2014: Unresolved

All that malarkey I spouted here about formalizing goals is a thing of the past.  I don’t think I made any resolutions for 2012 as I certainly couldn’t find reference to them in my FOUR posts in 2012.  Let’s just pretend that they morphed into 2013.

2013 Resolution Roundup

• Run a 5k – Mostly I just looked at this one and laughed.  Ambitious for me, yes. Actually doable?  No.  Off the list for good.
• Join the Circus – The closest I got to that was finding out my hairstylist knows a girl who does trapeze work.  Oh, and a Groupon for “circus arts” classes that were being offered only on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11:00 am.  Which is clearly a schedule designed for people who work at Whole Foods or Hula Hoop for a living.
• Write! – Seeing how my blog posts went from four to two in the last year, this one is a forfeit.
• Migrate to an Electronic Calendar – I did it!  Yawn.
• Go on a Buddhist Retreat – I found a new temple and went to visit and they were closed.  And, their hours don’t really sync with mine.  Sigh.

Behold, my list of “intentions” for 2014, first-world-problem-style:

• Design a better delivery system for getting skinny jeans onto freshly moisturized legs.
• Buy something other than golf-themed glitter bits stolen from the office for tooth fairy “dust.”
• Stop dispensing discipline to my children from the toilet.
• Develop a flash card system for my children with exciting new strings of curse words so they will know when Mommy is just being lazy or when she means business.
• Make a list of all the Swedish things I’m going to buy when the new IKEA comes to town.
• Stop noticing and scanning QR codes on my bananas.  Trust me, you do not want to get to this place in your life.

Moby Gong

I went to a Tibetan Bowl Sound Bath today.  I’m sure 98% of you have no idea what I just said.  Allow me to explain.  A lady plays a bunch of metal Tibetan bowls and a couple of gongs for like an hour while you lay there and enjoy the sound “bath.”  The particular gongs at today’s session were hand-hammered in India and tuned, get this, to the frequency of the planets Nibiru and Chiron.  These “planets” are newly discovered and not widely recognized by the scientific community as being legit.  So basically, it’s a $15 nap with music and a bunch of hippies.

About seven minutes in, the woman next to me started snoring.  Not just the soft snoring of someone in savasana at the end of yoga.  It was literally like sleeping next to a live whale.  On land.  One that was gasping, sputtering, honking, shuddering, wheezing and occasionally vocalizing.

Visions of brochures for sleep apnea fluttered beneath my eyelids while I struggled to make peace with this intrusion on my bath.  Just moments earlier, I happily moved away from the dude who smelled like cigarettes and pot to make way for his girlfriend and lodged myself next to the Whale-Woman, thinking “she looks less distracting.”  Little did I know, the universe was just fucking with me.

I tried to cover my right ear to take the edge off.  I rolled over to physically reject the sound.  Subsequently, my left arm, hip, leg, and foot fell asleep.  Then I remembered that body parts don’t have ears.  Well, except for ears. 

There was one point where I thought I would leave.  Just get up and go.  “Be BOLD, woman!” I told myself.  But then I remembered that I had paid $15.  I couldn’t just march up to the Tibetan money bowl and pluck my $15 out.  So I decided to suffer through it.  Kind of like my marriage.

I dug deep on the namastes, telling myself “we’re all interconnected…the divine in you is the same as the divine in her…compassion…love…surrender.”  Yet I couldn’t stop thinking about how she should really be propped up with a bolster and a block and perhaps enroll in a sleep clinic study.  I blessed and WELCOMED the sound of a barking dog, the wind chimes out the window, the train blaring by.  Anything that would help drown out the erratic, laborious sounds occurring 18 inches from my face.  How was SHE able to sleep through her own racket?

At the end, the woman playing the gongs from another planet asked if anyone fell asleep.  The entire room turned and looked at the Whale-Woman.  She blissfully smiled and shook her head no.  At that moment, I realized I had just paid $15 for blog content.  Namaste.

I am a Soap Whore and a Mermaid Died in My Bathtub

I love soap.  I go to the store for one thing and come out with soap.  Dr. Bronner’s is my favorite, if only because his labels are the manifesto of a raving lunatic.  The peppermint is worth every maniacal word.  Luckily my soap thing is not hard on the wallet like, say, a shoe fetish would be.  But it’s officially a vice.

It’s an easy vice to have as no harm is being done except exacerbating my dry skin problem and perhaps depleting the earth of its essential oils.  

Just as alcohol is linked to drug use, soap is inextricably and understandably linked to lotion.  Recently a friend who understands my dry skin woes bought me this lovely package filled with a seaweed bath salt “experience.”  I was excited at the prospect of temporarily alleviating the itching, the flaking, the scales, yes winter-y SCALES, on my skin.

I knew something was off when I read the directions: “empty contents of package in running water and swirl your hand around (doesn’t this sound dreamy?) until the water turns….light BROWN.”  Hm.  That doesn’t sound very pretty, but ok.

After emptying and swirling as instructed, I was suddenly overcome with the smell of a mermaid.  Not just any mermaid, but one who died, washed ashore, baked, and rotted in the sun for three days.  Sure, there was lavender in the package, but I quickly realized it was inserted to mask the smell of a spicy tuna roll that lived well past its expiration date.

I half expected sea monkeys to start hatching in my tub.

The smell was so overwhelming, the idea of actually putting my body in it and smelling like a mermaid corpse for the rest of the night was out of the question.  I quickly opened the window, emptied the tub and proceeded to wash the brown seaweed matter down the drain.  What was left I can only describe as the residue of a mermaid carcass that had been washed ashore and left to bake and rot in the sun for three days. 

It was a sweet gesture on my friend’s part, but little did they know they would unleash CSI: Underwater Zombie Kingdom in my tub.

I will stick to the coconut oil that gives me zits.  Surely there’s a soap for that.

2012 Year in Review

The WordPress helper monkeys just sent me a “year in review” infographic thingy.  It was very pretty and thoughtful.  They give you the option to post it for all to see.  I declined.  The most unsatisfying thing about my stats-at-a-glance is that I blogged four times in 2012.  FOUR.  F.O.U.R.  It sure felt like more than four.  I think I went to visit my safe deposit box more than that.

2012 was the year where my blogging buckled under The Pressure.  My god, the pressure!  It was just so much easier to burp out something short on Facebook and let it live, hang and die out there rather than froth it up into a full-on blog post.

A lot of important things happened in 2012 and I did a fair amount of writing, just not publicly.

So there.  2012 goes out with a whimper.  No resolutions on deck to up the ante for 2013.  Just this post and a big, fat “we’ll see.”  Cheers!

Whatever You Do, DON’T Google Camel Mating Rituals

Today at work we were talking about the dating terms “cougar” and “panther.” Apparently, there is some discrepancy as to the formal use of panther; it can sometimes apply to men, which none of us knew until we turned to the internet experts. Then there’s a puma, which is specifically linked to women age 30-39. So that once you hit 40, you’re a cougar. But only if you go for, according to Wikipedia, “significantly” younger men. It was all very confusing and limiting and demoralizing. I uncomfortably ended the conversation by declaring I was a camel.

Then I decided to beef up my match.com profile with the following:

• I make great scrambled eggs.
• I know just enough Star Wars and Lord of the Rings references to turn on every nerd within a 100-mile radius.
• I’m always one Lifetime movie away from bursting into tears.
• I’m fascinated by beekeeping.

That oughta turn things around pretty quickly.

Chicken Little in the Big Apple

Six days in New York City chewed me up and spit me out.  I was a newbie at the famed BlogHer conference where a person can feel like they are missing out even in the middle of it all.  Early on at the conference, I found myself feeling wholly insignificant.  My blog, my labor of love, my life, was being valued on the number of followers, facebook likes, and tweets.  There was one day I was so bloated  (for reasons I won’t disclose) that I had to unbutton my pants.  The irony was not lost on me that I was feeling both bloated AND insignificant.  How is that even possible? At BlogHer it is.

Don’t get me wrong, it was great spending a day with Stefanie Wilder-Taylor and hugging her at the end and telling her “I’m a big fan.”  No way did she throw my blogger card in her “stalker” pile.  I’m sure she has it propped up on her desk waiting for just the right moment to call me and tell me I’m brilliant and “let’s collaborate on a crazy book like Eat, Pray, Love, but more tragic and way more funny and with kids!”  She doesn’t want to jump the gun too early.  I wouldn’t either.  These ideas take time to develop.  Plus I imagine she’s working on finding me an agent and beginning a rough draft of the book proposal.

Outside of the conference, I came to the conclusion that New York is the city that never sleeps because everyone is too busy trying to get from Point A to Points B and C via a bus, a subway, a taxi, a car, or their feet.  The sheer density prohibits any of those methods getting you there quickly.  It’s surprising how “hey, let’s roll into the city for a quick bite” turns into a five-hour sweat slog.  I stayed with a friend in Jersey City so that made the “quick jaunt” even longer.  Most days I was out there like Chicken Little for 12 or 13 hours at the mercy of the MTA and NJT.  It made me miss my car.

Other observations:

• People always say New-Yorkers are rude.  I never encountered that.  They’re all just in a big, fat hurry and don’t have time to show you where the Empire State Building is even when you’re standing right in front of it.
• Everyone smokes!  I kept looking around wide-eyed like Ellie Mae saying, “people still smoke??”
• How can these young female students just casually stroll on and off subways?  There are muggers EVERYWHERE ready to apple-pick or roll you.
• Everyone also drinks. I decided it’s because no one wants to go home to their tiny little hovel homes.
• The aforementioned density caused me, after three days, to crave WIDE! OPEN! SPACES!  And air.  Just plain, empty air that didn’t smell like people and dirt.  The LYSOL people at the vendor section of the conference were giving out free bottles of their latest concoction.  I almost used it as a body wash right then and there.  A simple Silkwood shower did the trick when I got home.

All in all, I found it to be quite an optimistic city.  You don’t have to look far to realize things could be much worse.  Like the guy in his underwear sleeping on a pile of newspapers in the subway station while throngs of people stepped over him.  My friend was more than happy to point that out.  So, thank you BlogHer, (and said friend) for showing me a hell of a time.

Did You Get A Cat? No, That’s Just My Hair On The Floor.

OMIGOD. Have I really not posted in six months? Yes. That’s correct. And I’m well aware of it.  Just to keep my posse of 7ish readers interested, I’ve declared the following:

2010: The Year I Started Wearing More Concealer

2011: The Year of the Supplement

2012: The Year My Hair Started Falling Out

Note to self: do not Google “[extensive list of supplements] and hair loss.” You will make things much, much worse. And then you will lose more hair.

Hopefully I won’t be the only bi-annual blogger at this conference in four weeks.

The Odyssey

Yes, I have one.  Many do.  But, I have friends who actually act surprised when I mention him.  “Oh, you have a brother?  Why do I not know this?”

We aren’t that close.  We were close growing up being only two or so years apart, but drifted after leaving home and stayed that way for a small handful of silly reasons and a dash of laziness and complacency on both our parts.  Put it this way, when we were suddenly thrust into the same car to drive to Tennessee for our Aunt’s funeral, I had to Mapquest directions to his house.

I like him.  He’s kind and funny and a hard worker and a seemingly great husband and father.  We just don’t call or text or facebook or hang out except for the random holiday at our parents’ house.  We mean well.  We just get all hung up in our stuff.

Then this golden opportunity appeared under the cloak of grief.  Road Trip.  What better way to renew our sibling groove than to spend 24 hours in a car together?  Just like old times.  This could work or it could be, inappropriately, a nail in the coffin of our relationship.

In those 24 hours, we braved four Cracker Barrels all piping in the most dreadful contemporary Christian music, talked about poop, kids, ex-husbands (mine), more kids, divorces (mine), the genealogical roots of our family’s dysfunction, how difficult it is to be gluten-free when traveling, the crazy family dynamic currently in play, the death of our Aunt, and countless other topics.

We were reminded that in The Land of Drawl people talk differently, move slowly, and drive even slower.  Even the toilets flush slowly.  We listened to the housekeeping department at the hotel discuss a missing BYE-BUHL from a room.  (Translation: Bible)  They were also discussing some missing hangers.  “I need one like iss, not one like at.”  The kind of stuff that will make you pause.  Even if it’s simply from realizing that if we had never moved, we’d talk like that too.  Only in east Tennessee can someone visiting from Missouri seem like a total Yankee.

The trip was awesome.  No awkward silences.  He let me play DJ and even enjoyed some of the music.  We reminisced when he busted out his 80’s playlist.  We commented that apparently the right lane is now called the texting lane.  I learned that as far as organs transplants go, kidneys are the volume leader.  According to my brother, the Boy Scouts of America have settled for celebrating mediocrity, but he is working as a troop leader to keep the tradition alive and to keep pumping Eagle Scouts into society.

When the conversation waned and I got tired, he let me sleep.  When we ran out of available subjects and I started asking existential questions like, “Why are all barns red?”  He actually knew the answer.  It has something to do with iron oxide.

When he got tired, I let him sleep even though I was nervous about being left totally in charge.  When he felt like dorking out on Star Wars, I let him and I joined in the nerd fest.  Did you know the guy who acted in the fight scenes as Darth Vader died the day before we left?  I did.  And we bonded.

We jointly agreed to blow off part of a family thing so I could go shoot photos and he was happy to be the driver of the getaway car when I wanted to sneak around a fence into a chemical plant for a great shot.

After the trip, we fist-bumped and I burned him some CDs.  And I realized that I always have a go-to when the chips are down or if I need to free my leg from a bear trap.  For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother.

My Twelve Days of Christmas

1. A sour sense of consumerism and greed.
2. A lack of work ethic when it comes to wrapping gifts.  Tissue + bag = done.
3. OCD overdrive.
4. A wish, a hope, a dream.
5. Constipation.
6. Overdressed, sweaty, sticky children.
7. Underwhelming.
8. A trip to Urgent Care/Walgreens Take Care Clinic for at least one of us.
9. Waking up alone with zero presents with my name under the tree  because my kids are too young to buy me stuff.
10. Extra Xanax.
11. Disgust over the myriad ways Santa is depicted on everyday household items.
12. A distant bittersweet feeling I can’t quite put my finger on. So, let’s celebrate by drinking eggs!

Man, I’m a bummer.  ‘Tis the season!

Day 30: Craigslist is the New Therapy

Let’s talk about Craigslist.  If someone were watching me, they would see me shedding items from my life like body parts all over town.  It’s not just a handy service for getting rid of stuff I no longer need in my house, but it’s a great way to give an overdue emotional release a deadline.

I am amazed at how attached I’ve become to “stuff.”  Don’t get the wrong idea.  I’m NOT a hoarder.  I am a total pitcher.  But what else can you do with a Graco Metrolite Travel System with two (yes, two!) car seat bases?  Owner’s manual included!

Post-divorce, I have sold my wedding crystal in the parking lot of Pei Wei, my wedding china in the parking lot of Babies ‘R Us 25 miles out of my way, my godforsaken child-RV disguised as a double stroller in the parking lot of a Drury Inn, my high chair at Crazy Bowls.  I forgot what I sold in the parking lot of Steak n’ Shake, but it felt good, I’m sure of it.

Yes, there is some driving and sketchy parking lot meetings, but unlike Aaron Ralston in 127 Hours, I always tell someone where I’m going before a meet up.  Just in case I get stuffed in someone’s trunk, I’ve at least told my mom I love her one last time.

By far the most moving was my breast pump in a Kohl’s parking lot.  That warhorse got me through two kids, two jobs, blurring the line between work and home and intensely private bodily fluids.  Thankfully in both instances, I had an office with a door that locked.  That thing saved my ass on many occasions.  I’ve pumped at airports, conference centers, hotels, the local history museum, my in-laws bathroom, my kitchen.  I wasn’t just saying goodbye to my pump, but to a phase in my life where I will never be again — where my body will never be again.  Unless I take up wet-nursing (doubtful and antiquated.)  But I certainly remember that experience in every cell.  And, that’s plenty.

It’s a liberating feeling.  Ridding myself of that which no longer serves me, but may serve someone else in a better way.  Wish I could tell you I did something meaningful with the cash.   On what did I spend the $30, $50, $75 bucks?  I have no idea.  Something much less useful, I’m sure.  But mostly it was a way for me to take the emotion I put into certain physical objects and simply Let. It. Go.  My marriage, my life I thought I had, expectations for big dinners on fine china that never happened, the memories of how small my children once were and the contraptions they no longer need.  It’s become a very meaningful process for me.  Who knew Old Navy and the like would play witness to my inner transformation.