Call Me Crazy – Page 4

Twofer: A Real Post PLUS Retrobruxist Friday 9/28/12

A few words before we Retro it up here. My point with yesterday’s post was not that I think I’m an ogre… an ogra… what’s the feminine of ogre? I don’t think I’m an ogress. I think I’m aight.

And this next part is weird, because from what they tell me, a lot of women experience the opposite, but many times, I’m reassured by what I see in the mirror. [Oh, god, am I going to go here? Shit, might as well.] I generally walk around in my life kind of thinking of myself as a slightly greasy, chubby, waddling Oompa-Loompa with temperamental skin, and when I catch my look in the mirror, I almost always go, “Hey, that’s not so bad!” I mean, I definitely have times when my reflection makes me cringe, but more often than not, it’s a relief. Photos too. I’m weirdly photogenic, which is nice.

Thing is, I want to be the kind of person who sees the above photo and the one of the fat, ugly, stoned skeptic that Jeff took and says, “Psh, neither is reality.”

But the fact is—OH THIS IS SO PATHETIC—I don’t. I look at the above and think maybe someone could love that person, and I look at Jeff’s picture and say, good god,

i-have-to-rep-my-hermit-life-to-the-dog-and-the-mailman-if-i-ever-see-him — it’s gonna be me and 15 dogs.

What I wanted to get across in yesterday’s post was not “Please, everybody, reassure me that I’m beautiful”; it was “I need to stop caring about this superficial bullshit which is not who I am”.

I want to care MORE that I can live through difficulty, write a meaningful story about it, have the courage to get onstage and tell it to 200 strangers, and do it well enough that the audience is moved and the judges think it’s the best story of the night, and LESS about the fact that Jeff took a picture of me from a weird angle, which made it look like I had some sort of growth on my neck, while I was probably crying and definitely squinting into the bright lights. I can’t control every image that makes it to the internet and every perception that every person has of me. I need to let that go.

Here was my big plan to pull off this caring-about-appropriate-things thing: I asked Jeff for the photo, and I was going to post it on this very blog on the World Wide Web. Alas, he felt so bad about contributing to my distress* that he not only deleted the photo from Facebook; he deleted it completely.

So. The best I can do is try to re-create it for you. It looked a little something like

*Two things: (1) I used those iMessage screenshots without his permission. I am an asshole, and I won’t do that again (sorry, Jeff!); (2) he was nothing but lovely during the whole situation and really believed that he was honoring me and my story with the photo; and—OK, three things—(3) just so we’re clear, as depressed as I’ve been in my life, I’ve never, ever contemplated suicide. The whole bit about offing myself was pure histrionics for comedy purposes, but suicide is not funny, and I won’t joke about it anymore.

On to the Retro!

Three years ago, I was trying to teach my students show-don’t-tell. It’s still the hardest thing in the world to teach.

Redford was already 18 months old two years ago, but he was my baby. Still is.

I hosted the Monti StorySLAM for the first time one year ago. Crazypants. I can’t believe that was a year ago.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

37

Won the StorySLAM — One of these days, I’ll stop measuring my self-worth in Facebook Likes.

The irony (or not) is that my story had to do with being less than sanguine about turning 37, and being single, and having what I have, and not having what I don’t have. People keep asking me if they can read it, but—and this is weird because I told the story to 200 strangers on Monday night—I don’t feel ready to share it here yet. It was hard, and I cried, and apparently they cried, and I was hoping that it would be this big catharsis and I’d be Healed, and Filled with Optimism. But I’m not.

My birthday was great: My friends did it up for me; my writing teacher said nice things about my homework; I won the SLAM.

But two things: (1) I still seem to be in the midst of this 3/8-life crisis, and (2) Jeff, the director of the Monti, posted the absolute worst picture of me on Facebook on Tuesday to announce my victory.

And I flipped out.

I concluded by saying, “If that’s what I look like, then the question ‘Why am I still single?’ has been answered.”

He deleted the photo, but I really did let it ruin my day. Which feels dumb. Letting one bad picture negate all the happy. Especially, since I’ve been trying to be more accepting of my appearance, and most especially in the face of the Sikh woman’s righteous badassery that’s been floating around the internet for the last few days.

How do I get to be more like her? I don’t believe that my body is a gift from a divine being, genderless or otherwise, but I do believe that not focusing on my appearance would leave more time to think about my attitudes and actions.

In the past month or so, when I’ve found myself sliding into egocentrism, I’ve stopped, gotten on Facebook, and acknowledged a friend’s particular brand of awesomeness. It has helped.

But I like gettin my hur did. :(

Retrobruxist Friday 9/14/12

I started raging against the “You’ve lost weight!” machine three years ago. I rage on.

Two years ago, I accidentally let a student read questionable material in the classroom.

This week, one year ago, North Carolina did a bad thing. On May 8 of this year, NC did a worse thing. Amendment 1… Fracking…. Defunding Planned Parenthood… Hard not to think my home state is going down the shitter.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

Shit Show

[This post is going to be lousy with #firstworldproblems. I know a girl (she’s 11) who has a prosthetic leg, so all of the words henceforth can go in the chapter of the Avid Bruxist narrative titled Complaints About Shit that Doesn’t Matter in the Grand Scheme. There’s my disclaimer. And yet…]

In February, five friends and I registered to do the Tough Mudder Mid-Atlantic, a 12-mile course with 25 obstacles, obstacles to be overcome by doing such things as swinging across monkey bars, climbing over giant piles of logs and/or hay bales, and getting electrocuted.

The things I was worried about were myriad:

Running 12 miles. Not the hugest deal—my sister and I lumbered a half-marathon a few years ago—but, this time, I would have to do a reasonable job of keeping up with my teammates, all of whom (a) own legs at least nine inches longer than mine, (b) weigh 50 pounds less than me, or (c) participated in the 2011 CrossFit Games.
Doing some of the obstacles. See, there were some I planned to stroll right around: Everest, for example, a huge quarter-pipe, slippery as a snake, up which one must fling oneself and hope that another Mudder grabs at least one body part with which to hoist one the rest of the way. I was planning on skipping that one. But it was the obstacles I knew I should do but was really unsure about that caused some agita. For example, there’s a series of about a dozen shoulder-deep trenches filled with water, spaced five feet apart, over which I was supposed to jump, and I just knew—I knew—I would fall in and not be able to hoist myself out, and my teammates would have to double back and drag me out by the armpits. It was gonna be real embarrassing.
Using wet and muddy port-a-potties. While wet and muddy. Gross.
Getting electrocuted.

Turns out I worried about the wrong things.

Friday evening, my gang and I drove 280 miles to Germantown, MD, where we had booked two hotel rooms for two nights. On Saturday morning at 7:20, we received a text from the Tough Mudder management telling us that, because of traffic delays, we needed to use an alternate route to the site. OK. Odd that there were congestion issues before the first heat had even run, but OK.

Our start time wasn’t until 1:00, so we had breakfast, got dressed,

ran to Target for last-minute gear, and headed to the course (about 20 miles away) at 11:30. Plenty of time, we thought, to get there, get registered, and get psyched up.

Approximately five miles from the course, traffic stopped completely. We sat there for half an hour and then, using our handy telephones, navigated our way to a back entrance.

Ooooh, Mudder Nature, what are you cooking up?!

This time, we got to half a mile from the course before we were stopped. One hour later, we were still a quarter-mile away (correct my math, but I think that’s a quarter-mile an hour). That’s when the skies opened. After another 45 minutes, we arrived at the parking lot, which was 20 acres of nothing but mud. We watched even SUVs having to get pushed out by already muddy Mudders who had completed the course.

Hope sprung eternal, tho’, and several members of Team ‘Lisa grabbed IDs and the it’s-your-fault-if-you-die-doing-this-bullshit waivers we had signed and sprinted through the rain to the registration tents.

The final heat of the day was scheduled for 2:40. It was 2:35. As we ran back to the car to check on parking progress, we heard them over the megaphone announcing last call. We could do it! We were sure!

But, woe!, the attendants were (probably wisely) not allowing cars into the mudbath/parking lot. We were ready to ditch the car on the side of the road, but right then, a group of Mudders came out saying that site management had closed all the obstacles, and if we were to start, we’d basically be doing a 12-mile mud run.

The obstacles are the point.

Fuck.

Team ‘Lisa conferred and decided we would just get up at sick:30 in the morning and do the course the following day. We were Tough Mudders; we would prevail!

In the middle of the night, TM management sent another text saying that, due to safety concerns (flooding from the storm on the course), the Sunday event had been canceled.

Well, see, but the part about safety concerns wasn’t true.

I mean, even at that moment, it rang false because, um, the nature of the event is to slog through a 12-mile flood, but later, news reports indicated that Mother Nature was not the problem. TM management pointed the finger at uncooperative local authorities, who in turn blamed TM management for overselling the event. But the upshot was the mayor pulled the permit.

Shit show.

On the part of TM, I think it was a case of good ol’-fashioned hubris. They’ve been the popular jock strutting around the fieldhouse of mud-runs for a long time. They stopped showing up for practice, didn’t listen to the coach (sanctimonious jerk, though he was), and got their asses handed to them in the Friday night game.

As for the police department and mayor’s office, a.k.a. sanctimonious jerk coach, I do believe there was a lot of hitching up of pants and saying, “You big-city folks might do it that way where you’re from, but not in my town.”

Since then, TM management has backed off the “safety” charade and said essentially, “Even though local authorities were being badge-waving pissants, the responsibility lies with us to make a good event for you, and we failed.” (Which is true. They’re projected to take in $75 million this year. How ’bout you’ns invest in some goddamn ombudsmen?) They’re offering refunds(!), which they never do, or free transfers to upcoming events.

Team ‘Lisa is determined to triumph, so we’re requesting entrée into Tough Mudder Carolinas late next month. (That would give me seven weeks to generate some real good worries.) Alas, TM Carolinas is not on the list of approved transfers that was sent out today, so who knows if they’ll let us in?

All in all, I’ve gone through a lot (of #firstworldproblems) in the last few months. The chapter title for the summer of 2012 will be Wherein Our Heroine Learns to Deal with Disappointment.

I guess we all need struggles, right?, to learn and grow and change… That’s what life’s about, right?, learning and growing and changing… So I guess I should be thankful, right?, for all the learning experiences…

Nah. Summer 2012 can eat a dick.

Retrobruxist Friday 8/30/12

Three years ago this week, I wrote the first of several letters to my baby boy, Redford. You’re still my baby boy, buddy, even if you weigh 80 pounds!

I put up a new profile on OKCupid two years ago. So glad that worked out for me (mwop mwop). By the by, I closed up shop on OKCupid a few weeks ago. I just can’t, y’all. It was not fun. It was the opposite of fun. If-and-when I managed to sort through the mostly terrible prospects, I dreaded every date. I’ll either find that the love of my life is the friend of a friend of a friend or I’ll be a spinster. That’s how it has to go.

One year ago—yes, this, look at this and then reread the paragraph above. I’m going to start looking in the mirror every morning and saying, “You look beautiful and you sound perfect. I’ll tell you this every day.”

(…Booooooooooo hoooooooo hoo hoo hoo.)

Fuck This Shit O'Clock — Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

Retrobruxist Friday 8/24/12

Yesterday’s was a Retrobruxist of sorts, but it’s Friday, so here you go.

Three years ago I did a sleep study. I never did write a blog post about it. The abbreviated version: it sucked, and they didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.

Two years ago Redford shat himself in his crate, and I questioned everything, which I do on bad days.

One year ago I didn’t follow instructions. But it all worked out in the end.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

Moar Thots on Being Mostly Naked on the Internet

I don’t sit on posts. I draft and publish, draft and publish. I know I shouldn’t. I know I’d have a better blog if I would let an entry cool off for a few days and then looked it over before I shot it into cyberspace. I just don’t. It’s not something I can force myself to do.

But I sat on Mostly Naked on the Internet. I drafted it last Friday and could not conjure up the courage to let people see it. I pulled it up on Saturday. No. Sunday. No.

Monday morning, I was doing a version of that scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off where Cameron’s like, “He’ll keep calling me… He’ll keep calling me until I come over… OK! I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go, w— I’ll go. Shit. GodDAMMIT… Forget it. That’s it.”

Except mine was, “I’ll post it. I’ll post it. It’s going to bother me until I post it… No. No. No. Nope. Absolutely not.”

I waited until I was almost going to be late for work, clicked Publish, and then shut down my computer really fast, as if doing so might lock the post inside.

But it didn’t. And now I’m Mostly Naked on the Internet.

And it’s remarkably liberating. I mean, a lot of people have been complimentary of my body, which is sweet and flattering, but of course, not the point. Mostly it’s been validating to hear people use words like ‘honest’ and ‘brave’ and ‘inspirational’ and ‘totally bitchin’.

Here’s what I hope. I hope the post encourages other women to start their own Love My Body/Real Beauty campaign. I hope they’ll look at uniform femme-bots in ads and, instead of considering themselves deficient in some way, they’ll… I don’t know. Remark how odd it is that the models look like they came from a cookie cutter? Something like that.

(Don’t get me wrong: The Victoria Secret model is a totally valid version of the female body. It’s just not the only version.)

I hope women will look at their Rand-McNally stretch marks and their dimply legs and say, “This body grew another human inside it,” or “This body can deadlift 250.”

I hope when women have Bad Body Thoughts, their inner badass will perk up and say, “Cut. That shit. Out.”

I hope when their friends start saying mean things about their own bodies, their outer badass will perk up and say, “Cut. That shit. Out.”

Of course, when I say women, I’m including myself. I hope that I do these things.

(sigh) Growth. It’s hard. But good.

Now excuse me while I go clean out RiteAid’s supply of Dove products.

Mostly Naked on the Internet

I once read an article that said that 86% of females feel bad about themselves within the first five minutes of picking up a “women’s magazine” like Cosmo. (There’s a standard deviation of {+/-infinity} on that statistic because I can’t actually remember what the article said. But I recall that it was a big percentage/short time.)

I identified as one of those statistical females. So I stopped reading those magazines. This was about 8 years ago, and I still don’t look at them. It has helped.

But you know, you don’t have to be flipping through Vogue to find unreasonable body standards in the world. They’re around us all the time. Movies, TV, the music industry. Shit, there are toys on the market that’ll mess with a little girl’s mind and make her not love herself because her stomach’s not concave like the doll’s or her hair is not flaxen like the doll’s or her cooter doesn’t smell like strawberry bubble gum like the doll’s.

Our stupid culture has told me for a long time my body’s wrong, and despite being educated and of fair-to-middling intelligence, I’ve believed it every single step of the way. My ass is too big; my thighs are too dimply; my arms are squishy; my belly pooches out; I have cankles; my stretch marks look like the Rand-McNally of the Washington, D.C. environs; my boobs don’t defy gravity; my chin has a chin.

Cut to the end of last week when this photo started popping up in my Facebook feed:

Look how thin and taut and angular and boob-y and shiny the women in the Victoria’s Secret ad are. Silky tresses for daaaayyyys. Exact same height. Skin colors like on the townhouse exteriors in The Promenades at Spryngdale neighborhood, or whatever homogeneous enclave is two miles from your house.

And, to a woman, they are identical from the neck down.

I don’t know a goddamn soul who looks like that in real life. All the women I know look like the ones in the Dove ad (WHO I THINK ARE GORGEOUS): tall ones, short ones, busty ones, flat ones, curvy ones, straight ones, ones shaped like blueberries, ones shaped like pencils, and ones shaped like Coke bottles. Some carry their weight between shoulders and waist, and others from the hips down [raises hand]. Long hair, short hair. Skin of every color on the palette.

And this ad, or maybe this juxtaposition of ads (because I never would’ve noticed the total freaky-deakiness of the VS ad without the other), made me feel so much better about myself. I mean, I know Dove is a business, and businesses are in the business of making money, and this whole Social Mission blah-di-blah is probably just a really slick marketing ploy. I hope not. But even if it is, I don’t care because I feel so much better about myself after seeing this ad.

I. Look. Like. Them.

In fact—am I really going to do this?

…

Yes, yes I am. Fuck it. Hey, look at me, mostly naked on the internet (that’s a bathing suit… I just couldn’t do undies):

who takes pictures of herself in the mirror.

Here’s the back view:

I look at these photos, and while none of the Dove models is quite the chubster I am, my shape would totally fit in their ad. Because they’re all different shapes. And heights. And hair colors. And skin colors.

I’m sick of hating my body. I’m going to be 37 next month; this needs to end. The fact of the matter is, that roll of back fat you see up there and those stacked marshmallows I’ve got for arms and that hip-to-knee cellulite (which you can’t really see well in the photos but it’s totally there—high-five, iPhone camera!… Note to self: Buy Apple stock)? That fat and those marshmallows and that cellulite are my body, and that body carts this gal around and provides a venue for this blog to germinate and gives me orgasms and lifts heavy things. I am that body. That body is me.

Here are the parts I need to remember:

(1) There is no “normal woman”; we’re all different;

(2) yelling at myself about my body has never succeeded in effecting change;

(3) there will be people who look at me in these photos and go, Ew; I don’t have to be one of them; and

(4) somebody out there is going to like this body exactly the way it is.

But only when I do it first.

So this is my Love My Body/Real Beauty campaign. This is me. I am this. STFU, Amy, and stop being mean to yourself.

He Hath Been Adorable and Sweet

It’s also important to note that, when we sat in motherfucking DC traffic and then blazed (way out of our way) west to Manassas to take Route 15 south but then I missed the turn-off to stay on 15, not once but twice, and I threw multiple Grand Tanties (traffic & getting lost being two of my tantrum triggers), my dad seemed surprised every time and said, “Oh. I’m just enjoying my time with you.”

It’s possible my dad’s the sweetest old bastard alive.

The Foster Chronicles: Tulip, Week 6, Days 4-7

Day 4

My mom visits and gives her foster granddog a present: a soft blanky (“because she’s so snuggly”) with a picture of a doggy and a kitty on it. The doggy on the blanket is not a pit bull. We discuss the fact that they probably don’t make blankets with pit bulls on them. A quick google search proves us so very wrong.

pit_bull_pawprints_blanket_wrap — You can even get a pit bull slanket (90% fleece, 10% treacle).

My eyes!

Day 5

I awake at 5:20 to the familiar backwards-gulp sound (uh-ggg, uh-ggg, uh-ggg) of a dog fixin’ to thow up. I jump out of bed and flip on lights. Redford’s fine; Violet’s fine. Tulip has yorked a big pile of grassy mess onto her new blanky. I let her outside for a while, clean up the mess, and open the window to air out the room. Then I settle down on the couch, hoping to go back to sleep for half an hour. Tulip curls up in the crook of my knees and shnores. I lie there listening to the birds shriek at each other until my alarm goes off.

When I go out in the evening, Tulip goes in her crate with no padding over the plastic tray because it’s in the wash from the barfing. While I’m gone, she eats the damn crate tray.