Category: Random

I don’t know where to file these posts.

The Cult

Sometimes people call CrossFit a cult. That’s pretty dumb. I want to say, “Do you know what the definition of cult is?” I guess when people join a group and use a certain lingo or jargon, it has the audacity to make other people uncomfortable, and all of a sudden, it’s a cult.

It’s the jargon. People don’t like jargon. If CrossFitters talk about WODs and AMRAPs and metcons—Well, I don’t understand! Gack! It must be a cult!

Eleven years ago, I took this seminar called the Landmark Forum. If you look online, you’ll find their website, which is pretty cheesy—lots of phrases like “extraordinary life” and “design your future”—and other websites full of bloviating and the cyber-equivalent of people getting red-faced and throwing their hands in the air. Negative stuff.

I personally found the Landmark Forum both eye-rollingly self-helpy… and extremely helpy for myself. Swear to god, I use what I learned that weekend pretty much every day of my life.

But, in essence, the structure of the seminar is to call people on their bullshit six ways from Sunday, and people don’t like that. We like to wallow in our bullshit until we can’t smell it anymore, and then just call it ‘reality’. (Don’t get me wrong: I still have bullshit, but I can often spot it and work through it in a shorter amount of time than I used to.)

Anyway, you’ll see it called a cult, which, again, is super dumb because the corporation (yes, it’s a business—they make that pretty goddamn clear) that puts on the Landmark Forum is like: Here’s our course, and here’s how much it costs, and we have other courses you can take if you like that one. And here’s how much they cost.

As with CrossFit, if someone does the Landmark Forum and comes out talking about rackets or enrollment conversations or “empty and meaningless”, well, he must be getting brainwashed.

But every organization uses jargon. Every organization has vocabulary specific to the industry and acronyms that save time.

At my place of business, we talk about AYP, Gifted Service Provision, and Site-based. You non-teachers tell me what any of that means without looking it up. Kids have 504s, IEPs, and PEPs; they’re labeled EC, AIG, AU, ADD, ODD, and OLT (all right, that last one just means Obnoxious Little Turd).

I bet I wouldn’t understand half the vocabulary my friend, a doctor, uses with her colleagues in a given day. Or you with yours because you’re a lawyer and, to me, tort reform is what I’ve had to do to my fruit dessert recipe since going gluten-free.

Or because you’re an IT guy, and even though my brother-in-law has explained it a million times, I just don’t understand how fax machines work. You put a picture in a phone, and it breaks into ones and zeros and gets reconstituted in another phone two thousand miles away?!

No.

Not possible.

Elves.

Even outside the workplace, organizations use their own lingo. I bet your church does, and your family. There are things in the Scott family lexicon that an outsider would never understand. Tell me, what are ‘wooly bears’? What is something that might be ‘wapsed’, and where might it be ‘wapsed’?

And stuff you might understand, but if you didn’t know us, it’s possible you’d think we were mentally impaired. Like, we say we love our chother because when my sister was little, that’s what she said instead of ‘each other’. If two people speak the same words simultaneously, my siblings and I will certainly say, in a deep southern drawl, “Y’all must have ESPN!” because Mrs. Harris, our sophomore high school English teacher, seriously didn’t know the difference between extra-sensory perception and the highest-rated American TV sports network.

One of my groups of friends has a whole language we call The Worst. We say things like “also too”, use a lot of flat vowels, and waggle our fingers at the sky while proclaiming, “Their body temperature is quite low.” Because all that stuff means something to us.

But we have no charismatic leader; nobody’s driving a wedge between us and our families; we’re not forking over our life savings to the organization; and we certainly don’t think our bat-shit way is the only path to salvation.

So, can we cool it on calling groups cults?

Except Scientology. That shit is a cult.

P.S. If you’re curious, wooly bears are fuzzy footie pajamas that zip from ankle to neck, and something that might be wapsed is a wet towel. Where? On your bedroom floor.

And you’ll get in trouble for that.

 

There It Was, With a Broom, Sweepin

A week ago, my buddy Kathleen called and asked if I wanted to be in a video she was thinking of making. She gave me the run-down, and I said yes, absolutely.

After reading the script, I thought through my costume options and decided on jean shorts and white tank top. Also, as luck would have it, I had just done my once-every-three-years bra shopping at Target and replaced the blue one (that Redford had chewed on in 2010 but I continued to wear) with a leopard-print number. (Hahahahaha. Leopard-print.) Perfect for under the white tank top.

I picked up a soda from Burger King, piled my hair on top of my head, and met Kathleen on the “set” Monday afternoon.

I had someplace to be 45 minutes later (a date!), so we needed to get it done, but the other actor, who was going to film my part and vice-versa was late. Kathleen, who is not at all scared of strangers which I don’t understand because I’m scared of all strangers and also most of the people I know, saw a guy coming out of a house a few doors down and said, “Would you mind filming this for us?”

And, naturally, the guy was like, “Sure! I’d love to.”

He was cute. His name was Alejandro. Kathleen asked him later and he said he was straight and single.

I digress! Anyway, here’s Kathleen’s Sal Roker’s breaking report that homosexuals might actually be human beings:

Bellatrix

Two weeks ago, I started a project: get a new car.

The Outback, as I’ve mentioned, was never my favorite, plus it needed a new catalytic converter. I did not want to put a thousand dollars into a car I didn’t like. I’d already dumped so much cash into that beast, goddammit.

And when I say a new car, I mean a new car. My very first new car. Yes. Nobody else’s miles. No major repairs for a few years. Low financing. (I’ve been paying 5.75% to my bank on the Outback for three years, and boy, has that chapped my ass.) So I read through the Consumer Reports magazine my dad bought me and test-drove a whole mess o’ cars:

  • Mazda3 (My mom had driven a Mazda2 recently and said it didn’t accelerate.)
  • Toyota Yaris
  • Toyota Matrix
  • Scion xD
  • Honda Fit
  • Honda Accord (I wasn’t planning on buying an Accord—too big—but the guy had a 5-speed on the lot that he was trying to get rid of, so I took it out for a spin.)

I had planned to drive a couple Kias and Hyundais too, but CR gave them an open black circle for reliability, and after all the intimacy with my mechanic lately, it was an orange circle or nothing for me.

Mazda3 was my fave out of all of them. Good gas mileage, SIX (6!) speeds, and cute as the dickens. I might’ve dug the Honda Fit too if they’d had a manual transmission, but apparently those are pretty hard to snag. Folks in Japan have been replacing a lot of the vehicles swept away in the tsunami with 5-speed Fits, so I couldn’t get too mad at being put on a waitlist.

But I couldn’t really wait. My inspection was coming due, and I needed to get ‘er done before spring break was over. I went back to a couple of dealerships and got some numbers. And of course they wanted to give me chump change for the trade—Mazda twice as much as Honda, but as my boss in New York used to say, double bupkis is still bupkis.

So I put up a warts-and-all ad for the Outback on Craig’s List. I noted that I had dogs with whom I had traveled in the vehicle, that one of them had chewed the inside of the hatch door, that the catalytic converter needed replacing. I priced it accordingly, listing the Kelley Blue Book value and subtracting for cosmetic damage and projected repairs. I got five or six bites, one lowball offer, and one solid, but when I took it to the solid offer’s mechanic, his machine spat out “all kinds of electrical codes” in addition to the cat con one, and the guy rescinded. Another dude lived two hours away and wanted me to meet him halfway so he could look at the car. No thanks. I decided to trade it.

Meanwhile, I talked to my friend, Z—actually, you know him already. Remember the ridiculous specimen of male beauty?; yeah, he’s my buddy now. He had recently traded his car. When I asked if they gave him a good deal, Z said, “I made them give me a good deal.” As I’ve stated, he cuts kind of an imposing figure, what with the tattoos and the muscles. I wondered aloud if he might go with me to a dealership or two. He consented gladly.

Just knowing that gave me a boost of confidence. I wasn’t going to take any bullshit. I went back to the Durham Mazda dealer by myself, and the guy upped his offer by 25%. Now we were getting somewhere, but I wasn’t sure about the color. He had only silver on the lot, and meh. I looked online and thought I liked a hue they called dolphin gray. Durham Guy said he had one coming in “any day”.

I scoped out other Mazda dealers in the area and saw that the place in Cary had a six-speed manual transmission 3 in dolphin gray, so I set up an appointment to go check it out and hauled Z along with me.

Upon in-person observation, the dolphin gray lay well on the School Marm end of the spectrum, but the graphite gray which they also had, well, that shore was purdy. The salesman was an odd combination of pushy and pansy. He tried to offer me 800 less than what Durham Guy was willing to pay, and that was after I told him what the number was! I said, “Uh, no.” Z mostly sat in silence with just one hazy emasculation of the salesman when he intimated that the guy drove a girl-colored car. Perfect.

When Pushy-Pansy scurried back to his manager, Z straightened me out on a couple things: (1) it’s worth something to have your dealer near your house, so unless Pushy-Pansy could beat, not just match, Durham Guy in the price department, you shouldn’t do it, and (2) if you’re financing at 0.9%, it doesn’t make sense to put any money down. Oh, yeah. (“Math is hard,” Barbie said.)

Pushy-Pansy was gone for a long time. I told Z my theory: they make you sit there forever, so when they finally come back, you go, “Well, I’ve already invested so much time, I might as well buy it.” I was thinking of walking out, and Z said good plan. Meanwhile, Durham Guy called to let me know he’d gotten a black one delivered, and I set the scene for him: I was at the Cary dealership, and I was really liking the graphite—ooooh.

Pushy-Pansy came back and gave the final verdict: 300 more than Durham Guy. I told him I’d think about it, and we left. Z instructed me to call Durham Guy and gave me some pointers on what to say.

So I did. I called and said, “Look, I like the graphite best, which Pushy-Pansy has, but it’s also worth something to me to have my dealership close to my house, so if you come up with another 300 bucks on the trade, I’ll come take one off your hands today.” (I actually used those words: I’ll come take one off your hands today. Ha!)

He replied without hesitation, “I can do that.”

I pulled into the lot a half-hour later, compared the silver and the black, filled out a bunch of paperwork, and voilà!

(I've never been one of those girls who named her car, but my friend suggested Bellatrix, and I don't know, it just seems right.)

So my car payment is more than my mortgage payment. Which is not that much. (When the finance officer asked what my mortgage was and I told him, he looked startled, and then when he saw I was serious, he laughed. He laughed out loud.)

But still, it’s a lot of money for me.

And I’m totally paranoid that something’s going to happen to WHAT IS THAT LEAF DOING ON MY CAR? WHY IS EVERYBODY DRIVING LIKE A FUCKING MANIAC?

But it’s new. And I love it. And it’s mine mine mine.

(Thanks, Z!)

WMMH

I sometimes listen to NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, and the panel ends the show each week with a round of What’s Making Us Happy. As you can probably intuit from the title, they go around the table and name a thing or two (usually a TV show or concert tour or something) that’s giving their lives a little bit of joy. I’ve had some anxiety and depression and overwhelm in the last week (ran out of one of my amino acids; also, I prefer not working to working, but my job preferred that I go back to work), so I thought I’d try to psych myself out of it by accentuating the positive. Who knows? This might become a regular feature.

Here’s What’s Making Me Happy:

I’m doing really great on my New Year’s resolutions.

To wit, my friend invited me to go shopping (thanks, Michelle!), and I have worn actual clothes when I wanted to wear actual sweats several times. I even took two pairs of pants to a tailor to get them hemmed. That’s, like, some Carrie Bradshaw stuff.

I’ve flossed a time or two and made my bed daily.

I’ve engaged in no Facebook debates. Indeed, I’ve expressed nary a political leaning nor a religious dubiety, even though I wanted to post this cartoon real bad when I saw it:

I repeated things to myself that I said to the beasts (even though it feels embarrassing to say, “I love you, Violet… I also love myself,” even when alone in my house).

I went on a first date with a man and scheduled another with a different man, though the latter had to be postponed. Due to a sick kid. I’m probably going to be a stepmom.

Most importantly, I very much reduced my intake of refined sugar. I had some chocolate mousse on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and a piece of cake and two cookies on Saturday. I didn’t wait until after 7:00pm that day, though. But considering that I got the piece of cake at noon and waited until 4:53 to eat it, I’m calling it a victory. In addition, Sunday included French toast with syrup, which kind of fits in the dessert category, but, really, what’s a brunch buffet without the French toast course?

(Again, this might sound like a lot of sugar to you, but I assure you, for me, it’s a smidgeon.)

Naturally, the glutenful weekend, together with my job preferring that I get up at the ludicrous hour of 6:00am, has made me one sleepy girl today. But that’s not what we were talking about. We were talking about What’s Making Me Happy.

Now. Let’s talk about What’s Making You Happy.

New Year’s Resolutions

In the past, I’ve set the bar low, or as my friend Dan says, “created winnable games”, but I’m going to challenge myself a little bit this year.

1. I will dress better. A few days ago, as I “dressed up” by taking off my navy blue hoodie with paint on it and put on my navy blue hoodie without paint on it, I realized, this has to stop. But it means I’ll have to…go…shopping…I can’t feel my legs…(breathes into paper bag). How am I going to accomplish this resolution when just thinking of trying on clothes sends me into paroxysms? Help, girlfriends. Maybe a standing monthly shopping date?

2. I will continue to floss 2-3 times a week in my car at red lights. I would resolve to floss daily, but after about 18 years of that resolution, it’s smelling a little gamey, and a few times a week is better than nothing. This is not setting the bar low; it’s just knowing thyself. Myself. Thmyself.

3. I will not engage in political or religious debate on Facebook. It makes me not like people who, in person, I really like, and I’m certain the feeling is mutual.

comic from xkcd.com

4. I will make my bed. Life just seems more orderly when my bed is made. To make this easier on thmyself, I turned my bed around, set it at an angle for minimum bed-making gymnastic maneuvering, and bought one of those bed-in-a-bag sets from Bed, Bath, & Beyond. It was $180, marked down to $99, and I had a 20% off coupon, so for 80 bucks, I got a TOTALLY CRAPPY OPPOSITE-OF-FLAME-RETARDANT bed set. Seriously, it might spontaneously combust. It had those anti-theft things on it in the store, so I couldn’t open it and feel how polyester it was. And then, by the time I got it home, I was committed. Anyway, I basically just have to pull up the comforter to make my bed, and that’ll be easy. The 59 decorative kindling pillows that came with it might have to go in a closet.

5. I will reduce my intake of refined sugar. Oh, Jesus. This one makes me jitterier than clothes shopping. Here’s my plan. I can have sugar (and by that, I mean dessert items—I’m not talking about the quarter-teaspoon of sugar I have in my coffee; that stays) after 7:00pm on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. That might seem like a lot to you, but it’s about four days a week fewer than my current intake. We’ll see how this goes. I have no faith in myself on this one.

6. I will talk to myself like I talk to my dogs. Less: “You’re a silly monkey” and “Are you one of the two best dogs in the world?” More: “You’re cute, sweet, friendly, capable, smart, personable, honest, and caring, with leadership qualities.”

7. I will get into a romantic relationship. Jitteriest! How will I do this? I will go on dates. At least one first date a month (unless I find him before December, which will void this contract). That will be twelve possible matches. I’m going to work the Law of Averages.

So. What are your’n?

FLOCK OF CHICKS

A vlog for you’ns! It’s been a while since I’ve posted a vlog because I kept thinking maybe I’d shower and put on make-up before I did one. But I so rarely get around to doing those things that it got procrastinated upon. I procrastinated it. Until tonight, when I decided to record one, despite the fact that I’m sweaty from the gym.

Anyway here it is:

 

They also have a gift called a Trio of Rabbits, and I’ll admit that I like to imagine them doing a few musical numbers with top hats and canes for the lucky recipients.

A Cotton Swab Parable

It was the morning of the Watauga High School band’s trip to Carowinds, I want to say sophomore year. I showered as usual and headed to my parents’ bathroom to scout out a q-tip to dry my ears. And when I say “dry my ears”, you know it went a little farther than that.

It always started out as just drying my ears, and one of my mom’s sayings, along with “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”, was “Don’t put anything in your ear that’s smaller than your elbow”, but as I’ve mentioned, I have my dad’s ear wax genes, and I could never help but dig in there a little bit and pull out a satisfyingly disgusting wax-coated swab of cotton.

Maybe I was a little aurally fixated because I’d had a shit-ton of ear problems as a kid. Frequent, angry ear infections. Throbbing pain that I remember vividly thirty years later. Seriously, I recall looking up at my mom, who I know now must’ve been dying to see her five-year-old in such agony, and thinking, “How are you letting this happen?” Anyway, I had to have tubes put in my ears. Twice! To this day, when doctors look in my ears for the first time, they go, “Whoa!… Um, so you’ve got some scar tissue in there, huh?”

This particular morning in high school, after I’m certain I spent a half-hour picking out the perfect outfit to impress Robbie, probably involving matching shirt and scrunchy socks, I got really into the “ear drying”, and I just went a little too deep into my right ear canal. A little tap on something inside, and I found myself eye-level with the bolts that kept the toilet anchored to the floor. Totally horizontal, like that, in an instant. My ear felt a little tender but didn’t hurt. It was just weird, was all, that I could’ve been so undeniably standing in one moment, and in the next on the fucking ground.

I began to pick myself up, but even weirder, when I raised my head more than three inches, it was—no joke—like someone was holding me down. I could not make myself vertical.

Of course, I was not thinking that I may have done some major damage to myself. I was freaking out that I might miss the charter bus, and Robbie would never see that the coral and aqua in my earrings was exactly the same as the coral and aqua in my shirt, and uuugggghhhhh, why me?

But eventually, over the course of about 20 minutes, I raised myself up a few inches at a time until I was able to stand and stagger out of the bathroom. I went on the trip, and it’s unclear whether Robbie appreciated my fashion choices—he played cat and mouse with me for, oh, about three more years.

I have no recollection of where my family was during this incident. Maybe my parents had already left for work, but my brother must’ve been in the house because he was the captain of our ’83 Subaru GL (I was quartermaster, and by that I mean I managed the Led Zeppelin cassettes). Was I too embarrassed to call out for him? No idea.

Anyway, clearly the moral of this story is, do not match your accessories perfectly. It looks like you’re trying too hard on the band trip.

Dear Victorious Praise Fellowship

I appreciate your persistence. Actually, ‘appreciate’ implies that it’s worth something to me. Admire? No. Acknowledge. That’s it. I acknowledge your direct-mail dedication to getting me to your Gospel Explosions and whatnot. And I can see that the Muse was with the graphic designer of this latest postcard who cleverly exchanged the zero in ‘2011 Big Event’ for a disco ball.

But I have no interest in coming to your church. And when I say no interest, I mean like, the opposite of interest. I would rather do burpees for an hour than sit through a Sunday morning in your mega-sanctuary. Moreover, I don’t wish to donate toward your $6 million project to build a bowling alley, movie theatre, business center, gymnasium, and workout center. Even if I held your same religious beliefs, I’m not sure I could reconcile how the bowling alley would “win souls to Christ”.

In fact, in the event that I give my life over to Jesus, I can’t imagine that it would be in a church that has a Director of Marketing.

Save yourself the stamp.

Thanks,

Amy

You Say ‘Moleskin’, I Say ‘Moleskeen’

I, like many people who write, carry a small notebook to jot down ideas when they come to me. Two reasons, really: (1) An idea for a post will not stay with me for more than 30 seconds, even if it’s the most exciting thought I ever thunk, and (2) during Those Dry Times, I can sometimes flip through the pages and find something to blather on about.

If I don’t have my Moleskine® with me, I just scribble on a sticky note, a receipt, a gum wrapper… and my desk is littered with these little pieces of paper all the time. Here are some in front of me right now:

  • hands smelling like lavender after washing Baby E’s head
  • past tense of breathe should be broathe
  • Things I Don’t Like: (1) when people pronounce amphitheatre as if it has no h after the p
  • I worry that Boonie didn’t know how much I loved him.
  • “I don’t eat when I’m not hungry.” –Kate K. Jealous.
  • Horrifying thought of the day: A hundred years ago, I would’ve been considered a spinster. A SPINSTER. People get into relationships ALL THE TIME. What the hell is wrong with me?
  • Liane Hansen pronouncing “Ghostface Killah” in Mark Ronson interview—hahahaha

Most of these scribbles will never get written about. There’s just not enough there. But I really want there to be. I practically sprain my brain trying to weave these threads into something meaningful. One I keep looking longingly at is:

  • B: “Fly, you fools” (LOTR)

This is a reference to Christmas 2001 when my family saw The Lord of the Rings in a tiny theatre in Stowe, Vermont. At the moment when Gandalf was hanging from the precipice—the hobbits staring, petrified, powerless to stop his fall—my brother leaned over to my ear and said, “Fly, you fools!” one second before those words came out of the Grey Wizard’s mouth. And it was one of the most thrilling moments I’ve ever experienced. The combination of the emotional intensity of the scene and my brother’s precognition was too much.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, of course. My brother had read all the books a brazilian times; he knew every slash of a sword and every breath of a Ringwraith. (Now Dan Miller or somebody’s going to comment that Ringwraiths don’t breathe or something. Shut it, I don’t know anything about them because I didn’t read anything but Nancy Drew when I was little.) But it was so awesome. Just an awesome moment in my life.

So I’ve wanted to write about that moment for a long time; I just didn’t know what else to say about it.

And I still don’t, but there it is.

On the internet.

So. Yeah.

This is one of Those Dry Times.