Caterwauling

I’ve had lots of profound thoughts throughout the past few weeks. Too bad I’ve chosen to write down everything but. 😉

A lot’s been going on that I can’t talk about, here or anywhere else. The weird part is, it’s neither good nor bad. Not yet, anyway. I had an opportunity walk up and bite me on the ass yesterday, and I was overjoyed. It was one of those long-awaited, “holy shit, maybe all the heartache has been worth it after all” dealios.

But once the elation passed, and I got five minutes of advice from the voice of reason in my life (as I only had that long to talk), I realized it would end up being a case of reaching into Pandora’s box and having a snake bite off my arm or something. Not that there’d be a downside — there isn’t one. On the surface, anyway.

But you grow up and realize that even though you don’t have to answer to your parents, you always have to answer to someone. And it’s not always yourself. Not ultimately, anyway. Because listening to oneself is usually what *gets* us into these sticky situations — thinking that the universe has finally acknowledged maybe not our prayers but at least what we perceive to be our needs.

And I’ve sort of been annoyed. Because you really can’t have it all. Oh, sure, they lie to us as wee children, telling us that the world is our oyster and all we have to do is reach out for something and it’ll be ours. Maybe it’s possible, but life has always felt like a series of tradeoffs for me. It started back in school when you couldn’t be friends with X or Y would ostracize you. The bottom line I am fishing for here is that you can have your cake and eat it too, but that ain’t ever the end of the story. You’re never really the boss of you. If your balance in life is getting (and keeping) everything, then clearly you’ve never been kicked in the theoretical nuts for not making a choice.

Maybe this is one of those little tests. I wouldn’t doubt it. Whether a mere mortal orchestrated it, though, is anyone’s guess. And it sucks to be suspicious all the time. I don’t know what’s going to make me happy. I want to find out. But at what cost? Why do you always have to be wondering what others are thinking — what they know and what they would do to thwart your simplest efforts to find a little peace and happiness and satisfaction in this miserable experiment called life?

Like my best friend said to me tonight, you have one choice in life: You can either eat shit or eat cake. And, of course, we all know what we’d rather have! Although it feels like you’ve got to gorge yourself on one in order to earn the other.

I guess my bitch to pitch today is that in every single area of my life, I feel like I am at some bizarre crossroads between what I want and, well, what I want. The petulant 2-year-old in me is saying, “I want it all! Gimme!” And the clinging-to-idealism 32-year-old in me is saying, “Damn it. Enough is enough. How much more do I have to withstand so that I can finally have it all?”

And beneath it all, the small voice within is saying, “Why can’t there be a period of bounty to make up for the long periods of drought?” That’s the voice that I’m hearing the loudest right now. It’s also the one that is shaky, and for good reason, as it would rather not be banished again to the Sahara anytime soon.

Sort of unrelated (but sort of on-topic), I also have to drop the glorious goddess facade for a moment to say that if I’m always faced with choices, then I need to pose one back — to whom it concerns. Would you rather have a refreshed, sparkling, witty and pleasing goddess some of the time, or all 40 of my personalities (half of which are not exactly charming) in the barrel of your weapon of choice for Russian roulette?

I can be sweet for a defined period (mostly) but anything extended requires a warning label (preferably a Mr. Yuk sticker). I like to think I am pleasant. Damn it. 😉 But there are lots more incarnations of me than most people can handle, and I’m just saying that distance not only makes the heart grow fonder, but it’s also essential in keeping things alive. And, for that matter, people.

That said, I cannot think of a better song to wrap up this entry: Pink’s “Leave Me Alone (I’m Lonely)” …

Nina Gordon is back! I would post the link to her new song “Kiss Me ‘Til It Bleeds,” but my stupid piece-of-shit PC refuses to show me dropdown windows so *waves middle finger to Dell product*. But you can click here to hear it on MySpace. *squee!* Seriously, I heart this chick’s music. It’s an album I’d actually pay for!

I’ve got to be out of things to blog about if I’m answering questions about childhood. Gah.

Reader Poll Monday:

1. What was the worst nickname you had as a child?
My mom had a million of them for me. I don’t know that I minded them as much as I said I did, but her little made-up songs about me used to grate on my widdle nerves. She still calls me Lucy. I don’t know if it were a “Peanuts” thing or what, but it’s the only name I’ve allowed to survive the years. Mostly because she won’t let go of it!

2. What is the most embarrassing thing that happened to you at school?
I know there were plenty of things, but I have blocked out my formative years so well that I honestly cannot recall anything off the top of my head. Whenever bad things would happen, I would imagine a chalkboard in my head, whereupon I’d write the terrible thing. And then I’d painstakingly erase it. And seriously? It worked.

3. What was your most memorable haircut?
I had long, thick, flowing jet-black ringlets up until age 6. God, I used to hate my hair as a child — too much to lug around. And I hated the plastic/foam pink rollers my mom made me sleep in. But damn, I was cute. 😉

4. Which fashion trend makes you cringe when you look at old pictures?
I grew up in the ’80s. I don’t have a picture I DO like!

5. Who was your first celebrity crush?
Scott Baio. And I totally met him at the Pittsburgh convention center. His hand got tired from all the autograph signing he did, so when he got to me, he shook my hand. I was in lurrvvee.

6. What was the first concert you attended?
Mom and I (!) slept outside for two nights in a row to get tickets to Bon Jovi and to Motley Crue (two separate shows). Man did I get pneumonia (as I had to be cute as I was parked outside and dressed in hoochie mama rock ‘n roll wear and not in, oh, a coat).

7. Were you ever in a school play or recital? What was your role?
I was a munchkin in fifth grade in “The Wizard of Oz.”

8. What was your favorite Halloween costume?
Let’s see, that would be before the razor-blades-in-apples scandal that hit when I was in third grade, I believe. So Halloween? Sucked. But I did dress up as a Hershey kiss a couple of years ago. That was the most comfortable costume ever, all soft and foamy and ridiculously roomy. Although, the hat looked like a silver version of a Klan hat. (Well, if their dunce cap had a white ribbon with “Hershey’s” printed on it. Heh. There is some irony in that statement, isn’t there?) I vaguely remember people calling me the “KKK Kiss”!

9. What did you want to be when you grew up?
Barbie. That bitch could do everything.

I have always wanted to be a novelist. I used to read all my books over and over again, and pretty soon I just got bored with them and decided to write my own. I liked spending the days dreaming and the nights scribbling by moonlight lest anyone know I was awake.

10. What was your favorite cartoon?
You mean, back when we had cartoons on Saturday mornings? “Garfield and Friends,” of course! And as I got older, “Space Ghost” and “South Park.”

Oh, the bizarre dreams I have. This one seems spurred by my mom’s and best friend’s gentle nudgings to find them a son-in-law/brother-in-law, respectively. 😉

I dreamed it was my wedding day. I’d chosen a sunset time, so we had the whole day to get ready. I didn’t know my four bridesmaids — they were sort of inherited from the groom as all I had chosen was my matron of honor.

I was calm but getting more and more panicked as the supposedly magical hour approached. The wedding was in a church (odd given that I would probably elope if I could), and I looked out into the sanctuary, searching for familiar faces. Well, I guess there was just one in particular. He had his back to me, and all I wanted was to see him — apparently, I would know whether I were doing the right thing or whether my search wasn’t supposed to end that night.

I saw the groom before the ceremony, completely bucking tradition but not caring because I needed to see him — I guess for my dreaming mind’s eye, I needed to know how I felt about him. And I liked him. I thought he rocked. But. … Yeah. Exactly. No sparks. None whatsoever. Not even when I closed my eyes and tried to conjure them. And everyone seemed to know it.

Someone who was milling around in the dressing room with me overheard me talking to my best friend. The unwanted person volunteered rather unhelpfully, “Get married. You’re already here, so why not? You can always have an affair.” And we turned to her, horrified. Not because we’d been overheard, but that WTF? No, just … no. My friend went up and smacked her across the face. I loved that moment, mostly because one of us probably WOULD have smacked someone for less than that. 🙂

I went to look for that mysterious someone again. By now, he’d left. I wanted it to be because he didn’t want to witness my wedding, but I’d had no indication that anything could ever have happened with him or otherwise I wouldn’t have been there.

And that was a moment that jarred me. I remember asking myself if I wanted to be married if I were always going to be searching and wondering and looking for a way out. I wondered if I needed to pursue that other person, whomever it even was because I truly couldn’t figure out who he was — I just knew that I needed to talk to him. And now he was gone.

I actually let my own indecision make the decision. The four bridesmaids had traveled in a limo together to the church, and my friend came over to tell me that they’d been in a terrible accident. They survived, but their glamour and poise was compromised, to say the least. One of them needed to go to the hospital, and the other three said they weren’t going to go to the wedding — they needed to go with her. And I smiled at that, because here was a wedding that looked like 500 people had shown up for, and they were so loyal and committed to their friend that they didn’t even consider for a moment not being at her side.

At that moment, I decided it was time to call off the wedding. The groom truly thought I was being nice, that I just couldn’t let the show go on without the bridesmaids. And I realized what a big, dumb idiot he must be to not have a fucking clue what was running around in my head — four girls I barely knew who were perfectly fine couldn’t show up. Big deal. All you need is the couple and the person of the cloth to make a wedding happen. It was the marriage I wasn’t certain I’d be able to pull off.

It was almost like a movie, how my friend (and her kids, the flower girl and the ring bearer, and yes, she’s offered them to me to use. Her exact words in a real conversation to me were, “Get married while they’re still young enough to want to be in your wedding!”) left the church in our gorgeous formal-wear, free and happy and light. And I really did end the day with people I loved — just not the ones I expected to be leaving with.

I was bummed, of course, that I didn’t know what the next steps in my life would be. But my waking self knows that’s half the fun.

In any event, I’m (really) headed to Pennsylvania today, so enough with the dreams and now on to more important things, namely scrubbing my butt and gettin’ the hell outta Dodge. 🙂

Random theater. Dim the lights.

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OK, so I get a call from this headhunter firm that was apparently trying to get in touch with me all the way back to that horrible half-year when I wasn’t working. (Um, OK. I would have like answered the call, I’d think.) And they have big, interesting job opportunities. Like, one in particular. In my old neighborhood, literally up the fucking street from my old apartment. And it sounds pretty darned good.

But it would have sounded better a long time ago. Not just because I lived right there, but well, I don’t hate where I’m at in life in general. I chose to move closer to my job because I really didn’t want to give it up for something closer by. I think the eviction notice came at just the right time — I took it as my one-way ticket out of town and far away from places and things that just no longer worked for me.

I know I’m not rolling in dough or anything (far from it), but when they asked my salary range and I said, “I wouldn’t leave for less than X,” with X being just around the corner, they said, “Oh.” As in, “Well, we were thinking of a number that’s at least 10 less than that.”

And I had a moment in which I wondered if their e-mail HAD gotten through to me way back when. I’d been dying inside, digesting myself over the lack of a career (not just lack of money — I’d lost my whole identity because work was all I had to define it). Where would I be now? I wouldn’t live in D.C. I wouldn’t love my apartment building. I wouldn’t have met so many people who are crucial to helping me get through the day-to-day drama. I might have been employed sooner than I was, but the things I would have missed out on? I wouldn’t have given them up for anything, knowing in hindsight how much I’d miss them if I didn’t have them to look forward to.

In any event, she had other opportunities and ideas, and I’m willing to hear her out. But just that. Because in this oddly jarring moment, I realized that it’s not comfort that keeps me where I am. It’s not laziness or fear of change. It’s that I want to be exactly right where I’m standing because, for whatever reason(s), it’s where I’m meant to be. …

OK, so it actually makes sense in my world that I’m only seen at work when I’m violating about five dress-code rules. But whatever, it’s ice cream day!

So anyway, I’d gone to fetch my treat with people who have the access card to get into my floor. But we all came back separately. And I got off the elevator and didn’t even think straight — I went up to the place where you touch your access card, only I did it with my damn ice cream treat (I call it a strawberry scooter crunch, but down here they call it strawberry shortcake). Sorry, access denied. LOL. Ice cream really CAN’T solve all your problems!!!

In other news, I have those stupid 100-calorie packs of snacks in my desk. This time around it’s the Cheetohs mini-balls. You know, I think they’re a great idea, these portioned packs. It’s just too bad to have the whole box nearby as they tend to serve as breakfast AND lunch. Then again, I know how many calories I’ve consumed in a day, and not a damned one of them has any nutritional value. 😉

And tonight, beer!

I just spent way too much money and had WAY too much fun buying birthday gifts for my nephew, who just turned 1, and my niece, who’s turning 3 next week. There went the new-dining-set fund, but seriously? SO worth it.

I look at these two and am hypnotized by The Cute:

Yeah, I know I missed the wee one’s birthday, but luckily he’s too young to know that I run on my own time zone. I like to think of it as he will have presents to open on his sister’s day. That’s always been important to me — when he was born, I made sure she had lots of cool stuff because all eyes weren’t on her anymore.

If/when/yeah right I get my slush fund re-established, I’m going to go visit them. And my friends in Seattle (you know who you are!). Maybe November/Decemberish. Yes, that is a nice goal to work toward. I’ve missed out on enough of these important people’s lives — time to rectify that. And it’ll give me another excuse to buy more presents! 😉

Oh, GAWD, Lauren had to choose between a glamorous internship in Paris or summer on the beach with that bum of a boyfriend of hers. She must’ve read “Devil Wears Prada,” as she opted to miss out on Couture Week to shack up with that fuckhead Jason. Perhaps she should have read “One Really Good Way to Ruin Your Life/Career/Future.” Then again, these millionaires can afford a trip abroad whenever they feel like it. The rest of us would appreciate it. Which is why I am thrilled Teen Vogue wised up and gave the Paris internship to Whitney.

I am so disappointed in you, Lauren!!!

Welcome to the dog-breath days of summer. Today’s forecast is to step inside the pizza oven that our city has become, as we’re expecign a high of a balmy 102 degrees. Let’s just not even talk about humidity, either — I’m exhausted just thinking about stepping outside.

This just in:

Subject: Alert DC Government Closing

The District of Columbia Department of Motor Vehicles Southwest Inspection Station, located at 1001 Half Street SW, will continue to observe code red heat advisory service hours, opening at 5:00 a.m. and closing at 1:00 p.m. Thursday, August 3 due to temperatures expected in the 99° to 102° range with forecasted heat indexes between 110 and 115 degrees.

What was that? Did you say I have to wear pantyhose? Hahahaaaaa. Bite me. 🙂