The Weekend Report by Tommy

Guest Blogger:  Tommy

 Last weekend we goed to Six Flags, which is better than Disneyland.  My mama says that’s good because it’s cheaper and closer to our house.  I was brave of all the rides.  I like the Scat –A-Bout the best, that ride is very funny and fast.  Me and Deb laughed the whole time, and I slided into her on the seat a lot, even though I held on tight. I did that ride five times, and it was my most favorite.  When I rode it with my mommy she laughed so hard she cried.   She does that sometimes.  I goed on the roller coaster six times.  We got splashded by Shouka the whale and I saw dolphins and sea lions.  I didn’t get picked to pet the sea lions. My mama says it’s because I am too little, but I am not little, I’m big. 

My mommy and mama and our fun friend Deb saw somebody named Sean Penn when we were leaving the park on Sunday.  Deb said a word I’m not supposed to say, but I pretended I didn’t hear.  My Mommy pushed my stroller faster than usual but I still heard it. I was pretty tired after all those rides so I didn’t ask what it means.  I’ll save it for later, when I want to be really mad about something.  I think you say it when you are mad or surprised, Devil K. Fulkalowsky, as I call her, said it like this:  No F&^*-ing Way! Really loud, so I knew it was important.  When grownups are loud and say bad words, that’s a big deal.  Deb is fun, she will do all the rides with me, and she calls me Mr. Tommy, which makes me feel like a big kid.  I am going to bring her next time when I go back to Six Flags tomorrow. 

I ate a yummy Churro at Six Flags.  Disneyland Churros are the best, then Six Flags, then those kind my Mama buys from the lady at her work.  Costco Churros are not so great, they are twisty and not the same as a regular kind of Churro, but they are okay if it’s between that and a real dinner, I’ll tell you that. My mommy wants me to eat things like chicken and dumplings, and I keep having to remind her that my food can not touch.   My mommy and mama do understand that when you go to an amusement park you gotta have a Churro. 

We goed to Fran Sancisco, and my mama got a big bread bowl of clam chowder.  They even took a picture of it, which was silly.  After I bit the heads off all of my chicken dinosaurs I was ready to see the aquarium.  My favorite part was when the diver tried to wake up the octopus, but he just still stayed sleeping.  After the aquarium I rode the round ride with the horses that go up and down, but after that roller coaster and Scat-A-Bout a round ride is kind of boring.  The Churro by the round ride was good, better than Costco but not as good as Disneyland. 

After we went back to the car, I was really tired.  I couldn’t sleep though because my mommy hit every curb in that parking garage, and my mama and Devil K. were laughing at her.  Mommy kept saying, “Hold on! Hold on! This time I’m not gonna hit it!”  Still she bounced the car like a roller coaster. It was fun.  Then she almost ran into a car on the street, then she almost hit people, then my uncle who has a red car that we were following around made Mommy drive all over Fran Sancisco and my mama said, “Why don’t we go to all the stores?  Every single store in this Godforsaken shopping mall.”  My mommy was laughing so hard she was crying again, but we weren’t at the mall we were just still in the car, so I didn’t know why she was laughing.  I think my mommy might be the least stable of my two parents, and when it comes time for me to get a car you know I will be asking my Mama.  Mommy will probably tell me all about how the roads are dangerous and she’s not sure I’m ready, but Mama will teach me to drive. I’m only 4, but I am ready.  I am sick of this car seat, let me tell you. 

I have to go to sleep now, but I had the most fun time on my trip.

I Authentically Still Love Pop-Tarts and Donuts, and Some Thoughts on Writing

My friend sometimes talks about authenticity, and her use of this word got me thinking about my own authenticity and what it really means.  You know that thing that happens though, when you think about a word until it doesn’t mean anything anymore, until you think, maybe I don’t really know what that word means at all?  When I am thinking about something like this, I do what every educated American does, I go to Wikipedia.   A common definition of “Authenticity” in psychology refers to the attempt to live one’s life according to the needs of one’s inner being, rather than the demands of society or one’s early conditioning.   

Then I look for quotes: 

“What we’re all striving for is authenticity, a spirit-to-spirit connection.”   Oprah 

Of course I found Oprah. When I hear “spirit-to-spirit” I think of ghosts getting jiggy, but maybe that’s just me.  

Then I get Oprah’s son, Dr. Phil:  “Are you living a life that is more in tune with your “authentic” self (who you were created to be) or your “fictional” self (who the world has told you to be)?  Isn’t he just like a shrink, always asking unanswerable questions. 

Here’s one from someone I wouldn’t expect:  “Even the fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of not having lived authentically and fully.” Francis Moore Lappe 

That’s the Diet For a Small Planet lady.  She is better than my mom when it comes to guilt, after I read her book I felt so bad about all the grains the cows were eating that I became a vegetarian for two years.  Then I quit vegetarianism because bacon is good; tempeh and tofu, not so much.  Any food that takes on the flavor of other food around it and has to be disguised in order to be eaten is not right. It’s like poseur spy food. I don’t like it. 

My Bloglines offered greater clarity on authenticity, in the form of a blog written by a self-proclaimed “very nice” literary agent.  Agents seem to have a complex about their niceness, it must be hard to reject people all day long.  Having never submitted a query letter to an agent, I am not yet bitter about this sort of thing.  The blog is called PubRants, and the post was written by a guest blogger, Kristine Riggle, author of the novel Real Life and Liars.  Riggle’s words match my definition of authenticity as it pertains to writing (look at me, sticking to one theme in this post! It really is me, I don’t have a guest blogger.) 

Here’s what she says: 

“Write the story that grips you and won’t let go. I didn’t think about the market when I wrote REAL LIFE & LIARS. I’d been writing something else that was supposed to sell, and I was hating it. So I finally decided to instead write exactly the kind of book I like to read, so at least I would have fun, even if no one wanted to publish it. ”

I have decided to write the kind of book I want to read, not the one that I think will sell or that agents and publishers will like. So my novel that starts out with a hiker who steps on the hand of a dead body while hiking over lava beds in New Mexico and subsequently becomes a mystery novel, is, at least for now, not something I want to write.  I’m not Janet Evanovich.  She does that really well, that whole funny novel about the amateur trying to catch the bad guys thing.  But there is only one Janet (can I call you Janet, Janet?), and there can be no duplicating of that style, as much as the writer’s group may have encouraged me to do it.  I don’t want to be compared to other writers like that, it’s too much pressure.  Unless you want to compare me to David Sedaris, that would be okay with me.

That other novel I’ve been working on, the one with the boy who dies, I think I am putting that one away for now, too.  I feel really guilty about what I did to that boy; I mean, I didn’t have to make him fall off the second floor of that building and crack his skull.  His poor fictional mother, what have I done to her?  She just wanted to hang out in 1985 watching Phil Donahue and dressing her little 5-year old daughter in knickers and matching knee socks, and here I went and killed her fictional 12-year old son and wrecked her life.  All because he was different than the other kids, and because I hate the way kids can be so mean for no reason at all.  I wanted to explore what happens when a bully goes too far, when a kid fight ends in a death, but then I thought about The Outsiders, and how S.E. Hinton already wrote that story so well.  

I’m a nice person, I don’t want to fictionally kill people. I don’t even like reading that kind of book, the ones where people get killed.  I am tolerating The Lovely Bones because the death seems kind of unreal, but I’m not really loving it.  I think I get too attached to these characters.  Like when Johhny Nolan dies, I cry right along with Francie and Neely every time I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  And why did Melly have to die in Gone With the Wind, when everyone knows we’d all like that selfish little Scarlet O’hara to kick the big bucket and get buried under the porch at Tara.  I feel like a murderer, and the 12-year old boy character is based on someone I grew up with, so I am going to feel really terrible when I see him at the reunion next week.  Every time I see him post something on facebook I feel like a miracle has occurred.  Someone brought him back from his 6^th grade death!  And how is there a picture of him in the high school yearbook when he died at age 12?  See, I’m really not cut out for writing murder. 

I’ve been doing what the writer’s group wanted, which isn’t very authentic, is it?  They want to know things like, “What’s the novel going to be called?”  And “who is going to solve this murder?  Your main character should do it!  She should become a detective!  She’s like Stephanie Plum, you could have her figure it out!”  Blach – all these voices stepping on my own inner voice.  It’s a problem. 

Here’s what I do best when it comes to writing:  funny stories, essays and blog posts about my life, my family, work, and weird things that happen to me, like cultish gym memberships and exploding tires.  So I think I’ll put my energy back into that. Rest in peace novel about a dead boy. I just don’t have the strength to investigate the crime right now.  Maybe later. 

Here’s another note on authenticity: my authentic self really does not feel like flushing someone else’s poo poo that I have walked in on in the work bathroom stall.  I really, truly and authentically want to walk out and pretend I never saw it.  And even if I do the right thing, and flush it with just the toe of my shoe, and cower in the corner for fear of airborne poopy cooties, my inner self is too grossed out to be congratulating us (all the selves) on doing the right thing, even if I saved someone else from viewing the OPP (other people’s poo).  I guess this whole striving for authenticity is a lifelong process, and maybe someday I will get beyond the ick factor. Or heck, maybe I will get old and pissy and slink to passive aggressive poems posted to the stall door. A little poo haiku maybe. 

 Last thing on authenticity:  my inner, authentic being needs Pop-tarts, and I am tired of shirking the desires of my inner being.  But my authentic self also wants to shrink away upper butt fat, so you see how my authenticity is a real inner conflict.  

I am going to the reunion, but right now I am in the Who are these people? phase.  No offense guys, but I am looking you all up in the yearbooks, trying to remember you.  And I am not going to drop any weight for the shindig.  This morning I really wanted those powdered donut gems from the minute mart, but I didn’t get them because I didn’t want to be the reunion fatty, but now that I am all in touch with my authentic self, I know that I need donuts and Pop-tarts authentically.  So I will be the same “kind of thick” self I was back in the day.  My hope is that nobody is depriving themselves of food on my account.  Eat the Oreos, I say.  Enjoy your life.  Get super duper authentic.  Leave it to me to use authenticity as an excuse to eat donuts.

 After re-reading this post, I have stopped congratulating myself on sticking to one topic.

 Check this out, lots of fun.

What the World Needs Now is More Cookies

Dude, seriously, this is not how I planned it.  Maybe other people who work in Corporate America think the same thing. Or heck, maybe they love it.  Maybe they sit in meetings and get all pumped up, all “We can do it!  We’re the coolest! Ya!  We got the scoreboard, ya we do, we got the scoreboard, how bout YOU!?”  But I’m just saying, for me at least, this is not how I envisioned my adult working life, when I was a dreamy, hope-filled kid, who didn’t understand about money and bills.  Geez, I was gonna have a house with a cool porch and spend all day drawing, reading, writing and eating cookies.  How I would buy the cookies, I have no idea.  Maybe it wasn’t even my house in the fantasy, since I’d not be making a mortgage payment on drawings and cookie-eating, and I didn’t see the fantasy through to the part where I get arrested for trespassing.  Back to the cookies – I don’t eat very many cookies these days, not whole bags of Distinctive Bordeaux all by myself like I used to in college.  By the way, I just went to the Pepperidge Farm website (cookie gateway) to see how to spell Bordeaux; don’t go there if you are craving cookies.  They do good work over there at the Pepperidge Farm, and their site is beautiful, scenic, full of dancing cookies. Mmmm. 

Former congresswoman Barbara Jordan said, “Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap.”  A politician with a cookie platform – I mean, who can’t get behind that?  And that sounds very nice, cookies and milk and nap.  Course, would we all share our blankets?  Probably not.  Heck, no one could do that at Lilith Fair, and we were all supposed to be a group of music-loving peaceniks.  

Short post, I should be writing my essay, entitled, “Why I Want to Teach Your Children and How I Promise Not to Taint Them With My Semi-Crazy World Views,” or something close to that, to submit to the UNR grad school people.  My opening line so far on Draft 2 is “This essay tanks…” so I feel pretty inspired by my own confidence. 

But hey, check this out:  “Hello world, here’s the song that we’re singin’, c’mon get happy!”

Pay Attention. Embrace the Scary, then Watch Wipeout.

Dr. Miranda Bailey, Grey’s Anatomy:  Well, we’re all scared! I mean, if you’re not scared you’re not paying attention! One of my residents just signed up to go to war. That’s scary. Another one just almost lost her life to melanoma, now she doesn’t know what day it is. That’s scary! What Tucker’s facing isn’t scary! He’s just weak! A pat on the back isn’t gonna help Sir. 

I’ve been wanting to do a post inspired by the above Grey’s Anatomy quote.  Sometimes I get a quote like this in my head, I run it over and over through the mill of my psyche, and that’s what happened with this one.  Not the whole thing, because my memory is not sharp enough for that, but the “if you’re not scared you’re not paying attention” part stuck with me.  I hate to admit it, but of course I’m scared.  I am paying attention.  I watch the news, I see the scary news story links on my home page.  I quit the paper but you’d have to live in a cave to not know that we’re all f*&#-ed sometimes.  We’ve got war, missing planes, the Taliban taking students, layoffs and foreclosures, cancer and Swine flu, and so much violence, and sometimes it feels like there are only two options: hide out in your house and fixate on all of your screen sources, hoping a plane does crash into your attic, or ignore the news and live your life anyway.  You can look at the faces of your people and find love there when it feels like there is a lot less love in our world right now.  In too much us vs. them, I want to create a little bit of caring about all people, some kind of camaraderie.  Is that crazy? 

I want to raise a boy who thinks anything is possible, the world his oyster, and people are generally good.  But the world doesn’t always want to help me out.  So I watch TV shows like Wipeout.  People might tell me it’s a waste, but what’s better:  Wipeout or CNN news?  We’re scared, that’s why we sometimes ignore it all.  That’s why more people vote for American Idol than the President of the United States.   But what can I do?  I can sit here and be powerless, or I can try to appreciate the good things, like my weekly caramel macchiato.  I can try to be a light in someone else’s life, and hope that causes some kind of ripple effect in the world. 

The only option is to love what you’ve got, or love the action you could take to have something new and different. We are all searching, and I do think it’s there, what you are searching for.  It’s everywhere.  It’s in the grass, thunderstorms, fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies, and yes, bad TV.  Shows like Wipeout.  I mean, look at those crazy, mud-covered people in their dorky outfits, trying to jump on to a wet, spinning squishy thingy, acting as if they have been waiting their whole lives for this moment.  Wedgy-having, speedo-wearing dream seekers all. It’s like the American Idol for the delusional, the So You Think You Can Dance for the uncoordinated.  And I love it.  Yes, I could be watching a more educational show, but this is the only show that makes me laugh out loud.  

In other news, I passed the Praxis!  People said it would be easy,  no big deal, but it was a huge dea for me to take that step.  I studied, I memorized formulas, made flash cards, and I passed!  I rock!  It’s a big step towards a big goal of Master’s degree!  If I try to explain to you guys how happy I am I will start crying all over again, and I already did that today in my office at work, so I’ll just say, “she did it, she did it, oh ya, ya, ya!” 

So I am paying attention, and I am scared, but I’m finding my own light in the media’s dark tunnel.  Be the change, baby! Ya baby, ya! 

And this is fun, checky, checky this link.

Check Out My New, Much Cooler, Spacebook Profile

I am re-doing my Spacebook profile (thanks Paul for the name of my new site):

Movies:  Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, anything smart and prestigious and subtitled. 

TV shows:  I really don’t waste time with television, that is for lesser humans.

Books:  I have read all the classics twice.  My favorites are Ulysses, Middlemarch and War and Peace.  If Oprah endorses it, I won’t read it.  If you can buy it at the airport or Target, I also will not read it.  I have written 20 novels, they are just in a drawer. I am waiting for the right offer of course. 

Career:  I have worked as a pizza chef, waitress, barista, spa coordinator, report writer, package handler and construction flagger.  I currently work for a company that saves money by purchasing sporks rather than spoons and forks.  I appreciate that I wasn’t laid off in February.  I am a VIP here, super big shot, and soon I may have my own office and parking space. I’m holding my breath for that.  I’ve never worked as a journalist, although I have a degree in journalism.  Funny. 

Hometown:  I have lived in many exotic places in the last 20 years, including Los Osos, Cayucos, Albuquerque and Reno.  I once lived in a studio (well, we called it a bungalow actually, so quaint) that offered the added bonus of  a homeless person sleeping on your porch and sometimes even offering you money if you are willing to watch him drop his pants.  A homeless person offering you money?  Only in New Mexico, Land of Enchantment.  I lived with a two cat ladies, but had to leave because one of the cats kept spraying on my T-shirts. It was get a dresser or move, so I moved. 

Education:  It took me about 8 years to graduate college due to changes in majors, lots of two-for-one drink nights at cool bars, and too many camping trips that made me think I should just live at the campsite and travel down the mountain for Pop-tarts and library books once per week.  A person could live like that, and who needs a college degree then, huh?  Write in your journal, hike all day, and live on s’mores and hot dogs and Pepsi by the campfire at night.  Read Walden and Blue Highways.  That sounds nice.  Hey, I came out the other side eventually. 

Famous people encounters:  I met Doogie Howser. Ya, we’re tight.  He was like, “How’s the key lime pie?” and I said, “Very good but you should try the Rio Grande mud pie.” And he said “Okay, I’ll have that and a single cappuccino, extra hot.”  And I said “Okay, that’ll be $4.75.”  Even now, when I watch How I Met Your Mother, I think, yep, there’s my friend Doogie. I mean Neil.  Oh fellow classmate, you didn’t know, did you, when you sat next to me in geometry class and I didn’t say a word that I’d be that cool person working at the café in Albuquerque, the person who met Michael Martin Murphy and Doogie Howser and who actually saw, but didn’t wait on, what’s that dude’s name who directed JFK?  Oliver Stone. Yes, I was like, ten feet away from Olive Stone.  I said, “hey, that’s what his name!” to my co-worker.  Yes I did.  I almost waited on him, but then he left.  Ooh, and Bob Sagat.  He was right there, I was right here, it was cool. 

Over these 20 years I have come out of the closet, jumped into more than one swimming pool fully clothed, worn the wrong shoes, been underdressed, been overdressed, gotten so drunk I puked, drank too much coffee, started a blog, disclosed way too much, stayed quiet when I should have spoken up, did therapy, laughed until I peed my pants, had three surgeries, freaked out over stuff that didn’t matter, remained calm in crises, cried in the shower, found a fabulous woman, had a baby, played with Barbies in the bathtub, acted as “big kid gymnastics coach” in the backyard, changed hundreds of diapers, made a thousand dinners, and smiled a million times.  Oh yes, and I invented Post-Its.  And those really eloquent and hilarious notes that you find in your Extra Sugar-free gum. Ya, that was my idea too. 

Send me a Spacebook flower.  Or cappuccino.  I invented cappuccino, by the way. 

See you at the reunion!  I’ll be arriving in either my Limo, my Hummer, or my other car, my Saturn Vue.

What Do You Mean?

Things people say confuse me.

“I can’t do blank to save my life.” Usually it will be something mundane like “do math” or “make pancakes,” and when people say it I always imagine a scene in which a scruffy, pissed off guy waves a gun at someone’s head while the two of them are standing in front of a stove. The pancake person frantically tries to unstick the burnt, crumpled pancakes from the pan, while the gun guy makes threats. Or he is standing over someone who is poring over a piece of paper, holding a knife to their throat, yelling, “No! 12 squared is not 156!!! C’mon, do you want to die? Because I will kill you right now… okay, 144, good, good, you can live another day.” There is not a calculator in sight either. It’s pretty scary.

“Got Jesus?” Does anyone really have Jesus? I mean, I have milk, I bought it, it’s in my fridge right now, so I feel comfortable saying that yes, I “got milk.” But I don’t think anyone really has Jesus. You might not “know him” either. And here’s another thing, why are people so eager to share the thing that I don’t want? If it’s cash or pepperoni pizza, I am not offered any, but if it’s “the word,” or even “Jesus” they need to share it. It’s not like it belongs to them. That’s like, stealing. But it’s like the Jesus people know that I do not, in fact, have Jesus. Tommy might have given us away when he was singing “What a friend we have in Cheeze-its” to himself at gymnastics class. It’s fine by me, the Cheeze-its song. I mean, Cheeze-its are good. Especially the pepper jack kind. Yum. I don’t want to offend the Cheeze-it, I mean, the Jesus people. And I’m not a hater, the What a Friend We Have in Cheez-its and the J-E-S-U-S Express songs are on his Toddler Tunes DVD, and it’s not like I’m gonna skip those songs. Yaaaaay, Jesus!

I get this note on emails at work sometimes:  Please think about the trees before printing this email. So because they asked, I do. I sit for a moment and visualize trees. It’s one tree actually, a big tree, I think I saw it in Big Sur, when I was camping in Pfeiffer a long time ago. This tree is beautiful. Some days I think I can almost smell it. After I have considered that tree for a long time, I print my email. I think it’s really nice of my coworkers to help me visualize something pretty before I do something as boring as print something. It’s nice of them to do that for me. Because, you know, it’s easy for us to forget that, now and then, we should all visualize trees, or waterfalls, or Gotta-Have-It Cold Stone Creamery Creations; you know, soothing and nice things like that.

Furlough

Furlough days, furlough days, dear old forced unpaid days, how we love our furlough days…

Really, these unpaid days aren’t so bad, aside from that whole not getting paid thing. Days like this remind me how to do nothing in particular. My dad calls it putzing. Yesterday I did dishes, blew up a hippity hop, made a playdoh shark, star and snake, attended a princess party under the blankets in Tommy’s bunk bed- all the key players were there, Ariel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Sully, Spiderman and the Evil Queen. It was quite a party. I made a ziti and chocolate chip cookies, told 6 invisible kids not to take cuts in line at the swing set in the backyard, played the game Tommy calls “get silly with the pump,” which involves blowing tissues around the living room using his swimming pool pump, and watched two episodes of Little House on the Prairie. The single tear dripping down Charles Ingalls’ cheek, the moving hand across the dying man’s sheet, it’s classic 70’s television. Good stuff.

But today it’s back to work. All day yesterday I pondered my fabulous post, the one that would be inspirational and funny, but I was just too putzy. So this is what I’ve got. Happy Tuesday!

I Wanna Quit the Gym!

You remember that Friends episode, the one where Chandler tries to quit the gym, and he just can’t do it?  Ross tries to help him, and they suck him in too.  That is my lament right now, “I wanna quit the gym…”

 I won’t say the name of my gym, because last time I used specific names, the people from those organizations posted comments on my inconsequential little blog and made me feel like I was living in some Orwellian world, which we all are but that kind of thing makes it harder for me to continue this illusion that I am not, you know?  So I can’t quit the gym that rhymes with Mold’s.  Not because my upper butt fat cells are partying like it’s 1999 and my skinny jeans are so damn tight their new title is just going to be “jeans that used to fit me.”  I can’t quit because THEY WON’T LET ME.  The gist of the scam (yes, I said scam, anonymity breeds bravery, yes it does) is that on a whim in December I added Heather to my membership.  And that, unbeknownst to me, committed me for a whole year.  Did they tell me that when I added her?  No.  The dude just swiped my card and said, “okay, you’re all set.”  This same thing happened with my cell phone company.  I called to change my plan, and then a few months later I decided to quit my phone because my mom kept calling me all the time to tell me how much money she just won on her Keno numbers, and then to tell me the pattern of the numbers and the numbers themselves and the significance of the numbers.  Tell her to stop calling me you say?  Are you crazy?  But I could not break up with my phone because when I changed my plan I had made a secret, unspoken, one year commitment again.  I don’t get this.  It’s not a relationship, it’s a cell phone.  I don’t have to commit to cable.  Oh my God, I just realized we did a 2-year commitment to cable also.  Is this a new trend?  Are these companies so insecure that they have to get us to unwittingly agree not to break up with them?  And if this is the way things are going to be for all of my life services, could I get a prenuptial agreement?   With my gym, I can think of a few things that should make this one-year marriage null and void.  

Broken equipment.  I don’t show up to stand around and look pretty in my matching workout gear, I come here to torture myself for half and hour every day (fine, 4 days per week, if I’m lucky), and if the torture contraptions don’t work, well, you see my point. 

Weird people.  Listen, if you are going to make us all commit, sign agreements, wear your T-shirts, and treat this gym like some kind of special club, you should be more discerning about who you let in.  You should ask questions like: Do you sweat overly?  Do you wear those teeny tiny, butt-popping-out shorts?  Do you grunt when you lift weights?  Are you mean?  No mean people at the gym.  Like that James Frey look-a-like who told me to “get the hell out of my way” when he was trying to get to the front desk ahead of me.  That guy should be kicked out.  Are you lecherous?  Yes, I said it, no lechers allowed.  Go be a pervo at the strip joint.  If you need to get your jollies at the gym, you might be pretty hard up (oops, that was an accident).  I say this to the guy who pretended to be drowning in the hot tub so that when I leaned over to check on him he could look at my cleavage and say, “thank you, you’re a very nice girl…” to my boobs.    Heck, this is Nevada, there are a lot places you can go for that. 

Gross people.  For example, people who fart while they are running on the treadmill.  If this gym starts being infiltrated by public farters, I am out.  I should be able to quit my contract.  Nobody wants to talk about this, but this willy nilly farting wherever your butt happens to be pointing is unacceptable, and if I am on the treadmill next to you, guess what, I know it was you.  I’m sorry if running jars your gas right out, but then you need to take a pre-workout Gas-X or go over to the elliptical.  Or hey, even post a warning on the back of your T-shirt.  Example of extreme grossness number 2: that guy who blows his nose in the pool.  I know what you are thinking, in all of your land-of-lollipops-and-gumdrops innocence:  “People don’t do that.”  Yes, they do, and all I can say to the big gym contract people is, either the nose blower goes, or I am released from my contract.  

Lack of towels.   When I signed up for the gym, I was not at the acual gym,  I was in a conference room at my work, so I didn’t know about the towels.  But what kind of gym has no towels?  Hello, it’s called a gym towel for a reason.  All of these people are in this hot communal sweat box, and there is not a towel in sight to mop up the mess.  Oh, you can get one, but it cost a dollar.  Lame. 

I’ve been thinking about this working out thing, and I’ve drawn a few conclusions.  Nobody wants to do it, it’s an obligation we all have, like work and paying bills and not staring at someone who trips and falls in the middle of the Wal-Mart.   I have two gym memberships, because I can’t be released from the big one that I don’t like, but I’ll admit it is nice to have this cushion.  Maybe it’s what it feels like to be dating two people at once.  You always have an excuse.  If the nice lady at the desk at the small gym comments that she hasn’t seen me in awhile, I can say, well, I have a memebership at gym-I-won’t-say-that-rhymes-with-Cold’s too.  And when the spin class instructor says casually, “long time no see,” I can say,  oh ya, I also work out at insert-name-of-small-gym-here.  It sounds good, like the woman I met at the Shakespeare festival who is training for a marathon “for cross training, you know.”  Yes, I do know.  I have two gym memberships and spend most mornings on the couch with my laptop, making the big trek to the coffee maker twice.  

I see the ridiculousness of two memberships and so much morning couch time, and the logical thing to do is quit the gym, but I can’t!  It’s a conspiracy against my upper butt fat, and I’m not happy about it.

How to Fit in at the Gay Party

Let’s say you are one of those people who thinks that we fall in love with the soul, and the body is just a covering.  A shell of attraction, if you will.  I am not one of those people.  Chicks are hot, dudes are not.  But I’m here to help you enlightened womenfolk who fall in love only with the soul, and may someday fall in love with a female soul.  Because eventually you will need to meet her friends.  Her gay friends.  And the gay women are a serious group, so you better not take this meeting lightly.  I don’t know why, maybe because we don’t do drag shows and we don’t like Barbara Streisand and Broadway as much as our male counterparts, but in general we are not always a fun-loving, live-and-let-live type of people.  Some of us are very serious and we can spot a poseur a mile away, so you need to be prepared.

 

In order to avoid 5,000 pervo hits on this blog and more crazy spam emails than I already get, I am going to refer to the female gays as “my teammates.”  And I will say that this is all very stereotypical, and potentially upsetting to my teammates; but in the interest of helping you enlightened ones fit in at the gay party, I am risking the ostracize-ation of my own people.  No need to thank me.

 

Appearance:

 

Obviously don’t wear skirts, heels, blouses, short shorts, jeans with heels, or ultra-tight jeans.  All of these forms of apparel mean “bowing down to the patriarchy” (BD to the P), a carnal team sin.  Another sin: shaving.  If you shave, don’t tell the world.  There is a real problem with shaving, having long hair, waxing or tweezing your brows, or wearing makeup, so just be aware that you may be ribbed about those things if you choose to partake in a little beautification.  These things qualify once again as BD to the P or worse, trying to pass as straight among strangers and coworkers, a real annoyance among my teammates.  It’s a kind of “riding the coattails of other people’s hard work” kind of sin.  If you must have long hair or shave your legs, just don’t admit it, and try to come up with good excuses.  “My ears stick out too much for short hair,” and “I can’t afford regular haircuts” are pretty good ones, although  I bet you can get more creative.  You could try “My regular hair lady is in a coma,”  but really, these things are personal, you’ll need to work on it on your own.  There is no acceptable excuse for the teammates who shave, by the way.  As a shaving teammate, I can tell you that nobody cares if you say you are as hairy as the Geico caveman, you will be told that you need to embrace your hairiness and stop bowing down to the patriarchy!  This is a regional thing; shaving is okay in Reno, but not okay in Oregon or New Mexico, so you may be off the hook depending on where you live.

 

Don’t have too many chotzkes on your key chain.  Essentially, you need guy keys, so avoid the girly accoutrements.  Your keys should fit in your pocket, because, hello, the keys are not going into your purse.  DO NOT bring a purse, by the way.  Don’t even try to bring one of those purse backpack things.  It’s still a purse, and carrying one will give you away faster than talking about how you just can’t stop buying shoes.  Back in the day you needed to have a pocket knife on your keychain or a Leatherman in your pocket to fit in at the party, but these rules are getting softer in my circle.  When I was 22, I was publically chastised for not having a knife of any kind on me, and I subsequently received one for my birthday from one of my teammates.  I still didn’t keep it in my pocket, but at least I owned one, and I could say things like, “Oh, ya, it’s in my other pants, sorry.” when someone couldn’t open a beer or needed to pick a lock or something.

 

Behavior:

 

Don’t talk about ex-boyfriends or ex-husbands.  If you talk about how cute a male is, you must qualify it with “well, you know, for a guy…” after.  Don’t say that you are bisexual.  Many of my teammates just view that as a cop out.  A sort of lowfat cookie, a sugar-free chocolate cake.  It’s non-committal.  It’s wussy.  You either are a cookie or you’re not.  No middle of the road with this team.  Teammates may think you are trying to reap the rewards of both sides, and you will be chastised.  You karate do halfway, Daniel-san, get squashed, just like grape. 

 

Practice being outraged.  You must be politically correct and slightly mad at the world, or at least know how to pretend to be.  So practice phrases like, “That is ridiculous,” “How politically irresponsible,” “We absolutely cannot put up with it anymore,” “We should protest,” “We should boycott,” or even “I am outraged.” That last one is kind of obvious but still acceptable. 

 

Know what The L-Word is.  It’s a show about my teammates, and if you say you don’t watch it, or worse, you’ve never heard of it, you’ll be kicked out so fast you won’t even have time to grab your purse. 

 

Whatever you do, don’t admit that you think Gay Pride is a strange phenomenon that slightly confuses you.  Don’t say things like, “why do I have to march in a parade to be gay?”  Ya, they don’t like that, especially the older ones who have paved the way for the younger ones.

 

Acceptable vehicles:  Trucks, SUVs, Subaru Outbacks, trucks, motorcycles, and trucks.  No cute cars and no minivans. 

 

That should be enough to get you started, my enlightened new teammate.

 

In other big news on my Yahoo home page:  The WHO says flu victims may be infecting others!  I am outraged!  (See, I’ve had more practice than you, it comes very naturally, this being outraged.)

Best Ever…

I like rating things. I like to make lists and put things into categories, and to discuss favorite foods, books, top three best-ever meals, what would you want your last meal to be?, etc. In the food and drink category, the winners often don’t qualify because of perfection of the thing itself, but because of the situation and people surrounding the winner.

Coffee

It’s hard to pick just one coffee moment, because I do love coffee so much. Best ever for me is campfire coffee. That thick, sometimes even chewy, hot as hell (yes!), open flame camping coffee; that hot cup and the ritual that warms you and readies you for the laziness of hiking and swimming in natural hot springs all day. Yes, that’s the best cup.

When I travel, I am like an addict without the fix of my home brew, because usually the coffee is just not quite right where ever I stay. Some of my people have great coffee: Heather’s cousin Chris and his wife Oona; my old friends from Albuquerque, Max and Kim; my aunt and uncle in Napa. Some people are just snobby about the coffee and the water, as they should be.  So on the best of list, second to camp coffee, is the coffee we make effortlessly at home. Our own good, strong coffee that we make after having just returned from vacation and the uncertainness of our daily cuppa need. Sometimes we don’t even wait until the morning to make it, we brew before we even start to unpack. And it’s so good.

Best Hot Dog and Coke

You might think I am going to tell you about a ball game. Maybe even a fabulous birthday party when I was a kid. But here’s the situation: We think building a retaining wall in the backyard will be easy. Isn’t that how it starts with all home improvement projects? Did you know you can put those big brick pavers in upside down? You think you’re all good, you’ve set up your wall, heavy ass brick by heavy ass brick. Then when you stand near the edge of this leaning tower of Pisa thing you have created and look down the line, you envision the broken small child, a hospital visit, nurses making scowly faces at you, because when the pavers are put in upside down the cement lip pushes your wall dangerously outward, so that it retains nothing and no one. So after we hauled the bricks from the truck to the backyard, built a 40-foot, three-brick deep wall upside down, then redid it right side up, we ran out of bricks. Of course we did. That’s how it always goes. So we went back to Ace to get more and they were having a barbecue. I do love Ace hardware store. That hot dog and coke were the best ever in my life.

Beer

It was a Corona. I know, I don’t really love Corona either, even with lime on a 100-degree day, I’d rather have a Blue Moon, maybe a Hefeweisen. But it’s about the events leading up the beer. I blogged about it last summer, about my big exciting road trip by myself, how I was rocking out to Hotel California near Gilroy and feeling like a big, independent girl, when BAM! my tire blew, and the car started rocking like the Andrea Gail in The Perfect Storm. There is nothing like shredding a tire completely off the rim to knock the big-girl confidence right out of you. After that I was driving like my Grandma used to on her way to the Westward Ho! grocery store in Sherman Oaks, California; leaning forward, white knuckles gripping the steering wheel, “no radio honey, I need to concentrate,” making three right turns to avoid one left turn. When I finally arrived at my destination, I sat back on my friends couch, exhaled completely, and drank the best beer ever.

Dessert

This one was homemade. Heather and I made the best dessert: coffee ice cream pie. We had friends over, including our fabulous friend Ona, who lives in Hawaii. Ona took a picture of the dessert before she ate her piece and sent it to her girlfriend. We licked our bowls and laughed at each other as we  talked, and I felt so surrounded by comfort.  It was a great moment and a perfect dessert.

Praxis is this Saturday, and who knows, I may have a best ever celebration of something new after I complete the test.