Caterwauling

It’s no secret that I would rather be alone than wish I were. And, that means I spend a LOT of time alone. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who knows herself as well as I do, and as a Gemini, I at least have two personalities to keep each other company, so it’s all good. 😉

I had a rough week — and it was totally self-imposed. I decided to give up BIG FANTASTIC FREELANCE PROJECT(TM), which sucks because I have a BIG FUCKING RETAINER TO REFUND(TM) and I already spent it on car repairs. Yay.

My goal with Big Project was to earn enough money to buy a PowerBook (or, at least, an iBook with a ton of good software). But I can’t find the time to work on said project without having a fucking laptop, so bully for me.

Anyway, while I am upset, I also feel free. This has been hanging on me for awhile, and even though I LOVED the people for whom I was working and I loved the assignment just as much, I cannot fucking do it. I get up early, I spend no fewer than two to three hours in traffic each day and I have a full day at a job I love. And when I come home, I do not want to go near the computer. And on the weekends, I have shit like laundry and litterbox and errand-running and trying to make a dent in my piles of e-mails. I half-joke (but only half) that I keep a blog so that I don’t have to write to people and tell them how I’m doing.

In any event, I am a disaster at time management, so I’ve thrown all the balls up in the air and race to keep them afloat. Or, like Shan says (and she’s just like me), “We consider it a good day when we don’t have balls — of any kind — hitting us in the face.”

LOL. Atta girl, Shan!

Oh, and don’t even remind me of how long it’s been since we talked. *heavy sigh* I wish she were awake when I’m sitting in traffic — that would be the perfect time to catch up, and I’ve taken to spending my time on the Beltway talking to my mom.

But, I digress.

What I wanted to talk about was that I spent some mad cash last night and today by going on the shopping spree from hell. Discount shopping. God damn, my ass hurts, my calves hurt, my feet hurt and my debit card hurts, but I have never been happier.

Most of you who know me in person are to be pitied know I talk to myself. What you may not know is that I speak to inanimate objects like clothes.

Anyway, I was having a perfectly lovely discussion with a gray vest about how cute he was but how I couldn’t think of anything with which to wear him when two girls stopped and picked up the vest I had discarded. (Women do this, you know — we watch what others are buying and MUST HAVE IT BECAUSE THEY MIGHT HAVE A GOOD FASHION SENSE AND WE NEED TO BE TRENDY. Actually, I don’t do it so much, but I am always uber-trendy when I go shopping because I can’t wear my cute shit to work.)

So the second I put the vest down, the one girl picked it up. She seconded that it was way cute. She also seconded that she had no idea what it would match. She also announced the price and said it was way too much to grab when there was nothing that goes with it.

I was also talking to a lovely black shirt her friend off and on during our shopping journey, as we kept running into each other within the store. We both joked that we’d been shopping all day and that we’d both bought a bunch of black shirts and jeanskirts to go with the seven million we already have at home. I liked her — she’s as maniacal as I am about sticking to one’s favorite items and just buying variations on a theme.

At another store, I helped a woman to put together an outfit for work. I don’t know if I have a flashing sign that says “Fashion Goddess” (when did that word “Fashion” pop up in front of the original sign? LOL) or what, but I never go to a store without getting into deep discussions about the importance of coordinating, not matching (yes, there is a difference). Even in shoe stores, I always have an opinion.

Here’s the deal: I am a girly girl. I like expensive pretty-smelling perfumes and feminine jewelry. I know that pantyhose can turn pasty skin into glamorous gams. I like to have my toenails painted and I like to wear strappy sandals to show ’em off. I love sparkly makeup and hair accessories. I have an amazing eye for color and can put together a wardrobe for you that will knock your socks off. I throw back my shoulders and carry myself like I have confidence (which I usually do, although there are always those off days wherein I need to be more conscious of my body language — it’s like telling a white lie, but with body parts). And people can spot that from a mile away … and they want to bask in your essence so that it rubs off on them.

The thing is, I am alone a lot, but I’m not lonely. I choose to be a hermit, sure, but I crave social interaction as much as the next girl. And when I shop, I get the best of both worlds. While I’m happier than a pig in poop to be quietly talking to discounted designer duds and asking them if they want to go home with me, I love it that people magically gravitate toward me and seek my approval and advice. I love having in-depth discussions about “the new black” (which I knew a year before anyone else did that it was going to be pink, and I’m holding on for green and then purple to have their turns).

What I love best? Leaving the conversation and then the store and not being the slightest bit obligated to keep in touch.

E-mail and unlimited long distance have been glorious advents of the age of technology. Nobody writes letters anymore. Here in Alexandria, card stores are closing at a rate of one a month — who fucking sends a Hallmark card when we can totally forget about someone’s special day and make up for it with an eCard? And USPS wants to raise postage rates again — another two cents. Here, you fuckers, get a clue — let us use all the stamps we already have cluttering up our junk drawers and THEN AND ONLY THEN will we buy your new stamps.

Ahem.

What I was trying to say is this: We can and do keep in touch with people who would normally have dropped out of our lives after awhile because of distance separating us, we manage to stay in touch, even if it’s only sporadically. This is a wonderful thing.

But, on the other hand, we are in a lonely fucking society. Seriously. My best friend lives in Oregon. My family, in Pennsylvania. My other friends — pretty much fucking everywhere. I have friends I have never MET. I’ve spilled my guts to John in Atlanta when I do not even know what the man looks like — he knows more about me than people who see me every day of my life.

So, what sucks is that when I’m tired and could not give a shit about sitting in front of my beloved Mac, I am missing out on Pratt in Philly, Bill in California, Kukini in Chicago, Erica in Minnesota, and a whole bunch of others who have been my cheering section (and I have of course been in theirs).

But, what I want? Someone to join me on a coffee run. Someone to join me for a bloody mary. Someone to just give me the human touch that I find myself craving right now. I don’t feel like firing up one of my many instant messenger programs or screennames — typed pleasantries aren’t going to cut it for me right now. The problem with having human interactions — even in sporadic doses like today — means that I crave more. It’s like I’m all dressed up and have not a goddamned place to go.

Ah, all dressed up. How many clothes are too many? 40 denim skirts (of varying dye lots, mind you), 36 black T-shirts (maybe more — I have some untapped storage tubs) — I own more cotton than a fucking field, I tell you.

I get mad at myself that I have neither a pot to piss in nor a window out of which to throw it. I own nothing great — I don’t have the new technology and it frosts my flakes that, when I do have a couple of bucks, I waste it on little luxuries like something new to wear. But when you think about it, maybe it’s not so stupid. I will never own a Coach purse nor a Jones New York suit unless somebody buys it for me. Well, I’d never own those at full price — I have plenty of Jones and Donna Karan but, believe me, I won’t buy it unless it’s 60 percent off AND I have an additional discount coupon. I may read the fashion magazines and serve as a volunteer personal shopper to wayward women, but I am hardly an elitist — I will get the knockoff or I will get the real thing but just later in the season than everyone else. And I will tell it how pretty it is and how fabulous it makes me look. 😉

And when the clothes start talking back, I swear, I will get some help. 😉

On iTunes: Jane Siberry, “The Sea”

1. What is the one book that you re-read over and over again?
I used to buy ever V.C. Andrews book ever written, and even after she died, I bought the ghostwritten books. But I guess I finally outgrew them, although I must have read “Petals on the Wind” at least 20 times since I bought it as a pre-teen.

As a kid, I never really had playmates — what with being an only child and living in an apartment with no other kids. And I never asked for anything but books — I had the whole Sweet Valley High and Wildfire series, along with a whole bunch more (the Ramona Quimby series, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing/Superfudge/Harriet the Spy, etcetera). I read and re-read those dozens of times until I was 14, when I started writing my own. You can totally see the influence of V.C. Andrews and Sweet Valley High in those horrid early works.

I’d kept all my books in pristine condition (under the auspices of “In case I ever have a little girl”), but I pitched them when I moved to D.C. in 2002. Sad, because I had a lot of first-edition books that might have been worth money someday.

2. What is your favourite genre?
Romance, but not the Fabio-on-the-dust-jacket types of hokey romance crap. Give me Nicholas Sparks and Anais Nin any day. I love drama and I love happy endings, although admittedly, I often root for the villain and I don’t mind it when somebody dies at the end. Kind of refreshing when authors acknowledge that life does, indeed, suck sometimes.

One of my favorite Anais (pronounced Ah-Na-EES — nobody ever says it correctly!) quotes sums me up in a nutshell:

“There were always in me, two women at least — one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning, and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair — and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.”

3. Do you usually buy your books or visit the library?
After living at the University of Pittsburgh’s library when I was in college (because the library at my school sucked before it merged with the Carnegie Library, which happened the month I graduated), I never go back. I buy my books and I’m even selling a bunch — that’s how I managed to freelance for a few months, by selling my volumes. And yes, it hurt to get rid of books I cherished, but I also cherished my apartment.

4. Who is your favourite author?
I am all about the “beach reading” genre right now — anything that’s a page-turner works for me because I do NOT have time to think and savor the language the way I used to when I was a kid. (By the way, I am convinced that my reading was the reason why I didn’t grow up with a “Pittsburgh accent” — I am from a family of yinzers, but I always spoke British English because that was what I read. Oh yeah, and I used to read the dictionary. I was such a dork.) Anyway, I am into Jane Green right now.

5. What book have you read that you absolutely hated?
“Things Fall Apart” by Richard Achebe. Shitty yams. Goddamned yams. Motherfucking yams. The word “yam” appeared 10 times on every page.

I guess I can tell the story now — it’s been 13 years. I was in my beloved room 1723 with my beloved roommate Janna and our next-door neighbor and friend Jody (although I always called her Gro-di. Not sure why. Rhymes with Grow-Die — it made sense at the time, although Janna and I kind of had our own vernacular like twins and we had names for everybody and words for everything. By the way, the plural of fetus is fetii. Nipple is pronounced Nipp-ile (remember him, J? LOL. God, I was hot for him and his protruding nipp-iles).

Anyway, I was cramming for an exam, and I was reading that stupid book in one sitting. BAD IDEA. I had 30 pages to go when I started laughing deliriously. I mean it — I had my first nervous breakdown that night. Janna and Gro-di were sitting on Janna’s bed, chatting quietly and trying not to disturb me. But, so the cliche goes, I was disturbed enough for all three of us. I laughed and laughed so hard that I cried and cried. I went from funny laugh to evil laugh to witchy laugh to cries-of-the-damned laugh. I believe I fell on the floor at some point, and I could only talk in tongues. From what I heard from them, I could only say the words “God” “Damn” “Fuck” and “Yams.”

This went on for two hours. Or maybe three. I don’t remember. But I think the girls were terrified that they were going to call Western Psych and have me carted away in a pretty white jacket. And for all the commotion I caused, I don’t think anyone else in our hallway even noticed. I can safely say that all of us were sufficiently scarred for life by that one, crappy book.

Do yourself a BIG favor — do not EVER use the word yam in my presence. They are sweet potatoes, and they are one of my favorite foods. But only if they are called sweet potatoes. Call ’em yams in front of me, and you might have a situation on your hands. 😉

On iTunes: Usher f/Jadakiss, “Throwback (remix)”