Today, my problems seem so small compared to those of the parents of 20 kindergarteners in Newtown, Connecticut. I thought about suspending Retrobruxist Friday for the day, but in case you need a distraction (it’s a coping skill — for real, I learned it in group therapy) from your grief/confusion/anger/what-have-you, I offer you a few of my silly blog posts.
Three years have passed, and I’m dealing with the same shallow and/or generic messages from online dating prospects. Look, here’s one from today:
I bet you ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS you didn’t enjoy reading my profile because, in order to enjoy reading it, you’d have had to read it.
I wrote a story in five episodestwo years ago. It spawned the Call Me Crazy category on the blog because, in it, I got kinda crazy about being crazy.
A year ago, I had writer’s block. History repeats itself — drought this week. Maybe the words will come rushing out with my menses. (Hark, the sound of people deleting Avid Bruxist from their RSS feeds!)
When I first got baby Violet, my brother and sister-in-law drove an hour to my place to meet her. This was when I lived in that mill house in Hillsborough. Bruce is allergic to all things furry, so we decided to take the puppy for a walk — outside, he would be able to breathe at least a little bit. I put Violet’s tiny collar around her tiny neck and clipped her tiny leash to it (she weighed about 25 pounds).
On our stroll, she was, as puppies are, all over the place — zigging and zagging, chewing at the leash and getting under foot, too excited because of the smells! sights! air! life! to pee or poop. We were all delighting in the 100% present-in-the-moment-ness that is the life of a puppy. But as we headed back to the house, the tiny clip on her tiny collar popped open and she was free — FREE! — and she started to bolt.
I. freaked. out.
I’d had this dog for, what?, a day or two?, and already she was going to get lost in the woods across the road and starve or, worse, hit by a car? People drove so fast on my road! Panicking, I yelled, “Violet!” and ran after her. She thought that was pretty great and picked up her pace.
Behind me — histamine response be damned — my brother squatted, opened his arms wide, and said, “Come here, you!” in a decidedly silly-sweet tone. Violet’s head jerked around. She went bounding toward him, and he scratched her head, and she flopped on her back. And I walked to them and clipped her tiny collar back on.
I don’t know why my brain recalled this incident yesterday or then why it occurred to me that this, sweetness/silliness/arms wide open/”Come here, you!”, would be a much better approach to dating than the cynicism/fear/arms forming an X in front of my face/”Not this shit again” that is my current one. But it did.
So with that, despite the fact that I overdid it on Gluten Sunday yesterday thus I’m battling fatigue, and that I’m PMSing (bonus: pyimples!), I’m off to meet Mr. OBD.
I’m meeting Mr. One Big Duck next week. Like I said, it’s (with 95% certainty) a no-go, but I just have to. His message was/profile is so great, not to mention he’s real easy on the eyes — I just want to assure myself that prospects like him actually exist.
Plus, there’s that goddamn 5% chance that he’ll be so fantastic that I’ll overlook the duck.
Look at me, breaking my Don’t Write About the Good Ones policy. But it’s minimal and nebulous so it’s OK, right?
Speaking of OKCupid, I got fed up with it three years ago and posted a profile on Match.
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Two years ago, I over-indulged and wondered whether it was worth it. This continues to be a struggle. Nowadays I participate in a weekly event I like to call Gluten Sunday because Sunday means brunch, and you can tell me that an omelet or other eggy dish will do just as well but those are lies — LIES — because brunch means French toast and/or biscuits and/or pancakes and/or waffles. And I’m always groggy after, but it’s not so bad. As long as I can lay off the gluten the rest of the week. Which continues to be a struggle.
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Probably going to get somebody a flock of chicks again like I did a year ago but also a year of school. YEAR OF SCHOOL.
Kate “The Ginger Menace” n’ Megalu gave me another makeup tutorial on Friday, and this time, like good pedagogues, they had me do the work myself. Their standards were real high, but they conducted themselves with patient, loving guidance. Now I present it to you! (Spoiler alert: I’m not very good at it.)
After our session, Kate and Meg pulled things out of my closet and made an outfit for me. Turns out I apparently DON’T KNOW HOW TO DRESS MYSELF EITHER. They’re going to give me clothes lessons and go shopping with me. How to Dress Yourself for the Nearly-Forty-Year-Old tutorial vlog forthcoming, I’m sure.
Hey, visually-oriented Bruxistists, what do you think about the link color? I tried purple, but it didn’t pop. My graphic designer suggested hot pink, but it looked a little too Miami Vice for me. Burnt orange? Does it go with the other colors? If not, what does?
The Mexican braised beef that I cooked(!) is delicioso. I’m eating it in lettuce wraps with radishes and cilantro. The only sad thing is there’s all this nom-nom sauce left over, and it’s begging for a big hunk of bread to sop it up. Drinking it would be frowned-upon, right?
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I missed 12% by six-thousandths of a pointthree years ago. Got it a year later, but what a crock. Getting my National Boards didn’t make me a better teacher. You know what has made me a better teacher? (1) Wanting to become a better teacher, and (2) working with good people who also want to become better teachers. That’s it.
Now I feel kind of trapped by the 12% (#FWP). I can’t move out of my Middle Child Generalist certification area (3rd-6th grades) and keep the salary bump. And I don’t know if I really want to teach Middle Children anymore. Middle Earth Children would be fun.
About three times a month, somebody tells me I’ve lost weight, like they did two years ago. And five, ten, and twenty years ago. Now I just say, “Huh. I wouldn’t know. I don’t weigh myself.” They usually try to reassure me that their assessment is correct. Then I just look at them and shrug and look baffled. Then they awkwardly walk away. It’s fun.
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A year ago, I participated in a CrossFit competition against my cousin. Except that the whole thing happened inside my skull because I’m very crazy. She posted on Facebook recently that she’d gotten her first muscle-up…
Yeah. I’m not ever, ever, ever, ever going to be able to do a muscle-up.
And I’m actually OK with that. I was telling a friend recently that I grew up feeling inferior because my elder siblings were smarter than I was. After therapy and transformational seminars and inspirational quote-of-the-day calendars, I decided that was untrue! I had made it up! Empowerment!!1!
But later, I realized, it is true, and that’s OK.
Because the fact is I’m smart enough AND — they’d tell you this too — neither of my siblings could/would get up and host the Monti StorySLAM, and I can/do. I’d love to be intellectually brilliant like my brother and sister, but I have other talents. So it is with my cousin. Nobody’s good at everything, but everybody’s good at something. Or as my buddy Phil said recently, everything something nobody.
