I don’t mean my car that flooded; that’s ancient history. The cursed car is my current car.
You may remember a few months ago my registration sticker was ripped off. Finally got the replacement, and put it on my car. Not a week went by, and what happened? No, the sticker wasn’t stolen.
The very Honda decal was ripped off my car. What…? People are crazy! And please, don’t tell me it fell off. There is no way it could have just fallen off.
Most major department stores place their large women’s departments far away from any windows. Some hide the fat girls down in the basement. Seriously. Farthest corner on the bottom floor, that’s where I have to go to find clothes.
My goal for the new year is to climb out of the basement!
I’ve joined with some friends on a mission to make some healthy lifestyle changes. Yes, I want to wear smaller clothes and look better in them, but I’d also like to have more energy and a lower BMI. My immediate goal, as some of you have heard before, is to lose 10% of my body weight. I won’t be punishing myself with any weird crash diets, as I know that the key is “Eat Less. Exercise More.” Sounds simple, but it is REALLY hard to put into practice.
This evening at 7:15 p.m., it was 42 degrees (felt even colder), and I jumped into the local outdoor pool to play water polo.
Incisive neighbor: “Wow the ER is nothing like on TV.”
Doctor: “Yeah, we’re not all good-looking, and nobody’s having sex in the closet.”
That exchange took place while I was sitting on the ER bed, waiting for a tetanus shot and anticipating stitches. It was the first time I’d had stitches (not including surgeries), so I asked the doctor if I could watch. I managed to watch for a couple of stitches, but then the combination of my cut-open finger, the blood, and the needle going through my skin became just too much to bear.
So what the hell happened? It happened so fast, I couldn’t tell you. I was shaking a bottle of salad dressing, it slipped out of my hand, I tried to catch it. Next thing I knew, I felt some pain. I looked at my hand and saw a cut. Then it started bleeding. A lot. I’m proud to report that I had the presence of mind to put a towel and some pressure on my finger, and to turn off the oven and take the food out. I thought I’d wait a second to see if the bleeding would stop, but when I removed the towel, the depth of the cut freaked me out. I knew I would need stitches.
I knocked on my neighbor’s door and she walked with me to the firehouse. The guys were happy for a diversion, but they wouldn’t stitch me. They gauzed me up and offered an ambulance. Instead of sirens and melodrama, I let my neighbor drive me (in my car; of course the one neighbor who was home doesn’t own a car and hasn’t driven a stick-shift in a long time) to the ER. Luckily, Tuesday in Burlingame is a slow night, and the gauze was already blood soaked, so I moved to the front. A few x-rays, a couple of shots, and five or six stitches later, and I was almost good as new. Well, except that I look like Frankenfinger.
(BTW, after the firehouse, I went back into apartment to get insurance card, etc. I went back to the sink and figured out that the salad dressing bottle hit a pyrex bowl in the sink, breaking the rim. I don’t know if a shard came up and stabbed me, or if my hand slipped down over the jagged edge. All I know is ouch. The med tech said that besides power tools, glass cuts are the worst. Oh, and I know that my neighbor is a sweetheart. I owe her cookies.)
As jaded as I can feel at times about politics, and as much as I am reticent to talk politics, I get totally excited when I go to vote. Today will be historic no matter which presidential candidate wins, but every time I vote, I feel lucky and grateful to live in a country with free elections. I can just breeze in on my lunch hour, give my address to the sweet volunteers, and proceed to privately register my vote! I don’t have to fear for anything, I don’t have to bribe anyone (or be bribed), and I don’t even have to tell anyone for whom or for what I voted. That’s not something to take for granted.
And though my parents’ votes pretty much cancel out mine, I have them to thank for my love of voting. They used to take me with them when they voted, back in the days of the big ballot booths, with the curtain and the giant voting swtiches. Dad would let me pull the switches: “That one” and “Now that one.” He’d double-check his votes and let me pull the final lever that tallied them all in a big clatter and swung the curtain open like magic. It was all so fun and mysterious, even though I didn’t understand the power of voting then. All of that goes with me when I go to the polls, and though it’s just a little table now, it has that same aura for me. No absentee ballot! I want to feel the power of the polling place, see my fellow citizens taking part of the process, and get high on democracy.
Amen.
This weekend, in Santa Cruz, a guy on the street waved and said “hi.” When I waved back and smiled, he said, “You have a very nice smile.” I mumbled thanks, and kept walking. Later I walked by again, and noticed he was panhandling with the line, “Got forty-thousand for yacht repairs?” The next day, a different and much more distinctly homeless man smiled and winked at me.I kept walking.That’s what I always do, or try to do – keep walking.
I started thinking about all the times that my chaos-attraction has led random men to make unsolicited comments. Here are all that I can remember right now:
But my favorite of all time was not leery or disgusting at all.The man wasn’t degrading me or trying to bolster himself.You know how there are people in your neighborhood who you recognize but don’t actually know?(Cue Mr. Rogers theme song.)There was a man like that when I lived in Madrid.He was on his way to work every day while I was on my way to school.He was at least twice my age, a businessman, a respectable señor.We probably nodded “Buenos días” to each other, but that was the extent of our acquaintance.Then one morning as I made my way to the Metro, he turned to me and said, “You look very nice today.”It was a simple compliment, for no reason.Still, to this day, some twenty years later, it makes me smile.That’s the power of a compliment.
My dear friend Tricia turned 40 on Tuesday. At her surprise party, we were supposed to roast/toast her. I wondered, “How do you narrow down to one anecdote when you’ve known someone so long?” I decided you don’t. After all, our friendship spans 19 years, 8 foreign countries, and 4 degrees. That’s much more than a sound byte.
I always wanted to travel across the U.S., and write the modern-day version of Travels with Charley, except my title sidekick would be Tricia, instead of an oversized prize poodle. That journey never happened, but many others have — probably enough to fill a book of my own. So, with apologies to Steinbeck, here’s my roasty toast. Lessons learned through Travels with Tricia (in chronological order):
Here’s to many more years, lots more adventures, and NO more degrees.
The other morning, after a meeting with a great volunteer, I left all happy and content with the world and my lot in it. As I went to put stuff into my messy car trunk, I noticed something was wrong. It took me a second to realize someone had scraped off my registration sticker. Grrr! No longer loving humanity, I thought, “People suck!” The worst part is there is NO way the person could have used the sticker. It came off in chunks. Chunks! I have since decided it was just some punkass. That doesn’t change the situation, but I like screaming “Stupid punkasses suck” more than “People suck.” It’s much more specific. I don’t want to disparage everyone, just the sucky ones.
And how much do I suck? I have a picture of said destroyed registration sticker, but I cannot figure out how to get my ancient digital camera to communicate with my new laptop. Stay tuned for that.
UPDATE: I figured it out! Check out the damage. Derek said I should have cropped myself out of the photo, but I think it’s a weird & fun little distorted self portrait.
Water polo is hard! Really hard. I’m sure this comes as no surprise to anyone.
What surprises me is my head has not exploded. Learning water polo is hard enough. I’m also trying to learn a new job and belly dancing, not to mention the names of all the people I’ve been meeting!
The good thing about water polo being so f**ng hard is there’s no WAY I can expect to be good at it. I can’t worry about being a perfectionist while trying not to drown. When I’m attempting to both tread water in a whole new way AND throw or catch a ball at the same time — believe me, I am only trying not to sink. If I’m sprinting across the pool, I’m not worried about my imperfect stroke. I’m happy if I get there with any air left in my lungs.
Some say it’s character-building to try completely new things. Others would say I am enough of a character already. I say water polo is hard. Really hard. But it’s fun.
(Belly dancing is a story for another day. No recitals any time soon, so don’t ask!)
This dude’s name is Meatball. He’s my first-born monster, and already I’ve given him away. What kind of monster-mother does that make me?
These monsters are fun to imagine, design and make (my coworker’s ahead of me on the monster creation). Craft Magazine — http://www.craftzine.com/ — says you’re supposed to name them and give them a back story. Meatball Monsteropholes likes cats, though he fears one day becoming a cat-snack to one of his two kitty-housemates. He’s decidedly nocturnal. He dislikes rutabagas but he saves the fury of his rancor for squirrels, decrying “They’re just rats with good PR!”
Other monsters aren’t so amusing to think about.We try to forget nightmares.And I’ve done that quite well; I can’t remember a single childhood monster nightmare. I must have had them, though, and need to remember to ask my folks next time I see them.
In daily life, I think we have a tendency to make monsters out of the people we fear or those we don’t like. That teacher or supervisor we hated? We totally distort their bad qualities until they’re monster-like.It’s easier to blame and dehumanize “enemies” that way. It’s much harder to admit, “I was a lazy student with a bad attitude. She was just a flawed human who dealt with the situation as best she could.”
We also monsterize our fears.Whether it be job-hunting, learning waterpolo, or whatever icky situation we face, we distort it. (Maybe I should stop saying “we,” and just say “I.”) I overblow things sometimes, worrying and making them much worse by avoiding them. Guess what? Job hunting sucks. But it’s not lurking under the bed, waiting to kill me. If I face the ogre often enough, eventually I will find a job. In fact, my new one starts next week!
Even the real monsters out there — the sociopaths and illnesses and whatnot that can harm us — they’re much better faced than avoided. I have friends who are facing cancers and other life-changing, if not life-threatening, diseases. Their real struggles put my worry-worsened everyday fears in check.
I’m going to keep making stuffed monsters to remind me that monsters are mostly our own creation. I’m taking requests: I’ve already got a dissertation monster and a job-hunting monster in the work for friends. Special precedence given to those who have really compelling reasons or already have a monsterlicious back story for me.
