefully, be silent. Still, they groan under my shoe and crack. Dissolving under my soles, coloring the black with telltale white. They threaten to cut me, then shatter under me. They threaten to bar my way, and break under my need.

The sound is unbearable. Disturbing, disgusting. Each snap makes the skin stand up on my arms. My pulse races. I can hear each little wall crumble and fall, dying a second death. The once comforting home for a baby. The small precious gift. So lovingly warmed, so gently moved. Then so violently destroyed.

I wish I was weightless. Made of air so I could silently pass through my home, escape out the door. Instead every move closer is a move louder. The shells splice open to more jagged edges, more razor sharp obstacles. The tiny sounds of soft shell breaking apart may as well be thunder. Every word is a crack, every idea I voice, every breath I make is the sky opening up and splitting my little peace in two.

And still I'm walking, leaving a trail of fine white power in my wake.

Bad Phone

2007-07-09T18:12:00.000-04:00

A girls' best friend is her mother.

A girl's worst enemy...yeah...it's her mother.

My mom and I can be really close. When we're together it's just non-stop jabber. Attached at the hip (and now, as she gets less and less “mobile” we're attached at the elbow) we fall into the comfortable give and take of our relationship. I'm lucky that, as the baby of a family much older than I, I got to be raised much like a single child. I had Mama all to myself for a good portion of my life. We got to be girlfriends as well as parent and child, and that makes us incredibly close.

Too close. While we feed off of each other's joy in being close to one another we also feed off each others depression. It's a genetic thing, I'm sure of it. Like my long legs and my proclivity towards the creative my mother handed me her nearly debilitating depression. She got it from her Mother, who in turn received it from my Great-Grandmother. I'm sure if I went back a few more generations I'd find more women carrying this little demon in their hearts.

And it is a demon. It eats at you. For no reason at all it will surface and you can feel its tiny toes and sharp claws pricking at you. It loves company...and a phone call with my Mother is another chance to connect with it's demon brethren. You can almost hear their voices taking over through our own conversations. My Mother's need to guilt me into going home is almost as strong and my need to keep the demons at bay. I can't let them take over, she can't let me let go.

“Hi...it's me!”

“Hi! How are you doing.”

“Oh I'm okay...can we talk?”

“I'm not okay.”

“What's wrong?”

“I'm sick.”

“You've been sick my whole life.”

“I'm dying.”

“You've been dying as long as I can remember.”

“It hurts.”

“I can't make it better Mama, I can't fix it.”

“I'll never see you again.”

“I hurt too.”

“You're not here.”

“Next summer...next Christmas.”

“It'll be too late.”

And it might be. I can remember years ago when my siblings were planning their weddings my Mother would lament “I need my Mom.” Then I would point out that she was the Mommy, and why did we need more Mommies. She'd shake her head and cry. Grandma wasn't gone, she just wasn't coming.

Apparently keeping each other at bay is also a genetic trait.

But now that I'm older and am facing big grown-up decisions I feel myself start to lament too. I need my Mom. I have things in my head and my heart that I don't think I can decide on without her. I'm not sure if I need her to disapproval so I can, as a teenager, go off and do exactly the opposite. Or if I need her blessing, her “I told you so.” But I know I need something and I can't imagine it coming from anyone but her.

Either to let lose my inner demon and allow havoc and chaos to run rampant, or to swallow it down and make a peace. All I know now is that I'm lost.

And I really need my Mommy.

Brush Up Your..Staging

2007-07-08T10:04:00.000-04:00

It took me awhile to notice. For a good long time I figured we were just getting poorer. But now...has anyone noticed that theaters are getting smaller?

Really small.

And it's a problem.

It's not a problem for the audience. Black box theaters (usually called so because they are black and often shaped like boxes) make for amazing theater. There really isn't anything quite as engaging as watching King Lear so close you can feel his tears on your shoes. The kind of give and take you find in intimate theater is palpable. Audience and actor as one. Those black walls have a habit of keeping all the nuance and emotion in tight, you can't help but be engaged with each and every character.

So intimate theater is a good thing.

But it's also a problem...for actors.

There are a few “first rules” of stage presence. Everyone is more important than the one that was most important, but just like with any art form, you internalize them into your “golden rules” and keep them close to your heart.

Don't turn your back to the audience.
Project, Project, Project.
Always cheat. (Cheating meaning to angle yourself only slightly towards the person you are “talking to” on stage. It's probably best not to cheat at cards though...especially when playing with the riggers.)
Your script is your bible. Read it, love it. Lose it and die.

The rise of more intimate theater has made these little nuggets less important. (Except the script thing.) In a smaller theater you can play small and still make a huge impact. Ironically you probably make a larger impact than you would on a large stage with an audience at least 50 feet away from you. I can remember playing an extremely small theater (a converted flower shop) and having to re-train myself not to do a ¾ turn out towards the audience just to keep my face forward. I was flipping all over like a freaking ballerina till someone pointed out that the audience was literally two feet away from me and would be forgiving of a normal ¼ turn in the proper direction.

In other words...forget the rules and move naturally. Which I did, and apparently so did most other actors.

At a recent audition in a large outdoor, arena based theater I noticed a lot of very well-heeled actors making some very amateur mistakes. Perhaps I noticed these because I myself was panicked for days before the audition that I would forget them. I had no idea if I could project anymore. And if I could would I just sound like I was yelling my lines with no inflection or feeling? Would I turn into the actor I was when I was five and just beginning. That tiny kid who stood on those big stages and was told to “sell it to the man in Russia?” I was scared. Which made the fact that all these other actors were making the same mistakes seem that much more shocking. I literally felt like taking each and every one of them and turning their hips forward. “Look out! Look out!” I heard my theater instructor yell. “Cheat! Cheat! Don't let him upstage you!!!”

When I finally got on that stage it came flooding back. My body stood right where it needed to be and did just what it was supposed too. I felt those words bubble up from my stomach and boom out past the trees. That man in Russia spilled his tea. It was a testament to all those years and years of training and tears that I could easily slip into “big theater mode.” You just need to rely on your knowledge to get you through.

And I did. And I got through. And I got the part.

But I realize that a lot of the other actors, far more experienced in work than I, probably did not train in a big theater at all. How many proscenium arches have you seen in college lately? When was the last time you saw a raked stage? Have you ever seen a raked stage?

Probably not.

And that's okay. Intimate theater is good. It's challenging and hard. It puts the strain on actors and audience alike. There's a lot of work to be done to keep your character real and tangible in a small theater.

But it just doesn't prepare you to learn stage technique. There is no point to those big gestures and large movements. And it's really to the detriment of actors. If you're not training these little tricks of the trade into your body now you'll waste a lot of time re-learning later.

And unfortunately, actors who waste time learning to cheat will cheat an audience out of a well-rehearsed play.

PEZ

2007-05-07T21:19:00.000-04:00

For Easter I thought it would be cute to get the husband a PEZ Dispenser with a cute green racing helmet. I was lured by all those happy childhood memories of PEZ Dispensers in my stockings and baskets. Promising long happy hours (okay minutes) pulling pressed sugar goodness from out of Snoopy's mangled neck.

I love PEZ.

Or I thought I did. Perhaps my parents filled them all up before doling them out. Or perhaps my child-sized fingers simply had an easier time holding onto those tiny nuggets. Whatever it is, I find that now, when I have come to trust and rely on my excellent hand-eye coordination and digital motor skills, I cannot - for the life of me - fill the damn PEZ head.

Surely this was not some simple oversight of my memory. Surely my young mind was not so easily swayed by that delicious sugar powder to so quickly forget the fight involved in getting the candy into that little stapler-esque toy. I hate to admit that I may have simply forgotten all this pain just for that simple reward of a little piece of stale, substandard confection.

Because now, oh now, now the candy doesn't even make it in. I need to finish off at least a sleeve before I can find the patience to make those little purple dominoes sit right.

Oh PEZ, you've done me wrong.

How NOT to celebrate Admin Professionals Day

2007-04-26T13:51:00.001-04:00

The first time a "Manager" who is a "Very Important Person" (it says so on his t-shirt) comes up and complains that his little report doesn't print right - it's cute.

It's cute that a man 20 years older than me who has been working in this business for over a decade can't figure out how to hit the landscape button in Excel. There is a bit of adorable in a big strong man needing a woman to come and click his buttons. It contains a sense of ironic, a sense of humanity. It's a little funny. It gives you a giggle.

The second time he does it, after a twenty minute tutorial of the print function in Microsoft applications, while I'm trying to finish reports for people who actually -are- important (and sign my paychecks), when he's waited two days so that I have already forgotten about his dorky, dinky little report and am in the throes of preparing inventory for an entire division while fielding 2 calls a minute from two bosses:

Not so freaking cute.

More than a color

2007-04-24T21:00:00.000-04:00

My sister and I never really got along. With the age difference and me being the surprise (and I suspect - unwanted) baby we never connected well.

My earliest memories are being kicked out of our shared bedroom and spending most of my nights on the couch in the living room. I always did like sleeping on couches though...

But this weekend I was surprised by how much we have in common. Like:

"So I was hoping you could figure out how it works," she said to my brother, handing him a pretty spiffy new mp3 player.

"This is my new one" I said, pulling out the new shuffle I was recently surprised with.

"It's pink!"

"I know, I have everything in pink now. I just started it all of a sudden."

"Me too. I think I had this mental block and then just like that..."

And then just like that I realized:

Hey yeah, we really are sisters. And we like pink.

Blogs on Blogs

2007-04-16T22:35:00.000-04:00

I haven't been very bloggy lately. Well if lately means an entire season. I'd like to say that it's actually the season that has sapped my bloggishness. Like a bear I prefer to snuggle down in my cave of blankets for the winter and nap. Or in my case watch really bad TV like “Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Boot Camp.”

Unfortunately, my laziness comes from more than just needing to see that blonde fall on her ass. I've noticed that blogging makes me more aware. I'm always alert, ready for that next post, the next thing to jabber on about. I was always like that, long before “web logs” came into being. But the blog kept me sharp. I was getting good at pulling long introspective ideas out of short encounters with the grocer.

And then I realized – I really didn't want to do that. Not because I don't want to think, or because I don't like being introspective, but because the grocer is an asshole.

Okay, he's not. I don't actually have a real “grocer” and I'm sure if I did he wouldn't be an asshole. Maybe a little weird, but not an asshole. No, what I've been noticing lately is that the world really does suck more than it doesn't. And it's filled with some really awful people.

I hate seeing that. I hate admitting it. Of course C., smart man that he is, has been drilling that idea into my head. And of course I already knew. I knew there were bad people out there. I knew there were sad people, and cruel people, and people who were so desperately trapped in their own heads that they trampled over everyone in their path. I knew that.

I just didn't want to know that. I've been trying really hard to keep myself from admitting it. I held onto my self-imposed naiveté so long and so hard that now I'd rather not think than admit it was all a ruse.

I live a charmed life. It really is the best life. Life does not get much better than the one I get to live. And even so – I want it bigger. I want my little patch of happy to stretch out farther, further, to more places, to more people. I don't want the bad parts, the bad people, to interfere with my rose-colored world.

And they are. So I'm feeling a little un-bloggish lately.

Signs...

2007-03-21T20:38:00.001-04:00

...that you're being a tad over-emotional:

When you see this "commercial" and burst into tears.

Signs you're hormonally over-emotional:

When you think about this commercial after watching a re-run of X-files and burst into tears. Then of course when your man asks "What's wrong" you get mad because he just doesn't get it.

Computer Free

2007-03-06T20:44:00.000-05:00

I started my day today at 5AM and ended it near 9PM.

I spent my entire day without once touching a computer. No web surfing. No Excel Spreadsheets. No pulling reports from the mainframe. Nothing.

Not even email.

The last time this happened was when I was locked up with my husband in a small cabin in the wild woods of the Adirondacks.

A completely computer free day.

Well...until I had to chronicle the computer-free day on my blog.

Whatever.

God

2007-03-02T18:20:00.000-05:00

I know where it started. I was thirteen, alone, on a Sunday morning. I tied my white tennis shoes at the top of our stairs outside and looked around. Nothing but sun - warm, sky - cool and green. Green for miles. Maalaea Bay to the south, Kahului Harbor to the north. Behind me Haleakala crowned in white clouds around it's majestic summit. In front the West Maui Mountains - Mauna Kahalawai - and it's lush valleys, cool rainforests and the towering Iao Needle. That needle covered in green, soft and inviting. Unattainable and intimidating.

All around me was beauty, perfection, life and the living. Maui pulled it from the sea with his hook, Pele built it to the sky with her fire, Kane made the forests and Lono fed it with the wind and the rain - his peace and prosperity.

And inside I felt it. I felt the green seep into my bones. For the first time in my thirteen years of life I felt happy. Alive. Surrounded and inundated with joy. I felt the beauty of being me, of being a woman alive in the world. I felt the miracle of the beat of my heart and the feel of my skin. Warm sun against my body, cooled by the gentle wind. I could taste the growing things.

That heady smell of flowers that hits you hard. Invades your senses and fills your chest. The prickle in your skin when you can feel the grass grow up, stretching towards the sun. Hear the birds talk, the tree rustle.

Feel the very earth spinning beneath you.

That was God.

I've been chasing it ever since.

Cold

2007-02-28T19:01:00.000-05:00

The other day I watched my cat move sleepily from her napping chair towards her napping bed. As she walked past me and my desk she stepped into a long patch of sun shooting warm patterns on the floor. Her hind legs froze, her front legs kept going, but eventually she moved her little body into a contented cat stretch then plopped down to soak up the sunshine and nap right there on the floor.

I envy her. Lately my body has been bent and bowed not just with exhaustion but cold. I’m freezing. All the time. I wake up shivering under piles of blankets in a cold bedroom. I shake through my shower, growling at the two minutes of hot water tease before the pipes fun cold.

I shiver in my clothes. I chatter in my coat. My large house, with it’s white cavernous rooms sucks the heat away. My office pumps cold air onto my cube and I struggle to type emails with gloved hands. Math class finds me trying to curl into a ball under my desk.

I’m cold. And I can’t warm up. It exhausts me. It drains me. I long for that small patch of sun to curl up in. Just a little bit, just to be warm for a few minutes. That’s all I want.

This morning as I was moving myself from my sleeping bed to my cold car, I found my own patch of sunshine. A large, warm , inviting ray of light shining through our front door window. Standing at the foot the stairs I was transfixed. I leaned forwards, watching the streaks of bright yellow light shoot out over the snow covered lawn, through bare trees, over the whole world outside. It called to me. It begged me to stop, to look, to listen. I wanted to touch the light, to lie inside it and soak it up the same as my cat. I wanted to be naked in the light, to feel it's warm arms wrap around me and straight into me. No more bundles, no more artificial fleeting patches of warm, just pure heat. Inside and out.

In my quest to get closer I moved towards the door. Closer and closer I got, my skin tingling to feel that hot touch, those rays of sun scorching my skin, breathing heat and life and energy back into my lungs. Close I got to warm, to light, to wakefulness. Until I hit the door. Cold, hard, uninviting glass. The suns rays refracted in it, splashing colors across my face, but no heat. I turned my head and pressed my cheek against the smooth surface. Light broke through it, painfully bright, it burned into my eyes. But I was cold. The glass was cold, my cheek was cold, my body was shaking with cold. The door held me up, but inside I was frozen, still, and lifeless.

And outside, in that patch of sunshine the snow was frozen and the air was windy.

It was bright, but it was cold. And I just can’t get warm.

Forgetfulness - Billy Collins Animated Poetry

2007-02-25T17:04:00.001-05:00

Fun with Text Messages

2007-02-24T21:57:00.000-05:00

Somewhere between the beers and the hard stuff our friend got a text message on her cellphone.

“Oh! Oh! I got a message?! How do I open it?”

Despite being somewhat technologically up to date (meaning I have an ipod and knew how to use a mac before they came in five fruity flavors) I'm not a big text-ing girl. The last one I sent was documented on my blog with a picture of the supposed dead body on my porch sometime in October of '06. The last one I received was a few months after that and had to do with the sex of the newest anticipated addition to my familial clan. (He's not here yet, but he's coming soon...) Anyway, I don't do the text thing much. So it was my guy who swooped in and showed her how to open the message.

Both of us were sure it was a text from her daughter – her daughter really likes text messages – to the tune of a thousand dollar cellphone bills – I was sure it was her daughter.

In fact it was some unknown man who had left some semi-inappropriate message about her work attire and the way she used her “desk”. It was cute, she blushed. We giggled. We drank.

The someone in our group suggested we text back.

And boy did we. Between the three of us (and mostly between me and my guy, vicariously living through our unsuspecting 40-something, catholic, suburbanite companion) we got this man to “apparently” lie down on his bed, get naked, and talk about that thing that most women don't really care to talk about and most men can't seem to stop talking about.

In other words, we got dimensions and measure, in detail. And we really didn't need to work hard to get it either. He was pretty forth coming with his -er- desires.

Finally, once we had finished off a few more drinks, and clearly had worked the guy into a lather hot enough to have him suggest “meeting”, we decided that this little cyber-sex encounter (all of which had taken place in a bar, between dances and alcohol) needed to be cut off. But because we were in a bar, there were drinks and we all had our cellphones out we decided to do it in probably the 1) worst and 2) most cliché way available.

We sent him a picture of the two of us women making out with the tag

“No thanks hon, I got all the company I can handle here.”

That brought the end of the messaging and the beginning of a phone call where we discovered we knew the guy. From the office.

I'd like to say that now, sober, well-rested and in the harsh light of day I regret our little cyber-foursome in the middle of the bar. I'd like to say I regret a heavy flirtation with someone I work with in a professional capacity (though really he was flirting with her, he didn't know there were three people on the other end, but most of what was said came from me). However, I'm don't regret it.

Actually, I feel pretty good about it. Was it cruel? Probably. Was it inappropriate? Only because he made it so. Did he have it coming? You bet. Last night was payback for all the times our managers have ever stared at our breasts instead of our face. Last night was payback for all those little nicknames they use for women, regardless of rank. Last night and that quick little put down was a culmination of years – years – YEARS – of putting up with the gropes, glances and comments behind my back. Behind her back. Behind the back of any woman who has the guts to put on a skirt and a little lipstick and brave going to an office full of men who clearly haven't progressed past the 1970's.

Oh hell – the 50's.

Last night our text-companion did what it feels like ever man out there is dying to do everyday at the office: Whip it out, show it off, and gloat.

And last night we said what I feel like every woman wants to do everyday at the office, or at least I do:

“Put it away. It's not that interesting and you still don't know how to use it.”

Guilty Blood

2007-02-18T13:31:00.000-05:00

Every time I go to give blood (or platelets), they of course test me for anemia. And every time they do, they take out that horrid little needle and jab my small little finger with it.

It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't always make it a point to say "This is the worst part of the whole thing."

Excuse me, I beg to differ. I think the worst part is that big, horse size needle they then attempt to crush into my un-horse-size arm. Seriously, the thing is huge, they might as well just slice me open and let me drip into a bowl.

And I wouldn't be complaining so much if it wasn't for the fact that I have a little vein that apparently is terribly difficult to find. Oh they know where it is...somewhere in my arm, but usually I get a great big stick, then a few searching pokes through my skin while they circle the needle around and around and around my vein - but never in my vein.

I'm a group effort. Today at the apheresis donation I had no less than three woman come and look at my vein. And prod at my vein. And move the needle around and around my vein.

But not in it.

They're determined though. Determined to suck my blood and plasma and platelets right out. And I'm determined to give it. But what I don't understand is why they have to move the needle all around. After a few tries couldn't we just re-stick? I'd rather have a bunch of holes in my arm than a bunch of scratches inside it.

Today we failed to get the vein. Not for lack of trying. I sat on the chair with a great big bag of ice over my newly bruised arm and felt like crying. Not because it hurt that bad, it didn't, but because I felt like I had failed. Me and my veins had failed. We had the best of intentions. My heart, both the pumping one and the metaphorical one, was ready to give whatever I had away. I have plenty of clotting stuff, and bloody stuff, and liquid stuff. I'm ready, I'm willing, if you need it, you should have it.

And I couldn't do it. I kept saying sorry to the nurses. In my head I kept saying sorry to all those people with leukemia. To all those people who are getting ready for surgery and all those people who need their loved ones to get better, to be there for their families.

Stupid thick needle. Stupid thin arm. Stupid vein. Stupid me. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.

Every time I go to give blood they take out that horrid little needle and jab my small little finger with it.

It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't always make it a point to say "This is the worst part of the whole thing."

No really, the worst part is going through it all, and then failing to give what's needed. Failing all those people who are counting on that blood. That's the worst part.

Engaged!

2007-02-14T19:09:00.000-05:00

I'm piling in the car, me and all my stuff. The bag with my lunch, my books, a magazine incase I don't feel like studying, my purse, gloves I haven't put on yet, my hat that fell out of my pocket, water bottle...basically I come with a lot of baggage. And once I'm belted in he turns around and drops a little box, wrapped in a white bow, into my lap.

"Happy Valentines Day!"

I'm already flustered and floored and I haven't even opened it yet. I gush, and fiddle with the bow, wondering if I should wait till we're at my office before I open it. But no, I'm urged, and inside is the most beautiful ring ever. Sparkly and colorful, classic and natural, in other words perfect.

And fancy.

I can't stop looking at it. I'm a girl. I put it on, then I take it off, then I put it on again. It's too pretty. When I wear it, it really is the most beautiful thing about me. It makes my hands look worked, used, plain. But I love it.

I couldn't say thank you enough. I couldn't say it right. My husband bought me a ring. It was such a surprise.

I wear it to the office. Constantly slipping it up and down and around my finger. Giving my right hand preference. I find myself watch my hand more than the computer screen. The gems sparkle just enough to catch your eye everytime. I want to show it off, but I keep my mouth shut, till someone notices. And they do. And then they point it out to everyone and suddenly I'm surrounded by a bunch of women, all oohing and ahhing appreciatively at the beautiful ring. The ring my husband got just for me.

My engagement was short, two days short actually. And it started with a phone conversation.

"I was wondering if you wanted to elope?"

"Really?"

"Yes, really"

"Okay."

And then we did. There were no rings or gowns. No bridesmaids, no rubber chicken, no flowers. Just us and the vows.

But as my friends and coworkers start to get engaged around me I've noticed the little rituals I missed during my engagement. Getting to show off the ring, tell the story over and over, relive that giddy little turn of the stomach that you feel at the moment, and feel the giddy little vibes from your friends. I didn't get that. I didn't think I needed that.

But I'm a girl and I admit, it was fun. It was fun to tell my story over and over. It was fun to hear them coo over the ring. It was fun to pretend I was marrying the man of my dreams.

Call it vain and materialistic. It is. But I don't care. I loved being the center of attention for a minute. I would have teared up the same and been just as giddy over snow tires, but no one would have been as excited. Our office "Mom" wouldn't have called the girls over to coo over my tires. Instead I needed something flashy, something pretty, something special in order to get their attention.

And when I did I loved every second of it. Not just the ring, or the attention on myself. I more liked the fact that I was special for a moment because he is special all the time.

And, I think, I'm the girl he decided to love.

What it's really like to be me

2007-02-10T15:35:00.000-05:00

Asking the wrong questions at the wrong time:

During naptime when it is clear that he's juuuuuust about to fall asleep.

"Kitty's nose is cold and wet. Are all furry little animals noses cold and wet?"

"I don't know."

"Is a bunnies nose cold and wet?"

"I don't know"

"What about ferrets? Are their noses cold and wet?"

"I don't know."

"Do guiena pigs have cold wet noses?"

"I don't know."

"Do hamsters have wet noses?"

"I don't know."

"What about mice? Does mouse have a wet nose?"

"I don't know."

"Are mouse hamsters wet?"

Silence.

"Oops. Oh, I suppose only when is rains in mouse hamster land..."

"ARGH!"

Yeah, I know. I don't know how people deal with me either.

But Don't Trust Borders

2007-02-07T17:51:00.000-05:00

Saturday rolls around. I'm up. I'm out of bed. I'm ready to go.

Go now...now now please...let's go now!!

Four hours later my husband is finally considering putting on his socks.

Despite the delays I manage to get to our local Borders on the appointed "Harry Potter Sticker Day". One Day Only. Come in on Saturday and get a sticker. Only on our "Harry Potter Sticker Day" We had to stop for lunch first, and lightbulbs, and the traffic sucked...but I made it. I waited for three days to reserve my book and - you know - get a sticker.

This was better than Christmas.

By the time we got to Borders I was basically running through the doors and straight to the info desk. I stood in line patiently, nearly growling at every person who I perceived was trying to get ahead of me - even when they actually just wanted to check out the half price romance books.

Finally, I get to the bubbly blonde who is more than happy to take my reservation for Harry Potter number seven.

She takes my name.

She writes down my address.

She takes my phone number.

And my cell phone number.

And my work number.

And she askes me if I've ordered anything in the last six months.

Then she chit-chats with her manager about some display thing.

Then she asks me if I've ordered anything in the last six months - again.

Then she waits while my reciept prints out.

Then she tells me about the price and discounts and yada-yada-yada.

All the while I'm jealously eyeing her "Ask me about Harry Potter! and our new stickers TODAY!" badge.

She hands me the receipt and there is a quick, awkward moment of silence.

"Um, could I get a sticker?" I ask, sweetly, if not a little anxiously.

"Oh, we don't have any...they haven't come in yet."

I don't know how I didn't break down into full toddler mode right there, but somehow I managed to thank her politely and walk away.

Inside I was throwing a full blown temper tantrum.

I WANT A STICKER!!!!!!!!

We spent the rest of the day going grocery shopping and supplies shopping and gag-me computer store shopping. My husband bought me a new mouse pad...but it was no sticker.

The weekend sucks.

And Borders sucks more.

Trust Snape!

2007-02-01T21:47:00.000-05:00

Did anyone know that Microsoft finally released Vista? Finally?

Yeah, neither did I.

But I do know that today is the first day you can reserve yourself a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - the seventh and final installment of the Harry Potter series. I also know that on February 3rd at Borders you can reserve your book (or reserve online and go to the store on February 3) and get a free sticker.

That's like way cooler than Vista right?

As soon as I found out about the sticker...I've wanted one. I want a sticker. I want the special, fancy Harry Potter sticker. I will wake up early on Saturday and bounce around from the front door to the bedroom until my husband FINALLY wakes up and FINALLY gets dressed and FINALLY gets ready to go.

Cause I want a sticker.

And I don't care if they look at me funny. I don't care if I'm the only one in line for the sticker who is taller than 4'5''. I don't care that I am not twelve-years-old.

I want, I want, I want!

Now all I have to do is decide which one I want:

Trust Snape

or

Snape is a very bad man

Oooooh, decisions, decsions.

Danny Sullivan

2007-01-31T21:59:00.000-05:00

Danny Sullivan is a former racing car driver who won the Indy 500 in 1985. He's the only man to have spun in the Indy 500 and still win the race.

I didn't know about this till tonight. It's a little tidbit I'll probably never need.

But the real disturbing part of this trivia is how I learned about it. My computer professor, my very-much-older-than-me computer professor, was making fun of a Danny that happens to be in my class. During his not-so-funny-taunting he mentions that Danny Sullivan was the only man to win the Indy 500, even though he spun his car.

"Of course though, maybe you all don't remember it since that was in 1985..." he said.

"Before our time I think." I proffered

And it is. Though I was three years old at the time, three year olds aren't known for their interest in the Indy 500.

Then Danny opened his mouth:

"Yeah, I was born in 1988 so it was really before my time."

1988?!?!

When the heck did I stop being the baby? When did I go from being that young-punk-kid with the funny quips about ageism and the ignorance of youth and become - dare I say it - and adult?

1988...I was in college before this kid started high school.

And now we're in the same class.

I just did a 360 - hope I can win like Danny Sullivan.

Deep Sick

2007-01-30T21:15:00.000-05:00

Around this time of year when everyone is catching the winter flus and colds you start to see a lot of blog posts about the humanity of the common bug. Long winded essays on the common threads we shared in kleenex and sudafed abound. A lot of people choose to point out the way even the greatest titans can be laid low by the same bug that afflicts the poor. Some point out that the simplification of a sick-life (one where you spend your thinking-time thinking about getting some juice and nyquil) is a welcome relief opposed to our over-thinking, over-working, over-reaching exsistence in this cold western civilization.

And it's all bull.

There is nothing profound in getting sick. There's still less pro-founded-ness in being sick. There is nothing beautiful and deep in the way my nose has become more blocked than the Holland Tunnel at rush hour - and sounds worse too.

There is nothing attractive or comforting in my need to slam my face on the desk of my cubicle every twenty minutes just to feel the cool plastic-covered particle board on an otherwise burning cheek.

There is definitely nothing humanizing in the way I consider not washing my hair in the morning just cause I don't have the strength to standing in the shower that long. If anything that makes me go back a few steps on the evolution ladder.

No the only deep thing about being sick is the deep pile of tissues I'm amassing and the deep piles of work I'm avoiding.

So ther....achoo.

I can do Maths, me! Pt. 2

2007-01-20T23:39:00.000-05:00

Amount of time spent in Math class at community college each week:

3 hours

Amount of credit hours the computer thinks I spent in Math class at community college each week:

4 hours

Amount of hours worked at real job each week:

45 (on average)

Amount of time suggested by computer for studying for Math class at community college:

8 hours (2 hours per credit hour)

Amount of time suggested by teacher for studying for Math class at community college:
16 hours (8 hours per class meet)

Amount of time that actually exsists between work and other classes at community college for studying for Math class at community college:

2 hours (Lunch time on Wednesday, Lunch time on Thursday)

Wait...that doesn't look right either...

I can do Maths, me! Pt. 1

2007-01-20T23:25:00.000-05:00

Tuition cost at Community College for Math class:

$344 (at $86 a credit, for 4 credits)

Book costs for Math class at a Community College:

$535

Amount of money you spent on the books that you didn't spend on the tuition:

$191

Wait...that formula has gotta be wrong...

Excel-lent Secretaries

2007-01-17T20:04:00.000-05:00

"So I've been sending this report out now for two years right..." my fellow 'admin' starts while we're going through the quarterlies.

"...and no one has said a word about it. I subtotal it by person and leave the detail in it, so they can pull it up if they need it."

"Of course."

"Well today, after two years, I find out that they've been complaining to Boss Person about not getting any detail in the report at all."

"What sort of detail were they looking for?"

"The kind that's in the report, they just didn't know you had to click on the plus sign to expand the report."

"You mean the great big button next to their name in excel?"

"Yeah, that one."

"That's okay. My group still hasn't figured out how to open multiple tabs in the same worksheet."

"You mean they can't click on the word at the bottom of the screen?"

"Yep."

"Yep."

Barenaked Ladies-In The Car

2007-01-16T20:52:00.001-05:00

Not that there is much to this post, but yesterday I finally went on iTunes and bought a bunch of CD's (as opposed to making my husband do it for me). And now every CD in my car's six-cd-changer is a Barenaked Ladies CD (Stunt, Everything to Everyone, Barenaked Ladies are Me (two cd's), Barenaked for the Holidays, and Jane). And yes, I have listened to this song a total of 15 times today. And that's saying something because my drive to work is only 8 minutes long...

How 'bout this weather

2007-01-15T21:05:00.000-05:00

Not that I have to point this out to anyone, but it's kinda warm. And someday, when our civilization has been destroyed and replaced with the new one they'll go through all the thousands upon thousands of blog posts from our era and pin-point that it was the winter of '06-'07 that started the beginning of the end.

Because it's the middle of January and I just took out the trash (down our 250ft driveway) wearing a tank-top and slippahs (that's flip-flops to you non-hawaii people).

And I didn't shiver once.

Okay, that's all I had to say.

Apple

2007-01-13T20:44:00.000-05:00

We were at the Apple store. Drooling appropriately at the cool toys and sterile white-ness of the iPod church when I pulled him aside to look at the mac notebooks. They were white, cute and sitting in a little row of three, just begging to be typed on and fiddled with - which of course we immediately did.

I was having fun for a few minutes - navigating away from some dorky myspace page and surfing my way over to google when someone interjects - okay yells

"I was using that computer! That's mine!"

I turn around to look at, and then because I had to, look down at a short kid and his slightly taller friend standing there, glaring at me (up at me) and looking as menacing as someone who is probably fourteen years old could. (And that's actually fairly menacing.)

I instantly pulled out my rapier wit and divine eloquence to respond to this rude little hooligan with a

"Oh...okay?"

Fortunately, my guy was a little quicker on the uptake.

"What did you just say?" he shot out.

"I was using that computer. I was on it." I'm sure there was some big word mixed in there too like 'fuck', or 'fucking' or something equally useful, but I was too busy attempting to recover myself from my startled cod-fish impression to notice.

"Really, were you standing there? Were you buying it? Because I didn't see you..." He went on. Clearly more articulate than my pitiful "Oh". And for a moment, I ignored the conversation and was struck by the fact that he was protecting me. Defending me. It was such a surprise, such a shock. He could have been sitting on a white horse, with a big sword and chopped their heads off while sweeping me off my feet and riding me to safety and I wouldn't have been more affected. It was a warm feeling. It tingled straight through me, starting at my chest and moving it's way down. I wasn't paying attention to the boys, in fact I forgot they existed for a moment. All I can remember is the way he stood with his feet planted just so and his shoulders back. The way it looked like his muscles were tightening and how my touch felt on his arm. I remember looking at his lips, pursed just so, the way they do when he's passionate about something. The way I've seen a million times, usually when he's angry with me.

Then I heard the gravel in his voice and I looked back at the kids who had at first started out tough, taking that offensive step back to plant themselves and eventually lunge. Then quickly taking the defensive next step which clearly showed a fast submission. Why don't I notice these things normally? Why did I see them now? What was so familiar about them. It was as if I was watching a nature show and someone was narrating the play by play. Now the dominant male will circle in order to convey that this is his territory...

But it wasn't a wolf cub who I was looking at. It was a scared kid who threw up his hands and tried to escape while I turned to my wolf man and did the typical wolf woman thing. I put my hand on his shoulder and said softly "It's okay."

Before I could concede the computer the kids had fled and the two of us headed for the exit, and he held my hand.

Wrong Daughter

2007-01-12T17:29:00.000-05:00

I have a sister. She's older than me. Older by about 13 years. She also looks startling like me. Or I look like her, since I'm the younger one. We don't talk a lot, or at all, and we only see each other on rare family get-togethers. But every time we do see one another, we tend to look the same. Same hair styles, same hair colors. Same clothing choices. We also have the same eerie addiction to yummy hand lotions and other potions you find at Caswell Masey. All this despite not actually having lived together at all.

Regardless, we are pretty similar. And to add to our weird genetic link we also were both given names starting with "K". Hers is a semi-indian name (Native American name) while mine is a semi-scottish one. They don't sound alike, or look the same on paper. They aren't similar in sound. The only similarity is the letter "K".

You would think with the way my parents easily confess that they are scatterbrains, they would name their two daughters something completely different. Like Susan and Maryann or Padra and Carly. Something that's not easily mixed up. Something that would be distinctive based on each distinctive girl. But they didn't. Instead I grew up most of my life being called my sisters name - regardless of the fact that my sister moved out of the house by the time I was four.

It did offer some amusement for me at times. I do remember being bellowed at by my Father while he repeatedly called me by her name. Likewise, my Mother liked to give me compliments, that were always a bit tainted because she used my sisters name to offer them. And in my most bratty teenage years I got a lot of mileage out of a rueful stare and a coolly uttered:

"You have the wrong daughter."

The mileage on that one ran a little thin after awhile though. They may have been yelling at me using the wrong name, but they definitely meant to be yelling at me.

Once I moved out it got better. It's harder to call someone the wrong name when you're writing a letter or making the effort to call on the phone.

Well, harder, but not impossible. Especially for my Mother, as evidenced by the last two voicemails I received on my cellphone today:

Message 1:
"Hi K******, I'm just calling to let you know that the doctors didn't find anything wrong, so it's all done. Talk to you soon. Love Mom"

Message 2: (Following right after)
"Hi Kathryn, I'm just calling to let you know that the doctors didn't find anything wrong, so it's all done. Talk to you soon. Love Mom"

Message in Reply:
"Hi Mom, it's me. Glad to hear you're fine. By the way, call K******, she didn't get your message. Trust me."

Love your daughter: K-A-T-Y

Saddam

2006-12-30T15:41:00.000-05:00

We're running, little hamsters on the hamster wheel. All worshiping at the alter of beauty and health. In skin tight leotards, or running shorts. Muscle tees or sports bras. All moving fast, travelling fleetly, getting nowhere.

And before us are our goals. Pop stars in form fitting dresses shaking their perfect asses to the beat. Rock stars in jeans so tight every curve of every muscle pops the seams. Our gods, our perfection, our unattainable goals.

And next to the screen pumping my eyes with a blond woman naked to the dawn is a picture of a man stepping up to the gallows, bowing his head to the noose.

A picture of a man who might be sleeping, but is really dead. A murderer. A killer. Murdered. Killed. Dead.

And we keep running.

Mele Kalikimaka

2006-12-23T18:09:00.000-05:00

It's 60 degrees outside. People are ice skating in their t-shirts. Outside.

It's also two days till Christmas.

Luckily, I'm good at the warm weather Christmas. Growing up in Hawaii my Santa wore bermuda shorts and a hawaiian shirt. Our Christmas mornings were spent with a trip to the beach and a B-B-Q. We had sand, not snow. We drank iced tea, not hot chocolate.

So I should be perfectly able to get into the Christmas spirit in a tank-top.

But I'm not.

What I need, what I really want, is two scoops rice. I want manapua and guri-guri. Mix please. With the strawberry under the pineapple. I want ukulele's and na mele's. I want to stand with my friends and sing Surfin' Santa.

I want lumpia and poi. Lomi-lomi salmon and chicken long-rice. I want my Christmas pine to be a Cook pine, and I want my presents wrapped in hawaiian print. I want to sit outside on the lanai and talk-story with my ohana.

In short, if it's gonna feel like Hawaii, then I want it to be Hawaii.

I miss home.

Plastic Stocking

2006-12-22T16:38:00.000-05:00

I love stockings. As a kid I adored my stocking. I liked that it had a pretty ornament sewn on just for me. I liked that my mother had painted my name on it with glitter. I love that she had spelled my name correctly, which when you're name is Kathryn is a big deal. I loved all the candy my Dad filled it with, and the fruit, and the fruit cake. I loved the nuts in their shell and the toys we'd get every year, yo-yo's and silly putty. I loved the little books we'd get (I always got a "Pokey Little Puppy" book) and I like the penny dolls, the jewelry, the hair barrettes. I even liked the socks and underwear that would find their way into my stocking. I loved all the little things in it and I loved that it would take me days and days to get through it. A week at least for the chocolate santa.

Now as an adult I'm the one who's carrying the stocking tradition forward. But my first attempts have not been as spectacular as my childhood memories. Often I'll forget the oranges, or the chocolate santa. I never really get the right mix of toys and candies, it's usually heavy on one side or the other. I often get more stuff than will fit in the actual stocking too...so stocking toys end up becoming under-the-tree toys and lose some of that stocking charm.

Worst of all I never have the same stockings every year.

Instead of the lovingly crafted stockings my Mother made us, complete with our names, our special colors and our special angels. Instead of that musty, old feeling on each one, come from sitting in a box all year. Instead of that feeling that you have something that makes you part of the family, something that's your own but connects you to everyone else. Instead of all that nostalgia and romance we have brand-new stockings. Every year. It's not by design. Every year I break out all the ornaments, old stuff from our parents, new stuff from our newly-wed days. All the same and familiar. The same lights, the same blanket under the tree. The same angel at the top. But even though I pack everything away together, every year the stockings come up missing. So every year I buy new ones.

This year I found a set that were not quite my norm. Instead of furry topped stockings, or lace and beads, I picked out a set of needle-point stockings. Each with a different character on it, and each lined in a different color. Blue for my husband, red for me. They were very cute and I spent a good deal of time trying to decide just which ones I truly wanted. A good deal of time being at least 30 minutes of comparing and contrasting each and every one.

Finally, deciding on the gingerbread man and the deer, I took my two dearly found stockings up the register. So close to Christmas I expect long lines at stores and it doesn't bother me too much to hang around, even if I'm already carrying tons of bags of stocking stuffers. But just as I got up to the register, it broke. As did the one next to it. I waited while someone searched for a manager. I waited while they discussed the fact that the manager was at dinner. I waited while they fiddled with buttons and stared at tape. And while I waited the line behind be grew longer and the bags in my hands grew heavier. So heavy, so hot and so tired was I that I finally gave up, left my stockings and walked out the door with a plan to get my stockings at Bed, Bath and Beyond like I do every year. Bead, lace and all.

And I did in fact go to BB&B. I looked at each stocking carefully. I found a set I really liked. And standing there, carrying a number of bags, filled with stocking stuffers, I lamented the fact that I couldn't justify buying a second set of stockings when I'd already purchased my needlepoint set.

And under this short-tern memory loss (induced I'm sure by going to a hundred different stores in less than two hours) I walked out of BB&B, to my car and drove home. And it wasn't till I was getting ready to make up my stockings with all my goodies that I realized I had no stockings to stuff.

This year we'll be unpacking plastic bags. I might write our names on them for nostalgia's sake, but I'm afraid Santa is shaking his head at this very moment.

Shame

2006-12-13T17:32:00.000-05:00

Walking into my office building I start off well. My shoulders back, my spine straight, I step out of my car gracefully and strut myself up to the door. I look my best in the morning, my make-up is perfect, my hair curls just right, my clothes are pressed and fit just the way they should. I like the sound of my heels clicking on the pavement and the sound of my clothes swooshing as my hips swish. The beginning half of my walk from car to desk is the time when I really like being a woman, when I really feel confident and ready to face everything.

And then I hit the halfway point, and with it, George. George is an older man who works in our warehouse. He works the night/morning shift so when I'm coming in to work he's just about ready to leave. He takes his last ten minute break just a little before 8AM and he spends it standing in the hall with a cup of coffee and a comment.

"Well isnt it just my lucky day. Good morning beautiful."

"Good morning sweetie. I like that skirt on you, gorgeous girl."

"Now my days complete since the stunning Katy has come in."

And so on and so forth. Everyday there's George with another comment, another adjective for pretty, another crooked smile and another lascivious, but hidden, stare. And everyday the instant I see him I deflate. I feel my shoulders fall in an effort to hide my breasts. I try to walk on my toes in order to keep my heels from clicking on the floor. My eyes hit the floor, my arms draw in close and cover me. And for the rest of the day I have to fight from slumping down in my chair and hiding my face under my hair.

It's a feeling you can't name, but you know it's there. All George has ever done, to my face, has greeted me and given me a compliment. Every interaction we've ever had seems benign, safe, nice even. What woman doesn't want to be told that she's lovely? That she looks nice? Why on earth would I spend all that time with make-up and hair if I didn't want people to notice that I was a pretty girl.

And yet his comments make me feel small. They make me feel like hiding under my coat collar. Is it the way he looks at me, or in the way his voice sounds, something about the way he is always there that makes me feel frightened, little, incapable? Suddenly being attractive, even being noticeable, is a hindrance to everything. Not just to my competence, my intelligence, but to my ability to walk down a hallway.

Sometimes I think it's because I know what men say when women aren't around. I know what George talks about when he stops watching me walk down the hall and turns to his buddy. Sometimes I think that's just a cover up. The fact is I'm harassed, diminutized, violated - and it's worse because know one can see it. No one would ever know, or believe, how bad it feels.

And I can't blame them either. I've been that woman who scoffs at harassment charges. I've turned down my nose at girls who just don't know how to take a compliment, or worse, don't know how to play the game. I fear being the same woman I turn away from, I fear the fact that I could define myself as the "politically correct bitch" if I ever spoke up.

But after I smile shyly, say a hurried good morning to George, I feel my chest constrict and tears prick my eyes. I feel bound inside myself. It's as though he won some battle over my position, over my psyche. He even managed to influence my body - and he has never touched me. I can fantasize, outside of work, turning around and telling him to stop. Using my loudest, strongest voice to chastise him. Let him know it's just not acceptable, that I'm not his to look at, I'm not his to want. But in the building, he has me - there might as well be a gun stuck down my throat for all the words I can create.

So instead I go into work early. I look for his car when I'm walking through the parking lot. I wear big coats to hide in. I take the long way around the office to get to my desk. When I see him I panic, when he has his back turned I have to fight the need to run.

And it makes me more ashamed of myself than anything I've ever done. And even more afraid.

Those City Folks

2006-12-10T20:37:00.000-05:00

Just recently my husband and I have been shopping at an organic market more and more. It's something we've both wanted to do for a long time. I like the fact that they get a lot of their food from local vendors and we both like the idea that our food is a little less "tainted."

We did occasionally shop at a small market in our old neighborhood - but having to drive all the way over there just to buy over priced food was a little more than our schedules could take. Luckily, MOM's (My Organic Market) has opened near our home and it's a very pleasant trip down to the store.

Amoung the many treasures we've found at the market, such as fresh baked breads, whole spices and grains, and beautiful, luscious, sweet and firm apples right from the tree, we discovered real milk. Milk that comes from happy, well-fed, well-treated cows near to our home. Milk in thick glass bottles. Milk that could have come straight from the bucket. Real-true-milk.

Of course we bought some. Whole milk, all the fat, all the goodness, true milk. The kind of milk you remember as a kid. My mouth watered at the thought of it and we both couldn't wait to break out the bottle as soon as we got home.

Now as a preamble, both of us grew up with some "farm" experience. My home had small animals, I raised chickens for eggs and ducks for...well being ducks. We had a goat for awhile and I took care of sheep for the neighbors. It wasn't a farm-farm, but it was "ag-land" as it's called in Hawaii and I did get my hands dirty. My husband grew up on a real farm, his mother raised horses and he has many a story about chasing the chickens and getting chased by the chickens. I don't know if he had cows or not, but there were a lot of large animals around for him to get his hands dirty too.

However, as you can imagine, it's been awhile. Years of city and suburb living (not to mention supermarket reliance) might have wiped out a little of our rough-and-tumble dirtiness. So much so that when we cracked the seal on our bottle of milk I went immediately to pour it into tall glasses...

And nothing came out.

I shook it, I twisted it...no milk. Gingerly I stuck my finger into the neck of the bottle and touched a white, somewhat slimy but very firm substance. I looked at my husband, and in my city-like ignorance worried that perhaps we had bought a bad bottle of milk.

He took over, hero that he is, he shook the bottle, he twisted the bottle - and nothing came out. He finally gingerly stuck his finger down and touched the same firm, slimy substance and looked just as puzzled and disappointed as I did.

"Maybe it's wax, like a seal." I suggested.

"Maybe it's just not mixed together." He suggested.

We both looked down the bottle. Finally, we reached for a knife and plunged it in, sliding it straight through as easily as a knife through butter.

Of course people who have lived with cows and worked on dairy farms know what it was. Cream separated from the milk and floating to the top.

Once we scooped out enough to pour we savoured the sweetest, smoothest, softest milk we'd had in decades. It had all the weight and flavor that milk should have. It went straight down our throat and slid satisfyingly into our tummies. Filling us up far better than any of that white water they pass off for milk at Foodland. It made you think of being in the sunshine, the smell of sweet grass and dry hay, the feeling of good, clean dirt under your nails and that soft calm of cows in the pasture, soaking it all up and making milk for their babies.

And you.

After a long discussion on the goodness and joy of milk we finally had to giggle:

What a silly picture we made, screwing up our sophisticated and over-intelligent foreheads over a glass bottle of milk. We'd make a pretty good joke for a real farmer; us and our city folk ways.

Purr

2006-12-08T18:01:00.000-05:00

I'm a definite and decided "cat-lady". If not for my marital status and the amount of restraint shown by my husband in the face of cute, cuddly, fuzzy kittens with big soulful eyes and little mews I would be a "crazy cat-lady". And I'd probably be single for the rest of my life and I'm sure that when I died my cats companions would do me the service of eating my face before anyone noticed I was gone. (It's true, it happened to a friend of a cousin of a an ex-boyfriend aunt twice removed!)

Anyway, though I don't have a lot of real-live cats nipping at my heels and planing the big death-day feast I content myself with cat like things. Lots and lots of cat like things. In fact I have so many cat boxes, cat calendars, cat statues, stuffed cats, cat pill-boxes, cat pens, cat jewelry, cat vibrators (just see if your paying attention - I don't really have any cat-sex toys...yet) that my collection has over flowed beyond my home office, to my bedroom, to my kitchen, to my car and finally it's grow sneakers and hiked three miles to my office.

And I'm not alone, there are many of us who have cat like obsessions evident in our cube decorating styles. We're mostly boring-married-people and we are all women. We also are the most likely to coo over the latest picture of fluffy and mitzy chewing on a piece of string or looking quizzically at the toilet seat.

We're just that way. No one else is, they think were cracked. My bosses especially pick on our need to snuggle small furry things. Not a day goes by when I don't hear some disparaging remark about my feline proclivity. Likewise I never tire of hearing how "real men" don't snuggle little cats.

But I've found a way of including everyone in my cat fancy. In addition to the pictures and the figurines I have one giant, fluffy, white stuffed cat. She (because my one live cat is a girl I tend to refer to all cats as girls, I think it is the same with all pet owners) sits right above my computer on my "decoration approved" shelf and watches me type. She also has a secret, which everyone in my department is interested in. She holds my keys. The keys to my drawers, my files, and certain offices. She has them all deep inside her furry, cuddly belly.

So whenever one of my bosses comes up to get the key to such-and-such cabinet he can be seen giving the big fluffy white cat a hug while he rubs her tummy.

One of Us

2006-12-05T21:59:00.001-05:00

When I was in kindergarten, before I really learned how to write a "p" with a pencil (I've always had trouble with 'p', I don't know why) I and my classmates were lined up boy/girl and trotted off to the computer lab where Mavis Beacon and the "alphabet alien" taught us how to type. This was back in the day when floppy disks really flopped and your choice of font color was orange or green. Later, in the third grade I, along with four other students who happened to be chosen as the "gifted and talented", were sat in front of the first five Macintosh's ever to live in an elementary school in Maui, Hawaii. There the "alphabet alien" turned into the "mouse alien" and we learned how to point AND click. I've been pointing and clicking ever since.

What I'm getting at here is computers have been an important part of day to day life for me since I was five. That's almost twenty years ago. I learned to type my name before I learned to write my name. Shoot, I learned to type before I learned to read. A computer, to me, is not some newfangled toy. Not some novelty that has come in to replace my calculator. It's is THE tool. If you really want to get along in the western world, you're gonna have to start using it. And using it a lot.

Which is why it annoys me that out of the 20 people in my department I'm considered the only "computer person". The term is thrown around with equal parts awe and disgust. As if it's a betrayal for me to know how to create a spreadsheet, and my pointing and clicking skills make me dangerous. I'm the new species, I'm the computer-kind.

Likewise, it's become common to hear people beg off tasks by saying "I can't do that - I'm not a "computer person". Again in the same tone as someone saying "I'm not one of those people. I would argue that I too am not one of those people. I'm not a "computer person". I happen to be a regular person. My brain is made of mushy stuff, not processors and chips. My bones are covered in skin, not cheaply produced plastic. And you certainly won't find a sticker anywhere on my body that says "Intel Inside". I am in fact a person who uses computers, just like the other 19 people in my department do.

I could accept the fact that some people have been doing this work for longer than 20 years. I can accept that at some point in the past the work I do now was done with pens and papers and adding machines. I know adapting to moving a mouse around in a virtual picture can take a little getting used too. My mother still has trouble looking at the screen instead of the mouse when she's "pointing and clicking". But I cannot accept that a person who uses a computer for various projects 9-10 hours a day five days a week cannot actually do computer "things". They use the computer - they are computer people. They live in the computer age.

And it's time to act like it. If you can turn on a computer, open a program and type in a command - you my friend use a computer. If you can input random data and use the computer to produce information from it - you are part of the Information Processing Cycle. If you can navigate your web browser towards some chicks random web journal - you my friend are a computer person.

You are, in fact, one of us.

Grown-up Lesson

2006-11-20T20:50:00.000-05:00

As I stroll through the world of actual adultness I find that I am not as well equipped for it as I thought I would be.

As a child I was armed with those golden rules like "treat others as you'd like to bem to treated" and "always say please and thank you" and "don't eat food off the floor." I felt sure, as I grew older and older, that these little nuggets of shiny wisdom would carry me through to a happy and strife-free life.

However, now I find that all those little niceties are just that: niceties...and they aren't going to get me anywhere fast. In fact, in order to survive life without having your spirit crushed everyday you have to do the exact opposite of the golden rules (all except eating food off the floor...you can stick with that one.)

As I learned a week ago while I stood in a room of 40 or so women all prepared to learn the magical and mystical art of shaking ones body fat around. Or in other words: Belly Dancing Class.

I stepped up to the front row, unashamed of my lagging skills in hip dropping, and knowing that without my heels I'm a fair bit shorter than most women. And as the instructor handed out scarves covered in sparkly, jingly bells to those of us in the first row she warned that she "didn't have enough."

Well, of course everyone in the front row grabbed up a scarf or two. And while they wiggled and squirmed making their hips musical instruments I figured I would pass a few scarves back to those ladies who weren't in the front row and might not have the opportunity to pick one that suited them best. After all, it's only fair to share, right? I passed a few here and a few there. And when I was done I turned around to the last few left in the pile and reached down to pick it up...only to find that some other first row lady was also grabbing it in order to add it to her already jingly scarf AND jingly skirt.

"Oh." I said, "Did you want to wear this one instead?"

"Yes." she replied while snatching it out of my hands and failing to replace it with her first scarf.

I looked around. Everyone had a scarf except me. I danced my way through the class like the best of them, but I didn't make any music.

Until I got home. Where I whined to my husband about the lack of jingle scarves and my un-musical day.

"And what is the lesson from this?" he asked after listening to my probably over-dramatic account of the class.

"To not be nice?" I tried.

"Exactly."

Wish I had learned that one before belly dancing class.

Better Half

2006-11-06T17:41:00.000-05:00

I swear, there are tons of very interesting posts swimming in my head right now, just begging to be written...

In the meantime, my husband has a blog now:

Zoom Zoom

So now you can figure out which one of us is the better half...

Math Motorcycle

2006-11-02T17:50:00.000-05:00

Every once in awhile I find myself sliding into that disgusting comfort of stereo-types and I always hope that someone, somewhere, will be able to surprise me out of them.

Thankfully, I go to community college.

Every Tuesday and Thursday night I drag myself out to an obscure supermarket and hike my way past four different Korean barbecue joints and two tattoo parlors in order to sit for two and half hours and "learn" math.

My math teacher is exactly what one expects when one thinks of someone who essentially volunteers to teach higher-level math. I'm sure he can't be in it for the money...there is no money for community college professors.

In anycase, this man is tall, lanky, and awkward. He bumps into things that aren't even threatening to get in his way. His favorite trick is to simply stand still, and then suddenly hit his head on the overhead television. He has shoulder-length hair that is, indeed, unkempt. It's shiny though, and full, so it makes his face look that much more emanciated, which makes his eyes look that much more caffeine crazed.

He wears tight jeans, a mistake for someone who resembles a green bean, and generally reminds me of gumby if gumby still had his mom dressing him.

He isn't really a teacher type. He mumbles and has trouble communicating simple concepts like "take one and pass it around". He rushes through his lessons without realizing people are in the classroom with him - just so he can get to something really obscure and strange - then talk about that in detail for an hour before he announces "But you don't need to know this, I just think it's neat."

In short he is a skinny, pale, gawky nerd.

Who, one day as I was getting out my calculator, four notebooks, three text books and numerous erasers, shocked me out of my plastic yellow chair by walking into the classroom wearing a thick Harley-Davidson motorcycle, his helmet held jauntily under his arm.

In truth he looked more like a modern Don Quixote than a Hell's Angel, but it was the fact that this is his normal mode of transportation - in the middle of November - that really shocked me.

He's still kinda a nerd...but he's a nerd on two wheels. And that makes life worth living just a little bit more.

Mr. Body

2006-10-30T18:15:00.000-05:00

As I'm sure you've noticed I posted a picture of the remarkably human-shaped body that arrived on our front porch via UPS just a few weeks ago.

Okay...a whole freaking month ago.

And then I dissapeared. Where could I have gone? Could it really have been a human cadaver, sent to my home as a warning from my old gang sisters that I better start representing or face my fate?

Perhaps it was my handsome, yet insane lover from Italy who after years of trying to go on without me finally sucumbed to despair and sent me his self-mutilated body as a testament to his strong, yet now dead, love.

Hasn't he ever heard of black roses! Sheesh.

Or possibly the package was really a wrestling dummy bought by my roommate in order to practice his half-nelsons and full-nelsons and nelson-mandelas and etc.

Really, the body packaged in black cloth that showed up on my front porch was my mail-ordered virgin sacrifice for the feast of the mother of the divine purple cow. She is a demanding goddess who will settle for nothing less than aged, yet untainted meat.

Sadly the real story behind the mystery body may never be known - to people who skim through blog posts at least - and I'm sure conjectures about why it showed up on my porch a month ago and why it caused my lengthy abscence from my beloved blog will continue to haunt the internet for ages to come.

It'll be bigger than Snakes on a Plane. I swear.

UPS Delivers

2006-09-26T15:38:00.000-04:00

body on porch
Originally uploaded by katydyd.

A recent text message to my husband after checking the mail:

"There is a body on our porch."

I blog therefore I bore

2006-09-21T21:41:00.000-04:00

I've discovered the real flaw in blogging. It comes from boredom.

Recently I was laid-off and forced to search all over the DC/MD area for a new position. During my search I came across many interesting and odd companies and offers, including a porn distributor who was looking for someone to replace his daughter and write scripts for films and an offer to write the notorious "Nigerian Banker" type letters.

Dear Sir, I'm a poor widow from a country you probably don't know exists...I have money to give you...

In addition to the job hunt I also had a few months of hanging around an empty office full of disgruntled and depressed employees and rather petrified and chicken-shit managers and HR reps.

It was a summer bursting with good blog posts. My life was odd, fluctuating and interesting.

So I decided not to blog.

Now that I'm in a new job, going to school, and spending most of my nights rushing home to cook dinner then crawling into bed by 9pm...I am fingering the blogging pen longingly.

And that's the real problem with blogging. We have plenty of time and willpower to blog when our lives are boring and mundane, but when something really interesting happens - when a life event that can be engaging and relatable from people all over the world comes up - we're too busy, you know, living it rather than writing about it.

Let's be honest. We read blog posts in order to find that one line or moment that reminds us of our own little life. Then we share it in comments. We're looking for something that makes us feel - we don't really care what the blog author feels, or even says. As long as we can find a way to relate ourselves to it. Or get something interesting and new out of it

And unfortunately when my life is new and interesting and fresh - I don't feel like sharing.

But you can have all my boredom you want.

Double Standard

2006-08-03T21:56:00.000-04:00

Packed up the boss. Put his stuff in a box, wrapped up his dead animals in bubble-wrap, organized the "pile-o-crap" drawer and moved his office, furniture, boxes, dry erase boards a hundred miles away in less that an hour. All while he talked on the phone and complained that he wasn't suppose to be there.

"I'm sure gonna miss you!"

"Yeah, have fun in ********. I'll send your assistant my files separately."

"You've been really great. I don't know what I'll do without you" He put his arms out in either a good impression of Frankenstein or a gesture of familiarity. Don't corporate "whores" shake hands? Isn't there some unspoken rule about hugging assistants thirty years younger than you?

Nope...I got hugged.

"I'll think about you, take care of yourself. This is so sad."

"Yeah...okay." Am I gonna have to pat your back too?

And then it was over. Thank god. Until eight hours later when he called on the weekend. Something about a dog.

"Yeah. Yeah. I'll take care of it."

"Oh thanks sweetie!!!"

Sweetie? I've worked for this man for a year. Never has he called me sweetie. Now he's half-way to the new office, carrying with him a semi-felt hug of mine and he thinks it's okay to call me sweetie. It is not. It is most certainly not. I am not sweet. I am not cute and adorable. I am not made of honey. I'm made of starch, and white-out. That's all.

Today I called the other office and talked with my cube-buddy. My favorite guy. The guy who I picked on mercilessly waiting for him to cry uncle.

He never did. This is why he is my favorite guy.

We went a few rounds. I almost got teary-eyed thinking how far away he was and how unemployed I'm about to be.

"So pretty lady, what do you need from me?"

He thinks I'm pretty...

"Aw sweetie. I miss you. Wish you were here keeping me in line."

Hehe...he called me sweetie...I'm blushing.

"You're lucky I'm not."

"Oh I have no doubt. But I need someone to cut me down a few notches. I miss you honey."

He thinks I'm honey too.

To him I'm nice. In the only way I know how...I tease, torment and torture. And he loves me for it.

Which is why he can call me sweetie and boss can't.

This all makes perfect, sober, sense.

Quotes you regret

2006-07-31T13:22:00.000-04:00

When I was a lass I spent a lot of time being interviewed for things. Lots of volunteer projects, lots of fancy school commendations, lots of awards for theater and writing.

Having spent a lot of time talking with reporters (and unfortunately being the daughter of a well-known one) allowed me the chance to learn the hard way that you need to make sure you don't say something that can be edited down to the lowest denominator of dumb.

My biggest interview goof was a spot on television covering young local writers at a writing convention. In amongst my many comments on the lectures I mentioned that one of the speakers had mentioned that in modern writing "adjectives are useless."

Of course that's the one quote they kept in the whole spot.

However, I was 14 at the time. I'm often surprised that people my age now (ten years later) still come out with those kinds of quotes. Much less people far, far older than me, with much more experience - and in the New York Times.

My favorite from today's edition was found in the article Passing Down the Legacy of Conservatism:

"He [Donald Devine, lecturer and former head of government personnel in the Reagan Administration] lamented the prosecution of Kenneth Lay, the late Enron executive convicted of fraud, by asking, "Do you think it's possible for a rich person to get justice in the U.S. today?"

One can only hope that was taken out of context.

Philosophy

2006-07-20T18:26:00.000-04:00

Perhaps it's age, or it could be residue from "The Navy", maybe it's that marriage thing; regardless - you start to forget. You forget you existed anywhere other than where you are. Oh you remember where you were. Tiny apartment in San Diego, tiny scrap of corner in New York, strange smelling hotel rooms, long car trips, long flights. You can remember running around in your underwear down 5th street and getting drunk night after night at McGuire's. But do you really remember where you started?

I forget. And then someone from a past life finds their way in - or I find them. Emails from the blue, sparks of recognition, vague memories long since fogged over by...

Hmm by what?

Probably that 20th beer at McGuires to be honest.

People my age tend to complain a lot about not getting enough information about people from high school and college. I wouldn't know. I don't keep in touch with people. I guess that's not true. There are people I've emailed monthly for years and years. But they are the people who aren't interested in passing on "Christmas Card" letters. We don't talk about what we've been doing or where we're going. We exchange fantasy lives, stories, pieces of our imagination that needs to be let out - "Today I killed a bug, let me expound on the subject of insect-cide for five paragraphs"

I like that. Screw exposition and openings and closings. Free exchange of ideas...puzzling paragraphs to chew on. I talk with these people all the time...I have no idea what the hell they are doing with their life.

And then you go and get crazy and start looking up the names you can remember from high school on MySpace. It's weird, looking at profiles of people you used to know. You know you used to know them, but now they have new friends and have cut their hair. Now they have new inside jokes with their roommates and boyfriends. It feels like they've become famous. And you can jump up and down and say "I knew them when!"

Of course they aren't famous (well some of them are) but it's because someone else has claimed them as a friend...and they aren't in the circle. The outer world has invaded my memories - foggy as they are - and now what I owned is public property. This girl who for years after high school was mine, my memory, my idea, my revisionism. And she went ahead and kept living...cut her hair...grew up.

It's surreal. Which is real, which is true? My memory of us trading juice boxes or her newest blog post about the lawn service?

See, it's easier just to forget. I didn't exist before, I just am. Here I sit, in my little space, and here I always was. At least I know that's real.

StatCounter

2006-07-18T16:53:00.000-04:00

And now for another installment of "How did you get here?"

I just did a quick gander at my StatCounter "Came From" stats again - nothing incredibly strange this time. But it's odd that I've been popping out a lot of mundane posts about shopping and home life and somehow google seems to think I am a pornstar.

Search Query's that led here:

Google UK Search for "Big Boobs" (Well, we already know what I think about those

More UK people searching for "Orange Cichlid" (Mine was named Pumpkin and she died last August.)

Blogger Search for "Women looking for men who score" (Everyone loves a winner.)

Google Blog Search for "Bra" (Not weird, but seriously...you were looking for blog posts about bras?)

Also blog searches for "Big Bra" and "My boobs have grown." (And I thought I was the only one who worried about this stuff.)

Google for "Hair Scissors Snip"

Blogger search for "Sexy high school girlie" AND "drunk out girls" (You are very, very dirty.)

Google for "Britishisms Bloody Fag" (Because bleeding over cigarettes is a big problem.)

Google again for "Hands grow bigger" (Which would be helpful, considering I now have more than a handful.)

Google again for "Writing a letter to your xboss after a long time" (My mother always told me that if you didn't have anything nice to say...say it in the car when your husband can't hear.)

Great one from Google on "I had a penis, I was a man"

Blogger search for "Tattoo Katy" (I got nothing...)

More UK Google for "Merekats sales" (I wouldn't...they make horrible salesmen...and they keep digging holes in the carpet.)

Blogger again on "Show me sexy girls" followed by a Blogger search for "Bad girls" (Yes I am, so spank me :P)

And finally, to link the bottom of this post to the top a Google search for "Pornstar"

Guess I really am more interesting than I thought...

Hmph.

This post sucks

2006-07-17T15:38:00.000-04:00

"Like with all fieldtrips, we ended up being there about an hour too long." I summed up after detailing my weekend activities to Cary (not her real name - thank you) at work.

"You always do interesting things." She said. "My whole story was about the dogs fighting and reading a book."

"Sounds like a good weekend to me. You're plan was to relax."

"Yeah, but you guys always do something different and exciting. I'd never think to do that."

This statement isn't all that new to me. Before the great purging of our office our weekend update pow-wow's were more than just two women, and usually at the end of it my stories were met with shock and a little admiration. However, it was mostly women who were decades older than me and had children my age. Me being prone to indulge in some stereo-types when it fits my mood expect older suburban Marylanders to have boring weekends.

But Cary is 27 and single and drop-dead gorgeous. She's one of those girls I tend to fantasize about being. The perfect blonde who kept her looks and her popularity long after high school. Followed the straight and narrow, has a college degree and you know a job despite layoffs.

And she thinks my life is exciting. After I detailed a bus trip where we went around Pennsylvania drinking beer. Good beer, but still. It was beer on a bus, that's all.

It's odd feeling like I am somehow the bad girl amongst my fellow East Coasters. Growing up on a little island, with a father everyone knew, I rarely got into trouble. Actually I never got into trouble. During my prom I was invited to the infamous "after-party". But my date was gay and we both had to wake up early the next morning to do a mime show (I kid you not). Now as an adult a typical night for me is still staying home and watching t.v. Or playing on the internet. I do get drunk in public often. Usually the drunk in public thing is followed by flirting. That's about it. Oh, and dirty jokes, and swearing. But all and all it's tame. I'm really a pretty normal good girl.

Debauchery is such a word that deserves a little more...sin. Wild parties where you drink unidentifiable liquid in opaque cups and take unidentifiable pills from the sleazy guy with the silk shirt. Go home with an equally unidentifiable man or woman (or both) and wake up blissfully ignorant of why there is a picture of Hecate painted in red nail polish on your wall. That's debauchery. That's interesting. A story about how you found your underwear in the back of a white hummer limousine - now that's exciting.

Not a Thursday night spent at the pub.

So my status as the Bettie Page is completely unwarranted. I not only feel bored, I feel boring. My stripper exercise classes and my yoga just feel like normal things to me. Even dare I say a bit fad-ish. It smacks of suburban boringness dressed up. Like a housewife wearing heels. Ain't nothing to write home about.

Or write in a blog about.

Except that somehow all my friends tend to want to live vicariously through me. They want to hear all my dumb little stories. I guess when all their stories are about how they took out the garbage a day early and the racoon got it, my story about how we watched a spontaneous Argentine parade after the World Cup game seems somehow cool. At least to them.

Cary, who I secretly envy, envies me. And I think I'm boring. I think she's boring too, but at least she's blonde and boring.

Are my expectations too high or are the communities expectations too low? Do I just live in a boring place where anything out of the ordinary is strange and exciting or am I really the bad girl I've secretly always wanted to be?

Does this post sound too much like Sex and the City?

Maybe, instead of me actually being interesting and intriguing I'm the ordinary girl who is pegged as different because I am quiet and have red curly hair. Will the admiration and compliments slowly wear off and eventually turn into mob cries of "Burn the Witch!"?

At least then I'll have a really exciting story.

Mutant

2006-07-14T10:03:00.000-04:00

I guess I should have seen it coming. There were plenty of signs. The way my bras were digging into my skin. The strange indentations on my chest at the end of the day. The bad looks I got at the gym. I know those looks. I've given them before. That look that oozes venom. The pointed stare at the bouncing girls that just screams disgust. It's like being in high school...only worse.

But I couldn't help it - I thought - I'm trying to run.

Of course the kicker should have been when my friend yelled in the middle of the office "How do you fit those watermelons in a size small?!?!"

Regardless, I didn't pick up on the signals. I didn't listen to the murmurs (though apparently it was quite the topic among the men) and I didn't see the stares. So when I walked into Victoria Secret I wasn't prepared.

I was in a strange mood for Katy. I wanted to go shopping. I felt like looking at stuff and trying things on. This is rare and it was exciting to go off on my own and indulge in pure girly-ness. Victoria Secret is my favorite. It smells good in there and everything feels nice. I like running around and coo-ing over the latest cute set. The fun and flirty thongs. The new corsets. I like being in a store that screams curves and sexy and flirt. I flutter from rack to rack, looking at the mannequins and drooling over the lace and sequins. FUN!

I went in armed with push-ups and push-togethers. Side straps and tube straps. Convertibles, invisibles, demi, full. Silky, lacy, skin. I had my favorites picked out and was ready to finally face the mirror - sure that one of them would give me the exact shape I like. Round, but perky. And all in a size 36C.

But something was wrong. For some reason instead of round I was getting slightly oblong. Instead of full and perky, my breasts looked strangled. Smushed. Like they were trying to escape.

No girls, we have to wear a bra...it's the 21st century...we can't get away with that free-hanging stuff anymore.

But try as I might. Adjusting and pulling and prodding, they would not stay in the cup. Help!

I bit my lip as the very tiny girl measured me. It'll be okay I thought. So what if I've gained an inch or two. I'll get a few 38's and then hit the row-machine. Back to 36 in no time. It's perfectly normal to grow a little.

"36!" She counted the inches. "Oh but you definitely need to be in a D cup."

"A what cup?"

"You're definitely a D. Want to try something with a little more support?" She asked helpfully. I personally think she sounded a little too cheery.

I tried it on anyway. It fit. It was perfect in fact. Full, round, comfortable. And big. Seriously...all I could see were the twins. Nothing else. I ceased to have a body or a head, I was just a inconsequential transport for two big boobs. I felt like a boob.

But I was game. I went out looking for all those cute things I liked before in my new size. I mean why not? Everyone wants big breasts right? Plastic surgeons make millions every year by giving women larger sizes. I got mine naturally. I'm lucky right?

I was until I noticed that I couldn't find D's in any of the styles I liked. No bra-tops in D's. No Ipex, no second skin.

"Do you need some help finding something?" "Oh, you have to look in the drawers for that size." The drawers? Previously the drawers in Victoria Secret were only needed to find the odd colors. Like passion-berry and hot-green. I didn't need a hot-green bra. Not that I wouldn't mind it. But still...it's hot green.

"Right, we don't have D's in this style. Are you sure you want a demi?" "So which color did you need...flesh or black?" I looked around. Everywhere the mannequins were covered in fun colors and flirty lace. Pink and red and purple. Colors I love. Colors I like to put on under boring work clothes and know to myself that I am wearing a purple and pink lace bra underneath...and it's my little secret. Then I looked at the small drawer of D's...in styles I used to see my mother wear...and colors that were as boring as my husbands underwear.

It was all I could do not to burst into tears.

Overdramatic? Maybe. But this idea that society puts pressure on women to be big-breasted is a bunch of bullshit. Show me the store where the mannequins are a full C-cup? Show me where in the mall a woman with full breasts and full hips can by a t-shirt that doesn't stretch to bursting over her boobs. Show me the non-maternity wear dresses that don't either smush or bunch over a round front. Show me all that and I'll show you a bridge I have for sale.

Gone are the fun colors and the flirty sets. Gone are the cute t-shirts and fun tops. Gone gone gone.

But I have plenty of breast to spare.

The Importance of Being Egotistic

2006-07-13T09:40:00.000-04:00

Today I found myself stuck watching some morning "news" show while I waited in the lobby of my car dealer. The claim of the rental car girl that "They're bringing a lot of cars around front right now, " was slowly turning into "They're bringing a lot of cars around front sometime before noon." So I was sitting and dividing my time between Miss Mary Sunshine and her semi-attractive middle-aged co-star and the toy model of a BMW X5.

Some guy with a newspaper of some sort was watching with me, and snorting in derision while Mary talked about some potbelly pigs somewhere in Chicago.

"They really don't have a lot of news do they?" The woman who was sitting opposite newspaper guy said.

"I'm waiting for them to start talking about what's really important!" Newspaper guy cried. "This here will be the end of oil in America, they're taxing terrorists..." I only heard about half of his blather, I was too busy trying to crane my neck far enough to see the headline on his rag. And it was a rag...it even had glossy paper...no newsprint in sight.

This is about the time I started dividing my attention between the toy X5, the potbelly pigs, and my new found need to classify reading material by their actual material. It's not really and newspaper unless it leaves dirty black ink all over your hands and is too cumbersome to read comfortably. Somehow my own personal fantasy about newspapers and the mess they make took enough time that I found myself suddenly alone with Newspaper guy in the lobby.

He looked at me. I stared at the pigs. He looked at me again. I glared at the pigs. He scooted closer to me.

I moved my purse to sit between us.

He got the message and moved back to his other chair.

Then he looked at me some more. "You're not really watching this are you?"

"Nope, they're just pigs."

He nodded and mumbled about needing to see the "real" news. He kept on about the end of oil in America and terrorists. His snorts were much louder and somehow much more pompous now that he was in control of the fancy remote control. He waved the news-thing around to make a point about how American news doesn't talk about the real important stuff. I caught stuff like "ignorant" and "biased" and "monkey" Meanwhile I watched to see what he thought was real news. CNN? Fox? MSNBC? CSPAN? Was he conservative? Liberal? Libertarian? Did he want world news or domestic? Was he a pure story guy or someone who only watched analysts? Did he enjoy John Stewart?

Probably not, he was wearing a polo shirt after all.

Instead he stopped on a channel with old pictures of Britney Spears dancing in various states of undress.

Which is obviously more important than the end of oil in America and terrorism put together. And way real.

2006-07-04T20:37:00.000-04:00

So with Independence Day once more upon us here in the U.S.A. there have of course been a plethora of documentaries, movies, plays and books about our Revolution and our Founding Fathers.

I love these stories. I get chills thinking about the rag-tag group of soldiers sitting in the cold, hungry, tired, defeated - listening to the words of Thomas Paine and Common Sense before they fight the dreaded Red Coats again. I always feel my shoulders rise a little straighter and my skin prickle when I hear the words of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Patrick Henry repeated over and over.

And of course:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Wow. Just wow. Maybe it's the way I was raised, or the things I've seen and people I've met growing up. No matter. Those words still cut straight to my heart.

This year, though, I've been struck with an whole different idea.

These men were the Founding Fathers.

These men were my Founding Fathers.

It is a humbling and strangely uplifting thought to know that more than 200 years ago a few men risked their lives to create a country that one day would afford me so many things that so many people around the world do not have.

These men didn't just give life to a new country with new ideals, they gave birth to a new kind of person. Great people who've followed of course. People who changed the world. But people like me too. And people like my husband. And that's something. Because maybe we aren't changing the world in a single deed, or even a single lifetime. But if I've learned anything from my family and ancestors, it's that it's not the huge things that matter - it's the footprints we leave.

Our Founding Fathers left a lot of footprints to follow. And a lot of room for us to find our own path. They are big shoes to fill. But the cool thing I realize now is that the shoes aren't meant to be filled by one or two men. But by all of us. Because we're Americans, linked inexplicably to heroes from centuries ago by a simple pledge, declaration, of allegiance. I'm in a way related to Thomas Jefferson and John Hancock.

And in that way I'm also related to anyone who believes themselves an American. Being American isn't about blood or heritage or parentage. It's about allegiance, in any form, to the same ideas that were put forth in the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.

And that's a really awesome feeling.

Ramblings - Practice Roadtrip

2006-06-19T13:28:00.000-04:00

This weekend, for the first time since we've lived in Maryland (almost 2.5 years), my husband and I had Maryland crabs that were not in "cake" form.

And we only had to drive to Virginia to do it.

Well okay, we weren't in Virginia. But we were pretty darn close. We were in that strange Bermuda-triangle-esque area called "Delmarva". A wrong turn in any direction would have taken us to either Delaware or Virginia. Through the 12 gallons of gas and over 300 miles of driving I wondered how they came up with the name Delmarva. Why that order? Why not Mardelva? Vadelmar? Delvamar? Mary Delva? Vir Delma? Why Delmarva? And why is Virginia recognized by it's two letter code but Delaware and Maryland have to have three letters? Why couldn't we just use one letter for each and keep it far.

"Yo. What's up? I'm hailing from the DMV yo."

Ooooooh....that's why it's called Delmarva...

Regardless. We went there. We went in search of ponies. Which we found on Assategue Island. We saw five ponies, seven deer, one bunny and three doves. As well a hawk that I saw while were driving there. It's a comfort to know that there is someone else in the world who goes as crazy happy over seeing bunnies and ponies as I do. Or he's good at pretending he does. While other people will simply shrug when they see a squirrel climbing up the tree, I can feel comfortable knowing that not only will my husband not think I'm nuts for pointing out the little boing-boing squirrel.

We're a good match. And now I have proof that we are a good match in the form of our new digital camera - with 12 pictures of ducks being ducky, 7 pictures of bunnies hopping away, 4 pictures of squirrels, 7 more of a swan and a whopping 27 pictures of a flock of Geese eating sunflower seeds. All coupled with 2 pictures of me looking at squirrels, 2 of me looking at the swan, 3 of me talking to the bunny.

This is what we are preserving for our posterity. "And this little C. and little K. is when your Father and I stood in the park and quacked at the ducks. Here you can see your Father doing the duck-dance."

Yes, as far as mini-roadtrips go this one was fairly successful. A few animals, a tank of gas, and only one semi-temper tantrum halfway through. (His, not mine.) Which all ended in the elusive Maryland steamed crabs.

I made my crabs talk and do a cure puppet show. Then proceeded to split their head open and scoop out their guts. We both got very good at making lots of noise with the mallets. Any food that comes with a hammer is good food.

Giggle

2006-06-15T14:23:00.000-04:00

Right now I'm reading "A Popular Schoolgirl" by Angela Brazil. It's fun, I can't help but burst into a fit of schoolgirl giggles myself when I read it. It's so bubbly and cute and british.

It's topping - oops - there I go again *insert giggles here*

But on top of all the giggle-inducing phrases like 'right-o', 'topping', 'chuffed' and the like there are also a few situations that you can't help but smile at. For instance:

"You ought to help me with my exercises, though, Ingred," she wheedled. "Remember, it's for the benefit of the form. If you let me make mistakes, well--it's the form that will suffer. You can't call it _my_fault, it's on your own head. You know as well as I do that I simply can't spell, and it takes me hours to hunt up words in the dictionary. I'm looking for 'phenomenon' now."

"You certainly won't find it in the F's," laughed Ingred. "What an infant in arms you are! Here, then, go ahead, and I'll act as dictionary. You've only written half a page yet. You'll be a week of
Sundays at this rate."

"And I haven't touched my Latin or French!" sighed Fil dismally. "I wish I could go to a school where there isn't any homework, and that somebody would invent a typewriter that would just spell the words ready-made when you press a button."

"There's a fortune waiting for the man who does!" agreed Ingred. "'The Royal-Road-to-Learning Typewriter: spells of itself.' It would sell by the million, I should think."

Indeed!

The Ladies Who Lunch

2006-06-14T11:16:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we said goodbye to a fellow assistant in our department. She's going on with the company, the two of us are being left behind. As a semi-celebration (I'm not sure of what) we all three went to lunch.

Being assistants we never leave for lunch. Our bosses will leave for hours on "business" lunches to all sorts of restaurants and bars. We make the reservations but we never go. Instead you'll usually find us slurping up iced tea and diet coke while nibbling on local deli fare. Going outside for lunch is a special thing - and rare.

So it was a surprise when the three of us piled out of the car and into an incredibly packed parking lot. It was even more a surprise to walk into the restaurant and find it near full with people. Mostly people is suits or "business casual" attire. All sitting down at a table with full plates of hot food...and no computers in site. I wasn't sure if I could eat a whole lunch without a keyboard in front of me. What would I do between bites? How would I occupy the time?

Then I remembered I wouldn't have to worry about that. Three women going out to lunch...don't worry...very little lunch would be had.

We started off right away with talking about diets. We oooh'd and ahhh'd over the appetizers, then promptly ordered waters all around and changed the topic to the conventional wisdom of not drinking liquid with meals.

With the bread was the discussion of Atkins and South Beach. When we ordered, which took forever, we all prefaced with "Mmm, a steak sounds good" and ended with "I'd like the rabbit food please. Dressing on the side." (Actually I had grilled chicken with asparagus.)

Then we talked about pills and diseases. I was certain it was because we were trying to ruin our appetite. Thyroid conditions, cancer, obesity, senility. One woman decided she must have thyroid cancer since her memory was slowly slipping away and her metabolism "wasn't working".

Then we ooh'd and ahh'd over desserts. We all thought cheesecake was the best thing. And just when our mouths started to water one of us brought up the story about the cheesecake filled with botulism or something.

Food's up!

I was given a little respite over the meal when the two older ladies discussed their children. As they gabbed about schools and clothes and soccer games I looked around at our suited co-diners. A lot of them had beers or hard drinks next to their steaks and burgers. Most of them had fries (I love fries). I wondered if their conversations revolved around the latest diet craze or who's best friend has a yeast infection. Did the regular restaurant lunchers sabotage their meals with talk of fat and death? Was the man with the bow-tie going to tuck into his porterhouse then commence a discussion of diabetes?

I finished my chicken just in time to get the grill over when I would have babies. We moved on to the hardships of work while our waiter tried to tempt us into dessert. He should have known it was a lost cause. I did.

We piled back into our car, indulging in peppermints and exclaiming how full we were and how we couldn't believe we ate so much food.

You always hear about those Matrons of Society who do nothing but lunch. Or about the Housewives of Rich Men who spend their mornings in the gym and their afternoons getting plastered on the decks of fancy restaurants.

I don't believe it. I don't believe that a group of women could get together and really enjoy a meal. I'm no exception. I could have gone to that restaurant at any other time and ordered potato skins loaded with cheese, a thick yummy steak and a big potato on the side. I'd have tipped back a nice cold drink and followed it with a big sundae. And I'd have loved every second of it. But surrounded by my female counter-parts I felt the need to fit the mold. Share my food-eating secrets, try theirs. I easily rattled off all the facts I know about this exercise and that, about these calorie counters and those. I know all about them. So do they. And we know that they know. And they know we know they know.

And we still have to compete. We compete over useless knowledge and who can eat the least and who can suffer the most. Who sacrifices the most? Who is on the path to being the skinniest?

Who is the lady who can lunch the least the most?

Tattoo

2006-06-13T15:22:00.000-04:00

I'm approaching my 24th Birthday. And as I do my common birthday wish is beginning to creep back into my head. The idea is always there, it floats to the surface every so often, but around my birthday, around that personal milestone, the idea gets stronger, more compelling.

I want a tattoo.

I've wanted one for years. I want something small, simple, elegant. I want something pretty, something feminine. Something elusive. I don't want a big shamrock on my arm or some dumb butterfly on my ankle. I want something soft and dainty along my back...right in that space between the two dimples my hips make.

"Why," my friend said as his hand circled around my waist playfully, "would such a beautiful girl like you want ruin that by mutilating herself?"

"You sound like my Mother." I replied, rolling my eyes. We dropped it and went on to other topics.

But what I should have replied is that I want a tattoo because I am beautiful. I wear lipstick so my lips standout. I wear rouge so my round cheeks are noticeable. I line my eyes in black so my brown eyes will pop out. I brush my hair so my natural curl and wave will bounce as I walk. I wear a bra to make my breasts round and full. My clothes follow the line of my body. My make-up accentuates the shape of my face. My jewelry sparkles and draws attention to my neck which has a nice curve, my fingers with are small and delicate

It's all a game. A game I play very well. My friend probably wouldn't have thought I was "such a beautiful girl" if I didn't do a little primping. Dirty and messy I can sometimes come off as pretty, but not really. Dressed and dolled up I can attract a few stares.

And when I do it right I can attract those stares to the right parts. I look at adornment as a roadsign. A little sparkle to catch ones eye the right direction. Something flashy to make them look left rather than left.

I have a navel piercing. I like my stomach. It's not a six-pack or anything like that. But it's nice. I creates a flow. My sparkly piercing catches the light a lot. It pulls attention away from the fact that my abs aren't rock hard and more towards the fact that my stomach has a nice soft curve, and flow that, if you happen to be lucky, could be followed all the way down to a pair of nice full hips and a sloping waist. The nice dark blue gem in the middle on my navel is a nice contrast to my pale white skin, and it looks pretty.

In fact, it may be one of the reasons why I am "such a beautiful girl".

And my tattoo could do the same thing. I'm getting to point now where I really like my butt. It's a good butt. It's not that round, but it has a little fullness, and it moves nicely to my legs...which are very nice. And I love that dimpled area. I like it on me, I like it on other girls. I like looking at naked girls from behind because of it. I like the fact that pants ride so low simply for the fact that I can see that little swoop from the back to the butt.

I want people to look at my swoop. I want to adorn it and accentuate it. It's a nice swoop, it deserves a little color.

So I'm narsicistic. But I don't apologize. I like me. And someone has too...

/signed

2006-06-08T13:06:00.001-04:00

"It is not bigotry to define marriage as a union of a man and a woman," said Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas.
New York Times June 6, 2006

Okay it's no secret that I find the idea of defining marriage by gender is illogical. I just don't see why these two people can be in love and want to get married and that's okay with everyone, but these two other people over here can be in love and want to get married and suddenly a whole institution is being threatened.
Will my marriage be voided out and worthless because Mark married someone named Greg?

No.

But regardless where you come in on this issue this woman had a good point. If a Senator is going to attempt to define marriage perhaps he should know the standard definitions for other nouns as well. Like bigotry.

So I'm with Kathy. We should make sure our Senators know what they're talking about before they talk...or for that matter vote.

I've sent Senator Brownback the copy of Dictionary.com's definition for bigotry along with a copy of the article the quote is from (so he doesn't get more confused). And added a little of my own flare in the form of a large post-it note on the importance of vocabulary.

And I signed it Mrs. Katy ________.

Go here for more information about how to contact Senator Brownback. And remember to contact your own Senators and let them know what you think. Because I happen to know for a fact that Washington D.C. is far from any reality.

American Dream

2006-06-07T21:51:00.000-04:00

I grew up in America where, from an early age, I was told that if I was willing to work hard I could be whatever I wanted to be. "You can be anything you want when you grow up, even The President of the United States." That's what they told me. My parents told me that, my teachers told me that, girl scouts told me that. Heck, the Muppets told me that! All I had to do was work hard.

So I have. I started with the good grades, with the ambitious projects and the extracurriculars. I volunteered too, trusting that the people I helped then would be just as successful as I would be if they just got an extra hand up. A little extra help and hard work and we'd all roll right along. We could do anything, be anyone.

Then I moved on to working. Come in early, go home late. Get everything done on-time. Finish it all early. Anticipate problems, fix them before hand. Be reliable, dependable, responsible and organized. Work hard and don't complain. Be honest, Be trustworthy. Keep your nose to the grindstone and you'll be okay.

I didn't just think these things. I didn't just hear the catch phrases "Apply yourself" and "Work hard" and think "Hey, there's something to try." No. I believed it. I knew deep in my soul that the secret to life was working hard. I trusted in my grindstone the way people trust in God. Just apply more of yourself and you'll be okay. I was more than a good soldier - I was a devout soldier.

Which is why when I come to my office in the morning - turning on the lights as I do - I feel a crushing weight lying in my chest. When I turn on my computer and see all the things that have been left for me to do as my bosses frolic in Las Vegas or Paris or the beaches of Thailand, the weight grows heavier. As I toil on reports and presentations at lunch, the weight crushes my ribs. When I find myself suddenly alone in an office creating a new contract when moments before I was simply showing someone how to use a program...my back threatens to break.

But worst of all is knowing that no matter how hard I work. No matter what I do at my job now, no matter how great my resume is, how wonderful my references are - there will soon be no work. No work because after all the big salaries and the big airplane tickets and the price of food and gas there is no money for me.

And as I train five people to take over my one position - the weight crushes my faith. And that makes me mad.

Maybe it's because I was naive as a girl. Maybe I just needed to open my eyes more and realize that those people who were down on their luck didn't need a helping hand - they needed a regime change.

It makes me mad that I can work my ass off as hard as I want and still get laid-off...TWICE. I can have the best resume ever, and I can send it to everyone and their brother. But I will never be called.

Because hard work doesn't work. Applying yourself just means getting caught in the sticky mess other people make. Being honest means being expendable. Being helpful means being weak.

I'm 23. I'm smart, pretty, jaded, out-of-luck, in debt, educated, worn out, faithless and pissed off.

Just a thought

2006-06-05T15:49:00.000-04:00

It seems to me that you can watch the news every single day and every single day there will be a new story about the "Obesity Epidemic" in America. And invariably with every story there will be a little montage of people walking on the sidewalk who are overweight. Actually it's usually a montage of people's asses, and stomach, and legs, and usually one rotund woman stuffing her mouth with fries. Or some large man eating a burger in one gulp.

Ever wonder what it's like to be the guy shooting this stuff?

"Hey Mick! Go outside and film fat people."

"Again?!?!"

"Yeah, and make sure you get lots of butts. And a couple of people in shorts and tank-tops. The story is about cellulite - so remember - cankles sell!"

I'm sure when Mick was training to become a camera-man for a major news station his goal was to film endless b-roll of cankles. Miles and miles of cankles. Do they shell this stuff out to the interns? To the probby? Is it a hazing thing among the crew. You shoot good rolls of, well, rolls and you get move up to second position or something? And who edits this stuff? Whose job is it to sit in a dark room and pick just which cankle is scary enough to get the "Epidemic" message across, but not so scary that people turn off the t.v. during dinner?

Just wondering...

Look at all the people

2006-06-02T20:34:00.000-04:00

I have statcounter on this blog, so occasionally I can check to see if anyone comes here for longer than a minute.

Don't worry...no one does.

However on May 27th I saw this weird huge spike in new comers. Spike being 108 people rather than the two returning.

Where did these people come from? Did 108 people collectively realize that kitties are awesome? Did some horrible world event happen to them to make 108 people depressed and incapable of wallowing in the pit of despair that this blog lives in?

No. Something even more incredible. A rather accomplished blogger linked to me. Under a listing of D/s blogs. Which fills me with guilt that 108 people clicked on the link and were collectively...disappointed.

So to them - I'm sorry.

And to the accomplished blogger, thank you. No really, thank you. I'm too chicken to post on your blog, but I've always liked it. And always will.

And to the rest of you suckers who wound up here first...go to A Creative Spanko Wench instead. Because it's more fun.

Anyway, that's where all the people came from. And probably where they went back to.

Shoe Santa

2006-06-02T17:47:00.000-04:00

When one is in a class full of women who are wearing hard, plastic six-inch heels and rolling around on the floor, or climbing up poles, one is soon aware that eventually one is going to get a shoe to the face.

Especially is one is names Katy and has a history of getting kicked in the face.

One, well Katy-One, does not expect the shoe hitting her face to be her own.

But it was. A few weeks ago I was doing a particularly tricky tumble that ended up with me balanced on my right shoulder, arms out, head tucked and leg spread-eagle directly above me. It's a fun tumble and I highly recommend it for anyone who doesn't have a broken back...yet.

But just as my legs were swinging up and out I hear a great big SNAP. No, it wasn't my back. It was my shoe:

Which after going SNAP decided to fly off my foot and head directly for my face.

The worst part was not the shoe-shape bruise I sported for two days. The worst part was have to use my pole boots:

for chair dancing class. Why is this the worst part? You wear knee high pvc boots in a small windowless room with no a/c or fan and twenty other women...then do five hundred squats.

So I've been upset. I like my pole boots:

for pole class, but I want my stripper shoes:

for floor and chair class.

What's a girl to do?

Buy more shoes of course. And I did. And they came in the mail today. It's like Christmas in July in June!

I just wonder if I can wear these:

to work?

Now that's a clear connection...

2006-06-01T08:48:00.000-04:00

"Oh my god Katy, I'm 32 and I have tonsillitis!"

"Aww, Poor Jim! You're sick and you got stuck with me."

Jim is one of my favorite travel counselors. I am one of his most hated customers. Boss#2 does a lot of traveling and it's always complicated. The big joke is that the counselors screen for my name and avoid me like the plague. But apparently not like tonsillitis because Jim and I had just spent an hour hashing out three weeks worth of travel and now we're chatting about his penicillin dose.

"I know...I should have just jumped out the window instead." Jim says - probably jokingly.

We hang-up. I rub my throat sympathetically; glad I'm not the one working sick. But I've been really healthy, no flus, no colds, no near death emergencies. Generally I've been bright eyed and bushy tailed. I hate working sick, especially having to talk on the phone a lot. And I really hate being sick in the summer. Having a fever when it's cold outside is one thing, but having a fever when the heat has gone up to 80 and all you want to do is take a nap in the sunshine is just a cruel joke.

An hour after the call my throat feels funny. Sorta ticklish and tight. I attribute it to the Caesar dressing I had on my salad. I thought it tasted a bit more tangy that it should have.

Half and hour later I'm trying to force ice cubes down my throat before chewing them...just to numb the area. It feels good, but I keep choking. I have visions of lying dead in my cubicle and not being discovered till Boss#2 decided he needed another letter dictated. It both makes me sad that I'll die in a cubicle and happy that my Boss's lucky-bastard-gets-whatever-he-wants-cloud would burst.

I make it home anyway.

"You sound sick." My husband says helpfully.

"I'm not. I refuse to be sick. I will not be sick. Nothing and no one can make me sick 20 days before vacation. No!" Ah, hubris.

An hour later I'm curled under the blankets with a cat warming my chest and my head hidden under a pillow.

"Guess what!" My husband says cheerily.

"Mmmmmppphh." I respond.

"You're sick!"

But I was so healthy. I was surrounded by healthy people. I don't know anyone who has been sick or was getting sick. No one!

Except Jim. Jim with tonsillitis. Jim who I spoke to on the phone for two hours.

I have this memory of those commercials for a phone company: Reach out and touch someone.

But wash your hands first.

I AM

2006-05-31T11:07:00.000-04:00

It's dark, it's loud, it's packed with over 100 girls. Some of them are naked, some are clothed, all of us are drunk. We're currently screaming at a classmate to do "Love It or Hate It" on stage while singles go flying every direction. I barely hear the guy behind me asking if he can sit in the adjacent stool.

So he asks again - only this time he taps my shoulder.

"Can I have this seat?"

I know that a lot of guys get upset when girls are sarcastic and/or bratty...but honestly...why do they make it so dang easy for me. Questions like the above are just screaming for a smart-ass response. Must-make-joke...must-tease...willpower-draining....

"Sure!"

Willpower restored. I am a nice girl...really.

"I'm Rich, who are you?"

"Katy" I blurt.

He shakes his head like he can't hear me, and he probably can't. He leans in closer.

"Julie" He leans in again, this time confused. His hand has suddenly found mine and is doing that strange half handshake, half caress thing. He looks like he can't decide if he want to kiss my hand or break my fingers. It's creepy. I yell into his ear "Mary".

"I can't hear you!" He yells back before leaning in close enough that I can feel his breath down my neck. I'm sure he's getting a good view of cleavage from that position. I'm getting a good whiff of too much beer. "My name is Lacy!"

And if you believe that I have a bridge I can sell you. I am a semi-nice girl...really.

"I'm from England. I don't really know how to talk to you American girls. I really want to tell you that you're hot...but I don't know how."

I can't really tell if he actually is English. He either has an accent or he's just really drunk and slurring his words oddly. English or not his hand is beginning to worm it's way up my thigh.

"I'm sure you'll get the hang of it eventually"

"I would really like to sleep with you."

See, you already have the hang of it.

"Aw, that's nice Rich, but I'm married so I'm not going to sleep with you."

"What if I was more aggressive. I could change your mind."

Change my mind? You have to be pretty aggressive to go back in time four years and tell an excited bride that in four years time some guy in a strip club is going to tell her she's hot and fuckable and that she'll be sad she was married so she should call the whole thing off.

"You couldn't change my mind even if you were attractive!"

I am an occasional-nice girl

"Why don't we go out tonight?" He grabs me by my hips and pulls me off my chair and into him. I quickly disengage myself from the drunk semi-British man and push him away. Vaguely I wonder if this will turn into a bar fight. I size him up...I'm less drunk than he is, but I'm also about 100 lbs less person than he is. Throwing a punch would not be a good idea.

But it'd be fun.

I am a slightly mean girl.

I walk away and re-join my group of girls. We automatically form the patented "Cock-block Circle" and everything is fine till I feel fingers scratching at my back.

"Why do your friends hate me?" It's Rich...duh.

"You're a man."

I am just a plain brat.

"I'm buying drinks for all of you. You'll come and talk to me now."

"No amount of alcohol will make me want to talk to you."

I'm a bitch.

"I can change your mind." His hand grabs my ass and the other slides down into my jeans. I move before his fingers find anything else to scratch.

Fortunately I move right into a bouncer. Who unfortunately for Rich grabs him by the collar.

"Did he touch any of you girls?"

"No no," Rich mumbles "We're just dancing."

"He touch you?" Says Rich's new friend.

Rich looks at me pleadingly. I feel kind bad cause he had a pretty tight collar on to begin with. Then I don't feel all that bad cause my jeans were pretty tight too.

"Yep. He stuck his hands down my pants."

And Rich was gone. In amongst admonitions of "You don't touch my girls and you don't touch these girls" I hear Rich with a real British type accent:

"You Bitch!"

No. I am an American Bitch.

Inconvenience

2006-05-22T14:21:00.000-04:00

Living near the Capitol of my Country and the Residence of the Leader of the Free World, I expect a few kinks in the flow of transportation. I expect, when going down to D.C. and driving through the Diplomatic District that I may come across a few lags in traffic and possibly a closed road here or there. I am also used to finding the 95 has backed up the entrance to the 32 because our dear President decided to take his car out for a burger, or whatever it is he eats...puppies, small children, the dreams of small business owners...Oh wait - that's Dick Cheney.

Regardless, what I mean to say is I expect a little trouble to come into my life since I sometimes venture towards D.C. I can deal with this. Rather I be inconvenienced than have my country thrown into turmoil over a dead President. Take all the time you need to clear those streets boys...I'll wait.

However, I do not expect the President to muck up travel plans elsewhere. Like today. Today most of my supervisors were in some city in the Midwest somewhere. And all of them were headed home. Today, early. Operation Headed-Home was huge. Tons of people on different flights, all needing rides and tickets and directions and who knows what else. Everything was scheduled to the minute. From our command center on the East Coast we coordinated and moved 40+ whiny, picky, grouchy, timid little executives from hotels to cars to airports. And it was going swimmingly for a few hours.

When they closed the airports, and the freeways, and all the streets. And apparently Starbucks.

Why did they close all these very important things in a living, working, commercial city?

Because The President of the United States had come to town. He was gracing everyone with his prescence...and a speech on dining out.

I'd like to say that my company is important. I'd like to say that the work we do everyday helps people. I'd like to be able to say I'm a part of something important like feeding people around the world or distributing medicine. I would love to say that our company provides a service that is vital to the structure and economy of at least our country, if not the world. I'd like to say that, but it's not, I'm not and our goal is make money.

Or more to the point, spend it. On stupid things like meetings in Midwest Cities where everyone talks about dining out.

A luxury that a lot of people don't have.

And yet the President thought it'd be a good idea to disrupt commerce, airlines and my freaking Monday by talking about something that only effects the privileged few. Like he doesn't have anything better to do!

I got news for you jack...most of my bosses didn't vote last time...but I did...and I AM TAKING NOTES!

The irony of this whole thing is during the hub-bub and craziness of rearranging flights and hotels and cars I knew something that very few people get to know. Where the President is that day. Well I knew, and a couple thousand people who heard him speak. Yet, though I was privy to this special information, though I could say without a doubt what the Leader of the Free World, a man I have never met, was and what he was doing at that very moment....I lost my boss.

Poof.

Can't find him.

Left a few thousand messages, called his wife, called his dog, had a maid break-in his door. Still don't know where he is. And I bet he's screening my phone calls.

Bet the Secret Service doesn't have that problem.

Enter at Your Own Risk

2006-05-19T15:50:00.000-04:00

Today I went to work in a pair of jeans and my sorta beat-up tennis shoes.

All so I could fulfill the "Other Duties" part of my job description. The "other duty" being packing all the files in all 90 of our file cabinets into little tiny boxes.

And it's not that I mind either. I like doing physical stuff. Every so often I want to climb into the recess hole near the attic and search for old easels and files marked "Beef Confirmation 1997". I don't mind filing thousands upon thousands of reports into boxes. As an organization fetishist I enjoy looking at large piles of brown boxes all in a row. It's like a garden, a garden of spreadsheets.

But for some reason my cube is always the basis of operations for things like this. And because all the boxes and lids and pens and copies and rulers and coffee ends up on my desk, so do all the mismatch things that can't fit or don't go in the pretty storage boxes.

My cube is where things come to spawn and die.

This morning I had a few expense reports, a couple of lunch trays, and a few contracts.

This afternoon I have a dry-erase board, a lamp-shade, four cups of cold coffee, three copies of "Introduction to Access 2002", photocopies of "Powerpoint Intermediate 2002", seven Employee Handbooks from five years back, a book of Company Profits - also from five years back, someone's jacket, a book on leadership, a broken printer, ten expired markers and a box full of foam peaches.

And a partridge in a pear tree!

Well hopefully not.

Yet, as I continue to work at this desk for the next 30 days I'll just leave all this crap in here. And gain more, accumulate this and that and the other until finally my boss will come barge in, trip over the kitchen sink and crack his skull open on the sharp edge of the page holder that has no pages in it.

One can hope.

New Trick

2006-05-18T09:54:00.000-04:00

I discovered a new trick last night. I realized, quite spontaneously, that I can tap dance in knee-high, 6-inch heel boots. Not just tap dance, but do a traveling triple time-step AND a little soft shoe.

Sometimes life throws you a good surprise.

Flirt-Power!

2006-05-15T09:30:00.000-04:00

As a young girl of hormonal-age I was surprisingly not boy crazy. I was so "not-boy-crazy" that my Father, of all people, would often throw his hands in the air and cry "I sure hope you get interested in boys soon!" I'd often get thrown by this comment. Was I supposed to be interested in boys already? What was there to be interested in? What was the whole boy draw? As far as I could tell they spent most of their time jumping off things and blowing stuff up. I was so worried that I wasn't into boys that for awhile I thought I may in fact be a complete and total lesbian.

Interestingly enough, my girlfriends did the same things my boyfriends did - meaning they all jumped off things and blew stuff up - I'm not sure if that means I'm naturally attracted to pyromaniacs or that my significant others were naturally attracted to girls who had a morbid sense of entertainment.

Now, however, at the age where I should have a handle on my hormones I am decidedly boy-crazy. Not just boys, but men, older, younger, tall, short, dark hair, light hair...if it moves...I'm interested.

I'm not sure where this came from. I'd like to think I found myself. Tapped into that inner female-ness that makes men want to crawl through the mud. To get to me - of course. I'd like to think that my self-confidence has allowed me to open up, be brazen and guilt-free about my attraction. Through my growth as an individual I have accepted all facets of my personality, both intellectually and physically. I am woman, I am sexual, hear me roar!!!

I'd like to say all these things - but I'm probably just a narcissistic flirt.

Not that I'm going to apologize. Because it's fun. And honestly I've gone too many years being quiet and shy and reserved. Unsexual and undemanding. If I think you have a cute butt...I'm inclined to make my preference known. Probably by pinching it.

Deal with it.

This is all by way of an announcement to the participants of the Spring Micro-Brew Festival this Saturday. To the men with the Honey Beer who thought I was a stripper, to the boys selling t-shirts who were overly interested in the pockets of my jeans, to the guy who thought I should be buying an xtra-small pair of panties (yes, that's what I said!) rather than small, and most importantly to the pirate who liked my smile and had a very nice...dagger:

It wasn't the beer, it was all for you. You go ahead and keep looking at my boobs boys, I'll keep looking at you!

New Rules for Work

2006-05-08T21:13:00.000-04:00

Dawn Marie posted about some story involving mice and cheese. I really like that story - thanks Dawn.

But that reminds me of a place my husband hatched the other day. From here on in all office should have mandatory naptimes. Preferably on those bamboo mats we had in Hawaii. (I like those mats.) But regardless of sleeping arrangements naps must be had.

Followed by juice.

Apple juice.

And cookies.

And now cheese too.

Today at a very serious interview when I was finally stumped for a question to ask like "So what would my expense account be?" or some such crap I was tempted to ask:

"Do you have nap time? And is there anywhere to keep my Shera Thermos of apple juice cold?"

I am two hands, two feet, one nose, and two ears old. I am alllll grown-up!!!

Transient

2006-05-04T14:42:00.000-04:00

What are you going to do?

That's the question that invariably slips past every persons lips now a days. As we start to count down the days till we are officially all "Laid-off" or "Asked to Leave" the nail-biting is starting. My co-workers come and whisper at me trying to find out my plan. Someone them just want to gloat because they found something, some of them want to know if I have any leads but can't bring themselves to ask. Can't bring themselves to beg. And some of them are just glad that there is someone else out there as miserable as they are.

What am I doing? Same as always. Pack up my stuff (a F1 Poster, a model of a Mini Cooper and a peach shaped stress-ball my boss gave me last month) and move on to my next job. It's not like I haven't done it before. This is the way it's always been. At least to me. Find a job, make some money, then leave. Whether it be a company decision, or your own, nothing is going to last.

But here, on the East Coast, in this company - everything is different. No one leaves, whole families live in the same town. No one leaves the state. And they work for the same company for years, for lifetimes. My cube mate is ending a career of 22 years with our company. He thought he'd be here forever. Some people have been here longer. I can't imagine living in the same state for 5 years, much less with the same company.

Who is the naive one here? I don't believe anything will last, I don't think that the companies I work for will be around for very long. Or if they do they won't need me for long. They're sand-castles paid with seashells. I want to grab up as many shells as I can before the exchange rates go down. But here, the steadfast Marylanders believe that a Corporation is a thing of stone, a mountain that will not be moved.

Is it because my generation is used to change? We grew up using virtual tools. Everything we had was ethereal, intangible. Friends were made of text and relationships were lightening quick - and fleeting. Even in the real world we grew up knowing that marriage wasn't forever, parents didn't have to take care of their kids if they didn't want too, and home wasn't safe. Nothing inside or outside of technology was lasting, so of course as adults we can't trust that our livelihood's would be guaranteed.

Or maybe it's because my generation is used to surplus? Yes this company is growing smaller, is replacing me with lower-wage workers in India and an intelligent software that can talk. But no matter, there is work elsewhere. I'll get a job. It will never be a good job, I'll never be able to hold a good salary, but I'll have work, and money and proceed to spend it on my car payments. For every business that fails there are five more willing to take their place. And when they fail more will come in. There is always more.

And yet, maybe it would be nice to have less, but have it for longer.

So then I might know what I was going to do.

Our Chinese Lady

2006-04-10T17:40:00.000-04:00

I don't know why this is but for some reason when life is getting to that super crazy point fate has to give you that one little thing that is so utterly disturbing and absurd that you can only just stand there and think "Why me".

Our life has reached one of those points.

A few weeks ago my husband, spending sometime at home while he was recuperating from such and such thing and currently between jobs came downstairs in his boxers to get himself a soda.

Instead of finding a beverage he found a small chinese woman sitting on our couch eating cookies.

The call I got at work went something like "There is someone in our house." "Like one of "Roomates" friends?" "No." "Well did you call the police." "No." "Who is it?" "She doesn't speak."

In fact she did speak, she spoke three words of english and a lot of chinese. But yeah, she didn't actually say anything, no matter how nicely my husband and my roommate entreated her.

Then she picked up some shopping bags she had brought with her and left.

The cops, typically, showed up two minutes later.

It was a tense and rather absurd day that broke up the rest of our tense and not-so-absurd life. And we puzzled over it a little while till life popped back up and started to bury us again. My looming unemployment, my husbands new job, taxes, bills, health. All the things that you end up doing while life is happening elsewhere. Like laundry.

Till today, tired and grouchy from a long day at work I drive into my garage and see someone standing in my front door.

It doesn't look like anyone I know. And it's not.

It's a small chinese woman walking out of my house with a bunch of groceries.

I had a brief moment of ridiculousness as I jogged alongside her down our driveway trying to get an answer from her.

"Hey, hey, wait, do you need help? Want me to call someone? Need a ride somewhere? Hello? Can you hear me?" I'm panting and realizing that she hasn't even looked at me. It's as if I wasn't even there. I'm not sure I could simply ignore a woman running in heels and yelling at me like that. Especially if it was a woman who happened to live in the house that I had just invaded.

Regardless we got the end of the driveway and she walked past me. I could really justify chasing her down the street.

When I returned to the house I asked my roommate who the woman was.

"What woman?"

I was going to answer him, but really can I be certain there was a woman? I doubt she could be certain there was a Katy.

Instead I just showed my roommate how to lock the door...again.

Sheesh - Why me?

Vague

2006-04-03T18:09:00.000-04:00

When I was ten years old my friend Ellie who was very tall and had very long, very red hair showed me a strip in a comic book.

It was a big, coffeetable sized anthology of some Japanese graphic novel partially translated to english and there was a boy antagonist who was doing strange Japanese type heroic stuff that antagonists do in Japanese graphic novels.

Anyway he and his cohorts of unknown species found an egg. A big egg. And it hatched and this dragon-y thing came out and said "Zilla!"

So they asked it a bunch of questions like what is your name and how many fingers am I holding up and it kept answering "Zilla!". So the boy hero, who now that I think about it had blue hair, asked the monster:

"Are you a god, Zilla?"

And then there was something about directing the monster to a big Tokyo-like city to get some food.

I don't know why I thought of that...

(As a side note when I spellchecked this post the checker suggested I enter "Silly" instead of "Zilla". Not really sure what that means either.)

Empty Coffeetable

2006-03-31T21:50:00.000-05:00

Today I had to pick up boring wife stuff at the store. And instead of picking up the razors and toothpaste that we need I turn 360 and grab - The DaVinci Code.

In the supermarket. Between diapers and condoms.

And herein lies the real problem. People I know, people I work with, don't know I'm a reader. They seem surprised that I have read every single Jane Austen novel three times, and almost have all of Shakespeares tragedies memorized - and half of the comedies. They about drop dead when I mention articles I've read in the newspaper.

I wasn't sure why people didn't know I didn't read. A quick look in my car will reveal a pile of books for "on the go emergencies" and a bunch of papers with lists of books I need to find and read. Likewise my side of the bed looks like a bookcase threw up. So why don't people know I read?

Because you can't lay a copy of a pretentious, fad-y, smug, semi-religious novel on a coffee table when it's in paperback form and has a big $2.99 with Safeway Club Card" sticker covering the title.

Well you can't unless your thong is drapped over it...and then you're not the "book girl" anymore.

Fifteen Minutes with a Pornstar

2006-03-14T14:42:00.000-05:00

"So, at the concert people kept coming up to these women, who you know, were very very - nice to look at. They were hot. Real hard bodies. But people kept taking pictures with them..."

My boss is on minute three of his story about something that happened on his last trip south. So far he's talking about some random concert and describing every single person there. Well every single woman. And honestly I think I should feel flattered. Finally he's comfortable enough with me to talk about women in front of me, almost as if I was one of the boys. The thing is I'm not one of the boys, I'm a girl, a girl still wearing her wool coat and holding a bag full of melting cheesecake. And still the story goes on.

"So I like to play, you know I like to play, so I go down to the casino and start me off with a Ketel One..."

I always wonder why people need to give me a run down of every drink they have had. Even when the story has nothing to do with the alcohol, they still insist on telling me at what point they ordered a Irish Car Bomb and when they switched from rum to vodka. My boss especially, now knowing that I happen to be something of a micro-brew connoisseur, will tell me exactly what he had at each party, each bar, each club. Is this something people do to embellish the story? Or is it the equivalent of dropping names? Status isn't implied by who you know, or what you're wearing? Now it's all about what kind of vodka is in your martini?

"And then this really tall Jamaican woman comes up. And she's wearing these boots that make her tall too. Just high heels and the front has a few inches added..."

He continues to describe the boots and I toy with the idea of telling him I know what kind he's talking about because I have a pair of black patent leather platform boots and clear plastic platform heels in my trunk right now. I bet it would shorten the story, but it'd probably shorten my employment status too - so I bite my tongue and watch the strawberry on his cheesecake melt onto his desk. It's getting hot in this office...

"...and the bartender isn't paying attention so I help her order a..."

Here we go again...

"...we're talking and her friend comes over, another real tall beautiful girl, she comes and sits on the other side of me. And the first girl her name is Kia and her friends name is Mercedes..."

My head snaps up. Did it just get five times hotter in this office? Kia and Mercedes? Kia and Mercedes two girls in platform shoes and scanty outfits? Is my boss about to tell me about how two, not one but two, hookers tried to pick him up over a glass of Ketel One?

"...and I say 'I feel like I'm in a used car dealership'. They thought that was hilarious..."

Oh I bet they did.

"Then Kia says 'You don't know who I am? I'm a pornstar.'"

Yep, it's definitely hotter in this office. Suddenly I don't care about the cheesecake or my coat, my boss has a story filled with mistaken identities and embarrassing situations. He also has a lot of information on the latest Hustler shoot. I get the whole skinny.

"That is the coolest thing I've ever heard." I finally exclaim at the end.

"It's not cool. It was horrible. Can you imagine if you found out your husband spent the night with pornstars?"

I think about all the pictures of naked ladies from my husbands last deployment and the late night call he made to me after he had accidentally stumbled into an Australian Sex Club "Katy...you'll never believe what they did on stage!"...

I think I'd be okay with it.

In fact I think it'd be pretty cool. I would love to spend the evening talking to someone with an interesting job like that. Especially since they were so forthcoming with the particulars. I could come up with a hundred questions. I toyed with the idea of asking my boss some of them...but I think that might have gone over worse than the stripper shoes in my car.

But nonetheless I'd still like to know.

Are their fluffers for girls as well as guys?

Is kissing better than sex?

Do you ever actually feel truly sexy when you're having sex? On camera? Off camera?

When you're off camera do you feel the need to perform like a pornstar?

How do you keep your nipples erect if you're not turned on?

How many takes per scene do you do?

Do you ever yell out the wrong name?

What's the most fun part of being in a porn?

Does fore-play really matter?

Come to think of it does size?

Do you ever get sick doing it upside down?

and finally...

Why did you choose to sit next to my boss?

You know we're right

2006-03-06T15:38:00.000-05:00

Seattle is gray and overcast, like always, and we're driving through another random neighborhood listening to the radio and searching for something out of my boyfriend's past.

The radio is playing Nirvana's "You Know You're Right" for the first time ever. The next day headlines will be about Courtney Love's anger at the song being released before she wanted it too. And how independent radio stations are filled with delinquent, criminal, losers. Of course they're right, but as the spot in between each consecutive playing of "You Know You're Right" says:

"Fuck you Courtney Love, we have the new Nirvana song!"

My boyfriend is giddy over the fact that they are playing the song ten times in a row. Then choosing the song for the "Top of the Day" and playing it ten times more. After Number 17 I'm getting a little sick of Kurt's whining. But my guy is busy railing against the machine that is ClearChannel and revelling in the big middle finger "the man" just got.

Weeks later, when we have finally tied the knot he buys the CD and plays the song over and over again. Since Seattle I've had my fill of both Nirvana and Salmon. I look over at him and wonder if we are matched as well as we think we are.

A little over three years later and Maryland is sunny and chilly. We're driving through fields and farms, looking at cows and searching for a winery out amongst dairy-land.

I have a Broadway Show soundtrack in my CD changer that I spent a good portion of the week prior wearing out. Driving to and from work, switching between two songs I really liked, replaying them over and over. Bothering no one but myself. My husband found the CD when he was taking my car for a spin.

Now as I count the number of horses and look out for bare grapevines my husband is playing one song over and over again, listening to it, then flipping it to the beginning before the next song changes.

It's the same song I was listening to the week before.

I may have had my fill of Nirvana's missing song and Broadway's leading man belting out hell-fire, but I'm not annoyed. I'm happy. I'm floating. My head feels a little disconnected, the same way I felt the first day I met him.

We really are a good match. We really do belong together. It's a nice feeling.

Somebody Else's Story

2006-03-01T15:29:00.000-05:00

We're in the pole class again. The cute blonde in front of us is talking about the Level 1 class and showing off her fancy spins. I'm wearing stripper shoes and she's taller than me without them. Her clothes look adorable on her and her hair, after an hour lesson, looks perfect. When we stretch me and my girlfriend look like pretzels folding the wrong way on the pole. She looks like some exotic rainforest animal just hanging out for a nap. I'm a little surprised that I'm not harboring fantasies of kicking her mid-spin. Must be the calming effect of the disco ball.

We break and as I and another woman start laughing about vacuuming in our platform shoes the cute blonde bounces over to my girlfriend.

"Do you remember me?!" She chirps.

I watch the group for a while. My "girlfriend" is actually a lot older than me. Her oldest son is only two years younger than me. The cute blonde is more my age. I'm trying to place where they may have met. Apparently so is my girlfriend because her face is a puzzle for a few moments before her eyes light up in shock and she remember.

"Well of course I do!" she babbles, they hug, then my attention is pulled away again by my fellow shoe wearer. We talk about San Diego, the army base, the teacher and before I know it, it's time to get going. I've missed all of the cute blondes conversation with my girlfriend, but I'm not in the dark long.

"I can't believe I met her here."

"Who was that?" I ask as we roll up our mats and get our coats.

"That was my son's ex-girlfriend!"

I look around at the room filled with gold poles, red walls, and a fancy disco ball at the top and can't help but start laughing.

"The IM's are going to go crazy tonight!" She says as she starts giggling with me. "Guess where I saw so-and-so's mom last night!"

"He's gonna be mortified." I say, thinking aloud of the boy going to college and giving his mother no end of trouble as he does.

Sure enough the next morning my girlfriend gets an email and announces it to all of us in her area. It's from her son.

"Mom...you're not really taking a....that class. Are you?"

In a surprisingly sassy moment my very reserved, very sweet co-worker zaps back the email:

"Well you knew I was looking for a new job!"

------

I wonder if her kids will stop letting her play with me cause I'm a bad influence on their Mom.

Women's Lib

2006-02-24T13:02:00.000-05:00

My girlfriend and I are taking "stripper" classes for fun. A little lapdance, a little crawling on the floor and few spins on the pole. Once again I find I am a natural at the ultra difficult moves on the pole. I can swing and hook and swivel in 6 inch heels with the best of them...yet still can't put a car into shift fast enough to go up a hill (rather than down and backwards).

Sitting with my hunny and eating chicken I'm thinking about how much fun it was to swing around that golden pole and snake all over the place.

"What would you think if I stripped for awhile after I lose my job?"

"Huh?"

Clearly my husband hasn't been sharing in my pole day-dream. Pity.

"Just for a little while. My friend in San Diego did it after she bought her boobs, to pay them off, and she said is was the most fun she's ever had." (Well it was a friend of a friend, but she did buy boobs, and she did strip to pay for them.)

"Have I ever told you no?" My husband says a tad more seriously than fits a conversation like this.

"You've never said no, you've just likened what I wanted to do to the act of someone really stupid."

"No I haven't." sigh Sometimes I wish I had tape recordings of all the conversations we've had so I could point out what he thought of my University of Phoenix idea, I believe the word asinine and incompetent were applied. Not to me, but to those who had the same idea as me. That is till he decided he wanted to try it too...then it was a good idea.

Men.

"Don't strip, bad stuff happens and I don't want you with that crowd."

"But the girls I know are pretty down to earth."

"I've never said no to anything, but this is as close as I'll get to saying no."

And he says I'm passive-aggressive.

"You don't really want to strip anyway right? You're just trolling."

I think about this. I really do like dancing and I loved performing, but then it lacks a certain something that real dance and drama had. It lacks a certain type of theatrics.

"Well I'd like burlesque."

"Yeah that was cool, you could do that. But not a strip club...besides the ones here are sleazy."

That's true, strip clubs on the east coast have a kind of boys in the back room/these are my cousins' panties kind of a vibe.

"So not stripping, but burlesque, if someone started a burlesque."

"Yeah, you could do that. You'd be good at it."

Later, after chicken, he's getting ready for a haircut or something as I play with the kitty. He looks at me worriedly.

"You're not really gonna strip are you?"

"No," I say while I rub the kitty's tummy, "I'm not going to strip."

However, I think, I do reserve the right to remove my clothes in public!

Delusions of Grandeur

2006-02-15T16:04:00.000-05:00

"We are setting it all to you!" ,two of my co-workers cry gaily as they barge into my hallway of a cubicle.

"What do you need?" I ask, my standard response to everything including "Good Morning" and "How ya doing?" I just know they want something.

"We found a room at the conference!" My third tier boss almost crows at how adept he is in procuring rooms in hotels. I bite my tongue before I mention that one, hotels are made for renting rooms and two, we already had a room booked.

"It's free!" He crows again. I smile and look over at his accomplice. He's smirking - there's a catch.

"Well the room is free. But we have to pay for the furniture." Ah, that's why he's smirking.

"And how big is it? How many people?" My head is already calculating the price of chairs, tables, dry erase boards. I have a brief fantasy of giving my bosses a few deer skins and some poles and letting them set up tee-pees but it's rudely crushed with a different fantasy.

"It's ***** sq. ft. My idea," my boss says, "is that all we really need is a really tall chair at the back of the room. Then I could just sit on it and when our vendors came in they could kneel in a long line."

"You want to hold court? In a convention center?"

"Exactly. All we need is a chair, and a red carpet."

I'm going to Burger King later, I think, I'll be sure to get you a crown too.

Honestly...now he's a King? Give them a window office and they'll take a whole country.

Bad Calls

2006-02-06T13:31:00.000-05:00

No one could call me a football fan. Last year was the first time I ever actually watched the Super Bowl with any interest. I lived in San Diego when the show blew through there...and I had no idea what was going on.

However, this year I watched. This year I paid quite a bit of attention.

I never knew the referees were supposed to be playing for a team.

Next year I don't think I'll watch. Baseball has drugs, Football has politics. The new American Past Time? Yugiyo Tournaments.

Don't pitch the...psycho

2006-02-06T11:03:00.000-05:00

For a trailer it's very nice. Bouncy sales people with spiked hair run around offering people water and coffee. The couch is leather and the t.v. is currently projecting a picture of Nemo large enough to give me nightmares about guppies for the rest of my life.

C. is filling out the requisite form. As is the case with most of these business things my name has gone from Katy So-and-So to Mrs. So-and-So and we are collectively (though not inclusively) 30 yrs. old and male. That's the way I like it.

The forms are filled out. What level of fitness are you? Where do you live? What are you looking for? Apparently we're looking for a salesman because the bubbly little girl with our clipboard lost the first one. Finally we sit down with someone I think is named Robin. I cross my legs demurely, fold my coat over my lap and get comfy for the pitch.

"So, what are you here for C. and Kathy?" asks the questionably named Robin. We're both stumped.

Uh...aren't you supposed to tell us? I think. I ignore the fact that he got my name wrong...for now.

"We're looking for a gym." C. says. Maybe it's a guy thing. Maybe Robin is playing the snake in the grass, pretending to be guided before easily pushing us towards the plan that'll get him the best commission.

"So, have you been to our website?" Robin asks cheerfully.

"Yes." Mr. So-and-So answers for both of us.

"Okay, so what do you want to sign up for?"

Uh, I think again aren't you supposed to tell us that part too?

"Well, we had some confusion about the different plans." C. says - clearly cueing Robin in to give us the schpeel.

"Do either of you do yoga?" Apparently it's not a guy thing. Robin is thick as a post.

"I do." I pipe up.

"Do you have a 'I love yoga' bumper sticker?"

"No."

"Get the sports plan." Robin says.

That was it? That's your pitch?

"Let's sign you up then!" Robin says cheerfully, beginning to type in the name Kathy...whoever the hell she is.

"Well I'd like to know what we're getting." I say, I think rather diplomatically.

"If you saw the website you saw it all. Basically if you don't want one on one yoga then you don't need the Premium package. So, sign you guys up?"

"Okay." my husband says.

My head snaps around and I think Robin can hear my hair whizzing past him dismissively. I know why C. said yes, and I agree with it and am ready to sign up, but I am not ready to just hand this spiky-haired-name-messing-up bozo my credit card with a smile.

"Should I leave you two alone?" Robin says, giving my husband a smile that says 'Dude, tough wife you have there'. I'm pissed off. I'm not mad at my husband, I'm mad at Robin. You must be single I think to myself.

"No. This is fine. What do we get with this membership?" I say, folding my hands on the table and leaning forward.

"Uh, if you read the website...."

"What machines do you have? What classes can I take? Do I have to pay extra? How many machines do you have? What are the peak hours? When do you open? When do you close? How many teachers are there? How many bikes do you have? How big is the pool?" I look at him and he smirks. We back and forth, he answers derisively. It's ironic because I can tell he doesn't know the answers to any of it, but he's acting as if he's in with a big joke with my husband. Isn't it cute how she's pretending to play hardball. The way she pretends she can mix with the men. Isn't the little Kathy silly?

My name is Katy - Jackass!

Finally he calls in reinforcements. A lady comes over and gives me the entire class schedule, rattled off by heart.

"I should be careful what I ask her," Robin oozes "she gives too much information." He's laughing as she walks away.

"It was just what I wanted. I was asking for information." I say smoothly. If my pen was sharper I'd tear out his eye.

We sign up, we fill out the forms and take our receipt. It takes three more tries but Robin finally types in the name Katy for Kathy.

Before I walk out the door I ask the girls at the receptionist desk for a copy of their rules and regulations. Dress code, behavior, etc. Just so I know what to do when I come in for my first workout. No surprises. She rushes back to a manager to get it for me. As they walk up the paper, with all the information I asked for laid out in pretty, well worded efficiency I hear Robin's voice waft over to me.

"Who wants what? Oh I remember her...the psycho one."

Psycho indeed...wait till I see your sorry butt in kickboxing class "Robin".

Go somewhere else

2006-02-02T08:46:00.000-05:00

Believe it or not I am actually a published author. So, no, I don't have a book out there or anything, but I do have a few stories that wound up here and there.

When I was sixteen I won a trip to the Maui Writers Conference. Which is - huge. Big. Really big. The conference at least. The trip was thirty minutes.

Anyway, I heard a lot of crap when I was there, a lot of people who were trying to be self-important. But there were a few people who really said something amazing. Something that smacked sense into even the stupidest wannabe writers. It was a rare thing at a conference filled with thousands of writers.

It's been non-existant in a world filled with people who think books are a low-tech version of blogs.

Except today one of those trendy ones came out with something profound. Maybe it's because it has hints of the things I heard at the Writer's Retreat. Maybe it's because it has more hints of that passion that drives the really good writers. But I really like this guys post. He nailed it.

More Book Thoughts

Doldrums

2006-02-01T11:50:00.000-05:00

This Saturday I went from being a dark, sallow, tired looking brunette to a bright, glowing, still tired looking red head. With highlights...like blonde highlights.

It looks good.

However, it didn't exactly perk me up as much as I thought. I grew up hearing those little gems like "blondes have more fun" and "redheads have spark" not to mention "change your hair, change your life" (variations include "change your dress, change your life" "change your shoes, change your life" and more recently "change your lipstick, change your life"). But even though I was now a sparky-redhead with a change life, I felt depressed.

School is back on the back burner. Though it's beginning to simmer at least. Work is still drudgery, made more druge-like by the fact that friends are getting let go left and right and everyone is either scared or sad. And my house, has white walls. Lots and lots of white walls.

It's been a long winter.

I'm now longing to take my peppy, springtime hair-do into the sunshine. I wanna go jogging. Jogging in the warm sunlight, not the cold and scary darkness along a road where you know you're gonna get run over by the moron going 55mph in a residential area. (By the way, what is it with joggers who have to jog on the side of the road even though there is a wide and smooth sidewalk not two feet to the right of them? Unless you can run faster than my turbo charged silver audi...MOVE OVER!) I wanna go play! I wanna go do something fun. I want to go out and dance, or listen to music. Or go skating! Or biking! I want to do something. I'm tired of talking to my mother on the phone and saying "Well I go to work, then I come home, I read."

I want to have some purpose, some direction. I want, in short, something to completely concentrate on obsessively until people start thinking I'm a little scary for being so into it.

And beer just isn't going to cut it.

I got the hair thing down, now I just need to work on the life thing.

Why I Argue

2006-01-31T14:22:00.000-05:00

It was Chinese New Year in second grade. We had all made our pretty red envelopes ready. Each of us had a piece of the creamy hard candy and now we were learning about the Chinese New Year Calendar and how some people are roosters and some people are dogs and some people are dragons.

"What year were you born in?" My teacher, a large Hawaiian woman who always wore truly horrible muu-muu's, asked my classmate Kyle.

"Uh...82?" Kyle squeaked out.

"Right, so according to this chart you were born in the year of the dog. The dog is known to be very honest and attentive. They listen more than talk and they make the best friends. Dog people are very hard-workers."

I listened to the whole thing about the dog, I read the paragraph, I thought it sounded a lot like me.

"Now, all of you need to research which sign you are. Look up the year you were born and then find out if you are a rooster or a dog or a rat. Then write a paragraph about the year you were born in."

There was a scramble and pile of kids in front of the big Chinese Sign with the Calendar and years printed on it. I hung back for a second, slowed by a need to not be crushed and a nagging thought in the back of my brain. The whole class was in second grade.

I looked over at one of my best friends who was also sitting and waiting. Mahealani was the same age I was.

Kyle was the same age Mahealani was.

If we were all in the second grade, and we were all the same age...

A couple kids bounced back to our table:

"I'm a dog too!"

"So am I. We're the same."

"Cool. Mazelle is a dog too."

None of the kids at my table save Mahealani were hard workers. I knew that for a fact. And Mazelle was definitely not a good friend. She lived down the street from me and was my first friend when we moved to Hawaii. She was now regarded as both dumb and the cruelest girl to ever live. She never listened and was really mean. She was definitely not like a dog person.

"What are you?" my table-mate asked.

I looked at the mess of kids still clambering at the sign. I finally figured out that nagging feeling that was in the back of my brain. "I'm a dog." I replied.

"No you're not, you don't even know, you didn't even go look."

"I'm a dog." I said again and then looked at the floor knowing I was about to get all the attention of the class very soon. I concentrated on getting my pencil out and my note book so I could write my paragraph.

"Mrs. Salazar!!!! {Katy} didn't go look at the board but she's writing her paper already!" The typical little traitor yelled.

"{Katy} what lunar year are you?" The monster in the muu-muu asked.

"I'm a dog." I repeated, fully aware that she was yelling across the room at me and now everyone was very interested.

"Did you look at the sign to find out?" She boomed?

"No, I'm the same as Kyle." I said matter-of-fact.

"Just because Kyle is a dog doesn't mean you are. You have to look on the sign."

"We're the same age. I was born in 1982 too." I hadn't argued with a teacher before. This was new and scary territory.

"{Katy} go up to the sign and look up your year."

The territory was too scary. I walked up to the sign, looked at the year 1982 and saw a picture of a dog. Everyone's eyes were following me and the laughs weren't even hidden.

"I'm a dog." I told her.

"Good. Now why don't you write about what it means to be a dog."

What it means to be a dog? After that day it meant arguing for your point, if only to get the idea out there. Even if it's wrong...at least there is discussion of information over censorship. At least there is another way to look at things. After that day being a dog meant chewing on the hand that fed you till you got the food.

Kung Hee Fat Choy!

Whatcha Reading?

2006-01-30T13:13:00.000-05:00

Books in the pile on my bedside table right now:

Emma - Jane Austen
The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Body Art: A History - Unknown
Rue Morgue Magazine
Shakespeare: A Biography - Peter Akroyd
Moliere - Collected Works - Moliere (duh)
The Chronicles of Narnia Completed Set - C.S. Lewis
Anthem - Ayn Rand
Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach

Spooky

2006-01-26T09:36:00.000-05:00

We have a large door that is made of glass. It looks out onto our deck and the huge lawn beyond. During the day when it's sunny and pretty you can sit in the den and watch deer splash around in the "crik" and eat our glass.

At night the doors are pitch black and mostly reflect what's inside the house. This is disconcerting, especially when I'm sitting on the floor watching something like "Masters of Horror" at midnight on a Friday. During these times I have to turn my back to the door and focus on the t.v. completely. Sometimes throwing a blanket over my head scarf style so I won't look at the large gapping holes of black opening out into the abyss. Maybe it's the scary movies, or the freaky music, or the fact I'm sitting downstairs, alone in an empty house while the "men" are upstairs and wouldn't care even if they could hear me scream but my mind goes wild over the glass doors.

I am always frightened that some night or other I will look at the slate of shiny black and suddenly see a disembodied head come out of the gloom. I'm sure this head won't actually be disembodied. In fact I'm sure it's very bodied, complete with a fully bodied, bloody knife ready to hack me into several tiny pieces.

Last night we weren't watching "Masters of Horror". People on the television weren't screaming and the nice warm fire accompanied by the nice warm husband allowed me to let me glass-door-guard down. Instead I was settling in to hear my husband tell about another plan to relive his boyhood. (A horror story in and of itself.)

"It'd be cool. I can get some black powder and a bunch of pipe..."

GASP!

Suddenly, something at the bottom of the glass door caught my attention. Rising up from the ground, outside in the cold, wintery, dark was something round. Something white. From far into the reaches beyond human sight it moved close to the glass. Features came into view, a nose, a mouth - both small. Surrounded by a dingy sort of white halo making a face. Inches away from a door that lead straight into my home. And finally, two large, glowing eyes. It peered into our house through the thin glass, fog came from it's breath. It heard me gasp...

My hand flew to my mouth. My heart jumped into my throat and pounded away. I sat straight as an arrow and trembled as it's red, firey eyes turned towards me. We met one another's gaze. I could feel my breath come back and warm the hand covering my lips, I could see the face turn just slightly to get a better look at me. It's features were placid, but the eyes showed a look of equal surprise to my own. Then...

"Kitty!!!"

My husband finally turned his head to look at the specter haunting our doorway. The white fluffy cat looked at us both in confusion as if it were surprised there were people in the big house. His hair was damp but fluffed up from the wind and the storm. It's ears were barely visible through all the fur and it's white face looked ghostly and pale surrounded by the dark night.

It looked between us a few more times, it's big glowing eyes growing larger and larger - then it took off into the yard.

So much for burly, tough axe murderers. They're all a bunch of pussy cats.

The Cars Who Lunch

2006-01-23T14:01:00.000-05:00

I work in an area with lots of large office buildings. The economy being what is it (whatever that means) there are a lot of office buildings that are not filled and even more parking lots that remain empty.

Well mostly empty. From the periods of 8am to 12pm and again at 1pm and 5pm the parking lots look desolate and sad.

But when noon rolls around the parking lots look populated but no less sad. Noon is when the cubicle dwellers become the car dwellers, again, for an hour.

It's no different than the bench lunchers you find in more urban settings but we suburban/industrial-lites have taken the requisite twelve-inch-barrier minimum to the next level.

When we lunch we have to be at least one parking space and a few easy-listening stations away from eachother.

When I worked in New York you'd hit a deli or a street stand for your gastric monstrosities. (I particularly liked the grumpy italian sandwich man in SoHo because he loved pretty girls and hated pretty men. Which meant free italian cookies for me and sharp words for GQ grinding his crotch against my ass. The fact that grumpy italian sandwich guy was probably just jealous because he wanted to be the one grinding against the girls didn't escape me...but hey...free cookies!) After braving your mostly disgruntled lunchman you'd sit on a bench, either on a traffic island or in a park and stare straight ahead. Eat, wipe your mouth, throw your stuff away and go. And under no circumstances do you ever make eye contact. Sometimes you'd take a magazine, newspaper or book with you, to aide you in the anti-social thing.

It never did work for me. Even in other large cities. People always came up to me and talked. I supposed when you think of scary, potential serial-killer scenarios that arise from talking with complete stranger you don't picture me and my tuna fish sandwich on wheat.

But I bet you will from now on, won't you?

In anycase now that I work in a less walking-friendly area I take my precious lunch hours in my car. Along with 15 other people who share my particular favorite parking area. (A parking lot that is covered in a lot of trees and was built for a mostly-empty business park.) Today I spent my lunch hour cleaning out my car and managed to take a quick look around at all the people I was spending this hour with.

Three large trucks were parking in the lot. They each had two men in them and all looked severely ticked that they had to truck around the place in the rain. None of them were speaking to one another, but I think one was talking to his chicken sandwich.

Four little silver cars. All of them silver. My car is also silver. We could have been a school of fish. Two of them had their front drivers seats "missing" which means that the drivers had pushed them back in order to take a nice 60 minute nap before going back to their cubes. The other two were eating McDonalds and Taco Bell. The woman left her headlights on, both of them were getting steamy windows from the heat inside.

Then there was the ambulance that is always parked there. No one is ever in it. I like to think the EMT's are taking naps in the back too. At least they have comfy cots.

Lastly there is a black jeep that always pulls in around 12:45pm. He always has a girl with him, sometimes a few. The music is loud and the food always looks yummier in there.

That's 13-15 people I have lunch with every time I get out of the office. They're regulars. I recognize their cars and trucks. I could quote their license plates. But I am certain that if asked I could tell you what the drivers looked like.

The thing about the car lunchers is that we take that whole "no eye contact" thing to the extreme. We've created cubicles in our parking lots to mirror the ones in our offices. We all sit and look straight ahead at a windshield instead of a computer screen. We listen to the same crappy radio music that plays on our headphones in the office. We all just mindless eat whatever grey fast-food we found that day. And we never, ever need to acknowledge that outside those steel doors, someone else is there.

I have to admit, it feels safe. I like that I can get a cheeseburger and not worry that the other ladies at the office will comment on the fact I'm eating something with so much fat. The guy napping two cars down from me doesn't care if I eat something fattening. He would never say "I can't imagine how you keep your girlish figure with that food." He would never tell me about the latest article on Diabetes in the Washington Post. He doesn't bother me, I don't bother him.

And more importantly my car-cube allows me the chance to close a door. A real door. Heck I can lock it. No one can barge into my car the way they barge into my cubicle. No one can relax and rest their butt on my dashboard while they play with my air-freshner. Sure, my cellphone may ring, but I am not required to answer that one.

That's what the car lunch is, it's really true solitude in a box. I can imagine that those people who stretch out in their drivers seat can look up at the sky and actually, for one hour in the whole day, feel completely alone.

And somehow I think that this might not be such a bad thing.

This is my rubberband

2006-01-23T08:59:00.000-05:00

There is this odd phenomena that once my life starts getting really interesting - I have no desire to write about it. Those moments when my life is plodding step after plodding step is much more conducive to observation and fiction that makes for good blogging. Or psuedo-fiction. Or dramatic non-fiction. Okay - histrionics.

The fact is that 2006 came rushing in far faster than anyone would have expected. By anyone I mean me. Especially considering that 2005 sat in neutral for a full 365 days. Here we are not even one month into it and suddenly I'm staring down huge life changes for not just me but the most important person in my life. This is good. Being able to actually move forward, discover things and change is good.

But I don't want to blog about it.

The fact is around this time of year is when you read other blogs start talking about "re-focusing" their "blog design" and how they're going to get back on the "topic". Quite frankly this blog never had a topic. It was just an excuse for me to sit and write because I like to sit and write. And more-over I have enough "re-focusing of structure" right now to do me for...well...the next six months.

So instead of the quirky "state of the blogs" and the "this is what I plan" stuff you find at the "better" blogs I'm doing the opposite.

I refuse to get focused or planned or structured with this blog. In fact, if I can manage it I'm gonna get even more messy and confusing and crazy. Remember when you were a teenager and had that journal that was literally stuffed with a bunch of scraps of paper and tidbits and pictures and those napkins from the cafeteria that you put doodles on during lunch and really wanted to keep? The one that was so packed and so full that the binding came apart and you had to hold the cover on with a rubber band?

Well that's what this blog is to me. Like my purse and my car - crap is going to come in - but it won't come out. (By the way, thank my husband for that analogy.)

Color Coordination

2006-01-20T13:48:00.000-05:00

Among my other duties about my office I am also called to procure "office things" for new employees and associates who are either being moved in a bigger office or (less prestigious) into a smaller cubicle.

Usually it's not that big of a deal. Gather a few folders, paperclips, staples and other sundry then a couple of things to put them in. Most of the time my hunting techniques entail crawling through dirty, spidery crawlspaces and closets that have been attacked by the clutter monster. On "lucky" days I will get the chance to scavenge in the remnants of a cubicle whose inhabitant has recently left. During the last employee purge people would literally circle cubes like vultures circle an animal about to cross the road. If you're gonna get his by a Mack Truck eventually couldn't we just have a small taste now? As soon as the employee had taken their last piece of "personal decoration" the cube would be swarmed with people sinking their teeth into the nice, unsqueaky stapler and the keyboard that doesn't have a sticky "k".

And usually that's about the extent of the complaints when it comes to office supplies. Nothing works like new and no one gets anything that is new. The shiny new boxes from Office Max and Staples contain toys for the people coming to replace us, rather than the people doing the work now. So we squeak and stick a little longer, till I can find that golden Swingline that's been hiding in the pantry of the third floor kitchen.

Complaints about poorly working equipment I can understand. I will go out of my way to look for something that works a little better or doesn't smell so funny, but lately I've been working with someone who had a much more annoying request.

Everything has to be the same color.

This particular person is a little higher on the food chain than most so one would assume that my job would be a little easier. For him I can fill out a supply request form and actually buy him stuff. But stuff within reason, the stuff on our contract, the stuff that's cheap. For two months now I've been scouting out inboxes and staplers for him. I even went so far as to surrender (after being pointedly told asked) my own inboxes in his search for something black.

Today though I thought my searching would finally come to an end. After having brought him all he supplies he needed three times, and having been sent away in search of something "Similar, but different" three times each I finally had procured him a black stapler 4 inches rather than the normal 6, a black staple remover that was sufficiently sharpened, a black inbox that held legal paper rather than letter, a black paper clip holder that had a tinted box rather than clear, and a black tape dispenser that didn't say "Scotch". Finally after all that I had receive the last piece of the puzzle. I victoriously carried to his office a brand-spanking-new pair of scissors - fresh out of the Staples box, in their original packaging. Normally our scissors are small, dull, and have the name of some other company printed on them. I swear, it was like carrying the Olympic torch - same amount of stares, less flame.

"Katy, this handle is dark blue, is it possible for me to get a black handled scissors...or is that too much?"

Blink, Blink, Blink.

Typical

2006-01-19T12:50:00.000-05:00

You scored as English. You should be an English major! Your passion lies in writing and expressing yourself creatively, and you hate it when you are inhibited from doing so. Pursue that interest of yours!

Dance

100%

English

100%

Theater

92%

Sociology

92%

Engineering

83%

Journalism

83%

Linguistics

75%

Philosophy

67%

Psychology

67%

Anthropology

67%

Biology

67%

Art

58%

Chemistry

58%

Mathematics

58%

What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3)
created with QuizFarm.com

Captain! It's an Iceberg!

2006-01-17T12:37:00.000-05:00

There is blog called Opinionistas that is one of those trendy blogs. The New York Times has written about it, everyone reads it, if you read and of the other trendy blogs then you'll be directed to it at some point. It's a "hip" blog.

There is also another blog that only recently popped up and is not so widely read. It's called Opinionistas Sucks.

Yes, that's right. There is a blog that is purely for picking apart another blog. I think this smells like those websites people made to tout their own friends websites. "I'm like, so in love with Jennifer and her website. This all about Jennifer." and then Jennifer would have a website that was "All about how much I totally love Kyle 4EVA. Stay Sweet! And look at his website!"

Isn't the fact that there is a blog about another blog just the beginning of the end. And since the first blog mentioned the second hasn't the beast been unleashed? Won't blog1 post about blog2 who is posting about blog1 posting about blog2 which is posting about blog1 posting about...

The mirror-on-mirror action is just too much for me to take. Surely this new development signals the demise of the blogosphere. Doesn't this mean that the blog thing is on the way out. I mean honestly. A few people will get a book deal, some might even make a movie but by the time it's really ready the trend will be gone. The books will go straight to the bargin bin with the other garbage that publishers use to fill between the last Harry Potter and the next. The movie is straight to t.v. Probably Lifetime.

Not that I still won't hold on. It's like watching Titanic...you know the ship is going down...you know someone is gonna die...yet you just can't look away. Not till the last lip has turned purple and limbs start breaking off.

Yes, my bloggy heart will go on and on!

Panda's don't eat with chopsticks either

2006-01-15T00:43:00.000-05:00

Me (to the chick at the Panda Express Gourmet Chinese Food counter): Can I get a pair of chopsticks please?

Chick at the Panda Express Gourmet Chinese Food counter: We don't have chopsticks.

Me (looking at the Panda Express Gourmet Chinese Food logo): Seriously?

Chick at the Panda Express Gourmet Chinese Food counter: No one knows how to use them in Maryland.

Touche

Me (now stuck with a plastic fork): I'm gonna need another fortune cookie...

Double Entendre

2006-01-12T16:43:00.000-05:00

I often wonder at what point do you move from "young person who's head lives in the gutter" to "old person who misses blantantly obvious sexual references". Is this phenomena like the "Beautiful 24 year old"? Do you suddenly turn 40, or 50 and fail to see the phallic nature of a hotdog anymore? Is it indicative of a low sex life? Or a ultra high one?

And when will I get to the point where I can tell my boss about the meeting being held tomorrow (with a bunch of middle-aged men in suits) that is titled:

Disputes - "Double-Dipping"

without breaking up into a bunch of giggles?

The day I had Oysters Rockerfeller at Bloomingdales

2006-01-11T12:43:00.000-05:00

I never read "A Million Little Pieces". I did think of buying it for a friend for a brief moment, but I opted to get her a good smelling candle instead. That's about where I rate the "Oprah Winfrey Suggestions". They're no better or worse than good smelling candles. A light snack, the kind of book you pick up in the store to feel it's heft and read the back cover before heading to real tomes of prose and poetry. It's a warm up to stuff you should actually read.

That being said I find myself trudging through the feeling of apathy as I drive to and from work listening to people express outrage to the DJ's over the supposed betrayal by one Mr. Frey.

Honestly if the book was as good as people say then it wouldn't matter if Mr. Frey turned out to be a girl who grew up in Sweden. In fact, if the book was any good, in my opinion, no one would remember whats-his-face's name.

That's how it is with me.

Last night we had dinner at Nordstrom's cafe. Of all the places in Nordstrom the one that still has that charm and unique elegance of Macy's or Bloomingdales in the 1940's is their cafeteria. Sure they have a piano player on the floor, but he sits in front of the women's fitness area and his other-wordliness is destroyed by the glaring orange spandex. Likewise, the lowcut, too-tight pants on the clerks never reminds me of those shop women with the nice french twists and gentle handling of fabric.

But stepping into their cafeteria doesn't take me just back in time, it takes me into my favorite short story.

I don't remember the name of it, I don't know who wrote it. I'm certain I read it in a text book, but I can't remember what grade I was in or which class it was for. I can't remember what the real underlying theme of it was, or what the name of the main character was. I don't even remember the basic exposition of the piece. But I remember the way it made me feel. I can remember the story like I remember a memory of my very own. I know what it felt like, I know what it smelled like. I can close my eyes and feel the electric buzz the character felt.

And I don't even know if the story is real or if I dreamt it. It's memory hits me like a ton of bricks everytime I step into this particular establishment, and it may not even exist.

Like anything that is so vague - it is the perfect story.

It's about a woman who doesn't have much money. She goes out for a day to get something cheap. Along the way, somehow, she comes in possession of five dollars. I have no idea how. I like to think she found it. I like to think that as all these people who were rich and busy and used to the excitement and charm of the city passed by without looking, she looked. I like to think of her alone on the sidewalk, glancing all around and just so happening to see a muddy, footprinted five dollar bill on the ground. I like the poetry in that. I have no idea if it's actually part of the story.

She has five dollars and she spends it on herself. With those five surprise dollars she goes to a department store. Or maybe she was already at the store? I can't tell, I don't know, the important part is that she goes to a cafeteria - the kind I walked into last night. Bustling, yet with a reserved kind of noise. Comfy, warm semi-private booths. Tables with inlay, or tables with cloths. Glowing dark lamps, enough to make you feel happy and sleepy. I pick my food in a line. Pasta and a coke, made fancy and special by a slice of lemon bobbing with the ice. I sit a little straighter when I'm in my booth, watching all the ladies with blue hair and expensive casual clothes. I can't help my cross my ankles daintly...the way you're supposed to, but never do. I hide my hands under the table, only using one to carefully pick through the pasta. Sitting alone, waiting for my husband to get back, I feel just like the woman from my story. Sitting alone at this table I remember what it was like to be her.

She sat alone, wearing wool and cotton that smelled of grimy city and fresh air - not perfume. She sat straighter, hide her hands, fixed the way her hat sat on her head. For five dollars she ordered soup, potatoes, pie with ice cream. Most of all she had oysters rockerfeller. I've never had oysters rockerfeller. I don't think she had either. But she savored every bite. Every sip and taste. Soft, warm, over-cooked, delicious food. One day, one lucky day, when she sat down in a place that she would never sit in and had oysters rockerfeller - and maybe - just maybe a slice of lemon in her water.

I don't know if the story is real, if some woman one day actually found five dollars and treated herself to lunch. I don't know if the story was written by a man or a woman. I'm not sure if the story was actually about the lunch, or about find the money. I'm not entirely sure it was five dollars. All I know is I remember sitting in a department store cafeteria in 1905 and having oysters and pie with ice cream. I was there, I know I was. And I can remember the way the seat felt under my wool skirt and the way my shoes dug into my ankles after walking. I can remember the people I saw and the voices I heard and the face of the man who brought me my plate.

Did an author write the story? Did he want me to feel like I had been there when he did? Did he care whether I knew it was his mother, or his sister, or a woman he made up?

Does it matter?

No. The fact that I can't remember anything but what happened to the characters is what makes this my favorite story. It's the perfect story because it wasn't a story.

It was an experience.

I'd rather be a kitty

Negative

Untitled

Blech

Almost a Ghost Story

Shocker

Cellphone Blues

So maybe I'm a little tired

Twisted

Playing Dumb

Nap

Anyone want my job?

Quarter Century

Eggshells

Bad Phone

Brush Up Your..Staging

PEZ

How NOT to celebrate Admin Professionals Day

More than a color

Blogs on Blogs

Signs...

Computer Free

God

Cold

Forgetfulness - Billy Collins Animated Poetry

Fun with Text Messages

Guilty Blood

Engaged!

What it's really like to be me

But Don't Trust Borders

Trust Snape!

Danny Sullivan

Deep Sick

I can do Maths, me! Pt. 2

I can do Maths, me! Pt. 1

Excel-lent Secretaries

Barenaked Ladies-In The Car

How 'bout this weather

Apple

Wrong Daughter

Saddam

Mele Kalikimaka

Plastic Stocking

Shame

Those City Folks

Purr

One of Us

Grown-up Lesson

Better Half

Math Motorcycle

Mr. Body

UPS Delivers

I blog therefore I bore

Double Standard

Quotes you regret

Philosophy

StatCounter

This post sucks

Mutant

The Importance of Being Egotistic

Related

Ramblings - Practice Roadtrip

Giggle

The Ladies Who Lunch

Tattoo

/signed

American Dream

Just a thought

Look at all the people

Shoe Santa

Now that's a clear connection...

I AM

Inconvenience

Enter at Your Own Risk

New Trick

Flirt-Power!

New Rules for Work

Transient

Our Chinese Lady

Vague