LaurieWrites

August is almost over. Like, any day.

I moved home from Dayton ten years ago this month, which I keep thinking about although hello, old news. And August, as usual, is kicking my ass. It can be such a mean month. For me it's just random and weird and doesn't seem to have a common thread that I can identify beyond an insane amount of mental and emotional energy required at work. Therefore, a progress report, a gathering-in, if you will:

Yesterday a student winked at me and said some crazy things to try to cut the line and I can't remember what childrens' story it is where the people turn to ice when you looked at them a certain way because they completely sucked and deserved to be ice? Narnia? I don't remember. Anyway, he did, he turned to ice right there in the chair, except he was ice who could get right up and leave when I told him there was a line and to step off. And my overall reaction to this part of my life means that I immediately decided that I was, indeed, going to go to New Orleans for Voodoo Festival Halloween weekend (it seemed like an entirely logical conclusion to me) and God I hope the $77 fares are still on today because I totally did not complete the sale. 

Haha, this lineup makes me laugh and laugh. (Except for the Black Keys. That part makes me really happy without laughter. I really like them.)

And who can't use a little Kiss, a little Janes, a little Eminem even on the weirdest holiday of the year? (Besides Arbor Day. I like trees, I've just never gotten why they needed a whole day.) And did I mention I'm going with my father, whose apparently newest musical goal is to see Kiss in New Orleans? Oh Daddy. He's been practicing his guitar a lot. He's going to come home with an earring any day now. 

I can't wait, honestly. I've gone on about loving New Orleans in this space before and it'll probably always be a theme. October should be so nice there. Moving on.

Last night I went to the gym for the first time in weeks and did not die, although I did come home and fall directly asleep in a gross, drooly way during Maddow and when I got up off the couch to actually go to bed like a normal person my back was all, GAH, so that was scary because I need my back to work.

I told Twitter right after work that I was going to go so I couldn't back out. I was all BECKY I AM GOING TO THE GYM and since she had already gone (in the morning. Bitch.) I had that in my mind, not like Becky is really going to give a damn if I back out but it's a thing, a thing in my head that works so I run with it. (Honestly? Becky is the best Twitter cheerleader ever. And I'm sure other than Twitter, this is just where she pops up in my life most frequently at the moment. She's @beckydmbr if you're on there and um, don't know her, because you probably do come to think of it. Also do not piss her off. I just wouldn't advise it, because I mean why would you do that?)

I think I can even go back again, though, and although I haven't weighed myself I don't think I've gained back crazy weight. Maybe even none. People keep looking at me in this weird, awkward, "what have you done" kind of way and I'm mostly ignoring it so it doesn't freak me out too much. I do appreciate compliments, it's just weird to deal with them sometimes. I have 25 pounds to go and this is going to be a bitch, I know it, especially because I went to Candy Heaven (yes it is a real place) this weekend and bought an absurd amount of German gummy bears which are just so fabulous you have no idea and variety packs of Nerds that I didn't need but I have a serious Nerd problem. I'm working that shit out on Twitter too.

Devra and Sarah are going to have a Biggest Loser-style contest on their site and I decided to do it because you know, there's nothing like sharing your weight loss hell with other people. Highly motivational. Actually I do have a lot of ideas and tips that have worked for me that I'm feeling oddly benevolent enough to share with other people, which is honestly why I like to do these things. Plus, I won when I did the Biggest Loser at work in the spring. Maybe it's my lucky thing.

I went to a crayfish festival at Ikea this weekend. It was very strange. I have pictures that I haven't dealt with yet from that experience. I also saw 500 Days of Summer which broke my heart in 17 pieces as I knew it would but my recovery period is SO SHORT anymore so that's nice. I saw the movie with someone who made it seem like a good idea to move to Virginia which, although I knew this person had magic powers, just kind of confirmed that. I'm still mulling that over, because, well, Virginia.

Also, I came out as mildly crazy over here. That was a nice start to the week. I really appreciate what Leah is trying to do with the site and I finally decided I was more afraid of never contributing to the discussion than anything that could result from owning my own experience there. So yeah.

Finally, Neil made me his blog crush of the day the other day and I have to admit, that was fun and cool and very much appreciated.

Parts of 2009, big sections of it actually, I really really love. And the rest is just necessary ass-kicking I guess. I have a lot of stuff on my mind, decisions to make and large concepts to put in order in my head. I think I'm on the verge of some things. Some of it is really great, some of it just makes me really tired to think about and I do still get sad from time to time but again, the refractory period is so much shorter. That's good.

And now I have to go answer inane questions and get some coffee, in reverse order. Here, here's a picture of oysters. I'm fond of it, can't lie.

Blanket and other nicknames

Cross-posted at BlogHer.

My given name is Laurie (rhymes with "sorry", technically) to most people, much to the horror of the priest who baptized me and my third grade teacher Sister Patricia because although I was not named after a Partridge Family character it's still not a saint's name so basically to them I was Laurence. It's "Yo" and "hey" and increasingly, horribly, "Ma'am" to many more. Some people in a far off land I occasionally inhabit call me "Professor," that is when they're not calling me "Yo." Go ahead. Laugh. I do.

And some people call me lauriewrites. It's like I told them to or something. 

Speaking more personally, my name was switched up to Lou Ann by my grandmother who was the only person ever allowed to call me that or who would likely have a reason to. I was called "baby" almost exclusively for years by a man I'd kind of still like to kick in the knees on the rare occasion that I wear closed toe shoes, to the point that I rarely remember him saying my name. My cousin sticks with my name but called me LaLa for years because that was all she could say when we started out talking and it still comes out sometimes as a joke or an aside. I am ever Laurie Anne to my uncles and aunts and LDub - my personal current favorite - to a few of my closest colleague friends at work, who all have shortened versions of their names from me as well.

What do the people who love you call you? What do you call the people you love, and I'm only talking about the nice things, not the mad things. 

Keep that in the back of your mind, while I spin out and remind you that Michael Jackson died this summer. And although it was and remains a weird spectacle of family strife and drugs and nannies and Jermaine hosting benefits with Shawn King, wife of Larry, I still only care because in addition to the fact that I was a 70s and 80s kid and Michael Jackson died, as in permanently, I was and remain straight up fascinated that his youngest child, Prince Michael II, is called Blanket, both allegedly within his family and in the news media. 

Blanket. Prince Michael Jackson II aka Blanket Jackson, so named because of the blanket his father used to put over his head when he had to go out in public. (And yes, weird things frequently fascinate me.) 

At first I thought Michael was turning the media idiocy on its head and making friends with the enemy, as in "Make me feel like I have to hide my kid under a blanket and I'll show you. That's what I'll call him. I'm owning this one, bitches."

But maybe not, because I read on several marginally reliable sites (WikiHow? What?) that Michael allegedly said this: "It's an expression I use with my family and my employees. I say, 'You should blanket me or you should blanket her', meaning like a blanket is a blessing. It's a way of showing love and caring."

Which is probably the truth, although I'm not sure. Doesn't that sound like it would be the truth, though? Because look who we're talking about here. And whether it's true or not, what is true is that if Blanket's family wanted to call him Blanket, that was kind of up to them.

Names are important. Names matter, and I am unusually interested in them. Your name is how the world knows you and to some extent it's how you have to know yourself so you can do important things like endorse checks and get driver's licenses and fly on planes and pick up carryout orders. (Although for that? That last thing? Making up names is a small creative exercise if you're bored.)

Nicknames are important too - terms of endearment, shortenings of given names or inclusions of middle names in the interest of familiarity, affection, or maybe just laziness if someone's name issuper long and a couple of initials will do the trick just fine. 

Although Blanket sounds as really, really random as I really believe it is, things that are not actually names do indeed become people's names. People get called HalfPint and Homeslice and Scooter and Puddin and Tootie and Pookie (Seriously. The last two have turned into everyday names for cousins of mine who were never called Mary Jo or Dorothea unless they were in some serious trouble, I'd bet.)

My grandmother's name was Marie Louise but as is often the case with siblings her brother and sister called her Sissy and she was Sis to everyone in her life for 80 years (80!) except official business types. And it was weird when she moved into long-term care facilities and the myriad nurses and social workers and aides switched her back into a Marie in her last years, when she was always a Sis. She shared her name with her mother, also a Marie Louise in an unusual female senior/junior kind of situation.

My grandmother, tall and silver-haired, no-nonsense and obsessed with yard work and taking care of children, looked like a Sis, as I often believe people turn into a reflection of their names, as they come to look like how we know them, as they come to look like themselves. Sis looked better Magic Markered on a bowling bag, or on the underside of a Tupperware container at church. It made sense. Marie was her big girl clothes, her high heels, as pretty a name as it is. Sis and still sometimes Sissy were her everyday kicks. They fit better. 

Come to think of it, my mother's mother called her Sister too, the middle girl with three brothers, although my Southern Virginia-influenced  Grandma said "Sista." I have a little sister so it's surprising that I didn't fall in the same line. 

To be clear, all of this in no way means that if your brother calls you Jackass you should embrace it. Bad, unrequested nicknames are terrible and can and should be summarily rejected. There are exceptions to every warm and fuzzy rule, because there are people who will call their brother Jackass, even without provocation, and these people ruin good times and still send e-mail chain letters too. 

Laurie is what I need to get things done and answer questions and get my paycheck, that sort of thing. But LDub makes me smile, just like Laurie Anne pulls me back to the center of gravity when I'm with my family. I couldn't have predicted this when I started out, because as planned and protracted as formal name choices are for parents, the very best nicknames are organic. We earn them. They come about in everyday back and forth with people who usually see the most of us and know us the best and who therefore see us at our best and worst.

I gave Lou Ann back earlier this year. No one will ever call me that again and really that's for the best because no one could rock that less than awkwardly except my grandma. So I put it in my archive and know that someone loved me enough to make it up while we were hanging out around the house when I was a baby. That's gold. You keep that stuff forever, and take it out when everything else feels particularly underwhelming and it should help at least a little. 

I'll stop myself from thinking that his name may be the least of his concerns and say anyway that I don't know if Blanket will stay Blanket or even Prince or go the Zowie Bowie route (also? Not a nickname. Totally on purpose.) and switch himself up to Tom or Bill or, more appropriately, Mike. His life - and the people in it - will help figure that out for him.

Nicknamey Stuff Around the Web: 

I am (now) openly blog-stalking Disnazzio who is a new find for me and conveniently happens to be writing more lately. I Just Wanted to be Sure of You, a post about her friend Bucko and why their mutual nickname has a lot to do with their relationship, made me cry tears of relatedness. It's quite beautiful. 

 Jess at Du Wax Loo Lu likes the options for nicknames in her own name and is thinking about how to handle naming her children.

If you're feeling neglected, name yourself. Shaquille O'Neal does. Shaq Fu? Shaqquie Robinson? Go for it. 

Joanna Goddard talks terms of endearment specifically on A Cup of Jo. 

Victoria at Victoria is Only a Wee Bit Crazy gives people nicknames so she'll remember who they are. No kidding.  I'm trying desperately not to wonder if anyone has ever done this to me because it's so not about me. I may be failing. 

My favorite online Half-Pint tweets Laura Ingalls Wilder-style.  

Family and Photography Contributing Editor Laurie White writes at LaurieWrites and shares this post in honor of the best kind of happy accidents.  

Stones revisited

(I want to make this italic but I don't so I'll go parenthetical, bear with me. I got nothin today because I'm a bit pressed for time and mental space, but I've been thinking about this post a lot, maybe because of Virginia Woolf showing up a lot in my life this week and maybe because of other things. It's old. I'm going to link it if you want to see it in its natural habitat but I'm also going to copy and paste it because I'm obsessive-compulsive. If I had to name my top five things I've ever written, I think this would be pretty high on the list, and since I seem to have a lot of new people about I thought it'd be nice to share. It holds up in my heart, too. If you've known me for any span of time you've likely heard me say that life is a circle, which I do indeed believe. It's a Big Head Todd song, one I carry with me all the time. Things curve away, they come back to me. They're here and gone and then something else is instead.

And somehow this all fits together in my head.

This is from, let's see, April 2, 2007...and written in the Milestone Germantown Borders. I spent a lot of time there during a particular chapter.)

I'm sitting in the bookstore trying to grab ahold of the words before they leave me. The game club of Maryland is gathered here, and the bookish men and women at the  table next to me are playing a card name whose name I can't remember, even though I recognize it on sight. I once sat across the table from someone and learned to play it myself, wondering why I was there when it made no sense to be, beyond the fact that I have a tendency to put myself in risky places when I stubbornly and often stupidly feel it's worth it.

Names dance across my screen - words and facts and possibilities that I'm trying to file alphabetically under what makes sense, whittling them down into a decision that lets me sleep at night, even if I have to sell my car or walk strange city streets alone and mostly unafraid to do it. Sometimes I don't think I can, that I'll just let the waves of the next thing wash over me until I'm that half mile down the beach that you float before you even realize it, when all of a sudden the familiar umbrella and your people are specks down the shore, waving you back if you choose to pay attention.

When Virginia Woolf walked into the water of the River Ourse and didn't emerge, the stones weighing down her pockets, I can't imagine that no one saw, but maybe that's just because someone has usually been watching me - not known to be a strong swimmer. Still, I've never been truly afraid of the ocean, and can spend more time than you'd believe floating on my back, finding the mellow spot past the breakers where it's warm, going up and over the tiny waves, chasing the sun on the tops of my legs and my chest and my face.

On that same odd trip to the beach when a truly very sweet man and I played that card game, I took a photograph of an exceptional sunset. When I finally made it to the sand the next day, I was alone. It was cold out, walking into the water out of the question, except dipping my toes in to say I touched the ocean, a personal ritual regardless of the season or temperature. I sat on the sand with a notebook on that cold March day, and there was no one around for a good distance. It occurred to me that at that moment, temperature aside, I could walk into the water and just not stop, nothing on the other side but China - a concept we'd been taught as children digging holes for sand castles. We ignored the barrier of Europe and Africa beyond the Atlantic, even the idea of the Far East as ephemeral as air then.

I remember writing this idea of immersion down that day, feeling guilty for even thinking about it, knowing I'd never do it, knowing as sure as I sat there that later that day I'd be getting in a car and heading home, gazing out the window and wishing things different, but far away from this idea and the ocean itself. Still when I thought it, I wondered if, miles or just yards away as it happened that people who cared about me were, would they feel it? Was there an imperceptible shift in the air around the people close to them when people did things like walk into rivers not intending to emerge? Especially when they succeeded? There had to be, I thought - at least a palpitation or a whisper of an itch. But maybe not.

Woolf wrote to her husband in her suicide note, "You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good," one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever read. "You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be." They didn't find her for 21 days, after which he buried her under a tree in their garden, a last act of being in every way all that anyone could be.

It is a gift to be that way for people, and it's not easy at all. I see it in the people I love, who take care of each other. I see it as they try to figure out what the deal is here for themselves. And I know firsthand that it's hard and often impossible to be entirely patient, and beyond that to be incredibly good, and to still be honest, and to keep your sanity all at once.

I'm not sure how I went tonight from watching tables full of people having a perfectly good time playing a variety of card games whose names I can't remember to thinking about Virginia Woolf walking into the water, or myself sitting by it, for that matter, with the wind kicked up so hard that I couldn't hold the pages down to write what was in my troubled heart. That day was years ago and most things related to it I've tried mostly to forget in the ongoing reinvention of my 30s, in my determination not to let the too-important past be my entire prologue, and maybe to even surprise myself with a renewed capacity for joy. Details - that sunset, my shoes, the bay in the wind from a second-floor balcony - have come back as I've sat here escaping the things that are important now, today. My rivers, and increasingly the ocean they spill into, are figurative. I'm signed on for the duration here, and although there aren't enough storm metaphors in existence to fully express how that's gone, or might yet go, the rocks are on the shoreline, long since removed from my pockets. There's no room for them in there, with all the spare change and lipstick.

I wish that someone had run into Virginia on her way to the river, like so many someones have run into me, and a glance or a word had pierced her resolve to emancipate her husband from a situation he'd have dealt with gladly, most likely, into her old age. I wonder what something would have brought her out of the darkness. Her story has always nagged at me, is one of the pieces of evidence that sometimes things don't work out, seems a waste. The thought of purposefully drowning scares me sitting here - going under, losing breath, weighted.

The people sit around me and play cards, moving pieces methodically around on boards, deep in thought, talking excessively about trading imaginary gold and building kingdoms. Greek gods are somehow involved at one table as well. One man's voice has a pitch so low it dominates the room, an incessant droning of rules and strategy. I'm going back to the word arranging, to researching the facts, trying to make them mesh with my intuition and my common sense, to discard the idea of stopping the droning man and having him ask his shamans and mages in khakis and oxford shirts to check their runes and make a best guess about this actual human life.

Names dance across my screen - words and facts and possibilities that I'm trying to file alphabetically under what makes sense, whittling them down into a decision that lets me sleep at night, even if I have to sell my car or walk strange city streets alone and mostly unafraid to do it. Sometimes I don't think I can, that I'll just let the waves of the next thing wash over me until I'm that half mile down the beach that you float before you even realize it, when all of a sudden the familiar umbrella and your people are specks down the shore, waving you back if you choose to pay attention.

When Virginia Woolf walked into the water of the River Ourse and didn't emerge, the stones weighing down her pockets, I can't imagine that no one saw, but maybe that's just because someone has usually been watching me - not known to be a strong swimmer. Still, I've never been truly afraid of the ocean, and can spend more time than you'd believe floating on my back, finding the mellow spot past the breakers where it's warm, going up and over the tiny waves, chasing the sun on the tops of my legs and my chest and my face.

On that same odd trip to the beach when a truly very sweet man and I played that card game, I took a photograph of an exceptional sunset. When I finally made it to the sand the next day, I was alone. It was cold out, walking into the water out of the question, except dipping my toes in to say I touched the ocean, a personal ritual regardless of the season or temperature. I sat on the sand with a notebook on that cold March day, and there was no one around for a good distance. It occurred to me that at that moment, temperature aside, I could walk into the water and just not stop, nothing on the other side but China - a concept we'd been taught as children digging holes for sand castles. We ignored the barrier of Europe and Africa beyond the Atlantic, even the idea of the Far East as ephemeral as air then.

I remember writing this idea of immersion down that day, feeling guilty for even thinking about it, knowing I'd never do it, knowing as sure as I sat there that later that day I'd be getting in a car and heading home, gazing out the window and wishing things different, but far away from this idea and the ocean itself. Still when I thought it, I wondered if, miles or just yards away as it happened that people who cared about me were, would they feel it? Was there an imperceptible shift in the air around the people close to them when people did things like walk into rivers not intending to emerge? Especially when they succeeded? There had to be, I thought - at least a palpitation or a whisper of an itch. But maybe not.

Woolf wrote to her husband in her suicide note, "You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good," one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever read. "You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be." They didn't find her for 21 days, after which he buried her under a tree in their garden, a last act of being in every way all that anyone could be.

It is a gift to be that way for people, and it's not easy at all. I see it in the people I love, who take care of each other. I see it as they try to figure out what the deal is here for themselves. And I know firsthand that it's hard and often impossible to be entirely patient, and beyond that to be incredibly good, and to still be honest, and to keep your sanity all at once.

I'm not sure how I went tonight from watching tables full of people having a perfectly good time playing a variety of card games whose names I can't remember to thinking about Virginia Woolf walking into the water, or myself sitting by it, for that matter, with the wind kicked up so hard that I couldn't hold the pages down to write what was in my troubled heart. That day was years ago and most things related to it I've tried mostly to forget in the ongoing reinvention of my 30s, in my determination not to let the too-important past be my entire prologue, and maybe to even surprise myself with a renewed capacity for joy. Details - that sunset, my shoes, the bay in the wind from a second-floor balcony - have come back as I've sat here escaping the things that are important now, today. My rivers, and increasingly the ocean they spill into, are figurative. I'm signed on for the duration here, and although there aren't enough storm metaphors in existence to fully express how that's gone, or might yet go, the rocks are on the shoreline, long since removed from my pockets. There's no room for them in there, with all the spare change and lipstick.

I wish that someone had run into Virginia on her way to the river, like so many someones have run into me, and a glance or a word had pierced her resolve to emancipate her husband from a situation he'd have dealt with gladly, most likely, into her old age. I wonder what something would have brought her out of the darkness. Her story has always nagged at me, is one of the pieces of evidence that sometimes things don't work out, seems a waste. The thought of purposefully drowning scares me sitting here - going under, losing breath, weighted.

The people sit around me and play cards, moving pieces methodically around on boards, deep in thought, talking excessively about trading imaginary gold and building kingdoms. Greek gods are somehow involved at one table as well. One man's voice has a pitch so low it dominates the room, an incessant droning of rules and strategy. I'm going back to the word arranging, to researching the facts, trying to make them mesh with my intuition and my common sense, to discard the idea of stopping the droning man and having him ask his shamans and mages in khakis and oxford shirts to check their runes and make a best guess about this actual human life.

It's back. A little bit. Maybe. Damn.

So. I've been in a good mood for months. Months. Happy shiny months of months.

I went to BlogHer. I came home. I started writing again. I went to the beach, for a fabulous week. I came home. People like me in a good mood. I like me in a good mood.

And then I crashed. It kind of started at the end of vacation, the weird way I get when things are just a little off, the frequency starts humming just a little too loud and nothing helps. I'm owning it here because I don't know what else to do with it anymore, honestly, but also because I figure if I can go back to making this a daily practice when nothing else is happening with any consistency, at least that's something. 

And what I do when this happens is I isolate. I go back to my literal and figurative basement. I do not want to talk about it. I want to sit and not talk. I don't want to tell anyone what really goes on in here, because really? It's not interesting and it's not engaging and time is limited for even interesting and engaging things.

Maybe not writing about things keeps them buried. Maybe that was the purpose of keeping myself on lockdown for a year. Or it's like a conference hangover, you know, you're surrounded by all of this positive reinforcement and "you can do it", it's all Amway and Mary Kay but it's not, it's the epically cooler versions of those. And you start to think - I'm doing it again, writing in the "you" speak when really I mean me, I hate when I do that - I start to think of all the things I want and need and maybe should do to bring some order to these proceedings.

I knew things were building up. Old patterns started repeating (Addicts to any kind of behavior or substance will likely recognize this statement.) When I start listening to August and Everything After on repeat and the "I should never have left Ohio" mental tape starts playing I know I'm screwed, which, as true as it may be, and lord knows I have so much love in my heart for Dayton, it's not useful thinking because it didn't happen, and I needed to get out of that place when I did because if I hadn't I wouldn't have left and I'd be divorced with 2.5 children and driving around Centerville drinking wine out of a sippy cup, no question. (But property values? Could totally own my own house to be drunk in.) August 9 was my tenth anniversary back in Maryland. Maybe I can blame it on that.

Everything started triggering tears again, and I hadn't been doing that shit for MONTHS. It's not like I set out to do it on purpose, it just happens and I get so ANGRY when I feel it happening again, because it just doesn't seem fair that it happens when I'm just cruising along minding my own business and trying to do good things and really when I'm in that place I am super. Even I can cop to that at this point. In any event I'm the opposite of sitting there going, "Oh, thanks, this has been great, could I please have a MOTHERFUCKING MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL END OF SUMMER SALE???? THANKS DUDE! GOT IT COVERED THANKS."And as always happens, something stupid triggered it.

Saturday I went to see Julie and Julia, which I didn't really hate although I thought I would, and it plunged me into a ridiculous horrible pit of depression because I don't have my own kitchen (I'm not kidding. This is huge right now for some reason. It's like I want to make pot roast every night or start a cupcake of the week club. I. Am. Insane.) This is also no one's fault but mine. These are life choices writ large. And also my blog sucks and no one loves me as much as that little man loved Julia Child even though she talked like that all damn day and I didn't come up with the idea to cook 365 days of recipes that I stole from someone in order to get a book and then a movie deal and everything just sucks it sucks it sucks, are you going to eat that meatball? No? Thanks. And perhaps more wine? 

I had an embarrassing episode immediately following the movie based on the confluence of these factors and my entire weekend tanked, miserably. See how fast that happens? I am a phenom with the overanalysis and the crazy.

Speaking of wine and meatballs, I've also been off the regular exercise routine that had been going so well and really went down the drain between BlogHer and the beach, because you know what? I was TIRED. I did a few crazy long walks on the beach which probably helped keep me stable for the amount of beer I drank while I was there and I think I may have needed a break from the almost daily literal beating I was taking at the gym. It's just so easy to spiral out of control if I let it go even for a little while. Even a week is too long. It also turns out that workouts are essential to my mental wellbeing, and without them, I end up here again, where I do not want to be. And it's really easy to go down in a hole about this particular issue, especially when once I've broken the workout cycle it's SO hard to get back in the groove. All the head games start again and these games are complex and difficult to win.

Oh, read Devra's post about body image while we're on the subject. I've gone on about it almost everywhere else so I may as well do it here too. Her comments about this particular issue are important.

ISSUES, I have issues. I'm trying honesty around here. It may or may not be working.

And yet. And yet. I am trying. I'm thinking of the lists of things to be thankful for, which makes me stabby more than it helps sometimes, because I kind of like my gratitude to be natural and not forced, but maybe I need to get over myself where that's concerned too. I am trying to be forgiving and understand why people intrude upon your personal physical and psychic space with weird comments and invasive behavior, why they won't pick up on social cues to behave just a little bit differently, please stay behind the yellow line until your number is called, that sort of thing. I am trying not to say mean things to my students. I am trying not to purposefully seek out things that will upset me. (This is a big one that will make no sense to anyone but maybe two people but it's here for the record and let's just say I need to let the past stay in the past. The poorly dressed, overly critical past.)

I haven't been very much fun to be around for the past two weeks, and I don't like it either. Knowing that action cures anxiety, I have assignments for myself, the life management shit I hate, and I'm trying very hard to take an action every day. I know what to do, the ass-kicking I need to give myself to avoid the bad places. The long-term goal list needs to be revisited. And as for the short-term, I'm going to try to go back to kickboxing, because if there's anything I need right now it's aggressive physical activity. Listening to a lot of pissed off screamy music is helping too. And I need to communicate even when I don't feel like it with people I know are good influences, because at times like this I'm editing myself before I open my mouth or type a word and that's part of the problem.

And it turns out that due to the muscle deterioration that quickly occurs when one stops working out in a concentrated fashion for almost a month, I've lost two more pounds. So you know, there's that. 

Counteracting the bad place:

Karen is amazing. Her pictures are amazing. These are amazing. 

Schmutzie shared this recording of Virginia Woolf on her linkblog and as much as I love most of the stuff that Schmutzie does, I particularly enjoyed this. 

I spent some good time at last year's San Francisco BlogHer with Jenna at the Word Cellar and this post on turning envy into inspiration is getting some good attention today, for good reason.

Margaret and Helen are awesome too.

Janis at Woodstock

Woodstock happened 40 years ago yesterday. I was minus one and a half years old, so it all happened without my knowledge. Also I grew up in a house that worshiped the Band so I've got some history, plus I've studied up. I went to the 1994 version in Saugerties which was kind of crazy and honestly I don't remember much but being grossed out by how filthy it was and how much I was learning to hate forced crowd situations and asshole guys who don't have anything to add to a conversation or an experience besides punching each other, although I did manage to go up on a hill and catch NIN and my Chilis before we had to leave. All things considered I had a better musical experience with them at Lollapalooza 1992, which was right up the street at Lake Fairfax and had a ridiculous lineup. Still one of the most fun days of my life and also, GAH, old.

If I could see one person perform live although it's physically impossible it would be Janis Joplin. Everything's been said about her that needs to be.

Seven Christmas Eves ago my ex-boyfriend left my house to go home to his parents'. I'd given him his presents and in cleaning up the paper and other crap on the dining room table, I found a wrapped stack of what were clearly cds. No card, no nothing. I opened it and it was Janis Joplin's cds. I assumed they were from him, and that in his weird universe it was ok to leave a covert Christmas gift on my table in a pile of stuff and not say anything to me.

In a shocking act of assertiveness, I called him up and told him that at least he could have mentioned that these were from him, and um, maybe something about the act of gift-giving could be nice for a change instead of some weird, awkward throwaway action. I cried out of frustration and proof of my  knowledge that he'd just never get it and neither would I (This dysfunctional exchange, like all of them, had everything to do with our relationship and the chemical interaction that made us both love each other dearly and hate each others' guts. By the way.)

Not only did I think this was kind of a bizarre choice as a Christmas gift because we'd been dating for a long time and because if there's anything I do it's keep myself in music and that may sound bitchy but it's hard to explain, the whole situation. He knew he was screwed and he hadn't even managed to weird out over my birthday two days later yet. He finally admitted that his sister told him it was dumb not to at least hand me my present, and then he uttered a phrase that basically summed up our entire relationship:

"But it was her entire catalog."

Good thing for him that Janis died at 27. And thanks to her the part of my brain that cares what I get in recognition of any holiday sort of shorted out and I've since realized that it doesn't matter. People either get it or they don't and no amount of wishing, or gifting, can make it so in the "don't" cases. Anyway she's right:

"Music's for grooving man, and music's not for putting yourself through bad changes. You don't have to take anybody's shit, just to like music. Music's supposed to be different than that."

I wish her life had been as easy - or as manageable, anyway - as she was talented.

This annoys me because it's all stills but if you haven't seen Festival Express check it out for this performance - and also if you're a music history geek in any way. I saw it in a theater in Baltimore and I cried real tears. I'm such a dork but it was totally worth it.

She was quite a Capricorn. We take things pretty hard a lot of the time.

Saturday Errata

First of all, I just realized that Top Chef premieres Wednesday and it's kind of embarrassing how much I'm looking forward to this. Some people I know and trust to have excellent taste are crazy about Mad Men and given that I've reduced my tv schedule down to approximately nothing else besides CNN, Bones (God I love that show) and The Office I'm a little afraid to watch it once because I'm sure that I'd get just as crazy. Also I have never seen True Blood. Don't talk to me about it, please. I can't add anything else to my already epic procrastination files, not a thing.

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In the "intentions for the universe" department, I went to an art show at an oppressively hot D.C. gallery on Friday night. It was mixed media but a lot of it was photography. I think I could put some of my own stuff out there, judging from what I saw. Some of it is way better than mine, some of it is just, eh, I'll admit I thought "Wow, I have some pictures that can kick that picture's ass." (I immediately feel guilty about that and want to erase it. I'm not going to. Go ahead. Judge me.) Anyway, I think I might try. If I write it down maybe I'll actually do it.

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I guest-posted on Greeblemonkey yesterday because I love Aimee and she asked and honestly I was totally flattered that she asked. I ended up rambling on about a Dave Matthews Band show I went to with her last summer when I was in Denver for the DNC, and Duran Duran discussions with Sarah and her and other matters related to music and making friends on the Internet who you totally would have been friends with if you had met them in real life first. The Internet - and the  blogging community I happen to hang out in - came in quite handy in these cases.

This is Aimee and me at that show. I love that she included this photo and thank her in advance for letting me share it here. I'm not sure why I look like I'm crying, or maybe stoned, because no, neither. At least I don't remember crying. Maybe I was overcome with Internet friendship, or altitude. I worked so hard that week and my D90 was stolen and I fell unceremoniously in a street in downtown Denver when I was hanging out with my girl Heather C. and also lost my press pass (I'm not kidding when I say I need a minder) so this night out with Aimee was pretty much the highlight, second only to being in Invesco/Mile High Stadium when President Obama accepted the nomination - a first place that she would understand better than almost anyone.)

Note: Aimee will come and pick you up on a street corner after you've met her one time and take you to dinner and to the amazing Red Rocks, if you call her and ask her and throw in a show ticket. Total score.

She also included this shot of Sarah and me that I'll put here again just because I can and I want it on my blog too, yo.

Sarah makes me look good in general. I first recall meeting her for real while attempting to slice my finger off in a door at BlogHer DC last fall. (If this was not the first time I'm sorry, it's like you've always been here dude what can I say? ;)) This didn't bode well for good pictures but we've had a run of good luck since then. I can't make her stand next to me all the time which is a shame. This photo - especially notable because it was way past wine o'clock and my eyes are still open - was taken by Laurie Smithwick, another friend who makes the best kind in real life because she makes me think better and makes me smile big. 

Oh, what the hell. It's Laurie and me. Lauries, even.

I like you guys, all y'all. I keep threatening (like, myself, in my own brain) to do a really late BlogHer post and maybe I will. This year was good.

Haha, Denise, look! I wrote "really late BlogHer post" and I actually meant the conference but that is such an honestly ambiguous statement. May this new leaf turn over with reckless abandon.

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The post I wrote for Aimee is largely about music. And somewhat related, I'm currently stalking archives because as stated above I have these friends now from the computer and I'm realizing how much of their actual blogs I've missed over my past three years of failing at reading blogs (or because I didn't really know them well yet so it wasn't technically my fault. Deflect, deflect! Also I could link like 20 more people which I probably should if I'm going to do it at all but I can't take the pressure. You know who you are.) I am forcing myself to sit still for much of today because I'm fried, and therefore just read a list of Sarah's top 100 albums that she wrote three years ago (do not go back and read it Sarah because you might start arguing with yourself. Leave it alone.)

Sarah and I have some things in common so it's not so surprising that large parts of her music category, in fact, (minus some of the kids' stuff with which I'm not familiar because I just have no reason to turn it on most of the time although I'm essentially a child, and the death metal because I just never went there in spite of my obsession with hair and harder, albeit mainstream, metal) are right out of my life. I'm kind of tempted to try my own list but the thought is so daunting that I'm trying to talk myself out of it, and I'd have to follow the honesty rule and frankly I like some really embarrassing shit. Let's just say reading this made me want to write about music more. I'll probably start with this a little later, just for grins. Maybe you should too.

I really do love archives, which I actually don't think is so weird. I read Eden Kennedy's and Wendy McClure's sometimes just because the writing is so good and it doesn't get old for me. I'll take inspiration where I can get it.

And on a few key points that I'll mention here, Sarah, so I can embarrass myself on my own blog rather than going back and obsessively commenting on three-year-old posts: You said "counterpoint structure in rock music" and I have no idea what that means so I'm glad there are people like you who do; Night Songs is the far superior record for Somebody Save Me and Nobody's Fool alone, although Coming Home is one of my favorite songs of all time and I think I might write about a recent interaction with it next; Soundgarden is one of the greatest bands ever and this is why I despise my ex-boyfriend Chris Cornell all the more for the travesty of his recent inexcusable solo material wherein he managed to remind me of Cher; I'm confused however by your omission of Temple of the Dog; none of Simon LeBon's lyrics make sense, except in Save a Prayer, marginally, and props to you for bonding with the first record because it's by far the best besides "New Religion" and "Last Chance on the Stairway" on Rio which win for (naturally) bass lines alone; I'd like a world with Cliff Burton, Shannon Hoon (my personal addition), Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley still in it. At the very least I feel confident that Cliff would have saved the world from the Napster hearings and the documentary where the band went through group therapy; more people should have always listened to the Cult because some of their stuff is genius, Fire Woman alone, good Lord, and Blood Sugar Sex Magic and Appetite = totally in my top ten, BSSM might have to be 1 or 2. Ten is in the top 15. Also Ramble On is my favorite Zeppelin song and on my top-ten favorite songs ever list as well. And I'll stop there. We are both very smart people with excellent taste, in my own mind. The end.

I could have e-mailed that but I really think my Chris Cornell rage needs to be shared with a wider audience. Bottom line? This archive-stalking really saves a lot of catch-up time.

(Also I'm using the word "stalk" facetiously here. Real, creepy stalking is not funny or appealing at all in the slightest. Don't make me tell you how in-depth my site stats are. Really, because I don't want to talk about it. Moving on. Lalala.)

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Finally, because my mother is making me leave my house to go see Julie and Julia, a book I disliked for much the same reasons that I disliked Eat, Pray, Love (I know. I'm not a real person, and also clearly not a girl either. Bring on the hate, bring it.) and a movie I'm not too excited to see either but she is and I'm curious in a voyeuristic sort of way about how blogging will be portrayed so I'm going, I want this. Badly.

I just got my time capsule e-mail from Photojojo.com, and they sell it through their site (in the "awesomeness" category in their store. I concur.) I've had a combined camerabag/purse for a number of months now because I take my SLR everywhere - hi robbers please don't follow me and steal it, I'm scrappy and hard to pin down anyway, always on the move, yes - and it's fraying on the edges and generally making me look like the crazy camera bag lady, so I needed something cute and functional and this totally scores.

You should get the Time Capsule too. Connect it to your Flickr account and twice a month they e-mail you with a bunch of images that you uploaded exactly a year ago. It's very cool. If you're a nostalgia junkie like me it fits that bill plus it reminds me of pictures I'd completely forgotten about. The only sad part is they sent me photos of my dog after he died and I was in a crappy mood and it kind of made me cry to see him pop up in my e-mail and I'm sure the same will happen with my grandma but whatever, it's still a genius idea and I support it completely. I'm sure they've been waiting for me to weigh in on it, so there it is.

He was cute though.

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I think that's more than enough from me. Make it a great day.

Your Child, My Life, Our Family

Cross-posted at BlogHer.

"Laurie, why did God put all that water out there?"

She spread her three-year-old arms out wide to the ocean, with which she was precariously making friends, running down and teetering on the edge of the water til the baby waves splashed over her feet, then quickly running back, countless times. It wasn't getting old.

Oh. Wow. Is that multiple choice? Be fast with the thinking, woman.

"I don't really know how it happened, sweet pea. But I guess he needed something to balance out all the earth and sand? Does that make sense?"

And um, there is matter, and the matter is in different forms, and this water matter came up out of the earth and oh wow, I'm so bad at science. It wasn't like I was actually painting my nails in class, although there were the multiple sub-par attempts at geology in college.

"Yeah."

"Okay? I'm sorry I don't know more."

"Yeah. I still like it."

"Me too."

And that was that. It may be bad to admit in response to such a heavy question that you have no idea, but I often don't know what else to do besides turn them into a discussion because me, what the hell do I know, so let's just be partners in not knowing. Solidarity - especially in wondering about things - is cool. And one of the bigger rocks of my life is that if I don't know the answer I say that. And in this case, out of deference to her parents' theology, I left the premise of the question alone completely. I'd been asked to be a godmother of sorts. Some things even I don't argue.

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The day before, her mother, my cousin and oldest friend, stood in the hallway of our beach place in a sun hat and asked me if I was going to come out and play in the sand - with her, mind you, not her child.

Building sand castles was big business for us as children spending a week together on this same vacation every year. She was into form and structure, whereas I've always specialized in the wet sand drippy variety given my challenges with both of those things. Her asking me this dead seriously at 38 in the same words she probably used at 8 meant I needed to pretend to need something in the other room so I could really just wipe tears away with a beach towel.

"I was wondering when you were going to come out and play with me," she said.

It's like oxygen to feel so valued, and you don't know you're suffocating til you get it sometimes. I am six months older. Our fathers are brothers. Our path together has been long and not always smooth, but she's on my I'd-take-a-bullet shortlist, because I get all girlified Clint Eastwood sometimes when I love you. And when it comes down to important things like a day at the beach, we all still need to play - we need the people who do it with us to be people we trust, who are fun, and in some cases who have been there for a long time.

The people in my life are generous in sharing their children with me. And it occurred to me a few times in a week lived by an immense body of water - did I mention it goes all the way to Europe, hello - with two little people I care about that one of the only good things about not having my own children might be the preservation of my remaining nerves. Even watching kids I love who are still in no way my own, I'm an overseer who makes up funny nicknames and makes stupid faces and basically keeps them in comedy routine mode for days, but the whole time, I'm watching you, ocean, so back off because I'll cut you. I'll cut...water. That's right. And I'm grabbing the three-year-old's hand although she's all, LET ME GO I'M OKAY and yelling obnoxiously at the seven-year-old to go against the current to swim back a little, before he's pulled halfway to the pier and can't find his way back because he's not paying a bit of attention to where anyone or anything is and WHY IS NO ONE ELSE NOTICING THIS TRAGEDY IN WAITING HERE? WHERE ARE YOU ALL? I AM ONLY ONE PERSON WHO IS NOT A STRONG SWIMMER.

It's so (honestly) blessed frightening to me to see those tiny little arms and legs trusting water that can sweep them out to sea or just to a bottom where no one can see. Raised by a mother who feared water, that's why I throw myself in now, but that's just me so it's okay. When it comes to the babies, hell no. Life vest? Seventeen big lifeguards? (The lifeguards at this beach look a little frail, I'm just saying.) Grade-A floaty things with extra flotation ability? Never enough. You can never. have. enough.

But it's clear that you also cannot let them see you panic, so you have to sing a song or just scream a name again like you're just naturally counting heads when your heart is caught by a really big huge wave. It turns out that all of this behavior is really exhausting.

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By the last day, she was running in fearless with her big brother, racing him from tide pool to shoreline, laughing out loud, Dora bathing suit easy to spot because it was hot pink and well, the big Dora face didn't hurt. It was all really beautiful to see. I calmed down. Some.

On the sand someone who loves me and her talks to me about adoption, about options. She makes it sound easy, and in theory it kind of is. There are children who need homes, there are people who need help, she says and I'm just the person to give it. I have the compassion. I have the desire. But my mind races and midway through the conversation I kind of want to scream and I start to feel agitated and overwhelmed and not really in the right place to discuss these choices.

People want to fix things for me, all the time. They want to fill in my blanks, settle me down the way they know I need it, and this is why I'm lucky because I am so loved. But it's not that simple. It's just me. I'm not sure if they get that part? How could I afford it? What if I got sick, who would step in? What if what if what if?

Also, if I'm honest? Do I want to handle a rack of front-loaded needs on my own? Do I have to? Is that even fair, to you or to me, as fragile as I can be some days, as in need of help myself, obviously or not? I know so well that I'm not a selfish person, I know that I can give until it hurts. And in some ways that's the problem.

And as much as I know they mean well, the overlay of "You can do this, because you do these things" makes it sound too easy, adds a subtext of "you should, because you can." I don't know. It's fairly easy to walk the beach and watch out for the safety of a child in a most temporary way. It's easy - for me - to build that relationship of humor and trust with her. At the end of the day, I'm not responsible (something else that's pointed out to childless people on occasion - the supposed bliss of that lack of permanence. People should think twice before they throw it out as a positive with some of us. Again, just saying.) I don't know if I can swing it, and it's the one thing in life I'd least want to - could afford to - screw up.

I ended the week existentially cranky and a little sad, not wishing to discuss uncomfortable things with people who cared about me, preferring to blame it on hormones or a personality flaw, whatever. It was harder this year to go back to a life that while it is in no way solitary (really, so many people, where did you all come from, hi!) has a hole that I dance around, that I often can't identify, that after years of screwing up by racing to fill, I just let lie and sometimes that's difficult but it's all I know to or if I'm being honest can do at this point.

I do not know what I'll choose. I do not know what life will present to me, or what will make sense to pursue. I'm making friends with moving forward in a rational way. But I do know that there is an ache real and finally permissible when I stand and watch a life that isn't and may well never be mine, when I stand temporarily in someone else's shoes, when at the end of every day I, one of the most social of animals I know, am fundamentally alone.

This is hard to write and may be hard to read. Truth sucks, even partially, sometimes. I refuse to varnish over it, in spite of my knowledge that I try to make the best choices, and the choices that would have possibly made me a mother so far have been quite the opposite.

It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It doesn't mean I'm not confused. It doesn't mean that sometimes I don't look back and chastise myself for the too-many years spent in this train wreck or that. It doesn't mean that tossed off suggestions that are meant to solve this dilemma for me don't piss me off even though I love the suggester with all my heart.

It also doesn't mean that I'm not at a happier, fuller place in my life than I've been in years, because I am. Conundrum.  Paradox. I have it covered.

It's a weird, strange beach, this life, and someone did put all that water out there, surrounding it. And like anyone's, it has moments of happy and moments of unbearable sadness that pass and then there's just you on the sand, watching a little girl who has a lifetime ahead of her jump in waves that won't kill her because you'd die first. And sometimes it matters who she belongs to, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it matters what you've got, but mostly it doesn't. It was, this summer, a mix of sad and happy tears. It was a lot like looking into the sun.

 

Three Places I've Lived - Roommate From Hell Edition

Becky, one of my new favorite people, tagged me in a note on a site that dares not speak its name. I occasionally do memes as a writing prompt, and because the past year or so it's been really hard for me to get anything written at all besides, well, nothing, I was doing it a lot - notes, lists, Yelp reviews, whatever. I obsessed over that 25 Random Things thing like I was gunning for a Pulitzer, and I can't remember what even one of them was now. Wait. Let me check.

They were really boring, actually. Did you know that I often count along with the syllables to words? As in tapping them out like Nell? No? Didn't care, either, did you? Should have definitely played that one funny. I kind of want to punch myself in the face now.

I had already written the Three Things thing last month that new favorite person Becky tagged me in. Typically, you list three things about yourself in each category, i.e., three tv shows I watch are Top Chef, CNN on endless loop and The Office and that's pretty much it, aren't you glad you know that now too? And also how unoriginal am I? At least I rent the Weeds dvds when I get a chance (which is never, never ever ever anymore. If my life would slow down I might be able to catch up with my stories, kids. But I'll never miss Top Chef. Write that down. No really. Write that down for me, please, so I remember I said it.)

ANYWAY, when I went back to this note to tag Becky, my answers to the three places I've lived actually made me laugh out loud, as in for real LOL. Apparently I had a lot of pent up feelings about these roommate situations. So now you get to read it too, if you want, and I get to put something on my blog from that nameless site and it all just kind of mashes up super nicely for a Monday evening that capped off a really traditionally underwhelming Monday, thanks for asking.

It should be noted that whereas I can be an embellisher in certain circumstances, my life and interpersonal encounters are fucked up weird enough on a daily basis to not really require it very much, and these descriptions are particularly accurate and unembellished. Sadly. Also I really loved living alone.

Three places I've lived (the roommate from hell edition:)

1. In a crazy grad student house in Dayton where my mail was stolen out of the box and I lived with an insane girl from Chicago who moved to Ohio to stalk her ex-boyfriend who went to the same university, who called everyone "jag-offs" and spent her time compulsively shopping at Wal-Mart and doing insane things. These included getting her car keyed at Wal-Mart because she yelled "FUCKING MOTOR" out the window of her car to a little Ohio lady who then apparently keyed her car while we were still inside; trying to write checks for her food at Subway and then raging because the Subway boy wouldn't take her check; telling my loveably, perpetually high boyfriend all about how she was going to get back at her perpetually high ex by writing an editorial in the school paper about marijuana use on campus, causing my said boyfriend to go, "Oh my God, you live with a narc. I can't be here."; getting into a fight with my other roommate and accusing her of drinking a beer each morning [ed. note: something she only figured out because she dug through the garbage to find each solitary can, hello KRAZY] quoting Sheryl Crow's lyric, "I like a good beer buzz/early in the morning" to her in a nasty note that pretty much ended all serenity in the house [ed. note: and escalated into a full-on, back and forth Post-It-Notes-on-doors war that stuck together added up to the length of War & Peace, because both of them, it turns out? Yeah. The K-word] until we all had to move out in second semester. Invigorating.

2. In a house in Kettering, Ohio, with a very neurotic girl who was on the phone talking to her friends or her mother loudly every morning by 7 a.m. and also stomping around at that hour in her played out Doc Martens (wtf? Who calls people just to randomly chat at 7 a.m.? I can't even talk yet at 7 a.m.) and ended up hating me because I didn't want to pay a $730 gas bill so charged because the previous tenants screwed with the meter and we didn't know it until they shut off our heat in February. In Ohio. In February. To which I replied, "Fuck you, Dayton Power & Light. There may not be any elderly people or children in this house but that stunt earns you none of my money." So then she got all crazy and passive-aggressive and started with the e-mail messages in stilted, weird language and eventually it just all fell apart and that was that.

3. In a horrible, alternately boiling hot or freezing cold house in Hyattsville with one normal guy who liked to dance the salsa dancing and played hockey on alternate nights, the totally shady Jimmy Buffett Parrothead wannabe Annapolis sailor without a boat who owned the place and a tiny British math ph.d student who drank a twelve pack warm in his room every night and wailed along poorly to pop/folk-type songs (i.e., Mad World by Gary Jules) and worse yet never (NE.VER.) flushed the toilet or put his food down the garbage disposal even though the hole is RIGHT THERE, just push your leftover salad down there and flip the switch, you pretend to be a hippie so shouldn't you be composting anyway?...Who wandered around drunk in the early morning hours doing things like breaking the bathroom window and helpfully explaining that "it broke" when asked whether or not someone had broken in or he'd punched it or what.

At least I don't name names.

 

Sincerely, the Breakfast Club

“The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude” ~ Ferris Bueller

I can't write adequately about John Hughes. I could find some conceit to carry my point, I'm sure. I could share a list of the quotes from his films that framed my adolescence and teen years, that I continue to use as the anchor for my Facebook quotes alongside "Ramble On" and Walt Whitman and other words that make up my salad of same.

"That's very clever, sir. But what if there's a fire? I think that violating fire codes and endangering the lives of children would be unwise at this juncture in your career, sir."

And.

"What in God's name was that ruckus?

"What ruckus?"

"I was just in my office and I heard a ruckus."

"Could you describe the ruckus, sir?"

And.

"Yes. I always carry this. much. shit. in my bag."

I could tell you the people I think I'm most like in the films, which seems to be the thing to do on the internet in response to his death.

And when two badass women opt to assign me mine, who am I to argue anyway?

(I actually voted for a mix of Alison and Brian (Ally Sheedy and Anthony Michael Hall) from the Breakfast Club with a dash of Watts from Some Kind of Wonderful, but whatever, little quiz and Laura. I guess I have to watch this again.)

I have seen the Breakfast Club more than one hundred times, more than the Wizard of Oz, I'd bet, and maybe more than The Sound of Music. I know every single line and visual cue in the film. I can recite it while it rolls along, something an ex challenged me to and lost, badly. I can mentally put my fist in the air like John Bender does at the end and I can feel the agitation because I'm quite certain, in my adult knowledge of endings that aren't always happy, that they did not all talk in the halls on Monday. John and Claire probably didn't date for very long, and Alison and Andy probably didn't last either (and I really hope she kept the patch from his jacket.)

It doesn't really matter. Maybe they're all off into the ether of adulthood except maybe they're awkward Facebook friends now. Maybe, except John Bender isn't because he doesn't believe in Facebook because why in the hell would he put all of that shit about himself online and freaking Claire does too many quizzes anyway, what, doesn't she have a life?

I also tear up every time Anthony Michael Hall kisses that paper he wrote the essay on at the end, because if you're going to wrap up something I love perfectly, it's going to be with something you wrote so well, even you know it so much that you congratulate yourself for it because you know no one's watching.

I always hoped he'd make another movie, something to bring it all full circle for us.

I loved John Hughes for the stuff he wrote, for the words he put in the mouths of characters just about my age at a time that summarily sucked for me. I disliked high school, for the most part. I was not a sunny person. I was socially awkward (that sounds really terrible. I hate that phrase even though I just used it, maybe because in some cases I feel like it so still applies, and it just means I'm sort of abnormally normal. The confidence thing? Lies. All lies, and ulcers, and utter denial, but I own my ability to fake it.) I was, in fact, quite the basket case. But what I always got was funny and I was a drama geek so that helped ease the pain there towards the end.

And really, it's funny to speak of all of this now. It seems pointless because it's been dealt with and worked through and I'm totally well-adjusted about it. It's no big revelation. It was such a long time ago. Oceans of water that won't fit under any existing bridges ago.

I survived on music, basically. That was what I did. And Cinnabon. And jean jackets. And spite.

I still think Simple Minds were one of the most underrated pop bands ever. This is the song from the movie, of course - from Live Aid, no less - but "Alive and Kicking," are you kidding me?

I had a little bit of a debate with one of my internet people yesterday about the loss of John Hughes. He wondered why people cared, if it wasn't a little much, if any of us whinging on about his 80s work could speak to any films he'd made recently, if it made any sense to grieve someone we didn't know personally? And I shared back with him a thought I've been carting around since Michael Jackson died, when everyone freaked out about people grieving a person accused of the things he was accused of. And in this case, in a very different circumstance involving a very different celebrity from a similar era, it is only the same in that it's not necessarily about the person himself. It's about something he created that had an effect on you at a very impressionable time, or is so evocative of that time that you can't separate it from your life experience.

You might not have known John Hughes, but his work has weight and meaning for thousands if not millions of people who grew up in some small way interpreting worlds in the light of his stories.  The crazy things that happened to Michael Jackson in the aftermath of his most intense popularity - much of it at his own hands - couldn't erase knowing where you were and what was going on with you when Thriller dropped. These people and their work are for many people cultural and historical markers, and the grief for them is entirely selfish, which doesn't make it any less valid.

And whereas John Hughes may have been productive in other ways since then, creatively and otherwise, that was a different time and landscape. The era passed. He may have done other things - and I'll admit I have no idea - but after the films he had a part in making in the 80s/early 90s, he really didn't have to to cement his value or his legacy. (Just like I wish a lot of times John Irving had quit writing after A Prayer for Owen Meany, with the exception of Widow for One Year. That one worked.)

Because I was a dork, I used to make a mark in my journal whenever I rewatched this movie. I liked his other stuff too, of course. Planes, Trains and Automobiles is one of the funniest movies ever made. Everyone I knew including me loved Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The lists have been made and the memories set this week, and it's safe to say most people conscious of pop culture in this time will never forget which films were his.

But for me, what John Hughes did most notably was to give me 97 simple minutes of seven characters at Shermer High School in Shermer, Illinois. I don't know all the reasons why it worked for and resonated with me 25 years ago, but it's something I can purely say that I love. It always makes me laugh and relate to a time when I thought I really, honestly, was all of those people in some small way, when I knew my perfect boy was a mix of all three in the movie, with some extra Bender, admittedly. When I knew I'd never be Claire but I'd never quite be Alison either, because showers were entirely too important to me and if I died my hair it was a tragic run-in with Sun-In, not black. It allowed me to safely go to darker places than was allowed in my school, in my circle at the time. That really hasn't changed very much. And I'll still always be sorry that he never brought it full circle, as much as I know that's part of the point. 

Finally, if you read nothing else about this man this week or ever, I'd recommend Sincerely, John Hughes, a post by a woman who sought him out as a pen pal when she was just about my age in the 80s. He kept in touch with her for years. It's a fabulous story, and makes me, as I can tell my doubting internet friend, truly miss him as a kickass human being as well as a powerful creative force. There are 1,058 comments. It's that good, and that real.

MLMcW

Patrick saw my tattoo today and he cried. I didn't mean for that to happen, he was just telling a story about when I was little and how you know, all those times when he'd put me on his shoulders and pretend to throw me down the super steep stairs? How that was hilarious and how it wasn't as bad as something else he was describing. And I was like, yeah, I haven't needed therapy at all for my intense fear of falling off of high things, or high people, as the case may be, and thanks too for all the times you were all, Laurie Anne, why don't you go play in the traffic? Huh?

And we were all getting like we get when we're together, sitting on a balcony by the ocean, stories we all know by heart tumbling crazily one over the other, things we've heard and memorized over decades feeling new again or at least invigorated in the validation we only get from each others' faces, each others' turns of phrase, each others' encouragement to please, please talk about that some more before we lose it, so we don't ever lose it.

At the heart of these stories, most of them anyway, are these two people who are gone but still the most influential, people who make me want to believe in a heaven, because even beyond the pipe dream that I'll ever see them again (sorry, believers) I'd like to think of them hanging out watching us and laughing, except I wouldn't want them to be pissed off that they couldn't be there too (because truth be told they got kind of bored with each other. It must be stated.) So if heaven doesn't give you some kind of pass from that, maybe no, maybe I don't want that at all. My grandparents were probably the only heroes I'll ever have.

We'd been down at Harold's for a few hours, listening to the band and drinking too many beers and dodging the crazy rain, and I had the first day of vacation impulsivity to walk over to Patrick and stick my shoulder in his face like the incredibly rude, boundary-less person I can be, and say, "Look. There she is."

Apropos of not-this-topic but definitely of us, one of my earliest memories is going back in his room and laying on his bed when he was at work, scanning the walls he covered with black and neon velvet mushroom and Led Zeppelin posters (you know the one with the Stairway lyrics? And the Hobbity illustration that didn't include Hobbits?) and Cap Center ticket stubs, a dresser full of change and things with feathers that I couldn't identify, before I knew what any of it meant. He had an album-sized foldout sleeve of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours tacked to the wall by his bed, and I can remember reading along to the lyrics from Second Hand News, which is probably why I sought that record out years later and might have a little to do with why it's in my top 25.

Anyway. Today. He can't see well, but then again I can't either, and we're not even that old. He's not quite 50, and I'm younger than he is by 11 years but I've been close to blind since 5th grade so we're about even. He pulled my beach cover-up back a little and I heard him spell out the letters and mentally fill in what they stood for and then his voice cracked and I died, and he said, "That's Grandma." And he kissed me, flat out hugged me and kissed me like the men in this family don't EVER do, you have no idea. And that's when I lost it. I started crying and he started crying and bless him he didn't even try to hide it. He just looked out over the balcony to the wooden bridge to the beach.

"I was thinking about her so much on the way down here. She stood right there. She'd just stand right there and watch everything."

She was watching for us, is what she was doing, and he and I knew it at the same time. She stood there smoking an endless cigarette that thank God never caught the dunes on fire and watched for little kids whose feet were burning on the sand and big kids she could yell at and bigger kids she could still yell at, and especially by the ocean she was in her glory with all of this and we knew it. And he couldn't keep going for the crying and I tried to stop but I couldn't and my mother who is always two seconds away from crying was watching and this was not helping.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that," I said. "I just wanted to show you, especially you, all of a sudden."

"No, it's good. It's fine. That's good."

"She always has my back, see? I like that."

"It's good. No. This is good."

She stood right there, for years, wherever she needed to to watch us. She's standing wherever she is so happy that all 20 of us are here together, but angry that she's not here because she loved the beach so much, which is a huge part of the reason why we all do. She's standing there happy for Patrick and me, especially, because he was her baby and then I was the first of the next, but angry, yes, that she can't feel and talk, if by some stretch of the imagination she can see and hear. She was imperfectly real. She had no interest in not being here. She wasn't that gracious.

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When I got this tattoo I had a few things in mind. One was my dog, who I miss so much and whose funny face I wouldn't mind carrying with me forever. But when I got it last week all I could think about were my grandmother's claddagh ring and her initials, her name. (I interpret the claddagh much more as a cultural symbol, and not specifically a wedding/engagement ring, just to be clear.)

I took some shit from various quarters over the years for allegedly being her favorite. I was the oldest grandchild, the first girl she had to contend with after four sons (Patrick, my father's youngest brother, was 11 when I was born, and so became much like my brother too.) My parents were young and I needed years of medical care so things were not easy for them and their parents really did step in to help (as competent as my parents were, in every way, just to be clear, and not to equate youth with the opposite of it. It's just hard to have a kid anyway. Add in other challenges - actually no, please don't. And if help is there, so be it.) My mom worked so my grandmother, a homemaker since the late 40s, took care of me, every day. I went everywhere with her. She or my grandfather or both picked me up from school every day. We lived together after my grandfather died and I was still in college and commuting, before I moved to Ohio. We were in each others' faces all the time. I learned everything I didn't learn from my parents from her, which was a lot.

We were best friends. She was my favorite person. I truly believe she loved me unconditionally. I stole her cigarettes for months when I decided that was a strong life choice and she pretended not to notice. She also taught me to to read. If those two things don't bond me to you, nothing will. 

The iconic "Mom" tattoo exists for a reason, even though it's made to look like a caricature and a joke. It means what it means, which is, in many cases, our heart, the person who cared for us best and first. You don't have to be a mom - or a grandmother, in this case - to get that. You just have to have had a stellar one, or more, which I did, because the universe knew, I'm sure, that this kind of soul would need it. I'm not sure how this concept gets lost but it's stupid when it does.

Marie Louise McGrath White, along with my own mother, took care of me the best. No design can do her justice and our physical selves mean very little in the overall scheme of things, but I'm into symbols and apparently the drilling of them into my skin with ink, which inherently means much less about me than a lot of people think. I admit that I like having her initials on my shoulder, though. It felt like the right thing to do. I'm still pretty sure it was.