Daydream Believer

I feel my eyebrows sliding lower and lower on my forehead, by the end of next week they will completely obscure my vision.  My slouch in growing more prominent and even the chickens are unable to make me smile. It's getting serious.

I don't know if it was the addition of my Russian class at the community college, my lack of time off since last May (to work in Uganda, not really a break), or all the drama unfolding before me a home.  Whatever the cause, the effect is the same: I have become the Grinch (rather bad timing as the holidays are right around the corner).

Flipping through pictures of friends in Hawaii may have just set me off.  "I want to go," I thought lamely.  I can even hear the way the last note turns up ever so slightly to given the comment a true whine.  Even my own whine is annoying me right now. 

I need to get of town.  I almost left with my mother yesterday and did just that, but that tiny bell of responsibility was ringing just loudly enough for me to forgo the adventure.  Besides, what I want is a get WAY out of town, a get out of state, get out of country, get out of hemisphere kind of adventure.

I need a vacation.  Maybe to St Petersburg.  That photo does look intriguing, no? I wonder how my manager would feel about that?  I can dream.

Napping

Is it just me, or does everyone have a very concrete, unchangeable, very polarized view about napping?  With all the campaign crap exploding out of every orifice, I have been thinking a lot about what swedes decisions for people.  Do the smear ads convince people?  Do the debates sway voters? Or is it the support of other people (friends, social media, traditional media, other politicians)?  Or is it the way a political votes on specific issues?

Do campaigns really make much different?  We have had an entire lifetime to develop our opinions and formulate a kind of personal map about what principles are priorities for us, what we think is important.  Perhaps these campaigns just tap into that story.  They help us identify who is most like us.  The more I think about this, the more I wonder, to which camp do these politicians belong on my hot button issue: napping.

I just want to know, are you a napper?  Do you accept nappers?  Do you abhore and condesend to nappers?  Because, I know you have an opionion about it.  Everyone does.

I'll refrain from identifiing my affiliation at this moment, but I promise not to keep you in suspense for too long.

I can't help but see napping as a medium for people to identify with a world view.  If you like napping you might argue that a little rest mid-day refreshes and revitalizes your spirits and helps you focus your energy for the rest of the day.  However, if you are anti-napper, you may argue that you are truly ambitious, that you do not sleep your day away, that you get things done, that you are a hard worker, and nappers are entirely lazy and unproductive.

Which way do you vote?

Okay, I'll tell you what brought this on.  Today I got up for work at 0500 and made it home by 1300 (millitary time) and what full of vigor and enthusiasm about what I had accomplished in the morning (there can be much said about people who do and do not like the mornings as well, I am sure) and then had a lovely lunch with my mother who was passing through town.   About 1430 it hit me, my energy sagged (could it have been the experienmetal accupuncture from work?) and I could function no farther.  And so I laid down for an afternoon nap.  I slept for two hours and woke like a new person.  It was like magic.

So you've found me out.  I rarely have the opportunity to nap, but when I do, and when I can actualy sleep, I am never happier.  There you have it, I vote yes on napping.  And, accupuncture for that matter.

Sparkly Clips and Poofy Scrunchies.

You can watch virtually any T.V. show online these days.  And I do. There's the trashy stuff : ANTM (America's Next Top Model... and many of it's international satellite shows), Project Runway, and Biggest Loser.  And then there's the slightly less trashy shows: House, The Daily Show, and Jeopardy.

After working a run of days at work I find I can easily fill a day off with catch up episodes online.  Mini marathons. It's fantastic.

However, oftentimes I just want to watch the tube. I want to sit on the couch with a bowl of yogurt (or some other minimal effort food), flip on the T.V. and "chillax," for lack of a better word.  I want to let the great T.V. God to give me a small selection of mostly things I would never seek out online to peruse.

After 13 hours at work, this is what I wanted.  Tuesdays are usually promising.  I figured out recently that Biggest Loser is on on Tuesdays (so I can watch it "live" instead of online.)  Unfortunately, there was a basketball game on (not that I particularly dislike basketball, but really, it's no Biggest Loser).  I was so irritated that I made a point with the T.V. not to watch the game.

It's never a good sign when gymnastics on the sports channel is the winner.  But I will not complain about this. I actually like watching gymnastics.  The leotards are always so fun and bejeweled; those girls push the boundaries of where rhinestones can be worn. 

What I like most about watch gymnastics is that you can play the role of commentator and say things like, "oh, she didn't stick it.  That's going to cost her," and other nonsensical comments about how trivial things like a "wobble" on the beam will make the difference between gold and silver.

So, here's what I have a problem with.  While I do enjoy the outfits.  While I love the sparkles, bright colors, powdery chalk covering every body surface, and the elegant uniformity of the gymnasts,  I hate the hair do's.  They are such hair-don'ts!  The glittery hair clips pulling tighter a pony tail that looks like it could also function as a face lift, held up by a fluffy outdated "scrunchy."  And, to top it off, the placement is never high enough to be a true high pony (which might look cute in a childish kind of way, which those petite little girls could totally pull off) and never low enough to look dignified.  It's a travesty.  Perhaps I am watching too much ANTM and Project Runway?

So, I was commenting to my roommate that if I were an elite gymnast (because we were apparently playing the imagination gone wild game) I would never where such a gaudy statement piece. I most certainly would refrain.  And she argued that these accessories were part of the uniform, that as part of the team I would be required to partake in clips and scrunchies.

It was an Epiphany.  I suppose I assumed that these young girls had all individually chosen to wear these accessories; that each girl, in seeing gymnasts before them is similar garb, had thought to themselves, "that's a credible look, I too should were sparkly clips and colorful scrunchies."  Writing out this way has made it appear all the more ridiculous.  Of course they would never actually choose to wear those pieces.  Or would they?  What do you think?

Holiday Rant

24 October 2010

The Holiday Schedule is out. Notice how I capitalized the schedule like it is a proper noun.  Oh yeah, this schedule is no laughing matter, it determines what holiday you are giving up.  It's a lose-lose situation.  You either work Christmas or Thanksgiving (or if you are extremely lucky, you work only New Years, and if you are extremely unlucky, you get to work some combination of the three).

The Schedule Gods smite me every year, and then I get to call my family, who in turn curse the Schedule Gods (and perhaps me a little for working in a job that requires working on holidays).  It's been this way the last three years.  I call home and my siblings go on and on about how they have to postpone Christmas and their holidays end up lame because of me.

I hope you readers (I write with plural in the hopes that I have more readers than just my dad), if ever you should be unfortunate enough to be in the hospital on a holiday (or have a friend or relative suck inside it's antiseptic walls) that you remember to thank the people who care for you and are giving up (however unwillingly) their holiday, their family, their lives.

So back to this year's Holiday Schedule.  It was released to the greater public this past week and I had the opportunity to examine my fate this past Thursday.  For some reason I got excited.  Because of my history of being smited year after year, I, like many in any abusive relationship, hoped that this year would be different.  That this year I would perhaps work New Years (a sham of a holiday really) and have Thanksgiving and Christmas off.

I was promptly disillusioned. You'd think I would have learned my lesson.  Talk about putting you in a mood.  I took one look and was ready to quit my job and work somewhere else, anywhere else.

So here's the outlook (bleak as it may be): I am working Thanksgiving eve and subsequently Thanksgiving day (and the following weekend).  Then, praise be to the almighty, I have Christmas Day off, but there is the whole working Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas.  Did I mention that my family lives a good three hours away, which means going home for Christmas is a a six hour drive!  My first exclamation point, feel free to read it faster and louder, as that is how I meant it.

I worked Christmas last year.  And the year before that, for that matter.  I hate that I can't go home and see my family, my sisters that are strewn thither and yon, my brother growing up faster than I can keep track of, my parents who desperately want "all the kids home."

And there is really nothing to be done but pout and whine (it just comes naturally).  The holiday season will come and go, I will be irritated, my family will be irritated, and the coming year will arrive and I will most likely forget how annoying this whole business is, until next year when I the Holiday Schedule returns to scorn and spurn me again.

Bah Humbug.

Mother's Advice

Okay Mom, it's finally happened.  I've have given the "mom" speech. 

Let me take you a step backwards: my roommate is in the midst of a dramatic cluster-f.  Her brother and sister-in-law are on the splits and oh yeah, she works with her sister-in-law.  Drama in sues.  There is all that emotional baggage and character demonetization that comes when hearts are left feeling tattered and abused.

And my roommate is now strategically placed in the middle of this horrific apocalypse.  There is a plethora of "he said/ she said" hanging about everyone's head and my roommate was giving me the, "I won't be the bigger person"- garbage. 

And that's when it happened.  I felt it coming, but there was nothing I could do.  My mother's words just seemed to spew from me like a fountain of maternal grace.  I found myself saying things like, "you can't control what the people around you say or do," and, "you can only control how you react."

They're good words.  The way they play off my tongue sounds almost as if they were my words to begin with, and not complete plagiarism.  I could have gotten away with it, I am almost positive.

I got the expected results: tears and that look that says an epiphany has maybe just happened before your eyes.  It was like magic.  Who knew?  The conversation veered into the, "yeah well maybe I should..." and "I could be better." 

I was internally shocked by my results.  Even now, writing this, I'm a bit amazed that there was such a shift in attitude and acceptance.

After our little tete-a-tete Amy (my roommate) advised me to, "write about that in your blog."  She's brilliant sometimes.  Of course I then had to give all the credit to my mother. So yeah, thanks Mom, for all that malarkey growing up about taking on the world the only way you can, accepting what others around me do and working to respond in a way I can live with at night.

Take that Annie Dilliard... perhaps I don't need you after all.  I have an insightful mother.

1st Entry: Refections on Tinker Creek

22, October 2010

I love writing the date the way I have above.  It makes me feel foreign and sophisticated.  I have no idea from where this notion spurs, but I like it nonetheless.  Not to mention, it just makes so much more sense to start with the smallest measure of time (the day) and then progress to the greatest measure of time (the year).

Tangential much?  It happens. Frequently. 

Since this is my first entry, I feel like I ought to write about something substantial (i.e. not about how I like to write the date).  This concern stems most likely from too many years studying literature (as if there could be too many), but I want to dig into some of the more weighty self revelations that seem to be bottomless as I have been reading Annie Dillard's, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. 

At this point, with several deep creases splicing open the spine of the book, and thoughts littering the margins I have not yet reached half way.  I think I have approached this writing differently than I do most.  The guy at the book store, and my boss's wife both checked the book, gave it an appraising nod and seemed to connect with me in that way that people do when they respect your reading choice and feel like you belong in their mental book club, or something.  It's comical how much their little anecdotal praise of my reading selection may or may not have "tainted" my reading experience.

Dillard seems to go on and on about sycamores.  She is fascinated by trees, big trees (and insects, apparently).   She mentions at one point wanting to pay such close attention to the environment around Tinker Creek that she would be able to deduce the exact moment that Spring had arrived.  She writes, " I want to stick a net into time and say 'now,' as men plant flags on ice an snow and say, 'here.' But it occurred to me that I could no more catch the spring by the tip of the tail than I could untie the apparent knot in the snakeskin; there are no edges to grasp. Both are continuous loops."   Dillard makes the claim that she is continually trying to chase the present. 

It's a lovely concept.  This inability to ever exist in the present because it is impossible.  Is it because the present in infinitely connected to both the past and the future.  Or is it because the present is gone by the time we have realized it.  Do I miss the moment by analyzing the moment prior, or worrying about a moment to come?  Or, rather, is it the self-reflection, the act of meta-analysis that kills the present, that makes it intangible, unknowable?

Perhaps Dillard describes it better: "Consciousness itself dose not blind living in the present.... self consciousness, however does blind the experience of the present. It is the one instrument that unplugs all the rest. So long as I lose myself in a tree... the tree stays tree. But the second I become aware of myself... the tree vanishes.... it dams, stills, stagnates."

She does this page after page.  Some passages are convoluted and lofty, but for the most part, her stream-of-consciousness writing opens my mind and fills it with all sorts of different ideas.  Her reflections feel deeper than my own uninspired self revelations.  Her words stir in me a kind of initial reflection and then later a much more narcissistic reflection in which I wonder why my thoughts are not more original, why I need her words to think deeper and to look more acutely at the world around me: the trees, the insects.

I believe this may be the reason I have opened up the account and put finger to keyboard.  Perhaps I envy her her written reflective moments.  I want my own reflective moments.  Will mine be so well read?  Will the guy at the book store smile when he comes across it and say to the buyer of books, "Good book.  I especially like the first chapter about her cat"?  Highly unlikely.  But, the whiner can dream.