oh man
i've been busy, busy. well, and kind of mildy manic depressive. in an undiagnosed kind of way. as such, i have, in fact, been writing. just not here. because i'm sure you've missed me, i invite you to visit chicagoist. especially if you live in chicago. it's fun.

items for which my employer really should reimburse me
1. frozen pizza, potato chips, ice cream, and all manner of "comfort food" purchased as a result of stress incurred.
2. tylenol pm procured on a 10-o-clock run to walgreens post-anxiety-attack.
3. my cell phone bill, if it actually cost money for me to call my mom in tears at midnight.
4. tissues.
5. the chocolate that i bought my mom for mother's day as compensation for answering my calls at midnight.
6. my cable television/escapism bill, uh, if i actually paid for cable.
7. therapy. lots of therapy.

enter tumble weed
so, i've been long absent, largely due to an inclination to write adolescent nonsense. and my opposing motto: if you can't say anything grown-up, don't say anything at all. i seem to be going through some sort of quarter-life slump--not a full-blown crisis, but something related. which, in my willfully uninformed mind, involves a combination of symptoms associated with both adolescence and mid-life crises. for example, whining that my life isn't fair while purchasing a shiny, shiny new gadget. and i have this whole metaphor worked out for my current life/social situation? whereby my bff/roommate and her fiance are wheels together? and i'm a third wheel? only, they're moving forward and i'm just spinning in place? and how if i don't get out of my stupid rut, the connection between us will stretch and stretch and stretch and eventually snap? yeah.

it's not that bad, though. i'm not quitting my job, or cheating on anyone. not crying uncontrollably or writing bad poetry. but then, i have been making comments like "oh, i'll probably be alone for the rest of my life," while secretly hoping that the gods of irony, romantic-comedy style, will see fit to step in and prove me wrong.

which reminds me of this fabulous joke i heard once while at the magic kingdom: what did cinderella* say to the guy when she arrived at the kodak photo center?

wait for it...

i'm waiting for my prints to come!

bwahahahah. oh. uh, yeah. time for me to go.

*or was it sleeping beauty? snow white?

"we're pretty sure you won't die, though"
this is funny.

it suddenly occurs to me that i function better under the illusion
that nothing, nothing is ever going to change
even the good stuff, you know? i mean, despite the fact that i have higher aspirations than my current occupation, i find it easier, on a day-to-day basis, to go to work believing on the surface that this is what i'll always be doing. because to believe that it will change for the better is to give myself a power i'm not sure i have. and the notion that it could change for the worse is unthinkable.

not that my life is so bad. but i'm really just treading water. i'm not drowning, but i'm not swimming either.

my best friend, j., has always been a better swimmer than i. well, not a better swimmer swimmer--i can swim, but, you know, metaphorically. a better swimmer.

she and her boyfriend got engaged yesterday.

and i feel so disgustingly selfish, because despite the fact that i adore s. (and j., natch) and i love j. and s. together and their betrothal is hardly surprising, i am terrified.

things are going to change, they must change, they always do. i just wish that i would, too, and stop being the same old me: put some damn goggles on, take a deep breath, and get kicking.

i don't need a husband or a fiance or a boyfriend. just the maturity to simply be happier for my friends than i am sad for myself. to accept change with grace. to believe in my heart that i am capable of moving forward regardless of anyone else's place, pace, or standard.

i am. i can. i do.

i must.

hey, it's worth a try.

and while i can't be as happy as you are, dear j, i love you too much to hope for anything but the utmost happiness for you. congratulations, guys.

parental vow that is sure to be broken once i actually have kids (however that's going to happen), because they'll inevitably find out and will love the forbidden to spite me #1
no wiggles. sorry, honey, that's the way it is. let's listen to raffi, okay? nice, grandfatherly raffi? or mozart? mozart will make you smarter! you still want wiggles, huh? mommy can sing the wiggles for you! toot toot, chugga chugga, big red car! because the wiggles invaded mommy's brain! and replaced all sorts of interesting things? like steinbeck plots? with their songs! oh, baby, don't cry. you really like those happy, goofy, earnest-yet-creepy, seemingly-oblivious-of-double-entendre* old men? ow! now, how many times have i told you? we don't hit mommy! ow! ah! gah, fine. let's go to walmart.

*dear wiggles: why "do the monkey"? "dance" is so much more precise than, and just as easy to sing as "do"! come on and dance the monkey! see? it's better! unless, of course, you actually do mean "have sex with the monkey," in which case "do" is rhythmically superior, and the ambiguity might ward off some nasty allegations. but do you really think that's appropriate for young children?

as it turns out, all squirrels hop kind of like bunnies
as i was trekking from the bus to work earlier this week, i spotted a stump-tailed squirrel. having previously been acquainted with a stumpy*, i stopped to observe the critter and noticed that, rather than running or walking like most four-footed animals, it did more of a bunny hop across the street. and then i was mesmerized by this bunny-hopping stumpy squirrel--could it be a freakish bunny-squirrel hybrid, what with the puff-tail and the mad ups? i've been meaning to try and find him again for further observation, but then i realized today that squirrels really just move like that. and how did i not know that?

*scroll down to the willlliams college entry. also, i should note the squirrel-extermination controversy. the library employee mentioned on the above-linked site wrote a letter of outrage to the school newspaper after hearing that campus squirrels were being captured and exterminated. moreover, stumpy was missing! and i actually wrote an email to the interim president of the college asking if he knew anything of the scandal. and he didn't even respond!

also, spa vacations are expensive. my naivte is totally taking a beating today.

falling apart a little, but, hey, that happens sometimes
so, my birthday's in a month two months* and a half, and i'm thinking of going somewhere by myself, and being by myself. on purpose. so as to be the master of my own happiness, blah, blah, avoid disappointment, etc. go to a spa or something (any recommendations?), maybe in the southwest, where it's warm and i know no one. but, jesus, am i not both a little too old and much too young to be so angsty and bitter?

last week i was finally able to talk to the manager of the office where i occasionally meet with my good buddy, psychiatric nurse practitioner n., and where i formerly saw therapist d. i was confused because i had received notice from my insurance company that they had been billed for a visit with n., which they claimed to have paid for, despite the fact that i had been told he wasn't covered under my insurance (though therapist d. was) and had been paying out of pocket since i started seeing him. so i asked this woman what was going on--was he covered suddenly? why was my insurance company billed without my knowledge or consent? and she tells me, "oh, that was december 8. you saw d. on december 8, and n. the next day." so i say, "no, i haven't seen d. in months." and she says, "yeah, you saw her in december." and i say, "no, i mean, many months, like since last summer, or spring." and she says, "no, you saw her in december," as though i just forgot that i saw her in december and haven't seen her since? "i think i would remember if i had seen d. on december 8" i mean, why was this woman so intent on arguing with me? exasperated, and without even thinking, i burst out with "i'm not that crazy!"

ha!

god, depression is hilarious.

anyway, i finally suggested that maybe she was looking at records for 2003 instead of 2004, and she finally realized that i am depressive, not delusional, though she didn't quite yet get that she is dumb. "well, we didn't bill your insurance company because n. isn't covered." so, what, i'm imagining this piece of paper in my hand that gives a check number for the insurance company's payment? I KNOW N. ISN'T COVERED, BUT YOU BILLED THE INSURANCE COMPANY AND THEY PAID YOU. MAYBE, I COULD BE WRONG HERE, BUT MAYBE. YOU. MADE A MISTAKE. or several.

i think she still didn't believe me, but oh well. the part where i said i'm not that crazy? was awesome. i seriously could not stop laughing about it. which leads me to consider that i am, perhaps, a little bit off.

*i was once good enough at the maths to take multivariable calculus. happily ever after, the end.

sometimes i feel like whining and stomping my feet
but being a couple of decades too old for that, i blog. my apartment is a mess, i have too much laundry to do, and we're only about halfway through a two-week span of hosting various overnight guests.

though my arm is now feeling better, it was hurting and still does a little, and i have to keep icing it and stretching it and forgetting to take ibuprofen for it, as well as go to more inconveniently-timed and -located appointments for it. due to my general smallness, my work desk is too high for me to healthily type and mouse, but raising my chair would leave my feet dangling uncomfortably and not at all ergonomically. and when i emailed a guy about a keyboard tray, he didn't respond.

in the past week, two water bottles (old gatorade/juice bottles) and a plastic starbucks cup have disappeared from my desk overnight. similar disappearances occurred a few months ago. WHAT THE HELL? my hypothesis is that someone in the cleaning staff finds my recycling habits unhealthy and takes it upon herself to save me from myself. or is insane. and they don't even empty my wastebasket. in my quest for vindication, i was told just to hide the bottles in a desk drawer, but i can't stop thinking of utterly uncreative ways to fight back. like a big note that says 'don't touch my shit. thank you.'

for most of the past week or longer, my college alumni email account that i use as my primary address has been down or accessible only by first jumping through a flaming hoop followed by a back handspring. after sticking with it through this and other outages, i find out today that they are discontinuing email service. and i understand and support their decision, but i'm still annoyed, because now i have to make something like a decision. do i just use the yahoo account i already have, which gets gobs and gobs and gobs of spam, but at least puts it in a handily ignored folder? do i get a gmail account that i can use forever? do i get a free address (or use the one i already have) from my commercial isp, knowing that it will inevitably change if i decide to change my service? what should my user name be? do i do one of the above but only give out my other alumni address, which isn't really an account, but a supposedly lifetime forwarding service (and also somewhat cumbersome because some stupid girl in my class had the nerve to have the same initials as i do)?

and, most importantly, which will make me seem the coolest? because i'm nothing without a hip email address.

i've always been under the impression
that i'd never broken any bones
that is, excluding the middle finger of my left hand, which i crushed at age 6 as a result of swinging on a portable clothing rack. wheee! when i was "little," my hypochondriac nature and my fear of having my parents anywhere but rightnextome, especially at night, caused my mother to declare that babysitters were not to call my parents unless one of us was bleeding to death or vomiting uncontrollably. a similar attitude was taken toward doctor visits--there were four of us, after all, and to panic over every flu and tumble would inevitably lead to insanity. and, you know, we all survived. but i think i grew up with this sort of romantic idea of emergency, as though the chaos of our lives would suddenly vanish and in its place would be unadulterated attention. i imagined broken bones--a leg or an arm--the hospital visit, doting doctors and parents, a cool cast, a few days off school, then awe and signatures from schoolmates who otherwise ignored me.

ah, but no such luck. or great luck, as it were. i had my share of stitches, and nothing more painful or enduring than a sprained wrist for which my dad purchased a drugstore brace. i wore that for awhile, then on and off when i felt a tinge of soreness, or maybe a little need for pity. never saw a doctor for it. and while i probably would have preferred to at the time, i don't remember it being so painful, and it got better with the brace.

so i was surprised yesterday, when i saw a sports/occupational doctor for wrist and arm pain i've been noticing while sitting at my computer, mousing and typing around, and an x-ray showed an old fracture. "you must have been a tough kid," he said after i explained that i thought i'd sprained it playing soccer 12 or so years ago.

i called my mom immediately after the appointment, and she half-jokingly asked, "are you trying to make me feel guilty for not taking better care of you?"

and i was afraid it would sound like that, but i really wasn't. i was just amazed and, you know, a little bit proud.

allow me to introduce my good friend, anxiety.
and when i say "good friend," i of course mean "mortal enemy"
not that i haven't tried, you know. to embrace it. to give it the chance to help me get stuff done instead of paralyzing me. but no, no. it's just a big, fat jerk. and all those well-placed signs clearly stating "don't feed the anxiety"? not helping. it's a very, very hungry anxiety. last night, i was kept awake worrying about my roommate's potential gym membership, which really has very little, if anything, to do with me. oh, and then! then, i started thinking i should blog about this. and so then i kept myself awake thinking about what i would write.

and now, nightmares!
sometime last week, i had this dream wherein i was extraordinarily stressed. something about raw eggs all over the place and my mom being mad at me. so, believing myself to be in a real-life crappy situation, i shouted out loud: "THIS IS A FUCKING NIGHTMARE!" and, what do you know, it was.

and last night, after finally falling asleep with my very good friend, blogging anxiety, i had a dream that i came back to this blog and had lots! of! comments! which was very exciting, and most of them were mildly complimentary, but then there was this one that went like this:

"what is this? a blog for 10-year-old boys? shouldn't you be critiquing new york times articles?"

which was naturally very confusing and somewhat upsetting, and i wanted to think of a clever response, but all i could think of was an entry title: yes, this is a blog for 10-year-old boys.

welcome, 10-year-old boys!

actually, you're probably not going to find this very interesting. sorry.

and no, i probably won't be critiquing any new york times articles. though i wholly agree with my blogroll's consensus on that mommy blogging one. and i hear that this is awesome.

thoughts keeping me awake last night
crap, i didn't put a magazine in my backpack for the gym tomorrow. i hope i remember to do that in the morning. will i really take the initiative to apply for that job i really want but know i'm not going to get when i just got semi-promoted? if so, should i send them a sample of my audio work? if i don't, will they discount my claims that i've done such work? if i do, will they think i'm a big dork? hey, that one time, senior year of college, when i threw up in a cup at the purple pub (the one and truly only time i have ever been there) because two (male) friends thought it was funny to keep getting me more beer (and, well, i should take responsibility for this, too--i did drink it), and then we left; uh, did anyone do anything with that cup of vomit that was sitting on the table at the crowded bar--ideally, did i take it out with me and dump it somewhere outside when we finally had the collective good sense to get out of there and stop drinking, or did we just leave it there, sitting on the table, for all the cool kids to find?

making a mental note to be more careful what i wish for
so, after an evening of moping and crying that i can't take my job anymore because i have no work and it's pointless and boring and mind-numbing and my incredibles adaptation was killed, i go to work (i was going to take a mental health day, but decided to postpone it until tomorrow, when i'm going to get 2/3 of my hair chopped off--fun!) and am assigned to write a1000-word audio-enhanced story on these glittering (literally) beacons of girlhood.

well, not exactly exactly
i feel compelled to note, as regards my last post, that i don't feel entirely comfortable citing a capital-g God, especially in this generally irreverent space. yet i did not do so casually. though i haven't worked out a definition of a higher power or religion that makes sense to me (if pressed, i might say something like eric zorn does here (which is really more a series of questions than a definition), though i wouldn't go so far as to say that i don't care whether or not god exists), the notion of a sort of unspoken spirit, or feeling, in the respectful witness of community--something larger than what can be spoken or done by an individual--does make sense to me.

just to, you know, clarify.

on holding each other up
as i was obsessively editing and re-posting the entry below, i read this entry from frog, and hey, that's just it. she quotes parker j. palmer on depression:

...by standing respectfully and faithfully at the borders of another’s solitude, we may mediate the love of God to a person who needs something deeper than any human being can give.

yes, that's it exactly.

connections
one
my grandma loved johnny carson. even though i didn't pay enough attention--i never pay enough attention--burned in my brain are memories of staying up late at her house (and i had this special tiny red suitcase just for the purpose of visiting grandma), watching the tonight show. though i don't think i really understood what was going on and was most likely a little bored (the oldest i could have been is 11), in my memory, it makes sense to me that she adored him. maybe it's that i was there with my grandmother, that she didn't force me to go to bed when i was terrified to be alone, but when i think of johnny carson, i think of a tremendous comfort. avuncular, he was. i remember being sad to hear that he went off the air, but soothed by the thought of my grandma's stash of tonight show videotapes, both homemade and later ordered from one of those time-life-type programs, with the tv ads and the phone numbers and the low monthly installments. and awfully late, as it happens, i am drawn to the idea of buying a johnny carson dvd.

two
a couple of weeks ago, i made a teeny-tiny internet friend named will. will didn't know me but, like a lot of other strangers, it seems, i was drawn to his story and, god, sad as hell to read his dad's post on saturday. i've been thinking about will all weekend, and how remarkable it is that i found his little bit of the internet, and how the stories people share, whether read by hundreds, thousands, or just a few, make an impact, fulfill a need, and create community. we're warned to take caution on the internet, as though in constant danger of accidentally walking down a darkened alley--it's vast, it's mysterious, it's full of predators, it's an enemy of privacy, a minefield of credit-card-number-seeking opportunists. but then, like the world wide world itself, you find stories. stories of loss, of staggering heartbreak, of courage in the face of tremendous hardship, and stories of hope, of flickering joy, of love, of peace. you can be reading a blog and feel suddenly compelled, as one commenter on will's site did, to press that "next blog" button up there and find out, from sheer randomness, that someone's sweet little boy has died. and you are affected, you care, you suddenly see life from a different perspective, and you are a different person, if only for a moment. and maybe this is over-the-top romantic, but i like to think that, even if only in the tiniest of ways, we're all holding each other up, just a little. sure, there are jerks out there, and sometimes, often maybe, even the most supportive community can't make a dent in despair. but there are those out there who are trying, perhaps just by being present in acknowledgement and respect of one another's pain.

to john and mary: thank you for sharing will's story. he is, and will be, remembered.

best cure for a headache? get another one!
i arrived to work yesterday a half hour late and weighted by an inexplicable feeling of anxiety, the clenching in my chest and gut i used to call "the homesick feeling" when i was 7, 8, 10, 12 and at a friend's house overnight, suddenly overwhelmed by the need to be in my own bed.

it was a bad start to a gray day in which i wasn't to eat dinner until 9:45 pm. for the rest of the morning i did my best to ignore the low-level headache picking away at my brain.

then, when it was time for lunch, i ventured into the department kitchen to retrieve my turkey sandwich and yogurt from the refrigerator. the refrigerator, maddeningly crammed with the personal salad dressings, leftovers from today's lunch, leftovers from yesterday's lunch, leftovers from last week's lunch, cream cheese, bagels, milk, and juice of 50 people. so of course as i take my bag out, styrofoam boxes come toppling to my feet, and there's nowhere to put them that they will stay put. and by the time i finally extricate myself from the avalanche of other people's food, someone has opened the freezer door above me, and when my upper body, led by my head, flings to standing, the great momentum in that gesture is suddenly, painfully interrupted by the freezer door.

i spent the rest of the day holding ice, double-bagged in jewel grocery sacks, to my head while, in search of some good cheer, i typed out web addresses with my one free hand.

come to think of it, i have gotten
some very tempting offers on the el
it was a bright, summery morning, i was on my way to work, and love was in the air when a jolly fellow sharing my car broke into my semi-catatonic state and asked for the time. always happy to engage in some brief neighborly helpfulness, i checked my phone and answered him before staring out the window some more. and then the mating dance began:

"my name's kirby. what's yours?"

"elizabeth.*"

"you're very pretty, elizabeth."

"thanks."

"you wanna go out sometime?"

"no thanks."

"it's because i'm black, isn't it?"

now here i just had to laugh. despite my protests to the contrary, he badgered me and continued to insist (and really, what man doesn't know a woman's mind better than she does, eh?) that i wouldn't go out with him because he was black. frankly, if he really needed me to pin my rejection on a physical attribute, i could easily have pointed out his crooked, brownish teeth or the fact that he was easily three of me all rolled into one. that wasn't even it, though, necessarily. i mean, you never really know who you're going to fall for, though i'll admit to being shallow enough that those particular characteristics would have been impediments to my affection.

instead, i tried to tell him the god's-honest truth: i'm just really not into guys who proposition me on the el. in fact, i could no longer even be sure that i'm into guys anymore, what with my pathological celibacy and all. only it didn't come out quite so eloqently, and i babbled on nicely about how i would have to know someone better before agreeing to meet him somewhere or give him my phone number. to which he repeatedly insisted that i wouldn't go out with him because he was black, and i was therefore a big chicken.

we finally reached the end of the line, and as i descended to street level to catch my bus, he shouted after me: "CHICKEN!"

anyway, he seemed like a really nice guy. maybe i should have given him a chance, even though his name was kirby ("a warpstar knight-in-training,... his most amazing ability is to inhale his enemies' powers and give them a taste of their own medicine").

the time i may have really missed out on potential true love, though, was several months later as i was waiting for the train to leave the station i now wistfully refer to as the "lost lovers' el stop," the very terminus of my short relationship with the beloved kirby. i waited alone until a charming young man with a gangsta slouch and knee-high pantswaist boarded my car and uttered those fateful words: "wassyur name?"

"mary,**" i responded demurely.

"can i get your number?"

"nope, sorry."

"what, you don't date black guys?"

"um, i don't give my number to strangers."

"you white bitch!"

and then he bailed. sigh. i think back on that moment and my mind races with all the things i could have said but didn't.

no, all i could manage was a short, heartbroken whatever, and then i kicked myself all the way home.

*my standard pseudonym for situations such as these, elizabeth is what my mom wanted to name me. instead, my dad won that argument with the name of an apparently hot female character in an late-70's/early-80's primetime soap opera.
**a slightly less-used pseudonym, rooted in my middle name (marie) and the fact that sometimes it just comes to my head faster than elizabeth.

i'd love to report that cats don't snore,
but i can't, because they do
i once told someone in college that i thought that sleeping together was the most romantic thing two people could do. not, you know, sex. just sleeping. not that i knew from experience or anything--nor do i know any better these days--i have the cumulative dating experience (spread among three guys) of a whopping nine months (six of which were in high school) and a thing about people seeing me sleep.

and yet i wish i could get a photograph of the way my cat sprawls across my pillow, head resting on mine, front leg stretching over my neck.

yes, my most romantic relationship ever is with my cat. and not only is he a pillow-hogging head-spooner, but he snores. it starts out as a purr, then alternates between a soft wheezing and a whistle.

ugh.

maybe i should join a club or visit the local laundromat.