32 Loosely Related Thoughts

If Elan were here, she would maybe suggest to me again that I make a list, as she sometimes likes to do. So that is what I am going to do. I believe the last time she instructed that it be 18, 24, or 32 things long, so I'll see where I am when I feel like stopping and do that. 

1. Paul Ryan was announced as the Romney running mate today. I find no humor in it, and am focused on ignoring my 2000/2004 flashbacks. I am humorless about all of this, aside from the @PaulRyanGosling account. That's kinda funny. 

2.  No one seems to be talking to teenagers or young adults this election cycle and it's baffling and upsetting me, as well as scaring me. I'm used to being ignored as a single woman, but the Democratic party's focus on family (I like families. I do not hate families of any kind, except jerk families, okay?) at the expense of other demographics bothers me. Teenagers and young 20-somethings can be so disaffected about their options, and I can't blame them. Do you know how much they'd care, given something to care about? Christ TALK TO THEM. Huge failure, huge missed opportunity. I am in love with the Obama campaign for waking up like their house was on fire to LGBT issues, angry at them for ignoring the kids. A lot of them are also hanging around during the summer, so it would have been a nice, slow time to start talking to them. **Kicks things.**

3. This, this baby wombat and baby kangaroo, who found love and friendship with each other, are what made me feel better this week. I keep looking at them, because they are so, so cute, and I stopped hating everything every time I looked at them. 

4. I'm a hyper-religious-educated, lapsed Catholic and largely non-religious person with a deep belief in a human Jesus Christ who set out to do quite a bit of good in his time, and I'm sick of seeing him used as a political pawn. He just wanted everybody to have enough to drink and to love their mamas.  (Shut up, heathens can love Jesus too.) 

5. I am thinking quite a bit about loneliness, how I've backed myself into a corner in the place where I live where (in addition to living alone) I see very few people on a daily basis with whom I have a real connection. It just seems cruel, really, given my personality and what I basically need. It feels very stupid to say this, but I don't even really know how this shook out, and I'm not really sure how to fix it. I'm scared it will be this way forever, and it's kind of freaking me out. (I know it won't be. I'm working on it. Still, the valley is low right now. Uncomfortable.) 

6. My increased time on Twitter and Facebook is a direct result of this. It's making me more uncomfortable, and also reinforcing my desire for a family and home and community. So I guess it's all working together for good? Ugh. Sometimes I wish I could start everything over. 

7.  I woke up this morning motivated to clean and organize, and it's happening, to a better extent. This was a relief. 

8. I am tired of myself and thinking of ways I can help other people and situations so I can get out of my own head and dumb life situation. 

9. I think I want to move soon, so I asked Twitter and Facebook tonight (please cross-reference #6) who really loved where they lived, just as a backgrounder. I'm a terrible on-the-scene reporter, but committed to newsgathering, regardless. It's like I'm an editor, all the time. IMAGINE THAT. I felt like a huge dumbass asking these questions, but I'd just come in from this really unsatisfactory trip to the grocery store and Home Depot where I bought the entirely wrong, too-bright, track light bulbs for my kitchen, and for some reason this triggered a feeling that if I didn't get out of this area at large soon, well, I don't know. I'm not saying it was rational at all. It just seemed the thing to do to ask Twitter, no matter whether people think I suck because I can't stop talking on Twitter.

I am so glad I did! People answered, SO many people. They seemed to like being asked, and they got to talk about the homes that they love. The stories were so good.  

10. The upshot is that New York and California are winning as places to go, because at 41, I remain a cliche, apparently communicate with a lot of people on social networks in New York and California, and am also an idiot who likes to be broke. *If I'm still here next year, everyone is allowed to laugh and laugh at me. 

11. I have so many ideas, things that I want to work on. I feel like if I gave them to someone to organize, out from the alchemy would come this amazing plan. Left to me, it's all just neurons colliding at present.

12. Now that my front rooms are clean and organized, I feel like I can set this all straight and put it all in order. Check back with me in September.

13. I had all of these events to work on that I was so excited about from May through the beginning of August, and now I am at a loss. I feel like I'd know better what a double rainbow means than what anything is that I did, much less what I'm supposed to do next. 

14. I still most days think that quitting my job was the dumbest thing I could have possibly done, but I don't regret it at all.

15. This sounds horrible in my brain, but here goes. Sometimes I would like to be kept, in the sense that if my  basic needs were met and I didn't have to think about them, that I could make everything else for other people beautiful and productive, my brain would work better, and I could also earn money and contribute to the greater good with so much reduced pressure. (That sounds so terrible! What am I? A goddamned Geisha? I can't even keep a house like Alice from the Brady Bunch, not that there was anything wrong with Alice at all. Ann B. Davis, I apologize. I would still earn money and contribute. UGH. Oh well. Truth.)

16. I need to have conversations with some people that I don't want to have but that I need to have.

17. Everyone is on vacation. I need them to come back from vacation so I can get cracking. (It's all about me. Have nice vacations, guys!) 

18.  I saw the light slant for the first time today in a way that would suggest summer is waning and I don't like that at all, no ma'am. 

19. I am still vain about my BlogHer pedicure. Ken did a nice job, although he was WAY more concerned about pictures of his baby in Vietnam and also watching Spain vs. US beach volleyball at the time, selfish bastard. I wish I cared enough to keep it up every other week or so, but I am as bored of nail maintenance as other people are obsessed with and happy about it. I also let him wax my eyebrows after a year of him not-so-silently judging me, so I think I have to go back for that, though. 

20. I don't feel like dealing with my pictures on my camera or on my phone. I'd like to call July and August a mental "take a picture it'll last longer" era, delete them all, and move on to fall. I blame the death of Flickr on my uploading ennui. Facebook does not get my good stuff. Not sorry, Facebook. God I hate you. 

21. My twin obsession along with loneliness and how I've constructed this bizarro world of solitude out of relationships with hundreds of people, is love. Can it go away as an issue? Because, really. If I believed in reincarnation, I'd say that I was a murdering, pillaging Visigoth in my past life for the lack of luck I've had in this one. I don't believe in it, though, on principle, because if I'm going to say I believe in that, how in the hell am I going to justify my rejection of the literal resurrection and the glorious mysteries (Welcome to Catholic fantasy island. Sorry, Grandma.) How are these different concepts? It could be really easy to blame my state on earth now on some nonsense from back in the day when my name was Ermentrude and I beheaded someone or just, oh, maybe mildly pillaged, but I can't. So I'm left with shitty luck as a touchstone, which basically means I'm an apparition, not really here, because I left five minutes ago for a 24-hour convenience store in Baltimore to lean up against the counter and play Keno. 

22. This has gone off the rails a little bit. I think I may need to dust off the Tumblr. This kind of writing is encouraged there, right? 

23. I feel like I'm watching the hugest pot of water and stopping it from boiling.  

24. I bought white boards before BlogHer. I have written many tasks on them and have even wiped some accomplished things off. I think this means I'm an adult. 

25. Apropos of #15, my fondest vague vision of myself remains in some big-ass kitchen/dining room combo, open door sort of situation, making large meals for whomever shows up and not caring that my partner in life likes to slap me on the ass every now and then in some kind of affectionate passing. So basically I'm a larger, brown-haired version of Millie in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, with one sibling instead of six fake ones and no creepy songs about the Sabine women. And yes, this movie will always remind me, ironically, of Lesbian Dad, one of my personal heroes of humanity, who can live-tweet it like a...Polly. Also, in this version of my life, my potted herbs don't die, and all of my computer, music, television, and movie situations are integrated through no effort on my part. Both of these things make me so, so happy. (I don't have many daydreams. Therefore, the ones I have are very specific.) 

26. I thought I'd be so much happier at the end of this summer than I am, but I still have amazing moments of fun and good stuff from time to time. There's just something really missing that is driving me crazy. 

27. I am doing my first portrait shoot in a long time tomorrow, and I am nervous. My subject is someone I know very well and love, and I think we'll work well together. Still nervous. 

28. If I don't get a dog in my house soon I am not going to be responsible for my actions. #emptythreats

29. Isak Dinesen said, once when not writing Out of Africa, presumably, that "the cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea." I would really like someone to take me to the beach and knock out the other two. (Honestly, it is beautiful, so true, and my favorite quote. I keep saying it over and over to myself so much lately in between weeping and heaving through yoga classes, along with its annoying companion, the Rilke "Live your way into the answers" business.) 

30. Can the fall tv season start already? 

31. I look forward to being 42.   

32. Anyone who read this? I'm sorry. You are a champion blog reader, or you love me. Flowers at your feet, virtual ones, but flowers, all the same. 

Comments

[Genie]

I read through the whole damn thing and nob my head understandingly. True dat. xoxo

[Veronica]

Yes!!!! I got virtual flowers. On number four I relate in so many ways. Also why new York and California? I'm looking to go to the cheapest place possible. I'm
Greedy like that and sick of east coast cost of living. Lastly my blogher pedi is starting to fade. Sigh. Maybe a sign that I should write the damn recap post? Anyway thanks for the virtual flowers. May it all fall together soon.

[asplenia]

If you pick the DC region, we can hang! I've got a big social network I can introduce you to and it's more affordable than NY. :)

[red pen mama]

(coming out of lurkdom):

9. Pittsburgh. Close to NYC, big city/small town feel, way cheaper than Calif or NY. just sayin'

15. I HEAR YOU. of course, I want my husband to keep me (as it were), but he didn't get this deep in debt on his own!

As to the rest: Oh, yes, all of it, the wondering, the wandering.

[Jen]

I hear you. On an awful lot of these. Though I am more and more feeling the pull of moving somewhere more rural, I feel like doing that NOW will be giving up. It's strange.

Anyway, yes. Yes! even.

[Suebob]

#23 made it all worthwhile.

[Vikki]

I read every word. It really made me think...about how much I think dogs are a pain in the ass :)

[Ruth]

This resonates so much with me.... and reminds me of something my shrink told me once. She said, "It's hard being in your head, isn't it?" I did not say, "Bitch. What do you think I'm keep paying you my measly $15 co pay for week after week?" (re: $15, it was a very long time ago). Sigh.
Don't let people tell you "NY & CA" are both *so* expensive. L.A. is much cheaper than NY and I just got the visa bill that proves it. How on earth did we spend $1000 dining in 5 days? I should have filled up on that pre-purchased all-you-can-eat bacon at BlogHer.
Lastly.... If you can get a dog sooner than later, oh do! We adopted two cats last fall and man-oh-man I'm so grateful for these little ones. They account for two thirds of my smiles these days. Possibly pathetic, but true.
Thanks for blogging, Laurie.

[Marissa]

Have you thought about dogwalking? Cute canine interaction, adorable faces that do not judge, and no responsibility for the expensive parts of being a dog owner (the vet bills and food). And more upbeat than volunteering at a shelter.
I have been lusting for a dog for ages but can't afford one right now, so I give copious amounts of attention to the neighbor dogs in my building. Some now stop for me to pet them because they know I'm that sucker.

Also, campaign volunteering? If I had time I would...because this election year scares me to no end. You have the gift of words that could help keep this from being another Gore/Bush year. The damage that could be done to international relations and the Supreme Court alone if Romney gets into office...ugh.

And kudos to not giving Facebook all of your pics.

[Adrianna Beatty]

Good post. I learn something new and challenging on websites I stumbleupon every day. It will always be useful to read through articles from other authors and practice a little something from their web sites.