Trapped

I am writing now, because for the first time in a few nights, I finally have time to sit down and write. Not to speak again of the holiday, but it is always hard when family is in town because you have to merge your normal habits and routines with other people's routines. I appreciated the visit with my family, but I was ready to be back to my life. Strangely enough, I haven't hit that point yet. I keep waiting for my week to return to normal, and my routines keep getting changed.

This week happens to be a really busy one. Not only that, but I am pretty sure that I hate my job. I have been complaining about my job for a few months now, but I never thought it was anything serious. I came back after the break and instead of being irritated about the usual things, it's like I lost my will to care about it anymore. We have our fall show in three days. I have been practically living at the school. I'm not really stressed out about it. At this point last year, I would be going crazy out of my mind with last minute with changes and necessary items that need to be fixed and this year I am just bored and tired. I have a few million battles that I could fight to make my job better, but instead, I just hate it. And I'm even too tired to complain about it anymore. More than anything, I just want to go home, spend the normal 2 hours messing around on the computer, fix dinner, catch up with my counterpart and then whatever else until bed. Instead, it's been something different every night. I'm barely getting dinner in before I pass out from exhaustion. I'm done with the half-assed whining. That's not why I wanted to write this.

The reason why I am posting this is because with the rare exception of today, I doubt I will be around for the next four days. I have found out how to read everyone's blogs that I like to read over my lunch at work, but unfortunately because of the network, I can't post anything to your sites or to my own. Trust me, I have been reading, I am just rendered speechless. I really do feel like someone has stolen for this week the small piece of my life that isn't stressful. I am here. I am reading. I just doubt I will be posting. Or responding to your posts. Hopefully the next thing I write will be less dull. Hopefully. There was a quote from the book that I was reading the other day where a mother says to her daughter that the only way to get over the hard parts of life is to go right through them. This week and next will be my attempt to get through a couple hard parts. I'll be talking to you later.

A "Secret" Post For Genderist

Okay,

I know this is strange, but I think it is interesting because you were telling me about a dilemma last week and something happened this morning that made me think about it.

I got an e-mail from my bridesmaid-you know the one I have spent way too much of my time bitching about? The one that caused me to have orange angst and paranoia when it comes to friendships. Now I have complexities and trust issues. Ugh.

But still. I got the e-mail. It was all about us hanging out just like old times. Old times? I think just the statements that I have just made above make things pretty fucking clear about how fond I am of the old times. I responded by saying that there's alot I thought we should discuss before we do a whole lot together-I was eluding to me, the husband, and the loss. She responded by elaborating another two paragraphs about how her life was pretty rough lately because she had been sick for three weeks. Always her. Always her problems. I'd had enough. I remember telling you one time that it was okay to be angry. And while you didn't help me out by telling me that "Walk the Line" sucked, I am really hoping you'll tell me that I still get to be angry. Or hurt. At least tell me I can still be hurt.

The Blitz

The decision was made for the first time ever to give this a try. What could it possibly hurt? My mom has been looking for a laptop for awhile and who are we bothering by trying to get one on sale? We set our alarms for 4:00, considering that we only live a 1/2 block away from our nearest Wal-Mart Supercenter. I am pretty excited at this point because

(All right. Venting break. I just accidentally erased this post when I was about two sentences away from ending it. So now if this post sounds forced or awkward, it's because I am trying to re-create what was a pretty good of my account, but now I have The Rage working in me, so I don't know that it will come off in the way I would like it to. Sorry.)

there is something uniquely spicy about waking up in the remaining witching hours to go shopping. I was more restless than I am the night before Christmas. At least then you know your Christmas presents are waiting under the tree, unlike now, where who knows what we could end the day with? There's a soothsayer in my story, just like in the old Greek tragedies, that warns us that our journey may not end as we expected. As a former Wal-Mart employee of 20 years, she warns us that people usually start lining up at midnight to get this stuff. We spit on her midnight.

We woke up at 4:00 as planned, we drove the 1/2 block to the store and the parking lot was full. Not middle of the day full, but I am surprised we are vying for a spot, full. Look, I am getting ready to say something that I won't ever say again, but when we got to Wal-Mart and found our places in line, it looked like Red-Neck-Homa, which consequently normally gets on my last nerves when people make fun of our state because it has so much more than ignorant people...All that being ranted, Every Tom, Dick, and Cletus were out in line. Apparently, they thought that there was no way they could get sales from their local Wal-Marts, and so they made the trek to the city to get the goods. There was a woman in line behind us that had teeth like the Grinch (see above). I swear there were maggots and mold forming and crawling in between her teeth. After checking for my scar (see MISSING?!?) I found out from her that there were only 15 laptops. What?!? Why in the name of Davey Jones' locker didn't I see this one coming? I know that I am inexperienced in the ways of blitzes, but c'mon. Fifteen?!? I thought maybe they'd only have 100 or something, but not 15! How naive. At this point, the veterans of this little sport let me know that apparently I definitely needed to get my info straight before venturing out because last year one of the Best Buys had the same kind of deal and there were only 5 laptops. 5. Now I feel asinine to be up so early. Now there's nothing to be gained. And I won't even go into how painful it was to wait for the next hour to reach the point in the line where they started turning us away because they were sold out. To read more about my experience, see: Shopping Frenzy.

In the end, Target and Bath and Body Works produced some pretty sweet sales that we loved taking advantage of. And I really do think that I would wake up that early again, but that's only because I love watching people trying to control chaos. It reminds me that we are only as civilized as we tell each other we are. In the end, we are still animals and killers. Except now, instead of fighting over territory, we fight over toys. And we still fight for territory. Wait. Where am I going with this? Yeah, it was fun. I think. People are nuts. But I'll still defend our crazy ways to the bitter end, so bring your cynical comments about the destruction of Christmas, or about how bad it is that people fight each other, I'm Ready.

Teaching a Jew the meaning of Christmas

It seems strange to me that the other day I had my friend over to my house. We'll call him the bad shoe guy-mostly because of his sense of style, or lack thereof. So, the bad shoe guy comes over to help me hang up a dartboard that he had given us and while we are working on it, he notices that my home has the beginnings of our Christmas decorations up. (See The Damn Angst Quiz) While he was gazing at the decorations, he noticed one special trinket: The Abominable. Being the fan that I am, I have a knick knack. He says, "That guy was awesome in Monsters, Inc." Which is interesting because the knick knacks I have are on a red mat, in a house with Christmas decorations, and sitting next to five other knick knacks that are from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. I reply to the bad shoe guy, "That Abominable is from Rudolph, not Monsters, Inc." His response: "There's an Abominable Snowman in Rudolph?"

WHAT PLANET DID YOU JUST COME FROM?!?

That's like saying, "There's a witch in the Wizard of Oz?" or "There's a rabbit in Alice in Wonderland?"

I can't even remember the series of witty and brilliant responses that I had that were intended to humiliate him for forgetting the coolest part of the t.v. show. Then, he dropped the bomb. And just to be punny, I'll say he dropped the A-bom. He says, "I'm Jewish, of course I've never seen Rudolph." To which I again reply,

WHAT PLANET DID YOU JUST COME FROM?!?

At this point, I happen to be thinking to myself, "Well, I am Christian but that didn't stop me from watching Real Sex on HBO when I was a kid." (Yes, you sexist bastards, girls watch that shit, too.) Why did I watch Real Sex? Not because I was interested, but because that was ALL THAT WAS ON past ten on the channel and if you weren't watching cable past ten, then you were watching infomercials and you can only watch those for so many years... You couldn't avoid the show. If you watched HBO in the nineties, you had at least watched one clip from Real Sex. (Thank you HBO for being my sex ed teacher, you taught me well.) So, despite being Jewish, how do you manage to avoid a show that has been on for 41 years? You have to live in one pretty big Jewish Cave to avoid that shit. Especially considering that bad shoe guy has been alive 28 of those 41 years. C'mon. The argument continues, and again and again his only retort is that he didn't see it because he was Jewish. Which brings me to my next complaint: How in the BLUE HELL did Christianity become synonymous with Santa Claus? I don't recall signing that sonofabitch's paychecks. If my sources are correct, the belief in Santa Claus is just as pagan as worshiping Osiris or the Golden Calf. And don't feed me this crap about how we get him because of the whole St. Nicholas thing, either. There's no way that our Saints somehow mean that we get pegged with eight (nine including Rudolph) reindeer and magical elves that fulfill toy fantasies. This is precisely why I have a large beef with Constantine and his decision to have pagan holidays coincide with Christian ones, i.e. changing the celebration of Christ's birth and coupling it with the pagan ritual that somehow involves trees, and right now all that eludes me and I will rant about it some other time. My point being: this Jew has no excuse to pin Rudolph on me and he needs to get off his ass and watch it.

In the end, he tries to convince me that both abominable's are one in the same, which is why he shouldn't have to go back and watch the show. Once again I have to chop the bad shoe guy down to size by countering that only hard core Rudolph fans would know that they can't be the same because the Abominable in Rudolph lost his teeth when the gay dentist elf pulled them out right before he went over the cliff, or Herbie did some serious caps before his Monsters debut...

Are they the same? I am open for your thoughts...

And even more titillating for the brain...Is Donald Sutherland the true Abominable? Maybe you are the one who holds the key to unlock this unsolved mystery...

P.S. I am not really anti-semetic and I would appreciate you holding back on the hate mail.

Water Polo Plus Relevance

More than a few years back, I took at Water Polo class at the college I attended. Notice, I'm not sporting the school pride by announcing my alum. Jerks. Where was I?

I had made the decision to cheat the system by taking Beginning Swimming, which is kind of a joke considering that I am a lifeguard. Okay, wait. Sometimes that doesn't mean jack taco because some teens become guards to see how much humor they can find in a fat culture trying to squish their back and belly fat into spandex. And I definitely am that guard, but I also happen to be a damn good swimmer. Please note that my swimming is pretty and not fast. I don't want the random haters tryin' to challenge me to some kind of swim off, because I've only done that once and I will not lose $250.00 again. I ask again, where was I at? Beginning Swimming. Right.

I took the class because I knew that I could find reasonable success in the class. It was really fun. Being the egomaniac that I am, it was nice to once again be "King of the Hill." Did I mention that I don't tolerate competition well? I drank an entire bottle of KC Masterpiece once not because I was dared, but because someone wasn't listening to me when I told them that I loved BBQ sauce, so I drank it in the middle of the restaurants to gain his attention. Continuing on...

We were playing water polo.

Screams and shouts were echoing of the moldy over-chlorinated pool. After the festivities, we were all pleased with the days performance. Everyone was paddling to the side when I looked up, there was my 60 year old gym professor screaming at us to apologize to each other. Someone must have forgot to tell her that generation x doesn't play nice. "It's not personal, it's business." Needless to say, she made us all hold hands and look each other in the eyes and say, "If during the course of this game, I have somehow offended you or hurt your feelings, I truly apologize for myself and my actions." It seemed silly then, but as I walked away from the game, I mentally catalogued this memory thinking that I some day might need it.

Right now, I feel the need to say that this weekend I hung out with some new friends and some old friends. And for some reason, I think I might have offended you. To you I say, "If for some reason during the course of this weekend I made you feel uncomfortable, or if I offended you in any way, I truly apologize for myself and my actions."

And I want to eat food again sometime under much less complicated circumstances, friend.

The Damn Angst Quiz

Okay, so apparently Angry Dissenter wins the poorly designed and quickly thought out prize for the most amusing 10 minutes of my day, because I was supposed to right now be writing some kind of post about the comforts of home and how pleased I am going to be to see my counterpart tomorrow, and instead I take the damn angst quiz, which when I read it, happens to be right at the place that I am at right now.

I have spent the better part of 6 months struggling with the loyalties of friendships, just like the website told me I was. I just had that conversation with a friend over a Carmel White Fudge Shake this morning. Needless to say, I was suprised to see how accurate it was. I must say this was cooler than reading a fortune cookie after dinner to find out what I was going to be doing later that evening "in bed."

Check it out at Angry Dissenter's website. You won't be dissapointed.

And, just so I don't feel like I abandoned the evening's original purpose, you all should know the house is now decorated in a Christmasy fashion. And it smells more like cinamon and pumpkin than rank beer and dog pee.

Anger Hangover (subtitled: Ha Ha the Boys are Gone)

So apparently I had a lot of frustration on my mind yesterday. It has been a really hard week. I've had bosses yelling at me, a few co-workers have been nagging me, one of my favorite wrestlers died, and of course, my husband and I lost our baby. It feels good to finally say that to someone. I needed to get a lot off of my chest and for those of you that read that last post, thanks. I just needed someone to listen. It must have had a really cleansing effect because I woke up this morning and now I am ready to listen to Christmas songs and I am ready to bake some cookies or something. Having read genderist's post about the fudge, however, I think that I will hold off on doing anything too complicated. Maybe I'll just leave the cooking to her.

It is strange because a few of my friends and I have been waiting for this weekend because our husbands would be out of town. Needless to say, we were looking forward to a grrrrl's night out. And I guess I could cheat you and tell you that we went to a bar, because we did. At 7:00p.m. But then we left at 7:05p.m. Some nights you have to do your eating before your drinking. We head to get some nourishment, if you call fried pickles nourishment, and then decided to stop by Target to get some Coke for the real drinking. What did we end up doing? Spending the night playing in the Superstore. I bought this wicked awesome two-disc Christmas CD for $9.99 and it is great. Well, if you think Christmas is awesome, that is. Well, and it's awesome for a nine dollar CD. You can't have expectations too high when you find it on a clearance shelf. Needless to say, our night of debotchery ended with everyone going to bed long before the sun went down and no drinking was to be seen. Maybe that's why I am up at 8:00 a.m. posting. Whew. I don't know how many more crazy grrrl nights I can handle with the men gone.

An Attempt to Reconcile with The Rage (Revised)

I no longer have doubts that pop culture and t.v. have been my primal and soul guiders for the majority of my life. It's funny that my earliest memory is being scared to watch the Def Leppard video "Pour Some Sugar On Me" because the one-armed drummer always gave me nightmares. Don't ask me why a one-armed man is scary...

I have had an almost two year old dilemma that I have been struggling with and I thought that I would share it. It is at this point that I should issue a brief warning: I am not in the mood to work for the 'big words' to come into my roaming little mind today. As a result, I am more than sure that a fair amount of the 'naughty' words will be spoken in this post. If your eyes will burn from the insult, please move on.

Back to the dilemma...Most people would tell you that I used to have an abundance of ego. I was pretty sure that I was the most amazing thing in the world and I also equipped myself with a sharp tongue so that any person that got in my way would quickly wish they had never crossed my path. There is more than one person who would attest to my temper. I am also sure that there is more than one person that still hates me because of this. But that's the thing: at the time, I didn't care. You either were or weren't important to me. You either worshipped me or you got the hell out of my way. The weird thing is that when you act like that, there are actually a ton of people who are stupid enough to hang around you just because they want to see you go nuts and fly off the handle...this in and of itself is a foreign concept now. It seems like all of the sudden I woke up and the Feelings Fairy took off with my fucking mojo. At some point, I came to the sick realization that the things I said might actually hurt someone else's feelings. Most people at this point would tell me that maybe I was just growing up. I would like to momentarily ignore this statement. Somehow, for damn sure it was unintentional, I went through this ridiculous "spiritual" journey where I learned that all people deserve to be respected and that all people should struggle to take control of their lives and that the way we control our lives and our destinies is by owning our actions. While this may seem really trivial, it is amazing how many people don't grasp this concept. AND IT IS WITH THAT IN MIND, that I would like to throw a brief shout out to Dr. Phil. That son of a bitch was kind enough to teach me responsibility and I can see that he must have forgotten to teach the rest of the damn world because I am the only person who bought that bullshit. I wrote in my self-discovery journal and I meditated on my defining moments, and at the end of the day, I was the only one searching out my feelings. Everybody else was watching Seinfeld.

Time passed on and I started my dream job, and you know what happens now? I take responsibility. I try to tell the truth. I try to be kind. I try to compromise. I try to understand people. I make excuses for other people's poor or strange behavior. And I do this because I hold to the hope that all of us must be fragile. That all of us are trying to make this world better. What do I get in return? High School Drama. And no, the irony of the fact that I work in a high school in the theatre department is not lost on me. There is someone in this world who would read this and say that I am a better person for being kind. Say that I am making some kind of positive effort. There are probably even more people that are wondering what exactly it is that I am crying about, but for right now I wish the positivity police would jump off my back so that I could go back to being pissed off. And then I would find those people and tell them to take me to the fucking fairy that stole my anger. It is literally draining me of all of my energy to be as angry as I am now. I'm having to listen to really crappy music, just to keep focused on the anger. I just want to go back. I just want to say, what I want when I want, and to hell with the emotional damage that it may cause. I want The Rage back. It seems like an irrational request, but at least I wouldn't spend the majority of my adult life like the way I am now, which is feeling like a tool. Feeling like a victim to lies, manipulation, and gossip. Feeling like the majority of the people I deal with are the ones who snuggle themselves to sleep at night with the lie that they tell to themselves about how they are truly better than those with whom they would betray. I MISS THE ILLUSION. At the same time, my ever so special Feelings Fairy tells me to abandon The Rage. She holds a drop of sunshine in her hand and has smiley face stickers on her shirt. I hate her so much. I want my cigarette smoking, too tragic to deal with you, authority bucking mojo to return. She's the one I miss. She's the one who doesn't have to scrub the toilets and the bathtub in the morning. She doesn't have to pull down the poorly hung Halloween decorations. She's the time of my life that I never get to go back to. I think I will call her Adolescence.

All that being said, I would just like to add that I knew that t.v. was controlling most of my life when I had a dilemma as pressing as the one that seems to be nagging me now and the best reference I have to explain to you what I am going through is from the movie "Hope Floats" when people keep telling Birdie that she needs to be audacious and bold like she used to be. Thank you Sandra Bullock and famous-country-singer-who-I-can't-think-of-your-name. Thank you for leaving me with such an intellectually satisfying way to generate a metaphor for my life.

Homer Simpson: In case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic.

The Efficiency of Spell Check

I am pretty sure that as time goes on that my spelling will no doubt get worse as my memory fades, however, I found this irony last night and thought it was worth sharing...

Because my confidence is so low in my spelling ability, I have made the decision to spell check all posts. This is when I discovered that the spell check on this program doesn't recognize the word blog. It seems like there should be more to say here, but instead I will use Nelson's voice to fully color my thoughts, "Ha Ha! Your spell check doesn't know the word blog, and this is a blog"

Nelson: "Smell you later."
Bart: "Yeah, smell you later."

MISSING!?!

I have lost a lot of things in my time: my sanity, my virginity, and even occasionally my car keys. But never have I lost a scar. Oh, stop it. I already know what you are thinking: It faded, right? Look, I am not the the smartest turnip in the turnip truck (no, thank you, Dan Rather, for such an insightful metaphor) but I know the difference between fading and disappearing. This morning I woke up, I grabbed some pretty cheap pants that have a button that just happens to rub right where my belly button scar is. Flashback to 2001: I have my gall bladder removed because surgery seemed like a fun thing to do in the very merry month of May. When it is finished, I am left with a bumpy L-shaped scar that looks like a maggot that is trying to die at the bottom of my stomach. I have six "maggots" from this particular surgery, and after the fading-see I know what fading is-the scars turn from purple to white. This particular scar has been the biggest of my six. Flashback to present day: back in my bedroom with the cheap pants with the cheap button that always rubs on my belly button and the maggot scar. I was annoyed with this when I was dressing this morning, however I dismissed it and decided that the cheap pants were the option for the morning. Side Note: Ever notice how when you aren't in the mood to play dress up for your job, that you REALLY aren't in the mood? I mean, if I know I'm going to look bad for the day, I don't just half-ass it, I mean I put my whole heart into looking bad...
So the day of looking bad goes on...and so on and so forth...but now the majority of the evening is through and I am ready to take a bath. After sitting in the tub and glancing past my dirty pillows, I notice that the scar is gone. It's not a different color, it's not smaller or a new shape, it's just gone. So here's my plea: If anyone has seen my belly button scar, please immediately respond. It was lost between the hours of 7:15a.m. and 7:30p.m. I'm not asking for any money and I won't tell anyone that you took it, but I want my damn scar back.

As an after thought, not having the time or records to keep track of my own belly button scars, I thought I would post Alyssa Milano's belly button in place of mine, just because. I am a big charmed fan, maybe that's why I did it.

Thoughts from a fan

I don't know quite how to start this post. This past week has been really long for my family. We have suffered a loss in our family and we have been hiding from most of the world. It has been strange because I haven't wanted to talk to anyone about it. We have received all of these kind phone calls and visits from friends and loved ones and I have just been wanting everyone to get the hell away from me and leave me alone. Yesterday evening, I received a call from my brother and he informed me of the death of WWE Superstar Eddie Gurrero. It was surreal to hear that somewhere else at this moment, there is someone else in the world that is experiencing grief.

Just in case you are a fan or you are just curious to know, Eddie was found yesterday (Sunday) morning dead in his hotel room in Minneapolis. The cause of his death is unknown. More information and thoughts about Eddie can be found at http://www.wwe.com

I don't have anything special to say about Eddie Gurrero, other than that he was an awesome wrestler and had an amazing ring presence. Mostly, I just want to say that I was a fan. I also wanted to take the moment to say that it amazed me to see other wrestlers talk about their personal relationships with Gurrero, rather than talking about him as a wrestler. Being in a similar situation right now, I have a deep respect for people who could face millions of fans and express deeply personal emotions. I know it has been hard for me to face even a few people and for these men and women to face the public less than 24 hours after his death and continue to perform and speak seems deeply commendable to me and I just thought I would throw out the love.

Part of my heart says that I have to close by saying this: if you haven't experienced professional wrestling, I don't expect you to do so now. I also don't expect anyone to all of the sudden have some kind of profound respect for the event. Either you get it and you love it or you don't. I feel fortunate to be a fan. I have found that this too, like the other loves of my life, come in these tight community packages, where even though I am one in a million people that loves this, I have no doubt that any other fan of this activity wouldn't understand exactly how I feel at this moment. Ultimately, I am no one special. But yet, the bonds that grief creates seem to blend us all together as a community, as supporters, as fans. Rest in peace, Eddie.

A Breif Author's Note:

Picks suck. They really really suck.

One Fish, Two Fish

I have been thinking alot lately about how strange it is that I love almost all pets-except one. The fish. I actually have a recurring dream that I have to pick up one of the fish from the floor with my hands and return it to its tank. I didn't ask for the fish, that's for damn sure. But through a long story, which I will not include, I have four fish and a ten gallon tank. Correction: I have four fish remaining. There were something like ten or fifteen at one point, but I've been succesfully watching them die off for two years.

Don't get me wrong, these same fish would be great if they were in someone else's home or they were actually being taken care of, but I don't have the time or the love for the creatures to want to help them out. They get food, sometimes new water, sometimes new filters, sometimes I wipe the algae from the tank. Mostly, I wait for them to die. So, I watch and wait.

I am pretty sure that one of them is refusing to die just on sheer principle. I'm okay with that. I was relating this to my friend the other day and he told me it would be less painful if I just put the poor fish out of their misery and flushed them, but there seems to be some kind of ethical dilemna in actively killing the fish versus letting them live in the slums. That's really what it is, right? They aren't unhealthy or swimming in parasites-I even exterminated the tank once from unwanted snails-I don't let them get "swim bladder" or "fish pneumonia" or any other disease. But I wish that they could just lose their will to live and move on to the next place. I would even write a eulogy if it would make them feel better. Especially the big silver one, I hate him the most. I know the other three are pretty laid back and they would accept my half-assed attempt at fish care, but the silver one, Mr. Big is what I'll call him, he watches me. He knows my intentions and because he does, he refuses to die. Maybe in the end, my crappy care is worse than a quick death. But for now, the ambiguity of the situation is comfort enough for me.