Technology, and Other Stupid Things

I bought a digital food timer from Williams Sonoma. It took my roommate and me a half hour to not figure it out. Our conversation was filled with exclamations like, "Hey! I made it do a thing!"

We are not stupid women. We have college degrees. The problem with technology is that it's made by people who think a certain way. It's not made for artists and musicians who think in terms of aesthetics and metaphysics, and who want their food timers to -- oh, I don't know -- keep track of time. I don't want it to count UP. I don't want it to remember the time I used before for a completely different dish. I want it to go when I tell it to go and stop when I want it to stop. I want to feel smarter than the tiny device in my palm. Instead, I just felt like a big stupid lug, left no recourse but to assert myself by causing physical harm to my tormentor. I wanted to break it in half and say, "Hmm, I wonder how much time it will take them to put you back together. Guess we'll never know!"

They should test gadgets on people who don't like gadgets. People who like them will play till they figure it out. You don't need to make things simple for them. But people who want simplicity should be the test audience, because we're the ones who'll dump your fancy-schmancy product for something made of pipe cleaners just so we can work with items we understand.


In other news, another roommate just flew back from Texas. Among the items confiscated from her: anti-bacterial hand gel, concealer makeup, and applesauce. Apparently, if she'd had them in a clear plastic bag -- e.g. a Ziploc -- it would have been OK. But you can't have concealed concealer. She did sneak her lip gloss through by putting it in her pocket. The sheer diabolical genius! The pocket! They'll never think to look there! Turns out, they won't. The good news is that, while harmless blonde Texans are left with germy hands, exposed zits and Vitamin C deficiencies, we'll know the terrorists by the opposite -- they'll be well groomed and smell like Brown Sugar and Fig.

When Prayer is Fun

Some of you know that I came to the church I'm currently attending because of the prayer. Usually, when I feel the need to have another person pray for/with me, it's because I'm feeling fuzzy and confused and need them to listen to God on my behalf. So it was frustrating when, at some other churches, the well-meaning people would ask me for specifics about my prayer request, and would then essentially repeat it to God as a prayer. I'm sure God honored that, but it didn't necessarily give me any more insight than I had when I walked into the room.

You can imagine how psyched I was today, then, when I went for prayer and the man who came up to me said, "I'll just pray. When I'm done, you can tell me what your request was and we'll see if I missed anything." Woo-hoo! Then he had the patience to wait on God to hear what He would have to say, rather than just talking and saying stuff that sounded spiritual but didn't really have any relevance to me. The waiting paid off, too, because he heard some specific things, including the fact that I'm a musician.

The things God says are important, of course, but I find most often that the fact that He's spoken is the biggest deal.

Why Can't I Sound Like Kathleen Turner?

Years ago, I was riding in a big old car with my brother when some '70s music came on the radio. J immediately went into Pimp Mode, resting his right hand loosely on the top of the steering wheel and his left elbow out the window. He nodded along to the music, and in a deep voice said simply, "Yeah." Ever since then, I've wished I could have a low voice -- not so I'd sound like a man, but just so that I'd sound really cool.

My voice isn't bad, it just won't be earning me any street cred, ever. It sounds fine in my head, but as happens to most people, I'm surprised at what I hear when played a recording of myself. I think, Do I really sound that cute? Cute, like a nervous little girl. My "yeah" would sound more like "Yay!" and may be accompanied by hand claps and some jumping up and down. Very non-pimp. More like preppy cheerleader, which isn't really the image I'm going for.

It's like that when I sing, too. Again, not unpleasant, not even high-pitched, just girlish. This renders me incapable of delivering a convincing rendition of the blues. No matter how hard my life got, I'd always sound like I'm singing the pinks:

My boyfriend done left me,
I only have four left now.
My hair is too thick and shiny.
Math is hard,
Let's go shopping.

I think what I need is a seriously unhealthy vice, much worse than my current peanut butter problem. Smoking ought to do it. Or I could just go out into the desert and scream myself hoarse; I heard that a movie director told Lauren Bacall to do that in order to sexify her voice, and she sounded very cool.

All right, those of you who live and work around me, what would you prefer -- smoking or screaming? It will be totally worth it when I begin to cough in an alluring manner.

"Confessions of a Peanut Butter Addict"

This was the title of a story I read in Jr. High. It was about a hapless youth who first tastes peanut butter secretly in the back room of a store. He's hooked, and soon he upgrades from the kind where you have to stir in the oil to the homogenized, and then he goes completely over the edge with the chunky. It was outlandish and silly and, of course, could never happen to a real person.

Ha ha.

My name is Holly, and I'm a peanut butter addict. In high school, I was obsessed. Maybe it's because I was a vegetarian and my body craved the protein; I don't know. All I know is that I would look forward to getting home from school every day and eating something starchy with the PB. My locker smelled like peanut butter -- and I liked it. (Oh man, that's kind of Mary Katherine Gallagher, isn't it?) My favorite dessert was any solid piece of chocolate (e.g. bunny)dipped in a jar of PB. Even now I get kind of excited about it. I'm no longer dependent on it the way I once was -- I could totally go without if I wanted to... I just don't want to -- but I still mix the PB with desserts. Anything with chocolate, or -- oooo, you should try this -- white chocolate. Or caramel. OK, you can't see it, but I'm drooling a little right now.

Personally, I recommend chunky. The mixture of textures means you can eat more at one time before your mouth starts to revolt. I could (what am I saying, I do) eat it by the spoonful. Breaking it up with bread or crackers is more to appease my conscience than my palette.

I don't partake at work. The locker situation taught me my lesson: peanut butter stinks. Give me some at home, though, and I'm a happy girl. The next time I start whining about how life is hard and I don't understand it, hand me a PB & J and watch me shut right up. [Roommates, if you're reading this, take note. You may wish to try this next time I start crying and you don't feel like listening for an hour.] Peanut butter is happy. Happy happy.

And this post is over. Over over.

Ethical Violations

I work at a publisher. We had to fill out a survey at our company today. It was an opportunity to report any ethical or policy violations we have committed, or suspect someone else may have committed. In the spirit of coming clean, I hereby confess to the following:

-I've been using company funds to keep my pet eliphant, listing him as an employee (L.E. Funt, editor of Babar books).
-I've told people outside the company how much I earn -- and while the act of disclosure was not a crime, the salary amount is.
-I've privately published a series of children's books about an orangutan named Curious James.
-My uncle's domestic partner's dog is employed by a competitor.
-I've been taking kickbacks in the form of 15-gallon drums of peanut butter.
-I brought a machete in to the office a few weeks ago, but that was only because I was completely high; you can't really blame me for that one.
-I've secretly outsourced all my email correspondence to Russia, which is why, in said emails, I'm always asking my Editorial Assistants if they're enjoying the snow outside.
-I had an Italian relative who "fixes problems" convince our coworkers that our recent charity drive was a really worthwhile cause.
-I occasionally freshen my cubicle with Napalm room spray.

That's what I can recall at the moment. If you can remember anything else I may have done, please let me know.

Pink (adding a little surrealism to your day)

I have pink hair that grows long, long, and people ask me how I got it and I say, "I'm part flamingo, and the more shrimp I eat, the pinker my hair gets," and then I laugh because I've fooled them again, I'm not really a flamingo at all, I'm just good with a crayon.

Romantic Music

I have a problem with Romantic Music -- not love songs, but the Romantic Period of classical music, which had counterparts in art and literature. I don't hate it all, and I actually appreciate the way composers experimented and pushed boundaries. Berlioz made use of extra brass choirs in his Messe des Morts, which was kind of a cool concept -- there's a full orchestra onstage, and there are small groups of brass instruments in various other parts of the concert hall, kind of a pre-electronic Surround Sound. Wagner tested the limits of singers', instrumentalists', and audiences' endurance with operas that were 3-4 hours long, as well as testing their tolerance for one man's ego. It's good to try stuff like that.

My problem is in the area of emotion. I've learned, through experience, that I don't respond well when I'm told what to feel and when. Romantic music is all about manipulating emotion, and it's not at all subtle. If you listen to some Romantic pieces, especially the "programmatic" ones that tell a story, it's like the composer is sitting next to you, saying, "Did you feel that? Were you moved there? How about here? Are you about to cry? Are you in love with this woman the way I was in love with her? Do you want to kill yourself the way I wanted to kill myself when she spurned me? I'll kill myself now if you don't like my music." I used to outright hate that stuff because, as in many church situations, I never felt what I was supposed to. It didn't take long for me to get defensive, and to assume a crossed-arm posture and an attitude of, "Go ahead, try and make me feel something."

A friend told me once that she loves that stuff, that she likes music that "tugs at your heart." Maybe my deal is that I just don't like having my heart tugged. I prefer an offered hand. It takes confidence to say what you have to say and allow the listener the freedom not to respond. Then, if what you say is compelling, the listener's heart will come to you. I feel like Brahms did this in his symphonies and large choral works. He wrote in the Romantic Era, and his sounds are romantic sounds, but I don't feel hit over the head with a passive-aggressive hammer. His stuff is quite dramatic, but I don't feel like he's shouting, "Feel sorry for me! Love me! Admire me! Shave your head for me!" He's just putting his own heart into music, and when I hear it, I'm there. The same is true with Rachmaninoff, whose sounds were hopelessly Romantic; they'd be downright sappy if they weren't so good. But I'm free to feel what I feel when I listen; I don't have his experience foisted on me; I can have my own experience, and it can be different each time.

I won't hate any of you for liking Romantic music. You allowed me to like Country music, so I'll extend you the same courtesy. I think, at the heart of this, there may be some parallels between my reaction to music and my reaction to, well, everything else. My heart just won't do what it's told. It's not cold, it's just unpredictable. When it does react to something, it's as much of a surprise to me as anyone.

Back in the Habit

Hey, I'm back. I'm out of the blogging habit, having been away from it for the better part of a week. Still having some trouble distilling my thoughts into anything blog-worthy, but I'm gonna give this a shot anyway.
Let's see. About this weekend, and all that prayer. It was like a business transaction with God. I was not overwhelmed, or even whelmed, with emotion. Sometimes that was hard, because we're often told to expect some kind of Experience, and the people around me would sometimes get shaky or sniffly. I don't begrudge them that; it's just not how things usually go with me. But if God takes us at our word when we pray, and the effectiveness of our prayers isn't determined by the number of tears we shed when we pray them, then I got a lot done. And there are a couple signs that He was paying attention, and that He was at work even if I didn't feel it: 1. I usually wake up feeling guilty, about everything and nothing in particular; this is one of the fun parts of being me. But this morning, the couple of times I woke up early and then the final time I woke up for good, I felt good. That's rare enough to be notable. 2. I've had a couple friends whom I haven't forgiven for something they did years ago. I've prayed about it, but have always had a sense that some action step toward reconcilliation was necessary. Today, I became convinced of that, and passed the Communion plate by while I figured out what I should do. I wrote down some notes, and have the skeleton of a note I plan on writing to them. I don't know what reaction I'll get, but their reaction isn't my job. I just need to be humble, non-accusatory, and let God handle things on their end.
I'll keep my eyes open for signs of other change, too.
Thanks to those who prayed for me, even when I didn't ask for it. Just as I'm trusting that God worked in me, I'm trusting that He answered your prayers.

The Sound of Silence

Hey Everybody. I'm not dead. I've just been busy or tired every night this week. And I haven't had anything burning to say, or any brilliantly witty thoughts to sprinkle out into the world. I've thought about you guys every day, though. And I've been thinking about stuff. One of the reasons I haven't written is that I haven't been able to arrange my thoughts into anything concise enough to post. I do have a few tiny things left from my college writings that I could put up here.
But I think there may be some more serious stuff coming up instead. I'll be spending Friday night and all day Saturday at church, praying and getting prayed for. That may sound boring to some of you; to me it sounds draining, but it also has huge potential for huge blessing or huge disappointment. It's very hard to place yourself in a setting where you're supposed to meet with God in a powerful way, because if you end up not feeling anything, you end up feeling profoundly shitty. At least I do. And because God is big, and because my life revolves around Him, I have two big fears:
1. God will do something.
2. God won't do something.
As you can see, I have good reason to be afraid.
So I've avoided anticipation and expectation as much as possible. I've prayed about this upcoming weekend a bit, but this week's busyness has probably been God's way of keeping me distracted so I can't work myself up about it. I've also had several years to learn how not to be devastated every time my expectations aren't met.
Anyway, that's what I'll be doing when I'm not blogging tomorrow and Saturday.

Holly, the Doggie Diva-Slayer

My roommate has a problem with diva behavior. When she's around a woman who's behaving in a diva-ish manner, A will take the woman down a few pegs. She is the Diva-Slayer.

I'm not a very confrontational, or even assertive, person. I'm learning, but I let a lot of stuff slide. When I was in junior high, we had a very sweet and very big dog named Little John. He slept on my bed (a twin) and he took up most of the room. I didn't have the heart to push him over, or even to yank the covers out from under him, so I'd be left with little space and almost no blanket.

It would seem I've outgrown that, at least as far as animals (and some children) go. A cute furry face is no longer enough to convince me that you should get whatever you want. Thus, when our four-legged houseguest Gigi climbed onto my comfy bedroom chair uninvited, and refused to get down, I was like, "Oh no you di'n't. You are not going to make my clean laundry smell like feet." I removed her, physically. Her brain couldn't quite comprehend that she was being defied. Oh, but she was, my friends, she was, and I was the perpetrator! I am the Doggie Diva-Slayer [impressive theme music here].

I love dogs. But while I will clean up your crap from the lawn, I will not take it happily when you dish it out in the form of attitude.

Grits: Now that I have some, you can kiss 'em

I had grits for breakfast today. They were yummy, but the best part about them is they gave me an excuse for today's blog title. Nothing else I will say will have anything to do with grits. It will have to do with a little feminine attitude, though.

I live in a neighborhood where men in vehicles honk at girls on the sidewalk. I don't mind this, and even took it as the compliment I assumed it was meant to be, until I started getting honks on days when I was schlepping around in house clothes, running little errands before scurrying back indoors. A couple weeks ago, I was lugging this huge comforter to the dry cleaners in a big plastic bag. Surely this sort of thing isn't sexy. But it merited a honk, apparently. I found that disheartening, because it made me think that the honks don't mean, "Hey, you're hot," they just mean, "Hey! You're female!" I kind of knew that already.

And while we're talking about walking around: I try to be a considerate pedestrian. I'm the Queen of the Jaywalkers, but I don't generally run in front of cars, and I acknowledge with a wave whenever a driver stops and waves me across the street. How fast I move depends on who's driving, though. If it's a woman, I'll do that polite little quasi-jog that says, "I know you're in a hurry." If it's a guy, however, sometimes I'll take my time. I figure his reward is getting to watch me pass in front of his car.

Am I wrong?

I'm a Brick (da-dit, daaa dut) House

I am mighty-mighty. Know how I know? It's because I broke my toothbrush while I was brushing. I had no idea my powers were so great. This weekend I might safety-pin a bath towel around my neck and try to fly off the roof of our house.

Or maybe it's not my arms, but my teeth that are strong. In which case I'll be one of those crazy old people who pulls boats and trains with their teeth to celebrate their 100th birthdays. Maybe I can open beer bottles with my teeth. Wouldn't that be cool/scary? Oh, I'd probably need a tattoo to go with that skill...

I'm trying to think of anything else special that I can do, but all I'm coming up with is ia list of stuff I can't do: roll my Rs (or, for the brass players out there, flutter tongue), wiggle my ears, balance a spoon on my nose -- I can't even wink without contorting half my face, which eliminates an entire facial language I wish I could speak. I can't really tie balloons (although I blow them up very well -- once blew up a full-size air mattress manually). Can't juggle or do the splits, but I can throw and catch a baseball.

Gotta run and go get a haircut. We'll see how good I am at that.

Pronoun Trouble

[Extra credit: Can anyone name the cartoon I got this blog title from?]

Last time, she pretended to know something about grammar and discovered that she can't spell, or at least shouldn't be left to edit her own material. Is she stupid enough to do it again?

I think we all know the answer to that question.

So, as promised, today we work with pronouns. The focus will be narrow -- specifically, pronouns as objects, as opposed to subjects. Let's start with examples and do the explaining afterwards:
Pronouns as subjects:
I wrote a blog.
Bubba and I busted broncos.
Pronouns as objects (the hard part):
Bubba told me to quit horsing around (ha ha).
It was a long day for him and me.

Hey, did you catch that last one? Him and me. Would you believe that's actually correct? (OK, I know some of you knew it already. Try not to gloat too loudly. That's my job.) It makes sense if you break it apart: It was a long day for him. It was a long day for me. Therefore, It was a long day for him and me. The and in the middle doesn't change anything. The same is true when the pronoun is the object of a verb instead of a preposition: The horse told Bubba and me to stop writing sentences about it.

OK, it's getting kind of late and I promised to be concise. But can I squeeze one last thing in here? The word which modifies what comes before it; this means you're not supposed to have a second sentence subject after it.
Right: She talks to angels, which all know her name.
Wrong: She talks to angels, which they all know her name.

I'm too tired to belabor that point now, which is just as well because I'd probably get snitty. I had to say at least a little something, though.

Addendum: Possessive Pronouns

I remembered this last night. It kept me awake. Briefly:

You don't need an apostrophe in a possessive pronoun: his, hers, theirs, its

You should have an apostrophe if it's is not possissive, but a contraction of it is: It is hard to remember this stuff = It's hard to remember this stuff.

Example: It's the dog's business if it wants to chase its tail.

OK, class dismissed. Don't push, remember your jackets, don't run to the door.

Not Punctuation, FUNctuation

This is my lame attempt at making a post about punctuation non-annoying. I mentioned a while back that my big pet peeves are English-related. Mistakes in grammar, punctuation, stuff like that. Some of you were English majors, so you may consider me a sad amateur. But others may be saying, I don't know squat about that stuff!

Stay cool, my babies. Holly gonna take care a'you.

Today we cover the letter S. [Side note: In my mind, with letters and numbers having colors, the letter S matches my hair.] Specifically, when is S preceded by an apostrophe? And how can I explain it without making things even more confusing than they are? Here are the basics:

You use an apostrophe before an S when something is possessive: This is Holly's blog. Those are Douglas's shoes.
You use an apostrophe before an S to eliminate the word "is": Holly is weird = Holly's weird.
You don't need an apostrophe when making a plural, even if that plural is a name: I made brownies and cakes. The Smiths went on vacation. There are not enough Hollys/Hollies in this world.

What if it's plural and possessive? That depends on whether the plural noun ends in S already. If it does, the apostrophe goes after the S: The two mammoths' tusks locked as they were fighting.
If the plural noun doesn't end in S, you add an S and put the apostrophe before it, just as you would a singular noun: This is the men's department, that is the children's department. (Are you listening, Macy's? I've seen your signs for the "mens" department. Do you not have professionals making those things? How many people do those signs go through before they are placed in prominent places downtown? Are you telling me no one in this chain noticed? No one??)

What if the plural and singular form of a word are the same, like moose?
I don't know that one. I suggest you write about gophers instead. The two gophers' tusks locked as they were fighting.

OK, that wasn't completely awful, was it? No one walking out in protest yet? Cool. Stay tuned: next time we'll cover pronouns as the object of verbs and prepositions. I'm almost giddy with anticipation.

Ice Queen

A guy in my college dorm called me this once. Not because I'm cold-hearted, but because I like winter. I actually like the idea of an ice age, because they never had to wonder whether they'd get snow for Christmas. That was mostly because they didn't have Christmas, but if they did, they could rest assured it would be white. I get really uptight about that. If we have a 60 degree day in December, it really bums me out; if I wanted a warm Christmas, I'd live in Florida. I moved to Boston largely because I wanted more snow, and I was tired of Marylanders whining about how much they hate it, and cancelling school every time the weatherman called for 3 inches.

I love sweaters. I love bundling up. I love having hot chocolate in front of a fire after your fingers and toes have gone numb from an hour of building snowmen. I love the way no one gets any work done just because there's a blizzard outside. I love the smells of burning wood and pine trees and baking chocolate.

The crazy thing is, I'm one of those women who's always cold. I have to carry a sweater around in summer to put on whenever I enter and air-conditioned building. Other people will be in T-shirts, and I'll have on two or three layers, and that's not an exaggeration. You'd never guess I had Scandinavian blood in me. I would have made a lousy Viking, saying things like, "OK, Sven, I can pillage for a while, but I'm really gonna wanna be home in a couple hours or my ears will hurt. This helmet provides no insulation."

Oh, speaking of which, I need a fashionable way to keep my ears warm. Now that I've been forbidden to wear my Elmer Fudd hats and my ear-band thing, and the other ear-cover thingy pinches my head, what's left? Most girl hats don't cover ears, and ears are my big problem. The enire sides of my head will ache because my ears get so cold. Why do girl clothes always have to be so uselessly cute? Why can't they keep you warm?

I'm kind of excited about some of the other stuff I get to wear now that the weather is getting chilly, though. I stole some items out of my Mom's closet, including this fake suede & fleece jacket from the early '70s (which I wear with my Muppet scarf) and a plaid wool poncho. I love plaid. Love it. Especially when it has both green and red. All Christmassy. And I have this smart cream and coral tweed Coach peacoat. That might not mean anything to you boys, but if you saw it you'd like it, I promise.

So here's to staying up late to watch the news, just to see if the temperature will drop below freezing. Here's to waking up to see frost on the grass and cars. Here's to coats so thick you can't put a purse over your shoulder. Here's to feeling like you achieved something just by making it back indoors after being outside for more than 5 minutes.

[Postscript: I just reread this post, and I think I have an answer to my own rhetorical question about why girl clothes don't keep you warm. They're meant to attract men who will keep you warm. OK, I get that. But he might think it's weird if I mostly want him to hold his hands over my ears.]

Moral Dilemma

I met up with a girl named Annie after work. She's kind of new in town, but she probably knows the city better than I do already, because I don't get out much. (That could change soon, though, because I just got a promotion and a little raise. I worked it out and it comes to about an added $15/week after taxes. That'll pay for 1-2 fun activities per week. So measured in dollars it's not a ton, but measured in Fun it's pretty good.) Anyway, Annie and I have a lot of artsy-fartsy stuff in common, and a similar sense of humor, so a mutual friend gave us each other's email address and we went out on the town. OK, mostly we were at Quiznos, but it was downtown.

While we were wandering the streets after dinner, we passed a man who was asking for change. He was doing this odd thing with his arm, kind of throwing it out to the side -- either quite purposefully or quite involuntarily, but definitely forcefully -- before bringing his hands together in a cup and asking for money. This caused me to have a Moral Dilemma. It wasn't about whether to give him money. It was, When I get back home to my roommates, do I do an impression of this guy? I mentioned this to Annie, and her answer -- without hesitation or equivocation -- was "YES!" Well, problem solved, then. Now I just need to decide how to give my interpretation. Was it more of a '70s disco move, or a tick? (That line is Annie's. She said I didn't have to credit her when I wrote about it here, but I am anyway.)

I actually do wonder about little things like that, and whether I'm doing the right thing. Part of it is my fearful, anal-retentive nature. Part of it is a genuine desire to live out my faith, and to be kind to people even when they're not around. Even with Annie's enthusiastic encouragement, now that I'm alone at the computer I'm wondering if I should even have written about this gentleman in a sarcastic way.

At this point, my friends and family will probably tell me to stop analyzing. It's not mean, it's harmless and funny, turn your brain off and go have fun.

I haven't gotten to the point where I'm getting lots of answers from God. But I have gotten a lot better at telling my brain to shut up. So that's what I'll be doing for the rest of the evening.

Verizon Letter

As promised.

October 2, 2006

To the Customer Service Manager:

Our household has had three months of incredibly poor service from your company. You should know what’s going on so that you can address these problems within your organization.
· We were forced to disconnect and reinstall phone and DSL service simply so we could change the name on our bill. This is ridiculous, and it was the beginning of a series of difficulties that continues to this day.
· Each time we made any kind of change to our account, service would disconnect without warning. It also disconnected at other random times.
· Whenever service was reconnected, we developed other problems – our email accounts malfunctioned, we couldn’t access certain sites, and we were unable to download anything.
· Verizon never admitted responsibility for these added problems, despite the fact that each new difficulty originated with activity in our Verizon account. What’s more, we were made to feel stupid for not being able to tell Tech Support how to solve our problems. Some reps went as far as to suggest that the technical issues were our fault, thus adding insult to injury.
· Customer Service and Tech Support were slow and sometimes condescending. Being nice got us nowhere. We should not have to be pushy, argumentative and threatening just to get the service we pay for!
· Your call-routing system is atrocious. I suggest you try it yourself to see how frustrating it is. In addition to showing an unwelcoming face to customers, you’re doing your representatives a disservice because callers are doubly angry by the time they’ve battled through the system to get to a person. There were also two times when I didn’t even get that far – I was on hold so long that your system routed my call to New York.
· We’ve wasted countless hours and cell phone minutes trying to get our systems functioning.
This entire experience has been completely unacceptable, and we are now looking into alternative phone and Internet service providers. We sincerely hope you choose to examine these issues so that other paying customers don’t have to suffer the same inconvenience, frustration, and insults.

From your customers at xxx-xxx-xxxx

Whatever I Can Write Before Thurs. Prime Time Shows Start

Now that my car is in another state, I have to carry groceries home on the bus. We don't have one of those old lady carts, so what I buy is limited to what I can carry. I'm going to have forearms like Popeye.

We have a little dog staying with us named Gigi. She smells like feet and Cheetos.

I have this wonderful scarf I've been wearing. It was a gift from a former trombone student and her mom. It's bright and striped and furry-looking, like a Muppet. I half expect it to perk up when people approach me, and give them some kind of greeting that sounds like, "Rowr." I haven't thought of a good name for it yet.

Here's a recipe: Mix chocolate cookies, chocolate ice cream, and a tiny bit of peppermint extract. Be sure to mix that extract around, or you'll burn a hole in your mouth.

Here's another recipe: Mix peanut butter, crumbled Graham crackers, and chocolate ice cream. Or vanilla ice cream and chocolate Ovaltine. It helps if you nuke the peanut butter a little first, just to soften it up.

I was so tired today that now I'm totally pumped to go watch TV.

Hope you guys don't feel to neglected today. I gave you lots extra to read over the weekend, though, so I think we're kind of even.

Um, Was That a Compliment?

I once had a conversation with some other trombonists where they joked about how to give not-really-compliments to other musicians. Example: "It was great to hear you play. I used to sound like that."

I also noticed last night, as I was flipping through a paper at the train station, that write-ups about people are really boring.

(Now watch me bring these two ideas together. Pure genius.)

Here, for your convenience, is a by-no-means exhaustive list of non-boring and questionable things you can say about me in, say, my obituary. I was quite amused by myself as I wrote it on the train ride home, until I got into a conversation with some architecture students.

Holly was blonde most of the time.

She made people laugh, often on purpose.

She was exceptionally intelligent, but she hid it well.

She always thought of herself as a great writer.

Whenever she played her trombone, we were happy at the end.

If true beauty lies within, Holly was the deepest, truest beauty we knew.

Animals loved her as if she were one of their own.

We didn't trust her any farther than we could throw her, but that's not so bad because one night we discovered we could actually throw her really far.

Foresight

A conversation yesterday, wherein I hurt someone's feelings, made me realize that I have to be careful, especially as I'm now putting thoughts on the Internet for anyone to see. Over the last year, I've been working hard at overcoming Legalism. For the non-churchy folks out there, that's when a Christian tries to impress God by following rules and being "good," rather than simply knowing Him and letting that relationship steer you. In my newfound freedom, there's always the risk of crossing the line -- from trying not to care as much about rules and what people think, to not caring how they feel. I don't want to cross that line. So now, before I have a wide audience, and before I start getting paid to be clever, I declare that I don't want to hurt people. I don't want to walk on eggshells, but I also don't want to be mean. So if you all try not to be hyper-sensitive, I promise to try not to be a dick.

Picture It

Since I don't have digital pictures to post for you guys yet, I'll describe one for you.

Back in May, when I went to visit J & L in Texas, we took a couple days in San Antonio. They have a Sea World there. Did you know Sea World has roller coasters? Yep. I hadn't been on one in maybe 15 years, but I remembered liking them, so I was up for it. J was totally psyched -- being a pilot, heights and speed don't scare him too much.

They scare me.

Naturally, J wanted to sit in the front seats of the front car. OK. That was a popular spot, so we had to wait a while to get on. This gave me lots of time to get nervous. I'm not a big talker, but I couldn't shut up, saying, "I can do this, I can do this, I can do this." So we get on. And up we go -- click, click, click, click, up that torturous track that gives you a view of how far you'd fall if you did, in fact, fall, which you know could totally happen. In addition to not being a talker, I'm not touchy-feely, but I grabbed J's arm as we crested the summit of that first big climb, and I screamed all the way down.

After that, I was fine. Arms up in the air, big smile, it's all good.

But this is about a picture, isn't it? Yeah. They have cameras for these rides. I had forgotten that.

My brother remembered.

Not only did he remember the camera, he knew where it was. And not only did he know where it was (bottom of the first drop, of course!), he had the presence of mind, halfway down that drop, to hatch a plan. So when we get off the ride, I'm surprised and J is delighted to find the following: A shot of me, mouth wide open, face distorted by fear and G-forces; and him, grinning right into the camera and pointing at me. I was appalled at my appearance, but that quickly gave way to acceptance that it was way too funny not to buy.

We gave it to Dad as a Father's Day gift.

"Love, with a touch of mental illness"

This is how someone described my actions the night I went to pick up my roommate in my PJs.
Also from the same commentator, when he saw me wearing these pink socks and the roommate-picking-up-shoes: "Wow, even I wouldn't do that."

And while I'm dissing myself, here are some accidental insults that came my way a few weeks ago:
I was talking to my brother's fiance before the wedding, and we were making plans for lots of salon-y stuff -- nails, hair, whatever we could think of. I said, "You won't even recognize me by Thursday afternoon!" and her immediate response was, "Oh, good!"
The next day, I was at work and said I enjoyed a particular aspect of my job. A coworker said, "See, you were born to do this." I jokingly expressed concern, since my current job is entry-level and not something a person should want to do for 20+ years. He tried to fix it by saying, "Oh, well there are other things about you that make you not good at it." (He would probably want me to clarify by telling you that he meant I had other skills and talents beyond the scope of my current position. But it's way funnier without the explanation.)

Low-Maintenance

I used to wonder whether I was a high- or low-maintenance girl. So one day I asked the person who I thought would give me the most honest answer: my brother. If anyone's gonna be upfront about your character flaws, it's a younger male sibling, right? So I asked if I was high-maintenance, and he scoffed at me and rolled his eyes. "Are you kidding? You've had the same socks for, like, ten years!"
OK, that's actually true. Not to scare anyone, but right now I'm wearing a pair that is about 20 years old. But they're clean and all.
So I guess materially, I don't ask for much. A walk in the park and plenty to eat make me a happy girl. Kind of like a puppy. Let's see what else... I already mentioned I don't need jewelry... Wow, I'm making things way too easy, aren't I? OK, how about this: I promise to be indecipherable emotionally.

Blog Etiquette

I was informed tonight that it's poor blog etiquette to bring up things mentioned in someone's blog outside of the blog-and-comment arena. In other words, what happens in Blogland, stays in Blogland. I was unaware of this rule. My blog is an extension of my life. I consider it kind of a performance, but I don't mind talking about it any more than I'd mind talking about a recital I'd just given. In fact, I love it when people tell me that they read this thing. So I'd like to say two things:
1. I don't know what the rules are, so feel free to break them.
2. I don't know what the rules are, so if there's something I should be aware of so I don't go offending people, could you let me know?
Thanks.

Motivation at the Gym

I go the gym during my lunch break. Are you impressed? Don't be. I counteract whatever benefits there are to exercise by eating like a twelve-year-old with a salary and no adult supervision.

I would like to share with you some of the snarky pearls my trainer has had for me and my fellow lunchtime exercisers:

To a woman struggling with these insanely difficult ab exercises he made us do: "Oh, should I eat some popcorn while I watch your drama?"

To me when I had on bright red shorts and a blue T-shirt: "Did you wear your Wonder Woman outfit just for me?"

And again when I was all in blue, "You're Smurfette today!" (Perhaps it's worth mentioning that my hair is yellow.)

When I take the recommended 30-second break between sets: "Would you like me to get you a blanket and pillow?"

And when I made a face at having to use 10-lb. weights for something-or-other: "A case of alcohol weighs ten pounds. I bet you can lift that." This was made right after the weekend of the wedding. How did he know?

Strength training with sarcasm. This is why I'm such a tough cookie and am able to intimidate everyone. (You may snort derisively here.)

Everything is Warm and Fuzzy

My roommate is studying the history of the world. I wandered into the kitchen as she was taking notes and sat down and derailed her process. I did pick up little bits of what she was learning, though, and I came to a conclusion: I like the Ice Age better than the dinosaur eras, because mammals are furry. In my mind, every cave family had a pet wooly mammoth that resembled Mr. Suffleupagus, who the kids could snuggle up to on cold nights, which I guess would have been every night.

I looked up the spelling of "Snuffleupagus." Only one "P." And it is most certainly not "SnuffleuFFagus."

Oh, while I'm here I should clarify that a few posts back, in "The Courage to Ask a Better Question," I was talking about the love of God. I guess that might not have been clear, since I followed that post with that "Note to Hypothetical Future Boyfriend." Not that I'd mind having that, either.

OK, so back to this whole mammal thing. Some of you are probably saying that I wouldn't want to have a pet wooly mammoth because they were dangerous and smelly and they didn't really walk around saying things like, "Oh, Bird..." You're the same people who tell me I don't really want to live in a castle because they're cold and dank. Well, you're wrong. I totally want to live in a castle, because they're way cool. I'd rather live in a cold, dank castle, surrounded by stones and history, than in a modern apartment with boring white walls and brown carpeting and vinyl siding.

And if I have a pet mammoth who sleeps by the huge fireplace in the great hall, then that's my prerogative.

Peanut Gallery: An Invitation

Ladies and Gentlemen, I hereby invite you to vote on which posts you've enjoyed the most (or hated the least). My motives are entirely selfish, but they're practical, so please humor me. As you may have gathered, I would like to do more writing. To that end, I'm thinking about printing out some of these things, cleaning up the spelling, and sending them off to little local papers to see if anyone's interested. But I'd like to take an opinion poll first, to see which ones are worth sending. If it's not too much trouble, could you leave a comment giving the titles to two or three you think are halfway decent? I promise this is not merely a clumsy attempt to fish for compliments (it's partly that, but not merely that). And hey, if you think I should chuck it all and learn a trade, you can say that, too. But I won't like you anymore.
All right, people! It's time to make your voices heard!

Dim-Sum and Then Some

Went out for Dim-Sum last night. I got chopstick burn on my right ring finger. Is that supposed to happen?

Comments About Comments

Well, the sneaky, underhanded people who try to trick you into buying things have found my blog. I've begun getting anonymous comments asking me to email these mystery people directly. I will not publish them, nor will I respond.

To everyone out there who actually reads my blog, though, I love hearing from you. The more comments, the happier I am. Don't feel like you have to be witty or clever, either. I just like a response. I get so excited when people tell me they actually read this thing, and I'm not just sending words out there into a cosmic void. I love interacting with an audience, whether it's live or in the time-delayed realm of the blog. So don't be shy. Just don't tell me you have a great way for me to make money by allowing you to advertise.

Dim Lightbulb Going on Over My Head

Sometimes I have revelations. I don't necessarily get all the answers, but I'll understand something I didn't before. Usually this Something is a way in which my thinking has been messed up. I've had a few revelations this week, but today I give you two:
1. I'm afraid no one will want what I have to offer -- as a writer, as a woman, even as I try to sell my car. I recognized this as a blatant falsehood before, but recognizing something as false does't always stop you from believing it on some level. It's an addictively self-pitying thought, though, so I strongly recommend that you don't go there.
2. I don't trust God to speak to me in a way that would refute these supposed negative opinions from other people. I imagine Him telling everyone that they're pretty or special or whatever, which of course renders those words completely meaningless.

So I'm not just asking God to speak to me and tell me what's true, because I doubt I would believe it. I'm asking Him to prove me wrong. If something is true, and I need to change my thinking to line up with this truth, then show me, don't just tell me. My head is aware of plenty of things, but my heart is not convinced. I want convincing.

I'd also like to mention that I spoke up for myself yesterday. I won't bore you with details, but it meant I had to redirect someone's line of questioning. Normally I don't do this because I don't want to be rude and correct someone. But I did it. Boo-yah!

Note to Hypothetical Future Boyfriend

I prefer chocolate to jewelry. I mean, jeez, you could crack a tooth on a diamond.

The Courage to Ask a Better Question

It's hard to admit the need to be loved. At least I find it hard. But it's there, whether I admit to it or not. It's a place in me, feeling like an empty stomach, sealed off and protected, but very, very present. On Saturday, I fessed up before God that it was there. I often hide it from Him, and I definitely hide it from other people, because I don't like to reveal that kind of weakness. And I felt like if I opened up that space in myself, it would be like a vacuum suddenly exposed to air, with anything and everything rushing in to fill the space, dangerous and out of control.

On Sunday, I got prayed for during church, as I always do. The girl who prayed for me said I don't have to let everything in all at once; God can fill that place slowly, as long as I let Him. Huh. Hadn't thought of that.

So I've been asking. And this prayer, this asking God to fill the deepest, most vulnerable part of my soul, feels in itself like the answer to all my other prayers -- for meaningful, enjoyable work; for love and friendships with other people; for joy and happiness in this life, not just the next. I've asked God to do this before, but maybe I'm readier now. Or maybe I'm not putting up the defenses so much.

Y'all Either Love It or Hate It

I try to avoid controversy, and politics in particular -- not just in this blog, but in conversation in general. So, you can appreciate the bold move I'm making when today I choose to address a divisive issue. The thing that makes this division so fascinating is that it's difficult to tell on which side a person will fall unless you ask them outright. Geography can be a general indicator, but I've found even that quite inadequate.

What is this issue, you ask? No, it's not whether you're a cat person or a dog person or go both ways. It is: Country music.

See? You're having an opinion right now, aren't you?

I'll come right out of the rhinestone closet and declare that I like Country music -- not every song or every style, but I definitely appreciate the genre as a whole. I can appreciate some reasons for not liking it. Hate the twang? I do, too. Often corny? Yes. But there are bad songs in every genre. I can tell you that there has been plenty of very bad classical music written. The classical stuff most people hear is the stuff that was good enough to withstand centuries of wear. The stuff written by some guy in Podunkscheidt, Germany, hidden in a trunk all these years, waiting to be discovered like the poems of Emily Dickenson? In all likelihood, they should stay in that trunk. It's a good thing not everyone who picked up a viol had some crazy, rich nobleman to subsidize his mediocrity.

All that is to say that you can't dismiss a whole category of music just because some of it is bad. You can dislike it, but you have to have a better reason. There's also a big difference between criticizing something from the inside and criticizing it from the outside. When I hear a bad country song, I'm embarrassed the way I would be if I were next to a family member who started making loud, rude statements in public -- they're obnoxious, but they're still yours. I'm not just an out-of-towner wandering into a bar, shouting at some poor banjo player, "Hey Cleetus, why don't you grow some teeth?" That's just wrong.

I also freely admit to some redneck tendencies. The flamingoes on the lawn of my parents' otherwise stately and elegant home? My idea. That my folks were not only willing to go along with it, but were enthusiastic, is one of the many reasons why they are so flippin' cool. Jeff Foxworthy (of course I'm quoting Jeff Foxworthy) defines redneck-dom as "a glorious lack of sophistication." 'Tis I.

One thing critics often don't realize is that Country music doesn't take itself too seriously. Most of the lyrics that sound ridiculously funny are meant to be so. OK, not all. But most.

For anyone who's interested in having their horizons expanded, I present what is really a pretty mild selection of songs (and performers) you can check out -- evidence that there is quality songwriting out there. Again, you don't have to like them, but I hope you'll agree that there's some good craftsmanship -- clever lyrics, good storytelling, a fine relationship between the words and music.

It All Goes Down in Your Mind -- Johnny Cash
I Never Cared for You -- Willie Nelson (simple, sweet)
Crazy -- Patsy Cline (written by Willie Nelson)
Past the Point of Rescue -- Hal Ketchum (makes me think of cold, windy autumn days)
Cryin' Shame -- The Mavericks (I love the way his voice wails)
Fast as You -- Dwight Yoakam
Nothin' 'Bout You -- Brooks and Dunn
Real Good Man -- Tim McGraw
I Wanna Talk About Me -- Toby Keith
She's Everything -- Brad Paisley (Fellas, don't think women aren't suckers for this kind of thing. I know I am.)

And here are a couple songs written by Country artists, but made famous by other people:
When You Say Nothing at All -- Allison Krause
I Will Always Love You -- Dolly Parton (made famous by Whitney Houston)

And I'd also like to say that any man who can rhyme "midnight mass" with "mounted bass" has my respect (that would be Brad Paisley, "You Need a Man Around Here").

Middle-Aged English Guys

My coworker, Ben, walked up to my cubicle around 5:30 today and announced, "I'm going to be a really funny-looking old man." As Ben is currently twenty-six, I wondered what might have started him on this train of thought. What it was, was an eyebrow hair. He had just discovered that he had one very long, curly eyebrow hair. He pulled it out, but is confident that more will follow, and that he is destined to have those wild, unruly, face-dominating eyebrows found on British men approximately age 45 and up, including actors who, presumeably, get paid to be looked at.

Ben told me about some of the options he was aware of, such as eyebrow trimmers. Which leads to the question, Why do so many crazy eyebrow guys fail to take advantage of these things? It does not hurt to trim hair, correct? I seem to remember a Sesame Street bit wherein Grover goes to get his fur trimmed, and he discovers that it doesn't hurt. Why, then, can't a guy just take a pair of little scissors and do some topiary? It's not like he has to pluck like a girl or anything. Ben has as advantage over the old English guys in that he realizes that huge eyebrow hairs do indeed make make an old man far more funny-looking than he would otherwise be.

Some of my writing energy today went into finally typing up a letter to Verizon, which I may post for you all soon. So I hereby thank Ben, who does not have his own blog yet, for giving me permission to tell his eyebrow story here. I couldn't not talk about the eyebrows.

Holly, Drink! My Education

So there I was, about ten years behind in the drinking department. Part of it was biblical sanctions against all-out drunkenness, and part of it was just a dislike for the taste of alcohol. On my last birthday, though, I thought I'd find out what kind of effect a drink or two would have on me. And who better to show me the ropes than my brother and his now-wife? They took me shopping on Newbury St., and to keep warm we had Dunkin Donuts hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps and Bailey's Irish Cream. (Those last two ingredients were not purchased at Dunkin Donuts. But who knows, maybe this winter Irish Hot Chocolate will replace those fruit smoothies they're selling now. "America Staggers on Dunkin.")

That night I felt like doing something brave, so a group of us went to a Chinese restaurant that had karaoke. Here I had my second drink of the day, a Mudslide I think, which turned off that annoying Voice in my head that's always asking if something is a good idea and ruining my fun. I would have done the karaoke anyway, but without Mr. Voice I was less nervous. So up I went. I know you're all dying to know what I sang. Because of my classical music background, I chose a cycle of Schubert lieder. My voice isn't trained, but I have an affinity for the German language that I think helped make up for that. OK, I made that up. I sang Mary Chapin Carpenter's "Shut Up and Kiss Me." Yeah I did, baby.

My next big lesson in the art of imbibing came several months later when I went to visit J & L -- my coaches -- in Texas. A bunch of us went tubing down the river in San Antonio. They give you an extra tube for your beverages (read: BEvERages). I don't like beer, so J & L made me my own drink, orange juice with coconut rum. It was in one of those big Tupperware-like drink containers, the kind you can hold with two hands, like a grown-up sippy cup. The thing is, I still don't get excited about liquids, so I can make even a glass of wine last for hours. Moving this slowly defeats the purpose of having a drink (unless your purpose is to give your hands something to do so they don't merely hang, awkward and limp, at your sides -- which, hey, is a legitimate purpose). J knows what a rule-follower I am, though, so he introduced me to a game and told me that it was very, very important that I follow the rules. It's quite a complicated game, but I'll try to summarize it for you here:

1. Someone will call a person by name -- let's say, just for example, Holly -- and tell them to drink. In this case, it would sound like, "Holly, drink!"
2. The person then says, "Okay," and takes a drink.

Follow that OK? Read it again if you have to.

J & L played this game with me all the way down the river. I picked it up pretty quickly, because I'm clever. By the end of the trip, I'd drunk almost all of it, though J & L did help me out a bit because they found the orange-coconut combo quite tasty. I was fine, though. Mellow, but fine.

[A little side note: This was a very dirty river. Hundreds of people on a body of water, for 4 hours at a time, drinking lots of alcohol, and not a restroom in sight. You can do the math. There's a reason why folks were in tubes and not kayaks.]

Oh, and I was quite the crispy critter later that afternoon. People who saw my pale New England self out in the Texas sun kept saying, "Oh, honey, you're gonna burn." They were right. Yow.

Epilogue: You've already read about the rehearsal dinner, so you've now got the whole story of me and my Indoctrination into Inebriation. I'm still quite tame, which is OK with me. At least now I know how to have a little fun and not be boring at a party. Now let's see: I learned how to dress at 30, how to drink at 31... maybe by next year I'll learn how to talk to boys without blushing and hiding behind my algebra textbook.

Holly, Drink! Teetotal: The Early Years

I was such a goody two-shoes in high school that I never drank except for communion in church. Then, in college -- can you believe this? -- I didn't drink because I didn't want to break the law. When I finally hit my twenty-first birthday, I was hanging out with Christians who didn't drink. I had a great day, but it was all about cake and pizza and goofy decorations -- not a hard-core vice in sight.

Of course, I was so obviously square and wholesome that some people wanted very much to see what would happen once I had a drink in me. And it wasn't frat boys looking to see if I would party. It was men who had more of a fatherly interest in getting me to loosen up. Uncles at weddings and such. And my trombone professor in grad school. That's a story. I was in England, where they have three terms in a school year instead of two semesters. One day in each term, the whole trombone department would go to a pub and have a "piss-up," which meant they would get there early and spend the entire day getting very, very drunk. My professor kindly offered to buy me drinks, with the understanding that if I didn't like them he would happily finish them off. The problem was that I don't like fizzy drinks and I don't like the taste of alcohol, so I always went back to pineapple juice (which should answer the question you've all been asking yourselves: yes, I've always been this cool). This would leave me the only person even close to sober. People get really philosophical when they're drunk, and I got plenty of opportunities to talk about God. Someone would say, "You're a good person. I'm not a good person," and I'd whip out the little Bible I kept in my pocket and show them a passage and say, "We're all sinners. There's hope." My little bits of evangelism didn't prevent the entire trombone department of the Royal Northern College of Music from being permanently banned from the Moon Under Water pub, though.

Anyone who's been to England knows that drinking culture is much different over there. There was a bar right in the college cafeteria. (And lots and lots of smoke, produced by brass players who figured that if the tuba player in the Chicago Symphony could play with one lung, so could they.) Christian culture is different, too. The first evangelistic meeting I went to in England was held in a pub.

...Which provides a nice little segue, because the one man who tried harder to get me to drink than anyone was the pastor I shadowed my second year in the UK. His house always smelled fermented. When we talk on the phone now, he'll often say, "Holly, guess where I am!" "In your garden with a pint?" "Yes, I am!" He would hand me various liquids, and I would try them, make a face, and say, "Cough syrup!" There was one I tried once which made me think of hot dogs. I was told the word to describe it was "smokey."

Thus I managed to make it to the age of 31 without any understanding of the appeal of alcohol.

But you know this gets more interesting, or I wouldn't be writing about it. Or at least, I wouldn't be writing about it under this title. So stick around.

Eat, Drink, and Be Married!

From the time we started processing to the time we marched out, I'm guessing 15, maybe 20 minutes passed. The party that followed? A good 8 or 9 hours. The bus that took people from the wedding site and into town left at 11:30, and I know the bride later ended up in a pizza parlor in her wedding dress.

The reception was a lot of fun. Lots of dancing barefoot in the grass; I don't think I'd done that since I was a kid. Plenty of live music, very little public speaking. There were 3 speeches, though: The maid of honor joked about how she probably knew more about what was going on in the relationship than the groom. The best man -- who really, really, really didn't want to talk, and spent the first half of the night hoping everyone would forget he was supposed to -- was sweet and said my brother was the best friend anyone could have. Then I skipped up and grabbed the mic. J & L didn't know I had plans to embarrass them, but I did, ha ha. Picture me being clever and gorgeous. (I'm not saying I was, I'm just saying you should picture me that way.) I made the following points:

In the porta-potty pictures, J was the blonde one.
When he was little, he smelled like cheese.
L is not the first girl he proposed to; a few years after the porta-potty shot was taken, he asked me to marry him.
It was totally a rebound thing, because Mom had just turned him down.
We're all glad he eventually decided to look outside the family for a bride.
"L, you're not outside the family anymore. Cheers."

If you're going to tell jokes, I highly recommend you find an audience of happy wedding-attendees. They're very friendly.

The band leader was gracious enough to let my brother borrow his guitar. J taught himself to play in college, and he freely admits that his goal was to attract girls. So it's appropriate that he should serenade his permanent girl on the day of their marriage. He started with her favorite song, which was romantic and sweet, and better than the original version in my opinion. Then he launched into You Don't Even Call Me by My Name, a country song which I recommend you all listen to. You gotta listen all the way to the end, though. Man, I had that stuck in my head for days afterward. Which meant that I was singing it out loud, because that's what I do. I sing every darn song that gets stuck in my head. Just a warning if we ever hang out.

I was surprised to see J & L show up the next day for brunch yummies. Not only did they come to hang out, they stayed well into the evening because their friend made his famous pizza (even the dough is from scratch). I suppose the idea was that they'll be married forever, but who know when they'll get Pizza Night again? Makes sense to me.

People were saying it was the best wedding ever. I know this is what J & L had wanted -- to have a good time, and for all their guests to have a good time. This bridesmaid certainly had fun.

I'll just put this out there

I just finished watching Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. And I liked it.

The Ceremony

Shortest ceremony ever.

The Rehearsal Dinner

This took place on Friday night. It was a very "Mainah" meal with lobster, corn on the cob, and blueberry cake for dessert. Mmmmm, cake. Oh, and lots of that alcohol that had to be transported by pickup truck.

We had extended family and friends there of course, including one couple we call "Aunt and Uncle" even though they're not related by blood, because they've known my parents since before I was born. I know they had a good time, because I sat at the table with them. I just got Aunt Cindy's permission to talk about how drunk she was, with the stipulation that I use words like youthful, swingin', bright and witty, plus some of my own. OK. Let's see what I can do.

My hot, blonde Aunt Cindy was bright, witty, charming and fun at the rehearsal dinner. Also, she was drunk. There are a few stories that come up whenever I'm with her and Uncle Sugar Bear (who gets his nickname from the fact that he resembles the cartoon Sugar Bear mascot for the cereal formerly known as Sugar Puffs; I think they're Corn Puffs now, but I hope the Sugar Bear has kept his name because "Corn Bear" is dumb). The best stories get better with each telling, especially when alcohol has liberated the teller from the constraints of accuracy. One of these stories is about the time when I was only a few days old, which would make it right around Christmas. Sugar Bear was holding me against his shoulder (all together now: "Awwww") and I pooped right into his shirt pocket (all together now: "Ewwwww"). The part added to this rendering of the story by Aunt Cindy -- who is so youthful she still gets carded when she orders a drink -- was that the shirt was red and the poop was green, prompting my parents to change my name from Gertrude to Holly.

The other story they always tell is about the night they and my parents went out for a really fancy schmancy dinner -- $200-$400, and this is 30 years ago -- and got a bit sloshed. (Notice a pattern here?) I was with them, and I was only about 2, but I remember. At some point in the evening, either they decided it would be fun to put me in the water fountain, or I just climbed in and they thought it was too funny to stop me. However I got in there, the incident messed me up for years, because the idea lodged itself in my young brain that fountains were for swimming. (Note to readers over the age of two: They're not.)

Another feature of the night was Cindy's charitable effort to steer me in the direction of eligible young men. She'd point to one, ask me, "Is he single?" and if I answered yes, she'd start to push me toward him. Not at all awkward. We didn't get very far, though, partly because I resisted, and partly because -- in spite of her vast education, impeccable fashion sense and valiant efforts to end world hunger while rescuing homeless puppies -- she got guys mixed up when they were wearing similar shirts.

One aspect of the evening was years in the making. When Cindy and Sugar Bear's daughter was married in 2001, "My Girl" was one of the songs played, and my brother, J, started singing along. Mom and I were sitting near him at the table, so we joined in on the background vocals. Ever since then, Mom and I had the notion that J should sing that song to his bride when he got married, and we could back him up. When J got engaged, we started plotting in earnest. The wonder that is the home karaoke machine makes such things possible. Mom realized, though, that it would be hard to get enough mics for all three of us, so she came up with choreography instead. J sang his heart out and Mom and I did a hoedown, the Charleston, and Egyptian walks behind him. And that thing where you make Vs with your fingers and move them across your eyes -- we did that. J joined us on the bird flaps and the hula, and when the notes got too high he made a joke about needing tighter underwear. His bride, L, said she couldn't stop laughing, so I consider that a successful performance. Alas, our camcorder battery was dead, so our brilliance shall be lost forever in the mists of time and legend. You'll just have to use your imaginations (and you know you want to.)

No evening is complete unless you go from the party to a bar and then to another bar, so I went with the other twenty-and thirty-somethings into town after dinner. I think I may have a surprising ability to hold my liquor. Up till that point, I'd never had more than a couple of drinks in a day. But this night I had... let me count... 5 1/2 drinks, plus one Jello shot. They were all mostly juice, though, and they were really spread out over time and diluted with food and lots and lots of water. I don't think I was ever drunk, though I certainly loosened up a bit. I remember everything, I didn't do anything I wouldn't want to do sober, and I was fine in the morning (OK, I only had 4 hours sleep, so I was very tired, but nothing hangover-y). One of J's friends says that I have to drink hard every weekend for five years straight before I start getting hangovers. I don't know much about drinking, but I kinda think he might be lying to me.

My favorite part of this second half of the night was when J's college roommate launched into an extended demonstration of What Not to Do on a Dance Floor. He'd say, "Don't do this," and do something preposterous, then he'd say, "And never do this," and do something even more preposterous. It reminded me of the scene in Hitch where Kevin James is showing off his moves ("You use the Q-Tip, then you throw it away"). I wish I laughed so hard more often.

Those of us who were staying at the lodge got back late, maybe 1am, and raided the fridge. The others went to bed fairly quickly after that, but my brother and I went out on the deck and stayed up talking for a while. I couldn't seem to stop myself from being big-sister-y and giving advice about things I know nothing about, but it was still nice to hang out. I felt privileged to be the last one to talk to him before he went to bed on the night before his wedding. I was shivering from the cold, but I would have stayed up all night if he'd wanted to.

Latrine Detail

On Friday I was Queen of the Porta-Potties. Had my picture taken in front of them and everything. The bride was doing so much work herself (including sewing all the dinner napkins), that she had to delegate some jobs, and this was mine. The first crisis was that the johns were bright blue, not the green and brown she'd ordered, which meant they were highly visible outdoors -- great when you're in need of one, but not so great when they're in your wedding pictures. You could read the slogan on the side from the ceremony site ("Royal Flush -- We pick up where you leave off"). So Mom and I did some camouflage (sp?). We spent about an hour cutting branches and stacking them beside the visible unit. It didn't hide it completely, but it helped.

The other half of my assignment was to decorate the insides -- a little eye candy while guests are taking care of their business. I was given a stack of 8x10 baby pictures of the bride and groom. The bride, who is a natural blonde, was born with dark hair. In the pictures it's short, fuzzy, and sticking up, kind of a Pat Benetar look. In his picture, the groom had long, curly blonde locks, a suntan, and no shirt. His finger was up ot his mouth in a coquettish pose, and there was an ID bracelet on his wrist looking deceptively like jewelry. (Did anyone else out there have ID bracelets? They were these things with your name, address & phone number. If you were a little kid who got lost and were unable to verbally give your own information, the police could just check your wrist and ship you home via two-day mail.)

The long and short of it is, this picture makes him look like a girl. The bride has her own framed copy, courtesy of my parents, and when people see it they say, "L, you were such a pretty baby!" Her response: "Why yes, I was, but that's not me. That's J." It's also worth noting here that although we came from the same gene pool, J is now literally twice my size, possibly more. There's nothing girlish about him. The contrast between his baby picture and his grown-up self is quite entertaining.

These are the pictures guests were greeted with when they stepped inside. My brother's face was on the lid of the seat. I was good, though, and didn't put anything inside the urinal. We're only quasi-tasteless here.

Setting the Stage

In the mood for a little wedding narrative? I haven't had a chance to record much of what went down in Maine yet, on this blog or elsewhere, and I want to do it before it all becomes fuzzy memory. I'll try not to just recite a list of activities ("and then we folded programs, and then we ate, and then we folded more programs...")

So, hmmm. My parents drove up from Connecticut with my Granna and our dog, Annabelle, who is 7 months old. She was very good in the car (Annie, not Granna. OK, Granna was pretty good, too.) They picked me up on their way through Massachusetts. The wedding was being held outdoors, next to a log cabin which is rented out by the week, so we had a week to hang out in a cool lodge with a fireplace. Yummy. Also there were the bride's parents, the bride and groom, and the maid of honor and her boyfriend. Granna and I, the single chicks, shared a room.

Annie got to meet an older dog named Friday. Friday is nine and normally quite timid, but she sure put Annie in her place, and we all cheered her for it. In the 4 1/2 days we were there, Annie managed to unlearn almost all her training. She was cute, but she was a bad girl. She was the only one who almost went down the cliff. She almost got the menfolk in trouble, because that little incident happened on their watch while we girls were out working very hard on our manicures and pedicures. (The opinions of that experience ranged from "Best feeling in the world!" to "Someone's touching my feet?")

Apart from Annie troubles, though, the boys were well behaved that day. Mostly. They started on many manual tasks, like putting up posts and tape to create a parking area. They also moved this huge, dirty buoy that had been hanging from a tree in quite a prominent position, to another tree in a much more prominent position. Ha, ha. Fortunately, the bride had not lost her sense of humor. (I can't know the inner workings of male bonding, but I suspect much of it begins with the phrase, "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if...?") The buoy was later taken down and moved out of sight, but not before they had a competition to see who could swing it around and throw it the farthest.

The two dads spent much of their time taking the Suburban and the pickup truck to the liquor store to stock up for the rehearsal dinner and the wedding reception. They didn't seem to mind this too much.

OK, and just as a side note, can I just say that all of the things above are reasons why, if I ever have kids, I want boys? Even as adults, they totally crack me up.

I'm leaving out some of the boring stuff. You're welcome.

More later.

Roadrunner

I own a car. He's fast, blue and beepy, so I named him Roadrunner. He's a Jetta and he's very cool. But I can't keep him and he needs a good home.
I've been trying to sell him because I can no longer afford the insurance. Part of this is Boston being expensive, and part of it is the fact that I totalled my last car and the rates went up recently. The problem is, no one wants to pay for a car -- or at least, they don't want to pay for a car that's genuinely worth five digits. I've had signs in the windows, put up flyers all around town, and advertised online for 2-3 months, and no one ever followed through on an appointment to come see it. (This may also be related to my lack of success as an Oriental rug salesperson. I'm just not pushy enough.)
So my parents took my car to Connecticut with them on their way back from the wedding. They're going to try to sell it for me there. I had wanted to be all grown-up and responsible about this and handle it all myself -- dealing with prospective buyers, taking it to dealerships, doing all the paperwork. But the things I did do didn't produce any real fruit, and sometimes part of being a grown-up is realizing you could do with some help. So if Daddums and Mumsy want to solve my problems for me because the big mean Bostonians won't buy Princess's car, then that's just fine. Screw emotional and functional independence -- I want my check.

Back to life, back to reality

Hey Everybody. I had a great time at the wedding and during the surrounding days. Am posting this after-hours at work because Verizon has pooped out for the umpteenth time. We are now going to look into alternative providers because, well, honestly.
A lot happened, so I'll probably do a series of posts. In the meantime, I'm readjusting to the life I had when I left Boston a week ago. You know that feeling you have when you come back from a trip -- "Oh, these are the things I thought and felt in my normal life." It's good to have that perspective; sometimes it's the impetus you need to change, because you're more discontent than before. There a a few situations that are fine, but only if they're temporary.

If It Won't Shut Up, You May as Well Give It a Microphone

A friend asked me today how I like documenting my life in a blog. The answer is, I'm loving it. And a couple hours later, as I was waiting for the train to take me home, I realized why: I have a narrative constantly running through my head -- commenting on things, analyzing, making cute quips and sarcastic remarks, summing things up and breaking them down. I've thought many times in the past that I'd like to get these thoughts out of my head and into the world, but they run by so fast and then they're gone, and it's hard to capture them when I finally sit down with a piece of paper. I think this blog, though, gives me that opportunity. If I think a similar series of thoughts over and over, then I can remember it and put it on the blog. The stories I tell my family and friends about stuff the happens to me often fall into a pattern and crystalize enough for me to write them down in a concise and entertaining (I hope) manner. So what you guys are getting are the ramblings of my brain, happy to have their freedom, running around on this blog like naughty Munchkins on a sugar high.

Welcome to Munchkin Land.

Pardon me, Ma'am, but are you aware that you smell like fish?

You know how people who have bad breath never seem to know that they have bad breath? You know how that seems to be as true of many people with obnoxious personality traits? Do you ever wonder if you're that person and nobody is saying anything?

I wonder that a lot. Any time someone leaves me thinking, wow, interacting with them is unpleasant, my next thought is, shoot, am I that way? and I take great pains NOT to be that way. Such great pains, in fact, that I often end up doing, well, nothing, because I don't want to be annoying when I do it.

That may all sound extreme, and I'll admit that it's agonizing, but I bet you can think of someone right now who you wish were that willing to take a hint or learn from other people's mistakes. I was once in close proximity to someone who was thoroughly oblivious to what it was like to interact with her. It hurt people, it even cost her jobs (yes, plural), and she never saw the pattern, nor did she take it well when those left in her wake spoke up. I never, ever want to be that way, and the thought that we might be in any way alike scared the heck out of me.

I've spent a lot of time wondering why I don't have what I want, and why things aren't the way I want them to be. Are all the things lacking in my life a result of inadequacies in me? I have to stop asking those sorts of questions because they drive me crazy; I become like some kind of bobble-head, my brain all disproportionate from over-thinking, except the head is made of lead, weighing me down, and I keep crashing. But the question remains, How do you know? How do you know if you've messed up your own life, or if that's just how things go? And if you can't fix yourself, should you expect anything new to happen?

For me, God comes into this. It often doesn't mean I have answers; it just means I direct my questions at Him. Other Christians may have different experiences, about how they hear from God, how they feel loved by Him. I do sometimes hear from Him, but I'm one of those Christians who spends most of her time struggling as much with her relationship with God as she does with the world around her. This is how I'm able to be miserable in the most benign situations, like some Romantic poet who wanders around feeling misunderstood, looking for a beautiful cliff so he can fling himself off of it.

I believe God changes us, and I've seen Him change me, but everything is so slow it's maddening. Over the last several years I've lost optimism, lost my sense of destiny -- the conviction that God has a plan for me. In their place I've developed a sense of poverty, feeling like I never have enough, and like it doesn't matter that I don't have enough. I feel like God wants me to suck it up, or like He's waiting for me to cool off and come back when you have a better attitude, young lady. Intellectually, I know these things aren't true of God, but my heart thinks they are, and it's been waiting for Him to prove it wrong.

I've been asking God a question. Usually it's rhetorical, but lately I've been brave enough to ask it in earnest: Lord, what are you waiting for?

Me, me, me

When I started this blog, I thought I'd do more creative writing, less chronicling of my daily life. Who cares what I had for lunch yesterday? Even I am bored with my circumstances half the time. And it seemed kind of vain to think people would want to read about me every day.

Well, it turns out I don't have much fiction in me at the moment. And if I ever do end up writing anything bigger, even book-sized, I'll still have to write about what I know -- and let's face it, what I know will be me, cuz I ain't gonna research squat. So you may be getting more Real Stuff, and less Stuff I Make Up. I'll still try to keep it non-boring. Feel free to lob tomatoes if I fail.

"Oh, and the way the Jello shots matched the bridesmaids' dresses was truly moving..."

My brother is getting married next weekend. Ever since the engagement on New Year's Eve, he and his bride have been making the same anticipatory comment about the wedding: "It's gonna be a good time." Not, "It will be beautiful," or "It will be meaningful," but "It's gonna be a good time." And I think that's fantastic. I'm sure that committing their lives to each other will be both beautiful and meaningful, but I also have a not-so-sneaking suspicion that the ceremony is largely a church service they'll have to stay awake through in order to get to the party afterwards. Personally, I expect to be a teary mess during the ceremony, and I plan on having a ball for hours into the night at the reception.

In addition to the open bar (in a wedding full of Italians and Navy men, open bars are mandated by law), my brother and his future father-in-law thought it would be the best thing ever for each table to have its own styrofoam cooler full of Busch beer. As unquestionably classy as that is, I wondered what the bride would think. I asked her if she gave her stamp of approval to the cooler decision and she said, "Oh, no! I've always wanted my wedding to be a kegger." So there you go, my brother has found the perfect woman.

Children aren't invited to the wedding, largely for safety issues -- it's all taking place outdoors, near a small cliff overlooking the ocean, and we don't want any young 'uns going over the edge. It's especially hazardous as there are shrubs at the edge, and when it gets dark you may not know the ground stops. I don't know what we're going to do about inebriated groomsmen trying to pee on the shrubs and taking a tumble. We may have to do headcounts every hour or so. Or at least a sweep of the shoreline the following morning.

This is also a big week-long family gathering, so I don't know how much I'll be able to post over the next week. I'll try to live some good stories, though, so it will be worth the wait when I come back.

Bad Smart Girl, Bad

I always did well in school, but I was also the one in my AP English class who made everybody else feel really good about where they were in the reading assignments. No matter how far behind they were, I was even further. Same in college -- I never even opened half the books before we discussed them in class. I got A's and B's on my papers, but if the teachers had paid more attention they would have noticed that I never included quotes beyond page 42 in any given book.
I like to read, honest, but I'm soooooo slow. I read silently at about the same pace at which I'd read aloud, and I have to imagine all the action playing out like a movie in my head. If I can't imagine it, or I don't understand something, have to reread it until I do. That takes forever. It's not a matter of self-discipline, I'm just anal retentive that way.
I bring this up because I'm in a book club at work, and we meet tomorrow. Unless I can get through 85 pages tonight -- and I can't -- I'll be behind. Adulthood hasn't cured me. *Sigh.*

Anti-Frump

A guy gave up his seat for me on the commuter rail this morning. There were other seats available, and I didn't even ask; he just saw me coming and stood up, and he remained standing all the way to the next stop, about 15 minutes away. Yay for being a girl and for being noticed! And thanks to that guy. I love it when fellas get all chivalrous on me.

Babe Undercover

My mom says I should rethink that post I did a couple weeks ago about how frumpy I can be. It makes me sound unattractive. So, for the record, I submit the following:
1. I've looked very cute in much of the clothing I've worn lately. Cute enough to receive genuine compliments from both men & women.
2. I am an uber-hottie who has no business dwelling on earth with mere mortals, who inevitably look wilted and pathetic when stood next to the heat stroke-inducing light of my otherworldly pulchritude.
Now that I've cleared that up, I can tell you about last week's incident.

Around 10:45, my roommate, A, calls and tells me she's at a bus stop 5 minutes from our house and is waiting for the next bus to bring her the rest of the way home. Knowing she doesn't like hanging out in that neighborhood at night, and it could be a half-hour till the next bus comes, I ask if she wants me to pick her up, because I'm cool like that. She says she's OK.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
"Are you sure?"
"Uh, do you mind?"
So I go pick her up, which is no big deal. Except I'm almost in bed. I have on mismatched pajamas, a huge robe, slip-on sneakers, my hair pulled back with this huge head-band thing, and -- the crowning touch -- a bright-green avacado mud masque all over my face. I'm all Mission:Impossible getting to my car, making sure no traffic is going by and no neighbors are out before I dart across the street to where I'm parked.
I make it just fine. My roommate laughs out loud at me when she gets in the car, declaring that I'm now promoted from Friend to Mom.
We get back and I park the car. I'm not so lucky this time, as a car or two drives by while I'm standing there, a Vision in Comfortable Clothing. A gets a better look at me and begins breaking down the faux pas (does this have a plural form?). "Oh, that hair thing. And the shoes! I won't be seen in public with you in those shoes."
"Yeah, A, the shoes are the worst part of this ensemble."
All this is going on while some poor guy from the neighborhood walks by. I must have looked like a slumber party reject.
Later, when another roommate came home, she said, "I always get dressed before I drive in case I'm in an accident." Oh, I hadn't even thought of that. Now I'm imagining having to stand around some accident scene, surrounded by police, with green goop on my face. I'd be beet red beneath the goop.
I didn't dwell on that thought too long. Instead I'm posting it here, where it can last forever. Sorry, Mom. But you can take comfort in the fact that stuff wouldn't be half as funny if I didn't clean up so darn well ;-).

I Was at the Bookstore Sunday

...and saw that Captain Underpants has been having new adventures. Among the more recent additions to the cast of characters: The Bionic Booger Boy, in a story involving Nasty Nostril Nuggets.
I don't care who y' are, dat's funny right dere.

The Sadder But Wiser Girl

I haven't written much in the way of serious stuff in this blog. I've touched on things a little, but apart from from Verizon rants, I've avoided drama. There are several reasons for this:

-- I find it hard to write about serious things without falling into cliches. There's a big difference between deep thoughts and thoughts felt deeply. Someone may truly mean the words, "I love you/ I will be true," but that doesn't mean they have to put it out there for the world to see, and it certainly doesn't guarantee that anyone will want to read it. I also find it harder to tell whether something is written well when I'm not trying to be funny. If I make myself laugh, then I figure it will make other people laugh, too. But if I'm crying when I write it, it may just be because I'm going through something, and not because I've written something meaningful, or written it with skill.

-- Who wants to hear somebody whining all the time? Even if they write great poems about their pain, or make classic cinema, don't you ever just want to tell some people to shut up already? I don't want anyone to look at my blog or anything else I've written and roll their eyes and say, "Get over yourself and move on!"

-- It's just scary to put yourself out there without any kind of buffer. Humor is a buffer. Being on stage performing someone else's work is a buffer. Even having different kinds of conversations with different groups of people in your life is a buffer. That doesn't mean these things aren't genuine, but they enable you to be selective with what you share and how. I don't know how many people read this blog (2-3?), but I've invited a very wide spectrum to view it -- not just wide in tastes and opinions, but wide in relationship to me. Getting serious would mean letting people see parts of myself that I haven't necessarily revealed to them in person, which could be just as awkward for them, if not more so, than it would be for me. I don't want to scare anybody.

On the other hand, I've often thought that if, after I die, someone stumbles across my many, many journals and is nosy enough to read them, they could be really encouraged -- not because I have any wisdom to offer, but because I'm a mess. I find little inspiration and much annoyance in works that are meant to be inspirational, because it's always about people overcoming and doing nice things and love conquering and blah, blah, blah. I read that stuff and think, Great, that's all fine for them, but what if I don't have that kind of will power, or determination, or love for people, or confidence in myself, or any kind of conviction whatsoever? What if I've lost whatever expectations I may have once had about things turning out OK? What if I don't know what I want anymore? Where's the Chicken Soup for the Soul That Doesn't Like Chicken Soup? That would be my journal. No answers. Just a lot of questions, some tear stains, words scribbled out, and the occassional reminder that God doesn't want me to be as afraid of Him as I usually am. And if I ever end up accomplishing anything, then people can say, Hey! If God can make something out of her, then I bet He can turn me into a freakin' Nobel Prize winner.

So, I might start tossing some sad stuff in there. I ask for your patience as I bushwhack my way through the cliches and try to reach something real, meaningful, and worthwhile.

Billy Joe

I wrote this a few years ago. It's an intro to a story I never got back to. I don't know if I think it's good or not. Y'all are welcome to weigh in with constructive criticism if you've got any!

Billy Joe Bob Ray Franklin Bob, or “BJBRFB,” as people would have called him if they could remember that many letters, which they couldn’t, so they didn’t, was outside. The air had a strong hint of manure. Actually, the smell of manure was so pervasive that Billy Joe didn’t want to open his mouth for fear that he’d taste it, and eeeww, yuck. He was “all man” in plenty of ways, but he squirmed like a little girl when it came to poop. That’s why he wasn’t a cowboy, a farmer, a veterinarian, or even a rodeo clown – he was an HVAC man, and he was on a mission on this hot, humid, manure-filled day.

Mrs. Cutter’s AC system was down. The old bat was in a tizzy. Actually, she was in an insane, heat-, sweat-, and manure-smell-induced rage that involved throwing things – things which BJ all-manfully dodged as he made his way to the pooped-out (poop again, ha ha!) system. With a bandana over his nose and mouth, he set to work, sometimes allowing a projectile launched by Mrs. Cutter to hit the machine. It was a trade secret that strategic – and sometimes random – kicking and banging do make things work, so he took full advantage of Mrs. C’s powerful pitching arm. Pretty soon Billy took to placing his head directly in front of the area he wanted whacked, so that when Mrs. C aimed at him, he could dodge right before he was beamed and – WHAM! – she’d hit the desired spot. He was highly amused at the whole situation, not to mention his own cleverness. He couldn’t laugh, though, because that would mean breathing deeply of the poopy air.

After about 20 minutes of tinkering and whamming, the air conditioner was beaten into submission and began chugging, and then whirring. The effect was like that of a snake charmer’s flute on Mrs. Cutter. She became quiet. Then, with the look of someone who could hear musical voices no one else could hear, she hoarsely whispered, “Air conditioning!” and ran inside. Billy Joe chose not to follow her in; he stuck the bill inside the screen door. Though she’d been driven crazy by the poop-heat, in her lucid moments Mrs. Cutter was good at paying her bills. She’d often throw in a pie or some biscuits or something else highly edible. BJ was willing to brave the manure smell for the promise of good food (although the two together would have made him vomit, and violently).

Book Meme

This is a little survey that's been going around. I confess that for someone who claims to enjoy reading, I have not read very much. Watching TV is just so much easier. But I like these questions, so I'll answer them as well as I can. And can anyone tell me what meme means?

1. One Book That Changed Your Life
The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom. I read it as I was becoming a Christian, so I soaked it up like a fetus absorbs what its mother eats and drinks, and it will be a part of my make-up forever. I'm still discovering ways in which this has determined my thinking, on everything from being single to whether lying is OK.

2. One book you have read more than once
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History. For the record, I don't read in the bathroom. But I love these short-attention-span articles, and I love history. My favorite arcticle is a one-pager about how Immanuel Kant studied the nature of humor, and then tried to give a few jokes to illustrate his points, at one point commenting, "At this we laugh, and it gives us hearty pleasure." I certainly laughed.

3. One book you would want on a desert island
An empty journal and an endless supply of pens. We'll see how many deep thoughts I get when I have nothing to do but crack coconuts and spear fish with pointy sticks.

4. One book that made you cry
A Day No Pigs Would Die. I hid myself in the laundry room when I got to that scene (I won't give it away for those who haven't read it).

5. One book that made you laugh
America, The Book. I was that crazy person you don't want to sit next to when I read this book on the subway, because I kept doubling over in silent laughter.

6. One book you wish had been written
I'm going to piggy-back on blogger Kate Krupnik's idea. Her answer to this question was the story of her own life. I'm not necessarily thinking about straight autobiography, but for a long time I'd assumed I didn't have a book in me, and lately I've been rethinking that. So my wish is that if I do have a book in me somewhere, then it will make its way out.

7. One book you wish had never been written
I don't know about this one. May I come back to it later if I think of something?

8. One book you are currently reading
The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl. I'm reading this for a book club at work. Am about 1/3 through it and haven't decided what I think yet. Almost didn't make it this far, though, because the first 40 pages annoyed me intensely. I thought some of the sentences and structures didn't make sense, and there were lots and lots of maggots. Yuck. As I read on, though, there's more sense and fewer maggots.

9. One book you have been meaning to read
Travelling Mercies, by Anne Lamott (did I spell her name right?). I already know I disagree with some of her politics, but from what I've heard this book isn't very political; it's just real. This is my big deal now: dealing with God in a real way, in real life, and not making it all pretty when it comes time to talk to people about it.

10. Tag five new people
Anyone who wants to is welcome to take this and run with it!