Right now my house is a disaster. Dishes need to be done and the basement smells like a dog toilet. Molly, my 14 year old Beagle/German Shepherd mix has decided that when it's rainy and when nobody is home, the basement is a perfectly acceptable substitute for the backyard. And though I have scrubbed the concrete with urine odor eliminating solvent bought at Pet Smart, the painted, though peeling concrete floor is holding onto the smell like a sponge. It almost makes my eyes water. As I typed these words, the guilty party just walked into the room and plopped at my feet. I do feel like she can read my mind. She does make it hard to stay mad at her what with her cuteness and her sweetness. Anyway, there is a huge part of me that wants to call in sick to my cleaning clients' houses today just so I can clean my own house. Much like the editor who works on other's transcripts for living so he can write his own great American novel, I want to put some time into my own musings. A person might assume that it's the money that motivates to go to work today but it's secondary. Strange words from a person who can use all the money they can get their hands on. The thing I want to avoid is the confrontation, the conversation with the customers telling them I won't be working for them today. These interactions are almost unbearable for me at times. People in general really. Now in the same breath I tell you this. I am a lonely person. I crave human contact but only under specific conditions. Following is a list of times I would rather be alone.
1. Working. If I am cleaning your house, please be nowhere that I can see you. If I enter a room please feel free to disappear into another room. I won't be offended. And the fact that your mother-in-law is visiting is a perfectly acceptable reason to cancel. Your 1500 square foot home cannot accommodate me, my cleaning equipment, and all your people trying walk around me.
2. Visiting Family. How does this make sense you say? It doesn't. This just means I would rather be home alone watching nonstop Fullhouse reruns than hanging out being insulted by my family. And I loathe John Stamos. And by the way, Joey, that creepy dishwater blond mullet makes me gag and you're not funny.
3. Exercising. If I could have my very own pool I would be the happiest girl in the world and since that is not going to happen, please vacate the pool gym when I enter. What little bit of a competitive spirit I have comes out swimming these laps. And the fact that you ALWAYS swim in the middle lane is of no consequence to me. Adapt, humans are supposed to be good at it.
4. Shopping for clothes. The idea of having a girls day for clothes shopping sounds like a nightmare. Clothes have become a means to an end. Cover up and don't make a stink about it. The endless pawing through racks of outfits that you would never consider putting on your body just become your companion is interested in this year's polyester magenta crop top is of no interest to me.
5. Public bathrooms. We all know what's happening in here, so no eye contact and no idle chit chat please. And if YOU could keep the grunts down to a minimum, that would be great.
But that's really it. I am open to human contact in most all other situations. Scientists say that humans want to be part of a tribe, that we instinctively want to belong to a group because it increases our chance of survival. As every National Geographic special you saw growing up depicts, the lone wildebeest is never long for this world when the lioness is on the hunt. But I have found being a part of the group is quite tenuous. It is a delicate balance. Who is the alpha? How did they get to be in charge or at least the most popular? And more importantly to me, how do I fit in here? What is my role? This is what I am continuing to try and figure out. To be continued....
Friday, June 7, 2013
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Undigested Corn
You may not know this but I have a podcast. Actually I have two. Clearly I think I have a lot to say. One is a personal journal podcast called Hello Again It's Brenda Boo where I say too much, share too much, and probably throw my family under the bus too much. The other show I participate in is called Life on the Shit List. We call it LOTSL because iTunes says you can have an entire show devoted to skat play but for God's sake, do not use the word in the title. Life on the Shit List is a name that occurred to me at a time when I felt my life was particularly shit laden but it's basically the way I've always felt about my life. I am the emotional garbage man picking up and at every one's leftovers trying to make a full heart. This sounds dramatic. I am a girl after all. It's a skill. A person cannot be subject to this much hormonal change each month and not expect some kind of longterm effects. But estrogen fluctuations aside, can we talk about the way we communicate with each other?
My podcasts allow me to have my say. I can sit in front of my microphone and in an uninterrupted way, speak my mind. Much of the time I am spouting off about the world as I see it. As much as I like to fool myself into thinking I am a "go with the flow" kind of person and that I am not constantly judging the world around me, I do. Oh, I am a world away from the way I used to be. For example, I no longer care what strangers wear unless if you're heavy and I am subjected to too much of your skin. I am fat. I cover up my pasty white flesh. Please do the same for me. I notice women who power walk through Target, pushing their cart with more determination than I see from my dog when she tries to mind meld with me in order to get me to, "Give Me Your Ice Cream Cone!" Take it down a notch, you'll get your organic self-sustaining napkins and garlic hummus. Don't fucking panic. And don't get me started on swimming pool etiquette. I feel like I am getting better. Better at looking at the world with a neutral eye, live and let live, and blah blah, blah. But passive aggressive behavior has reached a whole new art form with Facebook and Twitter.
The whole idea behind social media is to provide a way to connect with people, if not face to face but mind to mind. I cannot be there with you, I am at work but I would like to check in with you. Sounds like a great idea. But the written word can be read in so many different ways depending on how you see the world. For instance, a person who has a podcast called Life on the Shit List MIGHT just assume the worst of people. A person with a larger than life ego might assume EVERYBODY thinks they can do no wrong. Perception is the key but I have a complaint about these social media outlets. Using Twitter and Facebook to get high on your horse drives me fucking crazy. Making vague comments leaving people to wonder "Is she talking about me?". Or "Oh, he must be pissed off at so and so". I know the writer feels better. It is out of their head and into the world and I am no stranger to venting on Twitter however, if you would not say this to their face, please don't say it on Twitter.
There have been times when I was desperate, throwing out the emotional "ALL HANDS ON DECK, I NEED SOME ATTENTION!" and I have tweeted the words "I hate Eric". What you may not know is that Eric is sitting right beside and I am telling him as I do it "I am tweeting that I hate you right now". It's all in fun. But if you are trying to convey a message through the social media hoping someone will read it but you don't have to take ownership of it, I just think that is all kinds of wrong and weak and childish. Look whose pointing the childish finger, me. To say I don't have these thoughts is a lie but it's called self-control and thinking about the consequences of your actions and is it WORTH it to put that negative energy out in the world. So again, I say, unless you are tweeting about the world's bitchiest cat who won't quit hissing and batting at your butt as you try to walk by, maybe think twice before hitting send. The same goes for giving unsolicited advice to celebrities, correcting their grammar or a misspoken detail. Challenging famous people on Twitter is the fastest way to get B-l-o-c-k-e-d. The only person who cares that John Lennon changed his middle name to Ono from Winston is you. Confession: I once called a local DJ to let him know this when he acknowledged John Lennon's birthday on morning show. Nobody likes a know-it-all and that's what I sound like right now. My point is the shower of shit from life has a strong enough current without adding unnecessary undigested corn.
My podcasts allow me to have my say. I can sit in front of my microphone and in an uninterrupted way, speak my mind. Much of the time I am spouting off about the world as I see it. As much as I like to fool myself into thinking I am a "go with the flow" kind of person and that I am not constantly judging the world around me, I do. Oh, I am a world away from the way I used to be. For example, I no longer care what strangers wear unless if you're heavy and I am subjected to too much of your skin. I am fat. I cover up my pasty white flesh. Please do the same for me. I notice women who power walk through Target, pushing their cart with more determination than I see from my dog when she tries to mind meld with me in order to get me to, "Give Me Your Ice Cream Cone!" Take it down a notch, you'll get your organic self-sustaining napkins and garlic hummus. Don't fucking panic. And don't get me started on swimming pool etiquette. I feel like I am getting better. Better at looking at the world with a neutral eye, live and let live, and blah blah, blah. But passive aggressive behavior has reached a whole new art form with Facebook and Twitter.
The whole idea behind social media is to provide a way to connect with people, if not face to face but mind to mind. I cannot be there with you, I am at work but I would like to check in with you. Sounds like a great idea. But the written word can be read in so many different ways depending on how you see the world. For instance, a person who has a podcast called Life on the Shit List MIGHT just assume the worst of people. A person with a larger than life ego might assume EVERYBODY thinks they can do no wrong. Perception is the key but I have a complaint about these social media outlets. Using Twitter and Facebook to get high on your horse drives me fucking crazy. Making vague comments leaving people to wonder "Is she talking about me?". Or "Oh, he must be pissed off at so and so". I know the writer feels better. It is out of their head and into the world and I am no stranger to venting on Twitter however, if you would not say this to their face, please don't say it on Twitter.
There have been times when I was desperate, throwing out the emotional "ALL HANDS ON DECK, I NEED SOME ATTENTION!" and I have tweeted the words "I hate Eric". What you may not know is that Eric is sitting right beside and I am telling him as I do it "I am tweeting that I hate you right now". It's all in fun. But if you are trying to convey a message through the social media hoping someone will read it but you don't have to take ownership of it, I just think that is all kinds of wrong and weak and childish. Look whose pointing the childish finger, me. To say I don't have these thoughts is a lie but it's called self-control and thinking about the consequences of your actions and is it WORTH it to put that negative energy out in the world. So again, I say, unless you are tweeting about the world's bitchiest cat who won't quit hissing and batting at your butt as you try to walk by, maybe think twice before hitting send. The same goes for giving unsolicited advice to celebrities, correcting their grammar or a misspoken detail. Challenging famous people on Twitter is the fastest way to get B-l-o-c-k-e-d. The only person who cares that John Lennon changed his middle name to Ono from Winston is you. Confession: I once called a local DJ to let him know this when he acknowledged John Lennon's birthday on morning show. Nobody likes a know-it-all and that's what I sound like right now. My point is the shower of shit from life has a strong enough current without adding unnecessary undigested corn.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
My Kitchen is Across the Hall
So I have never been very good about keeping a journal, a diary, what have you. My edit button is so strong that I can't even be honest with myself when presumably when nobody else is there to bear witness. My mind races from here to there like what? Sometimes it's like a dog. If you're like my dogs, one moment you're lying comfortably on the couch and the next, BAM! A sound, an unknown occurrence and before you can figure out what happened you're barking and your head is flying up in a start. But sometimes my brain seems to fold in on itself like batter in a bowl. The beaters are in the middle, moving everything around this central point and one moment it's gone and the next it's back right where it started.
I bring this up because today, despite having company, I spent a lot of time by myself. The day started out productive. I did a solo podcast. I got some shit of my chest and then my sister calls. She says "How about me and Mike come up for lunch and we can play?". I said "Sure, Eric is busy but I can do something." And it was nice, you know pleasant enough. My sister has never understood my sense of humor so there were a couple of times when she thought I was making fun of her which mostly, I wasn't. But my brother-in-law said the nicest thing to me. He says "It's so nice to see you." And that simple sentence, that small gesture absolutely disarmed me. I returned the sentiment and he says "How long have we known each other?" My sister pipes up "28 years because we have been together 30 years and we moved back from New York two years after we got together." If you listen to our podcast, Life on the Shit List, this is brother-in-law I spoke of having always encouraging me and made me feel like an artist. He even said those words "a natural artist". What a thrill to hear those words. But as we sat at Cold Stone Creamery we reminisced a bit. You see back in my even poorer days, we actually managed to live right across the street from each other.
So my sister and Mike had just moved back from New York City. My sister had graduated with a Film/Broadcasting Degree and had always dreamed of living in New York. Being trained in secretarial field she had skills enough to make a living until she could make her way into the film world. Living in Brooklyn with no car and only the subway for transportation took it's toll. Not surprisingly the lifestyle of an city dweller with no money is much less convenient than the lifestyle of that same person in a small town. Carrying your dirty clothes to a laundromat and groceries by foot loses it's romance pretty quickly not to mention the two sided tape strung along the bottom of the bed positioned to catch or slow down the roaches. I was working at Wendy's at the time and saving my pennies to come visit her in New York but after her friend got mugged right outside her apartment, she uninvited me. She was not about to responsible for anything happening to her baby sister. So two years after this experiment started, it ended and my sister came back home to Iowa. But she brought something back with her that she didn't have when she left, Mike.
Things were incredibly tight when they first moved back. No jobs, just a small amount of savings, so they rented what they could afford. The first place was a room with a bathroom and then across the hall was the tiniest kitchen I have ever seen. When I say it was across the hall, I mean there was the door to their room and the hallway leading to the other places and then a locked kitchen. It was so weird. Did I mention this building originally was an asylum for mental patients. Yep. So this place was too small and the layout was too kooky so they moved down the street to an efficiency. Same amount of space but at least it was all contained behind the one door. During this time I was breaking up with what turned out to be one of my "gay" boyfriends. This boyfriend and I had been living together so I needed a place and I just happen to find this room in a house across the street from them. I did this a lot back then, lived in houses that had once been single family dwellings and then some greedy mother broke the place up into this misshapen monstrosities and called them rent able spaces. The place I got had so much character, so I thought. It was quite ridiculous actually. It was the front room of the house. There was a giant picture window and a fireplace, complete with a mantle and peeling, floral wallpaper. Technically this room was supposed to be divided into two rooms separated only by a curtain. There was a complete stranger living on the other side of this curtain. Not a wall, a mere tapestry. Lucky for me the girl that was living there moved out when I moved in and nobody else moved into the other side until I moved out. The setup was that I shared the kitchen with the rest of the house and then I had my own bathroom but that was separated from my main living space much like my sister "estranged" kitchen.
During this time my sister didn't have a phone so she would use mine when she needed. She was reduced to driving my old first car, a 19 sixty something Wrambler, camoflage green. Our main entertainment was watching network television on our black and white portables and hanging around the kithcen table and talking. We would sit on their roof/porch in the evening and talk and complain and listen to records. One time their cat Katie singed her whiskers from jumping on the stove which had a pot of boiling water going just for some extra heat. We would draw portaits of each other at the kitchen table and swim at the city pool just around the corner for a dollar a visit. I have a lot of affection for this time. It was the beginning of 28 years of knowing each other and I miss those times.
I bring this up because today, despite having company, I spent a lot of time by myself. The day started out productive. I did a solo podcast. I got some shit of my chest and then my sister calls. She says "How about me and Mike come up for lunch and we can play?". I said "Sure, Eric is busy but I can do something." And it was nice, you know pleasant enough. My sister has never understood my sense of humor so there were a couple of times when she thought I was making fun of her which mostly, I wasn't. But my brother-in-law said the nicest thing to me. He says "It's so nice to see you." And that simple sentence, that small gesture absolutely disarmed me. I returned the sentiment and he says "How long have we known each other?" My sister pipes up "28 years because we have been together 30 years and we moved back from New York two years after we got together." If you listen to our podcast, Life on the Shit List, this is brother-in-law I spoke of having always encouraging me and made me feel like an artist. He even said those words "a natural artist". What a thrill to hear those words. But as we sat at Cold Stone Creamery we reminisced a bit. You see back in my even poorer days, we actually managed to live right across the street from each other.
So my sister and Mike had just moved back from New York City. My sister had graduated with a Film/Broadcasting Degree and had always dreamed of living in New York. Being trained in secretarial field she had skills enough to make a living until she could make her way into the film world. Living in Brooklyn with no car and only the subway for transportation took it's toll. Not surprisingly the lifestyle of an city dweller with no money is much less convenient than the lifestyle of that same person in a small town. Carrying your dirty clothes to a laundromat and groceries by foot loses it's romance pretty quickly not to mention the two sided tape strung along the bottom of the bed positioned to catch or slow down the roaches. I was working at Wendy's at the time and saving my pennies to come visit her in New York but after her friend got mugged right outside her apartment, she uninvited me. She was not about to responsible for anything happening to her baby sister. So two years after this experiment started, it ended and my sister came back home to Iowa. But she brought something back with her that she didn't have when she left, Mike.
Things were incredibly tight when they first moved back. No jobs, just a small amount of savings, so they rented what they could afford. The first place was a room with a bathroom and then across the hall was the tiniest kitchen I have ever seen. When I say it was across the hall, I mean there was the door to their room and the hallway leading to the other places and then a locked kitchen. It was so weird. Did I mention this building originally was an asylum for mental patients. Yep. So this place was too small and the layout was too kooky so they moved down the street to an efficiency. Same amount of space but at least it was all contained behind the one door. During this time I was breaking up with what turned out to be one of my "gay" boyfriends. This boyfriend and I had been living together so I needed a place and I just happen to find this room in a house across the street from them. I did this a lot back then, lived in houses that had once been single family dwellings and then some greedy mother broke the place up into this misshapen monstrosities and called them rent able spaces. The place I got had so much character, so I thought. It was quite ridiculous actually. It was the front room of the house. There was a giant picture window and a fireplace, complete with a mantle and peeling, floral wallpaper. Technically this room was supposed to be divided into two rooms separated only by a curtain. There was a complete stranger living on the other side of this curtain. Not a wall, a mere tapestry. Lucky for me the girl that was living there moved out when I moved in and nobody else moved into the other side until I moved out. The setup was that I shared the kitchen with the rest of the house and then I had my own bathroom but that was separated from my main living space much like my sister "estranged" kitchen.
During this time my sister didn't have a phone so she would use mine when she needed. She was reduced to driving my old first car, a 19 sixty something Wrambler, camoflage green. Our main entertainment was watching network television on our black and white portables and hanging around the kithcen table and talking. We would sit on their roof/porch in the evening and talk and complain and listen to records. One time their cat Katie singed her whiskers from jumping on the stove which had a pot of boiling water going just for some extra heat. We would draw portaits of each other at the kitchen table and swim at the city pool just around the corner for a dollar a visit. I have a lot of affection for this time. It was the beginning of 28 years of knowing each other and I miss those times.
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