I've been grumpy lately. Too grumpy to blog, really. Or rather, too smart to blog when grumpy, which would probably result in posts that were little more than vaguely-cloaked diatribes against the (very few) jerks I find myself fuming about as I lie awake at night.
Lately, when I think about blogging, all I can think about is what I'd LIKE to say to these people, but mustn't. I wish I was more like Don "I don't think about you at all" Draper. But I'm not. (I think about you jerks ALL THE TIME, okay? I can't help it. Congratulations. Hurray for you. I wish you'd fuck off and die. Ya. I said it.) What can I say? I'm not a great person. I strive to be better, but even in my 30s, I find I'm still mucking around in the emotional mud with the rest of the petty narcissists. One day, I'll grow out of this. I hope.
I often wonder: Why does anyone settle (occasionally) into a dark place? There's no trigger, really. The weather's been lovely, so I know it's not that. There's no reason for it. No event to look back on and say -- "There! That's the thing that made me grumpy." Sometimes, I just find myself here. Brooding. Brooding about things that happened ages ago, in most cases. Hating everything. Wanting to shut the blinds and stay inside and turn on the television and take out the vodka. And then, just as suddenly, I'll sail out of the dark place and find myself feeling better, with no provocation.
Is it chemical, do you think?
For various reasons, I am currently in the process or purging my childhood collections. Much must go. Clay ashtrays. High school agendas. Audio tapes.
But surely not the stuffies? Not the well-loved ones, with their bald patches and button eyes, all smelling vaguely of saliva and dust? They have to stay.
The older a thing is, the harder it is to lose.
Stuff from the 90s is easier to part with. The Soul Asylum cassette I bought when I was 13 because I heard some "cool" girls discussing the song "The Sun Maid" -- this can go. Also easy to leave behind is the double cassette version of Smashing Pumpkin's mid-90s epic Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. I can hold the memory of listening to "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" over and over again in my closet in the dark, rewinding obsessively between plays without a physical reminder.
In my adult life, I've become the sort of person who lets thing go easily. Stuff is not so important anymore. Relationships that aren't working are easy to abandon. I am quick to delete people from Facebook if they bore or annoy me. I am better at leaving things behind. I would recommend this course to anyone. The past is important, but not primarily important. Some things are important, but not all things.
But what this purge has shown me is what a magpie I used to be. Once upon a time, I kept everything. It all seemed so necessary. And that hoarding tendency seeped into my relationships and my work. I couldn't let go. I was afraid of loss.
I suppose I still am, to some extent. But I try to keep that tendency from boxing me into spaces and places that aren't much good.
Some talismans will stay: My great grandmother's pink marble egg; my collection of 1967 centennial pennies (an early indication of my love of birds); my wedding ring, which was my grandmother's and her mother's before her, my bronze cross, the strange little velvet sombrero Patty brought me from Mexico when we were six.
These things must stay, not because they're valuable, not because they're especially important, but because they make me happy. If you use that benchmark -- does it make you happy? -- it's easy to know what to keep.
Yet another new, free local "magazine" arrived on my doorstep this week. There are a million of these publications, all of them excellent. Sorry. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Let's be honest: NOT ONE of these ubiquitous publications is excellent. Each is only a slight variation of the next, filled with trite, badly-written advertorial copy written by 19 year old "journalists" and small local business owners playing at journalism in order to promote their personal ventures. Most of the time, I put every one of these rags right into the trash, but when a new one arrives, I can't help but flip through it (once, with hope in my naive little heart), looking for something ... better.Today was just such a day. On my doorstep was the newly minted Village Living magazine, Issue 1, Volume 1. As always, as I've said, I had hope. I had the tiniest glimmer of hope, which was, predictably, dashed on page 5, where, below the masthead, appears the following disclaimer: "Village Living accepts no liability of any kind, written or implied, regarding the contents of the magazine and expressly disclaims any warranty regarding the accuracy or reliability of information contained herein."Soooo... Sigh.
Well. We're married. Not "we" as in me and you and not the royal we. "We" as in me and THIS guy. And slowly, but surely, we are recovering. The balloons have deflated, the flowers are dead, and there are only about a dozen cupcakes left in the freezer. (Okay, two dozen.) I intend to wash them down with left over champagne. In front of the television. Wearing pyjamas.Here's what I'm calling our "official wedding photo" from City Hall. (Not pictured: our witnesses Patty and Gid, and the lovely Officiant, George). I've been pretty lax in my blogging duties over this period, but I promise to get back to it this coming week. In the meantime, here are a couple of amusing search phrases that have brought visitors to the site in the last couple of weeks: - conch penis
- creepy weirdos
- vintage children and french
- a certain amount of purposelessness is necessary to lead a full life
- does kale make you poop
Believe it.
I often ask my niece and nephew about their dreams. I don't know why. They're just little kids (4 and 2 years old, respectively). Most of the time, Kat (the older one) tells me she can't remember her dreams. (The little one, James, who is relatively new to the business of conversation, just blows raspberries and laughs.)
But last summer, Kat had a nightmare. And I've been thinking about it ever since.
She said she dreamt of a "little alien guy in a shell" with "one eye and a little horn" (to demonstrate, she curled a finger up by her forehead). She said the dream was scary because the alien was a "bad guy."
Katherine's been having bad (or at least unsettling) dreams for her entire life, I think. When she was just a couple of months old, she'd often cry out from her crib, and whimper in her sleep. I always wondered about this. What could such a little baby be dreaming about that might make her so upset? A shortage of breast milk? An especially dirty diaper?
I've always suffered from nightmares. I generally have a couple a week. I can't really remember a time when I didn't have them, so it's not so bad any more. I'm used to it. Sometimes, I even enjoy it. But Kat is still a little girl. And I worry about her. I don't like the idea of her having bad dreams.
So, with her birthday coming up, and the dream still in my mind months later, I wrote Katherine a little story. My friend Patty did some drawings to go with it.
I scanned the whole thing into my computer and am having it printed as a book for a present.
Neat, right?
It's not a great tale or anything. I use far too many commas, as is my wont. The rhymes are forced and sometimes awkward. But Katherine is only 4. I have a feeling she's going to like it.
Having a niece and nephew is great, by the way. None of the work of parenthood, and all of the fun. Basically the best thing ever. I know that makes me sound baby crazy, and maybe I am (a little), but seriously. Cuteness abounds.
If you want to check out the book, I've included a preview below, or visit the self-publishing site I used to lay it out and have it bound: Blurb.
Planning a wedding, even a small wedding that you hope will be as little like a wedding as possible (ha ha), is a dangerous business.
I knew this already. I've always known this. But there's a big difference between knowing something and experiencing it.
In my case, things have already gone far beyond what I initially planned. More guests are coming, we'll be serving far more booze, (and more varieties of booze), and I've tried on actual bridal, which I never intended to do.
It's all been... a bit much. Photo from the Bering Photography vintage wedding gallery. Nathan, being a weirdo Marxist, is helping. Like me, however, he's a people pleaser with a tendency to give in when pushed, so we have to bolster each other regularly with rousing exclamations of "Just say no!" and "We not doing that!" Sometimes, we just won't answer our phone. But I admit, there have been moments when we've been swept into the river. As I said, I tried on "real" bridal, and once you head down that road (or any of these wedding roads) all the cliches come to life. It really IS a slippery slope. Within an hour of dress shopping, I found myself thinking, "Well, $900 isn't really THAT much for a dress, is it?" And "maybe I DO need custom-dyed shoes..." (I know that there are people for whom $900 would be a major bargain, but practically my entire wardrobe is from Goodwill... for me, it's insane.) Insane or not, its just easy to get caught up in the bullshit. It wasn't my fault! The bullshit is powerful and hard to resist.Luckily, when I got home, I came to my senses, found a $5 dress at the thrift shop*, and moved on (at least emotionally). But still... despite our little rebellions, expectations continue to weigh on us.Interestingly, I find that what helps the most is the Internet. All it takes to remind me of what is inauthentic, saccharine and vile about so many contemporary weddings is a quick visit to Pinterest or a Google search of the words "best wedding traditions." The results are truly horrifying. From those "suddenly we're doing choreographed hip-hop!" reception dances to people who engrave their wedding bands with phrases like "I will wuv you for eternity" and "Love you, Shmoopie" (Shmoopie, being the most disgusting pet name ever and very likely what you'll be forced to call the devil in hell), the internet is rife with helpful aids in aversion therapy. Thank goodness for the modern wedding ick factor. Without it, I think I might have been suckered into a lot more hoopla. My wedding (or rather, marriage) is just a few weeks away, so I don't have to resist for much longer. Soon this will all be over and we can go back to answering our phone and being our regular selves. All we have left to do is ... a lot actually. In fact, I don't want to think about it. Ugh. *Yes. I am wearing a $5 wedding dress. It's fuschia. Why not, right? That's who I AM, dammit.
I have nothing to blog about! I've been spending recent days doing weird and boring stuff like cleaning under the refridgerator. Doesn't make for very interesting anecdotes.
Instead of a proper blog, here's something I like to call "the tickle cam." Enjoy.
Hey! Tomorrow is valentine's day! I don't tend to celebrate this strange "holiday" but take a look at these vintage cards from the generally amusing folks over at Funny or Die. They've been all over the place lately, but I'm not feeling very creative, so forgive me for sharing them one more time.
Most of you have seen this already, but in case you haven't, I wanted to share the silly website I made in honour of my upcoming nuptials. The site doesn't contain any details about the time or place, so I figured it was safe to put on the interwebs. I'm very amusing. Everyone thinks so.
Nate and I have been felled by a terrible flu. A rather classic flu, I think. Complete with fever and hideous night sweats. Nate's temp has been much higher than mine. Last time I clocked it, I think he was up at 39.3 C (which is more than 102 F). The other night, he was up to change his soaked PJs THREE times. We're gross, in other words. We're both pretty gross.This makes it hard to write. (The flu, not the grossness. You can be gross and write quite well, at least in my experience.) But fever complicates things. Unless you're writing something surrealist, or used to inebriated scribbling, nothing good ever comes out when your brain's all fuzzy.So with that in mind, here's a post that seemed doable, under the circumstances:5 Horrible Truths About Having the Flu- People think you "just have a cold" and that you ought to stop being a whiner.
- If you didn't have a flu shot, you have no one to blame but yourself.
- Damp mattress = not so cozy.
- When you lie in bed for days on end, the room starts smelling funky.
- You are the source of the funky smell. The funk emanates from YOU, my funky, flu-ridden friend.
5 Redeeming Truths About Having the Flu- If you want to have 6 hot baths a day, if only to lie like an oily log in hot water, without soaping, no one's going to give you a hard time.
- People will wait on you. They will bring tea, soup and other hot beverages. If they're very nice, they will bring wine.
- You can watch daytime television with impunity. Expect to learn much about bridal wear, child abuse, and toddlers who spray tan in tiaras.
- You'll have a whole (generally sweaty and unpleasant, but likely work-free) week at your disposal to read a very long and meandering John Irving novel and if you're not sure you liked it, you don't have to take a position, because you read it whilst sick. You're off the hook.
- You are forgiven for any and all smells you may produce during this trying period. Embrace your funk. You are forgiven.
Flu's aren't all about the downsides, after all. Hope none of you are as sick as we are. And if you are, head for the bath. It always helps. Talk soon. When I can muster up something a little less boring, I hope.
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