Caterwauling

As I typed that headline, I heard Axl Rose wailing within my head. Oh, the agony.

I don’t have much in this world, but something I am desperately trying to acquire is a wee bit more patience. OK, a wee bit minus the more part … I don’t have an iota of patience when it comes to waiting for anything. And that inner bitch of mine? Oh, the rage she exhibits when she has to wait for anything. She does know, though, that waiting for stupid people to trip over the cluestick and get bonked in the head by it, however, is the longest wait of all. …

Last week was a terrible week for commuting (though I did have a splendid commute both coming and going today, thankyouverymuch … minus accidentally ending up on Constitution Avenue, but even that worked out quite peachily because anything beats sitting on 395 North so long that you have a birthday before you make it to work, but I digress).

*takes a breath*

Anywho, after a spectacularly shitty eternity living in traffic last week, I spent practically the whole of Saturday morning waiting in line at the post office. Oh. My. God. The agony, the torture, the cruelty of it all! To spend the whole week wearing out the poor brakes on your vehicle, then to spend hours waiting to mail out some packages via media mail because you’re selling your soul (or, at least, your books) to make ends meet.

In any event, I was 437th in line behind some loony woman. As soon as I got there, four people lined up behind me. Loony Tunes tells me she needs to duck out of line for a moment and asks me to hold her place. I stared at her in stony silence, perturbed but not quite enough to just outright slug her. After she left, I heard myself say, “Well, what the fuck else do I have to do in the meantime?” Whoops.

So she comes back in line a few minutes later. I’d assumed she’d had to grab a form or an envelope, but nada. So we inch up a few times, and she tells me to hold her place again. I said, “Seriously?” but she had gone *poof* before I had the full word out of my mouth. Now, people are really starting to send me evil vibes. But my evil vibes are stronger because my Inner Bitch had had her vitamin that morning and nobody was going to out-bitch her that day.

Loony Tunes comes back and gets in line in front of me again. I had basically been flat-out ignoring her as she came and went because I was in no fucking mood for conversation and I certainly wasn’t in the mood for her shit. I mean, I didn’t want to be standing in line either, you know? I am claustrophobic and agoraphobic and, all-in-all, just ridiculously pissed off to be spending my life waiting.

And, wouldn’t ya know it, Loony has to get out of line again! At this point, her death is imminent. Would you dare ask anyone to hold your place in a line … and three times, to boot?

When she comes back into line, I launch into full assault mode. “Lady, go home and don’t come back till you get your fucking shit together!” At that same moment, she breathes that she has asthma and needed air.

Damn it.

Trumped me.

Fuck.

Anyway, she didn’t dare get out of line again. But she practically crawled up the ass of the person in line in front of her, so either she didn’t need air that badly or she didn’t want to be burned by the fire I was breathing in her direction. 😉

But, alas, apparently my patience is improving, because six months ago, my head would have spun 360 degrees from the pain. Apparently, I am growing, and there may be hope for me acquiring a shred of patience — or, at least, not plotting homicide — one of these days. 😀

On iTunes: The Killers, “Somebody Told Me”

One of the things I miss is having one or more traditions to which to look forward. Or, in this case, I need to adapt an old one so that I can still have it in some form or another.

Last year at this time, I had this great phone network ready for when “American Idol” voting was in progress. On Tuesdays, it involved calls conferring over who was the best and for whom we would be sending text messages en masse to FOX. On Wednesdays, when the results were announced and someone was kicked off, the calls were usually to bemoan the tastes of the idiot teen-agers who voted for whomever they thought was cute instead of the singers with the real talent.

I had two phones, and I’d often have someone on each line, at each ear. There were three people in my phone network. The prior year, it was two. In any event, “AI” season was the one tradition I really had — I would bust out the heated foot bath/spa every Tuesday and paint my toenails afterward. Those were two hours that I was parked on my ass and shutting out the rest of the world to focus on me.

This year, it’s season four of “AI,” and everything is different. One of my phone buddies is now on the West Coast and doesn’t see the show when I do (although we’ve had some midnight calls to discuss other shows, but that means I can’t call and give any spoilers. Rats!). Another — well, we aren’t on each other’s speed dial lists anymore. And the third, well, I’m sure we will be on the horn, even though circumstances have dictated that I pull away for awhile because I don’t socialize when I’m in a funk. But, alas, said funk shall dissipate to allow for bitching about “Idol” contestants. 🙂 Now, to just figure out where I shoved the foot bath, because I am due for a pedicure!

But, it shows how everything changes so quickly. I was thinking about some other people I know. One gets together with a friend and ensures that they see every Oscar-nominated film before the awards ceremony. Another gets together with her girlfriends to wax poetic over the “Miss America” pageant — their dream is to actually attend the event, but for now, they have a spa night and giggle like schoolgirls, dreaming together about what they would do for the talent competition and how they would discuss their plans for achieving world peace. I love that!

Living in D.C. means that you have to be OK with the transience of it all — people come and go; most move away because it’s too expensive, and others fall out of each other’s respective circles for whatever reasons. Perhaps the one longstanding tradition I’ve participated in during the nearly three years that I’ve lived here is to not count on doing the same thing at this time next year with the same people, if at all. Not to say we won’t all catch up on the phone at some point and get caught up on the gossip eventually, but there was something magical about sharing moments that we could always refer to in future conversations and not have to give the whole background for the other person to understand what you were trying to say.

In any event, I hope this year to, among many other things, develop some new traditions with some new people. But, I’ll never forget the joy of spending the old traditions with people who made those traditions worth remembering. 🙂

On iTunes: Howie Day, “Come Lay Down”

Subtitle: If the Underoos fit. …

I’ve come to the realization that I was never happy unless I was rebelling against something, particularly in regard to the professional world. I’ve always tried to be creative about it. From wearing tennis shoes with designer suits to smiling to people’s faces while writing poison pen letters behind their backs to smoking at my desk after hours, I was always up to something. It was like giving the mental middle finger to The Man.

The weird thing is, maybe I’ve changed or else I don’t harbor the same feelings of utter desperation in my new job. I have nothing to rebel against. And, for once in my life, I am not opposed to finding out what it might feel like to blend in.

Maybe I’ve just grown up, or maybe I’ve grown out of my need to feel like I’m getting away with something. I think it’s that I’m finally challenged to reach my potential instead of trying to burn excess creative energy. This is what happens to people who have unused potential — we dance mental circles around the masses. My friend Shan always jokes with me that people like she and I need to work at 50 percent capacity — 75 percent, on the high end — to accomplish what people working at full steam can. I suspect there are more of us out there who are afraid to admit it or who have forgotten what it was like to want to kick ass each and every day. But, people hate you when you raise the bar so high they couldn’t touch if if they walked on stilts, and they find ways to make you feel their pain.

I think that a lot of us get screwed in not having (or being able to take advantage of) opportunities to maximize our potential. Some of my friends and I are sitting on genius-level intellects and storage bins full of ideas, and we’re living some of the most nondescript lives in the world. But, think about it — if we started a think tank with everyone who reads this blog (’cause I know that you smart/funny/creative people out there feel just like I do!), we could achieve SPECTACULAR things. Revolutionary, even. With our combined forces, we could cure cancer!

However, we’ve used our superpowers to do something even more difficult … we’ve managed to hide our magnificent aptitude under the cloak of being average. We are our own Clark Kents, never donning the tights (thank god! LOL) and capes that will help us soar to where we were meant to reach. Per “their” codes, we dress up every day, we keep quiet and choose not to attract attention to ourselves, we amble along in fear of somebody expecting something of us because that means we will have to live up to everything we thought we were going to grow up to be. We could very well turn out to be heroes, and there’s no turning back after that happens.

A lot of pressure comes with being a hero. I know — I have tried it. And, while I loved it, my neck hurt from getting whacked every time I stuck it out. I learned in a very hard way that the person who fades into the background is the happiest one of all. Not saying I accept this as my fate but, rather, accept that many choose to live that way, and that doesn’t make it dishonorable. And, as a washed-up hero at 30 myself, it’s like making a hit record or two and fading into oblivion. While I relive the moments when I knew what it was like to shine, the world keeps turning and forgets, in its finite attention span, I ever existed. And after enough of that, sometimes even I wonder why I ever thought I was special … because wouldn’t I still be, then?

For those of us who forget from time to time that we are so very capable of making miracles, we realize that we have met our greatest challenge: acceptance. And, sadly, that is the wrong thing to which to aspire, yet for us, we watched “The Incredibles” and identified with the heroes-turned-nobodies that we became what those without potential wanted us to be. And when you meet somebody or somebodies who spot that spark in you and want to see you run with it and will pass you the ball for you to run with it, what will our hero do? Run, fumble, pass?

Before you answer that, just breathe for a moment and think back. When you were dancing around in your Supergirl or Batman Underoos so many moons ago, was this what you pictured you would grow up to be? There’s still time to feel that way again, if you so choose to accept this mission. …

On iTunes: Jimmy Eat World, “Work”

All you need is a hug. It’s been so long since I’ve had one, I’m to the point of dreaming about them. Last night, I dreamed that someone I haven’t seen in a ridiculously long time and hope expect to never see again just grabbed me and held me ridiclously tightly. I fought it, of course, because I am not the touchy-feely type and wasn’t about to accept anything from this long-lost figure. But, once I stopped resisting, it felt good. Really, really good.

I’ve spent my life loving my solitude, but the world is a lonely place when you don’t have anyone to come home to. No wonder I’ve embraced working ’round-the-clock the way I have … it was my only way of having something dependent upon the amount of care I could give it. But when the weekend comes, the only thing I have to wrap myself in is a fleece blanket covered with cat fur.

We all send virtual hugs to each other, and I always hug my cats (mostly Maddie because she seeks it out), but it’s high time I added “finding someone to hug me” to the to-do list. Amazing how the human body craves contact when it’s been without it for awhile.

On iTunes: Jennifer Warnes, “Right Time of the Night”

Dear Self:

Why are you freezing up? You are more than capable of this and a thousand times more. You get so scared when you’re put on the spot, and you know better than everyone that you practically have to be cattle-prodded to take an opportunity to shine. But, when you want to shine, you do. And, sometimes you shine even when that wasn’t your goal in the first place. You got this far … you simply can’t stop here. I know, your internal resources are close to running dry, but think for a second. Those resources regenerate when you’re using them. When you stop producing, stop thinking, stop dreaming and stop running, that is when the “use it or lose it” cliche comes true. A body in motion stays in motion, to overhype the cliche use this morning. 🙂 You’re finally in motion — any move you make is at least an adventure in some direction. So hop to it.

Love,
Dawn

Oh, and P.S.: That skirt you’re wearing today? So sassy and cute. I know, you wish it were denim and that pantyhose would be banned for all eternity, but you’ve sucked it up quite nicely and are personalizing your “older you” style pretty well. Rock on, lady!

On iTunes: Lindsay Lohan, “To Know Your Name”

When I turned 30 last May, I could barely say the word aloud. Thirty. Gah.

But I soon accepted it. I saw the benefits right away. I figured I’d worked very hard in my 20s — sometimes holding three or more low-wage jobs simultaneously. No one really took me seriously because of my trendy clothes, silver jewelry (and loads of it), short skirts, boobs usually a bit too exposed, cough cough ’80s hair cough cough and lack of age showing on my face. I figured I’d hit the magical age wherein people would take me seriously.

Fast forward several miserable, strife-filled months, and 30 has less energy and more wrinkles and gray hairs than I care to count. Wrinkles. Ugh. I have vowed, given ongoing financial chaos, to become a Hester Prynne of sorts — to never spend a dime on anything but bills and necessities for a long time to come — wearing my scarlet B for “broke” (or bee-yotch. Whichever!).

But the energy thing? A killer, man. Really. When I was in my early 20s, I had a hideous commute. (Via Port Authority, not driving. Ick and ugh.) Now I spend the same amount of time (but, this time, going 32 miles each way) en route, and at least I have my CDs and crappy a.m. talk radio. But I’m exhausted! And, upon further examination of the wardrobe, holy shit. No wonder those in “authority” (I still sneer at that word when I remember some people from my past — can’t help it!) used to look down their pointy little noses at me. I was the corporate hoochie, many days. 🙂 Hoo boy, someone needs an extreme makeover … and soon!

That outer makeover is going to take some time (read: thawing out from my debt avalanche comes first). However, there’s some work I must start doing on the inside, and that’s making sure I have the capability to make it through a day with, if not an abundance of energy, then “just enough” to still be OK at the end of the day.

I was talking to John recently about routines. Respectively, we used to have set “self” time (get yer mind outta the gutter, although admittedly, that kind of “date with ourselves” is definitely the best use of time ever!) for ourselves — even if it was as simple as a pizza/movie night kind of deal. And, I realized how much I used to abhor routine. There was a time in which I loved changes of plans and calls out of the blue, directing me to get dolled up and be ready in a flash. I could so totally do that … at one time. And, granted, I would love nothing more than to spend some quality time away from the apartment that has literally been my prison these past few months. But, my energy reserves are just depleted these days. The value of routines and schedules, I am finding now in my “old age,” is to ensure that we have enough momentum to get us through the times when we need it.

For me, that means no more staying up till 2 a.m., watching crap TV and typing really bad fiction on my beloved G4. No more hanging out on iChat (well, not as much as I would like) because I don’t have the wherewithal to have a conversation and actually accomplish something simultaneously. No more getting upset in the mornings because traffic blows (well, not getting too bent out of shape!) because I have to somehow make it through an entire day and an evening commute without having colleagues seeing the stress monkey I can become. That means streamlining a whole bunch … that means priority-setting. And, the No. 1 priority? Me. Plain and simple — I am the best date I’ve ever had, and I need to spend some time making me feel as special as I know I am, damn it. 😉

Bottom line, there’s only so much vim and vigor to go around when you start climbing up the hill you will eventually keel get over. A friend once warned me that your body goes to shit when you hit that third decade. Perhaps I’ve just had a harder year than most, but I’m definitely feeling my age, in any event. And, I’m certainly looking it!

My one big goal this year (other than the obvious, which I have finally achieved! Yeah!) was to actually find/cultivate/keep a functional relationship. But, it will be another challenge — one for which I am not completely ready at this particular moment — to carve out the energy (and time, but don’t get me started on that precious commodity just yet!) to make that happen. But, alas, despite my youthful distaste of the almighty routine, I am starting to see not only the value, but also the necessity, of knowing when I need to be “on” and when I can simply hit the snooze button and recharge. I look forward to finally finding my groove. 🙂

On iTunes: The Exies, “Ugly”

1. Ever notice how the only people who use the phrase “President Bush” were the ones who voted for him?

2. Of 17 turn signals I witnessed being used during the a.m. commute, 16 were used by me. The 17th? Some jackass who flipped on the “right” blinker and cut me off by merging “left.” Fucking asshat.

3. After months without it, I’ve had a faint sense of deja vu during the day. This is fantastic — it means I am in the right place at the right time. Which means my life will eventually be on track, right? Woo hoo?

4. Ever have a rantabulous diatribe just bubbling beneath the surface and know that if you so much as opened your mouth (or a “new blog” post), you will regret it? Or, worse, you don’t give a shit about potential reactions because you’re just fucking exhausted with always being the one who gets hurt and want to share the pain? While, in the long run, I am always glad to be the better person, sometimes I just want to kick ass, take names and let out a barbaric yawp.

5. Steelers loss = broken heart. The only thing I hate worse than the Patriots are their fans. (Minus you, Scott, of course!) HOW COULD YOU LOSE THE PLAYOFF GAME?!?!?!! I’d set fire to my “Go Pittsburgh” magnetic ribbon if the cold hadn’t soldered it to my back bumper!

On iTunes: Low Millions, “Eleanor”