Category: A Day in the Life

A Day in the Life, Explaining the Strange Behavior, Family

Teen Angst

the outside lane

You know, there are a thousand little indignities suffered by teens every day.  It is a testament to the will to survive that so many of them DO make it to graduate from high school.  They deserve more than diplomas.  They deserve medals.

I don’t know what made me think of it, but I remembered this horrible span of about 6 weeks out of my Senior year (during which I hid in various places around the school–or off campus, but you didn’t just see that, Dad–during the lunch hour because I was dodging the well-orchestrated vendetta of a boy I had dated briefly.) and thought, “Not for the faint of heart.”  Teenagers are such twits.  I was a twit anyway.

I’ve said before that whenever I run into someone I knew between ages 15 and 23, I feel like the first thing I need to do is apologize for having been that age.  I was awfully sanctimonious and eye-rolly.  How do high school and undergraduate professors manage all those horrible children?

(Side note, has anyone else ever noticed that the guitar riff from Under my Thumb sounds a lot like the bassline to Bang a Gong?  That would make a great mash-up.  Someone do this for me, please.)

A friend of mine was talking about one of her teenaged rituals of watching a specific video documentary every day, and said this: “[It] would make me cry sometimes.  It was just so intense and pure and even though I couldn’t really process it with [my] little brain, I knew in my bones that was what life was really about: getting out there and doing something.  So I’d just cry [because] I didn’t know what else to do as a teenage girl.”

I think that sums up the teenage experience beautifully.  These kids know in their bones that there is a life out there for them, but the slow reveal of adventure and adulthood is always just beyond their grasp.  It is frustrating, and it is a deep, pure anguish of desire–they can’t put their hands on it, and they can’t quite understand what it is they are trying to grab hold of.  So they act like teenagers.  What else is there for them to do?

1989. Boom Pa and me. I was a teenaged turkey.
A Day in the Life, Friends of Mine, GNO

Mother, Monet I?

the outside lane

I kept seeing photos of friends at corporate team-building painting parties, and I was so jealous!  So, I decided to find one of these painting party places and organize an adventure.  For my October GNO, I invited about a thousand people to come along to Painting With a Twist in Dallas to paint a scene from Monet’s Venice.  We would be doing an impression of the great Impressionist himself.  Fun!

Painting with a Twist is BYOB, so I bought a massive bottle of Lambrusco and a couple of bags of Ghirardelli chocolates to share, and picked up a Cosmopolitan magazine because the cover looked like hilarious amounts of fun, and off I went.

 

 

Me, all smocked up, showing off the femur-length bottle of wine I brought. It’s fancy. You can find the Reunite Lambrusco served in fine establishments, such as the Olive Garden.

At Painting With a Twist, you walk in to find your place set up with your canvas on an easel, your paint and paintbrushes waiting for you, and a super friendly, super helpful, super supportive staff there to walk you along from blank canvas and your terrified googly eyes, to a masterpiece and face shining with pride (or too much wine.)  Our team was Victoria, who guided us through the painting process, and Amber, who walked among us offering encouragement, tips, and clean-up supplies for those of us who needed them.  (I only dropped one paintbrush full of paint on the floor, narrowly missing Karen’s purse.)

You come to paint, and the shop prepares. That’s my sweet friend Amy peeking out from between blank canvasses there.

 

If you are intimidated by the blank page, I think this is a great way to overcome the fear of the empty and start making art.  You’re surrounded by friends (or just friendly people, as the come-alone-guy who sat to my left discovered–he drank a LOT of my wine) and support, and fun outweighs the fear of failure.

What’s more fun than getting a little dirty with your favorite friends? Especially when you don’t have to think about the clean-up!

 

We all ended up having a terrific time, and produced varying likenesses of Monet’s work.  But I must emphasize that it was the fun that made this $45 of worthwhile.  I will definitely be going again.

Karen, Leslieann, Amy and I all had a great time. I love how different our paintings are, when we were all following the exact same instructions.

 

Our instructor had a lot of suggestions for what to do with our finished work:  In-Law Christmas present, White Elephant Exchange, Bathroom Art.  Thor claimed mine, but said he’d like to put it in his closet.  Ha!

My masterpiece resides in Thor’s closet. Facing the wall. I think he was taking one for the team by claiming it, and he knew exactly where to put it.

 

 

A Day in the Life

Lane BeGone

the outside lane

I have cartridge toner under my fingernails, and it looks like I’ve been digging potatoes out of the earth with nothing but my gnarled claws, but my hair looks nice, so it balances?  No.  Dirty fingernails are my pet peeve.  Listen, my dad works on cars all the time.  His fingernails?  Clean.  It can be done.  I recoil from dirty fingernails.  Imagine how hard it was for me to watch the Lord of the Rings movies.

Speaking of recoiling…

I was in a seminar recently, and one of the men seated next to me was visibly uncomfortable being there.  Not “there” in the classroom, but “there” beside me.  My sense of humor was repellent to him.  At first it was funny that he found me so unfunny, then it hurt my feelings, then it was funny again, and I honestly felt sorry for him having to sit there.  So, I just concentrated on writing down my witty observations in the margins of my notebook, rather than sharing them aloud.  I’ve had to sit beside people who made me feel like I was biting down on a raw nerve before.  I know how that feels.  [He was a very, very nice man, by the way.]

Karen pointed out that given how much unwanted attention I attract, he must seem like a vacation.  Funnily enough, that was true-ish.  Of course I’d like for everyone to like me, and of course I’d like for everyone to find my asides as amusing as I do, but we’ve agreed that even though all art is art, we don’t necessarily want all art hanging in our living rooms, yes?  And, since my sense of humor leans to Soup Cans and Bowler Hats, I can’t expect leanings toward the Coronation of Napoleon to laugh along.

Ironically, the seminar was about how to manage your interpersonal relationships, and how to style your communication to meet other people’s needs.  I’ve had this class before, which is how I knew to stop talking to the poor captive at my elbow altogether.

As usual, I ended up in the Personality Type group with the smallest number of people.  All the other tables were full and bustling.  My table, which appeared to be made up of three introverts-socialized-to-be-extroverts, reverted to happy, independent silence when the group work was introduced.  Note to seminar people:  Introverts are exhausted by group work, so when you leave them alone together, they will sit happily, side-by-side without ever speaking, doing the work individually.  Then, when it is time to present, they will look at each other, and will communicate a decision on which of them will speak, using their eyebrows as semaphore.

This particular seminar types you in two ways.  A month ahead of the class, you send out a survey to a minimum of 5 people, who score you out on how you function socially based on your control or expression of emotion, whether or not you communicate by asking or telling, and whether or not you appear to tend to the alleviation of your own tension, or to the tension of others.  The first two sections give you your personality/communication type.  The last gives you your versatility.  You also take the survey, and when you get your results, you see where you scored yourself, versus where others scored you.

What you want is to see that you score yourself near to where others score you.  This shows that you have a realistic grasp of yourself.  I, apparently, have as much social function dysmorphia as I used to have body dysmorphia.  The long and short of it is that the 10 people (current and former management, coworkers, peers, and old friends) who surveyed me did not find me nearly as annoying as I find myself.  On the versatility scale, my people scored me as being extremely versatile, while I scored myself as being a stubborn mule. 

I think this shows that while I may think and feel one thing, I have learned to adjust my attitude so that I can live among humanity without being driven from the village by an angry, pitchfork weilding mob.  It’s either that, or take over and I am way too lazy to be staging coups.

Anyway.  Of the animals I could have been (a turtle, a dove, a lion, or a peacock) I scored as a dove.  And of the combinations to include secondary traits, dove-turtle, dove-dove, dove-lion, dove-peacock I could have been, I was a dove-lion.  The facilitator short-lined that as being a worker who says, “Heeeeeey!  Good to see you!  I gotta work.”  I can agree with that.

But no one wants to read about someone else’s personality type.  You want to know how things ended up with the repelled man.  Did I win him over with my charm?  Did he come to see that my jokes were funny?  Did he even crack a smile when I changed the animals to people?  (Dwight Schrute/turtle, Marmee March/dove, Gordon Gekko/lion, and Liberace/peacock. )  Well, friends, the answer to all these is, no.  No, he did not.

In fact, he bolted from the classroom so quickly after dismissal that I actually felt the air move.  Had we been cartoon characters, my hair would have blown back.

A Day in the Life, Beauty, Family, Health

How I Lost my Baby Weight!*

the outside lane

With so much attention focused on how quickly mothers can “lose their baby weight” (in scare quotes because…scary how obsessed the media is with how quickly celebrity moms can lose their baby weight?), and with my favorite “how quickly did this celebrity lose her baby weight” getting lots of publicity today (click the link, you’ll get a good laugh), I thought I would share the things that concerned me in Thor’s early days, weeks and months.  You know, the things that so many women are concerned with, when not being shouted at and called fat by the media for having dared to gestate a human being.

  1. My first and most oppressive concern was in getting the child fed.  We didn’t get the nursing thing down pat for several weeks, and I felt I had already failed as a woman by having been induced in a low-level emergency situation because I had planned an earth-mother (or water mother, actually, since I wanted to float around in a birthing tub), natural delivery.  Not being able to nurse him as easily as the lactation specialist seemed to think I should consumed me. 
  2. Right alongside feeding him, was the cost of feeding him.  Since he rejected (with a forceful stream of used formula, right across the room) the first few formulas we tried, we were told to buy one that many families (ours included) might find cost prohibitive.  Fortunately, we were only tied to that as a mainstay for a couple of weeks, then it was only as-needed to top off his tank.
  3. Was he breathing?  You ask any new mother which is a top concern: Her weight or whether or not the new baby is breathing.  You cannot know the number of times you feel the need to check just to be sure until you are responsible for one of those baby things.  It is insane.  You feel insane.  But you go check again anyway, because some experts tell you that if the baby is on his back and he barfs, he will choke and die.  Some experts tell you if the baby is on his stomach, he will smash his face into something soft, suffocate and die.  Some experts tell you that if the baby is in a crib with a bumper, he will die.  Some tell you that if the baby is–do you see where I am going?  Not even the experts can agree, so you go check again.
  4. The baby’s laundry is now ankle deep.
  5. Is he pooping?  If you have ever had a constipated baby…  He cried.  I cried.  None of us were happy.  And then I introduced the baby suppository.  Wow. 
  6. He won’t go to sleep!  When will he ever sleep?!  Something is wrong!
  7. He’s asleep…he’s been asleep too long!  Something is wrong!
  8. The baby’s laundry is now mid-calf deep.
  9. When can I take a shower?  Oh my word.  I can tell you that my proudest moment in Thor’s earliest days was when I managed to take a shower AND wash my hair in one go.
  10. Everything on you is leaking, and they don’t make pads for all of it. 
  11. Everything on the baby is leaking, and they don’t make pads for all of it.
  12. The baby’s laundry is now knee deep–you did laundry two hours ago.
  13. When do I eat?  When do I sleep?  Oh sure, they tell you to nap when the baby naps, but do you know how that works?  You get the baby to sleep and you see this:  The breast pump you haven’t had a moment to rinse yet, which you are going to need in half an hour.  The bottles that need to be washed and sterilized.  The diaper pail that needs changing.  The mess in the living room.  The mess in the kitchen (because you still have to feed the other members of your family, too.  Don’t forget that.)  The detritus from the baby’s bath.  Your own post-baby garbage that needs to be taken out (so incredibly gross).  Your own milk/poop/urine/barf/drool/food stained wardrobe (when Thor was 3, I lost my freaking mind over fingerprints on my Easter dress because I hadn’t had a stitch of clean, just clean clothing in three years.  I will never forget the look on B’s face as he steered the confused child away from the crazy lady.)  There are phone calls to return, emails to check, knocks at the door to answer.  If you can fall asleep after running through this mental list, good on you.  Because the baby will wake up just as soon as your breathing regulates.
  14. Laundry.  Oh my god, the laundry.
  15. I was consumed with worry about going back to work.  Forget about the pressure to be thin, I was dealing with the judgment of literal strangers, who felt perfectly justified in telling me that I was dooming my child to a life of delinquency and crime by shuffling him off to daycare so I could fulfill my selfish desires to keep a decent roof over his head.

I could keep going.  I could go all day.  And, while it is true that I was excited to drop enough baby weight to fit back into my pre-baby clothes, I didn’t give a stinky diaper what anyone else thought about it.  And I wore my maternity pants anyway.

If you are having a baby, or have recently had a baby, listen to me:  The only people who are worried about your size are the people who stand to benefit from it monetarily.  You spend your time loving that baby.  You spend your time taking care of yourself mentally because babies, whether you birth them, adopt them, have one dropped off on your doorstep by a stork, or are just watching them for an hour while their mothers try to get showers, are the most mentally and emotionally taxing challenges you will ever face, and you need to be good to you so that you have the wherewithal to be good to them.

Take all the (viable) help that is offered to you.  You need it.  Anyone who has ever stared at a newborn all night long, trying to suss out why it won’t stop crying KNOWS that you need the help.  Accept it gracious, gratefully, and go take that elusive nap.  Do not let anyone try to convince you that you need to spend your free time doing crunches (unless that is what you truly want to do.)  Anyone who does, slap them upside the head with that diaper pail bag.  Twice.

*I have no idea how I lost my baby weight.  It just happened.  I gained a total of 34lbs, and when I came out of the hospital, I’d lost half of that.  The other 15…I don’t know.  It just came off over the two months after Thor was born.  I cannot offer you a lick of help when it comes to weight loss. 

All I can offer you is this:  Even if I had never lost the weight, I had Thor, and that child…people.  That child is the light of my life.  I would weigh a thousand pounds, happily, if it meant his health and happiness.

A Day in the Life, Advice

The Purposeful Tourist

the outside lane

I used to really worry about doing things “right”.  That is, I used to worry about doing things in a way that would show me to be urbane and cosmopolitan.  If I read a list of 10 Things NOT to do When in Paris, I would memorize it just in case I found myself in some little cafe there.  I never wanted anyone to think I was a tourist.  This is why I did not wear sneakers to Europe.  Three days in to my tour, I wished I had worn sneakers.  I may not have looked like a tourist, but my toes were bleeding, and that’s gross.

I read this list of things NOT to do in Italy, and one of those things was order coffee after noon.  I saw the same thing on one of Anthony Bourdain’s shows, talking about how only the gross tourists order coffee in the daytime or evening.  Ten years ago, I would have dog-eared this information, along with the proper pasta twirling technique.  At this point in my life I say, and it is best said in a French accent because that makes everything sound snootier, “Fie on your lists.  If I want coffee at 5pm, I will order coffee at 5pm, and if you think I am a gross tourist, you can go hmph yourself.  I’m the one paying you, not the other way around.  You do it my way.”

This is proof positive that I am a nasty American, I suppose.

I also don’t get having to forgo ketchup or steak sauce if you want it, or soy sauce in a sushi restaurant just because the chef thinks his meal is perfect as it is served.  Again, if I am paying for it, I want to eat it the way I like it.  I want my salmon well done.  I want my tuna well done.  I want my A1 on the side of my steak.  If this makes me a Philistine, well, I am happy to wear the robe because it fits.  In fact, give me two robes because I will probably order the wrong wine as well.  Actually, I will probably order a Coca-Cola.  And I want a straw.

It is ridiculous to me to hear of chefs who won’t serve their guests because their guests’ palates aren’t up to the chef’s standards.  It is just as ridiculous to me that some designers won’t cut more generous sizes because, gasp! fat people might want to wear them!

Thor and me being tourists in Manhattan. We’ll take it!

It’s all faux elitism.  “If I don’t follow these silly, arbitrary rules that exclude people who aren’t in on the secret handshake, how will the people who aren’t in on the secret handshake know they are missing anything?  And if the riff-raff don’t know they are missing something, how can I enjoy lording it above them?  Look at this cake you can’t have, you Poor!  Now, have some cake! Hahahaha!  You can’t! Nom nom nom!”

Whatever.  I can cook my own steak, and it tastes just as good.  And I can have my coffee without getting side-eye from twit who thinks there is something wrong with being a tourist.

Tourists rock.

Being Tourists at my favorite tourist trap in the WORLD. Spongeorama. Click this picture to reveal the glory that is the Sponge. Best. Museum. In. The. World.