It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
I did a weekend soundoff a while back, but even with my assortment of friends (the lot of which easily form the Who’s Who of intriguing people) this was a bit much for a weeknight. While on the way to see a friend starring in another play, the following sentence was uttered verbatim:
“So. Margot. There you were in a strange city staying with a toxic couple who have gotten drunk and the wife – who is currently having an affair with a French street performer named Andre – is starting to come on to you in a desperate bid to end her marriage…what do you do now?”
Yes, there is a story behind this. All true. Sadly, it’s not mine to tell. Some of my single friends wonder why I like to stay home most weekends these days, I just can’t keep up!
“Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right.” – Oprah Winfrey
A decade, dears. There have been revolutions, wars, natural disasters. There have been cures for diseases, leaps in technology, triumphs of humanity. The iPod is approaching its 10th anniversary. I’m 10 years on since starting high school…where does time go, exactly?
A big decade for me, all things considered. Lots of good stuff happened, some bad as well but surprisingly little in comparison I find (which belies all my complaining, shhh). My small galaxy of people had a pretty stellar year too. Jane had to move three times in one year as she and her husband struggled with the economy, jobs, and life, but now they seem pretty settled (and much closer to me than California!). Janssen had a lovely little girl. Wise is about to follow Jannsen’s maternal lead any second now and her husband got a clerkship post that they are thrilled about. Hennessy got married and bought a house. Sav is graduating and her husband got into the grad school of his choice – hurray! Venice moved (which I’m still not over) but it was the right choice for her and Val and they have a bright future ahead. Peregrine also moved back to DC, has a fabulous job and a very special – but sadly top secret – project she’s working on. Scarlett is in grad school in New York, dealing with personal demons (aren’t we all?) but doing so with her usual clear-eyed honesty and personal flair. Angel got a great new job. Margot is having some truly heinous battles in the teaching craft, but I’ve never seen her more awesome, (which, if you knew her, you would realize is a statement of gargantuan proportions). Dad retired, Mum got a job teaching at university and they moved to the US to enjoy retirement (by which I mean, Dad flung himself into manual labor to turn a patch of East Coast backwoods into an estate). Gio graduated high school and is on to uni himself. Buddy and Snickers started at a new school in a new country and are doing swimmingly.
Next year will find J. graduated and off to grad school, goodness knows where. Most likely we’ll be moving as all but one of the schools he’s applied to are in different states and/or countries. 2011 will be a year of adventures and I’m thrilled. It’s been too long since I’ve had one.
Obligatory Goals:
Shop less.
Eat better.
Save more.
Exercise longer.
Love harder.
Complain less.
Anticipate more.
Hope the New Year brings you all the adventures you desire, kittens. See you on the other side.
I am a daughter, granddaughter, sister, and friend of soldiers.
– C.
In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another!” – The Crucible
Let’s continue on the baby rant theme, shall we? Or perhaps a variation of it…the names some people inflict on their children. Unusual names are fine, I have one for heaven’s sake, but some names seem more cruel than anything else. Here’s a few that have come across my desk in the past few weeks (J., please read this and admit that the nice English names I want to bestow on our children, though odd to an American ear, are far from the worst I could come up with):
Boys
Oral – why, by Jove?! Hildebrande – named after what was no doubt an embarrassing uncle Balthazar – are you a video game character? No? Bad choice Stetson – are you a Mountie’s hat? No? Bad choice Turk – is your last name Irish in any way? If so (it was) bad choice Jumber – baffling
Girls
Jaraka – an Anglo-American girl from somewhere in the midwest Daxy – after, apparently, a Star Trek character Camillo – wrong last letter Moment – it only takes a moment…to make your child hate you forever
Just so we’re clear, lots of unusual names are quite nice – Janssen’s baby’s name is not common and it’s adorable. Ditto on my godniece. But let’s be clear just because your spawn’s name is unique, it does not follow that it’s in good taste.
PS – See J.? My ideas are looking better and better, aren’t they?
“I can’t think why mothers love them. All babies do is leak at both ends.” – Douglas Feaver
Wise and R2 are both pregnant and due about the same time. I’ve had a slew of acquaintances spawn recently. Last Friday the office girls and I had that conversation about childbirth that traumatized three-quarters of us, and at dinner last night my god-uncle (jokingly) asked when J. and I were going to add to the list. Short answer, not any time soon, Deus Volent. Pregnancy seems to be on everyone’s collective brain these days.
Apart from my completely lack of desire to have children in the near future, pregnancy, as far as I can tell, produces all sort of undesirable social effects. I can’t begin to count the times that pregnant women have been accosted in public places by, as far as I can tell, perfect strangers. People seem to feel it’s their prerogative to run up, clap hands on their stomach, and demand when they are due or coo over them in an alarmingly possessive manner. I can personally guarantee the first stranger who tries that with me when I’m eventually ready to have kids will have their ears blistered.
Also, it seems to turn people (in their minds at least) into friends with everyone in sight. Which can be awkward for the individual on the receiving end of this jovial goodwill.
Friday evening I ran to Nordstrom to find a baby shower present for R2. When I stepped off the tile floor into the carpeted are of the baby section, I might as well has crossed the Bosporus!
There were choruses of “Awww!” from every corner, even though I saw next to no people anywhere. A creepy enough beginning, but it got more bizarre. Wandering past a rack of clothes a perfect stranger leaped at me out of nowhere clutching tiny shoes in her fist.
“Aren’t these the most adorable things you’ve ever seen?!” she demanded shrilly before disappearing behind shelves of diaper bags.
A bit shaken I began flipping through clothes when a woman on the other side of the store held up a pair of pajamas, waved them back and forth to get my attention, and when I furtively glanced up, yelled, “These are just too cute, I had to share them with someone!” I nodded and moved away quietly…
Ducks. Gender neutral enough? You decide
Only to back into a third woman who held up two onesies asking my opinion which one she should buy, launching into the life story of both herself and the person she was buying this present for.
“Uh, the one on the left?” I offered.
“My left or your left?” she demanded. “Are ducks gender-neutral enough?”
“Um. Yes.”
“By the way, when are you due? You’re not showing at all,” she said, reaching for my stomach.
“I’m not pregnant,” I managed through clenched teeth, nearly tripping as I backpedaled to avoid her hand.
“Oh. Well, you have time,” she said, patting the shoulder I couldn’t wrench away in time.
“One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.” – Clifton Fadiman
Yesterday was one of those days where everything went wrong.
On Tuesday I started a project to audit our records of everyone who is permanently forbidden from campus. I worked on it and nothing else for two days, 16 straight working hours and paid meticulous attention to detail. The product I turned in was exactly what had been requested.
NEED. CAKE. NOW.
Yesterday I went to talk with the officer who assigned me the project and he told me it wasn’t what he wanted at all (even though when I gave it to him Wednesday and he looked over it, he pronounced it good). Instead of just running an audit to see whether our paper files and electronic files meet up, apparently I’m supposed to create an easy reference guide so that a committee of people can decide whether any of these people should be permitted on campus in the future. Which is not what I was originally assigned and which requires entirely different information than an audit which, not to harp on, I’d spent 16 hours compiling data for.
Then! A volunteer organization we (and when I say “we” I mean “I”) run background checks for started a minor panic with it’s volunteers by declaring that they had never received the results of checks we (meaning “I”) had run.
“Bollocks!” cried I viciously, pulling up multiple emails spanning a month demonstrating that I had, in fact, sent the results off properly.
I have pride issues. I have no problem admitting when I’ve done something incorrectly or correcting mistakes. But when I’ve done my job properly, supplied exactly what was asked, and done so in a fabulously quick manner, only to be told I’m completely in the wrong and/or failed in a basic duty when I haven’t…poor J. gets a long rant over lunch.
However, thanks to a long and rather hilarious talk with Sav, Vodka, and Hennessy about (among other things) law, obstetrics, and drugs (legal ones!), I’m feeling in much better form.
“Wait, was this woman scary beyond all reason?” “Oh yeah!” – The Emperor’s New Groove
Freshman year I had a roommate, Georgie, who was awesome wrapped around a slice of fabulous. She wrote a show our entire dorm performed, had all sorts of scholarships, and the good fairy had blessed her with a wittiness of the lung-busting-laughing variety. We’ve kept in touch as best we can, she married now with a little boy and we live nowhere near one another.
She had a theory, one which in my life experience has yet to be disproved, that read thus: any incident may be summed up or perfectly accompanied by a quote from the Emperor’s New Groove. Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon?
Bad makeup day? “Llama face!”
Crisis of conscience? “My shoulder angel.”
Someone invading your personal space? “No touchy!”
So mad you can’t function? “I gotta go wash something.”
Invariably handy!
Yesterday Hennessy and I took a break and wandered over to the campus book store on the hunt for calendars (oh the thrilling life of a secretary!). While making our way back we came across her.
The woman was stretched like taffy, extremely long and freakishly thin. Her face was almost pentagonal, her cheek bones jutting out sharply on each side. She’d obviously had “work done” because her skin was stretched taunt over her visage in a way that does not appear in nature, her skull looked a size too small beneath it. She was dressed in something long, tight, and purple. She was accompanied by a large hulking man.
Hennessy and I made it past her without comment but when we were safely out of hearing, she turned to me and said one word. “Yzma.”
I leaked an unflattering snort as I tried to keep from laughing.
“Living proof that dinosaurs roamed the earth,” I gasped.
“What is keeping this woman together?” Hennessy returned immediately.
“If you go to a costume party at your boss’s house, wouldn’t you think a good costume would be to dress up like the boss’s wife? Trust me, it’s not.” – Jack Handy
One fifties girl, a teacher/maiden aunt, two babies, Spiderman, and Liz Lemmon.An Identity Crisis (note: HAHAHAHA!)A costume from Pakistan, Identity Crisis (again, because I think it's hilarious), and yours truly as Joan Holloway!
So far we have also seen, two Avatar people (the blue ones), one Lord Voldemort, and several Waldos (as “Where’s…”). Also a green plastic army guy, a BP oil spill, and the entire Monty Python crew.
And, speaking of clothes, the winner of our giveaway is…
Amanda who said her favorite thing about herself was: “my skin tone. I’m extremely white, but I’ve got enough on my mom’s olive hues to pull off pretty much any hair color. And changing up the hair is fun stuff.”
Congratulations Amanda! I’ll be contacting you to ship your prize to you!
“Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others are not; and that the two kinds are mostly oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.” – Christopher Morely
Truthfully, my loves, nothing interesting has happened since the Anti-Harassment Seminar. I’ve been wracking my brains for something to entertain you with but, alas, I’m coming up short. Accept, instead, this humble offering of some of the things Google Reader has saved my sanity with this stupidly dull Friday afternoon. Enjoy!
Fabulous friend Lauren – who writes a blog about buying and updating a “little farmhouse in the big city, which you should totally be reading – writes a post about water for Blog Action Day
Fabulous friend Janssen reviews everything worth reading and occasionally expands your world with recipes, stories, and even photos of her completely lovable little daughter.
Need to chuckle? Check out the sometimes silly, sometimes chic headgear of those crazy Aussies going to the races.
Do you love history?! And I’m assuming you do, since we’re friends. It would be a shame to lose you…anyway, check out The History Blog – with a new story everyday about something from the past being dragged into the present. Estate sales at Chatsworth, shipwrecks being raised, or (recently) a lost Vivaldi manuscript turning up in Scotland.
Do you love medieval history? Or at least funny tales, quips, and snarky tales of saints and sinners complete with Monty Python-esqe commentary and improbably illuminated manuscripts? Read here.
Get thee to a nunnery! Here’s a blog written by the sisters of a Stateside convent that will make you feel that the contemplative life might me more busy than you could handle.
Noble Pig – one of the best food blogs I’ve ever found, I inevitably start drooling on my keyboard whenever they post a new recipe.
And finally! Every once and a while something comes into your life, usually through the efforts of a very good friend, that you had no idea existed but now that you do, you can’t live without:
My father used to retreat to his armchair sometimes and read Calvin and Hobbes comics by himself. And within minutes this quiet but incessant giggle would be heard tiptoeing its way round the house. It makes my mother and I crack up every time we hear it. And, ladies and gentlemen, I have found my personal equivelent (although for me, it’s more like side splitting, lung busting bouts of uproarious laughter that must make the neighbors hate me). Behold! Hyperbole And A Half!
“You can watch this while I find someone who will perform a marriage ceremony between a crazed fan and a celebrity teen hostage. To the Internet!” – The Fairly Odd Parents
Savvy just did something which, considered in light of current societal attitudes and the fact that a movie title The Social Network was just released, is quite brave. She deleted her Facebook. Apparently it took hours of dogged, single-minded determination and clicking, but she did it.
"Honestly, C., had you no life at all?!" "I'm SORRY!"
I confess, I’ve toyed with the idea myself. Truthfully, the hours I’ve spent on that ridiculous thing will shame me when we’re all dead and get to watch the Big Movie of our lives.
However, I have a qualm. Surprisingly I do use Facebook for its original intent: to keep track of people. Having trucked over the world, keeping in touch with people can be a chore. It’s the same reason why I’ve never changed my Hotmail address: I got it when I was 12 or 13 and across the years have given it out to friends/contacts/employers in multiple countries. It’s the only way I keep in touch with a whole army of correspondents, I couldn’t do something so stupid as to change it simply because Gmail is en vogue (yes, yes, and better, yes I heard you).
Frankly, though, as the years have gone by, I’ve winnowed down my own social network quite a bit. Scarlett, Peregrine, Jane, and Venice are far off, but I still communicate with them regularly. Margot, Marie, Tink, and Angel, though busy, are still nearby. The majority of people I see everyday… I see everyday: Hennessy, Wise, Susie, Sav, and Vodka, as well as the traffic clerks. I regularly bump into Sadie on campus and we often get together with my whole godfamily to play, usually at least once a month. And now that my parents live on the same continent as I do, keeping in touch with them has never been easier.
So…what do I really use Facebook for?
Honestly, the occasional glimpse into long gone friends’ lives (once every six months), to keep in touch with Gio as he heads off into his first year of adventure at university (daily), and to play stupid games (also daily, shamefully). In other words, with very few exceptions, nothing really valuable.
I don’t know if I have the moral fortitude to completely go cold turkey as the indomitable Sav did…but I am thinking that I really need to start weaning myself off it.
And how many of these behaviors/tendencies have you displayed recently?
Make your voices heard, minions! Have you ever rethought your relationship with your techie relationships? How many people would simply vanish from your life if you ditched Facebook, Twitter, and whatever bastard cousin of theirs has popped up recently? And would you miss these people if they melted away? How much of your life would disappear, and how much of it would you get back if you tuned out? Weigh in.
Small Dog Syndrome 