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2 years ago
Saturday, May 30, 2009
No post tonight
Well that's an ironic post title. But, don't want to be neglecting my duties. Something important has come up and I don't have time to make a post today. I should have more time tomorrow. I apologize.
Free Association Friday, or Autopublish Fail
Note: I had thought I hit an autopublish for this for last night, but apparently I hit save instead. D'OH!
Today's word is: Pluto
Ah. Pluto. The planet that never was. Or was, and then wasn't. Counted among the planets, then stripped of its status, just because it was small and far away. It even has moons! How can something without moons not be a planet? I was scandalized the day Pluto was demoted. After all, science curriculum from first through seventh grades was looking at leaves, raising chicks or chameleons, and the NINE planets! Let's all hold a moment of silence, then raise our glasses in remembrance of poor, poor Pluto! (It occurs to me that this isn't really free association but when one's finger randomly lands on Pluto, this is difficult!)
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Urgence de Mode
I used to work for a cirque that was based in Ontario; when they stopped by Minnesota, blocks away from my apartment, I got a job womanning the box office. In the box office, I had some flamingly french bosses. Pascal loved to watch the customers walk by and we were instructed, if we saw an outfit gone hideously awry, to yell "Fashion Emergency!" (we were in the box so no one outside could hear) so he (and everyone else cramped in the box) could run to our window and behold the nightmare. Well, one day, one of the managers left their walkie-talkie on and a customer overheard our titilation. We were instructed, the next day, to substitute Urgence de mode! since most minnesotans don't understand french anyway.
Well, at my current institution, we have missing person alerts from time to time. 99% of the time they're benign, like, someone wandered off to the bathroom without telling their spouse. There are a lot of people here and it's easy to get lost in a crowd. This morning, I hear the usual PA announcement: "Attention, attention. There is a missing person. Last seen in XXX building. 78 year old male wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt with a flag and a Harley." I immediately thought "Urgence de mode!" That man wasn't missing, he was just kidnapped for a quick round of What Not to Wear. (less than 10 minutes later we got the all clear announcement, I'm not a complete monster :P)
Well, at my current institution, we have missing person alerts from time to time. 99% of the time they're benign, like, someone wandered off to the bathroom without telling their spouse. There are a lot of people here and it's easy to get lost in a crowd. This morning, I hear the usual PA announcement: "Attention, attention. There is a missing person. Last seen in XXX building. 78 year old male wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt with a flag and a Harley." I immediately thought "Urgence de mode!" That man wasn't missing, he was just kidnapped for a quick round of What Not to Wear. (less than 10 minutes later we got the all clear announcement, I'm not a complete monster :P)
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
My fuckit list
I actually started this a while ago before the meme got old, but you'll have to take my word for it :P
So here's my (growing) list of things that, at some point I had considered I would/could/should do, but decided...eh, fuck it:
So here's my (growing) list of things that, at some point I had considered I would/could/should do, but decided...eh, fuck it:
- Eat anything containing insects.
- Go on a road trip.
- Run a marathon.
- Learn how to change the oil in my car.
- Cut butter out of my diet, even temporarily.
- Not waste any time.
- Have a spotless house.
- Making everyone around me happy.
- Go hunting.
- Gamble at a casino.
- Keep a diary.
- Waste my time taking the stairs just to get that minuscule amount of exercise, when the elevator is faster.
- Try to understand/be understood by toxic people.
- Tweeting.
- Wear uncomfortable pants because they look good or are in.
- Read a boring book just because it's a "classic" (I'm looking at you, Gatsby).
- Put up and/or shut up.
- Purposely tan.
- Give a crap about "social networking."
- Learn to appreciate modern art.
- Vote for the lesser of two evils rather than the best candidate.
- Deal with people who piss me right the fuck off.
- Read/discuss/think about any more Jane Austen books, especially if someone claims "Oh but this is the good one, it's not like the others!"
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
The Crux
10PM and I'm seeking inspiration for a post. LB suggests I write about what's been on my mind; he knows what it is but I only just admitted it to him today. But I suppose with his blessing....
I was a bit cryptic in this post. The problem is, I want to have a kid, and LB doesn't. And I don't just want a kid in the abstract. I want one yesterday. My best years have come and gone, the aches and pains of getting older are already catching up with me (I realize this is a bit melodramatic for someone who's only almost 30; still fertility peaks in the early-mid 20's and I'm past that). Or maybe they're from stress; it hardly matters, since my career can only get more stressful from here.
And I know I have a good 1.5-2 years of school left, that we're in no financial position to have a kid and, even if we were, LB's responsibilities at the store would leave me with most of the childcare on top of going to school. But that doesn't change the longing in my heart, and it doesn't make it sting less every time I hear someone else is pregnant (I feel like the last person in the world who will recieve the honor; hell for all I know I'm infertile).
LB talks about how he'll be happy to have a kid once we're stable (he used to talk of kids without stipulation, before we were married). When we got married, stable meant a lot different of a thing than it means now. It has been a moving goalpost in our marriage. Every time we talk, he talks about maybe he just doesn't want a kid "right now" and when the time is right he'll want one. I'm skeptical. But otoh, I have had this same skepticism in our relationship before. Before we were engaged, we had dated for about 6 years. LB went on a month-long trip; while he was gone on that trip I decided, since he had fed me a line about not wanting to get married "right now" but maybe someday, that I'd give him until our lease was up, then I was moving on, since it didn't seem we were on the same page anymore. On that same trip LB decided to propose to me. So, you see, I have simultaneous hope and pessimism. I don't know what to believe, and my gut is so hurt it can't give me any hints. I don't know whether to wrench my heart from the person I love, or from the children I would love, or whether I even need to make that decision.
All I know is that my nightmare is to wake up one day and realize that the ship has sailed, and I will die childless.
I was a bit cryptic in this post. The problem is, I want to have a kid, and LB doesn't. And I don't just want a kid in the abstract. I want one yesterday. My best years have come and gone, the aches and pains of getting older are already catching up with me (I realize this is a bit melodramatic for someone who's only almost 30; still fertility peaks in the early-mid 20's and I'm past that). Or maybe they're from stress; it hardly matters, since my career can only get more stressful from here.
And I know I have a good 1.5-2 years of school left, that we're in no financial position to have a kid and, even if we were, LB's responsibilities at the store would leave me with most of the childcare on top of going to school. But that doesn't change the longing in my heart, and it doesn't make it sting less every time I hear someone else is pregnant (I feel like the last person in the world who will recieve the honor; hell for all I know I'm infertile).
LB talks about how he'll be happy to have a kid once we're stable (he used to talk of kids without stipulation, before we were married). When we got married, stable meant a lot different of a thing than it means now. It has been a moving goalpost in our marriage. Every time we talk, he talks about maybe he just doesn't want a kid "right now" and when the time is right he'll want one. I'm skeptical. But otoh, I have had this same skepticism in our relationship before. Before we were engaged, we had dated for about 6 years. LB went on a month-long trip; while he was gone on that trip I decided, since he had fed me a line about not wanting to get married "right now" but maybe someday, that I'd give him until our lease was up, then I was moving on, since it didn't seem we were on the same page anymore. On that same trip LB decided to propose to me. So, you see, I have simultaneous hope and pessimism. I don't know what to believe, and my gut is so hurt it can't give me any hints. I don't know whether to wrench my heart from the person I love, or from the children I would love, or whether I even need to make that decision.
All I know is that my nightmare is to wake up one day and realize that the ship has sailed, and I will die childless.
Monday, May 25, 2009
In Memoria
I'm sure everybody and their brother have a memorial day post up, but I'm adding one anyway :P
I don't know very much about my grandfathers, but I know that they both served in WWII. On memorial day this year my thoughts turned to what I do and don't know about them. What really unites their service is that neither would talk about it. The living veterans may not have given their entire lives to our country, but they still have given a part of their life, a part of their soul.
I'll start with my paternal grandfather. He died when my father was 12, so I never met him. To me he is a collection of stories and a face in pictures. I don't remember if he was injured in service or not, but I do remember he joined the army late in the war and didn't see as much combat as others. When he came home, he was drafted as a pro baseball player (something he had dreamt of before the war), however he ended up declining the position in order to spend more time with my grandmother and to start a family. He died of a heart attack, leaving my grandmother a widow in her late 30s, with 4 children. They didn't have lipitor back then. It was a blessing, then, that he decided to spend more time with his family than being a ball player on the road would have allowed. I have inherited a lot of his looks, although my personality and hair are more like my grandmother's than his (I doubt anyone would mistake me for a blonde!). I also did not inherit his high cholesterol, although my own dad did. In a final act of kindness, we later learned that before his death, he left instructions and money with some of his military contacts, and these contacts kept my uncle from Vietnam (my father would have missed a draft due to his age when the war ended, although instructions were in place for him, as well). He didn't know when or how, but he knew war would come again and he did everything in his power to keep his sons from it. Sometimes, when I think of how I almost joined ROTC for college, I think that it would have put me straight in Afghanistan or Iraq. I like to think that his spirit helped me make the decision not to join, a decision that, at the time, was very uncharacteristic of me.
My maternal grandfather disappeared from my mother's life when she was 2, leaving my 20 year old grandmother for a younger "woman" (I, however, think 15 hardly counts). I don't really talk (or think) about him. My grampa was my grandma's 3rd husband. He was shot and recieved a purple heart, and that is all anyone knows about his time in the service. My grandma possibly knows more, but not much. To me grampa was not a soldier, he was not a man who had taken human life. He was the man who smelled of tobacco and taught me much of what I know about fishing. He was the sweet man who sometimes would thrust his dentures at me and my cousins to elicit laughter or, in the case of one cousin, shrieks. He was the tall man who would carry me everywhere, even when I was getting a little big for it, giving me a view of the world that I would never otherwise have, being always of short stature. He was the man who would take me on long walks around their large, woody Upper Peninsula property and show me every bird's nest, filled with speckled eggs or small tweeting chicks. He was my partner in crime, smiling at me when I played on the wood pile, in the mud, or in my uncle's shop where he was constantly trying to convert junkers into functional cars, knowing my mother would object. He was the gentle carpenter who only ever yelled when we entered his woodshop, because he wasn't very tidy and had nails and saw blades all over. I remember all these wonderful things and think of the impossibility of him shooting Nazis in Europe. But it happened. I don't know what he saw that horrified him so much that he completely shut out that part of his life, but perhaps I can imagine.
So this memorial day, I'm not so much remembering the women and men who have died for our country; I'm more remembering those soldiers who lived on, but left a part of them behind. A part they chose never to touch again, a part they chose to let die, but to warn and protect future generations. Today my heart is with them.
I don't know very much about my grandfathers, but I know that they both served in WWII. On memorial day this year my thoughts turned to what I do and don't know about them. What really unites their service is that neither would talk about it. The living veterans may not have given their entire lives to our country, but they still have given a part of their life, a part of their soul.
I'll start with my paternal grandfather. He died when my father was 12, so I never met him. To me he is a collection of stories and a face in pictures. I don't remember if he was injured in service or not, but I do remember he joined the army late in the war and didn't see as much combat as others. When he came home, he was drafted as a pro baseball player (something he had dreamt of before the war), however he ended up declining the position in order to spend more time with my grandmother and to start a family. He died of a heart attack, leaving my grandmother a widow in her late 30s, with 4 children. They didn't have lipitor back then. It was a blessing, then, that he decided to spend more time with his family than being a ball player on the road would have allowed. I have inherited a lot of his looks, although my personality and hair are more like my grandmother's than his (I doubt anyone would mistake me for a blonde!). I also did not inherit his high cholesterol, although my own dad did. In a final act of kindness, we later learned that before his death, he left instructions and money with some of his military contacts, and these contacts kept my uncle from Vietnam (my father would have missed a draft due to his age when the war ended, although instructions were in place for him, as well). He didn't know when or how, but he knew war would come again and he did everything in his power to keep his sons from it. Sometimes, when I think of how I almost joined ROTC for college, I think that it would have put me straight in Afghanistan or Iraq. I like to think that his spirit helped me make the decision not to join, a decision that, at the time, was very uncharacteristic of me.
My maternal grandfather disappeared from my mother's life when she was 2, leaving my 20 year old grandmother for a younger "woman" (I, however, think 15 hardly counts). I don't really talk (or think) about him. My grampa was my grandma's 3rd husband. He was shot and recieved a purple heart, and that is all anyone knows about his time in the service. My grandma possibly knows more, but not much. To me grampa was not a soldier, he was not a man who had taken human life. He was the man who smelled of tobacco and taught me much of what I know about fishing. He was the sweet man who sometimes would thrust his dentures at me and my cousins to elicit laughter or, in the case of one cousin, shrieks. He was the tall man who would carry me everywhere, even when I was getting a little big for it, giving me a view of the world that I would never otherwise have, being always of short stature. He was the man who would take me on long walks around their large, woody Upper Peninsula property and show me every bird's nest, filled with speckled eggs or small tweeting chicks. He was my partner in crime, smiling at me when I played on the wood pile, in the mud, or in my uncle's shop where he was constantly trying to convert junkers into functional cars, knowing my mother would object. He was the gentle carpenter who only ever yelled when we entered his woodshop, because he wasn't very tidy and had nails and saw blades all over. I remember all these wonderful things and think of the impossibility of him shooting Nazis in Europe. But it happened. I don't know what he saw that horrified him so much that he completely shut out that part of his life, but perhaps I can imagine.
So this memorial day, I'm not so much remembering the women and men who have died for our country; I'm more remembering those soldiers who lived on, but left a part of them behind. A part they chose never to touch again, a part they chose to let die, but to warn and protect future generations. Today my heart is with them.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Resentment
How can you love someone so completely, and be so perfect for one another, except in one, heartbreaking way? How does this happen?
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