Viiiiiiii-kiiiiiiiiiiing!

My roommates and I are having a Halloween party. It'll be a day late, unless you're celebrating All Saints Day, in which case it's right on time. I haven't worn a costume in years and years, so I've had lots of time to plan. I want to be a Viking! Braids and a horned helmet, baby. Yeah!

About fourteen years of imagining, and I left myself one night to look for a costume. So pickins were slim. I snagged the last helmet at The Garment District. For the tunic, I had to buy a white thingy that looks more Grecian Goddess-y, so I may need to add a protective layer of tinfoil armor. I plan on being both elegant and invincible when I start razing villages. No cone boobs, though (sorry, boys).

Side note: The Garment District (a single store in Boston) can be a fun place to people-watch. The day before Halloween is like Christmas Eve at the mall, except at the mall you don't get to watch men trying on ugly skirts atop the mountain of Dollar-a-Pound clothes.

Anyway, what I lack in authenticity (because the plastic armor I might have found 3 weeks ago would have totally been authentic), I hope to make up for in theatrics. What do you think of me learning some German lyrics from Wagner's Ring Cycle and belting 'em out like a mad Valkyrie? That ought to scatter some peasants.

I'm baking cookies, too. Pillager meets June Cleaver. Being a melancholy type, I don't often get excited, but I'm rather excited to get my Vike on on Saturday (OK, kinda made that word up). I think it's largely the costume thing. I've always wanted to wear costumes -- one reason why my recently rediscovered acting bug holds so much promise for fun. Costumes, costumes, costumes! Holly wants to play! (Dang, there's Elmo again.)

I Draw the Line at Coin Slots, Too

I'm a fan of low-rise jeans. We've covered this before, but here's a one-sentence refresher: I'm not an immodest dresser, but low-rise pants fit me better than other kinds.

I thought about not writing this because it's Too Much Information, but what is a blog if not TMI? So, here's the thing: You gotta be careful with the undergarments when wearing the low-risers. Otherwise, you get someone standing behind you thinking, I see she wore the Care Bears today.

So, take caution is all I'm saying.

I'll end it there.

I'm Three People

My blog style has begun to carry over into my regular life. As you know, every once in a while I'll refer to myself in the third person here, because apparently I think it's funny to sound like Elmo. But now I find myself doing it in conversation, and even by myself. I'll be at my desk, will type something incorrectly, and say out loud, "Holly made a mistake!" Or I'll drop something and say, "Oh, Holly!" It's like I'm my own swear word now.

I can't decide if I think this is cute or annoying. For the sake of my own self-esteem, I think I'll choose cute until further notice.

Kicking Butt and Saving (Most) Lives

I am a Floor Warden! Or a Searcher. Not sure what the distinction is, actually. But I wear a Floor Warden hat, which is the important thing. What do I do? I save lives! Assuming they don't argue.

Of course, if they argue, I just kind of leave them to it. I'm not a confrontational person.

My job is to go around our floor at work and make sure everyone evacuates in an emergency. Obviously, everyone else had already turned the position down, so they were left with me. Last week, I had my first hat-wearing fire drill, and I walked around making sure people left. I was surprised at how many people refused to go, because they knew it was a drill. The happier ones at least offered to bribe me, but one stressed soul just said, "I don't have time for this" and closed her office door in my face. Um, OK. I wondered if I should be a hardass, but as it was a drill, I opted not to tick off my superiors (at my job, everyone is my superior).

Perhaps it was cheating, but I accepted the Hershey bar they gave all the wardens for getting people off their floor. I did tell them about the guy who insisted on going to the bathroom before leaving the building.

Apart from that, I embraced the dorkiness of the hat (fire-engine red!) and the accompanying flashlight. It helped that one of the other wardens is a super-hot chick, and she wore her hat with pride. I figured if she could do it, so could I. We also briefly played light sabres with the flashlights, because we're both cool and mature.

To my knowledge, no one died during the drill, so I'm calling it a success.

Killing Me Softly

I've recently been given a new position in my new company. It's a lateral move, which means the same salary. I'm not sure what I'll be doing. I haven't asked a lot of questions. This may sound apathetic, and perhaps even irresponsible, but it actually doesn't matter to me what I'll be doing, as long as it's not immoral -- and frankly, I don't know how immoral you can get with textbook supplements, unless it's all a big front for illegal organ donations, and that just seems like an impractically messy combination.

At this point, my job feels a bit like chemotherapy. I can't just up and quit it, so I do the next best thing: I sit there and let it happen to me, and pray that it kills the cancer before it kills me.

I Have a Person!

A few posts back, I lamented my lack of "people" -- folks to handle specific tasks that I either found unsavory or had no particular talent for. Well, I remembered this week that I do have one guy: The Booze Guy. His name is Mike, and he works at Tony's Liquors, near my parents' house.

Dad first introduced me to Mike a couple years ago, when I stole a gift idea from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and needed help with the implementation. It really was a great idea: As a wedding gift, buy the couple bottles of wine that reach their peaks on key anniversary years. Although I can't take credit for the idea itself, I do take pride in having stolen a really good one.

Problem #1: I know nothing about wine. When that's your first problem, do you really need a Problem #2?

Well, we went and had a consultation with Mike, and he came through brilliantly. I gave him a price range, and he came up with some wine selections and packed it all in a nice, sturdy, wooden wine box. The bride and groom were really pleased, and everyone was impressed with me, so of course Mike became one of my favorite people.

This week I needed help again with wine as a gift. (For such an inexperienced drinker, I seem to be making quite a habit of wrapping up alcohol for other folks.) Mike came through again, this time finding a specific brand from California. Yay, Mike!

And yay me! On my way to utter dependence on others.

Like a Haggis Burrito

I have this great wool poncho from my mom's closet. It's red-and-green plaid, and I look forward to the three days in Autumn when the weather is just right for me to wear it. A plaid poncho may seem like an odd, Scottish-Mexican combo, but it works somehow. And there's something hip about taking an article of clothing from the '70s and making it work.

I have this great moss-colored hat I've been wearing with it. I mention my hats a lot because one of my goals for when I had spending money was to buy and wear hats. Now I have spending money and I'm buying and wearing hats, and each time I do it it's a teeny dream come true.

Buy hats, be a movie star, win a Pulitzer like Dave Barry. My aspirations are modest.

1492, Where Are You?

How was everyone's long weekend? Nice and long, was it? Did you go out of town, take the kids to see their grandparents, maybe get some chores crossed off your to-do list? Or did you spend your time lazing around gloriously, becoming more acquainted with your bed, the golf course, or daytime TV?

Would you like to know how my long weekend was?

Short, that's how.

Because we didn't get Columbus Day off. Instead, we gave him the collective finger. Perhaps my company is run by Norwegians who staunchly support Leif Eiricksson as the discoverer of America (though as a mongrel with both Norwegian and Italian blood, I have no loyalties here). Perhaps this is where we're supposed to use one of our "floating holidays," a concept which is new to me. Or perhaps everyone just looooves their jobs. All I know is that yesterday, while the lights weren't even on on the other floors of the building, a tiny smattering of employees was toiling away under the flourescents, and I was one of them.

Bitter? Perhaps.

I mean, I do have those floating holidays, I guess. It was just a shock to find out, only a week ago, that if I wanted Monday off, I was going to have to ask for it, and sacrifice the option of using it in the future. It's different, you know?

And here's my question: If I don't get a long weekend every six-to-eight weeks, just when am I supposed to do laundry? Answer me that!

Cheap Date

After 200+ posts, you all probably have a certain image of me. I can imagine your thoughts. Holly: That broad is straight-up class. And yeah, I am. It may surprise you, however, that at heart I'm a simple girl with simple tastes. I'm as happy eating a burger as I am eating a steak. I'm usually content to go to the movies, or even stay home and watch something from Netflix. A cheap date, really. And fellas, I'm single! Can you believe some cheap bastard hasn't snatched me up yet? Astounding. I just can't work it out. Which reminds me of a joke I heard from my roommate, Helen (the one with the feet):

What did the constipated mathematician do?

He worked it out with a pencil.

Ha! See? A sense of humor, too! I'm great at parties. Call me!

Anyway:
I gagged on lobster once. Really, I gagged on it. I was never a big seafood fan, but usually I can at least get the stuff down. Not this time. It was at a surf-n-turf party, and the host had gotten each guest a lobster. I'd never had it, but everyone likes lobster, right? But it was all slimy and seafoody. (How did I not see that coming?) I was sitting right next to the host when I practically retched. I felt so bad. He was very gracious about it, but man, that's a whole lobster wasted! I don't remember if somebody else took it off my hands, but I sure hope so.

Sometimes I'll notice that my pinky is raised while I slurp my cocoa, but that's about as close as I come to being a swell.

I guess I'm just white trash with money, without the money.

Big Brother

I believe I've mentioned before that my little brother is, in fact, significantly larger than I. Twice my body mass. It's occurred to me recently, however, that you may have been left wondering, "How does such a size difference manifest itself, exactly? Are his arms twice as thick? Are his teeth twice as long? Is his head twice as dense?" (Yes, no, yes.)

Bro is concerned about Internet security, so he's asked that I not post pictures and names here. But he didn't say anything about artistic renderings. Thus, I've created a visual aid for your benefit. It's not scientific in its accuracy, but it'll at least give you a mental picture when I do posts about family holidays.

Here you go!

Insane in the Membrane

My skin has gone nucking futs. I've always been a bit of an Italian greaseball. (Thanks for the genes, Dad; I hope that, like you, I'll end up looking 10-15 years younger than I am by the time I retire.) Sometimes, it all gets out of control. I got acne at age ten, and it's never really gone away. I've been on sundry medications, on and off. Then, when I was twenty-six, it got worse than it had ever been, very quickly, and refused to get better. I wound up on Accutane (which to me sounds like Beltane -- perhaps it's the ancient Celtic festival of erupting skin). It really helped me, and for the last six years I've felt normal.

But now it's back. In the last month, I've gone from Almost Adult skin to 15-year-old-with-raging-hormones skin. That's not the kind of youthful look I was hoping for. So this time, I'm nipping it in the bud. When I realized it wasn't going to go away, I called the dermatologist and have an appointment for the end of the month. I suppose there's a chance that food or stress or any great number of factors could be at play here, but there are so many variables that I wouldn't be able to control them all. And besides, I'd really like to just be able to live my life without being paranoid that a busy day at work or a yogurt at lunch is going to turn my face into a topographical map.

So, we'll see how that all goes. If, two months from now, my lips have half an inch of salve on them, you'll know I'm back on the 'Tane.

Here's hoping this time it sticks, huh? I'd hate to have to write this post again seven years from now. I'll be freaking forty, for Pete's sake.

Freestyle

I think it's safe to say that my roommate Adam is the only person I've ever heard rhyme "Moldy bread comin' outta my eye" with "Superfly."

Rub-A-Dub Dub

There are five humans living in our apartment. We have a rotating cleaning schedule, where we each take a week to do ALL the cleaning there is to be done -- scrub the toilets, take out the garbage, dust the ceiling fans (I forgot that one when it was my turn). The three animals, who contribute much, much more than anyone else to the fur that collects on every surface, don't take part in this rota. Hardly seems fair, does it? But they're so darn cute.

Your week to clean is your Hell Week. Or, if you're a romantic (and don't mind wearing dresses), Cinderella Week, and you can wear your hair in a scarf and sing while scrubbing on your hands and knees. Every girl dreams of that, right?

I'm not a big cleaner. I can do it, like I can do a lot of things, but I don't get into it like some people do. Some people, like my roommate Helen. She has diagnosed Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, which is awesome. She loves to clean, and happily makes deals with the rest of us. I think she cleans every week now, with the rest of us trading favors. Not the sexual kind.

Not that it doesn't comes close. Helen has foot problems, so what she wants most in exchange for all her hard work are foot rubs. I gave her one this week. Is it weird that it wasn't weird? It helps that she has nice feet -- no cheese, warts, or flaky skin. You know how you can go to the doctor's office and not be embarrassed by things that would normally embarrass you in public? I think it's like that. You just turn off this switch in your head and it's OK. And it's not like there was toe-sucking involved or anything.

Wonder what chore I'd have to get out of to be willing to do that.

Today's Revelation

I'm not sure this is completely true about myself, but let me toss this out there:

I can be insecure about my talents and abilities. Or at least, I thought I could. But now I'm wondering if it's not my talents I'm unsure of. What I really doubt is that my talent will get me anywhere.

Certainly no one felt they owed me or my talent anything when I was trying to make my way as a freelance musician. No one offered anything I didn't cry out for or demand. I'm not much of a Cryer or Demander. And here's the kicker: I don't want to be. It's not how I'm wired, and while I do see the need for more boldness and less knee-jerk apology in myself, I don't expect I'll ever be comfortable wrangling favors out of people that they are unwilling to give freely, either professionally or personally.

Thus my talent stayed where it was, shut up in my apartment where no one could hear it.

My fear is that it doesn't matter whether I was a kick-butt trombone player, whether I have monster verbal skills or charisma on stage. I do wonderfully when I'm on a track laid out by other people, but I'm not a bushwhacker; if I wasn't able to carve out a career for myself when I had the proven skills, training and degrees, then why on earth would I be able to do it when I'm just a dillettante? And if no one "discovers" me or gives me an opportunity, where does that leave me?

Believe it or not, I'm not despairing over these questions. (Been there and done that already.) I'm in more of a "I'll just be myself and see what God does with that" stage. I actually hadn't meant to get so negative; my aim was to share that I don't think I'm as insecure as I may have led everyone, including myself, to believe. I'm just afraid that talent alone -- or even talent plus character -- doesn't carry the promise of ... well, of anything.

My hope is that, while talent promises nothing, God actually promises a LOT. I'm trusting that if God made me the way He made me, then He must also have some idea how it's supposed to work. I'm even beginning to place eggs in a risky basket: the idea that not only is there work out there that suits me, but there's a way to go about finding it that will suit me as well. I'm not entrepreneurial, but I'm social. I'm not administrative, but I'm communicative. I'm not aggressive, but I'm amusing and good with kids. I'm banking on the idea that I can get where I need to go without enduring a process that's completely antithetical to my nature. Maybe occasionally antithetical, but not completely. That would suck, and I no longer have the self-defeating appetite for suckiness that I once did.

"In the Female Prison...

Are seventy-five women
And 'tis among them
I wish I did dwell."

-- from some Irish folk song I heard (sung by men, it should be noted)

That was apropos of nothing.

So, I'm thinking I could use some People. You know, like, "I got people for that," or, "I got a guy." I'd like a tech guy, a financial guy, maybe a clean-up-my-accidental-homicides guy. I'm not big on doing my own dirty work, and while adulthood is great as far as getting to stay up late while watching TV and eating entire pints of Cherry Garcia, it stinks as far as having to be responsible and do lots of boring shit you don't wanna do. Work may build character, but it sure is inconvenient and annoying. I've been earning my own way in the world for almost 10 years now, and that feels like enough to me. When do I get to be The Talent and have other people do the hard stuff I don't like?