“You know when you take a puppy to the vet, and it get poked and prodded for hours, and when you get it home it’s drained, exhausted, and loopy for days? That’s you right now.”
– J.
Winter has been rough for me this year. My theory is that the lack of sunlight (which by itself doesn’t really bug me, seeing as I like rainy, cloudy, and cold weather just fine) combining with birth control hormones for the first time during the dark half of the year has congealed into a perfect cocktail of winter doldrums.
All I want to do is hibernate. Even if, in spite of the ridiculous things that wake me up occasionally, I get a full night’s rest, I wake up exhausted every day and completely lacking the will to do anything. For a week now I’ve hauled myself out of bed mere minutes before we have to dash out the door to work/school. There’s been a pile of clean clothes sitting on my floor for days because I just can’t muster the strength to sort and store them (sorry, Mum!). We got these great electric toothbrushes for Christmas from J.’s parents which took some getting used to (i.e. splattering the mirror) which I haven’t dealt with in a week. And nature might abhor a vacuum, but not as much as me!
This isn’t just run of the mill laziness and I’ve never been this affected by a season before. I’m in a right dirty winter funk!
“The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.”
– Aristotle
How can you tell that you have a good friend in your life? Well, first of all you are able to have a complete conversation with them wearing just a towel (this is a crucial test that all of my closest friends have passed, I shall spare you the details). Second you are able to pique the interest of everyone around you just from hearing your half of a phone conversation. Again, all of my friends have crossed this threshold, but today here is what my office got to listen to when Venice called to brighten my day.
“No one’s making fun of you. This is a judgement free zone.”
“I don’t really wear them.”
“Was the steamer necessary?”
“Holy mother of pain!”
“I will need my dress back at some point.”
“Oh, honey! Do you need to come over and shower?”
I take particular delight in refraining from elaboration when co-workers, classmates, or random strangers look to me for further explanation. A good friend doesn’t lessen her pal’s mystique!
“I need to take a picture! I need to post it!”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I said no.”
“Puh-leeeese?”
“No.”
“But I need too. I can see the caption now, ‘Cleaning dishes. The sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.'”
“No.”
“Why not?!”
“Because I’m tired and cranky.”
“Please please please please please?”
“What do I get out of it?”
“What do you want?”
“Donuts.”
“Cupcakes.”
“Deal.”
– C. and J.
“A ruffled mind makes a restless pillows.”
– Charlotte Bronte
Apart from the subconscious boxing J. and I seem to engage in while asleep, it is not the only adjustment to be made sharing a bed.
Though we have little awake experience to corroborate this, morning evidence suggests that we also play blanket tug-o-war on an almost nightly basis. Admittedly our second best set of sheets is pretty flimsy and doesn’t grip the bed well, but many is the morning we have woken up nearly smothered by a fitted sheet sprung free from its mattress corner. We also must toss and turn a lot because some mornings we awake to find blankets kicked off to the floor, or gathered so tightly around our heads that our feet are poking out. I suspect myself of secret malice because some mornings I wake up, completely overheated, but piled with most of the blankets, as if to keep J. from getting at them.
J. however, has sunk to a whole new low. A few nights ago, I was deep in slumber when he started moving around a bit and woke me up. Just an eyelid flicker, nothing too serious. I’d just closed them again when suddenly…
Thunk! My head dropped back and plunked on the bed. I scrambled up in confusion but a quick glance to my left explained all.
J. had stolen my pillow! Right from under my head! In his sleep!
I dragged it back, which of course woke him up, disgruntled I might add.
“You stole my pillow!” I accused.
“No I didn’t,” he returned.
“Yes you did,” was my witty rejoinder.
“No I…oh…”
His own missing pillow surfaced, shoved up in the corner of the bed.
“I love being married. It’s so great to find that one person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”
– Rita Rudner
The other day, J. came to my office earlier than usual and so he went to the break room to study for a while before my lunch break. A bunch of the student officers congregate there between shifts or to eat so there was a group of them there at the time.
Helper, a notoriously unobservant young man, was among them.
Helper is an interesting kid. He spent several months trying to flirt with me, mostly by slinking up to my desk, lurking behind me for a while, and then informing me of what I was doing quite suddenly.
“You’re reading CNN.”
“Where’d you come from?! Um…yes. I am.”
The weirdest thing he did was hover silently one day while I went online to my bank account to pay my credit card bill.
“You use [name of bank]?” he drawled.
I jumped, as I’d had no idea he was there, and demanded why the hell he was looking!
“No reason. Is that your email too?”
I shut my windows and pointedly asked him if he was on duty.
“Heh, yeah,” he gave me a ‘I-get-it-we’ll-talk-later’ look and meandered off.
This was two months after I’d gotten engaged and had this nice rock sitting pretty on my left hand that was supposed to protect me from the over-amorous attentions of clueless men.
It never registered. It wasn’t until a couple months after that he must have figured out I was getting married in the near future because he came to me while I was reconciling a report, lurked behind me for a couple minutes, and finally muttered, “So, you’re engaged.”
“For about five months, yes.”
“I see.” He sat looking at me for a few more seconds before sighing and murmuring, “I won’t bother you anymore.”
He wandered off while I sat with my jaw slack, wondering where he had pulled this supposed relationship out of. I don’t think he’s spoken to me since, though I have caught him glaring furtively before he whisks himself around a corner. And once I overheard him once complaining to a co-worker that I had flirted with him, and the ensuing guffaws.
“Are you kidding? She’s married, and she was dating the guy before she ever worked here. Besides, she thinks you’re creepy.”
The reason for this back story? Well, there J. was sitting in the break room for quite a while before Helper realized he had no idea who J. was and enquired.
“I’m J., C.’s husband.”
“C.?” Helper asked nonchalantly, “Who’s that?”
“You know,” Lexie said, “she works at the front desk. Dark hair, green eyes, pretty?”
“Short?” offered J.
“And by the way, everything is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
– Slyvia Platt
I’m in a bit of a bind, darlings. I signed up for a creative writing class this semester(after work hours so Chief can’t quash it) both to get me back into the school mindset and to make me start writing again. I’ve lapsed of late, so I thought this would be a great way to spur me on a bit. I got good and excited for the class and then I walked in on the first day and immediately realized Creative Writing was not going to be a comfortable class for me.
See, I want to be a writer. Most of the (mostly freshman) class want to be creative.
This is not the same thing at all. When we shared what our favorite books are most of the class said Twilight (blech and sigh) or named a fantasy series of some type or another. Then when we went around talking of what we wanted to do with our writing almost everyone said poetry, a couple said songwriting.
Appropriately artistic and moody writer.
My teacher is a poet as well, but talking about “snow melting like a woman crying” and trying to bring “the magic and mysteries of the cosmos to the page” is not really…what I do. He gave a long, rambling lecture about how he wants us to create art, ART (said in a rolling voice with a dramatic fist shake towards the skies), and that’s what he expects. I immediately blanched.
Inappropriately chipper and fairly happy C.
Now, I think I may be a talented writer but by no means do I think I’m a Great Writer (I’d paraphrase an evaluation of someone I heard once and say that I’m mediocre with flashes of brilliance). Mostly I just like to tell a good story. To be honest, I’d have to say that my sense of humor is probably what makes my writing at all readable, but I have a feeling that humor in this class would not go over well. So, whilst I was floundering in this sea of doubt, my teacher volunteered me to write a piece for class this coming tuesday. I have to submit it by email tonight to be ripped to bloody shreds by the rest of my artistic and suffering classmates in peer evaluation.
Of course, I probably shouldn’t tease them so much because this assignment plunged me into a pit of despair and I wandered about in a pretty artistic slump of my own for a couple days as I was seized with Writer’s Block and whined about the lack of poetry in my soul. Not that I’d ever want to write it, but that I’m shallow enough to want to impress my teacher.
Quick, someone tell me to suck it up and get to work! I’ve been telling myself for three days but my inner wanna-be-writer is actually pretty fragile and seems to be ignoring me out of fear of scathing peer reviews. Or the realization that I’m not actually any good. Yikes.
I went home with J. for lunch and as we walked in the door, we were met with an overwhelming smell that neither of us could identify. We sniffed dubiously around trying to solve the mystery. We dumped all the bins, lit candles and opened windows to clear the air, but it wasn’t until J. wandered into another room and got a fresh whiff that he exclaimed, “Sesame oil! But…why…how?”
“There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know.”
– Ambrose Bierce
So, Avatar. I have to give it one big “Meh.”
Now, before the raging hordes come for blood, I can absolutely appreciate the scientific whammy of creating completely new technology to make something totally innovative. I can also appreciate the fact that the special effects are indeed pretty special (as long as you’re not in the second row at a 3-D theatre…woof…).
But, and I stand on this, the plot is boring.
I have seen A) Dances with Wolves, B) Pocahontas, and I have also lived through the Bush administration (subtlety, thy name is not James Cameron. Might as well have named the planet Iraq and the invading commander Cheny…yes, we get your point. Thank you).
“I think it’s a terrible shame that politics has become show business.”
– Sydney Pollack
There are far worse vocab words than I!
My name is actually not a real name, per se. It’s a word that my parents turned into a name (which incidentally has enjoyed rising popularity in recent years, which makes me long to kidnap, rename, and adopt out any of these children who’ve stolen it, but I digress). I’m very fond of my name and when I see the word used anywhere I tend to get a bit excited. I was a vocabulary word in 8th grade, a fact both my teacher and I still find funny.
However, occasionally my name can cause me pain. Yesterday for example, as I was doing the laundry run and scanning through different radio stations I crossed paths with the Sean Hannity Show on talk radio. And he used my name. I felt unclean.
Politically I’m moderate and don’t associate myself with any parties (America needs a few more, I’m convinced, but that’s another post for another day) because I tend to agree with some things a party will support and strongly disagree with others. To be honest I think there must be a lot of people like me with opinions they’ve arrived at after lots of thought and examination. And if they’re like me they don’t like being herded by politicians or pundits into one camp or another for their own convenience.
Too loud to hear yourself think? Mission accomplished.
However, I irrevocably and unequivocably hate Fox News, more specifically Fox Talk Show Hosts Claiming To Be News. I find them inflammatory and painful (like a bad rash) for their circular reporting and flagrant bias. Now, I understand that all news sources have a bias and that you need to be aware of that bias when you use them for information, but I maintain that Fox News is the only one to wave its around proudly and use the protection of free speech to declare their opinions fact. See here for further details. (Genius.) Oh, this too to expound.
And now, they are bringing on…Sarah Palin? Um, has anyone ever listened to this woman speak for any period of time?
All of which has nothing to do with my name, but it really got my goat!
“How much sleep have you gotten in the last three days?”
“…twelve hours…maybe…”
– Parents and C.
Hello, darlings! J. and I have returned from Merrie Olde Englande but I’m not at all intact! For some reason I didn’t adjust to English time at all this trip, and no amount of Tylenol PM could fix me. And rest certainly wasn’t on the agenda because J. had never been and there is SO MUCH TO SEE/DO. All of which I will faithfully recount, as soon as I have recovered from the exhaustion induced headcold fog I’m currently clawing my way out of. Thank goodness I’ve the weekend to rest before going back to work.
And now, a few observations.
Small Dog, upon arrival.
Item the first. Some women look good when they travel. I am not one of them. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been flying at least a couple times a year for a good portion of my life, how much I hydrate, how many naps I squeeze in, whether or not I put on makeup, how many vitamins I’ve popped, or whether I’m seated next to the banshee child from Hades or a perfectly silent baby, I will inevitably arrive looking haggard. My hair will be in desperate need of a wash, my skin will have turned to an ashen mess, and my eyes will be rimmed in red agony. And also inevitably, on every flight there will be a leggy blonde in skinny jeans that fit her properly, a flowy cardigan, the perfect carry-on bag, at least one unobtrusive and flattering accessory, flawless skin, and perfectly mussed hair that will come out of the jet in the same lovely condition it went into it with. I hate this woman.
Item the second. Terrorists will make an appearance. I’ve had some experience with the fallout of their behavior. A few years ago I was flying out of Brussels back to the States, my family was on their way to the UK and I was back off to university. It was a day after the UK-based terrorist plot to use liquid explosives on airliners had been discovered and dismantled (2006, if you don’t recall in these fast-paced times) and the resulting chaos was ricocheting around airports world-wide.
Goodbye, dear. Be safe and don't talk to extremists. See you at Christmas...maybe.
My parents drove me to the airport, waved a cheerful goodbye, and off they were down to Calais to take the ferry across the Channel to Dover. And there I stood in the Brussels airport staring blankly into the pandemonium. There were security guards everywhere, dogs, and barking airline employees informing me that I would not be permitted a carry-on on my flight so I would either need to repack everything or throw my carry-on and everything in it away. I had turned in my European mobile phone (and so had my parents) so there was no way to keep in contact, and exchanged all my money for US dollars so there was no way to pay for anything unless I wanted to eat the exchange rate fees on my US credit card. And they were on their way to France (without me!). A very nice Middle Eastern family made room for me with their group on the floor where we all repacked, stuffed, sat on suitcases to close them, and repacked again to make sure we were within weight requirements. Going through the security screening took nearly two hours, but it didn’t matter because my flight was delayed for five.
After the foiled terrorist plot this past week, Heathrow had stepped up security but J. and I actually made it through in good time with only a frisking. Unfortunately, after we were frisked and shown into our containment area, we weren’t allowed out again and so I had to forego breakfast.
And item the third. Continental’s new entertainment system?! Amazing! You should fly with them just for the countless movie options!
All I want to do is hibernate. Even if, in spite of the ridiculous things that wake me up occasionally, I get a full night’s rest, I wake up exhausted every day and completely lacking the will to do anything. For a week now I’ve hauled myself out of bed mere minutes before we have to dash out the door to work/school. There’s been a pile of clean clothes sitting on my floor for days because I just can’t muster the strength to sort and store them (sorry, Mum!). We got these great electric toothbrushes for Christmas from J.’s parents which took some getting used to (i.e. splattering the mirror) which I haven’t dealt with in a week. And nature might abhor a vacuum, but not as much as me!
Small Dog Syndrome 