A Few Guidelines for the Fellas, and a Question

If the contents of your first email to me are:

I would to see you tonight?? (sic)

and you include a picture of your Hummer on your profile, then we are not a good match.

If we’ve exchanged two emails each over OKCupid, and you find and friend me on Facebook, then I will be creeped out.

If your profile states:

honestly….trying to find a total stranger in the area willing to help me with a quirky, simple, and safe favor….its odd…but i am serious….

and you have no picture posted, and you email me to say:

can you chat? favor to ask ya… then I will respond, “If it’s sexual, no thank you.”

(He didn’t get back to me after that one. Guess he didn’t need me to pick up his birthday clown from the airport.)

If your online dating handle is Fast_backhand, and your profile pictures are of you playing tennis, and in my email response to you, I say:

So…do you play tennis? (Ha ha. I make a leetle joke there.)

then don’t reply, “I do play tennis, yes.”

**********

I went on a date with a 25-year-old on Friday night. He was cuter than his picture and perfectly nice, but I kind of got the feeling I would eat him alive.

Also, etiquette question, since I’m trying this let-the-dude-pay thing: I’m also a firm believer in letting the guy do a little chasing, so I’ve always let him contact me first if he wants a second date. But when a guy treats, I feel like I need to email and thank him for buying me dinner. Thoughts?


Who Says?

I hate it when listeners call in to the Diane Rehm Show. It makes me so uncomfortable. If I want to hear some bumbling, disjointed, half-baked ideas about politics, I’ll just listen to my own thoughts, thank you.

A few days ago, a caller was, amongst many uhs, explaining his point-of-view on…what? I don’t even remember—I was in a jittery sweat, just wishing it were over…when it occurred to me I could change stations. I could listen to something other than NPR. Usually, the only time my dial is not set to WUNC is during pledge drives. (During those torturous ten-day periods, I make my pledge and then burn through all my saved-up podcasts of…NPR programs.)

But this time…it was not a fundraiser…AND I COULD STILL CHANGE THE CHANNEL.

Scary.

I pressed the scan button on my radio and ended up on one of those happy, poppy stations, which was playing a bubble gum tune with lots of na-na-nas and the lyric, “Who says?” over and over again. I think the singer’s thing was, who says you’re not perfect just the way you are? Something about not being a beauty queen but beautiful anyway. In your own way. Whatever.

I just kept hearing, “Who says?”

And these were the questions that came into my head: Who says you can’t get an MFA in creative writing? Who says you can’t, for the first time in your life, incur educational debt? Who says you can’t quit teaching altogether?

Yikes.

See, ’cause my friend Cat has been nudging me to apply for a low-residency MFA program. She did, and she got in, and she’s going to do it. And I want to do it too. But I’m terrified. I’ve never taken out an education loan, never even entertained doing so for a degree that has a good chance of paying me back bupkis. Never thought about quitting teaching to do what I actually want to do, which is write.

Here there be dragons.

But who says?

Tell I What You Think

Wading through those muddy waters of grammar again….

Do you see anything wrong with the following sentences?

He wrote to Sarah and I to tell us he was OK.

They rode with Bob and I to the concert.

Everyone from my students to my peers to Our Esteemed President, Barack Obama, is a little confused about when to use the pronoun ‘I’. I think people over-use it because they think it sounds distinguished. But to me, it sounds wrong.

For example, I’ve heard Obama say things like, This has been a great experience for Michelle and I.

My friends even say, She came to Rob and I’s party.

(shiver)

But take the other person out of the equation for a second. Would you ever say, This has been a great experience for I or She came to I’s party?

No. You’d say “for me” and “to my party”. Thus, you should say, This has been a great experience for Michelle and me, and She came to Rob’s and my party.

When is it appropriate to use the pronoun ‘I’?

  • When it’s the subject of your sentence: Michelle and I had a great experience. 
  • …Even if the subject comes after the verb ‘to be’: It is I. 
  • After ‘than’: She is stronger than I. (This one could be confusing, but just think, She is stronger than I am. You wouldn’t say “stronger than me am”.)

This is I’s understanding of the rules. Am me right or wrong on this one?

Ten Things I Like About My Body and Those of My Laydeez

Last week, you may remember, Coach Ashley gave us the difficult assignment of coming up with ten things we liked about our bodies. I came up with five:

1. Nice eyes.

2. Rhythm.

3. Coordination.

4. Freckled shoulders.

5. Strong back.

That’s where I ran out of ideas. But I’ve thought more about it, and I’m taking a mulligan.

6. I’m shaped like an hourglass. (Must…resist…urge…to add…disclaimer.)

7. I can make funny expressions with my face.

8. I can do 1,500 push-ups in 30 days.

9. I can mimic most accents. (It’s something my body can do! My brain and mouth are parts of my body.)

10. All right, all right. MY ASS. In a spirit of if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em, I’m hereby giving up not liking my butt and choosing to like it. I did that with bananas and the guitar riff of “The Piña Colada Song”—I can do it with this.

Now! The funner part of the assignment! What do I like about my CrossFit laydeez’ bodies? Well!

Colleen: Legs.

All the way down to the floor.

And a voice that…actually, you hear that? That’s Colleen’s voice. You can hear it from anywhere.

Bea: I’m attacking pull-ups in July the way I did push-ups in June because I want to be able to do pull-ups like Bea. She’s a great, hulking beast in a teeny-tiny package.

Also, she’s a photographer with a GREAT EYE. I’m not a visual person myself, so I’m lucky if I actually get the subject of my photos in the frame. Her photos look like a magical magic person took them.

Melinda: This woman, before she started kung-fuing breast cancer, did the Metro Dash. That’s an event where you run, flip tires, climb up and over walls…!

And I love her giggle. So I say, “Goddammit!” a lot because it makes her giggle.

Also, she’s currently kung-fuing breast cancer, and looks awesome in a head-wrap. And she let me feel her falsies last night.

Lindsay: Lindsay is

so

very

hot.

I mean, damn. Gorgeous face. Nice curves. Hot-for-teacher glasses.

Nelly: Woman is strong. She can pick up very, very heavy things.

She has perfectly imperfect teeth. (Seriously, I love them. She smiles and, I don’t know, it’s beautiful and unexpected.)

And she does an amazing donkey kick burpee.

Ashley: Every part of her is perfectly rounded and firm. Everything on her body looks on purpose. I want that.

I learned a lot from doing this assignment. (1) My body is a tool, a pretty awesome one. It gets me where I need to go and can do some cool stuff. (2) Sometimes I need an extension on my homework assignments. And (3) my CrossFit Laydeez are smokin’.

What Violet and Redford Did on Summer Vacation

Violet and Redford (or, as my 19-month-old niece calls them, Bye-dit and Redbud) just got back from a big journey. Wanna hear about it? I don’t care! I’m going to tell you anyway!

They rode in the car.
They stayed in a motel. (Redford nibbles on blankets when he's nervous.)
Redford romped on the beach.
Because of her bum knee, Violet had to stay on the leash, so she contented herself with digging holes...
...which gave her a sandy nose.
They chilled on the beach and watched the sun set.
But mostly, they rode in the car.
Which Redford did not enjoy.
At all.
Not even a little bit.
Poor little Redford. I hope the romps on the beach made up for it.

I Win at eBay

Remember how I told you guys you better hook me up with some synopses and analyses of major works of English literature? Well, y’all are all fired.

Except Margo who gave me three in-person lessons on poetry. Or, as I like to say it, POW-tree.

And Kate, who helped me create some study objectives.

And Big E, who discussed lit with me over lunch and lent me a bunch of her grad school books.

And Cat, who recommended a really good poetry text with which to study and listed everything she read in high school so I could write it down.

And my dad, who gave me what I call the nuclear option: if I don’t understand the exam question, I’m just going to write, “If anything’s consistent about Shakespeare, it’s silly fucking plots.”

Everybody else, though, you’re all fired. But NEVER MIND. I figured out a way to pass.

That’s not even all of them.

Here’s Your “Father’s Day”, Dad*

My dad had a concern, after the recent posts of his outbursts and witticisms, that readers might get the impression that he was a…what did he call it?…“a doddering old fool”.

Why would anyone think that?

My dad's idea of a clothesline.

Smurf-blue deck paint, also his idea.

Yep, that's his underpants. And a sock.

And yes, he is half-deaf and has only nine toes, so his balance is a little off and he falls down a lot, but my dad is also a genius. I just didn’t include the stuff he said about the devaluation of the American dollar or his comparison between Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War and our country’s current presence in the Middle East because DIURETIC DAY is so much more entertaining.

In addition to being a genius, my dad’s a badass. For posterity’s sake, I will catalog a few of the ways he has filled up this arbitrary existence we call life:

  • attended race-driving school, twice (once in the 1960s, and again about ten years ago)
  • took at least one bounty hunter workshop
  • got kicked out of both Phillips Exeter Academy and Columbia Law School
  • earned a PhD from Cambridge University in England
  • has written my mom a sonnet every Valentine’s Day since, like, 1973 or something
  • tromped all over Europe, including places like Bosnia and Croatia, with a backpack slung over his shoulder into his sixties
  • got his brown belt in karate before he got colon cancer in ’86
  • (speaking of which) beat cancer, two different kinds

Some of his occupations:

  • carny (no shit—he ran the scrambler for Reithoffer)
  • published author of several pieces of short fiction and a history book
  • tree nurseryman (to this day, more than 35 years later, we’re not allowed to cut a Christmas tree; we have to decorate a dug-and-balled Fraser fir, which we later un-decorate and plant in the yard)
  • ambulance driver
  • reporter, or as he would say “newspaper man”
  • college professor
  • and most importantly, dad…a doddering, meddling, hilarious, generous-to-a-fault, worry-wort of a dad to three kids and two kids-in-law

I love ya, Dad!

*My dad wrote a journal entry of sorts last week entitled “Father’s Day”. He showed it to me. It was just about his day, an everyday day, and about my heading up the mountain to see him. It was simple and beautiful.

 

Brush Up Your Rich Wilkes*

Between his sciatic nerve radiating pain from his lower back to his feet (“It feels like an iguana has latched itself onto my toe”) and the arthritis in his left knee, Dad was less than sanguine on the trip back down south. But I still managed to jot down a few nuggets.

Dad: (pointing to a sign in Pennsylvania) Lebanon! Let’s hear some AK-47s!

…

Dad: (lecturing me about his ancestral home in PA) The Polish, Irish, and Italian groups hated each other, and it was only with much thought and constipation that you would bring home a girl from a different tribe.

…

Dad: What do you know about Vin Diesel?

Me: He’s an action movie actor.

Dad: He certainly is.

…

Dad: Here are some quarters for the meter.

Me: I have change.

Dad: Well, these tend to pull my pants down. You’ll be doing humanity a favor if you take them.

(This is absolutely true. The guy who invented suspenders had my dad’s shape in mind. And you’re welcome, humanity.)

…

Dad: (waiting for a light to turn so he could get to a bathroom) Come on, baby…let’s do the twist…he said, farting.

To clarify, that speech tag was not added by me. That’s what he actually said, “…let’s do the twist…he said, farting.”

*Rich Wilkes is the author of such oeuvres as xXx, starring Vin Diesel, and The Jerky Boys.

Go, Amy, Go!

My buddy Jed and I were looking at the goals board at the gym back in May and noticed somebody had written 1,500 total push-ups as that month’s goal. I’m unclear on the details after that, kind of like that time I drank a bunch of wine and tequila sunrises in Sardinia and I may or may not have ended up singing karaoke and swimming in the pool in my underpants before absolutely wrecking the bathroom and lying in the shower, trying to remember the word for ambulance in Italian, but Jed said later that I had committed to doing 1,500 push-ups during the month of June.

I had started doing regular push-ups, no modifications, a month or two prior, so I thought, “All right. Why not?” Granted, I could do only about four or five that looked decent before they morphed into something akin to a really bad and slow break-dancing move, but whatever. Fifty a day. I’d get really good at them.

I averaged fifty a day for nine days before I started being really grumpy about it. My upper back and shoulders felt like I’d been in a really violent car wreck. That’s when Coach Phil was all, “Yeah, you’re supposed to rest, dumbass.” Actually, he was much nicer to me than that and even drew graphs to show that I was not doing myself any favors with my current regimen. But I realized he was right and called myself a dumbass. I took the day after that off, and—miracle of miracles!—my push-ups the following day were EASY.

So periodically, I’ve rested, once for two days in a row, and I’ve done up to 124 in a day. A lot of them still look ugly, I’m not gonna lie. And the only reason I’ve done them is because I made this ridiculous pact with Jed. (Thanks, Jed!)

But it’s June 28, and, people, I have 151 push-ups to reach 1,500. Now’s when you cheer me on.

Ten Things I Like About Myself

Ten things I like. About myself.

Ten things. I like. About myself.

This is a tough bit of homework, assigned by Coach Ashley to a bunch of us female CrossFit bloggers who, she noticed, tend to engage in a lot of conversations with ourselves in which we disparage our looks, bodies, and physical abilities. The requirement: ten things you like about or can do with your body. Not character traits. They don’t count.

What I noticed as I brainstormed was that wanted to qualify all of my ideas. Like, I smile with my whole face, but my teeth slant inward in a wholly unattractive way. Or, if they weren’t quite so square, my feet would be really cute.

I figured that disclaimers went against the spirit of the thing so I really concentrated to try to come up with things. Here we go:

1. I have nice eyes. They’re a cool color which morphs from blue to green to grey and back depending on what I’m wearing. When I’m not wearing mascara, which is all but about two nights a month, people think I am. When I am wearing mascara, people accuse me of wearing false eyelashes.

2. I’ve got rhythm. I’ve always loved to dance, and even today, I don’t listen to music while doing anything else because, if it’s on, I want to be dancing, and if I can’t be dancing, I get cranky.

3. (Related to #2) I’m coordinated. If you give me something to do with my body, and I have the strength, I’ll do it—often on the first try but definitely within a shorter time frame than the next guy.

4. My shoulders are all freckly. I know that’s just sun exposure, but I think it’s cute.

5. I have a strong back. Always have had. I gave a piggyback ride to my best friend’s 210-pound stepdad. When I was twelve.

6.

…

…

That’s all I got! And even as I wrote the list, which took two days, I felt compelled to document the myriad qualities and attributes that annoy or disgust me about myself. In fact, wait a minute.

Yep. Took me about 90 seconds to list an even dozen.

I think I’m gonna get a bad grade on my homework.

P.S. Here’s Nelly’s , Ashley’s, Colleen’s, Lindsay’s,  Bea’s and the bad-assest cancer-beating Melinda’s posts.

P.P.S. I was encouraged to include my ass in this list, but the assignment was things I like about myself. Not things others like about me. Or parts of me that are visible from space kinda like the Great Wall of China.