Caterwauling

Fair day, originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn.

It’s official — it takes a three-day weekend to recover from one week of my job. I almost feel like I accomplished something for a change!

Nothing says summer like the stench of citizens cow and horse poop at the MoCo Agricultural Fair, which was on today’s agenda. It runs through the 18th, so if you want to experience a little bit of country in the city, head on up to Gaithersburg so you can overpay for pretty much everything. 🙂

I really wanted to hang out for the night to see the rides all lit up, but man, I’m just too exhausted. I may go back, although between parking and entry, that’s $12 out of pocket before they rape you for five bucks for a lemonade.

I’m trying very hard to be nice, but walking through a county fair reminds me of the movie “Idiocracy”. We were sitting on a bench, chewing on a delicious funnel cake drizzled in chocolate, and I cannot tell you how many kids either almost walked into the plate or flat-out tried to grab some of the sugary dough because, well, they have no manners. Gimme the six bucks for it and I’ll gladly share, Junior. And don’t think anyone even noticed their children on the loose, let alone apologize for them.

Another thing I noticed, although it happens at more than just these outdoor summer events, is how men will stop to ogle you — regardless of who YOU are with, let alone who THEY are with. I don’t care — I smile and lick my fingers if I’m eating. And even if I’m not, although that’s a story for another day. 😉

My belief is that people aren’t really looking at me but instead at my food. Seriously! I’ve been to a lot of summer festivals with various men (*cough*) and you have to act like you’re not hungry ’cause you get the feeling they’d rather gnaw off their own arm than offer to feed you. I know, I know, you could get a steak at Bobby Van’s for what you pay for a coupla corn dogs, but damn.

Speaking of corn dogs, it says something about the evolution of the all-American county fair when you can find three burrito stands before you can find a freaking corn dog. You know where the corn dogs are hiding? At the goddamned taco stand. It was tasty, don’t get me wrong, but something just doesn’t sit well with me when you have to look hard for the stuff you would simply just expect to find anywhere else.

Anyway, before I get myself in any more trouble here, I just want to laugh at the ATM situation. Because when we got there, there was no money in the fucking cash machines. The irony in that statement was that Bank of America was a sponsor of the event. How do you run out of money when there should’ve been ATMs at the BoA booth at the front of the fairgrounds entrance?!?!

Today was a pseudo-hooky day from work, and to ensure I shut off the e-mail and cell phone once I was truly done, I took my happy ass to the cinema.

A friend had been streaming the “Once” soundtrack over iTunes at work, and spoke highly of both it and the movie itself. I heard a couple of songs and bought the soundtrack immediately, and I didn’t even read a review of the movie — the music alone compelled me to find out where it was playing because I was spellbound.

Had I read the reviews, I would have known that the two lead characters are never actually named. Even in IMDB, it’s “the guy” and “the girl.” I was wondering throughout the movie what their names were, but at some point I realized the lead character was the music, and maybe you could even list the lyrics as the secondary character.

And they don’t need names. They are everyman and everywoman. I was sitting there assigning my own names to the characters, from my own life. When I’m creating my own fiction, I am very much insistent on the names that mean something to me. The antagonist in my stories is named after the most obnoxious person I’ve ever known. The heroine is one of my alter egos. The heroes are named not necessarily after the people who inspired the characters, but instead names they may recognize or appreciate from things that remind me of them. Names are crucial to the writer, but when the viewer can assign them, well damn, all the better.

The neat thing is that the “guy” and the “girl” are professional musicians in real life. And these days, I can forgive any perceived flaws on film if I want to run out and buy the soundtrack. But it didn’t hurt the film at all. And maybe that’s the way it should be from now on — let people who already have a job do the acting in movies, as these cokehead starlets are riding their own ego trips too hard to be able to handle the pressure. The guy is Glen Hansard, who fronts a band called The Frames in real life. And the girl is Marketa Irglova, who did an album with Glen last year and who really had some serious on-screen chemistry with him as they literally (OK, and figuratively) made music together.

Toward the beginning, when the guy and the girl were in the music store, he playing guitar and she learning the notes to his song “Falling Slowly,” I just flat-out started sobbing. I mean, wow. Just wow.

“Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can’t go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I’m painted black
You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It’s time that you won.”

— Glen Hansard, “Falling Slowly

The thing is, I’ve probably listened to the soundtrack a thousand times, but seeing it in context, letting it push and pull the characters, brought it to life for me. Each song is more haunting than the next, mostly because I identified with something in it. Even “Gold,” which wasn’t my favorite lyrically, starts off with this fucking amazing guitar riff, and I got chills when I heard it in surround sound.

But I’m dancing around the storyline. Because I don’t know how to put it into words. I loved and hated the ending equally. The writer in me absolutely fell in love with it, because you knew that there were so many possibilities — so many ways the story beyond the closing credits could end. But the woman in me with way too many thoughts swirling around in her head was blowing an absolute gasket, wondering whether all that magic would manifest in any greater way.

I’m choosing to look at it as a happy ending. I’m hoping that what’s meant to be (in my head) will be. And yeah, I was still sobbing through the credits and even after the lights came on.

Where are you my angel now, don’t you see me crying
And I know that you can’t do it all, but you can’t say I’m not trying
I’m on my knees in front of him, but he doesn’t seem to see me
But all his troubles on his mind, he’s looking right through me
And I’m letting myself down in satisfying you
And I wish that you could see I have my troubles, too.”

— Marketa Irglova, “The Hill”

Anyway, the one thing I walked away from the movie wanting to do was write. Even if I can’t produce a fantastic story like that because I just can’t write the soundtrack that’s in my head because I have no freaking idea how to record it (i.e., can’t read or write music. Or, for that matter, lyrics), I just want to do something, anything creative. Something I love. Something I can’t live without. And if there’s anyone out there with a similar passion, just like “the guy,” all the better.

And I completely and totally have a crush on Glen Hansard now. I know, I know, probably a firecrotch and all. 😉 But dear God, that’s a man who can ignite every nerve in my body with the mere sound of his voice. To hear him imploring, “If you’ve got something to say to me, you’d better say it to me now.” *swoon* I can forgive a lot of flaws in any man if he can write, can speak proper English and can make me gush in my gutchies with an amazing tone. (Hmm, maybe that’ll be my next dating-service ad headline!)

I had to go to the art house cinema (supposedly) to see this thing. I don’t know how long it’s been out or whether it’s going into mass release or it was already in it. Whatever. Just, go see it. I would have seen it again had I not been forced to run out and feed the damn parking meter. 🙂 But there’s always another day, and yes, there’s always the soundtrack (which is only $7.99 in the iTunes Music Store) to occupy me in the meantime until I can buy the DVD!

It’s 9 p.m. and one project stands in the way of me having a vacation day tomorrow. And even if I write this article tonight (about what, I have no idea at this point), I suspect the phone will be ringing later in the day anyway.

I still don’t have much that I want to say in this space, yet the only creative writing I do is for the newsletters and Web sites I oversee professionally and my name ain’t on a damn one of them. Or on this one, for that matter, but still. 😉

There’s a part of me that wants to immortalize these days, and another part that is living in the future anyway and these times won’t matter then. I’m working on saying more positive mantras and looking at life from where I want to be as opposed to where I am. It helps. It really does. There are a lot of situations, personal and otherwise, that have the potential to make me want to figure out how to slit my wrists with a spork some days.

But looking at my goals as though I’ve already conquered them makes them seem so much smaller. And that makes them easier to surmount. My colleague calls it “micromovements” — that any movement is still going forward and achieving little parts of big things. And that makes the bigger goals so much more manageable in comparison.

Someone came into my life at some point, of the male variety. My best friend started referring to him as my husband right away. Which, hah. THERE’S a story better left for telling over about 14 rounds of drinks, but it’s funny. She swears that if I get on the bandwagon and start to look at someone special in that kind of way, someday it won’t be wishful thinking on her part.

And to say that’s SO not ever going to happen is a reflection of me living in reality. But maybe it’s a reflection of the fact that I have always had a hard time doing anything beyond living in the moment. I always thought that made me more attractive to men, that I’d rather talk about football than ask them what they’re thinking or feeling. And it keeps me from falling in love, too, because without any real connection, I know I’ll be OK if/when either one of us walks away.

On the other hand, it’s challenging to blur the line between reality and delusion. I would hate to walk around telling people, absolutely convinced, that I’m a 5’10’ supermodel who’s had lots of plastic surgery and who is a self-made millionaire. I mean, is that how psychosis starts? Telling yourself that something is so when it’s SO NOT?

Or is it OK as long as you keep your eyes focused straight ahead and know that it’s OK to dream but not OK to count on it happening? If I approach it differently, would it end differently? Are the chapters that are closed and the ones that never really opened still fair game?

Does wanting something enough for two people actually make it possible?

I’m trying not to be skeptical on this one, because my cynicism might have been what’s been holding me back.

My colleague told me that she read somewhere recently that procrastination is a symbol of a lack of faith in ourselves. And she’s right. I have this big-ass project at work that is going to kick ass and make us millions of dollars when it’s in place. And it’s not that I’ve been dragging my feet on it, as I’m up to my ears in a boatload of other, more-pressing projects. But there’s that certain feeling that maybe I’m not going to be deserving of all the success this project is going to bring. I mean, I know inherently that I am worth it. But what am I going to do with all that glory? Am I going to know what to do with it when it comes?

I have always had a dream to write cheesy, trashy, beach-reading romance novels. I’ve written a few of them. I’ve been writing notes on them since I was 14. But I let work and life push them aside. My reasoning? That I’ve never had the great love that I want to write about. That I’ll write them “later” — whenever that may be — when I start living and loving the way I want to write about.

Maybe my friend is on to something with this procrastination/motivation thing.

Anyway, I saw a class on romance-novel writing. And I thought yeah, right, like I can ever get an evening to myself. And then I met a gal online, someone awesome and interesting to follow on the Web and who I’ve typed with a few times, who edits romance novels for a living. Two back-to-back signs. Is the universe trying to tell me something?

Perhaps it’s trying to tell me to see if I can’t get past myself on more than just work issues and see the “me” who’s going to exist in the long run, not just the short-term. So I won’t grow six inches, but if I become rich, I can let plastic surgery take care of the rest. 😉

I’m sorry — WHEN I become a millionaire.

No more “ifs.”

So whether my friend will get that particular guy as her brother-in-law, well, let me think on that one for a little bit more. And while you can’t really talk marriage with a man before you’ve known him 40 years, maybe I thought I was doing the right thing by never letting myself fall.

And I could fall easily, if I wanted to.

Which means that I’ve never gotten what I think I do want because I never let myself want it. So it never really came.

Was I my own cockblock?

Someone I dated recently didn’t necessarily have me at hello, but he did have me at acknowledging that I work too damn much. I was never available. I would have made myself available more. I could have. What he had said to me in regard to the hours upon hours that my work consumes, “We’ll have to do something about that.”

I mentioned that very phrase today to a friend. It’s the pickup line that gives me butterflies. My friend repeated it back to me, to process it, and I realized how much I love the sound of it.

I want that someone who wants to help me do something about the “now” to build for the tomorrow that I’m slowly learning to speak into existence. Because I’m the one who’s in his mental picture, too. Maybe the universe has kept me from seeing myself in certain situations with certain people because it wasn’t right … then. But now that I’m older and wiser, and I’ve had enough of what I don’t want, I can find and keep what I do want. He’ll be the one to help me do something about that, after all.

And mark my words, I’m marrying that man.

Damn. No wonder they say, “Once you go black. …” 😉

Cialis

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Laughs via the inimitable Chris.

“And if this is all just a dream
What’s one more year?”

— Jimmie’s Chicken Shack, “Waiting”

Go about your night. Have fun. I’ll just be here hammering away at something. It might be my head that I end up pummeling, as my brain’s too wiped out to keep thinking for much longer.

Oh, if I could actually blog today, you wouldn’t believe it anyway. So I won’t. But I will be here inside my head if anyone needs me.

Locals (D.C. residents) — you know that WaPo commercial, for the Jobs section, where the guy comes home and says, “Not another day — not another day!” and his parrot goes, “Sqwwwawk! Not another day! Sqwawwwk!” ?

If you hear me squawking, it’s in reference to that.

I’m a very pissed-off Goddess right now. If my team could just secede from the union — either that or I could pat people on the head with the business side of a hooker heel — I’d feel much better.

*sqwawk*

So I’ve been thinking there was something wrong with the car (other than the driver). My regular mechanic failed to catch it because they’ve hired a bunch of lazy assholes and the service has been rapidly declining, and my recent trip there was no different.

On Saturday, I tried five different mechanics. Five. One place was OK, just backed up and asked if I could come back Sunday, so I said no. I tried another place, a dealership that has several prominent locations, and I sat in the waiting area for 20 minutes with not a soul coming out to talk to me. Bastards. So I tried a Shell station (I’ll give you the name because I love to bitch, but I also don’t want to talk about where I’m spending my weekends in this public forum).

Anyway, there’s a reason the base word in Shell is HELL.

It was 11:30 a.m. and I had to hunt down the station manager, who didn’t look the SLIGHTEST bit busy. I purposely went to this never-busy station so I could get help. But alas, they close at 12, which was the first thing the asshole told me. I looked panicked, so he said, “Your car will be fine for another couple of days, right? Nothing’s going to fall off or you’re not going to get in an accident, right? Because we close at noon.”

KILL.

I knew the car needed work. Expensive work. But I wasn’t giving his miserable ass the business. I said, “Fuck it, I’ve already tried four places. I’ll try five. But you may want to step out of the way when I pull out — wouldn’t want my car to lose control while I’m driving at, I mean PAST, you.”

He said, “Well, that answered that.”

I pulled out at 100 mph and he stayed out of my way. I flipped him off as I left.

I forget where I went next, but I finally ended up at another prominent dealership. Where I did get help. Go figure.

So the guy at the service desk asked to see my license so he could copy my address. I said it’s not a current address but he didn’t care. So he says, “You’ll just go home and wait till we call?”

I said, “I just told you I don’t live there. However, I will go hang out at the coffee shop up the road till you call.”

So an hour and a half later, I get the call that the car will need several hundred dollars’ worth of work and they’ll need another 2 1/2 hours. Christ.

I said fine, as I was desperate. And I proceeded to figure out how to waste a whole lot of time, as I’d surfed the Internet and listened to the iPod in my phone enough that the battery was halfway gone after a mere two hours of using it.

Anyway, I thought terrific, I’ll grab lunch. So I go to the restaurant next to the coffee empire, and I couldn’t even get waited on there. The cashier actually grabbed a mop and started cleaning while I read the menu. I finally pulled out some money and stood there, looking pitiful, and the idiot kept his back to me and the other four non-busy employees managed to never turn my way. Morons.

Seriously, the next time I’m picking a mechanic, I’m finding one next to a goddamned movie theater.

The car’s all better, and by “all better,” I mean that I had to save another round of repairs for a time when money starts growing on trees, as the latest batch ensured that I will be missing the next car payment and probably part of the rent. (The rent check I wrote yesterday is RUBBER.)

Blah.

It kills me how HARD it is to spend money, and lots of it.

Don’t think I don’t have visions of burning down half of these establishments. I’m someone who not only goes the proverbial extra mile for my job, but I’ll go the extra goddamned DAY if that’s what it takes to produce quality work. Sure, I’m possibly paid better, although judging by the fact that the car parts cost next to nothing and the labor alone was well above $300, I’d say I’m not impressed by anyone else’s work ethic right about now. Why can’t everyone be as fabulous as me?!?! 😉

… no, the answer isn’t “Goddess for $1,000, Alex!”

What I’m trying to say is that what goes down, eventually does go up.

Today’s been busy-busy so far. In a totally good way. I’m trying to shift my work hours and, ultimately, my overall mindset into something much more manageable. I’ve given up the 7 a.m. project that I’ve had for 2 1/2 years and “enjoyed” (can’t think of a more-appropriate word) a week of starting my mornings much later, to accommodate for the later-night schedule. Today I came in at 8 a.m. (a rarity for me) because there was some unfinished business left from Friday night.

Now, it’s not like I skipped out early — although for me, it was early, but for anyone who had a date or a dinner to go to, it really wasn’t. But god, it felt good to be a gangsta. I was thinking how much I loved it that the decree came from way above that the schedule I was working was mind-bogglingly ridiculous and that things could wait till Monday.

So Monday came and I had so much energy, I didn’t know what to do with it all. I don’t know that the new schedule will stick, because I get the feeling that the contractors who need me to be available at 10 p.m. on a Friday aren’t thrilled with the new arrangement. But what everyone either is realizing or needs to realize is that I am just as important a member of the team as they are. Just because I’m cheaper labor doesn’t mean that I’m the least valuable player.

It’s hard for me to value what I bring to the table because I’ve spent my entire career doing all the grunt work and getting none of the glory. And I realize now that I don’t need any glory — I just need to do a little more than meet my rent payment, especially given how much money I had to dump into car repairs this weekend.

I love to work hard. I get more than just a slight rush from it. I love results. I love kicking ass and KNOWING I kicked ass. I enjoy the occasional “atta girl” but what I love more than anything is when someone says, no, stop killing yourself.

That’s all I ever wanted. A simple “go have a life, like a normal person” mantra. That’s worth its weight in salary gold, believe it or not. Well, not that I’d turn down extra money for extra projects, but because exempt employees don’t have that option, we tend to take on more because we’re good people. Or masochists. But I’d like to continue believing we’re not totally crazy for taking on more because we’re capable of it, not because we HAVE to.

Anyway, I’m feeling rather accomplished and energetic right now, as I’m eating my sammich at a proper lunchtime instead of my usual “wait till 3 or 4 p.m. so it breaks up the day better.” My goal is to start earlier and get out earlier. I think, with having my early-a.m. project for so long, I got accustomed to rolling in for the second shift at 10:30 a.m. and then having to stay till the bitter end, whenever that may be.

But now that I can jump right into the rat race, maybe I can finish it at a reasonable time, too. Now, we’re not asking for miracles here, ’cause my life’s still contingent upon others meeting their deadlines, but I’m fairly exhilarated at being encouraged to stand up for “my” time. I might do it again someday! It’s amazing how much better my work is, and how much enthusiasm I have for it, when I feel like my time/efforts are valued equally with others’.

Now if I could just rastle everyone else into submission, I’d be as good-to-go as a Taco Bell commercial!

My friend Sabre, known for her sharp tongue, sharper wit and razor-sharp (theoretical) sword that will be at your throat the second you say something stupid in her presence (actually, it’s just the way she glares at dumb people — “squeak toys” — who keep talking. And talking. And saying nothing.) that makes you realize that if she calls you friend, you’re pretty damned lucky. And smart, or else you would have nothing in common with her. 🙂

Anyway, I’m reposting something below the fold that she wrote recently because it’s on MySpace and it sucks to use that wretched tool on a Mac. Although if I hate you and you use a Mac, feel free to peruse the site. 😉

*ahem*

The short version is that an old friend of hers has gone missing and is presumed to be deceased. The bigger issue is that it could be any of us who had made the wrong choice, innocently enough, that set us on the wrong path that we could never really turn back from. The greater issue still is that most of us are probably not “important” enough for society to make a big fuss about if our existence ended so brutally.

This post is for all of us who have fallen in with the wrong crowd, those among us who let the wrong person get too close, and those of us who ever dared to self-preserve because we couldn’t shoulder the weight of someone else’s world.

Sabre, as you can tell by her beautifully crafted story, is looking at the pieces of a friendship gone awry and coming to grips with the fact that it ended how it ended and there’s no going back. But for as many friendships as we all let go, and for as many reasons as we have to let them go, that doesn’t always make them possible to save — or even worth saving if you could go back and do it differently.

It’s hard to write about the entry before you’ve read it. It’s called “Marginalized,” and it’s what could happen to any of us. I mean, if I went missing, would you notice? If that fucking nutjob from any of our pasts (and we can all name at least one, eh?) came and did us in, how long would it take for someone to call the cops? What kind of reward would be offered if any of us disappeared? How hard would the justice system fight to bring those people to a similarly untimely end, if that’s what they made us suffer?

I think of all the visits to the police station, the reports I’ve filed, the calls to the fucking FBI (yep, got ’em on speed dial) and confidential talks with people in authority I’ve befriended to ensure my safety. That, if something terrible happens to me, here’s all the information you will ever need. I think of all the times I went to buy items for self-defense, and the times that friends let me stay with them for a night or three because they were worried.

I also think of the times I hid someone from someone else. The times I picked someone up with nothing but the clothes on their back and made sure they were out of harm’s way, just in case. And when you do that, you just know you’re putting yourself right in the Tasmanian devil’s path, too. But it’s what you do; you don’t think about it at the time. Like Sabre so eloquently points out, our society is as strong as the weakest link.

Labels be damned, those of us with nothing but good intentions are worth saving. Even if we’re not debutantes or stars or someone that the broader society would miss if we weren’t here anymore. On one hand, we as individuals cannot personally take care of everybody, but then again, isn’t that what the government says, too?

I don’t know what I’m proposing. (Maybe a domestic social program instead of dumping more dollars into Iraq. *hugs a tree*) I just do know that to get away from someone who’s clearly brutal and possessive and insane, you basically emasculate them. And for people who have to use someone they view as weaker (i.e., a woman) as a verbal and/or physical punching bag, they’re already not men to begin with.

Which means they feel they have to punish you somehow, for not sucking their dicks or kissing their asses and taking their shit even though you were not put on this earth to do any of it.

Anyway, she tells the story better than I can.

Please read it — and don’t feel bad about running in the other direction when you get even the slightest bit creeped out by someone, even if you have no solid reason to think they’re bad news.

Those of us who’ve had to stand tall right in harm’s way, have been targeted by those we’ve dared to feel sorry for, that nobody understood them. Feel sorry for no one, hear me? Get close to people with caution as a buffer. You never can tell which one’s the real thing and which one’s just waiting to make you feel their pain.

Just think of how many nights’ worth of sleep we’d all get back if we hadn’t felt obligated to stick around just because we thought it would ensure our safety or, at least, not invite any more aggravation.

We’re all worth so much more than what this girl suffered. And so was she. I just wish she would have known that.

Read on. …

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve spent the last week pissed off and exhausted about something I felt was out of my control. I mean, I could have gone the route of “no means no” but instead it became a “sure, I’ll bend over, grab ankles and take it dry.”

Salvation just arrived, I think, anyway. I’m a happy girl. I’m certain that chaos will ensue, but the message I was getting before versus the message I’m getting now are drastically different. And the former had to go away for me to even consider NOT taking my little red stapler and, well, stapling my brains to a wall.

I’m putting my foot down right this instant that I’m not going to get into that kind of a situation again. My lifelong goal is to be too rich to have to work for a living. Till then, the interim goal is to work less and produce more somehow. Top performers can probably get away with more; I’ve never once taken advantage of my own fabulousness. Damn it. I need to figure out how to make more money, both for the company AND myself, and I think I’ll solve this post-quarterlife and pre-midlife crisis that’s been ailing me.