Juno

I've been meaning to comment on the movie Juno since it came out what, over a year ago now? Today is the day so here it is.

I got pregnant at 17, had my son at 18 (on my 18th birthday to be exact) and gave him up for adoption. I was really lucky because my rockin' OB/GYN recommended an adoption agency that allowed a controlled amount of contact between the birth mom and the adoptive family. I met weekly with a case worker who helped me go through the process of picking out a family to whom I would hand over my first born. Throughout the years following, the adoptive parents and I swapped letters and pictures so we were able to keep tabs on every one's progress. It was cool. And weird. And cool. My son and I met a few years ago and I'm loving the relationship that he and I are building.

Since Juno has come out, this story seems to enter conversation more easily. Juno made it a little easier for people to hear it. I never really had a problem talking openly about being a pregnant teen or how weird it was to have 23 people in the waiting room when he was born or swapping letters with the adoptive family, but sometimes people had a hard time hearing it. Juno made it a little easier because it was considered a "light" movie about a serious matter.

In one of the conversations about the movie, the woman I was talking to had a clear distaste of the film. She thought it was too light and glossed over the seriousness of teen pregnancy. She thought it would encourage kids to have sex because the movie just wasn't telling the whole horror story of the terrible awfulness of teen pregnancy. To her it was a light, fluffy movie that was light and fluffy about the wrong subject. She didn't like how the character of Juno was so casual, even jokey about the whole thing. Treating it as if it wasn't that big of a deal. The movie didn't make that part up, being pregnant at 17 wasn't a big deal to me either. It was pretty serious but it wasn't a big deal.

This is the thing that people don't understand. Being 17 and pregnant, isn't that big of a deal when you are actually 17 and pregnant. The mind of a teenager cannot even begin to wrap around the whole enchilada of the reality of child bearing. There is a lack of maturity and worldliness that no matter who you are at 17, comes with the limitations of being 17.

I completely freaked out when my doctor told me I was pregnant. All I could think about was my life being over. I had no idea what I was going to do or how I was going to tell my mother. Which I didn't, by the way, I made the doctor tell her. But after I found out and told the people I was most afraid to tell, I started to calm down and I realized that everything was going to be fine. I knew that I was going to give my baby up for adoption, that it would be hard and weird but not impossible and certainly not the end of my life. I was smart enough to know that I couldn't handle raising a kid. Not because my 17 year old brain could grasp the hugeness of parenthood, mostly because I had things I wanted to do and I knew raising a child would keep me from doing them. My brain just kind of stayed in this happy-go-lucky place and I had a great time being pregnant, hanging out with my friends and being the center of attention.

It's only as I've gotten older and have both a relationship with my son and a large stash of photos and letters documenting his aging process that I start to get my head around what I actually did. I remember adults telling me, while I was pregnant and in the few years following, how incredibly brave they thought I was. How selfless and strong I was to have gone through both a pregnancy and giving a child up for adoption as such a young age. At the time I heard these comments, I shrugged them off. I didn't think it was that big of a deal, because at the time it wasn't. The older I get, however, the bigger of a deal it seems. "Wow!" I think to myself now, "I really did that?!?" and I get all impressed with how smart I was when I was 17. Then, I actually remember being 17 and it wasn't about being smart and selfless, it was about being 17.

I see pregnant teens here and there, mostly on Maury Povich and the like. I hear about the girls at Gloucester High and I wonder where those people are who poo poo movies like Juno for making teenage pregnancy look easy and fun. Are they out there trying to tell these girls that children don't unconditionally love you because you gave birth to them? Are they trying to get some reasonable sex education or contraception in the high schools? Are they working to stop vilifying abortion? I sure as hell hope so. We need less kids trying to raise babies with such a limited experience of the world. Teaching them differently would be the mature, adult thing to do.

Good Reads and missing Flea

On Monday, I got an email from Tinny asking me to join her as a friend on the Good Reads site. Every here and again I will get a friend or family member asking me to join them on some social networking site and I always say no. Not cause I'm a jerk but because I don't want to expend energy on keeping up with it. My days seem short enough and I rarely, if ever, go to bed wishing I would have spent more time online. I prefer to keep in touch via email and phone calls and I find many of the social networking sites to be a very insincere way of communicating. I have a My Space account and I check in on it about once every month or so. I have thought of deleting my account on many occasions, but I do like to spend 15 minutes every now and then catching up on what my more distant friends on My Space are doing (as I only have my actual friends of mine as "Friends"). A little catch up, and then I'm off to go play outside.

Upon receiving the Good Reads invite from Tinny, my inner whiner started to crank up. "Jesus" it wheezed "another one of these stupid sties that will suck up my time and I will never check my profile and how can I possibly fit this kind of crap into my day? I have dishes to do and financial aid to find so I can go to school, I don't have time for this shit."

As a gesture of good will (and because I love Tinny) I went to the website to at least look at what it was about. It's a website where you build a personal book list. You list stuff you've read, stuff you want to read, and give little mini reviews. It will recommend similar books and when you get some friends, you share books and thoughts about books. Well, being an avid reader, the kind that would blow off going out with friends to finish a good book, I loved this site!! I don't know what the hell happened, but it triggered this excitement and kid like need to blow off everything and read fiction all the time. I started to compile my list of well loved books and write little reviews and the next thing I knew, it was two hours later and I have a huge pile of books on my virtual "already read" shelf. That was two hours I was supposed to spend creating a training manual for the kids who are going to be taking over my job, but it was so much more fun to talk about books!

I pine for the days where I had time to read for hours on end. I could probably find some more of that time if I stopped talking to people, completely ceased housekeeping (or hired a cleaning lady, something that I long to afford) stopped working and blew off planning my wedding. Plus, I'm so busy trying to know so many things that I have relegated myself to reading lots of nonfiction in the four or five minutes before going to sleep at night. Needless to say these days it takes a long time to read anything and I end up feeling kind of gypped. I want the cake of my nerdy bookworm life and to eat the joy of my currently life too.

While I was madly filling out review after review of delicious book after book on my new Good Reads profile, I started to miss Flea. Flea is the bass player for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. For those of you who have known me since high school, you will remember a time where I was entirely obsessed with the RHCP and was pretty sure they were writing entire albums just for me (specifically Blood Sugar Sex Magick). Every interview in every magazine I could get my mittens on was like gospel to me. At one point or another, each individual band member became my personal messiah. One interview featured a photo spread showing Flea lying on his back with a copy of "Jitterbug Perfume" next to him and he talked about how he loved that book and why. I had just read this wonderful novel myself and took it to be a sign that he and I were forever bonded.

Over the years, as I have replaced rock star obsessions with neato discoveries of me, the obsession with Flea and the RHCP has faded into laughable memory. Then came Fleamail. While on tour touting the By The Way album, Flea checked in with fans via the band website with his Fleamail. Day after day he would talk about the cool stuff he got to see and experience while on tour and he would always talk about what he was reading. I have found so many of the books he read and liked to be books I read and liked. He had such a great way of talking about books that I found myself obsessed again. I couldn't wait to get another recommendation from him. I read and loved every book he wrote about.

That was many years ago. He has since made a new album and on that tour was busy being in love with his wife and new baby. Gone were his book recommendations in his Fleamail. In their place were beautiful tidbits about hiking in the forest with his baby strapped onto his back or his tribute to Patti Smith or his devotion to Ornette Coleman. I can't blame him, I'm in love with Goat and when we have a baby (eventually) I won't read much either; I love Tom Waits and write about him all the time and will be writing about wedding plans and going to college for the first time at the age of 36. I understand that life comes in waves and each one you catch is a different part of the ride. On my current wave I'll get my book fix from the friends I make on Good Reads.

I just miss Fleamail.

Addendum to CANning

Addendum to being CANned.

I just had a good chat with my ad director and the poor woman had to know about me being let go for two weeks before it happened. When you work as closely as she and I have worked over the last two years, it has to be tough to know that your counterpart is being let go. No wonder she acted weird for the last few weeks. It sounded like she was waiting for me to contact her first after the meeting, she didn't want me to feel pushed. She's off my brown list.

So I'm a little less bitter, but just as freaked out.

CANned

I got laid. Off that is.

I did see this coming, I have to say. Still, I'm a little surprised, kinda pissed, a tad mopey, mostly freaked out and somewhat excited. This is a large emotional load to carry around all day, so I'm also quite tired.

I have been working for a website for the last two and almost a half years as an office manager, sales support coordinator and ad ops chick. Last November, the website was purchased by a startup company based in California. If you are working for a company and the words "due diligence" or "knowledge transfer" come up in your list of duties, run screaming for the hills. I have been through the wringer with this company for the last year and I wouldn't put my worst enemy through any of it. Not even Rachel.

I knew that a chunk of my duties were going to be shuffled off to the HQ in CA, but I was promised by the CEO and COO that I would stay on staff well after the transition was complete. They lied. Now the transition is complete and now I am redundant.

I could go into how much crap I've taken from them as well as the previous owner, how stressful this has been on me and how I feel that the ad director threw me under the bus, because I do feel all those things. But the truth of the matter is that I could have left at any time and I didn't. Maybe I was naive, maybe I was too hopeful, maybe I was just lazy, but I didn't get off my ass and get a new job.

The last few weeks have been really weird too, no one has been speaking directly to me or including me in email chains that have to do specifically with my job. I was flown out to California a few weeks ago to finally meet everyone at the HQ, and it was like I was invisible. Since my termination has been announced, not one person in the company has contacted me to say anything. Even my direct supervisor, who I have worked closely with for years hasn't contacted me. Prior to the day they announced they were letting me go, we talked multiple times a day. That's just shitty.

Now, over the next three weeks which will be the last three weeks of my job, I get to train all the new kids that will be taking over my job. Not that I ever would, but how fun would it be to employ a little monkey wrenching. Too bad I'm so nice. Goddammit.

This was not a job I was in love with, by any stretch, so that's where the excitement comes in. I have a habit of jobs just showing up for me whenever I need them. I have been wanting to get out of this job for months and the universe gave me the kick in the ass I needed. Let's hope that the universe is a gracious and helpful as it usually is when it comes to my employment.

Engaging Conversation

A few weeks ago, Goat and I trekked to Columbus, Ohio to see Tom Waits perform at the historic Ohio Theater. While we were there, we got to see his friend Jerm, who has been living in the city for a bundle of years working as a doctor. Jerm recently got engaged to a woman who he met while on a rotation in a hospital in the infectious diseases wing. If you can fall in love with someone over the beds of people dying of horrid wasting diseases, you really have got a good thing there. She is a very cool woman and we had a great time visiting with them and surviving a huge bachelorette party doing shots of tequila in the hotel bar. Ugh.

Of course, the show was surreal and astounding, as a Tom Waits show always is. It is impossible to describe, so I won't even try.

On our drive home the next day, Goat and I decided that we would stop at all the antique shops that we zipped past the day before on our trip down. We wandered and found some treasures (like the collection of Camp Snoopy glasses)and kept an eye out for an engagement ring. Over the last few months, Goat and I have been talking about getting hitched and while I'm not too traditional, I did have two rules. One, do not propose to me without a ring. Two, that ring has to be pretty special since it will be one of the only pieces of jewelry that Goat will have to buy me. I'm not a jewelry person, I don't even have my ears pierced and I tend to find suitable jewelry for myself in the plumbing section of most hardware stores. So the engagement ring has to be something else.

I love art deco a lot and I quickly found that art deco engagement ring replicas can run many thousands of dollars. Eek! Our friend who is a jeweler told us that good deals can be found on antique engagement rings at estate sales and antique stores. So Goat and I were on a casual lookout. Our last stop before home was at Jeffery's Antique Gallery in Northwest Ohio, and within 3 minutes of arriving, I found a ring that I loved. I walked into the 38,000 square foot building featuring 250 vendors and find the engagement ring of my dreams in three minutes. Goat and I combed the rest of the antique mall for another two and a half hours and didn't find another ring that was anywhere close to being as cool. We did find an old Kiss album though. After talking to our jeweler friend over the phone, describing the ring and discussing rock swapping options, we got the ring.

Goat and I walked out to the car, passing the ring back and forth and talking about getting it sized and how fun it will be to show it to our jeweler friend and see what he thinks. How a square diamond would look good in place of the round one in the setting and how the sapphires on the sides were so cool. Goat suddenly stopped walking and asked for the ring. Then, he proposed in the middle of the parking lot and we held up traffic as I said yes and we smooched and giggled. He thought it was cruel to buy me such a beautiful ring that I loved so much and then not let me wear it. Plus, he knew I was going to say yes.

Fortunately, right next to my ring in the showcase was a man's ring, the only piece of men's jewelery in the showcase. It was a beautiful silver ring with turquoise and a wheat pattern that matched the wheat pattern on my ring. We bought the ring, just liking the pattern and the stones and it looked great on Goat's hand. So I used that ring to propose to him (I never really understood why men didn't get an engagement ring) and he said yes.

So, there it is. A little story about the engagement that Goat and I got into a few weeks back. Wedding to follow in June 2009.

Trial Cohabitation

A few months ago, Goat's neighbors received a knock at their door. Upon answering they met a Hollywood location scout who wanted to use their house for filming a movie. After much back and forth, agreeing on specifics with the assistance of lawyers, the neighbors (Todd and Liss) agreed to let a film crew take over their house for the month of July.

Odd side note: I went to high school with Todd and I find it kind of weird that he and his family live across the street from Goat. To further the oddness: Todd went to college with Goat. To add even more oddness: even after not seeing him for well over a decade, Todd recognized Goat from across the street on a snowy morning at 6:30am while a bundled Goat shoveled his driveway.

Those of you who aren't familiar with the inner workings of Hollywood film making might not know that they will do whatever they need to create their set. Todd and Liss' house has now had the back ripped off (so they could park a car in the dining room), the entire downstairs has been painted a yucky rosy mauve color and the pounding and drilling from the inside of the house went on for days.

Todd and Liss have two dogs, two cats and one 15 year old son, Eli and all of them had to move out of their house and take their stuff with them (except the microwave, that's in the movie). The stuff went into storage. The family wanted to avoid staying at an extended stay hotel with so many pets and a teenager who would be stranded in a far away part of town away from his friends for half of summer vacation. They found a great house to rent a few blocks away from their house, but the jerky landlord changed his mind about letting them rent the place for a month. He informed them of his wizened decision 5 days before they had to be out of their house to make room for the set crew. So Goat and I decided to let them rent his house for July and he would move into mine.

Thus began trial cohabitation for Goat and I.

In the 17 years I have lived out of my parent's house, I have had a roommate or roommates for collectively one year and 5 months of that time. I'm a woman that really appreciates her space. The nude sauntering, the 3am laundry, the postponing of housekeeping (after all, I'm the one who has to look at it)and the hogging of the bed and covers have suited me just fine over the 15+ years of no roommate living. So the idea of infringement had my back up a bit, made me worry that I would discover that I love Goat, but I just can't live with him. Or anyone. So I was a little edgy when he came to stay for a while.

A few days ago when he got home from work, he delivered a silly "Hi, Honey. I'm home." and I got teary. I was so happy to see him even though I couldn't sleep in the middle of the bed the night before because he was in it with me and I had to clean the dishes in the sink because we made and ate dinner together and I couldn't saunter naked because we were entertaining friends he had in town. So far, this cohabitation thing is pretty good.

The family of Liss and Todd are happy in their rental house, watching all the action going on in their real house from the porch. It's kind of surreal to have people who you recognize from movies standing in the middle of your street.

Liss and I are both former actors and the other day, while she was showing me what the film crew had done to the house, we got laughing. After all the years we spent trying to get regular acting work, suffering endless auditions and rejection with dreams of being on the big screen in our heads it's her fucking microwave that ends up in a movie.

Woosh!

That's the sound of time barreling by.

The garage sale was a success and a blast. Goat's glorious neighbor provided a big tent which proved to be invaluable as it did rain a little during the garage sale. Mom, Goat and I unloaded a bundle of crap and I got to meet some of my neighbors. The big ticket items didn't move, but that's what Craig's List is for.

I took the Friday before the sale off and spent the morning ripping around my house in a cleaning panic. Goat's mom had never been to my house in the two years that he and I have been together, mostly because I wanted to hide the dog induced hole in the couch, the cat induced tears in all the furniture and the seemingly terminal, messy state in which my house exists. I have enough of my mother in me to feel like the house needs to look impossibly organized for company. Not only was Goat's mom coming over to help at the garage sale and be introduced to my domicile, she was also bringing her childhood friend, one Miss Dixie Lee.

As you have probably figured out, I tend to use nicknames for the people that I reference in my blog. For some reason, I feel like it still gives them a buffer and a modicum of privacy. If they choose to be associated with the likes of me, they can volunteer that information themselves. Miss Dixie Lee transcends any other moniker as no other name could begin to encompass her.

Goat's mom loved the house as did Miss Dixie Lee. The garage sale was a success, we made a little money, got rid of stuff and I got to hang out in a lawn chair in my driveway with my friends and mom. Hooray! Getting ready for it was a tad harrowing, but it was worth it.

Next stop on the whistle stop tour of my life: Trial cohabitation.

Goings on

I have decided (after reading Mark's blog) that I will be expanding the content in this blog to include what's happening in my life. As much as I love to yammer on about my opinions, the mundanity (is that a word) of my day to day life might be a nice balance to the raging opinion monster within.

There are people I know who are interested in the goings on in my life and I don't call or email them enough. So maybe this will act as a kind of compensation and not punishment.

So, here's what's up with me.

The last few weeks have been spent raiding closets, nooks and crannies to get stuff together for my first garage sale ever. The garage has been cleaned out, materials for the Pinecrest Beautification Project(more on that later) have been cleared out of the way and the piles of stuff I'm selling for cheap are piling up.

I have lived in my house for almost 7 years all by myself. That's a lot of time to fill up 1500 square feet with a ton of crap, which I was very successful at. Now that Goat will be moving in in 6-8 months it's time to make some space for him.

Most of the stuff I'm selling is what my Mom would call "itty bitty shitty", but is not without it's charm. I have a few bigger ticket items like a diamond plate truck box and a lovely nylon string acoustic guitar with a hard case, but most of the stuff is in the .25-$5.00 range. I'm so excited about getting rid of stuff that I keep forgetting that I'll make a little scratch.

One of the greatest things is the cleaning out that has been going on. I have used my garage as a storage unit to a point where my truck won't even fit in there anymore. I had a pile of returnable bottles and cans that ended being worth about $42 (in Michigan we have a 10 cent deposit). That's a lot of bottles and cans. My garage hasn't been this clutter free since the day before I moved in.

Mostly I'm excited to hang out with all my friends and family that are coming to help out and sell stuff of their own. It's also shaping up to be quite a social gathering as well.

More adventures from the selling end of garage sales forthcoming...

Girls, girls girls

This may be old news to some and actually it's old news to me as well. Between my back yard beautification project, my social life and work, this is the first chance I've had to update my blog.

The old news is, Danica Patrick won an IndyCar race. She's the first woman in history to do so. I'm not a fan of racing but as a fan of women, I love that she won.

As expected, there have been rumblings around the racing world, one of which came from another racer, Robby Gordon. He said that Danica had an unfair advantage because she only weighs 100 pounds whereas most of the other racers, being men and all, weigh closer to 200 pounds. "The lighter the car, the faster it goes...I won't race against her until the IRL does something to take the advantage away." Gordon said.

I understand that there is overt sexism that is ingrained in people, mistaken for our cultural norm. I hate it, and think it's completely stupid, but I'm aware that it's there. I expected there to be some men grumbling about Danica winning. Her victory is a kick in the tighty whiteys to a sport that has been a hard core boys club for a long time. As people will do when change is coming to their town, they tend to lock the doors. Especially the locals in charge who are used to running the show.

What I find most frustrating about Gordon's complaint is that he wants the rules changed now. It never occurred to him to go on a binge of not eating, or start forcing himself to throw up after every meal, or overdose on laxatives to drop weight. He didn't think to risk his health and do whatever he had to do to stay competitive. The thought never crossed his mind. Instead, he went to work to change the rules.

That frustrated me because women do these types of things to themselves all the time. We are constantly told that if we want something badly enough, we will do whatever it takes. Women starve themselves to be faster athletes, to live up to false beauty standards, to be accepted by someone else in one way or another. Feminists have been fighting for years to have the playing field leveled, yet roadblocks are put up time after time. We are told that we are just bitter and hateful toward men, that we want "special" rights, that we women just aren't as good as men, that we are worth 70% of the salaries men make because, (according to John McCain) women need "more education and training". When we stop taking the world out on ourselves and start working to make it a better place for everyone, that's when we hear the backlash.

So Danica, whether you consider yourself a feminist or not, I don't care. You stand your little, fit frame on the podium and bask in the moment that you kicked the crap out of everyone one else on the course that day.

Ladies, I propose we stop beating up on ourselves and put that energy to good use. Let those boys who want to argue over weight restrictions in IndyCar racing, play golf at the country clubs that don't allow us in and use their bigger salaries to buy stuff they don't need to impress people they don't like anyway. Let them have that crap, let's you and I take over the world.

Full of it

I have been getting all over my own ass about being a cantankerous wanker all the time. I compare myself to the me of my early twenties when I remember never suffering road rage, living the life credo, 'live and let live' and feeling kindly toward most of the people on the planet. The people who I didn't think kindly on, I refrained from thinking about much at all.

Nowadays, I feel that I obsess about all the things that I don't like in this world and that those things are everywhere. I feel like I know more than I want to, have memories that I want to give back and do not suffer fools gladly, if at all. My patience wears thin and I give myself a hard time about the influx of negative thoughts in my head. From there, it just spirals.

Apparently, all of this negativity is well contained in my head, because those closest to me just don't see the glut of the growly that I feel I emanate.

This perspective was brought to my attention today when Goat told me that I was full of love. I was taken aback when he first said it, but when I thought about the evening's conversation, it struck me that he was right.

Since arriving at his house just over four hours ago, I have gone into detail about how and why I love the following things. Mind you, this is no mere "oh, I love that" throw away line, but conversations about the whys and hows of my love for these things.

- The pot roast Goat made for dinner
- Drag Kings (especially Harry Dodge)
- The dessert Goat made (brownies)
- The B side of Steely Dan's "Gaucho"
- The A side of David Bowie's "Low"
- Last night's furniture rearranging
- Snorkeling
- The wedding dress I found online that I want to wear should Goat and I get hitched
- Dancing with the dogs in the kitchen to The Upsetters

Now, for self-professed grouch, a girl who feels both way too old for her age and incurably pessimistic, that's a lot of love to spill around a house in one evening. Maybe what I hear in my head isn't as bad or as thick as it seems. Maybe I shed a few layers of gripes on my vacation, left them to be neutralized by the salt water and sun. I do have to say, I've been feeling lighter since I got home. Hell, maybe it's the brownies talking.

Getting that comment from Goat was like a shot in the arm, so to speak. It felt like that first day after winter but right before spring when it's snowy, but you realize that for the the first time in months, the sun actually feels warm.

Love. I'm full of it.

Freckles!

There and back again. My freckles have already faded.

My trip to Turks and Caicos ruled. It was a true vacation where I actually relaxed, read a whole book in a week, snorkeled, and exercised sloth. Is it actually possible to exercise sloth? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?








Goat and I spent a solid 10 days together, the longest of our relationship, and our partnership is still in tact. It speaks to the depth at which I am in deep with this man. I'm a girl short on patience and long on personal space issues.






This picture shows me snorkeling in the foreground. I was looking for lunch.

Tanning

My lineage is that of pasty people. Going on vacation to somewhere sunny usually requires me to do some tanning before I go, but I rarely, if ever, actually commit to the venture. In fact the last time I went to a tanning booth was at least 15 years ago.

In one week I will be heading to Turks & Caicos with my family. Just in time too, because I'm ready to loose my mind in the frigid chill of the bullshit that is winter in Michigan. Why do I reside in a state where the weather makes me a vitriolic maniac five months out of the year?

To keep my pasty, winterized epidermis from scorching in a place much closer to the equator, I decided to cram a handful of tanning sessions in at the local fake bake shop before heading south. I fully intended to go for 8 weeks prior to my vacation, but kept putting it off and putting it off until this past Wednesday, when I had 9 days before my departure.

In California, according to TV, the people who work at tanning salons are bubbly, helpful cheerleader types. There, tanning is a sign of health and vitality. In Michigan, it's a sign of being a stripper, having a winter home in Florida or combating Seasonal Affective Disorder. Natalia was not so much a helpful cheerleader as an annoyed minimum income wage earner.

There are now "levels" of beds. Who knew? In a standard get-what-you-pay-for scenario, the options are old skool hex bed which will burn the hell out of you after three minutes and you have to go for weeks and weeks to see any results; a level two bed which is low burning but better tanning in a shorter time and finally the high pressurized no burn, tan in two seconds bed.

Also unlike almost two decades ago, they now have tanning lotion specifically made for using in a tanning bed. You can't use regular sunscreen or lotion, no sir. You have to get the special stuff which is developed for the types of rays used in a tanning bed. They come in a variety of smells almost all of which remind me of the '80's. I picked one that makes me smell like Orange Julius.

The bed they always put me in is called the "Pryzma", all spelled out in tropical letters. It makes me feel kind of cool, like I could be in Hawaii and I might know how to hang ten. I call this bed the UV coffin because I get in and pull the lid over myself, like I'm a reverse vampire protecting myslef from the doom of a cloudy winter. There is a really powerful fan that blasts away all the noise and most of the overbearing part of the heat.

I love that 6 minutes of bright warm, smelling like the '80's. Over the course of the next few days I will bump up to 8 minutes, then 10 then 12 and then I will be on the beach in the real sun for a whole week!

Lights Out...REM...Action!!!

I am lucky, because I have really weird, vivid dreams all the time. Occasionally, they are so visceral and acutely sensory that I wake up exhausted. They often become really good story outlines that I note down and save for future writings.

Last night I had a dream that on my lunch break I went shopping for a strapless bra and ran into an old friend Pam. We ended driving to New York, looking for horses, and going to a restaurant for lunch where they were holding an auction. Henry Rollins was a panelist at the auction and he had three kittens with him. One of the kittens was the size of a Matchbox car and was covered in pink rhinestones. The entire dream, I was worried about getting back to work so I didn't get fired.

One of the peculiar things about my dreams are the settings which seem to be more like movie sets. For example, there is a department store where I often go to shop in my dreams. The set up and feel of the store is exactly the same every dream, where the stairs are, the set up of the racks, the doorways, but the merchandise, employees and purpose change with each dream. I'm never shopping for the same thing or for the same purpose yet it always feels haunting and familiar.

Other locations include a downtown, the interior of the a home, a shopping mall, and a few other specific locations that seem like they are movie sets stored in some warehouse in my brain and are rolled out and dressed specifically for different dreams.

The weirdest part is that these dream places aren't replicas of places I've ever been to in my waking life. There's a sense of intimacy that throws me off every time I got to one of these places while I sleep. I recognize it, but it's totally new, every time.

Hey, remember me?

My friend Mark is rad. He makes movies, he writes novels and screenplays, he's an awesome graphic artist. He has a creative idea and just makes it happen. As a person who thinks myself out of things way before they are anywhere near happening, I find this very impressive. I don't know how he does what he does, but I wish I did. Plus, Mark is brilliant and hilarious.

The other day I was reading his blog where he was writing about a Howard Hughes biography he was reading. Mark talked about how "popular imagination" has a tendency to re-write history and make us alter, or in some cases, completely erase everything that happened. He wrote about the tendency we have of freezing people in time and forgetting everything else that they did. His examples were Howard Hughes being remembered for two foot long fingernails and jars of pee instead of a man who revolutionized air travel and Helen Keller stuck in our memories as a flailing child instead of a radical Socialist who helped found the ACLU.

This lead him to wonder about the last impressions that we leave on people. Not only how we will be remembered after we die, but how we are remembered by someone we lose touch with.

Well, this really struck a nerve with me because I have been thinking about this very thing lately. Being a girl who has moved many times and drifted away from many people, I wonder how some of those people remember me. There have been a few of these people that I have been thinking and dreaming about over the last few weeks. I haven't spoken with either of them in over 10 years, one I dated briefly and the other I loved at first sight and became close friends with. Both relationships ended oddly with both of them dropping out of my life and never calling again.

I'm long since over the fact that they stopped calling and just moved on. Nowadays, I wonder if either of them remember me and if they do, how am I in either of their memories? Both of them knew me when I was wanting to be an actress. Do they see me as a failure because they have never seen my name in lights? Do they assume I'm socked away in some Midwestern town, married with kids because they didn't think I had it in me to do anything else? Will I ever see either one of them again so I can set the record straight?

Mark believes that we owe it to ourselves to write our autobiographies. To give ourselves the opportunity to set the record straight to anyone who would read it. I don't think either Chris or Adam would read it, but it just might help me iron some sense into my weird ass life.


Sidenote: Mark has a "List of 9" on his website. The current list posted is "Nine Movies That Would Be Better If Alfred Hitchcock Was In Them" and it's awesome. My favorite is "The Seven Year Hitch". Check it out on the "Links" section of my blog. Great stuff.

For the record

I read over an old blog post from last March, where I was all excited to have not smoked in 36 days. I thought I'd put in my up-to-date non smoking stats, just for poo and giggles. And bragging rights.

Time smoke free: 385 days
Cigarettes NOT smokes: 6931
Money NOT spent on smokes: $1784.48

Right on!

Neighbors part 2.

Now that it's quiet, the ATV is back in the garage and not grinding on my quiet time, I do have to clean up after my rant about my hick neighbor. Clear the air in the argument I'm having with him, in the privacy of my own noggin.

He (Sarge) and his girlfriend (Patty) are actually pretty good kids. Now that I'm in my 30's and my 20's seem so very far away, they are considered kids.

When my dog got out and was romping in the street, although on his way to class, Sarge stopped and got out of his car, gathered her up and when he didn't get a response to knocking at my door, took my furry kid to his house for safe keeping until I got home to collect her.

He had a power washing business for a while. He was one of those guys who went to people's houses to wash their decks and their siding with a ridiculously high pressure, glorified water shooter. He traded services with a tree crew who came over and cut down a rotting black walnut tree that was growing about 4 feet from my house and threatening to fall into it on any given windy day. I could have never afforded the service, but Sarge never charged me a dime.

To try and differentiate "work around the house time" from "relax and play around the house" time, I decided to buy an apron. Whenever I wear the apron, I am cleaning a bathroom or re-organizing a closet. If the apron is on, I am in work mode. This is to try and ease the tension between myself and me, because the two are always fighting about housekeeping. I'm in a constant state of messy because I'm a busy body and I have a million ideas at once (yes, they are all awesome ideas too). So I generate quite a bit of mess. Since I work out my house most of the time, sitting in amongst the messiness, I tend to get on my own ass about housework. So I found a super cool cherry print apron, and on it's maiden voyage for a bout of bathroom scrubbing last spring, I got called outside to sign for a UPS delivery. Patty was just arriving home at that minute and I waved to her from the front porch. Being neighborly (save the last blog entry) I went over to say hello. As we chatted, she inquired about my apron and I gave her the meaning behind. 7 months later, for a Christmas gift, Patty presented me with a new apron to add to my collection. Tied in the middle was a new wooden spoon, because she knew I really liked to cook and bake.

So really, it's not all bad. They are friendly and mostly thoughtful. Patty has broken Sarge of bad habits like having parties 'till 5am on week nights; burning wood in the back yard (both illegal and stupid on postage stamp properties) and leaving on the megawatt outside light that defies all manner of window shades and blasts into my bedroom all night long.

I really hope she makes him get rid of the ATV.

Neighbors part 1.

My redneck neighbor just got an all-terrain-vehicle. He's spent the last 25 minutes trying to get it started and it's been backfiring and sputtering all the while. Rattling the pictures on my wall, Lula's nerves and my patience.

I hate having a hick for a neighbor.

He and his live-in girlfriend have conflicting schedules. She works a 9 to 5 and he goes to school. There is a constant shuffle of their two cars in the driveway, which is a big hassle, because there is no street parking on the street where we live. To remedy the need for him to move his car so she can go to work or her to get her Taurus out of the way so he can get to his exams on time, they now park side by side in the narrow-enough-for-one-car driveway. So she parks two wheels on their lawn and he parks most wheels on mine. Because he is a manly man, he likes to tear in and out of the driveway at high speeds and has taken all of the grass (ok, weeds) with him and has created three enormous ruts in my lawn.

For those of you who are Buffy fans, this guy looks a lot like Spike when he's all vampire bumpy. His eyes are deep set, he has an large upper lip that struggles to cover his massive teeth that are arranged like an aged picket fence. Gross. Plus, he has much less appeal than Spike. Granted, my neighbor doesn't have some super creative writer scripting dialog for him or furthering his character in the stage play of life, but even if he did, I'm not sure he'd bother to read it.

Right now, I really hate him and I want sneak into his yard and pour sugar into the gas tank of both his car and his ATV.

Jerk.

Year of the Monkeybusiness

It was decided at Goat's New Year's Eve gathering that 2008 is the "The Year of the Monkeybusiness".

Mchan said she desperately needed to stop doing the assumed correct things all the time, I said I needed to stop trying to round my quirky square edges, Jimmy is working to get his brain in a more positive and fun place and Goat is always up for monkeybusiness, so The Year of the Monkeybusiness was born.

While it may take a village to raise a child, it took the four of us to create the theme of 2008. We all felt the need to shake things up, but in a way that still allowed us to live our lives and stay out of jail.

Who says a vegetarian, peace mongering, elementary school teacher can't enjoy a hockey fight or a round of Ultimate Fighting? I am a firm believer that there is a huge difference between the violence people do to each other and sports violence. If two players get in a scrum at a hockey game, it's consensual, they both are wearing padding, it's somewhat expected and there are referees to keep anyone from getting hurt. Same with something like Ultimate Fighting. The fighters are going into the ring to do battle. There are people there to make sure no one gets seriously hurt and watching two guys grapple, box, and wrestle is exciting and primal. There is lots of trash talking, but underneath it all, there is a lot of respect.

This is a year where I live in gray areas, explore creative shenanigans and learn how to keep my somewhat corporate job and stick it to the man at the same time.

I want to create a slogan for our 2008 theme, but trying to get the words "monkey" and "business" into a slogan have created little more than poo flinging pictures in my head.

On a poo note: My friend Mark determined that poo was a much funnier word that poop. Reading over that last paragraph reaffirms how right he is.

Saying

Over the last months, I've had the pleasure of hearing lots of sayings. I've spent time in new places and from these new places have sprung forth sayings that keep rumbling around in my head.

"It's not how the world works, but how you work in the world" -From an email that my brother sent me in response to my fretting about the state and fate of the world and the beings in it.

"I want to make sure we're all singing off of the same song sheet."- First uttered by my ad director in a corporate meeting when she was going into detail about a spreadsheet. I use this one all the time now.

"Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." -Said by keynote speaker Martin Sheen at the annual Michigan ACLU fund raiser dinner that I got to go to last Saturday.

"Watch yourself, this could made a goat walk backward." -A warning given to me by a Southerner while handing me a mighty strong cup of coffee.

"Arrogance is ignorance matured." Another Martin Sheen saying.


Funniest things in subject lines of spam email that landed in my email box:

"Pediatrics Taster"
"I would try spraying him before you have him neutered"
"Nobody will know about your problems"
"Be untensil into battery"
"His conyers will brasstown"
"On himself recurring"
"There are no difference!"

Best spam sender's names:

F Kimberly Q Butts
Lewie Throop
Anus Romines

These are the other two photos of my Grandma that were taken at the same time of the one below. I love the series, they show so much of who she was.