Thanksgiving

I am not a mean or ungrateful person, and I love celebrations, but holidays and some of their traditions bring out the very vocal critic in me. On the morning after our national celebration of thanks, I'd like to have a good long rant!

1) As I rode south in the back seat of my mother's Subaru Forrester, (see #2) we passed amid the rape and pillage of the countryside where I grew up. Amid the open wounds of earth one can note that some of this land had been sacrificed for the very noble cause of...a Lexus dealership. It has pissed me off since I first spotted that snooty sign saying "future home of Lexus of Chester Springs". So as we passed I said " I just want to bomb that place! Bomb! Bomb! Bomb!" My mother was alarmed as her literal imagination had me torching the structure, being hauled off the the slammer and joining a prison gang. Then my Dad said of the new Catholic church across the street " I'd like to bomb their parking lot! Do you realize how much electricity all those lights use when they're left of all night long!" My mother was still concerned, but I explained that certain words really satisfy and put to rest our feelings of anger and powerlessness and bomb is a great one! Soon bombing things had become part of the vernacular of the journey.

2) The stupid back seat! Literally and figuratively! How do I hate it? Let me count the ways! When I ride in the back seat I feel second class, like I'm still a child living in a 31 year old body that really doesn't fit in that stupid seat. My long legs roam the empty wasteland for a comfortable resting place in vain. If I pay the slightest visual attention to anything inside the car I will be nauseous for the rest of the day. I have to do a gymnastic routine to get the hell out of that seat when we reach a destination. I'm either going to design a car with 3 front seats or hire someone to sit back there with me and keep me company!

3) The fate of the single on Thanksgiving is, I have always felt, to go wherever their parents go and act grateful that anyone is willing to have them at their table at all. I have realized that this is not so! I can actually do whatever I want! My favorite thanksgivings ever were as follows: a) The one at Emerson College in England where all the american students cooked the whole shebang for the rest of the college (from 31 different countries). My mother and sister were visiting at the time, but everyone else was related not by blood but by love, which carries none of the burdens of normal family. b) The one I spent by myself. This may seem pathetic, but I was in charge of the entire day, I cooked everything with care and joy (obviously I couldn't eat a whole turkey, so I made a chicken), listened to music while I worked, ate at my own pace and I thoroughly enjoyed it all. Next year I will be arranging something non-traditional and stupendous! Stay tuned!

Having got rid of all that crap, I must include the things that I am thankful for and indeed I am thankful for them every day.
I am surrounded by plenty and have never had to go without what was truly important, be it food, shelter, education or love. The family with which I felt resigned to spend the holiday is actually a welcoming, kind, interesting, and unique bunch of people and I know I could hardly do better! My parents and indeed my whole family are very open, accepting people and have never pressured me about how little money I make or my lack of significant other and it is only myself who is dissatisfied with these states. I am grateful to the universe for the opportunities it constantly places at my feet and for the exciting unknown that is my life in the future!

Being Me

I went to a beautiful, fabulous, super-fun wedding last night! The bride looked like an old timey movie star, the groom virtually sobbed out his vows, the two families were so much fun and enjoyed themselves and eachother to the fullest! Love was in the air, and not in the way that has bridesmaids and ushers doing it in the janitor's closet. Everyone danced their hearts out! Everyone felt they had found themselves "in the valley of love and delight". It was the best night of all our lives!
I got ready for the big event at my sister's house with our dear friend who is like an adopted sister. When the primping frenzy had calmed, we saw we were clearly all working with the same color palette, but we took a moment to notice how each of us has a distinct look that reflects our character.
My sister we call the fancy lady - she's married, financially stable and as of yesterday, beginning to show her 4 month pregnancy. She wore a simple black dress with beautiful, quality, grown up dress shoes. She was acessorized by small but elegant diamonds.
My friend is the vintage eclectic. She too sported a little black dress. It had a modest neckline and hem and her shoulders were covered by a vintage-looking teal sweater in a bolero-esque style. She was wearing borrowed shoes because for as long as I've known her she has never owned "the right shoes" for a dress-up event. She topped it with a plaid wool vintage coat with a hood that she bought in San Francisco.
I must just make peace with this...I will never be the kind of elegant I see in other people. I wore black rayon dress pants with a black knit top with a ruched v-neck and flirty cap sleeves topped by a sequined, grey cardigan sweater. I had imagined I could wear the heels I had bought at Kohls for $13 for the wedding I'm in next weekend, but I got the distinct feeling when I tottered into them that this would end with me eating the sidewalk. My sister's old high heeled ankle boots saved the day and though many people would have been mortified to go to a wedding reception dressed like this, it was me ready for a party. I have quarrelsome feet and this is the truth of being me.

The Gas Tank Is Half Full

I'd like us to all take a pause for optimism! Today I paid $2.11 per gallon to fill my car with gasoline! Not to long ago, every media outlet you turned to was reporting the shocking rise in gas prices. Some people were mad at the middle east, some people were mad at GWB, but we were united in our anger at having to pay for the luxury of driving ourselves wherever we liked in whatever monstrosity we wanted to drive. I have mixed feeling on the issue: I like cheap as much as the next guy, and I have an income that hovers around the poverty line, but at the price that we are accustomed to paying for gas, we treat it like water. It is in fact a limited resource with pollutant after-effects when used to fuel an engine. So I'm all for the European method of charging an arm and a leg for gas and giving people excellent public transportation options. But that is not why our prices went up, so I am thrilled that to sing the praises of the Wawa in Paoli! Long live the bargain! Why aren't we hearing about this on the news? Because happiness doesn't sell. We are more use to big business and the government when we are scared and desperate. Buck the system by filling up on cheap gas and smiling all day long!

The I-76 Music Awards

On my hour-long drive home, having spent the day with children from 8 - 13 years old, I need to ROCK OUT! Luckily so does the rest of America's work force! On my way home today, through the molasses-in-January traffic of the greater Philadelphia area, I surfed my way around the stations of my cranked-up radio, partaking of the ample offerings of TGIF-themed shows. I feel that driving and listening (often accompanied by singing and 'dancing') alone do not make the time pass fast enough, so I began to imagine what awards I would give songs if this were a competition. The following are the results of the private ceremony held earlier in my vehicle. The content does not reflect all-time favorites, merely the best chosen from today's radio offerings.

Most fun to crank up and wail to: Angel by Aerosmith
runner up: She's so High by Tal Bachman (How can it be that I have never heard this name until I just now looked it up?)

Most vivid feeling that I was back in junior high: Take me home tonight by Eddie Money

Best car-dancing number: Love Shack by The B52's

Most repetative and yet fun-to-sing-along-with chorus: You shook me all night long by AC/DC

Most likely to induce vommiting: Cruisin Together as sung by Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis

Guilty pleasure: Everything I do (I do it for you) by Brian Adams (My overall movie star flame in high school years was Kevin Costner. Odd choice, I admit, but when Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves came out, I was in heaven! Not only was my hunky dreamboat on the big screen in period costume (more or less), but the theme song was all over the airwaves AND there was Prince of Thieves cereal; tiny, sugar-coated, crunchy arrows. I was and still am, a sucker for the complete marketing package!)

May I Take Your Order?

I am scared of menus. If it is posted on the wall I am so near sighted that I have to belly up to the counter to see what it says and then the person behind the counter thinks I'm ready to order, making me feel like I should be ready to order...too much stress for a stand-up meal! Sitting down with the menu in my own hands at least I can see it, but it comes down to this: I don't know what I want, or more precisely, there are too many voices in my head and I can't hear my stomach!
Voice 1: You have a sensitive constitution! You shouldn't have sugar, or wheat, or dairy that isn't organic, or peanuts, or black pepper, or anything grown in another time zone, or orange food in combination with purple food!
Voice 2: You know, your pants are not fitting the way they used to and you don't want to be old and alone and fat, do you?
Voice 3: What will these people think of you! Your eating an entire bag of m&m's by yourself! At a movie by yourself!
So I'm on a new campaign to order what I want and eat what I want and not care what people think and buy new pants if I need to. Because what am I doing when I get a hot chocolate and malt balls after school? I'm adding sweetness to my life in the only way I know how to right now! And I'm living my childhood dream! Who's with me?

Boys to Men

My friend Jamie used to say she'd be sad to see me in a stable relationship because my male misadventures were my best source of comic material. I don't know if she put a curse on me or what but I find that not only am I miles away from stability, I actually question whether or not it exists. I have several married friends and I realize that I don't really understand their lives! What on earth would it be like to be so sure of your mutual feelings that you decided together to never hereafter be solo acts? I have definitely been sure that I had met the most fun, fabulous, beautiful person I was ever going to meet and would have gladly given up my life as I knew it and followed them across the globe. In fact I pretty much did that! But it didn't surprise me when it ended. Ends are something I know about. Ending feels familliar.

So yesterday I ran almost ran into a friend-turned-lover-turned-bastard in the candy aisle of the grocery store and before I had to pretend not to be pissed at him, I turned tail and headed for customer service to redeem the $3.36 that I had just poured in penny, nickel and dime form into the coinstar machine (my wallet had been getting heavy). Additionally he had called last week to invite me to a party last night and I had duly ignored him and was pretty sure I didn't want to go. My instinctual reaction in the grocery store confirmed that I didn't want to be there. What did he do that was so awful? Well nothing really! He just chose some other girl over me. But I've had a standing crush on him since junior high and the reality that that's all it will ever be has recently come to light. What's so fantastic about him? Well, he's beautiful and funny and a talented artist and he's known me forever so I don't have to explain myself to him, which is a task I loathe and never feel I do adequately. On the reality end of things we really have no common interests besides eachothers bodies, and those are goin' down hill pretty quick, so its not hard to see how little of a future we have. But it's never easy to be told that somebody enjoys sleeping with you, wants to be sure you're around for them until they are 90, but would rather struggle through life with someone else as their 2nd in command. So I'm gonna be pissed for a while and someday I'm sure we'll laugh about it together...maybe when we're 90.

But who can be glum when a different guy, who has clearly stated that he respects me too much to be in a romantic relationship with me, but deeply values a long and therapeutic monthly phone call, has vaguely suggested that he might call some Sunday and want to have lunch while he's in the neighborhood! Today is Sunday! Not to mention that the ex-lover for whom I still carry a sizable torch will be coming through town next weekend with his true love, the choral music of the Republic of Georgia! Put on a little lip gloss and go gather some material!

Seriously, Jamie! Lift the curse already!

Prized Posessions

I am reading "The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova. It's great storytelling, however it is about vampires and my roomates were not home last night so I had to choose between lying awake with my heart hammering it's way out of my chest, or sleeping with the light on...I chose the wimpy route. I was awakened this morning bright and early, when all thev vampires were safely back in their coffins, by the rhythmic scraping sound of a cement mixer...the neighbors are putting in a pool.

I have long been compiling a mental list of my most prized posessions at the top of which has always been my bathtub (not the one that was being re-caulked). I once read about a woman who designed an outdoor tub space as an escape for herself and therafter began my search for a claw-foot destined for a similar fate. I found my beloved at a great little unpretentious antique place. I had two little girls with me. I used to babysit for them and had just taken them out for hot chocolate. Their presence made the event even more special. So we loaded the tub into my dad's boat-like buick stationwagon and headed for home. The tub was soon installed in my parents' back yard (I did not at the time have a yard or even a home, of my own), behind a low stone wall in a grove of young-ish trees. We ran a hose fron the utility room sink to the tub for warm water. Although we only use once or twice a year if we're lucky, it remains my very favorite thing and my number one prized posession!

Other Prized posessions include:

2. My tent and its acoutrements
3. My vintage pancake griddle/waffle iron (thanks, Marisa!)

More to follow...

Opening Credits

The very first thing I must share with the world through this blog is that I cannot take credit for its brilliant name. All the credit goes to singer/songwriter John Mayer. It describes my sentiments perfectly, but he came up with the words.

The essence of what burns in me and needs sharing is how hard it is to live without answers, without certainty, in the moment which is always in the process of going, how beautiful it is when you occasionally feel like the moment you're in is the right one, and how hilarious it is to be alive, in a body, constantly doing silly things in front of other bodies or witnessing other bodies do silly things.

Today is an unseasonably warm, sunny, perfect day where I live in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I have a treasured day off from my work and the house to myself (except for my friend Chris, the hero who is currently finishing the re-caulking of the tub, a project that has had me crossing the street everyday for a week and a half in sweats with a backpack of toiletries to shower at my roommate's parents' place). I slept in and woke with the very rare inspiration to exercise. After traumatizing my muscles, I made the trek to the big house for a hose-off, came back and put a load of wash in (more later on the simple delights of laundry), and decided that today was the day I start a blog.

By this time you will have noticed that if run-on sentences are a pet peeve of yours, you may not be able to visit me again. If you have a tolerance for unconventional grammar, an equal hunger for the profound and the frivolous, and just feel better knowing that you're not the only one who struggles, then I hope you'll be a frequent guest for tea and cookies, so to speak.