You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October, 2007.
I can explain. I know the two really have nothing to do with the other, but Wednesday, in my world, they did.
A few weeks ago, after coming home from work, I caught the early morning rerun of Conan. He had Dita Von Teese on his show. I don’t too much about her, except she’s a burlesque performer (which I had no clue until hearing about her that that was still around), she’s a MAC spokesmodel, and she was crazy enough to marry Marilyn Manson (who’s pictures always scare the Dickens out of me). At any rate, watching her interview actually made me like her a little bit. There’s just something about her.
When you look real up close, she’s really not drop dead gorgeous or anything. She’s actually pretty average looking. But it’s her uniqueness or her being comfortable with who she is (and probably the lack of clothing in her performances) that makes her stand out—and the fact that she wears a garter belt.
Could I ever be so bold? Why the heck not!
Wednesday morning as I peered into the depths of my closet trying to figure out what to wear, my eyes were drawn to one of my favorite dresses. It’s a dress I love because I always get compliments in it, and I always feel pretty in it. So I wore it…with a particularly pretty set of undergarments (I know, TMI, I’m sure, but stay with me on this).
It’s funny how sometimes the simplest things can make you feel pretty. I remember a few months ago, when I was feeling so unpretty, undesirable, insecure about my big move, and just plain icky. One of my dear friends took me shopping and encouraged me to buy several pretty things and a handful of cutesy underwear.
“What’s the point?” I remember asking her. “It’s not like anyone’s going to be seeing it anytime soon.”
But, she assured me, I would see myself in it.
Beyond underwear, she made me realize that I had so stop dressing to impress others. I needed to work on always putting my best foot forward for myself. I do, need to start treating me a whole lot better.
So, on Wednesday, I totally went all out and looked beyond hot, if I must say so, just to go and sit at a desk all night digging in to the day’s news. Thongs, hot dress, to-die-for red shoes, purse, makeup, hair and all. It felt great.
As I sat in the corner of Panera looking hot for no one, I noticed a couple not too far away from me. The man was reading a copy of Link (only the coolest newspaper on the planet)! Yes!! I kept watching to see what articles he’d stop on. Would he be drawn by Ernie’s wonderfully designed Southside doubletruck? He was. Would the articles I picked to go in the news section fascinate him? They did. And then as he was flipping through the rest, stopping first on sports, of course, his wife’s attention was caught by the Life front.
“See,” she told him. “Everything’s pink.” It was an article about all of the different pink products you can buy this month because of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. After making him pause on the page for a few moments, she picked up her cell phone.
I would have stopped watching these people normally at this point, except, once I realized the woman was calling her doctor, I was intrigued.
Apparently, the woman was scheduling an appointment for going in for some kind of testing and discussing with the doctor when she was going to begin chemotherapy. As I kept listening (well, she was also talking really loud, so it was kind of hard to ignore her), she was telling the doctor all about how she’s had patients go through chemo and cancer treatments and she knew all about what to expect and how some people go through depression. She was a therapist.
After remaining calm all throughout the phone conversation, I watched as she explained to her husband all about having to have a hysterectomy or something and how her hair was going to fall out. She was extremely calm and in good spirits. As she continued eating her soup, just like everyone else that was eating in the restaurant, she nodded, smiled, and even laughed.
I wanted to cry, yet she was far from tears.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” I heard her tell her husband at one point.
Even in the face of something so serious, this stranger exuded such confidence.
While I know I was the hottest thing in there, in that afternoon, she was the most beautiful!
There’s something wrong with my line (anyone? vintage New Edition!!), or rather, something unfortunately attractive about my new home number.
This morning when I got home from work, I had three new phone messages. The only thing was none of them were for me, or where from people I’d want to talk to. Today’s messages were from some financial group, an automated system that, if only I had answered and followed the instructions, would give me the names and locations of registered sex offenders in my area, and a recording that tells me to press one for English and numero dos para espanol (which I get at least three times a day, but have yet to be home to answer), which I finally called and learn was coming from some inmate. (If this isn’t amusing enough for you, go ahead and edit this comma-filled run-on.)
Actually learning that some inmates are trying to contact me is rather annoying (especially since I haven’t been home to put a stop to the calls), yet it amuses me.
I remember the first call I ever got from an inmate. It was my very first week of college. I was so freaked out. I cried and ran to my dorm director pleading that my phone number be changed before someone got paroled and came after me.
Now I only look at it as an inconvenience. I’ve come a long way, baby!
Maybe it was on “L.A. Law,” the first law show I remember watching every Thursday night before primetime television was inundated with law dramas. You know, back in the day when Harry Hamlin was considered a hottie and not the dually annoying male duplicate of his wife. (Am I the only one who thinks he and Lisa Rinna look more like twins than husband and wife?)
At any rate, I remember watching an episode where some woman got away with murder pleading insanity or something due to PMS. Such an amazing defense, I’m sure, has been repeated at least one time or another on “Ally McBeal” (if you loved that show, you totally have to check out “Boston Legal”).
So, I wondered if this has ever truely happened. Apparently, in the UK in R v. Craddock (1980). Craddock was a barmaid, who was charged with murdering a co-worker. Seriously. Check it out at http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/proceedings/16/Easteal2.pdf.
So, if PMS can justifiably be used in a murder case, then it can definitely be used to explain my bipolar episodes this week. My emotions have been all over the place.
I started out earlier this week wanting to do what I could for my community, my state, and the whole darn South. After hearing about how much of a drought we’ve been in and actually hearing the weatherman say he was hoping the clouds in the sky would bring rain, I went out and washed my car. The way my luck always seems to go, I was certain we’d get a downpour. It didn’t work. But I did find a charming farmstand just around the corner from my apartment complex, a park, a new gas station (with a crappy car wash), a Hardee’s, and a new grocery store. So, nevertheless, eventhough it didn’t rain, I was productive. And my car is already again covered in pine needles and bird poop.
So after my fits of wanting help the world (if you’d call them that), I began to get frustrated. Stress from work and co-worker paranoia began to take over my hormonally imbalanced mind. Then I just began to question what I’m doing with my life. Where am I going? Do ya know (and I can totally hear Diana Ross singing in my head)?
Then the purging came. I totally went to battle with every bad thought entering my body and began kicking some negative butt! And somehow that brought me to the list of toxic people and relationships in my life. One must purge such things from life far more frequently than engaging in spring cleaning.
And as the tears came, I came to the realization that I don’t deserve to be hurt. No one does. (Criminals and evil people, yes, should be punished and held accountable for what they do, but no one should set out to hurt someone. Does that make any sense?) And if I allow people to stay in my life who refuse to take responsibility for being hurtful, that’s almost the same as saying I deserve to be hurt and taking ownership of such hurtful things. I refuse.
So where does that leave me now?
With movie magic. After a fun-filled day of organizing and banging nails and drilling holes, I treated myself to what I consider a good movie: “Stranger Than Fiction.” Have you seen it? If not, I highly recommend it. But then again, I recommend the movie “S1mone,” which most people consider a totally flop. But this movie, like that one, made me think a lot. They’re the both the product of high concepts. Hmm and they both, like magic, have inspired me to go pour a glass of wine a flesh out some intoxicating plots and richly layered characters.
Until next time: wine, writing, and the Suffolk Peanut Festival (Seriously)!
I used to think he was really cool and deep, well in my 21-year-old mind he was way deep. I’d listen to his music and want to adopt his simple lifestyle. (But with all the loot he was making, was it really simple?)
Scanning through radio stations on my drive home tonight, I tried to think myself out of a pity party. Then Moby came on and I began wondering about him. Remembering I was in my senior year in college the last time he had a hit, I wondered how much he’s changed since then. How much have I changed?
Then, after Moby came my second helping this week of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch (the same song came on just yesterday on XM Radio at work). Seriously. I know I was in middle school with foot-high bangs and baggy clothes, South Jersey–style. I know I’m not the same person I was then. I’ve really changed.
Change is inevitable. And real change, it seems—even when it’s for the best—always seems to hurt.
One of my friends recently wrote about her semester thus far at a new school. She said it has been really tough for her, but it has also been such a blessing in that she’s seen herself changing for the better.
I could say the same has been happening for me, I hope.
“Do you see him?” I overheard a woman ask her young son Friday night as I joined a group of people gathered at the sandy boardwalk edge watching the red fire ball rise over the black ripples of the Atlantic.
It was absolutely gorgeous. I tried to take a photo, but, having never read the camera instructions, I couldn’t figure out how to turn off my flash. And as I continued to gaze, I couldn’t make out the man in the moon.
I never could. As a child, who took everything very literally, I’d always squint in attempts to catch a glance of the man. Was it Neil Armstrong, the astronaut I learned about in school? Was he still walking around up there?
After my great uncle died, I was convinced he was the man in the moon. So, was the moon some kind of rest stop before getting to heaven for men? Where did women go?
Once I got older, I associated the man in the moon with the Reese Witherspoon, Jeremy (or is it Jason?) London (one twin is missing a toe, but I never can remember which one it is and I don’t remember seeing toes in the film) movie by the same name. That was one of the first movies I ever cried over. So I never look for the man in the moon.
What I did look for were the sand castles. There was to be a contest for them on Sunday and I knew they had to have started building them already.
“Are those people down there?” I pointed farther down the shore to one of my three co-workers I was out with (we were out for the Neptune Festival, by the way). “Or are those just trashcans?”
Doug laughed and assured me that I would never live that comment down. There were no people farther down. They were, indeed, trashcans.
Although we never found the trashcans, the evening was a success. I got to know some of my co-workers a little better and beat them in one of our games of Scrabble. Yeay!
And yeay to shopping, which I did the next afternoon with yet another co-worker and her friend and her friend’s daughter. While spending money I don’t necessarily have probably wasn’t the best thing, the highlight of the day came from Maya, 8, who informed me that everything I purchased was “ugly.”
