Category: Everyday

A story to pass the time.

Our dead, brown, Christmas tree is still sitting in our driveway next to the shed. I guess I missed the city memo listing all the hoops we needed to jump through to have them take our tree away this year, because it sat out by our trash for three consecutive trash days and still no takers.

No worries, though. I’ll just get me a saw, hack it to pieces, and stuff it in the yard waste barrel. Sounds like a Stephen King novel, doesn’t it?

I mention this Christmas tree debacle because it reminds me of a story from the Glory Days. Years ago when the whole world was still single and I was living in NY, my friend Sarah loaded her post-Christmas tree into the back of her little pick-up and set off down the street to dump it at collection spot the city set up (the city I live in apparently has no such hospitality).

As her speed picked up the wind caught the tree and sent it flying out the back and into the street. Like a good citizen, she pulled over and dragged the tree to the curb and propped it up against a bus stop sign. Not really sure how to proceed since she didn’t want the tree to fly out of her truck again, possibly hurting someone or causing an accident, she left it there.

And there it sat.

And sat.

And sat.

It kept the good people waiting there for the bus on Dexter Avenue company.

And when I visited Seattle from NY in July, it was still sitting there next to the bus stop.

The end.

In Seinfeld’s world, I would be the Self Talker

Everybody has a nervous social tick.

At least I hope they do, if only to make me feel better about mine.

I talk about myself when I’m nervous. When around people I don’t know, I talk about myself. When found in the midst of an awkward silence, I talk about myself. When I’m with someone who is upset and I don’t know how to comfort her, I talk about myself.

For instance, this morning I attended the adoption hearing for one of my best friends, Sarah, and her husband, Ted, who adopted two children after more than a year of fostering them. Big event, lots of family, huge decision, monumental undertaking, lots of happy crying… you get the idea.

On this big day of celebration where it is SO not about me, I open my big mouth and say to Sarah, “Did you see my new boots?”

That was after telling her about my car being low on gas, not being able to find a parking spot, and breaking two fingernails on my way there.

What the hell?

And yesterday? YESTERDAY, my friend tells me the ultra sound she just received showed signs the baby may have a serious heart condition and the People who know about these things started throwing around words like “echo cardiogram,’ ‘amniocentesis,’ and ‘surgeons.’

After we cry and vent and get pissy about nobody giving them any REAL information, I launch into MY big news about a family transition coming down the pike – as if it’s, like, Show and Tell time and now it’s MY turn.

WHAT THE HELL?

I walk away from these conversations with the classic sitcom slapping of the forehead for being such a dolt, for WHO REALLY CARES ABOUT MY FINGERNAILS on the day their children’s adoption becomes final???

Do I obsess about myself to other people because my daily life consists of coloring, Barney, and conversations about poop missing her mommy? Is it that any adult who crosses my path must endure the crazed ramblings of an introverted woman whose extroverted daughter never stops talking?

Or am I avoiding something, like emotional investment, by keeping the conversation focused on myself? That sounds completely mental, but possible.

My biggest fear is that I am just plain self centered.

I can handle being a crazed housewife or even mentally deranged – they have drugs for that – but I would be devastated if all I am is self centered.

So, my hope is that this is just a nervous social tick, much like Suburban Bliss’s awkward hugs. People still like me – at least I’m pretty sure they do – so I can’t be all THAT bad, right?

Bon Voyage

Well, I just finished 8 loads of laundry in preparation for our trip to California tomorrow. Yuk.

The good news is, our Christmas weather will look like this:

CA weather

Sadly, for those of you here in Seattle, your weather will look like this:

untitled

You may not hear from me for awhile. My in-laws live in a time and place without computers. Since I have a secret love affair with my Starbucks internet account, I may say a brief hello here and there.

Peace to you and Merry Christmas, too.

Pitter Patter What’s the Matter?

The winter wet and cozy has settled in. I love this time of year – at least until January do I love it. Around February and March the monochromatic landscape starts to wear a little thin. As Heartichoke describes it:

You can’t see mountains, you can’t see the sea. It seals off the light, and everything looks dull and lifeless. You feel as though you’re trapped in low basement, staring up at the off white, popcorn ceiling.

Then comes the rain. It’s a light rain. But it’s not a mist—a mist might be romantic and mysterious. This rain is more like sugar, being sifted down in small drops.

But in November I still love the cozy damp. I light candles, I sip tea, I curl up under a blanket and read a good… blog (you thought I was going to say ‘book,’ didn’t you?).

Virtual Soul Mate

I love reading Maryam Scoble’s blog. I find so much comfort in knowing someone else out there is married to a geek with tunnel vision. It’s downright creepy how much her life parallels my own.

I especially love how ornery she is. Half the time I can’t figure out if her tone is bitter or dry wit. She’s that good.

It’s time like these that make me wish I had a cell phone because I would have SO CALLED THE COPS on this guy!

So I’m driving down Rainier Avenue in South Seattle, minding my own business, when the dump truck on my right meanders into my lane because his load is too wide for his own damn lane.

As I’m watching him get closer to me I realize he doesn’t seem to mind that I’m in the way, so I veer slightly to the left as a reaction INTO ONCOMING TRAFFIC at which point I scream, slam on my brakes, and swerve back into my lane behind the Ass Truck.

The stupid freaking truck continues to drive in the right lane, swerving into the left lane at will without so much as a signal or hesitation.

At the next red light I pull up on his left and roll down my passenger side window (isn’t it funny how we still say “I rolled down my window” as if anybody cool still has window cranks?), shake my finger at him and yell, “YOU CAN’T JUST MOVE INTO MY LANE LIKE THAT – “

At which point he waves me off like a fly before I even get to the swearing part and proceeds through the intersection when the light turns green.

In the words of Mercer Mayer, I was so mad!

The Non Post

I have not been consistent in my posting lately, which is not to say I have not been writing. I have been in a deep and serious state of mind, yet I have fought against publicizing that to write something witty and entertaining.

This usually makes for bad writing, this constipation of my thoughts, and I am therefore in a creative funk.

Yesterday I wrote about the trainer at my club that I busted eating a candy bar as she walked from her car through the parking lot. That had potential to be funny if I was really into it, but it was crap so I filed it away in my drafts folder to look at later.

I considered writing about the junk mail delivered to me via UPS, as if the importance of ripping open a cardboard envelope would increase my potential to refinance my home. Again, it felt forced.

Even this morning I heard a funny conversation on the radio about the obsession of eating Captain Crunch even as the roof of your mouth is bleeding. THAT made me laugh, but not enough to go with it.

Life has stabilized, allowing me to look deeply into my imperfections without falling apart emotionally or ripping apart my husband and children.

I think I need to go with this, funny or not funny.

This weekend I met a group of women who amazed me – women that I have known to varying degrees before, but in this setting my eyes were opened to a new strength, a new vulnerability, and this gave me tremendous hope for change in my own life.

After many months of waking up each morning vowing to have a better day, promising to suppress my temper, hoping to bring order to my disordered life, I now see my inability to do any of this on my own.

This realization has been freeing.

I don’t know where to go with this from here. Even this morning I feel like bagging my attempts at writing because this seems random and cryptic. Or perhaps I should allow you to hitchhike on my quest to embrace the imperfection of The Draft. Annie Lammott talks in her book, Bird By Bird, about her fear of getting hit by a bus before she had the opportunity to perfect her “shitty first drafts.”

But if I have learned anything from ‘Jack,’ who is LOST on a mysterious island with other crash victims, it’s to allow our fears to well up in us for a moment so they may give us strength to push through.

So here it goes:

One… two… three… four… five….

Side effects may include snoring in public

I am ALWAYS TIRED.

The other day I was flipping through a magazine and saw a full page ad for Zoloft. I read the tiny print at the bottom just for kicks and it said the side effects were, among other things, drowsiness and insomnia.

It seems like this combination would perpetuate the insanity that made me take the pills in the first place.

Roll Out the Red Carpet and Call Joan Rivers

Well, here it is.

My very own website.

I like the categories feature.

I need to personalize the sidebar a bit, but I figure no one will mind if it wasn’t perfect just yet. Just think, you can wake up one sunny morning, cradle your steaming cup of coffee, sit at your desk or breakfast bar in front of your laptop, and click your bookmarked link to my site only to find SOMETHING NEW AND EXCITING awaiting you in the sidebar.

I can hardly stand it.

I was not as prolific this past week as all my spare time has been lovingly devoted to obsessing over this site. However, there are two posts I wrote below, which I posted according to the dates they were written.

I hope to get back into the swing of things again.