Happy cats make for happy homes

 
adolescence Alabama beliefs blogging calm change Chicago crisis crushes dreams family fear flint hills food friends happiness health being a hippie holiday home internship kids loss love magic memories money music parties perfection plants projects relationships relaxation reminiscing ritual school social work issues spirits sports stress style the South violence weather weather worries writing

CURRENT MOON

 

Go now. Go.


There’s something about Sunday night
that really makes you want to kill yourself
Subscribe to this blog
for e-mail updates
 

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

What can I say? Kids love me

I think kids can tell I'm never really sure what to do with them. They gravitate towards me like they're planning on tormenting me. I think they just love to throw me off. They draw me pictures, make me valentines, tear down the hallway to hurl themselves around my waist. There's one five-year-old who says, "I'm your boyfriend!" every time I see him, and comes to inspect my office to see where I've put his artwork.

Or maybe they can tell I'm not exactly a grownup, and I'll play around with them more than the other women around.

This all makes me subject to a lot of teasing around the office, because everyone believes I hate children just because I tell them I have no plans to push out a few of my own. (Whether or not that is actually true doesn't matter to me when it comes to my nosy co-workers. For the sake of their teasing, I'm not having kids.)

I never really know how to talk to them, so I use a combination of wide-eyed enthusiasm and adult language. As much as the baby-talkers annoy me, so do those who insist prissily that they talk to children just like they do adults.

But the real reason I try to avoid kids is because they're too hard to leave. I'm ok with giving up my women. I know it will happen; as much as I like a lot of them, it's easy to let them pass through my life. If the kids burrow into my heart, it hurts too much. I just sent a client on her way with two adorable children. Her 18-month-old learned to stand by my knee and wait for me to pick her up, tossing her in the air before she landed on my hip. She'd pierce my eardrums with her squeals, and bounce in my arms until I did it again. The 8-month-old would stare off sleepily into the distance until I came into focus, and he'd break into a drool-filled grin. I got him to laugh by dipping him and playing airplane.

I put them on a bus and sent them on their way, and the 18-month-old started to cry. So did I, as soon as I ran off the bus and got into my car, and sobbed. Sobbed. For ten minutes straight. I don't think I've ever cried over a client before. Ok, that's not true. But I've never cried about losing one before. These kids, man. They got under my skin. I miss them too much.

Labels: ,

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Love at first sight

The reason why I've never believed in love at first sight is because it takes me a while to notice someone. I was in American Lit I in college for a month and a half before it dawned on me that the guy sitting across the circle from me had killer sideburns and amazing blue eyes.

I rode the same train to work for a year straight between 1998 and 1999. Second car from the front, Main Street stop in the first suburb north of Chicago. It took me a couple months to realize there was always a man with flame red hair sitting near me (despite never really being attracted to redheads, he had wavy hipster hair with sideburns. Which, as mentioned above, are key. And he wore a thick silver ring on his middle finger.).

And then the morning train ride became simultaneously the most exciting, petrifying event of my day. Once I became aware of him, I could no longer concentrate on reading my book. I knew he was sneaking glances at me, too, and I was too shy then to do anything but studiously avoid his gaze unless I could somehow plot a way to look across the entire car and take him in at the same time while appearing completely suave.

Entirely. Too. Much. Thought went into these forty-five minutes of torture. Somedays it was almost a relief to not see him on the train (he boarded the stop before mine), but then the sudden panic that I'd never see him again and all was lost (all? There was really nothing, though every morning, I'd psych myself up, and think of a good opening line so we could finally speak.)

Once I boarded the train after work, and through the crush of people, saw an empty seat. I dove for it, and pulled out my book. Engrossed in reading the entire ride home, it wasn't until I stood up at Main Street to disembark that I realized the knee three inches from mine belonged to him.

But time passed, and it got more awkward by the day. Finally, it was winter, and I was bundled up to wait for the train, then hot on the crowded train, I took off my hat and gloves. I didn't notice the gloves falling to the floor, but he did. He picked them up, tapped my arm, and handed them back. I thanked him and turned away, face flaming. Then I cursed myself for several days for not using that as an intro to talk to him. What a waste! But what would I have said? I'd never been very good at striking up conversations with people I wasn't sure I actually had anything in common with. Plus, massive crushes were guaranteed back then to keep me tongue-tied forever.

In addition, I had a boyfriend. One that I was not particularly happy with, which is probably why I became so obsessed with the man on the train. At long last, I got so annoyed with myself and the situation that I started riding a later train.

I saw him once or twice again, after I had moved to the city, and gotten new boyfriends. Long after I had stopped fantasizing about randomly running into him at a bar (which would have been a much easier venue in which to strike up conversation), I saw him at a David Sedaris reading. I suppose that would have been an easier place to talk as well, but I was with another boyfriend, onto my second Kevin, and in case he didn't recognize me, I didn't want to remind him that I was the strange girl who stared at him a lot a few years back.

Labels: ,

Cars

We have a little black car. Were it not for a few bumper stickers I'd really like removed, a crystal pyramid on the dash, and a dream catcher hanging from the rear view mirror, as well as, er, some big scratches on the front bumper from an accident not bad enough to get repaired, I'd lose track of it in a parking lot and walk up to another black car. Actually, I do that sometimes anyway.

When I lived in Evanston, my boyfriend drove a teal Ford I don't know what. You see this car on the street all the time. Everyone owns one. One evening, he lent me the car to go visit Katie. Though he told me where it was, I couldn't find it immediately, then located it a few cars from where he had described. It looked darker than normal, like he hadn't washed it in a while and the dirty winter snow had caked onto it. I unlocked it, got in, and adjusted the seat, like I usually did. The car felt different. The radio presets were not the ones I was used to. I couldn't find some paperwork that Kevin had been screaming at me was definitely, most certainly without a doubt in his glovebox. Halfway to Katie's I began to suspect this actually wasn't Kevin's car. By the time I got there, I was in a panic for stealing someone else's car, and what had happened to Kevin's if I wasn't able to locate the right car on the street?

I raced back home, and we looked through the registration paperwork to see who the car belonged to. The owner lived just down the block. We knocked on his door and explained the situation, much to his befuddlement. We showed him how our keys opened his car, then he tried his and opened Kevin's car.

Kevin was all fired up to sue somebody, but it turned out that car manufacturers really only make about ten to fifteen different locks, and believe it's a supremely long shot that people who live near each other will end up with the same car in colors that look similar in the dark.

Complaining

I can get behind complainers. I understand them, and the impulse. I am one, sometimes. At a certain point, of course, it's too much, and you don't want to hear it, you just want to tell them to get off their asses and doing something about it, but for a while, it's ok.

There's a lot about work that I need to complain about, in order to get through it. I had a big bitch session with a co-worker today, and I left feeling refreshed and happier. We understand each other. We're not really friends, though we work comfortably together and like each other. I know not to look her way during staff meetings when certain issues come up, because I know she'll be looking at me with an eyebrow raised and I'll start laughing.

I think it works because we both have similar frustrations with aspects of our jobs, but we both know how much the other cares, and that complaining doesn't really indicate a lack of dedication. At my last job, I worked with a bunch of complainers. Most Fridays we'd end up bitching about work over beers. It seemed worse. It made me think, "what the hell are we doing working here if we hate it so much?" We sure didn't get paid enough (one of the key points complained about) to work through the apathy and annoyances. This seems different to me, I guess because at the heart of it all, I really do love my job.

Though sometimes we come up with ways to change the things that frustrate us, often we don't. But it does help to vent about them and then get on with things.

Labels:

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Valentine's Day

My favorite part of Valentines day in high school was the way the main office would explode with flowers and candy and balloons.

My least favorite part was sophomore year when I got a mysterious rose from a secret admirer in my locker only to discover it was from the dorky new kid.

When I was 24, I was a month or two (amicably) broken up with a boyfriend, who was also my boss. We started chatting late in the day, and before we realized it, it was hour or two past quitting time and we were hungry. It seemed natural, since neither of us had Valentines-specific plans, to have dinner. We ended up at the Indian restaurant where we had our second date and traded first kiss and Valentines stories. Later I gathered with friends at my favorite punk rock bar for alt-country night, drank too much, sat on many laps, and kissed too many people. It was quite perfect.

The following Saturday night, I cleaned the house til it glowed, made myself a delicious dinner, opened a bottle of wine, filled the dark apartment with candles, and enjoyed a quiet meal by myself. Halfway through the wine, my apartment buzzer sounded. It was him. I was mellowed enough by the wine to not be very surprised to have an unexpected visitor, though he was taken aback to see the candlelit house and bottle of wine half finished, yet find me alone. He pulled out a brochure and started explaining how he had been planning a winter vacation somewhere warm, and had found a reasonable package deal to some resort in Mexico. I was wondering why on earth he came over so late on a Saturday evening to tell me about a trip he wanted to go on when he said, "But when I think about going, I can only think about you with you. Will you go to Mexico with me?" It was really the most romantic gesture anyone had ever made to me (and the dark apartment lit with candles really underscored it all so well); it was a shame I was almost too drunk to fully process what was happening. (We did get back together for another year, though we did not go to Mexico.)

When I was 26, I got a different boyfriend a ticket to see Alejandro Escovedo at the Old Town School of Folk Music while I volunteered for it. We went to my favorite Thai place for dinner beforehand. He was grumpy and untalkative because work had been stressful, as it had been for the entirety of our relationship (five months at that point). The concert, as can be expected, was amazing. The perfect end to the evening would have been to stroll home through my darling neighborhood, stopping for a decadent pastry at Cafe Selmarie on the way back. Instead we made a beeline for my apartment and went to bed without saying much. I lay awake for most of the night, a huge weight smothering me, feeling guilty for feeling like I had wasted my volunteer points on a ticket for him. We broke up about a week later, and I made my way back to Tim.

We don't really do anything special for Valentines Day.

Labels: ,

Monday, February 13, 2006

A little bit of everything

I was a little insulted when I described my previous editing job as hideously boring and my social work as a variety of interesting activities--and my psychologist was surprised. I suppose her believing I needed predictability, routine, and no stress was what insulted me.

I get bored quickly. I need variety. But it's true that I sometimes revel in the office-y parts of my job. Things were slow last week, so I decided to streamline the way we gather and record our data. Before that, I spent several months soliciting for books and created a library for our clients.

It's been a slow six months or so.

I don't know how to strike a happy medium. For the first six months to a year at my job, I was slightly panicked every day, trying to keep my head above water. Somewhere around September, that eased up, and I had the happy realization that I basically knew what I was doing. It was around that time that I started to get bored with things.

I can't think of a job I'd rather have, but it's true I'm not as excited as I used to be about this one. Is it burnout? What does that say for my future in social work, anyway?

I think if I could specially tailor a job to my liking, I'd spend four days a week as a social worker, and one as an editor. As much as the last three years or so of being an editor were mind-numbingly dull, there were parts about it that I really, really loved. Once a week should just about satisfy my need to hold a little red pencil again.

Labels:

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Acting

It's usually hard to watch Tim act. It's always him up there, putting on a different accent, holding his body differently; he's always mine, the one I know better than anyone else in the world. I always get a bit squirmy, because I know I'll be grilled afterwards, about what nuances worked, what didn't, if the character was believable, if he delivered a line in an appealing way, and so on (and on and on). I stress out so much, because I just don't know. I'm not that smart about theatre and acting anyway, and I don't always catch the nuances. I'm learning, because of him, but it's taking time.

Then this weekend, I watched a reading at a new play festival/workshop. He played the young romantic lead, set up on a blind date with a psychic girl, who freaked out upon meeting him, then the entire play was about why she couldn't date him. The play was actually better than it sounds. Many flaws, that even I could see, but all in all, a well-written, interesting, funny, poignant play. The crux of the story was that anyone of his blood was unable to have children with anyone of her blood, and so as fate would have it (of course) they fall in love. By the near end, they admitted their feelings and said they loved each other. Unexpectedly, my tears welled up, and embarrassingly, overflowed. I knew they couldn't be together, that the whole play was leading up to that, yet I couldn't hold back the tears.

Later in the evening, when I was telling Tim about this, just describing the scene and my reaction made me start crying again.

"But I just *sniffle sniffle sniffle* wanted you to beeeeee together!"

At the very least, I wanted them to get to actually share a kiss, instead of hearing the stage directions from the narrator: "And then they kissed."

And I looked at Tim, and he was beaming. I realized that for the first time ever, I had actually forgotten it was him on stage. He was Len Fragmire, from Lousiana, in love with girl he couldn't have. He was so good.

The things I believe in

I was thinking about something when I started a new Pandora radio station based around Elvis Costello, and some Jackson Browne songs appeared.

I like his music. It feels mournful. (Aha! And AllMusic backs me up on that: Wistful, Bittersweet, Plaintive, Melancholy, Earnest, Brooding)

But I have in my head that he was the reason his wife committed suicide, because he was abusing her. I don't know where I first heard it, but I've believed it for years. And I just found this posting on a message board: "I try not to let personal information color my impression of music, but the tabloid accusations of Jackson Browne's wife-beating made it hard to take his political and personal musings seriously. These stories were denied by Browne and by the alleged victim, Darryl Hannah, herself. I don't know if Joni Mitchell has disowned (or reaffirmed) 1994's "Not To Blame," a song in which the former lover not only accused Browne of beating Hannah, but of driving his first wife to suicide."

So maybe it's pretty well-known and believed. At any rate, I, like that poster, have a hard time listening to him with that background information.

I get into this a lot with Tim, who believes that sometimes the immensely talented live on another plane of existence, and that their gifts to the world outweigh their personality failings. Does talent transcend human foibles? Now I forget his big example, but it's a blues man, whose cocaine habit--or general nastiness--drove him to slap his wife around. I'm thinking the "Shades of Blue" guy, or Charles Mingus, but perhaps not, and I don't want to defame.

Or like Martin Luther King, who changed the history of this country, but cheated on his wife.

I just can't look past something like that. MLK doesn't get an out just because he moved millions. It was still really, really shitty of him to cheat on his wife. And I don't believe someone has to be of pure heart and spirit to create perfection, but I don't want to let anyone off the hook to act like a decent human being just because they have talent. Where does that leave those of us with little or no talent like them? I may never move the world, but I couldn't live with myself if I didn't at least try to be a good person.

In rereading this, I wonder if I sound hopelessly naive, but I think I have to believe it, in order to live my life according to my principles.

Friday, February 03, 2006

Hormones

I'd like to think we have the potential to master ourselves and our emotions. Or rather, that I have that potential for control. If I have low self-esteem, I don't blame it on anyone. I know it's within me, that I'm the only one who can change my outlook. Or if I'm confident, that I put myself there.

And then like clockwork, that day comes, and stretches into four, or five, and I can look in the mirror and think, "You disgusting creature. How can anyone bear to look at you?"

I'll sit on the edge of the bed in tears, upset about not being good enough for my clients. Arguing with Tim who says, "You care so much. That means something." Saying, "but doing my best still isn't good enough. I'm still not good enough."

And I believe it all. It's all true. All the ugliness and failure seems bone deep and bred in me.

But at the same time, I notice how easy it is to think and talk hatefully about myself, and I'm also surprised. I am objectively shocked at the loathing, and how subjectively another half of me accepts and believes it.

I suppose, since I'm stepping outside myself to have all these observations, that I can understand the hatred is not real, that the failure is, for the most part, imaginary. But one half of me still burns with it and claws the ugliness to bloody shreds.

And then, the next week, it's gone, and I wonder how I could ever look into my mirror eyes and think those green irises were ugly. I know my eyes, and many other parts of me, are beautiful. I just know it.

I'm left in a tilt, off-balance, knowing hormones are coursing through my body, influencing me in ways I cannot ever control. In a small way, it's reassuring, knowing when I fly into a rage because they're out of my favorite piquante sauce at the grocery store that there's a reason for my seemingly out-of-nowhere anger. But still. I'd rather be able to be accountable for everything.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Teasing

Part of me just doesn't understand sociability. Of course I love having friends. But work is a different matter. I was used to office work, where the people in my department would hole up their own offices. We'd gather for a weekly staff meeting, occasionally be drawn out for collaboration projects, then get together for happy hour on Fridays to drink too much and complain about work. No one ever looked askance if I didn't emerge from my office the entire day.

Now I realized that spending more than a few minutes shooting the breeze, sometimes talking work, sometimes gossiping, is really a way of life (here anyway). I sat at the front desk for part of the afternoon today, because the admin assistant was out, and a coworker I really enjoy sat with me for about an hour, chatting. Talk turned to the admin (who is fairly new, only about 2-3 months into the job). My gut twisted. I get really uncomfortable with the amount of gossip that goes on at work, and lately there's been a lot about this woman. She and I are friendly and talk a little, but there's a lot of weird tension between her and many of the other staff, and it seems partly to be racially motivated, which makes me freak out even more. I feel stuck in the middle.

But what I understand now is that she doesn't really make much of an effort. I imagine it would be hard to come into the middle of our department, because there are a lot of forceful personalities--it sure was hard for me, but my coworker said at least I didn't isolate myself and not talk to anyone. I don't know about that. I think this coworker just likes me and so gave me the benefit of the doubt. But still, it took me a long time to feel comfortable amongst my coworkers. A looong time before I could sit through a staff meeting without worrying that the raised voices meant huge conflict, instead of normal discussion.

It did take me a while to realize that I enjoy my coworkers a lot more if I chat and joke around with them during the day instead of holing up in my office.

Speaking of joking, it sure doesn't feel like that when my coworkers bug me about having kids. For a brief moment, I considered telling them I couldn't bear children, just so they'd be appalled and not bring it up again. And I can't even fully express how much it bothers me when they talk about me being pregnant, having kids, or, with just as much regularity, how much they think I hate kids. I even have an on-and-off serious dislike for one coworker because she seems to take just too much glee in teasing me about it. And it seems to be a vicious cycle of behavior, because I do sort of play it up when they tease, loudly proclaiming that there's no way in hell I'll ever get pregnant, sure don't want to ever be a mom, etc.

So it happened again today during our staff meeting. They ganged up on me again, asking when I was going to get pregnant, and I just couldn't take it. I had some serious hate on for the world this morning due to hormones, and I got a little snappish with them. I've always wanted to get snappish about it, though I just don't really have the nerve, plus, I know all about how the point of teasing is to get to someone. And in the end, the one I don't particularly like, said, "aw, we jest messin' witcha."

And then it dawned on me. They like me. I think in small part they also like playing with someone who takes herself too seriously, but I think they do like me.
 
This page is powered by Blogger.
Get awesome blog templates like this one from BlogSkins.com