Saddam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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.