Carey Recommends.

2012-02-16T01:50:00.001-06:00

I am an Eligible Single.

Do you want to date me? Sure you do. I have an alternative hair cut, keep a funny blog, and in three years I'll have passed state licensure exams confirming I know how relationships are supposed to work.

I am so very date-able that I even won a contest recently confirming that I was one of the Top Ten Eligible Singles in Cleveland.

You should come to the Kick Start Love party at Dragonfly tonight and meet all us eligibles.

I think over the past year I've shed a lot of fears I've had about being a lousy partner. I had this very strong idea, even before I dated anyone, that I was a difficult person to date and should be grateful for anyone who could put up with me. And now....now I know everyone's really difficult to date. That's pretty much what dating is, bringing out all the difficulties and working through them. Not at first, but that's what being a couple is about over the long haul.

It is true I can be a terrible person to date. You wouldn't believe the stories other people can tell on me. But there's also amazing parts to dating me. And they're linked with the terrible parts, the way it works with anyone worthwhile.

I'm putting this out there in the universe: I want a real girlfriend. I want real intimacy, that builds slowly, that respects both people, the slow twisting of two lives together. I know there are parts to that I'm going to suck at. I feel filled with strength and vigor to keep working on those parts. I feel up to the challenge, universe.

So....yeah. Whenever you're ready.

2012-02-14T22:58:00.000-06:00

You look familiar.

So the queer community. Awesome thing, right? Straight people are totally jellz of it. Us queers look out for each other, and attend support groups together, and march together, and when we discover one of our own in a straight environment we are BEST FRIENDS.

Yeah, it's a great thing, this queer community.

Except you know what else we do in this community? We date. And you know what dating people entails? Bad breakups, cheating, hating each other, being obsessed with each other, dropping friends, getting dropped by friends, acting like our worst selves, etc.

You know how when you start to date a guy you might wait a couple of weeks before you meet his friends? And it's a little nerve wracking because you want them to like you?

When you date a girl, you quickly find out you already know all her friends. Because you dated them. Or they're dating your ex. Or they're best friends with your sworn enemy.

In fact, all of your sworn enemies have started a softball team/arm wrestling league/ books to prisoners program/ potluck crafting club together. They're saving the world one frown from you at a time.

Now, I still find it upsetting. I find it upsetting when new friends have bad feelings about old friends. I find it upsetting when I'm the new friend who has bad feelings about old friends.

But I like dating women. And that's the pool them apples are bobbing in. So ok queer community, fine, let's get to know one another. Let's be in each other's faces and each other's spaces and let's annoy the shit out of each other. And if we can avoid fist fights outside the bar on ladies night, I'm pretty sure the Dalai Lama gives us all cookies.

2012-02-13T12:03:00.000-06:00

Hi, Monday, Nice to See You Again.

I have a really nice week coming up. I have a new friend to hang out with from Chicago in town. My classes are of course, very interesting and engrossing. And then on sunday I get on a plane to hang out with what are now old friends.

I ran this morning. It was easier than the last time. It still completely blew. I ran more this time, less walking breaks. I'm facebook friends with this lady who will run 20 MILES ON A SUNDAY FOR NO REASON. Since I am still holding steady at 2 or less miles, I.....I just cannot believe 20 miles is possible. Like, in a non marathon setting. Like, without an aid station.

I tried to talk my coworkers out of the 10 mile mud race in April, but it just got them more excited about it. They were like "You have 2 months! Just add a mile each week!" And I was like, "You Mother- Effers."

Yes, I mean I planned it this way, I sought other people to do this with so I couldn't back out. It was a good plan. It's just that fulfilling the plan sucks so hard.

It didn't really suck that hard today.

I will say, while I am "running" I am mostly thinking about running. Like, that's a patch of ice I could break my ankle on, oh look at that my calves are seizing up after a quarter of a block, I wonder how far away my ipod shuffle is from playing "Drunk Girls" again. And that's a really good thing for my brain because I am so very rarely thinking about what I'm doing in the moment. My brain is just too fast and powerful not to multi-task constantly. But surprisingly, not fast and powerful enough for most math. That's society's fault, let's move on.

So I guess I hope to run 3 miles next monday. "Run." I will cover 3 miles next monday. While I am in another city with my friends, but one of my friends did a marathon once so I know she'll come. And then the next monday after that I'll do 4 miles? What? No. I have to be over-estimating. Let's just try the 3 miles next monday and see what happens.

2012-02-10T13:40:00.000-06:00

I hate this running thing.

GUYS I'm so bad at it. I look so stupid doing it. I'll go one step further- I look UGLY doing it. And I am not an ugly person, except in my black black heart. But not my face! Except when I'm running, and also when you take a photo while I'm talking.

This was a dumb idea of mine. I'm not gonna be able to run 10 miles by April 15th. UGHHHHHHHH.

What a stupid predicament. This is why you don't push yourself. Because the stuff you're good at and the stuff you're bad at are not mutable, fluid categories. I'm good at joking around, reading fast, and blogging. I'm not good at pounding my legs against concrete for no good reason, or even for a very good reason. If there were police chasing me they would catch me, immediately. And a lot of police are not fit.

ACK I AM SO ASHAMED. My body and it's not being immediately in shape when I want it to be!!! What a terrible terrible thing to be, a body out of shape. Worse than a landfill. Worse than a politician soliciting sex in a bathroom. The worst thing to be ever, stuck in a slow, soft body that gets out of breath and red and also with a brain that gives up immediately.

Gross. Gross gross gross, working at something and not getting any better, or getting better at a glacial pace. At this pace I'll be able to run 10 miles in 2030.

Ok, I'm done for now.

2012-02-09T10:12:00.000-06:00

Girl with the Dragon Tat- Turn it off! Turn it off!

I watched the swedish version of "Girl with The Dragon Tattoo" last night. Also known as "Men Who Hate Women." Also known as "Oh my lord my male neighbors are talking at normal volume I better double check the locks and huddle under these blankets."

It was a good movie. It was an EFFECTIVE movie in releasing large amounts of adrenaline into my bloodstream. And no, I did not watch the whole rape scene. Well, there's really two, I watched the first one, and then really pushed myself to watch the second, but in retrospect I am so so soooo glad I did not.

Hey, let me make this really clear. You know how there are some movies that are rated R, but it's really because some people hump and swear in it, and your kid can handle it because they aren't a total moron who doesn't know humping and swearing exist? This is not that kind of movie. If you let your kid see this movie I'm calling child services. It's like letting your kid see Mystic River. Please, let them see all the Chucky movies instead. Let them see Hostel. Let them see Debbie Does Dallas. Actually, don't, I just creeped myself out.

I will say, at least I watched the whole movie. That's happening for me less and less. I can watch 6 hours straight of a tv show, but sitting through a 2 hour movie is becoming hard. I'm halfway through True Grit, and it seems like it's potentially a GREAT movie, but....what if someone said something funny/ decidedly incorrect on facebook? This is why movies on laptops are just not the same.

The only way to bring my adrenaline down to normal levels is to meditate on what is good and true. And ignore the existence of mechanized slaughter in our food system. OH GOD THAT DIDN'T WORK. Here we are, only the french eat these. Actually, the caption says they're going extinct.

I need the highest dose possible of all that is GOOD and TRUE in the world, STAT.

If the world is still a place where Basset Hounds can eat chips and fall asleep, so can I.

2012-02-08T11:30:00.000-06:00

Being Single: Everything I've Ever Learned

1. If you're constantly thinking about being single and it makes you unhappy, you may be obsessing due to some underlying depression or anxiety, which very probably has a much deeper cause than you being single. Get ye to a mental health professional and stop reading women's magazines.

2. Some seasons are better for tight pants than others.

3. Young people like old people. So if you're worried about how old you're becoming, know that all the bright eyed bushy-tailers can't see you and your life choices clearly. This is because we live in a compassionate universe.

4. You will be SHOCKED at the number of hobbies you'll run through over the years.

5. You might snore, and don't know it. When someone tells you you will resent them sooooo much.

6. Work on your earning potential.

7. Your exes' opinions on you are as disconnected from reality as your opinions of them are.

8. Keep a blog for your deep thoughts

9. A lot of your anxiety about other things are probably being dumped on your love life. People in couples do this too. For some reason complaining about being single feels better than complaining about being financially insecure, or not knowing what you're doing with your career, or hating where you live. Keep an eye on that anxiety. There probably is a good cause for it, it's just probably not your love life. Unless it is.

10. Regular haircuts are a necessity.

2012-02-07T13:31:00.000-06:00

Unfocused Thoughts.

Guys, let's level. I'm having some trouble writing a blog post because there's all these separate strings of thoughts happening in my life right now and I can't think about one of them long enough for a blog post.

1. My new apartment: has internet, has lights, has a coffee maker, had an apartment warming party. It's so nice to have some space to control. I feel like a real adult, almost, except I bought two lime green saucer chairs because they were cheap.

2. Grad school has a lot of reading. I enjoy it quite a bit. My textbooks are seriously good reading. I'm not even kidding or ambivalent in the least about this.

3. My friend Ever Mainard went viral!

4. I've been jumping into all these facebook fights about abortion. Which is probably a HUGE waste of energy, but if you are a guy and you post something about 'when life begins' I just have to call you the biggest WASTE OF NEURONS THAT EVER WAS. When does life begin? All I know is a person is still ALIVE by the time they're able to get pregnant and thus should not have to be investigated by the police for ending a pregnancy. Is that little fetus a human life? Thus should we treat the person carrying that fetus who decides they'd rather not carry that fetus the same as someone who shoots somebody? I don't know, depends on how many people you'd like to have live in our jails. Also depends on whether you feel you're more likely to be the person getting investigated for having an abortion, or a person doing the investigating. Life is not a thought experiment, there are realities that we have to make choices about, and the reality of women dying from unsafe abortions is not some detail you can gloss over in your little philosophical morality play. DO NOT PUSH ME IDIOT MEN.

5. Uh.

6. Jesus christ, sometimes I just get this feeling like if we let dudes run our lives they'd be stoning us and burning us and taking away our farms just for being unmarried. OH WAIT.

2012-01-30T07:51:00.000-06:00

Feelings, so many white feelings.

I have to write a response paper for my multicultural counseling class and the textbook for that class is so good I have too many feelings for a 1 to 2 page paper.

Theme #1:

I just read the chapter on micro-aggressions.

And when I say I'm racist, it's micro-aggressions I really have the problem with. It doesn't seem like there's a big problem with who I want to be, or the political ideas I have, and I'm certainly not going around yelling about miscegenation.

But micro-aggressions are the arena I notice my own racism cropping up. One category in my book is 'assumed criminality,' and guys, I have a problem with it. Last week on my street I saw a black guy fiddling with the door of a truck. I thought "I better keep an eye out on this guy." And then he locked the door and walked away from the truck. Because it was his truck.

When I lived in Logan Square, which by the time I lived there and on the east side of the neighborhood was mostly white kids and latinos, I noticed these racist reactions happening more in my head. I saw a group of black teenagers walking down the street and thought, "What are they doing here?" And then I thought "Jesus Christ Carey, are you the cops now?"

Now, I'm a little bit of a masochist, so if I thought confessing to all my racist sins in the public square and getting tomatoes hurled at me would repair the situation I totally would volunteer for that. But no, a better goal would either be to slough all the racism off of my head so I don't go around suspiciously watching men lock their cars, or to be aware of it enough that I can keep those thoughts from manifesting into physical responses that hurt people.

Because that's the bottom line. These little micro-aggressions hurt people. You may say, "Sure, whatever, but not like the PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX." My friend, they are all parts of a whole. Micro-aggressions exhaust all the people who could be ending the prison industrial complex. Also, who do you think calls the cops when they see men locking their own cars? That's a micro aggression gone major.

So that's what I want to work on. And I think there's a couple of strategies to use here. I read some article back in my Logan Square days that said the more segregated the existence of a white person, the more racist we get. Yes yes yes I believe that. So one strategy is making sure I'm interacting with lots of different folks in different capacities. Not just as strangers on the street or yay friends!

Theme # 2:

We have to do an immersion assignment for this class where we visit another cultural environment for two hours and then write about it. Now. Two hours? That's weak. And I'm kind of over the idea of visiting people for a grade. The professor suggested to the class they could visit a gay bar and I got salty about it. Like, come on, that's a space for me to meet other gayze, don't turn my evening out into your paper. So I'd like to find an organization where people like me are not the majority or running the show, and build an ongoing relationship with them, so it's both not so one-sided of an interaction and actually brings a little something into my life past this class.

Theme #3:

I might be inappropriately enthusiastic about this class. Like I might be making other people in the class uncomfortable, and I don't just mean the other whites. A student who's black in the last class talked about how uncomfortable it is when white folks try to prove how not racist they are to her. That's pretty clearly what I'm doing.

So I have to find a way to engage on a deep level with this class and not get in the way of other people's engagement.

Maybe I should not talk in class so much? Partly because when I've said my crazy activist things other people are not jumping on board. I said I was racist, and no one else did. And I said me getting angry at other people being uncomfortable with gay people might be a challenge, and did anyone else foresee issues they might get really angry about? And no one said a word.

Theme #4:

Why am I so enthusiastic about this class? Ok, so it's pretty compelling to get to be one of the good white people. I'm not gonna front like that's not a big reason I like the idea of getting anti-racist. Isn't that what all white people want? To be officially excused from the legacy of this country? I would love that.

But on a more honorable level, I feel like I've poked around the queer oppression stuff for awhile. And I've identified the micro-aggressions that happen against me, and the harm they've done, and all the shame and internalization and yadda yadda THERAPY THERAPY THERAPY, and there's got to be a way to use those experiences for good. I don't want to not be able to use them. Like, sorry, that's it, you went through some bullshit and it was meaningless. I want it to be, great! You went through some bullshit and look where it took you! On a fabulous emotional journey and now you're the best white person on the planet. Congrats!

What I'd really like is to create an atmosphere around me where people can tell me when I've hurt them, because they know I'll listen to the criticism and not defensively attack them back. That, in all seriousness, is what I'd like out of this class, to push my not being defensive skills to the limit. And I don't want to cop out.

2012-01-29T12:23:00.000-06:00

Effectivity.

I am about to run. I am about to run up and down hills like a goddamn jack rabbit. And even though my lungs will feel like they are being pierced by forks, I will keep breathing that cold stupid ass air and feeling bad and just BARRELING THROUGH. Also my knee and back will hurt. I learned yesterday this is because I don't do squats.

I have Jay-Z on my ipod. I have a great sports bra. I have a hat. I have everything.

Then I'll do laundry, then I'll drive all the clothes down to my new apartment. And I'll spend a night there. It might feel creepy.

Why not right? Time is gonna pass anyway, I'm inching ever close to death and an eternity of nothingness, why not run and have it suck? We make our own meanings from experiences. A mile and half run can mean a million different things. It doesn't have to be a disproval of the idea that I am physically fit. Every time my feet hit the ground I don't have to think "GEEZ MY BODY IS LIKE A SACK OF POTATOES." Perhaps the run sucking can be the beginning of an epic quest for perfection. Perhaps the run can be a sacred meditation on Artemis, goddess of the hunt.

What this comes down to is I HATE RUNNING I HAVE A MASSIVE BLOCK AGAINST IT ALSO PHYSICALLY IT IS UNCOMFORTABLE.

But you know what, no one else came up with the idea of doing this 10 mile mud race. Literally no one suggested I do that. I came up with that. I thought it would be meaningful to do that before my thirtieth. And it wouldn't be meaningful if it came super easy. If I enjoyed every minute it would a stupid thirtieth birthday thing to do. Like watching every episode of 'Community:' who cares that you did that it's a great show of course you did!

POWER. POWER. Power over the body. Power in spite of certain death. Power over the temptation of being under warm blankets with the internet on my laptop. POWER POWER POWER.

2012-01-25T11:53:00.000-06:00

The Problem with Popular Narratives

Cynthia Nixon says she chose to be gay, and boy am I glad someone said it.

Now, some women and men I've known were born gay. That's what they told me, and I believe them, and also that allows for adorable stories about their gay childhoods. Gay children are perhaps the most adorable thing in the world.

That is not my story. My story looks much more like Cynthia Nixon's, except unfortunately sans the hot ginger activist wife.

I had a conversation with an exceptionally thoughtful activist I know about the 'born this way' narrative, and she had worked with a lot of queer youth, and had the opinion that the 'born this way' narrative is mostly about getting bigoted parents to not kick their gay kids out/ beat the shit out of them. And it was important to preserve the narrative because it might save some queer kids' lives.

Yes. That seems right. And also, that is how it works for many queer people, they know when they're 5, and being heterosexual is as distant a possibility as growing fins.

But can we preserve that story and also make some space for some other stories? I'm asking for real, I don't know.

I was boy crazy when I was little. I was boy crazy when I was in college. I was boy crazy after college. I'd still get down with The Strokes.

Now, it's not that girls were invisible to me. But I had a story for where those feelings went (I mean, all girls are bi in college, amirite? folks, amirite?) and that story was still about a woman whose life was set up around men. And BI THE WAY, those stories about all girls being bi in college were a source of untold amounts of anxiety when I decided to take those feelings about girls out of that box and try putting them on the mantle. And talking to other queer women who said that my journey sounded like theirs did a lot to calm that anxiety. Like I had a right to live my own story. Which of course, we do.

Which is why I go around saying "queer" instead of "gay" when I think the people around me won't stare at me like I just grew a head. But you know what folks- most people do stare at me like that. I had a teacher just stare at me like that this week. And I am TERRIBLE at giving the definition of 'queer.' So terrible I actually should just print out some cards so I can hand them out and not have to say anything.

Here's stolen from wikipedia:
"Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities[1] that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual) communities as being oppressive or assimilationist."

But try to explain to a muggle about how you're opposed to mainstream LGBT ideologies that are assimilationist. TRY IT. I seriously dare you. Also, can I watch, so maybe I could learn something? I bet you're already better at it than me.

Here's what I want people to know when I identify as queer- I get to make my own decisions. I don't particularly think you deserve a map for my desires. But I will give you advance warning that you should not make assumptions about my desires. (Whatever, I'll cow to you, I want a radical baby raising household!) And maybe this is a delusion, but by confusing muggles I hope we're building a world with more possibility for everyone, where you get to choose your gender, choose your orientations, choose your ideologies, choose the daily life that gives you happiness and peace, unless you would rather choose not to.

For some of us, that will mean marrying the wife you dreamed about since you were 5. For some of us it will mean not having to marry anybody. For some of us it will mean hot ginger school activists. Everyone's lives will get to be specific and unique.

It is just a given that when I talk about these things I really offend and let down some people, so if I did that to you, feel free to leave it in the comments or email me. I actually do think these fights are worth sticking with each other through.

2012-01-24T10:26:00.000-06:00

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww-kwerd.

I recently got on this anti-racist kick. I'd love to say it was because of some kind of amazing protest experience I had, but no, it just has to do with my surfing tumblr a lot.

RIGHT. SO. I want to be an anti-racist white person. The white person part of that I totally have covered. The anti-racist part I do not have covered, besides being able to acknowledge that I'm racist.

How do I know I'm racist? Well, I can't have a conversation with a black person without somehow saying 'holla.' It sneaks up on me! We could be having a conversation about taxes, suddenly I've said 'holla' and raised the roof. About getting a refund or something.

"Well Carey, that's annoying, but it's not so bad." you perhaps are thinking.

Well, but that's easy to admit. It's not so scary a confession. The racist things I do that are really bad I'm probably in denial about.

But so far my anti-racist journey is pretty weird. It consists of me saying "I want to be anti-racist" to black people and so far they've responded "Well, everyone's racist. Black people are racist." Which, you know, true, and it's a nice reassurance, but I'm trying to get free! Or I'm trying to not get in the way of other people getting free. I mean, I've also got my own ways I need to be free. ALLY. I mean I want to be an effective ally!

Oh, being white. It's a pretty hilarious thing to be. And this new thing is only making me more hilarious. But my hope is me being ridiculous creates the space for other people to challenge stuff without looking ridiculous, because I've got the ridiculous person in the room role covered.

I'm not willing to dread my hair though. I can be every other stereotype of a trying too hard white person, but no dreading. I am willing to write a heartfelt song about this on acoustic guitar.

2012-01-23T15:31:00.000-06:00

Some Incredible Things.

I woke up today and an incredible thing happened. My mother walked into my room and sat on my bed. (This is not super incredible.) She asked me about things happening on my facebook wall. (Again, not incredible.)

Now I had posted an update that said "I think I chose to be gay because I enjoy gay people so damn much." And a comedy friend of mine from Chicago commented "If yer choosing to be gay yer a poser." He was being a jackhole as a joke, and knew that I'd know he wasn't serious, and so I wasn't offended.

Well my mom was offended and sent him a message saying I was NOT a poser and in fact "gay to the core" (her words!) and to watch out for Carey Callahan's mother.

Guys. Guys. GUYS. MY MOM DEFENDED MY SEXUALITY.

I can't TELL YOU HOW GOOD IT FEELS. I just cannot. But here goes. It feels so good. My mom has always been one for standing up for me. In 5th grade she told the boys I was attending Space Camp with that she knew they were messing with me and she had her eye on them. In 7th grade she yelled at Ms. Calvey for making me stay after and sand desks when she didn't have definitive proof I had written my name on one.

It just means a lot. My friend was making a joke, my mom's response was an over-reaction, but oh my god, I do not care, it feels so good.

Parents- copy my mom! Use my mom as a role model!

Oh gosh. So, so, so good.

I also had an amazing weekend. The first Atomic Comics was great, and Nellie got 85 tickets sold in literally a blizzard. It took us an hour and forty five minutes to get from Logan Square to the Mayne Stage (it would normally take a half hour) and she still managed to get all those people out! If there hadn't been a blizzard she would have sold the theatre out.

The show went fantastic. Ever Mainard, Chris Condren, Abby Mcenany, Candy Lawrence and Dan Telfer were all so goddamn hilarious. I was also hilarious.

And then I spent the rest of the weekend hanging out with ladies. Ladies are so great. Dudes, you're also great (some of you) but for me nothing beats a high quality lady hangout.

And then I came back to my mom's complete affirmation and support, then I got the keys to my new apartment, then I bought a new mattress. WHAT IS GOING ON EVERYTHING IS AMAZING!

Oh gosh, life is so good. Not always, but when it's good it's sooooooooo good. Totally worth the hard times. Ack. Wonderful.

2012-01-19T09:03:00.001-06:00

Sublime-imation.

We learned about sublimation in my class last night. It's when you take all your horniness and pour it into a non-sex pursuit.

Horniness is a funny thing. It used to be it was a really good metric of how on track my life was. I was horny when I had interesting stuff going on, I wasn't when there was nada happening.

The wrench in this system is antidepressants. Anti-depressants have not killed my sex drive, but they have made my sex drive much more open to reasonable suggestions. Like, "oh hey, even though I'm attracted to this person, there are some good reasons to consider they may make sport of skinning people alive, so I'll pass." They also have helped me be more prolific, more effective, a citizen of a stable and forward moving world.

So is fluoxetine taking energy that was in my 'getting sex' reserve and re-distributing it to the 'everything else' reserve?

Sublimation seems like a pretty good theory when you read things like saint's memoirs. Per St. Teresa of Avila:

I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.[

But you know, I'm suspicious. There's always been 24 hours in a day, let's see you're a prehistoric human who lives in the garden of Eden and you sleep 10 hours a day. You got 14 hours to fill- let's say 8 goes to getting meals together? You can't have sex for 6 hours. You can't. Not day in and day out. Our bodies just can't produce all the lubrication you'd need for that. So you could have sex until you are totally satiated and knocked out- you'd still have to deal with an hour or two of downtime.

Maybe I'm in denial. (That's another thing we learned about.) Maybe my non-sex pursuits are what I'm doing because society doesn't let me live in an orgy paradise. That would be exactly like society, ruining my good time.

I probably don't really understand the theory. Doesn't Freud seem pretty ridiculous? Like the Oedipus complex- how does a little boy get that his penis has anything to do with his mom? Like, how does he understand that he's a dude, and dudes have sex with ladies, and his mom's a lady? I buy that the minds of little children are full of sex and death, it's just how are they full of our concepts of who has sex with who?

I do also buy that kids are scared of their parents killing them. That's just truth. When you're that small you are probably so aware of everyone being bigger. And owning everything you use.

But I am glad to get to be thinking about such trashy stuff for school. Incest, death. Really makes contracts law seem pretty dry.

Chicagoans, but your tickets for Atomic Comics! It's tomorrow! See what I've been working on instead of having sex!

2012-01-17T16:23:00.000-06:00

Sometimes Shit Gets Real

Sometimes when shit gets real it means someone's decided to come at you with a truth hammer. Suddenly you realize you're about to work out some honest to jehovah hardcore emotional shit. But sometimes shit gets real and it means everything's hard. All the problems in your life soup come bubbling up to the surface.

This is how it goes. You have a good week, you have a bad week. Shit gets bad, shit gets worse, you give up, you try again, suddenly everything's easy, suddenly you drop down dead. Be like a piece of driftwood in the ocean of life. Don't take it personally. Better people than you have been flayed alive. Worse people than you will go down in history as heroes. (That is not a swipe at Dr. King.) (But it is a swipe at Teddy Roosevelt.)

My training for the long terrible mud race I plan to participate in on the 15th of April is not off to a strong start. I ran today. At first indoors, then outdoors. I didn't run far at all. I'm just gonna try to run everyday from now till then. Hopefully the U of Akron personal trainers will call me soon and give me some structure. Until then if I just run everyday I'll count that as a victory.

I was trying to remember when it was that I started to hate movement. When I was very young, at 6 or 7, I had the idea I would be an olympic runner. I would run up and down the driveway and play out getting the gold medal.

Something changed in third or fourth grade. I think the playground became a lot more gender segregated. The boys started playing football. I tried to play once but felt really stupid because I didn't know where to run.

I wish I could remember more. But right around that age is when I got the sense I wasn't good at organized movement. I developed a self consciousness that dogs me at every physical fitness turn. For the first two years of riding a bike I wouldn't ride with anyone else because I was afraid I was somehow riding a bike wrong and they would point it out.

Well, I don't know guys. I'm just sort of poking around the anxiety. Just trying to stretch out that knot of irrational fears.

That's why I want to do this terrible mud race. To just get over it! Just like, bye twenties, hello thirties, if something terrible happens and I need to run 10 miles over hills and through obstacles it'll be just fine.

And it can't be harder than other things I've done, but it can be harder in a different way than things I've done. Lots of people say public speaking is their big fear, pssssshhhhhawwww, I seek that shit out! Lots of people won't move to new cities alone. WHATEVS. I could do that every year if I needed to. Lots of people wouldn't eat mealworm salsa, I did and it was DELICIOUS.

In sum, my life has been a series of crazy pointless difficult shit, and this mudrace will just be one more. And if I just run everyday, and keep at it, I will finish the race on April 15th. And if I don't, it'll just be like my 7th grade piano recital where I hadn't practiced enough and I froze on stage and couldn't perform. Sounds bad, right? It was. But I didn't pee my pants even a little. So...the worst case scenario is never actually that bad with this kind of thing.

Oh hey, buy tickets for Atomic Comics. Seriously. We're getting down to the wire.

2012-01-16T10:53:00.000-06:00

Microphone Magic

I have a little brother who is a scientist. Some of my best friends are scientists (not true). So don't call me science-phobic when I proclaim to the world, you cast a spell with whatever you say into a microphone.

Yes, we live in a demon haunted world, and I believe in spells. I really do. I can't explain how they work. I'm intellectually opposed to efforts to explain how they work. Details, ew.

So you have to be careful what you say into a mic. If you say "nobody likes me," you're casting a spell for that. If you say "everyone likes me," is that really what you want? Everyone? Even Hitler, were he alive?

But Carey, people speak into microphones every day, and often these people have opposing intentions, so how does that square?

The spells duke it out. Whoever cast the stronger spell wins. The louder the mic the better, but there's also things you can do as a speaker to increase the strength of your spells. Bring the energy up from the stage and start your words in your belly. You want a lot of jump in your words. They should be going nuts inside you waiting to get out, so when you speak they spiral out onto the audience. You just open your mouth and they come rushing out.

No use being shy in front of a mic. It freaks people out because they know you're using a powerful tool, and if you're not confident in using that power that's bad news.

2012-01-14T14:35:00.000-06:00

Down Day.

This week was really something. I started GRADUATE SCHOOL. Then I (maybe unwisely?) drove to Chicago to do 4 minutes at UP Comedy Club, then drove back the next day.

The contest at UP was remarkable in that actually everyone was REALLY FUNNY. I frankly wasn't expecting that. But I saw a lot of people I'd never seen before and they were really funny. I got to go second, and then sat with Nellie and Candy Lawrence and drank jack and gingers and laughed and laughed and laughed. Adam Burke won, and he was very funny, although I think the suits give him an unfair advantage.

So today I go to work at night, but before then I'm gonna lay in bed with Fox and that's it. That's all today is about.

Partly because the snow has piled up outside. Partly because I drove through that snow yesterday and the day before, and that's exhausting. Mostly because why move if it's not necessary?

I don't even have any thoughts, deep or shallow, today.But I still want to write. Cause I'm on this roll with writing, and also I have this show on friday I want to bug you to buy your tickets for now. This show needs to sell out. If this show sells out me and Nellie won't have any problems ever again. That's how that works.

I keep bugging Nellie to say that I'm single in all the show promos. She doesn't. Because she knows better. She knows that's desperate and gives everyone a funny shifting feeling right below their rib cage. Like, "Should I laugh? That's not funny, but maybe I should laugh so we can just move on?"

Nellie is wise.

You know who else is single? Carrie Brownstein. I mean, can you even believe that? She's just the most talented prettiest raddest person on the face of the planet right now. Portlandia's IFC promos are these slo-mo biking porn things, where she and Fred stare at the camera like you're on a date with them. The best date you ever had with the most amazing person you ever met.

Some people are too rad to be in relationships. Right?

Right?

No, not really. No one's too rad for relationships. Some of us just have a lot of baggage, and it makes us avoid relationships and pursue other things. We'll get into relationships eventually, almost everyone does. You need some stasis in your life before a relationship can grow roots. You need some free time and you need to have figured your shit out.

Sometimes maybe you need to grow closer to your family. Sometimes you need to pay off your debt. Sometimes you need to find a pack.

It's just I'm so LUCKY. Everything has worked out. Everything. And how long can you think about being lucky before you get bored? Our brains are not built to be grateful for long periods of time. They are problem seeking and solving machines. And my problems? I sort of have no problems right now. I have some homework to do, but guys it's so interesting! I have to move into a new apartment, but it's more like I GET to move into a new apartment. I get to buy a new mattress! I get to meet with my adviser to plan out the rest of grad school! I get to go back to Chicago this weekend for Atomic Comics! Shit is GOOD.

So my brain is like, finances solved, school solved, comedy solved, work solved, friends solved, family solved, love life not solved? Should we dwell on that?

But that's not even very compelling. If one part of your life has to be up in the air, your love life is the area to choose. Especially if it's up in the air but there's no crisis.

I better start working out a lot harder so I have something to complain about.

2012-01-11T14:47:00.000-06:00

Whelmed.

The first week of class, and I get surprisingly a lot accomplished each day, if only because there is a mountain of things to accomplish. Today my physical fitness was assessed, and I got a parking pass, and I got my student email turned on, and I bought some books. And I emailed my adviser about meeting, and then I found out I get to go up in a showcase at UP Comedy Club in Chicago tomorrow night. So that's great.

After my fitness assessment (in which it was revealed I am in fair to fit shape) I ran a mile. Which isn't enough if I want to be able to run 10 miles, up and down hills, and through obstacles, by mid April. So I guess I'll have to go back to the gym again and run more.

It'll be good for me, because this week it seems I'm juggling quite a bit, and the only way to juggle is to be really focused on what you're doing RIGHT THIS MOMENT.

I have a problem when I run where I start thinking about when I'm gonna stop running. I'll have the thought "Ok, after two more laps I'll stop." And then those two laps are SOOOOO HARD. The minute I decide that I will stop the laps become terrible. So I have to just not think about when I'm gonna stop, I guess?

That's why treadmills are no good for me, because the constant updates about how long I've been running or how far I've run make me immediately want to stop. And the wanting to stop is what makes running awful. If I could just forget about stopping I could run forever.

Oh, another accomplishment- I'm signed up for health insurance. It has been 3 years since I was last health insured. Pretty good, right?

Tonight after class I'll head to the Village Idiot in Lakewood to say my jokes at an open mic. In preparation for the showcase at UP tomorrow. And in preparation for ATOMIC COMICS NEXT FRIDAY AT THE MAYNE STAGE.

2012-01-10T00:26:00.000-06:00

On Wanting the Audience to Hug and Fix You

Power. Power. Power. That's when I do well, when I'm focused on dominating the audience. And when I do well, and dominate those wimpy bottoms, I feel great!

But you know, sometimes, something about being out at a bar late brings out the sad in me.

I have this little nugget of sadness that is always available for feeling, even when my life is going great. My life is really on a high right now. I think I'll just always have that little nugget.

And sometimes that little nugget pops up when I'm about to go on stage. And when that happens I want to sigh and complain about my life and wait for the audience to hug me, and set me up with their sisters, and tell me I'm so special.

Here's the problem: NO ONE GOES TO A COMEDY SHOW TO DO THAT.

That's not a thing you can get from an audience actually. You have to get that from individuals you're halfway intimate with. Audiences want to be passive, they want you to do all the work, they do not want to take care of you at all.

When it comes down to it, standup is not therapy, nor is the audience your girlfriend.

I did two sets tonight. The first one went pretty ok, and I was focused on dominating. The second one I felt a little sad. It was a fun little open mic, mostly just comics messing around, and I got really needy when I went up. I wanted to whine. I wanted to whine about how I'll never find anyone and how crazy I am, which are both lazy things to say, because they aren't true and I know it. It's just me being lazy and needy and inaccurate.

That's what two yuenglings do to me.

I don't need sympathy. I'm just saying it's a lesson. To remember that the relationship with the audience is not one where emotional needs get fulfilled. That's for friends, family, and lovers.

Now, the problem, of course, is that I feel much safer in front of a crowd of people than one on one with a lover. I am scared to death one on one. That feels like about the most unsafe position you could put yourself in. You're gonna tell this person who you want to stick around all your shit? WHEW, that is HARDCORE. I don't know how any of you people do it.

But I mean, that's what I'm in school for, to try to figure that out.

I used to do standup as a replacement for intimate relationships. That was stupid. Because standup is a terrible replacement for those. But it doesn't mean the REAL use of standup- which I think is the thrill of being the only person in the room talking- isn't actually cool. Sometimes you get into something good for stupid reasons.

2012-01-09T10:03:00.000-06:00

Now We're In It.

First day of grad school, first day of grad school, finally we're doing it, finally we're doing it!

I'm gonna go down to Akron early and use the gym, make a personal trainer appointment, I'll print out a bunch of stuff, make an appointment with my adviser, buy my books. Shit will be so real.

I kidnapped Michael Ivy last night and made him go to an open mic in Kent with me. Ladies. LADIES. We need to talk about heckling. You may not think you're a heckler. But if you're yelling things at the performer, you are. Standup isn't a conversation. That's a two person act you're trying to get started, and hey that's sort of a retro throwback idea, that's cool, but don't spring it on someone in the middle of their one person act.

Especially if you're a feminist lady, because you gotta believe me I LIKE YOU I WANT TO TALK TO YOU JUST AFTER I'M DONE WITH THESE JOKES I WORKED ON.

And I get it. When I have a couple of drinks in me I also try to turn every standup act into a two way street. I know you may even think you're helping. I know you have only good intentions. But still. Stop.

Often you can just shut down ladies by disagreeing with them. No. No. No. Wrong. What I have to say. Wrong wrong wrong. Me instead.

But feminists- I love you. I don't want to shut you down. Maybe you should just do stand up if you like talking in front of people. That's why I heckle in a conversational manner. I would like that quite a bit, we could be friends, we could go to open mics together, we could bully dudes out of their shitty rape culture material. That would be great! Let's do it!

And then you'll see what I mean about not heckling.

Tickets are selling FAST for Atomic Comics, so now's the time to buy your tickets.

2012-01-06T00:33:00.000-06:00

The Inevitable Search-for-Narrative Upon my Hometown Return

I rolled into Cleveland at 3:45 on the Megabus. The Megabus gets off 90 on a morose block of West 25th. There's a gas station, a field, a building for rent, a field. A manufacturer of something, something that needs to be transported away in big white trucks. The Megabus heads toward the market, where things get cheerier, what with the new candy stores and all the many options for where to get a cup of coffee. Then it drops you off near Public Square, with the teenagers and the working ladies with their purses and sneakers, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Guys, I don't know what to say about standup. All of my feelings regarding it are very intense.

I came back to Cleveland and my head was full of stand up. I was repeating the throw away lines that got the big laughs, trying to get the re-enactment down.

Guys, in therapy this fall I mostly talked about stand up.

Guys, this song is how I feel.

Caught in my life this time--
I'll swear off future crimes;
lighten my soul.
I'll give up everything:
the kick, the bite, the scream.
You tame it all.
I want you back to front,
I want you front to back--
I want to feel this again,
just like a heart attack.
I want to make it real,
I want to make it good--
and make it right.

Caught in my life this time,
'cause I'm so hardwired
to be alone.
We wanna know everything,
but you were just kidding--
don't wanna know, and
my blood flows out to it,
my nerves are inside-out,
there's voices in my head--
it's like a barking shout--
but I can't turn it off,
no I can't turn it down
or make it quiet.

I want to know.
I want to know.

If you're gonna be a restless soul,
then you're gonna be so so tired.
If you're gonna keep me up all night,
then you'd better learn to love this fire.
If you're gonna be a restless soul,
then you're gonna be so so tired.
If you're gonna give up on this fight,
then I'm gonna call you a liar.

Guys, how intense must my feelings be if I need to post song lyrics? The most intense feelings of all time ever.

You know how you can have a moment where you feel very alive and powerful, and it's terrifying to have that moment, because you know you're gonna chase it and you can't stop? And you chased it before, and perhaps, in this theoretical circumstance we're creating in your hypothetical life because remember we're talking about you, it broke you?

It's like having coffee with someone you broke up with, and every time you accidentally touch 5 million doors in the future you walked away from fly open.

I cannot believe I feel this intensely about the thing Jeff Foxworthy does.

2012-01-04T12:06:00.000-06:00

Mama Grizzly-Snake-Dragon-Fighter Plane.

I auditioned at the open call for the UP comedy club at Second City. Then I went to the open mic at Lotti's. Then I went to Chuc just to hang out and that great big angel named Dan Telfer offered me 5 minutes. I accepted. I had a very good time.

It's not too hard to have a good time when people are giving you hugs because they haven't seen you in awhile. But if I felt I had bombed at any of those events, it would have been a bad time. I'm not gonna front. I did not in any way bomb.

Guys, let's just get real. I DID REALLY WELL. I DID WELL at all three events.

ALSO- I like saying my new material out loud. I like it because I get to yell during it. I like it because I get to yell at various jerks I have known through this material.

And you know I just want to YELL ALL THE TIME. I just. I have a lot of anger. I am an angry person.

So I guess I'll just keep doing material where I get to yell at people. Also then I can yell at the audience, and for some reason audiences really like being dominated. They like it when you order them around and shut them down.

My favorite moment of yesterday was at Chuc when I said I went to OSU for college, and some guy cheered then some guy booed. And I said "I don't care about your football bullshit." And it got a laugh! And that is really how I felt about their various football affiliations, like, I'm trying to TALK ABOUT SHIT up here, keep your idiot dude stuff down. You have every other moment of your day to reveal how you feel about those big money making institutions which don't have any feelings about you rather than enjoying all the money you throw at them. Now you have to listen to me because I have my own feelings and I spent all day turning them into jokes. Shut up.

I don't know, maybe part of the problem the last time I was trying to do standup was I got too into the idea that people thought I was cute. Which was the feedback I got a lot back then, that I was adorable and nervous. And I think I tried to develop that into some kind of adorable nervous character. But.....I'm not adorable and nervous. I'm admirable and not nervous at all. I'm handsome and smarter than most people. You know?

I'm just a self esteem kick because I got laughs for shutting people down.

Ok, but also, these are some thoughts I had yesterday: I feel excited about turning 30 because I think it's time to move into the Mother phase of my life, rather than the Maiden phase. I'm not gonna be a mom in the sense that I'm gonna push a person out of the most sensitive part of my body. But my relationship to the world is changing. Bear with me.

My twenties were a time of just straight up insecurity. I was just so confused the whole time about what I should be doing, and how I should be letting people treat me. And I was very focused on becoming acceptable to at least someone- if not acceptable to my parents, acceptable to audiences and partners and cliques. That didn't turn out well for me at all.

I think that's a Maiden thing. That's like, who am I in this world? What's my role? How should I conform to the world? How can I be what people want me to be?

And once I saw what a terrible place those efforts brought me to, I finally had to trade it for protecting myself. Instead of "How can I be what the world wants?" it was "How can I protect myself from the world? How can I keep from being pulled apart by everyone's different expectations? How can I take care of myself?"

Now, I think that's still a Maiden thing. Figuring out how you can nurture and protect yourself is still a Maiden problem.

So the Mother problems are maybe more "I know how to take care of and nurture myself, now I can take care of and nurture others." It's like, "These are the seeds I'm taking responsibility for. These are the people I'm gonna get to their full potential. How can I do that?"

So I think the Mother phase is in large part about being fierce and scary. Gentle to people who need some gentleness, and a straight up BITCH to anyone trying to hurt the people/institutions/places you've decided you're gonna mother.

Now this is the part where maybe in a couple of years I'll look back and forget I felt this way. But right now I think the people I'm interested in mothering are young women. Like, women in high school and college. Because women are pretty funny and smart and enthusiastic at that age, but also so very confused. And they get put through total bullshit. And the options we give women that age for their identities are not good options. And pretty much no matter what you do as an 18 year old girl, someone thinks you're doing everything wrong- whether you have a kid, or get a job, or go to college- just by being an 18 year old woman people think you're inherently a fuck-up. It's not fair. It hurts women. We need better options and lot more support for women just coming into adulthood.

So who knows if I'll feel this way in 3 months. Who cares. Point is MAIDENHOOD IS COMING TO AN END. THE SCARY ASS MOTHER STAGE IS ON IT'S WAY. HOLLA.

Hear more about this on January 20th at the Mayne Stage.

2012-01-03T00:31:00.000-06:00

Just like Old Times, Except Not at All.

I went out to two Chicago open mics tonight. I was extremely nervous. The extremity of my nerves was really something. I went to the Shit Show at Shambles, and waited at the bar for Ever to get there. I was much less nervous when Ever came up and hugged me. She's a comedy angel.

I had forgotten that open mics can have really nice community feelings swirling around them.

After Ever hugged me, but before the show started I was sitting at the bar drinking a bar I really didn't enjoy (Lagunitas, but not the IPA, NEVER MIND) and tapping my foot and just feeling my stomach clench up again and again. And this comic I didn't know came up to me and said some really nice things about having seen my comedy way back when. Guys, another comedy angel. I needed that so bad. I tried to explain to him how good that was to hear. And then I liked his comedy too. It was wonderful.

Then I went to the Globe. Where I ran into Nate Simmons, who is a special person in my personal history because he was at the first ever open mic I went to in Chicago and it was his first time going up. 4 years ago now?

I needed it to be a good night, and I'm so grateful it was.

I'm going to go out tomorrow night, and maybe I will stay here until wednesday to go out wednesday night. Maybe not. I really need this stage time. I get so flustered in very avoidable ways.

I don't know guys, we'll see how this goes, we'll see what unfolds.

2012-01-02T14:38:00.000-06:00

Writing Jokes for Fun and Profit.

Would you like to make a gazillion dollars? Do you enjoy adulation from strangers? Do you have precious insights to bestow on the world?

Why not try standup comedy?

Getting rich and receiving all the love the world has to offer is easy and fun!

First, you must write a joke.

Second, you must say the joke out loud into a microphone.

Third, you must pay your personal assistant enough to keep them from leaking your business to the tabloids.

Standup comedy has the added benefit of being a calming, centering activity which will increase your sense of well-being. The practice of standup is often a path away from self destructive activities like over-eating, drinking, and screaming at everyone but yourself for your shitty life.

Since I've decided to get serious about my mental and financial health this new year I'm also going to be doing more standup. Please go here and purchase tickets for the Atomic Comics show at the Mayne Stage in Chicago on January 20th.

Today in preparation for this show I am writing jokes. The jokes are flowing from me like a babbling brook. And in that brook live the fish of inner/ outer peace. Tonight I will go to an "open mic" (open microphone) where these jokes will create community. I will go to bed secure that my actions are meaningful and have immense value.

2011-12-30T09:31:00.001-06:00

Hip Hip Hoo-Ray.

When I went off to college I had never seen a hipster. This is because I was the opposite of cool in high school. I wasn't aware that people went to see bands at places that weren't Blossom Music Center. It hadn't occurred to me someone would let their whole house be turned into a dance party. The only tight pants I knew men wore were biking shorts.

So yes, when I got to OSU the existence of hipsters, or as I inexplicably called them "scenesters," blew my mind and legs wide open.

(Ok, in loyalty to my uncool, innocent younger self, I actually didn't hook up with a ton of scenesters, but I LOVE the sentence above so I'll leave it in. I chased a lot of scenesters. I would hook up with more hip people after college than during. I became a more effective hipster chaser with age. Once I knew the right word.)

Now, this is where my ignorance really begins to show. I thought Columbus was an especially hip place. I thought there was something special happening in Columbus. I didn't think garage rock and tight pants and beautiful, long, wavy hair on men were happening anywhere else. I fully expected that when people from Cleveland saw my new cultural membership their minds would be similarly blown. They would be confused and frightened and intrigued and most of all impressed.

No. Everyone from my middle school, and everyone from my high school, by the end of my freshman year of college had become a hipster. And they used the correct word for it. Everyone was a hipper hipster than I was.

This is how unhip I was: at winter break my freshman year a childhood friend asked me if I had heard of Belle and Sebastian. I lied and said I had. She said "That's a college thing, right?" I was like, yeah, uh huh, for sure, Belle and Sebastian, everyone at college listens to that shit.
Then I filed away the band name to investigate. And then I was like, I don't understand, this doesn't sound like Guided by Voices. I hadn't heard Guided by Voices, but I did know what they sounded like.

THINGS I DID BECAUSE I WANTED SO BADLY TO BE A HIP IN COLLEGE:
-dyed my hair purple, then black
-went to every show ever at Bernie's
-cut up a bunch of t-shirts
-gave myself the ugliest haircuts
-became a vegetarian
-stopped bathing
-gave myself alcohol poisoning over and over
-mostly just listened to a bunch of bullshit opinions from boys at parties who had long ago abandoned personal hygiene.

Guys, I didn't ever succeed. The hipsters never thought I was one of them. It was pretty obvious that I did improv comedy and listened to Shakira. It was obvious I didn't know how to smoke weed, no matter what device you handed it to me in. But mostly it was obvious I was relentlessly, tirelessly self-loathing.

It was for the best. The friends I have from college are pretty much only from the improv group, or from my decidedly non-hip dorm floor sophomore year. Shakira is still awesome. And if I had been better at smoking weed people would have included me in their other drug escapades, and I would've flipped my shit on the Oval.

Also the people who were successful at being hipsters in college now are married. Like, not even newlyweds, really in the thick of being married. Married enough to be getting divorces. This is why it's good to be a late bloomer kids. Draw out that young adult period until....just draw it out.

2011-12-27T13:30:00.000-06:00

Evidently, I will not be decreasing my mass in the upcoming year.

Well, maybe more of the universe should consist of ME anyway.

Some actions that do not result in a healthier you:

-sleeping till 12
- laying in bed until 1:30
- getting up and preparing bacon, eggs, and the mushroom/ green peas from Christmas dinner for breakfast
- returning to bed to write on a blog about this very experience.

We haven't talked about fat in awhile, have we? Remember 4 years ago when I was really into fat acceptance?

I still am. Even though it was easier to be into fat acceptance when I was an actual healthy, fit, biking machine. Now fat acceptance depends on accepting the fat that is a part of myself, and which I see in photos and feel worried about what other people see in the photos. Real fat is more challenging to accept than theoretical fat. BUT MORE IMPORTANT TO ACCEPT.

I don't take good care of myself or of my surroundings. I have regressed to teenager-hood. I do not know how to feed myself, my room is a mess, I leave my stuff all over the house for my dad to pick up. It's ridiculous.

But hey, I feel pretty good about the opportunities for adult behavior coming my way this year. I bet I'm gonna finally figure out where to put my clothes that have been worn once, but have another wearing in them before the laundry. Besides my floor. I'm more acquainted with the many stores that sell storage solutions than I ever have been before. And man will I work out, like, everyday. Every day just getting super sweaty, and talking about it all the time when I'm not working out. Getting skin yeast infections from all the sweat.

Also I bet I'll finally decide whether I'm a leg shaver or not. And commit to that identity.

And I won't drink at all. Or, I'll drink some whiskey that's really expensive that no one besides the bartender has ever heard of, but I'll nurse it for two hours. Besides I won't be the kind of person who wants to get drunk. I'll be so content and comfortable in my own skin I won't long for oblivion. But I'll still get lots of play. But I won't call it play anymore. I'll be really discreet and respectful and an object of much lust.

I'll get really stylish in a subtle way. I'll just buy a couple of high quality pieces, and I'll call them "pieces."

I won't be really into that Gym Class Heroes song anymore. Because obviously it's annoying. Thus I'll turn off the radio when it comes on instead of blasting it.

I won't be gassy.

I won't cry in a scary way, I'll only cry in an appropriate manner which adds a pinch of pathos to situations which could use it. My face will not turn red and my nose will not run in these situations.

This blog will teach you something besides my mood patterns.

I'll develop a couple of obscure hobbies that are really intriguing to other people....like.....well, right now I'm not even aware of what they could be. Old cameras? I really don't know.

I'll get a smartphone but I won't be constantly on it and thinking about being on it during conversations with real people.

I will always be reading the best new book.

Nothing will ever make me angry except in a far off intellectual way. Like I'll be "angry" about poverty but I won't be ANGRY about some stranger at the bar talking too much when I WANT TO BE TALKING.

I will make Community the most popular show on television.

I'll have a realistic plan for becoming rich.

Everyone who meets me will start to identify as a feminist or womanist. The men who meet me will have sudden insight into the ways they've been kept from being whole people by the patriarchy.

I will be able to rap.

I will become adept in a fighting sport and WIN A BUNCH OF FIGHTS.

Tegan and Sara will get my haircut instead of the other way around.

I'll feel very sure about everything I've said and written.

I will be full of love and forgiveness and appreciation for everyone I come across.

I will be able to knock out 10 pullups at a time.

I actually will do that last one.

2011-12-25T00:04:00.000-06:00

A Christmas Poem with no shame attached at all, not even a little, maybe a little.

I had a moment tonight
Maybe it was Christmas
where my heart filled out a little
stretched on one side
just a smidge

Where a gust of wind came through and found a fold to push out

Where I thought of you people I know
wishing each other good things
all of us wishing good things
these wishes arcing across the city grid

we know a wish does nothing
but just in case one might
we do this on special occasions
and some ordinary days
sending out protective nets
sending out love and money spells

that before we're through here
we might have good luck
and see the good luck of our friends
and know we were lucky.

2011-12-24T01:13:00.000-06:00

Bad People.

I do this thing where I roam the internet from 10 to 1 in the morning. Then my eyeballs are so wound up I can't get to sleep.

You know, one thought I have to manage quite a bit is if I'm a bad person. I wonder about this often.

Well, maybe some other people also wonder about this.

How should we proceed, potentially bad people?

Someone who was eminently sane would perhaps suggest that a person can neither good nor bad, only their actions can be good or bad. Because a person is a process in constant flux. Perhaps you behaved badly while you were tired from work, but were a saint on your off day.

However, I call bullshit on the eminently sane. There are good people. Dorothy Day. There are bad people. Hitler. Good people. Martin Luther King. Bad people. Sheriff Joe.

Good people. My friend Mary. Bad people. Uhhhhhhhhh........this guy who was a friend of my boyfriend's in college? I mean, he was a messed up guy. Also such a jerk. You wouldn't believe. But he maybe wasn't bad through and through the way I would characterize Mary's goodness.

Well, we've established it's hard to put people you know in the 'bad people' box unless they're really, really bad. So they have to be sort of distant and on tv to really be bad through and through.

Ugh, fellow bad people, look, it's the same shit as always: we need to be friendlier to ourselves. I know. You don't want a friend like you, because you aren't very energetic or dynamic or saving the world.

Well you can either change and be more of all those things, or you can stay the same and start to like your tired, nap prone, bourgeois pig ways. Except you've tried to change, and failed, right?

That was a trick question! No you did not! Because of what that eminently sane person said about people being processes. You didn't fail because you're not done with the test yet. It's still going. And it will go and go and go until you FALL DOWN DEAD.

You know what, this is not something I can talk you out of, you maybe horrible person. Maybe you actually are Hitler or Sheriff Joe. Maybe you are even a worse person than you suspect. Maybe you are fooling yourself about all the harm you do to everyone you cross paths with.

I got nothing on this. Except a question to think about: would you rather be a bad person who everyone liked, or a good person who everyone found obnoxious? A lot of good people are obnoxious. But so are a lot of bad people. And Hitler was a popular guy.

I am really aiming for the middle of the road on both. I would like for at least some people to like me. I would like to at least some of the time be a good person. I think half the time is really stretching it for me. 30 percent of the time is a more reasonable goal. Then 50 percent of the time I'll be asleep, so only 20 percent of my time will be spent being an actively bad person.

It just gets tricky with inaction, right? The US government makes it real tricky, right? With the torture and the prisons? It's hard to have a relaxed attitude about being a middle of the road sort of person when your tax dollars fund nasty shit. Shit you would definitely not be a part of executing, even though you are funding it.

ACK. Ok. So. You're a bad person. You're a no good, terrible, awful, very bad person. Just like that guy I knew in college. Except you also have an anxiety problem. He probably did too. He probably thought he was a really bad guy.

I think maybe the best course of action is to pretend you don't actually exist. Just pretend there's no narrative that connects all of your actions together. There's no person there to be good or bad. And maybe you can do some good things, and experience how that goes, and some bad things, and experience how those go.

That's terrible advice. Don't do bad things. Do good things. Do enough good things you never have to worry about being a bad person, because you are in the middle of doing something good RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND.

Whew. Glad we solved that.

2011-12-15T06:33:00.000-06:00

Early Morning

I've got a test on two chapters in my 'Memory and Cognition' course today. It's the last test, so it's the final, but again, it's only on two chapters. They're about reasoning and problem solving. Pretty interesting stuff, or rather would be if I weren't getting tested on it. Funny how that works.

I take the overnight bus to Chicago tonight. Megan is already there, and I hope she's filling today up with family and other friend time so that once I get there her schedule is free and clear. I hope the same for Nellie and Mary.

I woke up at 6 to study, and Fox had a noteworthy amount of energy when we woke up. In his prime he'd get up at 6 with my mom and was allowed to roam free through the neighborhood. I guess the early morning suits him.

The early morning can suit me every once in awhile, but I wouldn't bet on this time being incorporated into my lifestyle. It may be peaceful, but it's also dark. That's a recipe for sleep. It's not a recipe for exercise or meditation. I'm probably not an ingredient in any recipes you find for those things.

I've been listening to 'Exile in Guyville' in preparation for my trip to Chicago. Those are songs that seem clearly written about Chicago to me. You know what song about Chicago I can't deal with? The Sufjan Stevens one. Pandora always wants to play that song, so I've probably heard it at least twice a week since I've started waitressing. Ugh. What is that guy even talking about? What is he ever talking about? Jesus? Feelings? Michigan? Ew.

Also, change your name if that's what your parents gave you. It's easy. You could just reverse it. Steven Sufjan. So much better.

After this test I have a day free to do errands. Then a standup show at the Grog Shop, then I catch the bus downtown at 1 in the morning. And then this fall is sort of officially over. Holiday time, and then beginning my GRAD PROGRAM happens next. Who ever thought this would come? Not me. I lost faith way way way back.

Yeah, so I officially can't complain right now. Everything's great. I get to go on vacation, have a Christmas, and then do this thing I really didn't believe I'd get to do. That may seem really overly dramatic, but....ok, sure, yeah, it is. This is me and my blog. It's overly dramatic. But imagine if this was the inside of your HEAD.

2011-12-10T11:58:00.000-06:00

Heroes

Warning: I just drank my morning coffee so this is a very optimistic post. If you notice my posts swing between two extremes, and that follows the time of day they were written (morning posts are happy, afternoon posts are not) and whether I just drank coffee.

Today I've been thinking about the incredible things this Occupy movement has already accomplished, which I didn't see coming at all. And my next thought was "I HAVEN'T DONE ANY OF THAT!" Which we've already discussed, my relentless self centered-ness when it comes to activism. Me me me me me me!

So I think the next step in my maturation might be learning how to really appreciate the stuff other people do. Instead of other people's noble actions being deeply threatening to my sense of my own value.

The way I was taught about social change was through stories of leaders. My middle school participated in a "MLK-Dorothy Day- Gandhi" conference where a bunch of other catholic middle schoolers made big poster boards with badly drawn (but in retrospect, adorably so) portraits of The Big Three with big quotes about Peace next to them.

From a very young age I assumed I would be a great leader. Much like I assumed I would be a very tall woman when I grew up, with slim hips. It seemed my natural place in the universe- I was a talker, I could get very wound up about the things I talked about. Would you believe when I ran for 5th grade class president the whole class cheered wildly for my campaign speech, in which a number of impossible promises were made? So many that even though I won that election, the teacher took me aside to tell me she was giving it to my opponent. My speech may have been about what a farce the fifth grade class presidency was, I'm not sure.

But despite my ability to win class elections, I am very much not a political leader. I'm very much a political follower. Because of those strong emotions and that getting wound up- it's very hard for me to keep on task, or to sustain focus for more than an afternoon. I mean, surely you've noticed that this blog is constant navel gazing? (And will continue to be so.)

But back to other people. I guess I'm saying, good effort liberal Catholic middle school educators, but too much of a focus on individual leaders was no good. Because the leaders of movements matter SO MUCH, but that isn't where most of us are gonna fall and so we need a variety of role models.

And while I admire my friends who are demonstrating their leadership abilities in this time of upheaval, I also want to throw a shout out to all the older folks I know who have turned out not to be great leaders, but faithful and steadfast followers. It's not so glamorous sending a check, it's not so glamorous getting the free calendars, but that money can lay the foundation for more glamorous actions. And taking the day off of work to go the statehouse is a pain and a sacrifice in small ways (specifically your numb butt through the bus ride), but it does do a little something for whatever you're lobbying about.

And it looks like that's the kind of political participant I'm gonna be. The check writer, the lobby day-er, the intermittent protester. So there will always be doubt about whether I've done enough (probably not) or whether I'm a sell-out (no, I'm not willing to bandy that insult about). Whether I backed the right horses. Which it turns out, even if you backed the ineffective horse, if that horse has some money they might fund the effective horse when the effective horse comes along. Or the ineffective horse might be a bastard horse. Live and learn.

Maybe I'll start a monthly club of followers, where we can write and mail our checks together. While eating cinnamon rolls and wearing fuzzy slippers. We'll sponsor an organizer together, and maybe every once in awhile we'll get a picture and a handwritten note from the organizer assuring us that we're good people, even though we are so, so very comfortable and our slippers are so very warm.

2011-12-08T09:12:00.000-06:00

Fine, but not doing too well.

You see, I'm waiting for this letter. Waiting for this letter is destroying my life. I yelled at my mother because of this letter. I am avoiding any conversations with my dad until this letter. There's an undertone of dismissive annoyance to my waitressing which has resulted in some fifteen percent tips.

They told me it would come by friday.

There's nothing else to think about. Everything should change after the new year, dependent on me getting this letter and being able to apply for financial aid.

I do not WANT to be patient anymore. I've put in my time. I want to get out of this town, even if only to Akron, and my own place that I could have an overnight guest in. I want a nice bed. I want to take classes that are interesting and relevant to a long term job. A PROFESSION even.

What's scaring me is I can't really imagine it. My life right now just stretches indefinitely into the future. Years and years of living at my parents and saving money for....for some change that will never come.

I need to get this out of my head. Because I work a double today and I need to earn money. Because I'm hanging out with a new person tonight and I can't fixate on this. Because it's the only choice besides being miserable until it comes.

Ugh, I'm dying here. The notion that I have to go interact with the world right now, rather than sleeping through this, is messed up.

2011-12-04T13:02:00.000-06:00

Dirty Person Problems

I've been saving money for a car down payment. Because it is time to get a real car, an adult car, a car that I won't ditch in a year because all the brake lines are rusted through. So I've been working a lot. Which is great because this time in between thanksgiving and christmas is the most profitable time to be a waitress. I'm making BANK.

Predictably, I'm now living in squalor, because if I'm not at work I don't want to be moving. It's challenging to live in squalor. Here are the hardest parts: finding clothes to wear to work 2) not thinking about how disgusting your sheets are.

Awakening in squalor creates its own resistance. I wake up in these disgusting sheets and I'd rather not move. Don't get me wrong, I get up for coffee, I just bring it back to bed. Then I leave the coffee cup on my bed stand for up to a week. When I have my own place again I'm gonna put the coffee pot on my bed stand. It'll be one of those coffee pots with a timer, so the smell of coffee can be my alarm clock.

It's also way past time to buy some new clothes. My black skinny pants ripped at least a half foot on the left thigh. My bras look like they have ptsd. (Is anyone offended? I don't know about these things anymore.)

Speaking of, I wore a sports bra to work yesterday and went out after, and a friend told me she could tell I was wearing a sports bra. Does that mean my customers noticed the sports bra? Is that really unacceptable, serving in a sports bra? It's just I'm tirrrrrreeed. Also I hate bras, and a sports bra is the closest I can come to not being filled with rage at underwires and straps that dig into my shoulders. UGH BRAS. I don't like any piece of clothing that leaves red marks.

Guys, I just really need to get it together. Change my sheets, throw out clothes, fold the ones I'm gonna keep and take them off the top of my dresser. Also vacuum. I really wanted to wait until after christmas to buy new pants, but I might not be able to make it. And definitely new bras. UGH GOOD BRAS ARE 50 BUCKS EACH. Damn.

Ok, I'm gonna get started on this path of self improvement or basic hygiene. Have a good sunday.

2011-11-30T21:40:00.000-06:00

Fight for your Stupid Life.

I'm experimenting with my first name. Because my name, while cute, while really pretty adorable, also doesn't seem very grownup to me. And if I ever write articles or books I want a name where you don't know my gender, and thus probably pay me more.

And you know, I'm not gonna live forever, why not try a name spelling change? If it doesn't take it doesn't take. If it takes it's not even really that much trouble for people.

The person I think might be upset about this would be my mom. But we'll seeeeeeeeee. Maybe she'll be really chill about it.

2011-11-28T02:02:00.000-06:00

Me and Activism

This fall lots of people have acted in really necessary, important ways. I haven't been a part of it. I went to the first 3 hours of Occupy Cleveland, but got annoyed at everyone talking and left.

So I guess I want to talk about that. Because I have a complicated relationship with activism, and I think it is time to get past it. I've been young, it's ok to have complicated weird emotions as a young adult, but I do want to move towards being like the older adults I admire.

Ok. So. Activism. My political views cry out for it. Ok.

I grew up believing to be a good person required fairly constant activism. This idea came not just from my parents, but also the parents of the kids at my middle school. And then Cleveland has a lot of activists compared to other cities, I think. There was rarely an adult around me who didn't promote the idea that good=activist.

Now, I was a sensitive kid. I was a theatrical, emotional kid who talked all the time. Much like the adult I am now. And for many reasons, and you could assign blame up and down the levels of society for this, I felt a lot of shame about being that way.

Emotions and theatricality can be incorporated into effective activism. But they are not the traits that will get the bulk of the work done. Strategic thinking is more important. Stamina is very important. Assertiveness, and being comfortable pushing people around a little, are both very important.

So those are all traits I did not develop growing up. Maybe because I was already ashamed of being a little crazy-ass gaywad, the traits I developed were being funny, empathy, and making people around me comfortable.

There are many parts of activism that are really difficult for me. I feel so antsy and then angry in meetings. I hate long speeches (unless I get to be giving one). Delayed rewards are really, REALLY hard for my brain to process. Whenever I've volunteered in a political way, I always leave feeling like it was a waste. Not that it actually was, but I can't really keep my focus far in the future. And making someone else show up for something- that feels hard and terrifying for me.

(And I tend to be attracted to the politics of almost lost causes, where the rewards of political action are FARRRRRRRRR in the future.)

Don't like arguing. Don't like people who like it. Don't like know-it-alls, and come on, that personality trait is all over activists. I mean, if you paid me a nickel for every criticism I could make about the activist personality I would have no student debt.

(Also, it may be in the future because of those know it alls I'll have no student debt.)

Speaking of, a trait of mine that DOES work in activist contexts is really a delusional hopefulness. Well, that works for and against me. It makes it easy to start on something. But it makes it easy for me to be too enthusiastic at the start. It makes my disappointment particularly crushing. (The Dean campaign may be funny in retrospect, but guys, I worked hard organizing that house party.)

So there's a lot of psychological conflict when I'm at an activist event. And you can call me lazy (and lots of people have) but at other times in my life when it looked like I was being lazy I really was expending lots of energy on psychological conflicts. And thus had less to commit to the outside world.

But you know what I'm banking my whole life on? Growth. That something I was bad at yesterday I might be decent at two weeks from now.

I tried very hard one year to be an organizer. I put myself in an almost impossible situation. I worked for a union, and working in the labor movement has some of the most delayed rewards out there. THEY NEVER COME. Also I jumped right into a job where all the traits I hadn't developed were all that counted. Also I bought a car I didn't have money for, and drove it all day long, and my family is tired of me complaining about that but GUYS IT WAS TERRIBLE. And basically for 3 months I spent all my money, got no sleep and worked constantly and drank a lot and gained weight, then I spent 3 months slacking and doing a terrible job hiding it. Then I went back to being a legal assistant. It was the stuff of nightmares.

(No, I really did have nightmares, especially during the legal assistant period. Dudes, that is the worst job.)

And my implosion was pretty devastating. I took that job as some attempt to prove I was a good person, so there were impossibly high stakes, and made it as hard as possible on myself, and when failure came I took it really personally. I didn't attribute it to hard circumstances at all. I was a depressed kid, whowouldathunk?

After I had pounded myself with a bunch of blame I got really mad at all activism. Really mad. Mad at anyone who could think strategically, mad at people who can make other people do things, mad at people with stamina.

Um, also, I dated some activists, who I was into because I desperately wanted approval from activists, and wouldn't you know romantic situations where one person is desperate for approval can go south? Far south. Deep down south. So far south you're in the gulf with seafood BP says has totally recovered and is fine to eat.

So I had that all that ammunition too.

BUT. BUT. Activism is necessary. This American society is a mean and crazy one. We beat up on everybody, little kids make our shoes, we lock people up indefinitely with no hint of a trial, we torture people, we're all poor and miserable, we're killing the ecosystem that could sustain us- we're living in an insane way. To participate in this society with not even a break for a march or two is indefensible.

Also, activism, no matter who little effectiveness there is to it, is more effective than the activities that are not activism. Unfortunately.

Soooooo.......how to go about doing this? The goal is to participate in effective activism. And that will involve a lot of disheartening moments, where I feel dumb and hate myself, and thus will hate everyone around me with a fervent white hot hate. I think I need to really glom onto someone like-able. Find the person at the event who I would like to hang around at a bar. BUT instead of trying to chat them up about Glee (because I do that, I try to distract people at meetings and protests because I'm sooooooo booooorrrred) I just need to watch them and breathe very deliberately. And watch how they keep their cool.

Oh, actually, maybe I need to find the person at the event who is really crazily affirming. Just find the cheerleader.

I need strategies for being patient. How do people keep patient when they're not good at things, or when a lot of their ego fear buttons are being pushed, or when things are booooorrrrring?

2011-11-27T11:55:00.000-06:00

Let's Raise a Kid

I want to raise a kid. I totally do, despite having limited baby-sitting experience. But here are the problems:

1) kids tire me out
2) I get crazy when I'm tired.

Honestly, I wouldn't trust myself to raise a kid alone or with a partner. That's not enough parents! I'm gonna say something terrible at some point if I'm exhausted. I would need about 5 other adults raising the kid with me before I'd really feel good about not causing damage to the kid.

So would anyone like to raise a kid with me? We'd have to live in a house together. It isn't important to me at all that I give birth to the kid. I'd rather do some child raising and get used to it before putting my depression-prone body on the line.

If there were 6 of us we wouldn't even necessarily have to wait for our financials to get better before attempting this experiment. 6 poor adults could still really raise a kid well. We could probably start on another after the first one hits 4?

Now, my one worry is that since some of us wouldn't be blood relatives, that there'd be less incentive for us to be cool to the kid. But I think if there's all these adults we can monitor each other pretty well. So if someone's being sketchy or mean, there's 5 of us to kick them out.

So I need 3 or 4 other childless people, and either a single parent or a couple. Oh, and if anyone in the house is romantically involved you have to keep your fights your business.

2011-11-23T23:30:00.000-06:00

What a Queer Lady Not Living in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Toronto, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, or Even Columbus is Grateful For

Cleveland is a trip. We're a liberal, liberal city- for the 1930's. People here are all about economic rights, man, social justice, grassroots organizing, all that good stuff- and they got a strong start to their education on these matters at their catholic high schools. In addition to reading pro-life quotes of Cesar Chavez's, which is exceptionally confusing. (But true!)

And what were we taught about gay people? Uh....love the sinner, hate the sin? That's what vocations are for?

I always get wound up when I talk about my high school devout days.

POINT BEING Cleveland is an economically liberal town, full of the small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens that change the world, but it is not a particularly socially liberal town. And many, many times I feel stranded. Dyke drama is killer here, because there's only 8 of us. And 5 think bisexuality is a joke. ('Queer' means you got some funny ideas in college.) And the remaining 3 of us have dated, or our exes dated someone, at some point, and we believe about the other that they are PSYCHO BITCHES and thus do not make eye contact.

So you know what keeps dykes in towns like mine sane? Besides our sex-positive gay boy friends? The Internet. Because on the internet, boyish young women post beautifully lighted photos of their alternative lifestyle haircuts.

Because on the internet, there are queer women's websites that don't pay homage to the gold star ideal.

Because on the internet you don't have to watch all of the episode to get to the good parts of Glee.

Because on the internet dyke community is sufficiently developed to necessitate humor blogs.

Because on the internet you can pretend to be at the kind of dance party your friends in other cities send out invites to.

Because on the internet Tegan and Sara have reinterpreted your romantic desperation to be almost noble.

Because on the internet you can dream of living in NYC.

What I mean is, it helps me keep my chin up, this world wide web, helps me believe in a new culture even when I can go weeks with no sign of it. And hold the prayer close to my heart that someday I'll be a real girl. Or date one.

2011-11-22T10:34:00.000-06:00

On Being Told I am Hated

In August I said something really pretty awkward to someone, while drunk. On Sunday I got reamed for it, not even by that person, but by a relative, who reported that the person I was awkward with "hates" me.

Fuck 'em both.

If your standards for hating someone are that low, there's no way I'm gonna win in the long term with you. I say awkward shit to people ALL THE TIME. I don't in general say hateful shit to people.

You know what I said? I said I had met this person's ex. It was a very awkward thing to bring up. I meant it as "Isn't Cleveland a small world, I just met you, and then 2 days later I meet this person you talked about!" It was dumb, if I hadn't been drunk I would've identified it as a dumb thing to say.

Here's the kicker- I apologized for it right after I said it! Because it was obvious from the person's face that it was an upsetting thing to hear! Because actually, even if I say something weird, I usually am not trying to make anyone feel bad, and I feel bad when that happens.

Most people won't be this upfront with their hatred. The last time I got a whiff of hatred from someone it was during that whole Time Out fiasco. And even then no one said the word "hate" to me. They said the words 'ugly,' 'bitch,' and 'fascist,' so it was implied, but still, it's sort of polite to leave it up to implication.

I was UPSET when I got told this person hated me (also because their relative asked "what kind of person would say that?!" and being challenged on your character is upsetting) but pretty soon after (maybe 20 minutes) I was happy it happened. It's good to just have people lay it on the table. Oh, you think I'm a shitty person? Thanks for letting me know, I propose you get out of my life.

Also it's cool to get permission to start being an actual shitty person. You've decided I'm the devil? Cool, I can be the devil. Don't think an awkward drunk moment is my deadliest weapon. There's more than a few people out there who can attest to my capacity to identify and abuse vulnerabilities. They are justified in hating me, and if you're gonna be on their team, you'll have the opportunity to find out why they're justified.

This is just me talking trash. All that's really gonna happen is I'm gonna try to never interact with those two again and I'm gonna tell people why. Because it was ridiculous, and that's the risk you run when you act ridiculously, that news of your exploits will precede you.

And one day I may get to call them miserable sad sacks in person. You might be surprised by how many people I've gotten to tell off in person. And you might be taken aback by the terrible things I said to them.

This is much like an incident that happened to me earlier last week, when a really worked up man experiencing some kind of upsetting delusional experience called me a witch repeatedly. He started off with yelling that I was a bitch and should go away (I was walking the opposite way on the other side of the street, so I was complying in advance of his directive). Then he moved up to witch, that I was a witch and was in league with the devil and would go to hell and in fact should go to hell as soon as possible.

It was awesome.

The best is when someone insults you in a way that gives you this powerful role. I was SO TEMPTED to get in his face and start chanting. Maybe I am a powerful, evil witch. Maybe you should be scared of me, random street guy with a mental illness.

2011-11-20T12:10:00.000-06:00

The Joys of Waitressing

I know it's suppose to be a job for college students. I know people think you don't need to be smart to do it. I know office jobs are the jobs you're supposed to reach for. Guys, waitressing, even when you have an awful shift, is five gazillion times better than the best day as a legal assistant.

1) You're allowed to smile. You're SUPPOSED TO SMILE. You're REWARDED for making small talk.

2) When men are inappropriate with you, they're only going to be in your restaurant for an hour or two. And they'll probably tip you well. You can usually be sassy back, and they'll eat it up. Whereas in an office, they're just there, lingering. Also, men are just less inappropriate in restaurants, for real.

3) Your snack food does not come out of a machine.

4) You get a workout while you work. So after a shift, you don't need to argue with yourself about whether you should go to a gym. Of course you shouldn't, you just ran your ass off and your arms are sore from lifting huge platters.

5) There are zero ethical conundrums.

6) You meet new people every day.

7) Free soda.

8) People actually are impressed with you in the moment. When you're running around like crazy and you're still getting everyone's water filled in time, people notice.

9) When people are jerks, you have coworkers who have been in the same position to complain about it with. Also, those jerks are not gonna be around you for long.

10) You can make BANK. And it's in your hands at the end of the night. Oh my gosh, the thrill of achievement.

11) The blade hanging over your head is that you might drop something big, potentially on a baby. So much better than not filing something on time. Also, more exciting.

2011-11-18T11:17:00.000-06:00

An Alternate History

In my alternate history nothing bad happens to me when I'm 19. If I can't get that, in my alternate history someone names it for me, has a support group I can go to, and some meds I can get on. Then I avoid a lot. I avoid the whole sex doesn't matter at all and it can't hurt me phase. I avoid the whole school doesn't matter because I'm so dumb anyway phase. I avoid the please please make me your girlfriend so I can get that badge of approval from the International Association of Straight Men phase. I avoid the being a shithead to literally the coolest girl who will ever have a crush on me phase. (Not to say anything bad about any of the other girls to follow, but she played guitar.) (SHE PLAYED GUITAR GODDAMNIT.)

Some very obnoxious people will tell you that rather than having a regret, you should honor everything that's ever happened to you because they were all lessons, and now you know. But I didn't learn any lessons for ten years. It's like not ever really understanding algebra in the 8th grade. Maybe when you're 30 you'll get it, but in the meantime there's no way you got an engineering degree.

Who are these people without regret? What kind of lives must they be leading? I lead a frustrating life. I lead a life where I can see clearly where I went wrong. I lead a life where the things I want feel so close, but never come around. Where every weekend feels like it could be THE weekend, the weekend life finally starts, but instead I earn some money and the change piles up.

Which is good. I'm getting closer. That money is a mark of getting closer. Give me a month and a half and I'll be in school, in school for I think actually seriously the for real career I'm supposed to have. FUCKING FINALLY.

Me and Nellie (not Nellie and I) are always talking about the Saturn Return. I want to believe in this astrological concept so badly. I want to believe that after 31 I'm gonna have a 30 year period of relative calm. I'll work on the same things day in and day out- the same job, the same relationship, the same house, the same kids- and I'll know every day these are the right things, the inevitable, unavoidable things to work on. They were always going to come into my life and I was always gonna labor for them.

When I have those people and home and things, please show me this blog post. So I can remember how terrible all the options were. How having options is a lot like having nothing, really. How new things every year, every month, just blur together. So that you don't even remember all the people you lived with or the jobs you had, where you know someone for a year before they learn about law school or north carolina.

I'm just having a lot of trouble with patience these days. I've always had trouble with that. But universe, I am putting the call out, the trap you've set for them, the small role you're gonna stick me in, the limits to my life- I may not be ready but sick them on me.

2011-11-16T18:23:00.001-06:00

For A Person Experiencing a Depressive Attack

So here you are, experiencing an attack. I don't know what the clinical term for this is. But it's when the slow attacking thoughts gain some speed and energy, and you are alone in your house or apartment, crying. When normally these thoughts might slow you down, and make you foggy and listless, instead they have a lot of force and you feel on edge and very, very bad.

So perhaps you have not been able to fulfill some commitments you made because of your fog and listlessness, and it seems like this always happens eventually, you letting people down. Perhaps this refrain of the ways you let people down is bouncing around your head like a reflection in a hall of mirrors.

I need you to breathe very slowly and deliberately. You don't need to stop crying. We just need to decrease the energy behind these attacking thoughts at the moment. They need to bounce a little slower, so we can catch them and look at them.

Do you have the opportunity to make a hot (non-alcoholic) beverage? Not coffee either. Hot chocolate, tea, cider, whatever you like that is calming, and again, won't get you drunk.

Alright. So you believe you've disappointed someone. That's hard. You're in a hard place. Especially when depression is the reason you haven't been able to fulfill your obligations, because to non-depressed people it can look like a controllable set of character flaws, rather than a disease you can't control.

Is there room in your worldview for a depressed person who is also a good person? We don't have to talk about you right now. But can you imagine someone else who has a good heart, who is a valuable person, being incapacitated by depression? Now would be a good time to read a list of famous people who have been hospitalized for depression, attempted suicide, or attempted and succeeded at suicide.

Ok, so maybe you're not convinced of this in your case, but can we at least agree that in other people's cases, depression has been a real disease, and it wasn't a set of character flaws, and they were very good and valuable people who unfortunately were also depressives?

It must have been awful for them, right? It must have been really hard to sometimes be capable of great things, and sometimes be incapable of very simple things. It must have been nerve wracking and totally confusing. What an awful situation to be in. Let's take a sip of our hot beverage and feel some compassion for Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and (now we're bringing out the big guns) Kurt Cobain. All of these people who produced big amazing works still got it in their heads they'd better get rid of themselves. You'd think after winning a Nobel Prize, or selling a gazillion records, you might feel entitled to more life, but nope, guess not.

Can you feel compassion for them? I'm just gonna keep going as if for sure you do.

Ok, so unfortunately, you have the same disease these geniuses, these very good and valuable people, did. That is really too bad. It is truly unfair. It is really not ok that good and valuable people sometimes get a disease that makes them tired and sad and gives them terrible thoughts.

And it's obvious from that sample of geniuses that just because you can't beat it doesn't mean you are not smart enough, and doesn't mean you don't have accomplishments coming up in your life, and doesn't mean you will let everyone down forever. It means you're sick right now. And like a person with the flu, or with a broken leg, you can't manage everything a healthy person can manage.

I'm sure you'd rather be a healthy person who never let anyone down. I bet you'd rather be very effective and very reliable. It is disappointing to not get to be that kind of a person. It is disappointing to be vulnerable the way sick people are.

So probably the best plan would be to go ahead and feel disappointed. Wrap yourself in a blanket, put on a comedy show, and keep drinking hot beverages. Call your psychiatrist in the morning. Someday soon you'll meet another depressive and it'll be a blessing in their life that you can relate to them. It'll be a bigger blessing to meet you than to meet a very effective, very reliable super-hero person. Blessings can be hard to get to.

Take care of yourself. I'm pulling for you.

2011-11-14T22:54:00.000-06:00

That Last Post was a Piece of Shit.

Right? Boring as hell.

Guys, I don't know, I'm real dissatisfied today. There are a few moments every once in awhile where I feel like, yeah, I know how to live, I'm good at this. Mostly when something really great happens, like I get into grad school. Then pretty quickly I get back to my baseline, which is: yuck. This shit sucks. My body hurts, people either want shit from me I'm bored with giving or they don't want anything from me, and I don't look cool enough.

Then I start thinking about my next haircut. My hair carries a lot of responsibility in this game. If only I could get it right everything else in my life would fall into place. How other people think about losing weight I think about my hair.

Except yesterday and today I've been thinking about my weight the way other people think about their weight. Really noticing the bulges. It doesn't help I've apparently lost my only belt. I need to work out until I look like an action hero and that way when my pants hang too low you'll see some kind of cut muscle instead of a pale white bulge threatening to collapse an elastic band.

Ladies, let's get real. Does anyone else out there hate being a lady? I need to figure out how far away from the mean I am in my hating lady-ness. I HATE the menstrual cycle. HATE IT. Also: having boobs! What a total inconvenience. They hurt when you exercise and even somewhat ok guys will look at them instead of at your face. And bras HURT. And I never even had one moment in my life where my boobs looked like Playboy boobs. What a total letdown having boobs is. To think I fantasized about getting them when I was little. I was promised more.

I like having my reproductive organs tucked up inside, all safe and warm. That's cool. I don't like having a high voice. I'd like a melodious baritone instead. I like not having back hair. I like not having to wear ties. I like not having to shave my face. But I fucking hate having to shave my legs.

Yeah, and my medical ailments are lady specific too. Bad cramps, migraines and anxiety- in other words HYSTERIA. In other words tuck me up in the attic with the yellow wallpaper because I am a CRAZY BITCH MAKING THIS SHIT UP. IF ONLY I WAS MAKING THIS SHIT UP.

Today I had to make a 5 in the morning run to a 24 hour Walgreens to buy pads. My cramps were killing me. I was yelling about it in the car by myself. And also laughing because cramps that bad are RIDICULOUS, my uterus is acting like it's expelling a baby deer and not a half cup of goop. Why does the uterus even need to contract to let that stuff go? What a stupid-ass design for a body that SOME OF US have to live in, thanks a lot Big Dad in the Sky who didn't even incarnate as a woman because he didn't want to deal with this BULLSHIT either.

I get to Walgreens and I do not know if I'm gonna make it out of there without rolling up in a ball and throat singing at top volume. I grab the pads and I'm speed walking to the checkout, but I made the fatal mistake of letting this dude with a cart pull ahead of me. He's attempting to buy 7 bottles of fabric softener using coupons that expired at halloween. AT 5 IN THE MORNING. Because he has a lot of clothing to make soft before heading to work, and he's on a limited budget.

Let me tell you. I was displeased. I'm still displeased. And when I wrote that post, I guess I was just trying to write something without writing about how displeased I am with what my uterus is up to.

Shit is hard.

2011-11-14T15:43:00.000-06:00

Slipping towards Entropy

I worked two doubles this weekend, and my ass is so kicked. I like my work, I don't have any problem with working a lot while I'm at work. It's just when I get home, and all these things I meant to do aren't done that the problems start.

Physically, waitressing knocks me out. I tend to get sick if I work too many doubles, or really, even one weekend double.

After a double I spend soooo much money on food and drink. Because I just have no common sense after a double. That is when to hit me up for money, because I am fried and have cash in my pocket and my brain is asleep.

At the end of my double yesterday my legs and arms felt like bags of sand. I got in the car and really, truly, I meant to drive home. Then when I was on 90 (which is not part of the route home) I really, truly, meant to have one drink and then go home. Then when I texted a drinking buddy for the night I really, truly, still meant to be home by midnight.

But then you meet a nice young photographer man, and then your drinking buddy shows up, and then some people you hung out with once show up, and then some very drunk straight people show up and you tell them your name is Karen and one of them tells you repeatedly that you might turn out to be a yogi, and then even the bartenders are off of work and sitting at the bar drinking. And then you're eating a crazy amount of Taco Bell at 2 in the morning.

What's weird about being a waitress is that your day off is everyone else's START OF THE WORKING WEEK. It's a weird life. It's a good life though. A much better life than a legal assistant's life.

The Cleveland gay bar options are not very glamorous. But it forces you to love the bar you're at. What, is there some amazing hidden away place you know about that you'd rather be at? Then fine, make that middle of the night road trip to Pittsburgh.

Other queer women here tell me they like straight bars just fine, and pick up plenty of chicks at them, but I'll always prefer a gay bar. I never pick up anyone. I could go to an orgy and not pick up anyone, so my choice of bar depends more on the illusion of possibility and the friendliness of the strangers there.

2011-11-10T10:21:00.000-06:00

Blog the Instigator

This blog is really valuable to me. It must look insane to put really personal feelings on the internet for strangers to see. But generally, I need to put them on this blog to figure them out. I tend to be the kind of person people don't listen to. People talk to me like you wouldn't believe. A day without hearing a stranger's life story is an exceptional one. But when it comes to being heard by others, 3/4ths of my words just float up into the clouds.

Which is why I am such an addict for this blog and standup.

Nellie thought my blog yesterday was passive aggressive. My sister didn't. I felt really troubled by those feelings yesterday morning, and putting a troubling feeling on my blog is a nice way to nail it down and look at it. But in retrospect, I had had a conversation where I said those things directly to the person who needed to hear them, and maybe I put them on the blog to turn up the volume on that message, because I just did not trust that I had been heard.

And yeah, that is a crazy way to do things. It is crazy to use a public blog to communicate with with the people in your life. But if I don't shout these fears in the public square, even the people who really love and know me will blow them off. And the people who don't love and know me- anything inconvenient I say disappears immediately.

But not on the internet. On the internet people react. It happens over and over they react much more strongly than I expected. I have been very surprised at how offended people have gotten- I mean, I got fired from a job for a blog entry. And I thought, but you know I'm a comedian, and you know I'm a feminist, and you know I have a period, so why was that blog entry a surprise? Or comedians who have gotten really mad at blog entries about rape jokes- I thought I had made it very clear face to face, in real life, how much rape jokes bothered me. So why be surprised when you come to my blog and read about it? Or like the gay stuff- until it was on this blog it seemed some people were just waiting for the phase to end.

If in real life you hear me in soft tones, in tones that seem to convey a sort of submission that undermines the content of my words, then it must be a shock to come read it on this blog and have it be forceful and exaggerated and jokey. And public. It's a very different persona I have on here and onstage. It's a persona I need so bad. And sooner than later I need that persona and my one on one persona to fuse together in an integral way, so that more people get mad at me in person, in one on one conversations, and don't need to come to this blog to get mad.

I guess I just need to stamp my feet more in these one on one conversations. My efforts at appearing friendly and open to other viewpoints one on one are working against me. Somewhere I picked up the idea that it was more important to listen than to be heard, and that's not true. I'd rather be aggressive-aggressive.

2011-11-09T07:41:00.001-06:00

I Hate Skim Milk and Romance

I got nothing real to say, but man, am I a sucker for your page views. Every time I look at my sitemeter and I can't tell from the location who it was who visited here, I pretend it's someone who blew me off and now they're regretting it because this blog is SO GOOD. (For the sake of this scenario let's ignore the biographical content revealed in the blog, k?)

Not every day has a story to tell. What I really want to tell you, what I really need to get off my chest, what I feel is plugging my font of creativity unless I spill it on the world wide web is- skim milk is weak. Skim milk is bullshit. I'm drinking my coffee now, and I used up the half and half yesterday, and yeah there's a gallon of skim in the house. But this coffee is black. Because skim is such bullshit I'm not even gonna bother.

People act like skim milk is virtuous (mom). I'd like to know what is the point of enslaving a dairy cow, and pumping it full of hormones, and taking it's babies away, if all you want is white water from it? I'll only do that to a cow for milk fat. What kind of sick jerk wants to get an animal involved when you could just soak some antacid tablets in water? At least then you'd get some mint flavor.

Oh geez, there are actual veganz who read this blog. Sorry guys. Please don't take away your page views.

What's sad is I think I wrote about skim milk 4 years ago.

Let's talk about whether to be in a romantic relationship. I've wanted to be in one for awhile, largely because being single at 29 in Ohio is a mark of defeat. It lets everyone know that there's something wrong with you, and if they can't pick it out physically, they'll assume it's mental. THAT HITS TOO CLOSE TO HOME.

Right after the protest where we chalked around a building this summer, I bought some more chalk and chalked in front of my parent's house. People were confuuuuuussssed. Because in my neighborhood based on my age I should have a 10 year old, and definitely no time or interest in chalking. And these two women engaged me in a conversation about why I was chalking and within 20 seconds the one asked "Why aren't you married?"

I could've said "I'M NOT ALLOWED TO IN THIS STATE!" but that's misleading, because it implies I have someone I could marry if only our love was recognized as valid. Also this lady was wearing a headscarf and sometimes I just don't want to come out, especially if I've already had to explain something weird about myself, like why I'm chalking at 9 on a saturday night. So I said "I don't know."

And she said "You're a pretty girl, don't worry. But you could wear some makeup."

But shit, I have been in BAD romantic relationships. Maybe there are some people who can't manage to participate in those things, because I've never been happy in one. And you know how you can tell I'm not happy? Because I am screaming at you. Then you accuse me of a lot of character flaws because I'm screaming, and I believe your opinion of me, then I have to go to therapy SOME MORE once you leave. The whole process is overwhelming and exhausting. I mean, I can't even really remember what the good parts to being in a relationship are. Sharing a bed? I used to really like that, but now if there's someone in the bed I grind my teeth so bad I have to use Sensodyne toothpaste for weeks.

But I guess I'm thinking about this because someone likes me (well, in a VERY initial way, she doesn't really know me) and honestly I'm thinking, "My life just got good again a WEEK AGO!" I don't want to share anything. And it's like, ok, when life is finally ok someone likes me, but no one was trying to share a bed with me when a dog was peeing on said bed. That's when I needed to be held. We could've used the couch.

She'll read this. I mean, she's nice, this isn't about her. It's about ME. And I would like it to continue being about ME for a long long time. Other people and everything they need make me resentful because I JUST got what I need. I don't want to entertain anyone or watch what I say when I'm in a bad mood or talk things through. I want to do my comedy and look forward to grad school and save for a nice mattress for me, for me, for me.

I just don't trust you motherfuckers. I know you're all selfish and want convenient people who don't get in your way, and want to have sex exactly when you do, and will let the world know there's nothing wrong with you. (Yay projecting!) Or you want a sparring partner.

Now you say, you're jumping the gun! Just hang out with people and have fun! Yeah, like how your first couple times doing meth are fun. Then your teeth fall out. SO FUN!

2011-11-07T22:56:00.000-06:00

Sage Wisdom Your Idiot Friend is Paraphrasing

Ok, I'm not gonna let this blogging blitz end, we're gonna push through, because my pain is also the font of creation.

You heard about my breakdown. Then I recovered.

Pema Chodron says it's not the ways that we fall apart that are the problem, it's the ways we put ourselves back together. Thus, I approached putting myself back together with a great deal of trepidation. I had put myself back together 4 times already. The first time resulted in my almost marrying the wrong gender. The next time resulted in me moving to Chicago to do comedy. The next time resulted in me working a do-gooder job which could not have required a more different personality than the one I had to work with. The next time again resulted in dating a boy.

So when I moved back to Cleveland I didn't want to try to fix myself in a way that would spawn it's own crisis. There are only so many times you can tell your friends you've fixed everything. My friend Megan had already told me I was too intense about beginnings. (And she's intense like a camper.) The doctors I saw thought I might be bipolar when I described these cycles of "YAY I WIN AGAIN" and "fuck i fucked up again" repeated over and over.

(Get it? Intense sounds like 'in tents.' That's what I did there.)

So when I was in Cleveland I didn't really want to fix everything. I did want the ear infection gone, because that shit HURT. SO BAD. I'd walk in circles in the living room opening and closing my mouth and also humming to myself trying to get through that pain. And I knew I needed a job, because I needed that credit card debt gone, and I needed a therapist. Otherwise I just wanted to lay in my childhood bedroom and have my mom come in and hug me.

And my parents were/ continue to be great about it. No rent. Lots and lots of food. Food my mom would make, whole crockpots of stew. Oh god. All I wanted to do was eat.

I went to yoga classes, because my body hurt in weird spots, like my lower back. Yoga helped so much. I got into it and I was like, yeah dude, yoga forever, I'm gonna take care of myself like this for always. I don't do it anymore. And my lower back is killing me.

I got the waitressing job I have TO THIS DAY. Which is a great job. I eat delicious food and I work with lovely people. And I make a good amount of money. It was like a revelation to be making good money while not minding going to work. Some days I even look forward to working.

I got my therapist through the LGBT center, and I highly recommend all you Cleveland LGBT-ers hit them up for therapy, cause the lady I saw was awesome.

Pretty much I came back home and every day for the whole fall I felt so grateful to be alive. Things were bathed in a golden light. In the winter I got grabby and restless again, but that fall was great.

It's harder for me to reach that gratitude right now. Which is sort of nice because it means I'm getting farther away from the time of crisis. But man, was it great to realize how great a family I have, and how wonderful it is to have a steady job, and how great it is to be rescued. Being rescued is awesome!

Also I went to New Orleans to see Megan with Mary that fall, and it was just fucking magical. That whole fall was magic.

Since that recovery I've tried to change how I talk to the divine. I've noticed when I feel grateful I thank the goddess, and when I'm freaking out I plead for help from the god. God. Since that fall I've tried to thank the goddess more. Because I really do think that works better. I do think the world is giving you everything you need, even when what you need is a whole bunch of total bullshit. And when you're being grateful, you're probably viewing your options and possibilities in a clearer way.

What about people getting MASSACRED by their next door neighbors and STARVING TO DEATH? Folks I don't know. I don't know why that happens. All I know is what feels sane in my life. I'm not trying to say child soldiers need to think positive. I'm not even really a fan of thinking positive about the future, I'm not gonna say you should believe things are gonna get better. Things will keep changing, so maybe there's a 50% chance some situation will get better? Is that how math works? It's not like last fall I was thinking "Oh yeah, everything's gonna work out, I'll be just FINE." It just felt good to think "I'm so lucky to have this place to fall into, and I'm so lucky to have this family and job, and thanks goddess for taking care of me."

I seriously have no advice for people getting massacred or starving to death or being forced into armies- not one recommendation.

Um ok, but back to gendered representations of the divine. I just noticed whenever I was pleading with some higher force to go easy on me it was that Catholic God Dad from my childhood. And whenever I was being grateful it was that Mother Earth Let's Get in A Drum Circle This Tree is so Bee-yoo-ti-ful character. Guys, I love that character. I love that all these life cycles we're a part of can be conceived as this Mom who will give you everything you need, but not really even most of what you want, and also someday when it's your time she'll cut you down to make room for some new kids.

This is funny and stereotypical and new age-y and you're all laughing, but it feels good.

I'm trying hard not to be all the put back together. It's not that hard. The grad school thing is AMAZING but I'll also believe it after I've taken my finals. I'll believe it when I'm licensed. Saturn Returns don't end till you're like 32.

There is no normal. There are great times, there are in between times, there are terrible times. I don't know why it works this way. I try not to know too much.

2011-11-06T11:41:00.000-06:00

I Beat It!

My chronic illness, depression! I beat it! It's gone! People say you need to be on pills for the rest of your life with depression, but actually you just need to get into grad school and know what you're doing with the next two years of your life. Getting into grad school solves every problem you ever had.

(I'm still taking my pills, concerned friends.)

It reminds me a lot of the time I didn't get into grad school. Would you believe that was a real blow to my self esteem? Also because it wasn't even an impressive program. I got that wait list letter and I was like, "Oh you mean motherfuckers." But now that I've gotten into grad school I can say with great peace and wisdom that the world works in mysterious ways. I have been guided onto my path. And it just took almost killing me over and over and over. Thanks for that Universe.

(No, really, thank you Universe, don't take this away!)

That happened during the worst month of my life, which would you believe happened 2 months after I had decided I would definitely not kill myself. You would think after a decision like that the universe would reward you with some money for food or something. No. I went 2 more months without ever getting a spare 20 dollars for a grocery trip (it sounds like an exaggeration, but it isn't!) Then I finally applied for food stamps, which meant I waited in this line that wrapped around the building the food stamp office was in before the office opened. Then when they did open, they made us wait in this big empty room with motivational posters where all the chairs are turned in the same direction. It took 3 hours altogether. I got 60 Link dollars from that meeting, after meeting with a nice lady who I have no complaints about.

I blew through that 60 dollars in 2 trips. (Tip: Do not buy fruits or veggies when you're poor. Stick with pasta.) Luckily Nellie was letting me crash on her couch, because she lived by my work and work was a 45 minute bike ride away from where I lived, and I just kept getting flat after flat after flat on my bike. I would lock it up at night and in the morning I'd have a flat.

Also, I had bought a breakfast sandwich at a 7-11 near my work, and had already heated it up, and then when I went to pay my card wouldn't work. I told the guy I would come back with the money, but no, my account was deep in the negative, and I never ever came back with the money. This was extremely disheartening.

So in the midst of this I get the letter saying I'm wait-listed, and if I want, I can be on some kind of priority list for the next year. But it was already clear if I stayed in Chicago I would not be alive in another year. So I'm like, ok, let's make the date with my mom to move me back home to Cleveland, where there is food a-plenty, and I'll just hang out at Nellie's until that happens.

While I'm at Nellie's I get some really weird emails from a friend of mine, who I know has a family history of schizophrenia, and I'm like, cool, I'll do the responsible thing and track down his family and they'll get him care. That didn't work out. Instead he killed himself. And when I called his mom and she told me, it didn't even register. I said something about being glad to know him and how she should take care of herself, and all the while my voice is getting higher and higher and higher. THANK GOD NELLIE WAS THERE WHEN I MADE THAT PHONE CALL. I got off the phone and everything was so normal, except my friend was dead and because I had tried to help him. And literally I thought, "I can't think about this now. I'll think about it in Cleveland because I don't even have the necessary caloric intake to process this."

So then rent is due in the apartment that's 45 minutes away from my work, and I don't pay my phone bill so I can pay rent. Oh, and as background this ex-boyfriend of mine, who I had had a terrible tumultuous shitty relationship with (largely because I'm actually gay and I was incredibly poor while we dated and he wasn't, and that shit will break you up) asked if we could meet before he went to Europe for two weeks because by the time he came back I would be moved away. And he wanted to give me a card.

Reader, I was not in a mood for any damn card. I did not want any fucking cards. I wanted money for groceries, and a bike that worked, and my friend to not have killed himself, and to have gotten into fucking grad school. I did not want a card commemorating this shitty relationship and the many poor decisions that had led to this spot in my life. So I said, let me think about it.

I biked to the old apartment to drop off rent. I'm there for 30 seconds before that guy walks in the door. Because my room mate had gotten him to come over to walk her dog, which normally I would've done but I'm at Nellie's now, and my room mate can't give me a warning he's gonna come over because my phone's dead.

Oh reader. He gasped when he opened the door and I called out "Hello?" Then he said "I'm sorry," and I said "Just take the dog." They left and I left the money and I gathered up a bunch of clothes I wanted to get rid of before I moved, including a sweater of his that was soaked in dog pee. (Other things in my room that were soaked in dog pee: my bed. That was the other reason for camping out at Nellie's. That dog loved me in a vindictive, controlling fashion.)

So then I get the FUCK out of there because I want to be LONG GONE before he comes back. Because I am so GODDAMN FURIOUS. I'm furious that I am so humiliatingly poor, that my bed is soaked in dog pee, that I have no money left on my Link card, that I'll never pay that guy at 7-11, that I'm not going to grad school, that someone turned to me for help and I did the wrong thing, that the only friends in town I have left are Nellie and Mary because they're the only people who can handle what a mess I've become, that everything ever has gone to TOTAL SHIT. Oh I didn't mention also I had pink eye and an ear infection.

Yes. I had pink eye and an ear infection all through this. Nellie had to buy me an eye patch. That was actually sort of a highlight.

But this guy doesn't know what's good for him, and as I'm walking quickly down my street to the clothing donation bin with his dog pee soaked sweater he's walking back to my apartment. (By the way, I do feel bad about putting a really nasty sweater in the donation bin. I hope that's not an official crime. But it should be.) And he says something to me, it might have been another "I'm sorry," and I say "FUCK YOU YOU'VE ALWAYS BEEN A FUCKING BASTARD" and let me tell you, I meant it. Every shitty thing he'd ever done, and every shitty thing I'd ever done, and especially every stupid, stupid decision I'd made I wanted off the memory books. I wanted to blow us up to pieces and have us rain down in flaming bloody chunks all over Logan Square.

In retrospect, I made a lot of stupid decisions in order to be in that relationship, but they weren't really for him at all. The relationship mattered because it was proof I was lovable, but I didn't really ever do much for him. The whole time I resented him, because the thing about him was he was a boy. Which was clearly his fault, he should be held responsible for that, no doubt, but what I'm saying is it would have been a terrible shit storm of a relationship no matter what boy was in his place. It would have been more accurate to yell "FUCK YOU YOU'VE ALWAYS BEEN A FUCKING BOY."

And you know, I wrote him an apology email for that, but I never really regretted it. That's weird, it could be because of the antidepressants. Or maybe any semblance of a friendship did need to be blown up. Maybe you go through shit with people and what you really need after is to have a tall, strong wall with spikes at the top up between the two of you for a long long time.

Or maybe I've just gotten more comfortable with my innate asshole nature.

Then I went to Cleveland and there was food everywhere and I chatted with Nellie every day and I paid off my credit card and volunteered at the gay center and took some classes and now I get to go to grad school. Actually there were still some bad times to go through, but nothing, nothing like that month.

Thank god for Nellie, amirite?

2011-11-04T11:55:00.000-05:00

How to win me over

1) Be funny. I don't want to hear your 5 and 12 minute sets. That you can transform a conversation into an improv show, complete with act outs, is important. That you will carry a joke years into the future, so that when we live in a squalid home together we have a cast of character voices to use is important.

2) Be available. I've finally figured out I don't like feeling confused. Some of the tests I've taken have been doozies, and I know the appeal of a challenge, of thinking "oh yeah, the wheat is being separated from the chaff with this one!" Unfortunately I've also experienced finding out I'm chaff. Being challenged is overrated.

3) Appreciate and comment on things. Food especially. Music, soft fabrics. Cool outfits. Smart books. Funny jokes. Talk about how good they all are. Be happy at how good they all are. If you can do this with a variety of people, you maybe are a saint, and I will appreciate and comment on that.

4) Cut it out with the makeup. I mean, I guess if you LOVE it you can go ahead and put whatever you want on your face. But if you think you need it, we're gonna fight about it, because faces are much more attractive when you can see them.

5) Be a smartypants. Smart enough to know when you don't know things.

6) Be able to lift heavy things.

2011-11-03T10:28:00.000-05:00

Oh, I see what you like.

Gay stuff. You want me to write about gay stuff, even though you have no reaction to it worth leaving in the comments. Well, I'm happy to comply. I am in a much different place than two years ago, when I started and quickly ended my gay nightlife blog (what was that, two entries?)

I'm a little more assured nowadays that if the first impression anyone gets of me is "gaywad!" that that's ok and pretty accurate. Sure, there may be other facets to me, but the gaywad facet is really the biggest, shiniest facet. I also have some opinions about how to treat waitresses, but I don't feel the gaywad impression will deter important people from reading those opinions.

Readers, I have found the process of differentiation from my parents a particularly tough one. My parents are admirable people. Catholic, but liberal, willing to do a lot of research, smart, they've got lots of opinions with a lot of credibility behind them, my dad at least doesn't appear to have an attention span issue. (My mom is ADD like a squirrel on uppers, but she denies it.)

But it's taken me a long, long, long, so long it's not over yet time to accept I'm not my parents. For one thing, neither of my parents are gay. Secondly, neither of my parents like to perform, unless there's a hidden past I don't know about. (Well, my dad likes to play guitar. Because he has the attention span for that kind of thing.) Neither of my parents have a compulsive need to defuse stressful situations. No, they can operate in stressful situations for years and years if need be. If we were all dog breeds, my dad would be probably a german shepherd, my mom would be a lab maybe, and I would be this dog:

And for me, all this stuff feels connected, the attention span problems, the need to defuse, the performer part, and the gay part. I don't know HOW exactly the gay part is related, maybe only in that I was gender non-conforming enough as a little girl to constantly ask for a lot of attention from my teachers and classmates. Ask? No, it was more coercive than that.

But I have so many moments where I wish I was more like my parents. People say I'll scream at my kid someday and have a chill run down my spine and a howl will rip through my brain that I am like my mother! But I find any shared perspectives with my parents very comforting. If I could've ordered what kind of person I was I would just straight up be them. I would be straight, I would be some kind of saint activist who spent a lot of time in Catholic Worker houses, I would have the attention span of a redwood. Also I would speak spanish even though they don't. I would have a lot of posters with Oscar Romero quotes around. I would have some very serious and credible opinions on banking regulations. (Uh, and if you knew me right out of college you'll recognize that is exactly the kind of path I was trying to forge.)

But you know, at least by this time, and I'm no spring chicken anymore, I am much more interested in show tunes. And all those things on the same spectrum as show tunes. You know, dance music, having sex like it's some kind of political thing, small talk, parsing the hidden content of tv shows. Jokey jokes. Small talk.

But if as I grow up I become more like my parents I would be very proud of it.

2011-11-02T09:36:00.000-05:00

An Ethical Dilemma

So one thing that sucks about being both a woman and a public figure is that no matter how far you go to not present yourself as a sexual object, someone ends up judging you on those grounds. So Rachel Maddow's hate mail consists of her being called ugly, as if you need to be good looking to be on the radio. (Also, Rachel Maddow is just about the sexiest thing since mountaintop orgies.)

Which brings me to the flipside I find myself on: when is it ok to talk openly about a lesbo-tastic crush on a hot lady who is not trying to make a living as a hot lady, but rather make a living as a talented lady?

Now there is a blog I, and many, many others, enjoy reading called tigerbeatdown.com. It's creator is a very funny and smart lady who goes by Sady Doyle on the internet, whose writing I have enjoyed for a couple of years. Sady Doyle writes about a lot of things, and every once in awhile she may write about dating, but the bulk of her writing is politics and pop culture.

Everything's cool, right? Here is another woman, who I respect, who has gained a modicum of success with her ideas and talent. Great! Go comrade!

Until New York Magazine publishes this photo of her:

(record scratches)

WHAT. Sady Doyle is a hot lady? WHAT. WHY DIDN'T I KNOW THIS?

Oh. I didn't know this because she's a political blogger, and is thus not trying to be known for any aesthetic appeal she might have.

And she has quite a bit.

If a straight man wrote a blog post about how hot this woman is, it would be forgivable, but still offensive. Cause it's like, don't reduce my sister to that! Listen to her ideas! But for reals, I am very aware that this lady is not my sister.

As dykes build our own culture, with our own visions of what constitutes sexiness, how can we talk about it without engaging in the inevitable objectification of women in straight culture?

Because I don't want to get in the way of anyone reading tigerbeatdown.com and taking Sady Doyle seriously. But a slightly lesser concern of mine is getting to talk about my own version of hotness in a lady, to offer up some competing standards from the hetero version. (Since that version requires you to be a gigantically tall 13 year old.)

Any crushes you feel like maybe you might be a patriarchal creep for having?

2011-10-21T10:23:00.000-05:00

And the rain keeps coming, and the blankets stay warm.

I hang out with Fox, our old dog, a lot these days. And I'm not gonna sugarcoat it- it's no fun. Fox is not a fun dog. There are very specific places on his body you can pet him and only in very specific circumstances or he snaps at you. The top of his head may be ok. And then he'll move his head so you're rubbing the gunk out of his eyes or digging into the inside of his ear. It's gross. But you aren't allowed to touch his legs or any part of his back end. And he wants to hang out with you, but that mostly means he wants to lay on most of whatever blanket you are using.

He's a needy dog, but he's a snappy dog too. You cannot cuddle him. He does not want that. He wants what he wants when he wants it. He won't come down the stairs unless you're watching him and making noise for him.

But I think the thing I find most frustrating is the taking up more than half of the bed thing. If there is a dog in the house I'm staying in, they will sleep with me, and they will take up more than half the bed. I've spent all my adulthood clutching the edge of the bed, and it's not even because I'm sleeping with other people. It's just all these selfish-ass dogs.

And when I lie there at night, with a fourth of the covers, clutching the side of the bed and getting attitude from Fox every time I move my legs, I think, "This is not how babies get made."
Nopers.

2011-10-04T11:40:00.000-05:00

Tension.

Ohhh, I feel it coming off of me in little hard chips. I have time on my hands, I blew through some money recently, and the great fear is stalking me. Surprisingly, this is not depression. If I'm anxious, I'm not depressed. When I was depressed, I didn't write blog posts. The faith that my anxieties are ok to put on the web is actually a great and wonderful card to hold.

I have forgotten, in general, how to cook for myself. I used to really know this, hands down. I used to even bake my own bread, every sunday, for the week. For about a year I did that.

I mean, I also used to cry every time I'd walk my dog, for like 3 years, so I am not arguing that I have backslid. Absolutely things are better, I am better, than I was before. Fresh bread or no fresh bread. The fresh bread was part of the great plastic purge of my first winter in Chicago, and in retrospect, was OCD-lite. Not that lite, since my 2 weeks of veganism resulted in a 10 pound weight loss. Not in a good way, at the time I did not have 10 pounds to lose.

I was reading about Gampo Abbey, which is the tibetan buddhist monastery in Canada where Pema Chodron lives, and their daily schedule. To apply to live there you have to commit to live there for a year, and you have to have at least 6 months of daily sitting down. This is eminently sane- it would make no sense to go from no daily sitting to 5+ hours every day with a bunch of strangers.

Ohhhh, but I how I want to be kidnapped by a bunch of buddhist nuns and made to wake up at 6, do chores in silence, sit for 2 hours, do yoga, do more chores, do more sitting, and then lights out by ten. Extremes feel very comfortable to me. But as someone trying on gentleness and sanity, how would a person move towards that kind of disciplined living in small steps? Because small steps are the hardest for me. Sitting for 10 minutes is almost impossible. Can't someone force it on me?

Do I really, as an adult, have to make these choices on my own? Could someone guilt me into me? Couldn't someone call me and leave angry messages about this?

OOOHHH I JUST HAD A REVELATION. THAT'S WHY I'M SO OBSESSED WITH FINDING A PARTNER. BECAUSE I WANT THEM TO BADGER ME INTO DOING THE THINGS I WANT TO DO. THAT'S WHY IT FEELS LIKE LIFE WON'T START TILL I HAVE A PARTNER. BECAUSE I'M WAITING FOR HER TO SHOOT THE GUN THAT STARTS THE RACE.

Whoa. Damn-a-rama.

2011-09-30T10:48:00.000-05:00

The Meaning of Life.

I have got it! There is nothing like the meaning of life to pull you out of a crummy morning. I wasn't so smart this week, on several unrelated occasions, and when that is the first thought in your head it is hard to get on up out of bed.

I did however. (First victory!) Then got coffee. (2nd victory!) And then in a turn of good luck found http://emotionalbagcheck.com. Which I highly recommend using, both as someone checking baggage and taking someone else's baggage, because what do you know, the stranger's baggage I took was very similar to my own! Funny how that works.

Then I found this:

Then I started remembering my own favorite memories. And you know what? Many, many of them involved me screwing up as a stage setter for the favorite memory. Falling in a pond, peeing my pants, eating food that was not mine to eat. Some involved just plain unearned good luck. But none of them involved me being a very effective adult-like person who made it through my to do list.

So it looks as though I will continue wandering through life being spacey, sleeping through things, wasting money, being a general dumbass. And yet, I will still get handed wonderful times with people. In fact, the more I screw up the more very wonderful times it looks like I will get.

Good deal life. I accept. Bad decisions, here I come!

2011-09-15T23:26:00.000-05:00

Old-Fashioned

I've been holding off writing this post because it feels like a real "should." I did make an old-fashioned, it was pretty good, that was monday and since then this has been on my to do list. Otherwise known as my "EFF YOU I WON'T I WON'T I WON'T" list.

I got some other things I want to write about, my more normal repertoire of nostalgia for recent eras. Also I've wanted to post youtube of sort of recent pop songs.

This teaches you nothing.

But then there's THE GIMMICK. NOSTALGIA. THE OLD-FASHIONED. Could the theme gods have handed down a golden-er apple?

The Old-Fashioned was invented in a gentleman's club in Louisville in the 1890's. There's a description of a drink like it in "Huckleberry Finn." Sugar, fruit, ice- there was a time in this country where it was easier to get your mitts on some cherries than a Coca-cola.

Here's what you need:
2 cherries (I used maraschino. Any self-respecting mixologist will tell you to make your own brandy soaked cherries.)
2 orange slices
2 sugar packets
3 dashes angostura bitters
4 oz bourbon (I used Maker's Mark)

Put the cherries, the orange slices, and the sugar in the bottom of a rocks glass. Add those 3 dashes of bitters. Muddle, but don't go nuts, because you don't want the orange peel going bitter. Pack with ice. Pour in bourbon. Stir, bringing the crushed fruit up from the bottom of the glass, so the drink turns a little cloudy.

What does it taste like? It tastes great. It doesn't particularly taste nostalgic though. Doesn't remind me of any particularly great parties.

WHO WERE MY COCKTAIL GUESTS?! I had none. That must be why I'm so apathetic about this drink. I made this at work. It was a bartender training we had, and I'm so glad we had it, and I love my coworkers. But I only drank half of this before I stopped because there was maybe some driving that was gonna happen.

What would be in my nostalgia drink?
- Naty Ice
- Jungle Juice
- a jug of Carlo Rossi red wine
- apple pucker
- mint schnapps and chocolate syrup

Those are all things I have vivid memories of throwing up in college. But before the puking, before the terrible, humiliating, painful puking, I think I had a good time. I have a rosy, vague impression of the time before the puking.

So I would feel nostalgic and nauseous if you served me any of those.

I have been in Cleveland for a year now, and things have changed. For example, I no longer rock myself to sleep. I don't avoid places where people I might know are. And I'm out out out, out to everyone within shouting distance. Out to everyone who can suss out my rat tail. So out the chef at my work gives me dating advice.

Being out has dramatically reduced my daily opportunities to feel anxiety. And that's real nice. It's nice to get to be out in the same town I grew up in. It was harder to do than being out in Chicago. Being out around people who knew you as a little kid and teenager is just different. It's scarier. No one in Chicago was gonna be like, "You sure bought a lot of David Duchovny posters in 8th grade for someone who supposedly is GAY!" or "You sure used to talk a lot about your live in boyfriend for someone who supposedly is GAY!" or "Jesus christ, stop talking about being gay, this is like your horse phase."

(In my defense, horses were NOT A PHASE.)

To connect this back to the old-fashioned, it turns out people love crushed fruits.

2011-09-01T19:21:00.000-05:00

Fish House Punch

This punch is evil.

All these people were drinking Fish House Punch.

Esquire.com provides a compelling little story about our founding fathers drinking this punch while writing the Constitution. So now you know where we went wrong, why we needed the Civil War and suffragettes and why we did what we did to Central and South America. And the Middle East. And Africa. And....

Point being- give up your childish beliefs in the Illuminati. Give up fears about the woods near San Francisco. The problem isn't that the richest of the rich have secret clubs. It's that at these clubs they drink Fish House Punch.

1.5 cups superfine sugar
1 quart lemon juice
2 quarts water
2 quarts dark rum
1 quart cognac
4 oz peach brandy

A couple of explanations before we get into the instructions. 1) super fine sugar is a fantasy food made up to make you spend more time in supermarkets. 2) A quart means a bottle. Even though liquor bottles come with a "750 ml" label on them, this is yet another trick. Once you get home, google it, break out the measuring cup, you'll discover all these bottles are quart bottles. 3) Cognacs are the top shelf brandys. They come from France. They're all at least 20 bucks. Thus you will not buy something labeled 'Cognac' you will instead buy a 'Brandy.'

Ok, so you take a cup of regular sugar, and you dissolve it in some water. I used a cup of hot water to help this regularly fine sugar dissolve more completely. Then pour in a bottle of lemon juice. Then add two bottles of rum. Then one bottle of brandy. Then the 4 ounces of peach brandy, then one more cup water. I then walked it over to Joy Machines, where it sat for two hours maturing. (The ladies of the Two Heels and Wheels bike ride were supposed to drink it while learning how to fix a flat tire.)

Carrie! You only put a half a quart of water in the punch!

Hold your horses, bossy. Later I bought a bag of ice and dumped it in the lukewarm punch, which released even more than the recommended 1.5 quarts of water into the punch.

This tasted like lemonade. But you could tell it was strong. Guess what? IT WAS STRONGER THAN IT TASTED. After about three sips I was wasted.

All through the bike rides the ladies had been so well mannered. Thanking motorists held up by our ride, pointing out the beautiful sunset, real genteel stuff. Then at Joy Machines, while Lindsey was teaching us how to take our tire off, things changed for the worse. The ladies started heckling Lindsey.

And of course, when one person heckles, I also need to start heckling. Any teacher of mine will tell you, I'm only one abused substance away from heckling in any situation.

Lindsey had to tell us to simmer down. We finished the lesson, then went to ABC, where I started suggesting threesomes to people. Why, oh why, would I do this?

BECAUSE THE HORNED GOD HAD ME IN HIS HOOVED GRIP. The punch, the punch, the punch.

Breanna very nicely said if she was having a party she would ask me for the recipe. But you know what folks? Only serve this at your party if it's an orgy/ massacre party. If you're Nero and it's your fiddle recital, sure, fish house punch is appropriate.

So then I drank a screwdriver (the punch was gone), bought another one and spilled most of it, and wandered farther and farther away from the front patio of the bar, until a friend had to rein me back in. Then I biked home, and vowed, I will not go to sleep drunk. I will sober up before falling asleep. Instead I ate a burrito, told facebook how drunk I was, and fell asleep.

How did I feel today? Like life was random chaos filled with pain and devoid of meaning. Like I had within me a core of darkness which was throttling my stomach. Like the human experience was confronting our essential alone-ness. Like my body was rushing towards the oblivion of death. Or at least rushing to the bathroom, over and over.

How many people does this punch serve? I have no clue. You only need a fourth of a cup of it to get drunk. Probably about 30 people drank it last night.

So I'm telling you- DO NOT SERVE THIS PUNCH. Hug your mother, serve soup to the homeless, salute the flag, wear clean undies- DO NOT SERVE THIS PUNCH. Talk to a priest, go for a run, eat a salad, smile at a stranger- DO NOT SERVE THIS PUNCH.

Unless you want to get f*cked up. Cue the fiddle!

2011-08-27T09:39:00.001-05:00

Mint Juleps

One quirk of my mood disorder is that tired= terrible, terrible thoughts in my head. Probably everyone has a version of this, although maybe the thoughts are not quite as intense. So by the end of a double shift it is clear to me my life isn't going anywhere, ever. Contrast that with the morning before a double shift, when I'm congratulating myself on finding such an accomodating work situation, which serves as an indicator of my general well rounded awesomeness.

But let's elaborate on this "going nowhere" idea. What's interesting is that the value judgment attached to non-action here isn't a necessity. Many people would congratulate themselves on existing in the present, building a present which is a loving heaven. More and more that seems to be the only sane way to live, building a heaven out of the here and now. Because let me tell you, I've been to the future, I've been to the past, there ain't no heaven there either.

I mean, truly, where are we going? We're going to be stardust again pretty soon. So you could call that somewhere, you could call that nowhere. You could call that here. Here we are, we got here.

Well those are my thoughts on existence, now let's talk about alcohol.

The thing to understand about the mint julep is that you're almost drinking the bourbon straight. This isn't a mojito. If you're expecting the main flavor to be mint, if you're expecting to be refreshed, you're wrong. The main flavor is whatever bourbon you're using.

Here's what we did:
3 ounces bourbon
1 tsp sugar
a bunch of mint leaves

Chill some glasses. Put 4 or 5 mint leaves in a glass and sprinkle the sugar on them. Use a heavy dull thing to crush the mint and the sugar together (I used the handle of my strainer). Fill glass with ice. Add the bourbon. Stir. When the ice melts down a little add more ice. Throw some mint leaves on top.

We had two types of bourbon at our disposal, Knob Creek and Bulleitt (thanks to Ms. K). There was a huge difference between the two and the juleps they produced! The Bulleitt was much, much better for this, much more mellow, took on way more of the mint flavor. The more you know.

This was sort of a couples cocktail hour. My dear high school friend Ms. J and her husband Mr. R attended, and Ms. K and her gentleman friend Mr. B. My sister and I attended as spinsters.

There was, dare I say, immediate chemistry in this group. Hardly any icebreakers were needed. And it took a minute for us to get drunk, so the ah-ah-ah-alcohol cannot be blamed.

It took a minute because since a mint julep is almost bourbon straight, they can take a while to get down.

(It's also interesting to compare this to an Old-Fashioned, and to think about how sugared sodas changed the landscape of american drinking.)

We ended up falling back on the sugared soda bandwagon before the evening was through. I got through a fourth of my mint julep before giving up, Ms. J fared worse, Ms. K drank hers all the way through (although hers was the better bourbon). Then we turned to ginger ale to make these a little more palatable.

My friend Mr. C suggested making a mint simple syrup to use rather than muddling the mint with sugar. This sounds smart. I think if this happened and Bulleitt Bourbon was used a much mellower, mintier drink would result.

I did invent a nice drink this cocktail hour, which in honor of all these hetero couples I will name The Double Date:

2 ounces bourbon (might was well use up the Knob Creek on this)
a splash grenadine
a couple of splashes orange bitters
fill with ice
top with ginger ale

Now to connect the philosophical digression in the beginning with drinking- well, the highest purpose of the cocktail is the cocktail hour. A nice, civilized, aimless hangout. Going nowhere with some company, sipping a drink that you couldn't gulp if you tried. No one's even trying to get laid; they got that on tap at home. Thus cocktail hours are almost meditation, and you can replace your morning sit with one.

2011-08-19T08:18:00.000-05:00

St. Germain: Bikes at every step of the process

St. Germain is an elderberry liqueur released in 2007. As a new addition to the liqueur scene ( but I don't even know her...) the company has engaged the services of the most gung-ho copywriter around. Thus, the pamphlet around the bottle top assured me that the elderberries that went into my bottle were not (as the dictates of centralization would suggest) grown on a farm and picked by farmworkers. Nope, they were grown literally WHEREVER and then old men on bikes went around gathering them. The old men are called "paysans." Which wiktionary translates as "ruralite." I'll do the rest of the translation in my prejudiced head and call these men "hicks."

Well these abused hicks don't even get a vehicle for their foraging work, and I guess people never retire in France. (They work you to death over there.)

All this is to say when I bought the St. Germain I immediately felt suspicious, because of the transparent attempts at mythologizing in their materials. St. Germain, calm the hell down. It'll be fine. Rampant insecurity is a turn-off; BELIEVE ME I KNOW THIS.

The Count of St. Germain, interestingly enough, was a character around Mme. Pompadour's time who went around claiming he was 300 years old. The king of France built him an alchemy lab at Chambord. Pretty weird stuff, and the theosophists grabbed onto his story much later on as someone who had the "elixir of life." Good move St. Germain marketing people, product name pick for the win.

So how does it taste? It tastes sort of citrusy and flowery. It's good. It makes your drink smell pretty.

Mr. T (not that one) and Mr. A biked over to my house for the experiment in the use of St. Germain. I was a little nervous to let them in the house because they're both architects, and their shared apartment is much cleaner and more pleasing to the senses than my childhood home. They were kind enough not to comment much on the state of the house besides identifying the foyer and vestibule for me. (We had been referring to these rooms as 'the front door' and 'the hallway.')

We went with the first suggested drink in the St. Germain marketing materials, which was the St. Germain cocktail.

1.5 parts St. Germain
2 parts sparkling or dry white wine
2 parts sparkling water or club soda
Garnish with a lemon zest

Mr. T was kind enough to bring the dry white wine, which was a pinot grigio.

Look, these were good. They were like a flowery, not too sweet Sprite. You could not taste any alcohol in this drink. If you were trying to get a teetotaler drunk ala Sergeant Sarah Brown in 'Guys and Dolls,' this would be a good bet.

Then it stormed and the Mr.'s had to wait around and watch the NBC comedy lineup with me and my dad. Does that happen to the paysans? Do they get stuck out on a muddy road, their bushel of elderberry flowers getting soaked? Set those old guys free St. Germain, give them a pension and employ some young dudes to get the flowers.

2011-08-11T05:46:00.000-05:00

The Moscow Mule.

A mule is a drink made with Ginger Beer. Why do drinks made with Ginger Beer need their own nickname? Especially when there seems to be only one of them? Because drunk people are silly assholes.

I highly recommend this drink's wikipedia page, in which you can read about the inventors of the drink being silly assholes. Hey dudes, what would happen if we combined this tasteless liquor with a delicious soda and lime? Gosh, I don't know if anyone would like delicious ginger soda that you don't realize is getting you drunk.....is that a thing people like? Sweet, secret liquor things?

Remarkably, a sweet, secret liquor ginger lime drink "lifted the spirit towards adventure." Which is what I'm trying to avoid by drinking at home, the various adventures my spirit is lifted towards in bars. Also, that picture on the wikipedia page comes from The Velvet Tango Room. Cleveland! He-yo! We're all witnesses. Or the sober people are.

Ok, to be serious, the Moscow Mule has a fancy name, and based on that name you might be comfortable paying 9 dollars for one somewhere. But it's just a highball, folks. The thing that makes it fancy is the fancy soda, which yeah, you have to find one of those stadium sized suburban food emporiums with an olive bar to buy at. The food emporium Bridget took me to had dry cleaning and a sub sandwich station. Oh, and a liquor store, which, you know, I'm just not motivated to make fun of.

Here's what went into our Moscow Mules:
2 shots SMIRNOFF. (not grey goose, not ketel one, not puff's latest vodka venture, shitty old smirnoff. Because vodka is just shitty whiskey, and fancy vodka is a rip off.)
The juice from half a lime
ice to fill the glass
Ginger Beer (2-4 parts per two shots vodka, but really you just fill to the top, everyone wants more of the Ginger Beer)

Here's the complicated part of the process: knowing the Ginger Beer and Ginger Ale cannot be substituted for eachother. You got that? You need to buy the fancy old timey soda.

Everyone likes these. Because seriously, what are you not going to like in this drink? What is the challenging component? It's the snob's sprite and blueberry vodka.

You might pick up that I sound angry in this post. I am angry. At things totally un-related to the Moscow Mule, but some of my anger is being transferred and I am literally ANGRY AT THIS DRINK FOR BEING SIMPLE AND GOOD. IT IS A SIMPLE AND GOOD DRINK THAT IS NONETHELESS IMPRESSIVE TO PEOPLE AND THAT MAKES ME PISSED OFF. What are your goddamn problems, Jack Martin, John G. Martin, and Rudolph Kunett? Why did you have to invent a delicious drink my mom, my sister, and my two new friends would all like a lot? GO DIE.*

I should mention I am not drunk right now, it is 6:30 in the morning and I'm starting my second cup of coffee. That pretty much encapsulates the source of my anger, being UP and ALIVE for another PRECIOUS DAY OF LIFE. Fucking delicious ginger beer and getting to be alive for another day. What total bullshit! If I was tipsy from a moscow mule, I bet I would be much more mellow and my feelings regarding the ease of preparation of a Moscow Mule would not be ambivalent. ESPECIALLY if I was trying to have another. Because you can be drunk as a skunk and you will not mess up this drink.

Something besides my feelings you might like to know about is that if you're having stomach troubles, the ginger beer feels really really nice.

*already dead.

2011-08-01T21:41:00.000-05:00

Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary

She's behind you!

Yeah, you wish. What a great world this would be if Mary Queen of the Scots was making house visits. Instead you only get to visit with ALIVE people and most of the time they're total bores.

But if you're having company, serving bloody mary's is a good idea cause no one is gonna be boring hopped up on them. I had my sister and my coworker/ horse girl friend Miss L over for Bloody Mary's, and we were all quite the chatterboxes. Because they were actually really strong, but you couldn't taste it under the cayenne, celery salt, mozzarella and bacon. What I'm saying is we had alcoholic liquid pizza for dinner.

The recipe I used:
cover the bottom of your shaker (or glass, whatevs) with worcestershire
dash of cayenne
dash of celery salt
dash of garlic powder
dash of black pepper
one half of a lemon
two shots vodka

stir

add as much tomato juice as you feel like, pour over ice

GARNISHES!

GARRRRRNIIISHHHHEEEESSSS!!!

Bacon!
Mozzarella!
Gherkins!
Cheese stuffed olives!
Celery swizzle!
Lemon slice!

I spent more on garnishes than I did on the vodka. REAL TALK.

I loved them. Bridget and Miss L liked them enough to have a second, but they had some suggestions. ONE- Miss L had an ex-boyfriend who put guinness in his. What the hell? But she liked it, and she suggested an IPA as a summery substitution. Bridget agreed, saying she felt like there was complexity missing from the mix.

It was hot as an aftertaste. It sort of burned your lips when you put your glass down, but it didn't strike you as a spicy drink at first. I mostly got garlic as a first impression, which was great for me because I love sandwiches, salad, and pasta, and enjoy drinks that imitate them.

And oh, the funny things Miss L and Bridget said! Oh god, the exploits of straight women. It's a secret cabal that of course I can't reveal the inner workings of. Guess about it!

I'm very glad to have made these, probably the gladdest I've been about learning a drink, because they were WAY easier than I imagined. There's no reason to buy bloody mary mix, ever. Evah. You probably have all the spices! Also, if you don't, who gives a crap? Just throw whatever in there. You don't even need vodka, throw whatever fermented thing you have lying around in there and see what happens!

And honestly, after this cocktail phase is over in my life, I picture myself abusing bloody mary's, day in and day out, hopefully at a beautiful senior home in Boca Raton (fingers crossed!). They're like a health drink, if health drinks came with cheese and pork.

2011-07-30T12:20:00.000-05:00

Drynks of Womyn.

Did you know I was once fired for blogging about my period? It's true, I really actually was. I never learned anything from that incident.

Well, I'd like to tell you more about the cycles of womanhood, and how it connects to the miracles of booze.

Summary: Period=booze.

This is a time honored tradition. I was well underage when my mom first put a shot of whatever we had in the house in tea for my cramps.

Here are some not very original recipes to serve at the irish wake for your uterine lining:

1st Day Tea

hot black tea
Honey
shot of bourbon

Stir together, drink. Also throw half and half or lemon in there if you like. Repeat until you're asleep.

2nd day highball

2 shots rye whiskey
dash of bitters
dash of orange bitters
juice of half a lemon
ginger ale

Stir all the fancy stuff. Pour over ice, fill with ginger ale. Repeat until it's time for lunch. This is very good for summer periods.

Whiskey comes from the gaelic word for "Water of life." I do believe whiskey drinks are what to depend on for medicinal liquor consumption.

I don't recommend partying on your period, for a couple of reasons:
1) Your pants probably don't fit, or you just stained them, so what will you wear?
2) You're highly suggestible right now and will absolutely consume two of every fruity vodka drink you see.
3) You'll kill someone. Real talk.

Of course, your period is when people throw all their parties. Also, it's when you're scheduled for doubles, usually. That's why you have to spend the whole week after your period sleeping and considering treatment options.

So the first week of this blog I tried to do a drink a day, and that is too much goddamn drinking. Holy crap. They make it look so easy on 'Mad Men.' I had to take some time off. So the new goal is going to be two drinks a week. This week I'd like to make bloody mary's for my mom, so I need one more cocktail. I'll have to buy vodka for the bloody mary's, maybe moscow mules?

Hey Carrie, why aren't you drinking Bloody Mary's now? Wouldn't that be a good joke?

What's a good joke is the idea of me leaving the house to buy celery salt right now.

2011-07-20T17:18:00.000-05:00

Manhood and Manhattans

Well, I stole some mint from my neighbor because today was just perfect for a mojito, amirite? Then I found some limes at the discount grocery near my house and I was even more excited (I was gonna go ahead and make one with lemon juice, which is something some people do in CUBA.) But you know what you really need for a perfect mojito?

Rum. You need rum. It's non-negotiable.

So back to the Esquire drink database, and also back to rye whiskey. Since I got some italian vermouth the other day, it was time to make a Manhattan, which is the dark twin of a Martini.

2 oz rye whiskey
1 oz italian vermouth
1 splash angostura bitters (which the guy at the liquor store told me were the default bitters, so let's hope he's a trustworthy character)

Shake with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, which I still don't have.

I once had a boyfriend (weird, right? It was a youthful phase) who ordered a Manhattan at an Applebee's and I tried it and it took off the top layer of my gums. It was so NASTY. Manhattan's became a very macho drink in my mind, more macho than a Martini, which mostly seems an olive conveyance vehicle.

It's much smoother with rye whiskey. Strong, I mean SO DAMN STRONG, but the problem isn't the strength of drinks, it's the unbalanced nature of flavors. A drink can taste strong and not taste like an antiseptic.

But let's dwell a little bit on machismo, because I find the masculinity sold by Esquire incredibly alluring. Not that I want to date an Esquire man, but I want to be an Esquire man. They wear really bright shirts and pants, and carry big man purses, and objectify pretty ladies, and worship fancy bartenders. I find the idea of switching sides very alluring, the idea that I could become a queer version of the Esquire man. (Ok, ok, the lady queer version of the Esquire man, and I'm cutting you off before you make a joke about the queerness of the gentleman Esquire reader. The premise of which I just acknowledged, so I both win at jokemaking and at shaming you for thinking of the joke.)

And suddenly patriarchy doesn't seem so bad, if I could jump ship to the winning side, and wear bowties and mix drinks and objectify femmes. Suddenly the possibilities seem a lot brighter, and I can envision a future for me that involves golf outings and tedious arguments about athletes.

But you know what....I've been taken in by the patriarchy before. Oh yes, yes I have. Many, many times. First by the promise I was gonna be a treasured wife, my respectability intact for forever, then by the promise that a girl who made enough dirty jokes was thus in on the jokes. NO, NO YOU ARE NOT. That isn't how it works. You come into this world with a vagina, or you acquire one, no matter what else you do from that starting point you cannot be a winner in the game of Manhood. Heck, you come in with a giant male member it is still statistically impossible for you to be the MAN of all MENZ. The only people who can be male enough to win the game are these dudes:

Who are still so insecure about their position as top males ever they are literally NAMED KOCH. (It doesn't get pronounced Coach, if you're wondering.)

I don't know what I'm saying. This Manhattan is not messing around. And I am not messing around when I say, Esquire, you're not fooling me. I know there's no way for me to be a Don Draper. I wouldn't even get to be Joan or Peggy, I'd be that old secretary who dropped dead and it was a big joke. So even though I am reveling in the aesthetics and liquor choices of your throwback style, I ain't fooled. I still worship the moon goddess and her drum circle ways, ya bastards.

2011-07-19T17:30:00.001-05:00

The Jack Rose

There was no cocktail hour yesterday because I was at Cedar Point. If this was a cocktail/ roller coaster blog you would read that I believe the best coaster at Cedar Point is the Mantis, because it's a longer one and has loop-de-loops. You would also hear about the peace I made with death at the top of the Power Tower and how I didn't even have time to make peace with it on the Top Thrill Dragster (which was wonderful). But our business here today is cocktails.

This image and other trivia related to this post from wikipedia.

The Jack Rose has a special pop culture place in my heart because Rachel Maddow taught how to make it in this video.

It also has a special literary place in my heart because it is the drink Jake of "The Sun Also Rises" (the one without testicles) drinks while waiting for Lady Brett Ashley in a hotel bar. I would not have known this without wikipedia, cheers to you wiki editors of the world!

Here is how I made the Jack Rose:
2 oz Laird's Apple Jack (which is not 'bond,' it's only 80 proof)
the juice of a lemon
1/2 oz grenadine

Shake it with ice in YOUR NEW STAINLESS STEEL SHAKER. Which has a big glass cup to use as a top that has drink recipes ON IT. Drink recipes like "Electric Lemonade," "Apple-tini," and "Long Island Iced Tea." So you never have to worry about having the ladies from your office over.

Serve up, in a chilled goofy christmas glass, with a LEMON ZEST that you zested with your NEW ZESTER that came in the same box as your shaker. Per the instructions of some customer at your restaurant, rub the zest of the lemon around the edge of the glass before dropping it in. Your new lemon zester, remarkably, only removes the yellow skin of the lemon, not the white part. It's amazing.

The jack rose, which I keep wanting to call an apple jack, is great. Sweet and spicy. Very, very pretty to look at. Tastes strong without knocking you over.

I am so very, very pleased with myself. Cheers to consumerism!

2011-07-17T10:17:00.000-05:00

A Failed Flip.

At the suggestion of Mr. C, a childhood character turned into an out of town gourmet, I tried to make a whiskey flip. SPOILER ALERT: it was no good. My rampant subbing finally ruined a drink.

Mr. C pointed me to this page of flip recipes, and I chose the whiskey flip, but if you notice you are supposed to use a blended whiskey, like Canadian Club. And I used my rye whiskey instead. Well. It certainly makes a difference.

1.5 ounces of blended whiskey (Oh, and I didn't measure this very well, so besides being the wrong kind of whiskey there was also too much of it in mine)
2 tsp light cream
1 tsp powdered sugar
1 whole egg
lil bit o' nutmeg

Shake all ingredients besides the nut meg in your trusty nalgene with ice. Strain into a whiskey sour glass. Which is this:

It LOOKED delicious. It looked like eggnog. And then it was WHISKEY. WHISKEY WHISKEY WHISKEY.

Also, I had had a glass of wine at lunch, and after the first couple of burning sips I just felt done.

I'll revisit the flips.

I've never liked learning about a topic where there are many fervent experts. It's one of the reasons I've been a bike commuter for 4 years now and still just learned how to take my back wheel off. I hate subjecting myself to being the dumb one in a situation. So I just give up and let other people know what they know and never try to learn.

As I've been talking to people about this project it's been clear there are many cocktail hobbyists. Who REALLY know their stuff. And it seems like an endless amount of information to know, which artisan ryes are good for sipping, etc. Can you feel my eyes glazing over? It looks like boredom, but it's an anxiety reaction.

Oh, and then my sister has some very strong ideas about the metadata component of this blog. Specifically she really wants me to tag posts. I have a gut reaction of "no, no, no, no, this leads down a path of a lot of work." Maybe that is also my gut reaction with cycling and whiskey experts...a fear that the work will not end....ever....

Well, some buddhist once said that it isn't our flaws that creates problems, it's our efforts to hide those flaws that creates problems. So let me be up front: I know very little about alcohol and I hate being the non-expert in a field of passionate experts and I hate to work at things.

Alright, we all know where we stand. Flips will be attempted again next week.

I had a Moscow Mule which was really delicious at "The Flying Fig" yesterday and also their "Lemon Basil Martini." The bartender was an exceptionally good flirt, in addition to the drinks being very good and very strong, so by the time I peeled myself off the bar stool my cheeks were burning red and I had a massive crush. That's a good bartender folks. I only meant to have one fancy cocktail and ended up having two. And he very nearly sold me on a dessert also. There are some people who will hand over their wallets if you make eye contact enough, and by some people, I mean, I do that.

But what these good drinks have in common is that besides being strong, the non liquor ingredients play up some other flavor of the liquor so that it's a much more balanced taste experience.The ginger doesn't simply distract you from the vodka, it actually tricks you into thinking vodka tastes good.

So goals: make a good flip, flirt more effectively, push through the wall of anxiety to get to the moat of learning.

2011-07-14T15:45:00.000-05:00

The Cliquet.

Cocktail hour happened early and alone for me today. Which should be troubling for everyone who reads this- come over and drink with me or else I'll have to drink by myself, much closer to the middle of the day than is comfortable for everyone.

Two days ago I bought orange juice for the Maiden's Prayer, and will be leaning hard on the oj recipes to get rid of it. Then the soda recipes will come next, because for the Silver Fizzes I ended up buying a 2 liter.

This is the first drink recipe where I've had ever single ingredient AND the proper glass. So here we go:

1.5 ounces of rye whiskey (you could also use bourbon)
1 tsp dark rum
OJ

Mix in a rocks glass. Add 2-3 ice cubes. Picture and recipe from esquire.com.

Oh, hello whiskey. Well. There you are. In my drink. Asserting yourself quite loudly. Oh my.

It's a sweet drink. And I think I have ordered a couple of whiskey and ginger ales in my lifetime. It's not as sweet as that. It does warm you up immediately. I'm 3 sips in and my cheeks are red.

Rye whiskey is, surprise surprise, whiskey distilled from rye. Bourbon is whiskey distilled from corn. Scotch is whiskey distilled from barley and IN SCOTLAND thank you very much. Irish whiskey is also made from barley but has more random grains in it, and IN IRELAND ya bastard. A canadian whisky (they spell it different) may be referred to being a "rye whiskey" while being made with almost no rye, because it's too damn cold up there to give a shit.

Ryw whiskey used to be the alcohol of choice in the northeast before prohibition. It's supposed to have a spicier, less sweet flavor than bourbon. Uhhhh...sure. Ok, maybe I taste that. I have found many whiskeys to be sickeningly sweet in a way this Cliquet is not. Like, caramel-y, and the caramel and alcohol gets to the back of my throat at the same time and makes me want to retch. I'm not feeling the need to retch right now.

(Should I ever feel the need to retch, cocktail hour will end abruptly, this isn't a suicide mission.)

I don't have a lot to say about this drink. I would not be embarrassed to order it at a bar, since it's a quick one to make, but I also would only use rye whiskey. The OJ is sweet enough, I think OJ and bourbon might be disgusting. There's hardly any rum in the Cliquet, so if they try to charge you for a shot of rum....actually, just let them. I don't approve of arguing with bartenders. They have the power, they have the alcohol, just RELAX and think of England.

Q: "Now Carrie, what do you think about during a lonesome cocktail hour, closer to the middle of the day than is comfortable, sipping a whiskey cocktail?"

A: I think about the cool wind blowing through the trees these past two days, bringing my long pants out of retirement. I think about the tippy tap of my fingers on the keyboard. I think about the USA women's soccer team and what a mistake it was for me not to play sports at my all girl's high school. I think about how nice it is to not have to chill a glass. I think about how dumb it is to call ice "rocks." Why sub one word for another if they have the same number of syllables?

Alcohol stirs up a relaxation tinged with nihilism. It's a weird substance to get into. It makes me revel in every detail that seems off. Like I'm Hunter S. Thompson all of a sudden, and have no shame about presenting myself as a mess. Like I'm such a GENIUS that of course I am also a MESS.

And indeed, that was the attitude of my comedian friends towards their drinking.

I no longer believe I am a genius or a mess. I may have some shining and some stinking moments, but in the end I believe they will even out into a life of middling proportions. I am within one standard deviation of the mean, I'm sure, of whatever characteristic you want to pin me down on.

The Cliquet is a cocktail for the 68% within a standard deviation of the mean. It's the drink of the moderate in a two party system. A little snobby because of the rye, a little girly because of the OJ. Not a drink for the experts or for the undergrads. A drink for an endless adulthood, measured out in rocks glasses.

2011-07-13T21:58:00.000-05:00

The Silver Fizz.

Today's cocktail guest was the sophisticated Miss K, a childhood friend and gal about town who also tends to know her gin. When I get around to Mint Juleps, the mint and the bourbon will come from Miss K, which gives you a peek into her pantry.

Anxious to buck the gin shaken with lemon trend I got super old school and attempted the Silver Fizz. How old school was this? So old it relies upon a RAW EGG, taking us back to a time when chickens were raised in sanitary conditions and weaklings would drink 6 raw eggs for muscle.

2 ounces gin
1/2 ounce lemon juice
1 tsp sugar
1 egg white

Shake vigorously in nalgene bottle with ice. Serve in a big glass (esquire.com said a Collins glass, you can make an educated guess whether I had one of those), fill to the top with soda.

Well, this drink may have been different had I not halved the sugar by mistake. I only put in 1 tsp for both me and Miss K. The resulting drink was like alka-seltzer.

In sort of an ok way though. The foam took up about half the glass. Even though it didn't taste strong, it secretly was. Miss K commented "I wouldn't order it, but if someone gave me one I'd drink it." Which is, of course, what had just happened. I was disappointed it wasn't more like the fizzes I've had at Velvet Tango Room. A good start would be putting in all the sugar the recipe calls for.

The thing about having a strong drink before you eat dinner is that 1) you get really pretty drunk and 2) you get SO hungry. You just whale on a sandwich. Teach it a lesson. Like, don't be a sandwich when I'm in the kitchen, jerk. And then after dinner you're really tired, and you go to bed early. It's a whole different schedule for an evening.

Well, so I feel like a pro at shaking a nalgene full of gin. I think it's time to master the muddling drinks.

Miss K and I talked about The Great Gatsby, and then Baz Luhrmann, and birth control options, as gals are wont to do. It was decided that in the twenties nervous gentleman callers must have requested Silver Fizzes for their anxious guts. Now, as my mother says, THE THING IS I actually have a nervous gut. My stomach seizes up and stays that way for weeks at a time.

It is good for a nervous gut to drink an eggy fizz on a porch swing. Really loosens you up.

2011-07-12T19:48:00.000-05:00

The Maiden's Prayer

My guest this cocktail hour was the fabulous Miss E. Miss E is a dear friend, my very favorite former flame, who unlike myself has a sophisticated booze palate already. This lady orders Rob Roys on a regular basis, in marked contrast to my blueberry vodka and sprites. (Well, we could be compassionate and characterize my drink orders as 'highballs.')

We stayed with the london dry gin theme, since that has the special distinction of being a liquor already in my house. And being both young women, alive with life and young with youth, we chose "The Maiden's Prayer."

This picture and the recipe we used come from the esquire.com drink database.

1.5 ounces london dry gin
.5 ounce triple sec
.5 lemon juice
.5 orange juice

Shaken with crushed ice, poured into chilled cocktail glasses. Again, the missing ingredients and utensils were:

triple sec
a shaker
cocktail glasses

So I chilled those polish christmas glasses in the fridge with ice water. And the nalgene bottle serves its purpose. We subbed Grand Marnier for the triple sec, and since that's still a bitter orange liqueur I feel just fine about it.

This drink was less sweet than the Honey Bee, and very lemony. If this was a woman's drink back in the day, oh how the mighty amazons have fallen. It was STIFF. Refreshing, sure, summery, yes, but strong like an alcoholic ox. Us ladies used to be able to put them back. Now we run around drinking flavored vodkas and sodas (or rather, I do) but our grandmas wiled out on gin with a whiff of lemon.

Miss E's take on The Maiden's Prayer: "Yes."

Miss E finished hers much faster than I. I guess compared to a glass of scotch with an ice cube in it gin is a walk in the park. I'm just glad cocktail hour happens before dinner, because I wouldn't have been able to operate a vcr in good conscience on this drink.

(I'm exaggerating a very small bit for comedic effect.)

Gin does lend itself very well to summer drinks, and to lady drinks if the ladies know what they're doing. In preparation exceptionally similar to The Honey Bee, and a gin martini while we're at it. You can pretty much put gin and anything in a shaker with ice. Again, a transparent exaggeration, but anything that would play upon the fruit and herb tastes in gin would do well. Raspberries? Cucumbers? Basil? Flower elixirs? Go out to your garden, stuff whatever you find in the shaker and get the party started, grandma style.

And indeed, Miss E and I did party it up with true geriatric flair, sitting on the porch swing talking about the lack of sexy times in our lives. Then I pooped in my diaper.

Tomorrow I might mix it up by making a fizz.

2011-07-11T17:52:00.000-05:00

The Honey Pie.

The Honey Pie is a drink I just made up, based on the Honey Bee. I've decided to be the BARTENDER TO RULE THEM ALL and thus will work my way through the esquire.com drink database. The problem being that as of yet I have no bartending supplies and access to a liquor cabinet the content of which can best be described as erratic. Lots of gin, some peach schnapps, creme de cacao, and Apple Laird. Both the supplies and liquor situations will be fixed shortly, but in the meantime some improvisation had to occur.

So the Honey Pie is a Honey Bee made with london dry gin instead of white rum. That is quite the difference in liquor! But it works.

The recipe for a Honey Pie is thus:

1/2 tsp honey
1/2 tsp warm water
1/2 ounce lemon juice (which seems to be the juice from a half of a lemon)
2 ounces white rum

If you substitute dark rum, you're making a Honeysuckle. We had the last bit of a bottle of good dark rum, but I felt guilty using it. So onto the london dry gin! I used Bombay Sapphire.

Since we're using LONDON dry gin, I thought it was appropriate to name the alternative version after a Beatles song.

Now, besides white rum, here are some other components I didn't have in the house:

a cocktail glass
a shaker and strainer

So instead I chilled these crazy old polish glasses we use for wine at christmas. And a nalgene bottle was utilized for a shaker. I chilled the crazy wine glass with ice water and set it aside. Put the 1/2 tsp honey in the nalgene bottle, and supposedly 1/2 tsp warm water, but I just darted the nalgene bottle under the faucet. Then I screwed on the top and shook it to mix the honey and water. I cut a lemon in half and measured out the juice in a shot glass, then dumped it in the nalgene. Added two shot glasses of the gin. Popped 4 ice cubes in until the ice had sort of broken apart. If it had been a metal shaker I would've shook until my hand hurt, since that always makes a pretty martini, but my nalgene was not gonna get that cold. Then strained it over a spoon into the chilled crazy wine glass.

What is the Honey Pie like? It's like a very alcoholic lemonade. Which seems to be how every gin drink turns out, frankly. But the honey does bring out some different flavors in the gin, it tastes a little floral, maybe?

I'm going to order a home bar set right this minute, but will be making do with the nalgene bottle until that arrives from off the internet. And I will probably be doing gin drinks the rest of the week too, until I can get my hands on some bourbon and some bitters.

Here are the drinks I feel it is important to master: a manhattan, a mint julep, and a sazerac. Because there is this southern themed restaurant I'd like to work at. I feel very confident about my martini skill set- although only a regular vodka martini, a gin martini, a dry martini, and a dirty one. The non-martini martinis, like an apple or chocolate one, I don't know how to do.

Oh, and for those of you concerned, it'll only be one cocktail a day. I'm trying to get very mindful about my drinking.

2011-06-27T11:30:00.000-05:00

Second Attempts.

Well, here we are, it is the second day of research papering, and I think it's time to admit yesterday was a red herring, or a mulligan, or a deep dark hole of nothing. There is not enough research on psychological treatments of dyspareunia readily available to me to write a paper about it.

So the first criteria for a topic is wide availability of research on it, and so I am writing about a very hip thing to write about- Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. So hip the NYTimes wrote an article about it's creator Marsha Linehan LAST WEEK. So what's this paper I'm writing? It is an overview of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. It will cover the proposed etiology for emotional dysregulation, the historical treatments for Borderline Personality Disorder, the historical development of DBT as a treatment for BPD, the therapeutic process of DBT, and the exxpansion of DBT for other conditions that also manifest partly as emotional dysregulation.

So that's 5 subtopics, which I hope have a logic to their order. And this paper is TOPS 10 pages, so let's assume there's an average of a page and a half to each subtopic. Now I need a source for each subtopic.

1)A Biosocial Developmental Model of Borderline Personality: Elaborating and Extending Linehan’s Theory
Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 135, Issue: 3, Date: May 2009, pp. 495-510
Crowell, Sheila E.; Beauchaine, Theodore P.; Linehan, Marsha M.
2)Borderline personality disorder
The Lancet, Vol. 364, Issue: 9432, Date: July, 31 - August, 6 2004, pp. 453-461
Lieb, Klaus; Zanarini, Mary C; Schmahl, Christian; Linehan, Marsha M; Bohus, Martin
3)
4)An illustration of dialectical behavior therapy
In Session: Psychotherapy in Practice, Vol. 4, Issue: 2, Date: Summer 1998, pp. 21 - 44
Linehan, Marsha M.
5)Special Series Dialectical Behavior Therapy: Adaptations And New Applications
Commentary on innovations in dialectical behavior therapy

Marsha M. Linehan ,
University of Washington, USA, Cognitive and Behavioral Practice
Vol: 7 Issue: 4, Autumn, 2000
pp: 478-481

I'll come up with something for 3. Whatevs.

And then I'll need some other sources, but I can probably pull those from the references above.

What is DBT? DBT is a cognitive behavioral therapy, which means the therapist teaches the patient how to choose their thoughts and actions in an adaptive manner. In DBT the therapist teaches the patient emotion regulation skills. BPD patients both experience emotions more intensely than the general population, and they don't have the emotion regulation skills many of us learned in childhood. BPD is characterized by black and white thinking, suicide attempts, self harm and mutilation, problems caused by impulsivity, and intense, erratic relationships. In DBT the therapist teaches the patient how to identify and be mindful of their emotions without acting out the maladaptive behaviors the patient was using to cope with those emotions.

What factors create BPD? Linehan proposes a bio-social model. People with BPD come into the world with a vulnerability to intense emotions. They are then placed in environments that retard their emotion regulation skills. These could be abusive households, or simply families which demand they hide emotions, which causes the person to oscillate between stoicism and extreme emotional lability.

The first goal in DBT therapy is to put an end to suicidal or self harming behaviors.

That's all I can write about this without reading these articles. Thanks for being a part of this planning session.

2011-06-26T22:47:00.000-05:00

Thinking about your thinking about your research paper.

You might be surprised by the anxiety you have floating around up there. Even if the paper is just extra credit and you choose a topic you found exceptionally interesting, psychological treatments for dyspareunia in women, which is PAIN DURING INTERCOURSE. How could it get more interesting? But as you wade into the pool of literature, it occurs to you it's a shallow, shallow pool. The pool for physiological treatments appears much deeper- interstitial cystitis, bacterial infections, there's even a surgery to remove the offending lower third of the vaginal canal. (I don't know what you're left with then.)

And what a nice thing, that physical pain should be found to have a physical cause which is then removed. So you think...hey, maybe this disorder, while described in the DSM-IV-TR, is not a great research topic, because it's a throw away category for cases they can't treat physiologically.

Uh, so then, you expand your horizons into other sexual disorders. All you wanted to do was write a nice simple research paper on treatment methods for a sexual disorder. But it appears the treatments that have had serious studies done on their efficacy are physiological treatments...so your psych research paper looks like it's turning into a physical therapy research paper.

Which makes you think long and hard about this big ole plan you have of being a clinical psychologist.

Your thinking about this subject has become very uptight.

And you decide maybe writing a blog post could help loosen up the writing mind and put your thoughts in order. It does appear if if your dysparaeunia can't be solved with the help of a gynecologist and physical therapist, you're maybe S.O.L. Or maybe not. There just aren't many studies for you to read about it.

I found an article by the professor who heads up The Kinsey Institute arguing that the dearth in research on psychological treatments for female sexual disorders was a bad thing. Obviously, another bad sign for my paper, as I was hoping to survey just those hypothetical treatments.

Um...I could do something more normal I guess. Sigh. Good thing I drank a Red Bull and will be up for the next two years.

2011-06-12T23:39:00.000-05:00

Being Bored at Least 8 hours a Day.

Oh I was so bored today! The only exciting things that happened were meals!

And so nothing bad happened. Nothing bad. Not much good, but some good, those meals were nice.

You know boredom and attentional difficulties are related.

You can tell by these short sentences I'm having trouble even concentrating on this blog post.

I think I have been waiting for the day when I stop being bored, and it's never gonna come. That's not how human life works.

Sometimes I'm out socializing and get bored, and it feels scary, like the boredom is spreading and it'll take over everything.

Maybe I can work on my focus. If only I were a zen master I'd have no problems at all.

2011-06-11T11:38:00.000-05:00

Fast Acting Loratadine.

How can you enjoy the warmth while crying and sniffling? You can't. You just can't. You just can't sit under a tree and marvel at it's height and it's fibonacci sequence leaf distribution while the salty contents of your sinuses are running quickly down the back of your throat and down your upper lip. You can't marvel while being disgusting. A zen master could do that. But they would have worked for several lifetimes for the ability to be on fire while marveling.

Why not take a fast acting loratadine, which is the active ingredient of Claritin and promises 12 hour relief? Why not just take the damn pill, which is citrus flavored and melts in your mouth, and forget about it?

Why not take a pill for everything? Why be ashamed of it? Many people spent 10 hour days for years and years to come up with these pills. They got promoted, fired, they had office affairs, they could barely contain their dislike for eachother's bragging, they thought about ditching it all, they thought about what a great life it was researching these chemical reactions, conducting these studies. All so your allergies could be controlled.

Do those people always take the allergy medicines they worked on? Or do they feel no emotions at all about the fruit of their labors, and pop a benadryl?

Let's not forget the people who manufacture the Loratadine. I can't figure out where those people are from the Loratadine box. The people who distribute it work in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania.

So many people working to make so many people feel the same way. The same experience reproduced all over the world. Total strangers tooling around in our sinuses and the corners of our eyes, drying them up with chemical towels and chemical hair dryers.

And the trees send out their leaves in mathematical consistent spirals, to best capture the radiation flooding the universe.

2011-06-08T21:24:00.000-05:00

Kicking ass, Taking Names, Putting the List of Names Down Somewhere and Losing It.

Oh yeah. OH YEAH. You got stuff to do? Paperwork to turn in? Emails to send? Haircuts to get? What if I told you there was an easy way to clear out your to do list in one sweep?

The easy way to BE ME TODAY BECAUSE I GOT MY SHIT DONE LIKE IT WAS MY JOB. MY JOB. I ALSO WENT TO MY JOB TODAY, SO IT'S LIKE I DID TWO JOBS.

Hmmmm, does it feel good to be me. Oh boy, did I bike today, in the heat, getting all sweaty, but it didn't bother me because I applied sunblock like a PRO. And I picked up that prescription like a PRO, and deposited that money like a PRO, and registered for that class like a PRO, and drank that smoothie like a PRO, then went to class like a PART TIME STUDENT.

Nothing like getting shit done. Nothing like it. You look at all those losers in their cars, waiting to make a left turn, in a long line, and you know they're not getting anything done. They're THINKING about everything they want to be getting done and aren't. Maybe they should hire me to do their shit. Oh wait, I can't it's like I have a job already the WAY I'M DOING MY OWN SHIT.

I can't recommend being a highly effective go getter enough. Feels great. Feels top notch. Also, you have one day like this, you're starting an avalanche of effectiveness, but it upward propelling avalanche. The avalanche takes you to the top of the mountain. Or another way to think about it is the avalanche takes you to the valley, and valleys are actually great places to farm and settle. Point being, you're going places, and whatever errands you have to do in the new place, you will get them done also, in the same super effective expedient manner, you MONSTER.

Additional recommended material:

2011-06-07T07:33:00.000-05:00

Unloading Your Shit on Relative Strangers.

You know, the tap dance of self reveal is a tough one. Especially if you are a very good, entertaining tapper. You may have been very inauthentic for a long time. Then you may have swung to the other side and been very authentic, and very detail oriented, in a compulsive way for awhile. And you still may get a little electric thrill every time you approach the line of appropriateness. You may feel some kind of relief when it becomes clear you jumped over that line with a new acquaintance by telling them your menstrual cycle, your bad year, your diagnosis.

Oh, you don't know what I'm talking about? Because those wires have not gotten crossed in your head, the wires of embarrassment and reward? So you don't experience those feelings as two sides of the same coin? In fact, the experience of a rewarding social interaction generally has to be void of the anxiety that you shared too much? You are missing out.

Oh the faces your new friend will make when you unload. There will be a twist of fright, that may have a hint of disgust. Then a supportive face, the wide honest eyes with lots of contact, the tight mouth, will take the stage. Hopefully your new friend will feel they should share some uncomfortable experience to balance the conversation out.

Aaahhhhhhh. Ahhhhh the ultimate in anxiety relief, getting the wide supportive eyes. There's some room to move in wide supportive eyes.

Perhaps you are testing people, seeing how they can hang in the face of some weirdness. Maybe this long ago became a compulsion and at least you're doing it face to face instead of on the internet. Maybe you are a therapist's dream, spreading authenticity all over society, laying it on thick with a shovel.

Like a fragrant layer of manure.

2011-06-05T23:37:00.000-05:00

Sunblock.

I highly recommend this product. Even if you want to tan. Even if you've got some idea that you have to burn the shit out of your epidermis a couple of times before fading into the lizard person you want to be. Your skin is your front line! It's the pawns in the game of biological chess that constitutes living another day!

A sun burn is itchy. It makes you tired. It may peel, which sure, everyone likes picking at peeling skin, but what if you have a date? What if you get a sunburn on a part of your body which needs to touch your chair at work or your bed? What will you do then, genius?

If you are going to lie in the blazing sun being lulled to sleep by the sound of waves, I highly recommend ditching the notions you have of which parts of your body have the capacity to burn. For example, you may never have had a sunburn on your lower legs. This may give the impression your lower legs are immune to burning. How quickly you will be disabused of this notion! Your lower legs have never been burned because they mainly reside under you, blocked from the rays of the sun by your upper body, but should you stretch them out on the beach they will burn like a back of the neck.

And so you must apply sunblock to parts of your body you are not accustomed to planning ahead for.

What sunblock is right for you? Any sunblock you can get. It is the correct one to put on. Put it on now. Especially on your hands, because you can't get a face lift on your hands.

2011-06-05T08:37:00.000-05:00

We've reached the point in the summer where I get skinny. Because I'm not just biking to work, I'm actually going out to other cultural events (bars) and finally the new social engagement is paying off, in the form of my pants not fitting. And I'll tell you what happens, because it's happened for four years in a row now- I'll buy new pants, and come November I'll be a size 12 again and rip the new pants down the butt. Yep. Take a bunch of photos of me now, because I'm not going to allow winter photos anymore. Winter is officially the season of luring strangers from the internet into dates with misleading photos. Summer is officially the season of taking the photos.

I found out this person I know from college smashed the face of a friend of a friend into a wall when they were dating. What are we turning into?

You know someday my life will be ilke a movie, and I'll have strong true feelings the propel me into strong true actions, but right now my life is not like anything. It's like a schedule. Be here, be there, tire myself out, eat. Do this, do that, earn money. It's not so bad at all. Much better than not earning money.

2011-05-28T12:24:00.000-05:00

I'm 78% done with "Infinite Jest," my kindle tells me. I have been reading this book for 2 weeks. I mostly finish books in 3 days, one day if it's a very good book. "Infinite Jest" is really goddamn long, and if I was reading it in book form, instead of e-book form, I probably would've been cowed by its size and abandoned it.

I have laundry to do, and then work tonight. Then tomorrow and monday I'll have one screw around day and one studying day. Probably sunday will be the screw around day.

Now that the weather is nice there's not much to think about. People compliment me on my new jacket. The bike is easier to ride now that I cleaned it. Another pair of pants is getting worn through on the upper legs right by the crotch. This is how my pants die. I like a pair, I wear them too much, they wear through by the crotch. It's straight line of pants life. Not a circle of pants life in the least.

I might shave my legs tonight so I can actually wear a skirt to work. In the fall I thought I earned more when I wore skirts, but now I'm not so sure. I earn plenty in pants.

Because of "Infinite Jest" I've been thinking a lot about addiction. That's a deep book. Deep thoughts are plenty enjoyable when they aren't framed by anxiety. Did you know the hormone cortisol, which gets released to stress you out, hopefully in appropriate situations and not all the time, keeps your brain from making new neurons? Well, "keeps" is misleading. There's a connection between cortisol release and lower levels of new neurons. And then new neurons in your hippocampal region improves your brain's "control of the stress response." (All of this is from the wikipedia page, I don't really know this.)

When they have tortured rats by giving them antidepressants but keeping them from making new neurons (which is called neurogenesis) the antidepressants didn't work. Thank you, dead little rat souls, for your ultimate sacrifice in the pursuit of human mental health.

2011-05-26T09:15:00.000-05:00

Back and back.

I have undertaken a long long journey. A journey that involved prerequisites. And one of those prerequisites is Abnormal Psychology, and it turns out this is also a prerequisite for the occupational therapist program, and that is the reason most of the kids in my class are taking it.

It's weird to go backwards to start this journey. Moving in with my parents, moving back to cleveland were both steps backwards, and now I'm taking undergrad classes. With college students who want to be occupational therapists (not even the hippy dippy kids who were in my classes in my undergrad, debating theories of myth). It's weird. But I can't see another way to get a graduate degree.

Also, it's nice to go backwards. I know what I do, I already did it, a long time ago. The tests in this class are MULTIPLE CHOICE. Can you believe it? And there's 5 of them. There's no cumulative final. Could they make the knowledge assessment any less stress free?

But I have to get an A. I can't go backwards back to undergrad and not get an A. This isn't a scary math class. A B is just not ok.

I mean, if I get a B I'll still take the next prereq. I'll just be really really sad. I'll have a depressive episode. Which won't count as one because they need to last several months long to count as major depression. Otherwise you're just bummed and have to deal with it. Which is of course what people in a major depressive episode beat themselves up with, why they can't deal with being bummed the way a normal person can, why they have to be sad for months at a time. I'll be sad for only a couple weeks.

It's also weird to hear lectures about things that are pretty close to my heart, lectures by medical doctors, to kids who are Health Science majors. But I guess if I really want to understand this stuff I have to get used to the uptight scientific viewpoint, which I experience a lot of hostility toward. The time of writing papers about Jung has long since passed. Now things have to be standardized and tested.

In other news, I'm really getting into Taylor Swift.

2011-05-22T11:48:00.000-05:00

Thoughts on an SNL I watched on the internet the next day

You know what I miss? I miss watching hot guys be funny, or not really hot at all guys be funny, and swooning. Now when I see a hot guy getting all the yucks and all the ladies giggling, I just want to roll my eyes but then also scream and say "WHATEVER!"

Whatever, dudes, you're the most perfect person anywhere and everyone from our parents to our little kids but especially all us twittering girlies just think you're the motherfarting best.

Farting Justin Timberlake. Yeah, I'm just super sexy and sing really well and also everyone thinks I'm hilarious and no one hates me. WHATEVER. MAYBE I HATE YOU JUSTIN. EXCEPT I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO DATE YOU.

Farting universal appeal. Yeah, I think you're hot and so do super republican chicks and that's why you're making the transition to Romantic Comedy Leading Man.

Is this farting thing working?

2011-05-21T22:39:00.000-05:00

Messed Up

I sat next to this old guy at a play last night. A real talker of an old guy. I really wasn't feeling the conversation until he told me his wife died last year. Oh my lord, and that they went to plays together. Come ON. Once he had me hooked I asked him all kinds of questions, and he bragged about his kids (of which there were a lot) and about his grandkids (of which there many TONS) and how they all went to college and then a lot of them grad school.

You better believe through the second act I was having fantasies about being this guy's best young friend, going to all kinds of community theater with him. "Oh no, I can't take your shift thursday. I'm going to the Beck Center with Ralph. Who's Ralph? Oh, just a friend of mine." Then two weeks later they find out Ralph is this widower! And I hang out with the very very old and talkative, just for fun! That's just the kind of surprising thing you don't know about me, coworker.

Once the play ended he bragged a little bit more, about how young he had his first kid and how long his careers were, and then he took off. He didn't want me to be his best young friend. He just wanted to brag about how many people he had made. The whole time, not one question about whether I had made a person. Whatever, Ralph. Or whatever his actual name was.

I bet he lures young women in all the time with the fantasy of being some kind of urban saint.

Course I could have followed him out to the parking lot and gotten his number. The facts of the case are I don't really want to see a bunch of community theater while having a one sided conversation with an old guy. But it was a nice fantasy about my moral fiber while it lasted. But in real life I like to hang out with other people my age, who let me talk about myself. Or I like to just go home and hang out with the dog.

Lucky I believe in a universe where there's no punishment for being the kind of person I am, besides the experience of being the kind of person I am, which is also the reward.

2011-05-19T08:56:00.000-05:00

In which an entire city functions as a scrapbook.

I went to Columbus and walked around. I tried to find the houses first things had happened to me in, some of them I knew from 2 blocks away, some of them I never did find. I walked into the record stores and noticed how friendly the staff were, whereas I remember record store staff being dismissive and terrifying. I noticed all the boys around. I noticed how small the girls looked. I did not feel like the college-aged me. I felt sorry for her, with all these boys around, with the girls trying to out-small each other, with dismissive record store staff to impress. And the blocks and blocks of falling apart housing to live in. What weird experiment is this, to pay so much money to send a coddled child off to work out a social system with a bunch of other coddled children in houses that are falling apart? College was a dangerous place. When I was there 4 kids died in a house fire, 3 kids were shot execution style because their room mate never paid for the drugs he was dealing, there was a serial rapist that attacked girls while they slept, stradley hall got locked down for a day while a boyfriend shot his girlfriend and then himself, a boy jumped off the top of the math building, and there was a bar that kept getting re-opened under new names when a girl would get raped in the bathroom. A cycle of rape then a new name. It's like a really dumb war zone.

I walked in a light drizzle in a new coat and new sneakers, and I felt old in a superior way, like a Mother Superior checking in on all the new nuns. When I was in college I was fighting the kind of woman I ended up becoming. I thought ugliness and manliness and queerness were inextricably linked, and I felt unwieldy and manly and loud. I thought that was why boys hated me, because I couldn't fix the ugliness. Couldn't tone it down, lose weight, listen more than talk, grow some nice long hair. All I wanted was for boys to like me. The matter of what I might like, besides being liked, was light years away. And in the present day, in a new coat and new sneakers, I thought of how aware I was of getting checked out by these college boys, my difference a main ingredient in my appeal, and I thought it would've been nice to have a different kind of beauty role model when I was in college. But I'm sure those people are in the women's studies department, and I wouldn't have gone near them.

Nostalgia, like a lot of ruminative thought, has a time limit before it turns sour. Also, with Columbus I know I'll just go back there in 6 months and do the same thing, and my friends who actually live there will keep on living in Grandview, driving cars, being adults, not knowing they live in The Museum of my Young Adulthood.

And I'll come back to Cleveland and lay on my childhood bed with Fox, who only wants to lay on a bed these days, and I'll sell kebabs and be assumed to be much younger than I am, and continue this long and mesmerizing ascent to graduate school. And thank the gods and goddesses that life is so much bigger and weirder than my mind can get a handle on, and whenever I try to imagine my future life I am so wrong it's like I answered the wrong essay question.

2011-05-14T10:57:00.000-05:00

Things you can do on a rainy day:

You can go to the bathroom.
You can eat a bagel.
You can look at a pile of clean clothing.
You can put liquid bandage on your big toes, which have been irritated by your work shoes worn without socks.
You can have a cup of coffee.
You can go to the bathroom again.
You can listen to youtube videos while blogging.
You can re-evaluate your communication strategies with people from your past.
You can name these thought patterns "ruminating."
You can think about reading a magic book. A book about how to do magic.
You can search for upbeat music on youtube.
You can stick your thumb in your nose and gently roll it around, feeling your nose hairs.
You can put that on the internet. Gross.

2011-05-11T22:32:00.000-05:00

Worms

One thing I would really not like is if a worm was crawling out of my skin. Surprisingly, the smaller the worm the less I would like it. I would really not like it if the worm was translucent a little, or a very very pale peach, and if it first poked it's head out of my skin then went back in. Like it had looked around. I would really not like it if I could see the worm crawling around under my skin. Or if I could feel it from the outside. I would not like it if I went to a doctor and they tried to catch the worm and couldn't. Or if they got the worm, and pulled it out, and it was over a foot long. Or if they pulled it out and tested it and called me two weeks later to say I had to be full of worms.

I would especially not like to have a worm in my eyeball, and maybe if sometimes my vision went blur and that meant the worm was crawlng over my cornea. I would also not like to have a worm in my ear and whenever it itched it meant the worm was laying eggs. I would not like it if the worm laid eggs.

I would not like it if I was sitting on the bus and saw a worm crawl out of the skin of the person I was sitting next to. Especially if then I looked at the face of the person and their eyes were all whites. Or I could see a mass of worms under the skin of their face. Or they were biting their tongue and blood was spilling down their chin. I would not like it if the worm crawling out of their skin was huge, and had teeth and bit it's way out of them. I would not like it if the person was howling in pain. I would not like it if I was the only one on the bus who noticed the zombie person with whites for eyes was howling in pain. I would not like it if the police stopped the bus because the driver had called 911, and they put us in quarantine, and in the time we sat in quarantine we all got infected with the worms.

I would not like to pull a worm out of my tongue. I would not like to pull a worm out from under a finger nail.

I would not like to be an astronaut or a national geographic photographer and came back from a mission with skin busting worms. I would not like to be a preschool teacher and catch skin busting worms from a 4 year old who had pooped on me. I would not like to catch skin busting worms from a fish I had caught in Lake Erie.

I would not like to be intimate with someone and have them pull a worm out of my back while we were laying in the afterglow.

I would not like to give skin busting worms to my loved ones.

If a corporation had infected me with these skin busting worms, I would like to save up all the worms I pull out of my skin and put them in a bucket and deliver the bucket to their headquarters with a documentary camera crew.

2011-05-08T23:31:00.000-05:00

Mother Cybele

Cybele is the Anatolian equivalent of Gaia, the Greek earth mother goddess. There is a carving of Cybele in a mountain in Eastern Turkey that dates back to the 13th century BCE. Cybele had a son and consort Attis, who when he saw Cybele in all her goddess glory on their wedding day went nuts and tore his male characteristics off.

Other people, older people than us, knew how to have a good time. And they knew to have a good time some balls were gonna have to be sacrificed. Thus did the most ecstatic followers of Cybele also part with their male genitalia, and adopt the dress and manner of women. Because what else are you gonna do when you love the great mountain mother? Just dance all night and sing and have orgies every spring? Well yeah, that was the other way to do that.

When I smell flowers, which I do quite a bit now that the trees are in bloom, I like to think of the scent of roses that accompanies sightings of the Virgin. I like to think the smell of flowers is Cybele asserting her presence.

I learned recently 80% of women who have ever existed have gotten to reproduce, while only 40% of men who have existed have gotten to reproduce. This is the kind of thing you can learn from analyzing the genome, I guess. I don't know how that works.

You know, I do write these days, I just write to myself. Because what seems to come out are not strong opinions but fragments, clues to something else. What my fingers type adds up to a scavenger hunt. There are beautiful structures that undergird us, beautiful mysteries that humans have touched and lost over and over in history. Motherhood is one. The numbers are mysteries, geometric shapes, natural forces, the colors, the way images repeat themselves in sacred art across the centuries and people and time. There is so much to consider, and people have been considering it since before we were people. Or rather, before we were considering these things, the neanderthals were. They were ahead of us in considering all this. We can evidently tell by the way they buried their dead. I don't know how that works.

Not that I mean to denigrate knowing how these things work. We should probably cycle between striving for a complete understanding of the physical conditions of things, and then once the physical conditions blow our minds, stunned amazement at the mystery uncovered. My mind is just blown very early in the learning process. One piece of trivia and I'm psyched for the rest of the week.

It's just that as my depression is getting treated I am more intrigued by io9.com and mythology. I seek out getting my mind blown over and over. And to think of the cult of Cybele, carving her into the mountain, the sacred parties that would later become what the Dionysus followers did, I don't know, it's all so long ago but it's not so long.

What I mean to say is I'm running off to the mountains, hope you didn't have a vested interest in my testicles.

2011-03-18T23:05:00.000-05:00

A strength based evaluation

So obviously I'm no shiny new car. I am a used car. But I do think I am a Toyota.

Maybe consumer goods are not the thing to compare yourself to, especially cars, since they lose half their value when you drive them off the lot. And people do accumulate value as they get older. I think. Maybe not.

So people are maybe like wine? Oh my god, stop this. People are like people.

I was in a ton of physical pain today. First day of the period and a day of throwing up. I thought I had the beginning of a migraine so I took my migraine medication when I shouldn't have, because it lowers your blood pressure and after that I kept surprise passing out. Which is such a peaceful experience. It looks dramatic from the outside, but I just experience it as surprise, now you're laying down! Surprise, you're in the laundry pile! Surprise, your foot is in the vomit bucket! And then I took a painkiller for the cramps, which I had to sneak into my body because I couldn't swallow it since I was throwing up, constantly, with breaks that were 3 minutes long. And right after I took the painkiller, before it worked, my hands and legs felt like they were vibrating, and my whole torso was just a wall of churning pain, and I was groaning really loudly, and my mom was holding my hand. IT WAS TERRIBLE. For some reason the vibrating extremities were the scariest thing ever. I wanted to go to the ER, but I thought, well, what are they gonna do that my nurse mom can't do?

But the painkiller and a heating pad on my lower back did eventually kick in, and I did eventually stoop throwing up, albeit in early evening.

What is good about physical pain that passes is that you can be reminded of how awesome not being pain is by late evening. It is so awesome not to be in pain. And you only get a couple of hours of appreciating before you're like, "But there's nothing good here to eat! I have to go to work! I look like a regular person instead of a movie star! IT'S ALL TERRIBLE."

That is true though. Whoever designed this thing life didn't know what they were doing, and I have some notes for them. I hope when Life 2.0 comes out they've caught all the kinks.

Right, well, I wanted to speak about my various strengths, since I spend a lot of time extolling my faults.

- funny.
- good waitress.
- good listener.
- compassionate, usually, with some breaks.
- I get fit pretty quickly with a workout routine. It took me until the late twenties to discover this, but well, now I know.
- Careful.
- Fast reader.
- Good with turns of phrase...(s? turns of phrases? WHATEVER.)
- Good collector of interesting friends.
- even though I hold grudges for a very long time, I do eventually purge the grudge. It takes a lot of work for me, doesn't come naturally, but I still do the work.

That's all I got right now, but that's 10, that's a pretty good list. Oh, number 11, good at making lists.

2011-03-11T09:42:00.000-06:00

I have a very good counselor right now. I always feel more hopeful about things when our appointments are over.

I'm trying to increase my self-compassion right now, and several important religious people tell me once I do that I'll be able to be more compassionate towards everybody. Oh, and when I feel compassion towards everyone I'll be really happy. I look forward to that.

I was trying to feel compassion for Japan today, and I realized I was scared to try. With people who are far away, or when things seem hopeless, I don't even want to try because there's nothing I can do and I'll just be sad.

But actually, feeling sad is the main element of compassion. You can't feel compassion for someone else without being willing to feel sad.

GET SAD.

I'm also sad about Wisconsin. But I definitely have a block up against feeling all the sadness about that and SB5 in Ohio because I could work really hard to stop it and it could still pass.

It feels like self-preservation to excuse myself from stopping SB 5. But then again, my friend Justin is a teacher, and he's upset, and I'll end up being really upset if SB 5 passes regardless of trying not to.

Being brave enough to co-suffer. Or trusting that you'll comfort yourself when you make the commitment to co-suffer.

In summation, here is my horoscope for this week:
Your meditation for this week comes from writer H. P. Lovecraft. "What a man does for pay is of little significance. What he is, as a sensitive instrument responsive to the world's beauty, is everything!" While that's always good counsel, I think it's especially apt for you right now. You're in a phase of your astrological cycle when you'd be smart to evaluate your own worth based less on what job you do and more on who you are. Practice thinking this healing idea: The soulfulness you embody and express from moment to moment is the single greatest measure of your success as a human being.

2011-03-06T09:04:00.000-06:00

Why I never take Vacations

Because they are TOO GOOD and they END. Because they end and you are not spontaneously generating awesome drag variety shows or super hip lesbian bars or natural wonders or great mexican food, you are returning to the land of work and other people working. No Beats, no Chinatown, no crazy scavenger hunts, no city parks, no beach, no buffalo, no unionized strippers, no medical marijuana collectives. No gay country dancing association. None of that.

ACK. This is why travel is dangerous.

If I moved to San Francisco I would be homeless in two days. Because I would have too much fun and stay out all night a couple of nights, and then my money would be gone, and I would just hang out in city parks all day and social workers/strippers (because social work doesn't pay enough for an SF apartment) would dedicate their lives to saving me. There were a lot of homeless people there.

This is why I can't have too much fun. Because the fun will be too fun, it will reveal my true nature, what I really want out of life. And all I will want are vacations. My world will quickly spin apart. Yes, that's right, what I'm saying is that my survival depends on tight control over my own enjoyment.

Well, LUCKILY, I have a standardized test to study for and a doctor's appointment to attend.

Oh, who am I kidding, that stuff is pretty fun too. MY LIFE IS TOO DAMN FUN. Real Talk.

2011-02-28T09:28:00.000-06:00

I'm going on a trip

I'm going on a trip to a famous west coast city. This city has many gay clubs, a Chinatown, streetcars, and some redwoods about a half hour away.

I hope to come back from this trip with some of the joie de vivre I had this fall. Not that I'm that down. I'm reaching the end of a period of relative inaction and I am antsy and sick of it. I just want to take the GRE tomorrow (but I don't actually want to, because I definitely need a month of prep) and sign up for my psych classes and MOVE FORWARD.

All things in their proper time. Patience. Even though the ego is always screaming for more action, there are other more important things in life. Like food and shelter and love. The three of which I have a lot of.

And I think realizing I'm still depressed without the pills bummed me out. I just really like being able to put bad times in the past, and telling the story about it, and having the story end with, "So I realized something important, and since then I've done everything correct!"

But really I just learn the same lessons over and over and over until I just am so sick of them. Or I don't learn them. Either way, it's some Groundhog Day bs.

I need to give up. I need to get that I'll always be foiled, always be frustrated, and find some peace apart from results. Because even a vacation that starts TOMORROW can't stop me from being dissatisfied.

I think about death a lot since last year, and how nice it will be to die. Having your senses pull apart from the narrative. To rejoin the process. I'm not suicidal, don't get concerned. But I do look forward to those 49 days the Tibetans say I have in between this lifetime and the next.

See, I need to stop writing about this stuff and just fucking do my yoga and meditate. In my west coast city I will try to do that.

2011-02-26T13:47:00.000-06:00

I am not too smart to be depressed or anti-depressed

I have fluoxetine coursing through my systems and I am not depressed. Last weekend I was:

And now I am:

And it is weird, since I think of myself as a very smart person with key insights into the maintenance of mental health, to recognize that my insights do not do my mental health much good. Besides the insight that anti-depressants are very useful to me. But all the zen ones- that life is both good and bad, that we can't control our thoughts but we can observe them, that being on your own side is key to handling bumps in the road- I know all those things. I know them all, and yet, and yet.

I can't thank the manufacturers of fluoxetine enough. Despite what Adbusters taught me about the pharmaceutical industry, my ability to advocate for myself and pick good situations has been helped immeasurably by these pills. The unending monologue of self criticism that takes over my head when I am not on these pills cannot be good for me and society and the revolution or whatever you want to have happen.

Last year, when that self-criticism was particularly vicious and violent, I couldn't believe my smarts weren't more useful to me. And still now, these pills are much more useful to me than my smarts. My smarts betray me at the slightest provocation- the moment something goes wrong they join the other side. Sure, when I take these pills my smarts do my bidding. But when I don't, I don't know who they're working for.

It is unnerving, to know your moods are not your own. To know your thoughts are not your own. Well, life is complicated.

2011-02-20T22:45:00.000-06:00

Attaching

I just finished "Hold Onto Your Kids" by Gorden Neufeld and Gabor Mate. It is a parenting book. I am not a parent. It's just before Christmas Gabor Mate had an interview on Democracy Now! (there's an exclamation point there, right?) and he's written about ADD and addiction, so I put a bunch of his books on hold at the library and this is the only one I've gotten.

So this parenting book is about how kids are primarily peer-attached nowadays, meaning they look to kids their own age for both emotional closeness and a culture to model. And of course, kids are not people you want to depend on or learn culture from because they are vicious shits. Except when they are primarily attached to mature, loving adults, who can model non vicious shit-ness to them.

It was a good book. It got me thinking about who I'm looking towards for my attachment needs these days. And guess what, it's my parents! Just like the book says. But I am a grown up. Or....I am the age of a grown up person. I should be grown up by now.

And I guess I should be attached to other people, people my own age. But people my own age are undependable and can be vicious shits. They can be ok. They're not always like middle schoolers. But they aren't a crowd you want to be getting your self esteem from.

I'm supposed to have my self esteem already, so that I can weather peer rejection. And I think by the time I graduated high school I had some, but I lost it along the way.

So I guess I am looking to my parents for both emotional closeness and a culture to model again.

2011-02-19T23:06:00.000-06:00

Not cured.

I thought maybe I was. I have been so happy in Cleveland, and my job is so nice, and I'm studying for the GRE, and I have enough to eat, and now the snow has melted so it's way easier to bike, and I have a yoga place, and I'm saving money, and my parents are nice to me, and I can do a headstand.

So I thought, the situations which cause my crippling depression last year are gone, maybe I am not depressed anymore. And when my prescription for fluoxetine ran out, I thought I would try out not taking it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am still depressed.

Oh, how familiar this all is! The fixation on the past, the total weariness, the sudden calling myself a moron, OUT LOUD even, the wishing that people would not see me so they wouldn't talk to me.

Ahhhh. It is not restful at all!

It is amazing I held down any jobs while feeling this way. And I felt this way for 8 years, so...well, maybe that explains why I left jobs so often. Slow-moving and distracted, it would be hard to disagree with the assessment that I am lazy. But I guess it's because depressed people are lazy. Oh, and sad. Slow moving, distracted, and prone to tearing up.

I will get my refill very soon, maybe monday, maybe tuesday. So I'll pretend I have the flu and stay in bed a lot.

I mean, this sucks. It sucks I need pills and the pharmaceutical industry to feel ok. But what would suck worse would be needing pills that don't exist.

I thought I had conquered the idea that I was a failure. I thought all my yoga and meditation and tarot cards, oh and let's not forget therapists and support groups had conquered the idea that I was an inherent failure. But no that parasitic idea is still living in my brain, evidently using up the blood supply, since my short term memory isn't working and I can't concentrate.

I read on wikipedia some people think we evolved to get depressed to excuse our sub par genes from the gene pool. Uggghhhhhhhhhhh- my depression is an effort from my own body to keep me from reproducing? GEEEzus that is harsh. And way to confirm my fears that I am too messed up to have a successful romantic relationship. Thanks evo-psychologists, you piles of sunshine.

Well, I can't keep my eyes open anymore. At least this isn't the kind of depression where you can't sleep. And at least I'm going to be normal again in a week. The new normal and whatnot, but who can fault the mentally ill?

2011-02-09T23:00:00.000-06:00

I want to be a ROck'n'Roll Drummer

They are the coolest. You NEED one for a band. They have muscley arms. They don't ever look distracted. Drumming is a little like dancing? I like dancing.

They're always frowning, concentrating. You are expected to get really gross and sweaty. It looks like it would be exhausting in a great way. Like being exhausted from dancing?

Drummer's hair always looks crazy. Drummers are crazy. People are really intimidated by them.

I want to be like Animal from the Muppets. I want to be a crazy mean distant looking sweaty mystery. Also I'd like to get exhausted without having to be social at all. I'd like to be cool without having to talk to anyone.

And I'd like to have my ears blown out. Maybe I'd wear ear plugs and just feel the beat. But if you do that how do you know where the rest of the band is in the song?

Also I just want to beat the shit out of something. Beat the shit out of it and make a racket. RACKET! That would be a good band name, especially with the exclamation point.

2011-02-06T10:24:00.000-06:00

The Writer in Me, After Taking a Long Rest, is Ready

This week I told my therapist I was bored, and she got so excited. "This means you aren't in crisis! Now you can figure out what makes you happy!" she told me. I was really taken aback by her enthusiasm, but it was also pretty persuasive. I left therapy really excited about how bored I was. The slate is BLANK.

And that's been troubling for a long time, the blankness of my slate, the impermanence of all the situations I've taken part in for the last couple of years, but impermanence is also the space to create. It isn't always the enemy. Sometimes it's a very good nanny, guiding you through the rhythm of your days, moving you to the next thing and the next thing, things you can't even come up with in your segmented brain.

If only I could always notice. If only I could only notice the passing away of beautiful things, the passing away of ugly things, the way the snow on the tree tops only gets to hold the stage for 10 minutes before being ushered off for the next act in the Wonders of Nature Variety Show. If only I only noticed, that was all my brain knew how to do, to sit and be an appreciative audience member.

But then I guess we also have to put on a show. What will the snowy trees clap for if not our utter craziness?

One of the people who read this blog is dead now. He died in August. I wish I had been a better audience member for his show. It was a very good show- he was always up for deep conversations about writing, and buddhism, and manhood. He was tall, and that's too bad, because he gave off the impression of being a wise leader sort of person who had it together, and he was just a little kid who grew up to be tall. It isn't fair that we grow up and strike everyone as adults and have no choice about it. Because sometimes we need people to know we need to be taken care of, and it would be easier if they could see us as little kids.

But I'm glad Kevin gets to be an audience member for a moment. Luckily I am more and more persuaded that we are reincarnated again and again, so he'll get pushed out on the stage again in no time. Maybe that's why we are moved to be so good to babies, because we know somewhere down deep they are coming right from being mourned.

Today I will practice math for the GRE and go to work, if the show goes as planned.

2010-12-09T22:00:00.000-06:00

What a day

It was so busy at the restaurant today. I just ran and ran and ran, and now I am so beat but also so up up up.

I really like Cleveland. I really like it here. I like how impressed people are here with so little. Not jaded at all. Really excited for anything new. It's so nice.

And I know all the houses. I know everyone. People know me from when I was a little kid. I know just what it's gonna look like covered in snow, I know what it will look like in summer. I know this town. This town knows me.

Maybe I am a flower that will bloom. Maybe I am a tree. Maybe I just need the right soil, familiar soil.

2010-12-07T08:17:00.000-06:00

Aaaaahhhhhhh

I was supposed to go to the doctor this morning and cancelled the apppointment because it is so uncomfortable outside. But my mother is downstairs and will be angry at me when she learns I cancelled. So I'll just stay up here and blog. I feel sure the decision to cancel was a good one.

I've been feeling a little lonelier at night recently. I realized come february it'll be a year since I've had sex, and who cares, that's nothing, nuns go without sex for 50 years. (Except for all the lesbo sex they're having in secret. ANYWAY.) I've only had one relationship in my life that at the end didn't feel like a nuclear bomb went off. And it's not like that worked because we were so mature and loving about it, I just didn't care very much when we broke up. And so I have been on the lookout for potential nuclear bombs and steering clear to the best of my abilities.

But I would very much like a real girlfriend. A totally real relationship- one without any actually real girlfriends living in new york, without any settling because I'm scared I'll never do any better, one that lasts for the better part of a year, one where we are in love and happy for awhile. One where I think she is such a catch. One where people know us as a couple and are happy for us. One where anniversaries and valentine's day are celebrated. I would like to feel included in that part of human life.

(What about men? I still notice men. But when men are interested in me I always get the sneaking suspicion they are looking for a type of girl that I am not, quite. I am almost her but with all these extra things. And all the ways I am not that girl end up being things I'm supposed to give up.)

Also I would like more money than I know what to do with and to be really hot. These are all things I want. Please purchase them for me.

So in the absence of chasing love or success this fall I have found myself bored. And out of that boredom I have decided to be interested in hippie spirituality. And it's fine. I would really like to have some intense communion with the universe experience. That's another thing you could get for me.

Well, the things you are searching for are also searching for you. I am supposed to be learning how to exist with wanting things I don't have, how to exist with things unfinished. How to sit quietly for long amounts of time. How to not make plans to move to new cities. How to not quit my job. How to not try to be cool. How to not do anything.

Especially now that it is winter and the point of winter is to sleep deep underground for months at a time. Doing stuff is for springtime.

2010-11-26T08:41:00.000-06:00

Hullo.

I've had a very peaceful fall. Before that I had an especially turbulent summer- a summer that involved friends dying, going on food stamps, some therapy breakthroughs, fleeing poverty. I didn't blog about that because I didn't feel anxious during that time so much as totally, totally beaten, completely at wits end, like a chicken who has suddenly been confronted with the loss of her head.

Then I had a very peaceful fall. It was a warm fall. I started doing yoga a lot. I biked every day to my peaceful job, where I make good money and serve good food. I loved my parents. I met some nice new people. I had a great trip to see old friends. I saw a lot of doctors and got medicines for my various chronic ailments. The doctors and nurses were all very nice. Everyone has been very, very nice.

Now I'm back blogging because I can feel the big questions creeping back into my life. What else has this blog been but an anxiety release? That's what my anxiety,that question "where does the story go NEXT?" And there must be a way to ask that question calmly, eyes shining with curiousity and interest. That is not, in general, how I ask that question. I ask that question like a person hiding from nazis might. As in, wherever this story goes, I am sure it's not going anywhere good.

There is no story. We're just here. I'm just here. If something happens next, and it probably will, it might make no sense. It might not be a good story at all.

I really consider my flair for personal narrative a burden.

The big questions have snuck back in because the new people I know here now know me well enough to ask them. If they like you at all people want to know about your life plan. It's hard to explain to them that you are taking it day by day, because they might assume you are a recovering alcoholic.

I do feel like I'm in recovery. Recovering from an addiction to exciting, big plans. An addiction to distant futures.

I'm very lucky right now. I'm lucky to be alive, I'm lucky to be living at home, I'm lucky my parents have been so loving this fall, I'm lucky to have my job. I don't feel done resting up.

2010-05-15T12:31:00.000-05:00

The Middle

I finally got to my doctor's appointment and am properly medicated. My horoscope told me this week I will explore the sumptuous middle of life, and gosh, am I looking forward to that!

I went karaoke-ing last night, and it was really good. The selection was great, the bar passed out Sargetto's party mix, everyone really brought it in their performances. I sang "Strong Enough" by Cher and "Bizarre Love Triangle" by New Order. If you sing a song people want to dance too, they really don't care whether you are singing it well. Not that I wasn't singing beautifully, like a delicate little sparrow. A drunken little sparrow.

I wasn't very drunk.

I'm going to read all the great literature this summer, all of it, every single poem, essay, and book, and if anyone has a "great book" they thought was particularly readable and moving, please suggest it. I don't want to tackle something that no one is brave enough to say is actually crappy, and then get disheartened and give up.

I read "Beloved" this week and now I'm reading "Kafka on the Shore." I think it would also help if the books you suggested were about women. Right now I'm more into those. It wasn't always that way and it won't always be that way- for instance, I loved "I Married a Communist." Just if I'm gonna read about an existential crisis, I want it to be a person who has to deal with similar stuff to me. Lone rogue men, roaming the countryside, sleeping with ladies and then getting out of there in the morning because they know they can't be tied down what with this existential crisis on their hands is not very moving to me right now. I could read something about soldiers though. That could be good.

2010-05-07T18:35:00.000-05:00

More ADD

After skimming the book Bryan linked to on the last post, I am totally, completely, can't talk me out of it, ain't gonna let nobody turn me round convinced that I have ADD.

The guys who wrote that book said even if you're treating the ADD with drugs, it's essential you get a job and a spouse that both can work with your ADD. They suggest you get an assistant to handle all the niggly scheduling and common courtesy crap you can't be bothered with, with your unique and visionary vision mind.

I love the shit out of that suggestion. I am going to get an assistant. It may take me 40 years to accumulate the money for this, but it will be done. Someone to return my calls, my emails, pay my bills, keep me organized, get me out of the door, find my keys- I cannot wait for my assistant!

My two major romantic relationships were with people who had diagnoses of ADD. What a horrible, horrible couple of decisions to make. It makes sense I liked them in the beginning, since we had unique visionary vision minds in common, but someone in the partnership needs to be able to get places on time, and do the laundry. That someone should really not be me- the laundry will only take energy away from my absurd and unworkable plans. Then I will stew in resentment for laundry taking away momentum from my unwise ideas.

I need to be me, is what I'm saying. I need to be my ADD me.

I had an unwise idea today, which is I'd really like to be a Liza Minnelli impersonator, and I think I could pull it off. We look a lot alike. And then I could buy this outfit, and write it off as a business expense. And become a billionaire.

2010-05-06T20:13:00.000-05:00

Slacker

So it has occurred to me of late that I have ADD. I am talking to a doctor soon to get a diagnosis, but here is my evidence:

1) My teachers always said I was smart, but I needed to work harder and be less chatty
2) I hate board games because I hate learning the directions and I hate having to wait through other people's stupid turns
3) I've gotten in trouble at 3 jobs for surfing the internet too much
4) I find sitting through meetings torturous
5) Right now I am supposed to be preparing for a math final, but I am writing this post instead.
6) ADD often goes with depression/anxiety in women- which makes sense, because it is depressing and anxiety producing to know you won't be able to concentrate on what you want to do the way another person might be able to.

I have only been able to be good at school for two years out of my 28. The first year was my senior year of college, where I took almost exclusively religion classes. The second year was the year I did in law school. Law school is sort of the bomb for people who can't concentrate, because your entire grade is dependent on one essay exam in a really high pressure environment. I do much much better in 3 hour spurts of pressure. And I'm very good at working with ideas, playing ideas off of each other, because I'm pretty creative. I'm also good at picking the right words. I'm just not good with the kind of consistent attention you need to learn a skill set like math or language. That's actually a REALLY important thing I can't do.

Point being, I wish I had meds now, or better yet, three months ago when I was starting this class.

Ok, back to the grind.

2010-05-05T13:00:00.000-05:00

I Love Musical Theater, It Touches Me as Profoundly as 'The Wire'

I've been listening to the Meatloaf Pandora station a lot. Meatloaf started in, and interspersed his commercial singing career, with musical theater work, most famously in "Rocky Horror Picture Show." I love Meatloaf. I want to be Meatloaf. "I would do anything for love," "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," "It's all coming back to me now"- they are all crescendo. Crescendo followed by crescendo followed by crescendo- he is throttling you with this music.

I need lots of sensation to pay attention to anything. Intensity is the name of the game. If things aren't very intense, there is some space in my brain to get worried about whatever- what my friends think of me, what I'm not doing with my life, why no one will ever love me. But musical theater! You gotta be goddamn PRESENT for that shit to work. And of course people love you when you're performing in a musical- could you get more lovable?! You're dancing, you're singing, you're being extremely expressive with your face. You are the definition of lovable.

I was the Baker's Wife in Into The Woods during Near West Theater's summer teen production the summer before my freshman year of high school. That role is a strong contender for me peaking. I got to die in the show. What could be more thrilling than getting to play a death scene as a 13 year old?

I was reminded of how much I love that show by this article in the New York Times. His lyrics are so dark and vulnerable, and also really cheesy and on the nose. They are such a thrill to sing to a room of people sitting in the dark.

Sondheim had a pretty bad childhood- he was alternately neglected and used as an emotional crutch by a mom struggling with mental illness.

God, people will put up with so much sadness in a performance if it's musical. As long as you sing about depressing things, it's more than a-ok, they'll eat it up. Or rather, I will.

2010-05-02T16:42:00.000-05:00

Grown Up

I thought a lot about composting yesterday. Some stuff is easier to compost than others- carrot peels are very easy to turn into some nice dirt, dog shit is harder. But it can be done. You have to add the right stuff, cover it with the right stuff, let it sit, turn it, let it sit, turn it, mix in more of the right stuff- you can turn the shittiest shit into great soil, but the shittier the shit the longer it takes and the harder it is. (If you can't tell, I don't actually know the specifics of composting dog shit. I skimmed an article about it once and it looked hard.)

And I think that's part of being a good person- turning the shitty shit you got handed into some quality soil you can grow stuff in. But you can't be in denial about what you're composting. Face up to it! You got dog shit on your hands!

It's sort of a 'buck stops here' thing. I'm not going to just wrap this in a plastic bag and put it in the trash to pass off to the sanitation department and let it be preserved forever in a landfill. I will be the last person to deal with this particular piece of dog shit. I will use the dirt to grow carrots, and then someone will have to compost carrot peels, which you can do in your kitchen with some worms.

I think I so often have equated being a grownup with being hard on yourself, and for some people who maybe got away with a lot when they were kids they might need to be a little harder on themselves. But I have always been hard on myself, and was a very frightened little kid, and I think being a grownup for me is about being a lot kinder to myself. Sticking up for that little kid.

In sum, dog shit and scared little kids. 28.

2010-04-30T01:30:00.000-05:00

The Annual Reflective Birthday Post

My 27th year was the year I finally came to the end of the rope that had been slipping through my fingers for 8 years. Bouncing and bouncing from project to project, job to job, relationship to relationship, trying to stay a step ahead of my misery. I guess this spring was the beginning of sitting down with the misery and trying to figure out where it's coming from.

Actually, sitting down with the misery makes it sound like it was a choice. More like I fell down hard and couldn't get back up.

But in this mystery me and my fellow detectives have already come up with some likely suspects. Well, we've all but got them convicted if you must know.

So close to thirty, and my friend tells me thirty is so much easier than twenty-something. So close to thirty, and everyone I date is younger than me. When did I turn into the village skeeze? And who are these people dating me, the almost thirty year old who writes a blog about being miserable? Why is no one warning these young people about red flags?

2010-04-21T16:28:00.000-05:00

Another Self Help Exercise

I love that anger book, but whenever I say I'm going to do something on this blog it means I will not do it. So when I said I would work through that book on this blog you should've seen the doors slamming shut on the possibility of it. But here's another self help exerice, from the book "Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life" by Todd Kashdan, Ph.D.

(I'm comforted to learn I am only missing one ingredient.)

(I am not comforted by the back of the book, which reads "Embrace Uncertainty. Attract Love and abundance. Master your life." Back up! That's way too ambitious- why can't someone write a byline like "Spend your day out of bed and speak to people who aren't your roommate's dog.")

Dr. Kashdan gave me a list of values to pick 10 from, and then rank the 10 as 1,2, or 3. 1 is most important. 2 is less important. 3 is EVEN LESS important than 2. Everyone still with me?

Here are my rankings:

Health 1
Purpose 1
Genuineness 1
Contribution 1
Knowledge 2
Achievement 2
Humor 2
Stability 3
Faithfulness 3
Cooperation 3

How am I supposed to use this list? That's a great question, and one I did not read the book carefully enough to answer. Maybe I'm supposed to double check my choices by asking if they fit with the values on the list? That's probably it.

(Reading comprehension is not a value on my list.)

The song of the day is "The Boxer" due to Lee Dewyze singing it on American Idol.

Guys- I'm like that poor boy! I seek out the poorer quarters (cheap living situations) that only the ragged people know! Even though I've never ridden a train, I've spent a lot of time at Greyhound Stations. It's like he wrote the song about me. I am leaving, I am leaving, but the Carrie still remains.