An ugly, hypocritical little bird

All of your comments on that last post have been incredibly insightful and helpful and, um, the crazy thing? You helped me learn some stuff about myself. Some stuff I didn't want to know, and some stuff that is incredibly enlightening. I'm even working on a post about it, but in the mean time, how about another situation I could use some advice on?

How do you like that? Y'all are my personal team of Dear Abby's and Anne Landers!!

Dear Internet Friends:

I am always late. I am embarrassed to admit it, though if you've ever had occasion to spend time with me, you already know that I am one of those people who is ALWAYS late. My norm is about fifteen minutes, but on a bad day I can be anywhere from twenty to thirty minutes late. A really good day has me arriving only five minutes late, which as far as I am concerned is absolutely the same thing as being on time. I have friends who routinely lie to me, telling me something starts at six if it really starts at six-thirty, just so that I will be on time. It works. I have other friends who just plan ahead and arrive fifteen minutes later than we agreed, so that they aren't waiting around for me. That works too.

Though I may be someone who is religiously late, I cannot stand other late comers. It drives me crazy. I think it's rude and disrespectful and irritating. Clearly, I am a chronically late hypocrite. Why? I don't know. What I do know is that being late everywhere gives me such anxiety that I end up with stomach pains and headaches and itchy rashes. But does that make me more understanding of others who are habitually late? Nope. Does that make me a big fat asshole? I suppose so.

But it gets worse.

Not only am I chronically late, and not only do I find other late people irritating, but I also do not like those people who are always three minutes early. Or always on time. Because I am always late, if you show up three minutes early or right on time, you are simply highlighting my deficiency and reminding me of my shortcomings.

So here we have it, folks. I take four hours to get ready in the morning. I'm always at least fifteen minutes late. I am a hypocrite who resents other latecomers and I cannot be made happy by those people who have the courtesy to be on time.

What to do?

Like an ugly little bird

I have a confession.

It takes me four hours to get ready to go in the morning. Even when I wake up at 6 a.m., I'm still not ready to leave for work until ten.

I've recently considered starting my days at 4 a.m. so I can be ready to go by eight, which is when I'm supposed to leave, instead of two full hours later at ten when I usually leave. (My boss doesn't read my blog, so he'll never know.) (Famous last words.)

The thing is, it's this four hour block of .... primping? that is causing a lot of the major time-suckage I've been complaining talking about lately. I thought maybe if I wrote about this phenomenon here, we could, together, as a team, help me find new strategies to becoming a person who can wake, eat, shower and leave in a more reasonable amount of time, like, say, one hour. One hour is reasonable. Four hours? What, am I being tied into my corset by my nursemaid every morning? Seriously.

So. What am I doing with four hours every morning: I spend about thirty minutes preparing my coffee and breakfast, then eating. I spend another thirty minutes doing yoga (or reading mommy blogs, depending on the day.) (OK, usually I'm reading mommy blogs.) It takes me fifteen minutes to shower and condition my hair, then thirty minutes to apply the various moisturizers, creams and lotions I use, another fifteen to twenty minutes fixing my hair and ... that's it. That's everything.

But that's only two hours and five minutes, tops. Where are the other two hours? Where? What do I do with them?

Yes, I realize that two hours and five minutes is a really long time to get out of the house, I know. You don't have to make me feel bad about that. I am perfectly willing to work on narrowing that down, AS SOON AS WE FIGURE OUT WHAT ON EARTH I AM DOING FOR THAT EXTRA HOUR AND FIFTY-FIVE MINUTES.

Because I have no idea.

Animalia Chordata Amphibia Driedoutada

"She was, in a word, weird."

-- Robert McCammon

When I was a little girl, my parents took me to Kauai, Hawaii for a week. I wasn't sure whether or not to be excited about it, because all of the cool kids were going to Maui or Honolulu or Palm Springs. Kauai? None of my friends had ever even heard of Kauai. But then I realized that they had also never heard of Molokai, the Isle of Lepers, or Kaho'olawe, the Isle of U.S. Military Practice Bombing, so I decided to reserve judgment.

Kauai was incredible. A tropical paradise dreamed up for a hungry suburban child, thanks to the total lack of tourism. We visited a ranch where ducks and geese and chickens ran free and where I spent the whole day trying to catch a duckling I planned to smuggle home. We went to a luau, ate kalua pig, watched dancers swallow fire and learned how to put a chicken to sleep by twisting its neck. We snorkeled and hiked, we drank coconut milk from the actual coconut and slurped freezing shaved ice. The week was idyllic, but the very best part wasn't any activity or attraction. It was the frogs. They were everywhere. Beautiful fat brown frogs with slick, cool bellies. Their croaks were a chorus that lulled me to sleep then guided me from dreams in the morning. I could step off any road into jungle, and at my feet would be a carpet of wet, belching frogs. At night when we walked to dinner I chased frogs along the road, and in the morning as we walked to breakfast I used a long stick to pop their flattened bodies off the road. Lord, if the roads weren't paved with hundreds of their pancaked bodies. I'd never seen anything like it in my entire nine years of life.

When it came time to pick a souvenir, I wanted one thing.

"No."

"But WHY?"

"Do I really need to spell it out?"

"Yes."

"Because it's dead and rotting and filthy. No."

A couple of years later my parents sent me to horse camp for a week. It was heaven. In addition to riding and jumping, I learned all about taking care of a horse. I learned how to braid the mane and tail for shows. I learned how to feed them and muck out their stalls, something I actually thought was fun. One day, a farrier came and let us watch as he removed the horse's old shoes, trimmed his hooves and hammered new shoes on. While the other little girls ran around collecting discarded horseshoes to hang in their bedrooms for good luck, I ran around collecting hoof clippings for my own little collection.

I hadn't even been home from camp for a day when my mother came sniffing around my room.

"What is that?"

"What?"

"That smell."

"I don't smell anything."

"I do. It smells like something in here is rotting."

"No it's not."

"Where's your suitcase?"

"I haven't unpacked it yet."

"Open it."

That was when I flung my body across my suitcase and cried, "But it's for my collection!" Then I pointed to the shelf where I displayed my deer jaw, the mouse vertebrae I found in coyote scat and the leg bones whose previous owner I hadn't yet identified.

"We agreed. Nothing that rots. Open your suitcase."

I thought the hoof clippings smelled wonderfully gamey, but Mama said no, they were rotting, they had to go.

A few years ago my parents went back to Kauai. They called me after their trip and we had a nice visit. They asked if I'd gotten the gift they'd sent. I hadn't, but I'd definitely keep a lookout for it! They told me all about how the island had changed, how tourism had exploded; there were more hotels, more paved roads, more mosquitoes, and they only saw one frog the entire time they were there.

The next day I checked my mail and found a small padded envelope addressed to me in my father's neat hand. Along the bottom of the envelope my mother had scrawled, "This was your father's idea. I give him all the credit."

I carefully tore open the end of the envelope and right away got a good whiff of something fishy. The smell wasn't unpleasant, just surprising. "I think they sent us some fish jerky!" I called out to Mike, who was in the next room. I shook the contents of the envelope out onto my kitchen table, wondering why the jerky wasn't in some sort of packaging. And then I realized it wasn't fish jerky. It was a frog. A perfect, beautiful, flat Kauai frog.

I finally found the right display case for him. Isn't he lovely?

If these dogs could talk

I have been very busy lately. Very busy and very tired. As a result, I've been cutting a few corners here and there. Not major corners, just like -- ok, here's an example: Dinner for the dogs. Normally, dinner for the dogs is raw chicken on the bone, which is great for them, but a holy mess to clean up for me. The other night I was just too, too tired. I mean, my own dinner that night came out of a cereal box, so if those dogs really thought I was going to do anything special for them, they had another think coming. They were going to eat kibble, and they were going to like it.

"Valentine! Theo!"

Two little dogs came running into the kitchen, tails and tongues wagging.

"Sit!"

Two little dog bottoms hit the floor. I scooped kibble into each little bowl.

"Bravo!"

Theo dove right in, chomping happily. Valentine didn't move. She looked at her bowl. She looked up at me. She thumped her tail on the linoleum. She looked at her bowl, up at me, thump, thump, thump. Down at her bowl, up at me ...

"Fine! Jeez." I opened the fridge and grabbed a tub of cottage cheese. Theo paused mid-chomp. His tail twitched. Valentine did a little happy dance and then sat nicely in front of her bowl. I opened the cottage cheese tub. Theo's nostrils flinched and he huffed. I reached for a spoon. He took a long step away from his dish and sat down, a perfect little dog, waiting patiently for his supper to be served, just like I taught him. I dipped the spoon into the tub and dropped a teaspoonful of cheese into Valentine's bowl as both little tails began a rhythmic thump, thump, thumping. I swirled the spoon in Valentine's bowl, kibble rattling loudly as it rolled, sweet cheese coating each crunchy morsel. I rapped the spoon on the edge of the dish, knocking off the last bits of cheese, and stood. Theo's eyes widened and Valentine's tail froze.

"Bravo!"

Valentine leapt for the feast and dove in. I slapped the lid back on the tub, flung it into the fridge and shut the door. I washed the spoon, dried my hands and dragged myself back to the living room where I crumpled onto the couch in a heap of exhausted limbs.

If you belong to the school of thought wherein dogs are stupid creatures who act soley on instinct, I would like you to tell me why, after finishing the last of his cheese-less meal, Theo lifted his leg and urinated in his bowl. Was that just instinct? Because it seems like a pretty well thought out statement to me.

discombobulated

I'm really tired, you guys. I'm really really really tired. All of the time. No, Mom, don't worry, I'm not pregnant. That's not even an option on the scan-tron.

It's kind of an adjustment to go from working eleven hours a week to a gagillion hours a week. I don't mean to exaggerate here, but it really feels like I work a gagillion hours a week. And as a result, I don't get to do anything BUT work.

I mean, there are other hours in the day, sure. But after my 8 hour day, I reeeally don't have the energy to do anything other than slosh onto the couch and sit there drooling until about 10 p.m. when it's time for bed.

This is horrible.

I am not complaining. It sounds like complaint, but actually it's sharing. I'm sharing. Things would be just fine if I could just be awake enough in the evening to do something other than watch TV. That's the thing. I'm just so tired. I could be happy if I weren't a vegetable at the end of every day. Maybe if I worked only five days a week instead of six, maybe if I could spend two days in a row recharging my little Ish Battery I could plow forth on Monday morning and be a super-star of productivity. But that hasn't been the deal lately. And there are just SO MANY THINGS I love, that I am ignoring.

Let's make a list, shall we? In no particular order:

1. Yoga/Exercise

2. Photography

3. Writing

4. Doing Married Things With My Husband (Because We Are Married And It's Allowed) (Side note: Have you ever noticed that on Trojan condom ads, the couple is ALWAYS wearing wedding bands? Simple, barely-noticeable gold wedding bands. Very interesting, no?)

5. Playing With My Dogs

6. Spending Time With Friends

7. Laundry

8. Balancing my checkbook

9. Data Entry

10. BEING AN ACTOR

Sad face, Dopey!

And look. How weird has my writing gotten since I stopped? It's all jiggedly-glop all over the screen. It's not even writing. It's just words piled upon words piled upon words that barely make any sense at all. Is this even cohesive? Does anyone understand me? HOW DO I FIND BALANCE IN THIS ONE LIFE OF MINE?

That is the question for the day.

Done Dirt Cheap

Yesterday I wrote in my journal again.

I only bring it up because it's kind of a big deal.

Sometime last June I bought myself a 9.5x6 inch notebook. Just a regular notebook from the drug store, nothing fancy. I picked blue because it reminds me of the ocean. I vowed to carry it around with me every day and write down all of the things I overheard or thought of or was told or read and thought were funny or awesome or deep or ridiculous. My first several entries include the following lines:

"I'm so hungry I'm afraid my stomach is going to climb out my mouth and start digesting peoples shoes."

"For the first two years I lived in New York, I felt like my friends and my family were in Los Angeles, living my life without me. And I was trapped in the city with no life at all."

Us: She looks like a

(Together)

A: midget.

T: someone who's had a few kids.

A: We're going to hell in a big yellow school bus. You're driving, I'm holding the map.

And my personal favorite:

"Is my eye twitching? Because that's how I feel about that."

I loved my little journal. I carried it every day and I wrote in it constantly. I often started blogs in the journal, finishing them online. I knew the little notes I made would be used at some later date, little treasures tucked away for safe keeping, the way a quilter might stash bits of pretty cloth for a quilt she hasn't thought of making yet. Then, about four weeks into my journal-keeping, I wrote in it for work.

You're probably thinking, So? So what? You wrote in it for work, no big deal.

But it is a big deal. Because then it became a "work" notebook and I started using it exclusively for work. I could no longer separate my personal thoughts from my work thoughts and so I had to dump it. I replaced it with my sales book, something I absolutely cannot be without and am able to take notes in.

Yesterday I took it back. I took my journal back and I wrote it in and I wrote dirty things that would make your eyes pop out. I wrote about dogs who vomit and dogs who eat vomit. I wrote about taking photographs of dead animals I find on the street. I even wrote about ... MY PERIOD. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.

And it felt. So. Good.

An Open Letter

Dear Project 365+:

I just want to apologize to you for dumping you like a stinking piece of poo. I hope I didn't hurt your feelings. The thing is, I still really like you. I mean, I like you, like you. I think you're the coolest. It's just... I've been really busy. And, I know, I know. You'll say, "But it only takes about five seconds to take a photo and write a blurb about it!" The thing is, it takes way more than five seconds. It takes at least thirty minutes to write the blurb, and if I want a photo to write about then I have to haul my camera around all day, and as it is, I'm already breaking my back with all the other stuff I have to carry around for my j-o-b. Did you know that part of my j-o-b requires that I drag around a heavy suitcase and carry a heavy shoulder bag too? In addition to my purse? And since it's gotten cooler, I'm dragging the heavy suitcase, the shoulder bag and the purse either while wearing a heavy coat, or carrying a heavy coat because I got too sweaty to wear the heavy coat.

It is EXHAUSTING.

As a result? I've had to ditch unnecessary items. And I'm sorry, Project, but a camera is unnecessary. As are the following treasured items that have been dumped because of all the heavy shit I have to carry every day:

1. Chap stick

2. Hand Lotion

3. Pocket Mirror

4. Good Luck Charm

5. Extra Pair of Panties

So, basically, I didn't dump you, Project. I love you. I just dumped your baggage. Maybe one day we'll be together again, but that one day? Only God knows when that will be.

Love,

t.