We cannot change the world unless the world wants to change...

Yesterday I spoke to my mom.  It did not go well.  Which is ironic, because I was so excited; I thought I'd come up with a Christmas present to rival the year I gave her Mr. Darcy on DVD.  Well, I say excited but that's not entirely accurate.  I also knew that brilliant as this idea was, my mom almost certainly wasn't going to want it.

With so much build up you're probably expecting something really amazing.  It's not.  I just wanted to buy my mom a dress.  Just a dress.

But the thing is if you know my mom you know that buying her a dress isn't as simple as it sounds.  I have already talked about my mom here.  I've talked about the way she sees herself and how that affects me.  Succinctly, my mother's life is an eternal struggle to conquer an adversarial body.

Nowhere is this more manifest than in my mom's wardrobe.  For the last 15 years my mom has carefully curated a collection of one dress.  The sack.  Not unlike the travesty that is Molly Ringwald's "dress" at the end of Pretty in Pink.

yes, this one, only with shoulders and without lace

To her, "clothing I like" means clothing in colors she likes.  Because styles she likes are non-existent...no, strike that.  There are actually quite a few styles my mom likes.  She actually has a really lovely and distinctive (if rather old fashioned) sense of style.  But you'd never know it to look at her because she wears none of it.  Why?  She's too fat!  It isn't comfortable!  She's too old!  All clothing beyond the shift is off limits to her!

except this pattern is definitely too busy for her...

So this Christmas I thought "Hey!  I happen to know of a great website that will custom build dresses to your exact measurements!  Wouldn't it be great if I were to get my mom a new dress, customized specifically to her that wasn't another of those wretched shifts?!"  It seemed brilliant.  If I could show her that even "fat" people can look good; that the world of pretty clothes that make you feel attractive wasn't forever beyond her; that she can wear whatever she wants!  If I could, with this one dress, open that door even just a crack, then what a magnificent gift I could give her!  So much more than just a dress!

from here, where there are several other cute outfits

But there was a problem.  I couldn't figure out how I could get her measurements any other way but to ask her.  And I knew that if I asked her she would need to know why.  See, I knew that this had to be a surprise because if I were to tell her she would instantly shut me down.  After 60 years, truly she has come to love her prison, if that's not too melodramatic a spin to put on it.  But it is the truth.  She has reasons, she has excuses, she has justifications, but the fact is that my mother is comfortable within her rigid world of body hate.  She knows the rules there (how could she not, she made them herself).  So I knew that at the slightest hint that I was thinking about breaking them she would close ranks and lock down.

But I couldn't figure out how to get those damn measurements.

So I convinced myself I was wrong and maybe she'd see what a great thing this was and suddenly change her personality.  After all, wasn't it smarter to supervise her picking out her own dress rather than risk getting one she hated?

No.  The answer to that question is no.

I called her yesterday morning and told her my plan and exactly what I knew would happen happened.  She shut me down.  She did let me show her the website (after I harassed her) and she managed to find the one sack dress they had.  But I couldn't handle listening to all her justifications for why she wouldn't even try something new.  Not when I had been so excited about this.  I got mad at her and ultimately had to get off the phone.

Because I am angry.

As a person who considers it a fundamental element of my identity that I almost never get really angry, this is important for me to say.

I am angry.

I am angry at my grandfather, whose obsession with arbitrary definitions of physical beauty warped his children's perspectives of themselves for their entire lives.  Every one of them has fought against and hated their bodies from childhood.  I'm angry at a society that both gave my grandfather that arbitrary definition and then told him it was okay to pursue and teach it the way he did.  The society that reinforced his beliefs in my mother's mind and proved to her he was right.  Right or wrong, I'm mad at my mom.  I'm angry that she cannot see through all of this stupidity and just let it all go.  I'm angry she can't see that "this is just who I am" only because she has decided it is.  And I'm angry at myself because I am still fighting the same battle myself.  Because I just had the exact same experience of feeling like I couldn't wear something because my body shape forbids it.  (Side note: I bought the dress anyway and wore it to church today and looked damn good, if I say so myself).  All of these "rules" are the purist form of bullshit and I'm angry that it still exists in the world.

And in the end, I'm angry I couldn't buy a dress and fix my mom's issues with her body.  It's an overly simple idea that obviously would never work, but I wanted it to so badly.

I think this is what I would have gotten her.
Nothing crazy.

The Benefits of Debate

Guys, today was an exhausting day for me on facebook.

I expressed opinions.

Ironically, what I'm left thinking about is not at all the original opinion, but how I feel about the experience of hosting internet debate on my internet words.

you know what I like to do? Express my opinions on hot button topics, inciting endless debate, and then completely disengage. At least I attempt to moderate and have pretty dependably civil friends....

but very secretly deep down I fantasize about a world where just once I can say "this is what I think" on facebook and have everyone say "huh, that's interesting" and NOTHING else. Just once. 

That's the last thing I posted on facebook, and it is very very true.

But it was also so untrue that here I am writing this blog post at midnight when I really really ought to be going to sleep.

This is how I tried to explain it to Matt a little while ago:

 Matt:  Facebook should make a way for you do disable comments on a status

kind of like how some articles can do that

 me:  I think that very often

but on the other hand

once I think that

I then judge myself viciously for being one of those people who wants to simply exist in a vacuum where the only words you hear are people saying "oh yes!  you're so right!" and no one ever challenges your beliefs on anything

deep-down-core-beliefs-me thinks that it is really superlatively awesome that I have so many people with contrasting opinions in my life because that way I get to hear both sides. but superfluous-lazy-me sits on top of deep-down-core-me and says "but debates are harrrrrrdddddd!"

And really that's it.  I get exhausted by these things.  But then when I complain in my head about all the feedback I'm getting (when all I wanted to do was spit my opinion out into the void with no repercussions) I remember how I need this feedback because I don't want to be one of those dogmatic blindered people who can only hear what they want to hear.

So...thank you all.  Thanks for helping me to be more deep-down-core-beliefs-me instead of superfluous-lazy-me.

A Woman of a Certain Age...

So today was my 28th birthday.

All my life birthdays have been a big deal.  When we were little my mom would go all out.  You would wake up on your birthday and find the dining room decorated with streamers and balloons and a preliminary present waiting for you at the kitchen table.  Because mom wanted to make sure that we were always excited for our sibling's birthday, she would make sure that whoever's birthday it wasn't also had a small gift at their place setting (this remains to this day one of my mother's most brilliant parenting ideas).  She made us these intricate, amazing cakes that were works of art.  One year she constructed a whole clock tower for me, complete with columns.  I could not tell you a single birthday present I ever received but I still remember those cakes.  Of course we have no pictures.  We were the anti-hipsters before anti-hipsters were a thing...

I'm not even joking when I say that my first birthday at college was a bit of a blow.  Nothing quite made the point that I'd left home like waking up to a sad empty dorm room with no streamers in sight.  To be fair, I'm having a vague memory of a possible party thrown for me later that evening by the girls on my floor.  Maybe combined with other September birthdays?  Idk.  But still, that "first thing in the morning surprise that wasn't actually a surprise" hadn't been there and I'll be honest: I still wake up on the morning of my birthday with a teeny tiny hope that somehow there will be balloons and streamers, and every year that there isn't I am a very small, reasonable adult level of sad about it.

The early college years all were rather underwhelming like that.  It wasn't till I came back to school after my study abroad that birthdays began to regain their former glory.  It's amazing what happens when you start having friends...

When you have friends birthdays become a big deal again, even in the absence of breakfast streamers and balloons.

Fun fact: my first ever blues dance happened to be on my birthday.  I had no idea what a "birthday jam" was and I was terrified; when they announced it I kept quiet and thus missed out on one of the best parts of being a dancer.  Had to wait an entire year for my chance to roll back around.  Tragic.

I was the happy recipient of one not-so-surprise party, and another party that was such a surprise that I didn't even show up till I was called and frantically begged to come to Slab "because".  Both experiences were delightful.

I think it was at 25 that I started planning my own birthday party.  That year I asked everyone to bring me something wrapped.  I didn't care what it was, I just wanted to unwrap things.

that is me about to unwrap a sled and my own butcher knife

enjoying a birthday dance which I have never been so foolish as
to pass up ever again after that first poor decision

The next year I asked for flowers.  Fresh, paper, plastic...I would accept anything but those nasty craft store fabric ones.  I got some really silly ones and some really lovely ones and it was absolutely perfect.

Last year Anneke volunteered to throw my party.  She did such a good job!  All my friends stopped by and even though I hadn't asked for anything at all that year, several of them brought gifts (some less "serious" than others).  After the party we went to Red Robin.  Again, amazing.

But last year also felt a bit like an ending, at least in retrospect.  Between 27 and 28 the last of my closest dance friends moved away.  Other friends graduated and moved, or got married or made babies, or got adult-type jobs.  At 25 I had literally a crowd of people I loved and who loved me and bringing them all together was simply delightful.  I must confess that at 28 the crowd has, with all reasonableness, dwindled.  The currents of life have swept a great number of that crowd down different paths to different places.

So this year I didn't throw a party. It just didn't feel right, as idiotic as that sounds.

Instead I dressed up for work, makeup included. I clocked out early. Kara and I ordered pizza and watched some Gilmore Girls and then went to institute.  I ordered a slice of cake from The Chocolate, ate the cake and left the frosting, and questioned who I even am anymore.

And now here I sit at 12:30 am feeling apparently incurably contemplative and wondering if this is what people mean when they talk about "feeling old".  I've never dreaded old age.  My personality is, in fact, far better suited to an old woman than to a young adult.  No one tells grandmothers that they're wasting their lives because they prefer hot chocolate and a good book to an afternoon's hike.  But "28" keeps running around in my head knocking into the bookshelves and disturbing the cats.  "28" tells me I don't want a party this year because it will just remind me of how few friends I have left and how many I haven't made to replenish the pool.  "28" says that I should have, if not a solid plan for my life, at least a definite direction.  "28" says I should stop talking about being an adult and just go ahead and be one.  "28" says that old age might be something I'll enjoy when it gets here, but that the middle bit that I thought was annoyingly long is perhaps not nearly as long as I thought.

When you're little you experience finite eternity, measured in endless summer days.  I suppose "getting old" is the realization that school will come eventually, and each day, no matter how glorious, is NOT endless, but rather one day less before the end.  And 28 is the year that I am realizing that summer cannot last forever.  The day I thought would never come.

The day when I worry "I'm getting old"

Arithmetical Theologic Pedagogy

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong.  No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it. -Terry Pratchett

Tonight I went to institute.  First time probably this year.  The lesson was essentially about getting your priorities sorted.  It was based on this conference talk about refocusing on the spiritual rather than the temporal.  The teacher took the idea a different direction, focusing instead on media consumption.

Overall the lesson was fine.  But I had a problem with one of her final statements.  She said she hoped that we all felt a little chastised by the lesson.  She referenced some quote about how if we aren't repenting every day then we aren't doing our best so we should all remember that and bring our A-game.  Aside from her use of the phrase "bring your A-game" pretty certainly placing her forever beyond my social circle, I was more annoyed with her stated hope that her lesson had made us all feel chastised.

Contrast that sentiment with the lesson I got on Sunday.  Relief Society was mercifully changed into a combined special meeting with our Stake President, who had been invited by our bishop to share with us a compressed version of his bishop training program.  Fun fact:  in real life our stake president works as an addiction counselor.  I really really appreciated everything he had to say, but what is relevant to this post is when he said that the best and, indeed, only way to fight darkness is not to try to remove the darkness, but to add light.  Though he is not the first person to characterize things in such a way, he still struck a chord with me.  I realized that darkness is an absence and you cannot remove an absence.  All you can do is fill it.

Which brings me back to what bothered me about our institute teacher's chastisement comment.  At first I thought I was annoyed because she was telling me I need to repent.  But that wasn't quite right, because she's right, I DO need to repent of many things. I am all too aware of that fact.  Rather, it was her blatant negative angle.  She hoped, not that her lesson had inspired me to do better, but that it had chastised me for not doing well enough.  It felt to me that she was attempting to remove the darkness rather than add light.

I have had this debate with some of my friends and I understand that some people respond well to negative motivation.  So I suppose what she said was a perfectly legitimate sentiment to express because it was effective for some members of the class.  But I have to wonder...while negative motivation works for some people, I would imagine that positive motivation works for all people.  Is that incorrect?

Telling me that I should feel bad for not "bringing my A-game" implies that my failure with whatever principle you're talking about is based on complaisance and laziness.  For every simple principle that one person writes off as a theological gimme, there is another person for whom it stands as an insurmountable obstacle.  For that person it is at best insulting and at worst actively damaging to tell them that their failures are due to laziness.  We all have our darkness, even if it isn't all in the same place for each of us.  That is, after all, the entire point of our lives.  The darkness may have got there first, but we strive to bring in the light to overcome it.  To fill it up.

So this is my friendly reminder to myself and to you and to that institute teacher who will never read this blog post.  This is me reminding us all to use positive motivation.

Let's add more light.

Suitably Hirsute

...

In a largish transmogrification from my typical attitude, I have found myself more and more frequently striving to achieve what I like to call "Sexy Genius Hair."

Sexy Genius Hair, as you may have presupposed, is typically found on Sexy Geniuses.  Note the capitalization, which, as we all know, distinguishes a Sexy Genius family from a sexy genius family.  The former is fairly prevalent and found primarily in its native habitat of Television.  That latter is far more rare and found exclusively in The Real World (this family is far more difficult to classify due to the conflicting list of characteristics used by different scientists for classification).

But back to the point.  There are several major genuses of Sexy Genius, ranging from, to name but a few, the Awkwardly Adorable Sexy Genius to the Difficult and Actually Quite Rude but Fictionally Worth It Because He Is So Sexy Genius, to the Mysterious Sexy Genius; each can be relatively clearly categorized by its standard markings and iconic traits.  Sexy Genius Hair, however, can be found throughout the family, and often will vary in nature with the particular genus and even species.  Allow me to present some examples:

from here

image here

image from here

image via: here

via this tumblr

via this site that you probably shouldn't visit cause it looks shifty

As you can see, while it may be straight or curly, and even on rare occasions shortish, the real key to Sexy Genius Hair is that it must look simultaneously sexy, and yet also as though the Sexy Genius displaying it gives exactly zero bothers over it.  Indeed, it can and often will be mussed frequently, after which it magically returns to perfect sexiness.

Obviously, it is important to note that Sexy Genius Hair is found almost exclusively on the males.  Some scientists have argued that MPDG Hair is the female equivalent, but I maintain that the two are quite distinct and it is possible, though quite rare, for a female to achieve Sexy Genius Hair.

It is this belief which has inspired my own hirsute sartorial endeavors.  One specimen in particular could reasonably be cited as the genesis of my ambitions...

via

via

via

Alas, I have not yet quite achieved a perfect Sexy Genius Hair.  But today I got close.

And tomorrow I shall most likely try again.  Rome was not built in a day, nor do species evolve over night.  My Sexy Genius Hair is no more a simple endeavor than those, and so I press on with the struggle of looking effortless...

Driving home...

One of my favorite parts of my day is the drive to and from work.  Especially going home in the evenings.  From Payson up to Provo I get such a magnificent view of the valley and in the evenings the light shines across from one side to the other and lights the mountains up so they glow.  Add in some clouds and you have some legitimately breathtaking vistas.

This evening was one such.  I worked a bit late tonight so I was driving home about 8 o'clock.  We've had much more rain this summer than I remember getting any other summer I've lived here, and today was another cloudy day.  The western sky was clouded over, with a small clear strip just above the mountains.  Mostly the mountains were dark, but right in the middle was a break that created a bowl full of pristine, clear orange light that spilled out and lit up the undersides of the clouds.  It was raining over the foothills, so the all that glowing orange was softly streaked with grey, and there were very occasional white flashes of far distant lightning.  Across the valley the east mountains were also dark through Provo, but up north the point of the mountain was all alight.  Around Spanish Fork I could see it was lit with these soft diffused rays shining out from behind the Lake mountains, also streaked with falling rain.  It was one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen and trying to describe it here is so incredibly inadequate.

As I tried to stare at that sunset as much as I possibly could whilst also managing not to wreck my car, I thought about the conversation I had with my friend Bryan last night.  We were discussing an experimental opera he'd worked on with some friends this summer and how much he'd enjoyed attending the single performance.  I pointed out that, while I understand that the ephemerality (which is apparently a real word?) of something only performed once is a part of the art, I am nevertheless struck by the melancholy of such things.  Once they're gone they're gone and if you didn't get to experience them you never will get another chance.  Sure there will be other things and other times, but that particular moment is gone.

This is much the same feeling I have every evening driving home.

When I see something like tonight's sunset I feel like I must look at it for as long as it is there.  Once it's gone it's gone and if I don't watch it while it's there it might as well never have happened at all.  Somehow my experiencing of it adds value.  When I think about it rationally I know that isn't true.  A beautiful moment is beautiful regardless of observation. And even if it wasn't, surely there is someone else out there who looked up for a moment and noticed those rays of sunlight spilling through those clouds.

But I don't know that.  And that places an obligation on me to observe it all if I possibly can.  This awesome, gorgeous world has been given to all of us and the least I can do is to appreciate the beauty it provides.  I can be the eyes and the memory that record that sunset so that even though it will never happen just the same way ever again, it isn't gone without a trace.  Even though I know that doesn't really make any sense.  And even though I know, and mourn just a little bit, all the billions of moments that happen every day that I can never observe.  I did see this one.  I felt that ache in my chest that comes from an exquisite experience.

I looked and I saw and that moment is mine.

lacking an actual picture of this evening, this is a picture of a different
place at a different time that is sort of similar.
got the pic here:
 http://www.errant-ronin.com/PrudhoeBayUshuaia/PBU-Part07-Mexico-Down.htm

More gym issues...

I think I just have to accept that, rather than a steady pull that builds like a literal snowball from the really annoying awkward shuffling around just sort of patting a tiny ball in the snow to a giant cartoon pinwheel of snow thundering down the side of a mountain, my efforts at self-improvement will happen in broken fits and starts sort of like a manual car being driven by someone who doesn't know how to drive stick.  Momentum is not something I will ever have on my side.

In the end, I think, the best I can hope for is to cut the time between each new effort down more and more until it might seem, to an outside observer, that they are, in fact, all one consolidated effort.

Tonight was yet another of those renewed efforts.

A month or two ago Kara put me on a two week challenge to eat better and to work out regularly.  The requirements were: breakfast every day, followed by at least one other real meal a reasonable number of hours later, including one serving of fruit and one of vegetables every day; cardio three times a week; and some sort of strength building twice a week.  I think I came up short some cardio both weeks, and the eating fell apart on the weekends, but overall it was a good experience.  Then the two weeks were over and I entered into the two weeks of insanity at work.  My tender little habit seedlings didn't stand a chance and were crushed mercilessly under the boot-heels of 10-12 hour work days.  As is my custom, after the crazy work subsided I made no attempt to reinstate Kara's regimen.  I think since then I've been to the gym 2-3 times.

But what is life but a daily opportunity to improve today what you failed to do yesterday?

So tonight I went to the gym.  I did not want to.  But I went and was blessed in the form of Ever After playing in the cardio cinema.  With credits, I arrived an almost perfect 30 minutes before the end of the movie.  It was like Fate or Jesus metaphorically patting my head and rewarding me with a biscuit.

I ran my customary 15 seconds to crank my heart rate up to near-heart-attack rates as quickly as possible.  The great irony of my life these days is the fact that I actually could theoretically run longer--perhaps 30-45 seconds even.  And the struggle is not, as you might be thinking, the bosom issue.  I have acquired an impressive torture device sports bra that manages to lift and compress my chest into a sort of clavicle-level squshd boob battering ram that minimizes the bouncing from a full on coordinated beating and smothering to simply a muted pounding on my chest.  The side effects of this impressive piece of engineering have been winnowed down to a feeling that my lungs are slightly collapsed and basic arrhythmia as the pounding on my chest confuses my heart as to which rhythm it should actually be following.  Both of which are completely manageable.

No, in the end, it is a different jiggle problem that stops me running.  As it turns out, I am fat.  And my particular fat likes to hang out in two major places: boobs and waist.  The boob situation may be under control, but alas, the waist remains free to jiggle all it wants.  And jiggle it does, to the point that after only a few steps I am in danger of my shorts shimmying right off.  And while it may be dark in the cardio cinema room, I am confident that it is not yet dark enough that no one would notice the shining white legs of the girl whose pants fell off whilst she was running on the treadmill.  Thus, every few steps I have to jump off the belt and hitch my shorts up, then jump back on and run for a few more steps.  Why there are not people working on solving this problem I do not know, because I do know I'm not the only one suffering.  In the end, it is my frustration with this ritual which puts an end to my running, not my lungs, heart, or even legs.  Oh irony, truly thou art a bitch...

Sadly, tonight was not the night I conquered the bros and the machines.

Instead I came home and improvised some very technical body-weight and strength exercises.  One of the bonuses of being fat is that you come with weights built in and ready to go.  If, however, I feel that I need to augment my own natural heft I have managed to find a successful free weight alternative.  Because who wants to buy fancy rubber-gripped weights if you don't have to?  Owning  a 12" cast iron gnome means you don't have to.  Miles actually makes a really good free weight.  And somehow, lifting a gnome is just more fun than lifting a boring dumbell.

And so tonight I began again the endless battle.  Attempting to take control of my life and my body.  Fat jiggles and free weight gnomes and all.  Tomorrow I am hoping to make it to the grocery store after my hair appointment to restock on yogurt so I can make another attempt at being a person who eats breakfast.  Somehow telling the interwebs about the struggle helps, so I shall try to continue to update on my repeated attempts.  Wish me luck!

Thoughts on a night out...

Did you listen to that song?  If not, please stop reading for a second, scroll back up, and click play.  Then you may continue reading.

Tonight I attended the Punch Brother's show in Park City.  The song you should now be listening to was the song with which they opened their set and it was, if you can believe it, even better in person than that recording.

I was able to attend because of the truly magnificent generosity of my dear Matt, who decided that I needed to experience Punch Brothers live and so bought me a ticket as a birthday gift (somewhat prematurely, as my birthday is not till September).

Technically he bought me two tickets, though I intend to repay him for the second.  The goal was for me to bring someone to the show with me.  Unfortunately, it turns out that none of my friends love me enough to come see a band in Park City that most of them have never heard of, which hurt to discover, btw you guys (or, in the case of a few, they HAD heard of the band, they just had lame excuses like poverty or hanging out with their wife's sister who was in town for a short while).

As such, I ended up attending alone.  Which was fine except for the part where all of my witty conversation and observations were wasted with no one to hear and inevitably appreciate them. Which is why I'm sharing them with you all now.

So, without further ado, here is a small selection of the conversations I WOULD have had tonight, had I had anyone to have them with....

....wow...it turns out I did not need to leave nearly so early to get up here.  How shall I pass the hour and 45 minutes until the show starts?  Staring at nothing?  Sounds good....

....these people in front of me literally just pulled out 5 bottles of wine...

....This opening act is so boring that I'm daydreaming about getting a blood clot in my leg from this chair so I can leave to go take care of it...

....HOLY COW I LITERALLY CANNOT HANDLE WHAT AMAZING MUSICIANS THESE MEN ARE!!!....

mostly a picture of the drunk people in front of me, but also of the band all tiny at the front

....dude seriously, this song is so great....

....Chris Thile!  So nerdy!  So adorable!  Might very possibly be the most awkward dancer in the entire world.  Half the time he dances like Scott Pilgrim, the other half like he just needs to pee reeeeeally bad.  He is an even more awkward dancer than Chris Martin....

....Dear Utah, please stop being so tacky and leaving 10-40 minutes early so you can "beat the traffic"....

....And THAT is how you play a bass solo!....

....My mind is still being blown by these guys.  Totes 100% worth it!....

....WHAAAA????  Is he seriously busting out his Bach right now?!  From memory of course.  And this huge crowd of drunk people is actually digging it?  Aw yissssss....


....they drank all five bottles of wine, one bottle per person.  How are they getting home?....

....SHIRT!....

....Oh crap.  I may never get home.  I am 1000% lost on this mountain.  I will die here.  I wonder if anyone besides my mom will miss me.  Oh, this is the road I'm supposed to be on.  Ok, we're good....

....Dear Heber McDonald's:  You might have very fancy bathrooms and a confusing layout, but you gave me diet Dr. Pepper (so nasty) and onions on my hamburger.  We are not friends.....

....Who knew driving Heber canyon at night would be so fun!  I should maybe slow down?  I'll probably definitely get a ticket if a cop sees me.  And animals?  But...Gypsy Kings are singing "I Did It My Way" in Spanish and my speeds remain marginally safe and if I do crash at least there's no one else in the car to die with me! WHEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gym Issues

I went to the gym today.  It was part of my ongoing struggle to fill my Saturdays with something...ANYthing worthwhile.  Filling my time successfully is a topic for another post, however.  My point today is that I went to the gym.  

Every time I go to the gym my "routine" consists of the exact same thing.  I head straight back into the comfortably dark "cardio cinema" room, where I walk (with the very occasional addition of 15 seconds of jogging) at varying speeds on the treadmill.  I do this for 20-30 minutes, 45 if I like the movie they're playing.  Then I stop the treadmill and walk right back out to my car.  I might stop at the water fountain on my way out.

About 60% of the time I have much more ambitious aspirations about my workout on my way in.  I'm going to do my 20 minutes of cardio, but then I'm going to use some of those fancy fancy machines that I pass every time going in and out of my friendly cocoon of darkness in the back.  I'm going to stretch.  I'm going to really get the kind of work out you're "supposed" to get when you go to the gym.

Do you know how many times that has actually happened?

none.  none times.

The first blow to my plan is all the bros.  As I walk into the cardio cinema room I will pass on average 5-8 swole dudes sauntering around.  These are the guys who you look at and cannot imagine anything else they do with their life besides work out.  Except maybe summer sales.  And the strange wandering they do around the gym when they're not actually working out in it.  I mean, where are they walking to?  Why don't they just go home if they are done working out? 

There is literally no human being on earth more incompatible with my personality than a bro.  I'm more than willing to admit that this is partially my fault, but the fact is, bros (and their attendant ladybros to a marginally lesser extent) don't really appreciate the things that make me me.  They tend not to appreciate my sense of humor, my interests, and they definitely don't appreciate my physique.  And the feeling is almost always mutual.

Which is fine, btw.  It is perfectly ok if the bros and I never really hit it off.  We don't exactly have anything to do with each other.

except at the gym.

Because the gym is their house.  Going to the gym and expecting not to find bros there is like going to the chapel on Sunday morning and expecting not to find Mormons.  It's stupid.  Unfortunately, like church, you're still expected to go to the gym.

The second problem is, of course, only a problem because of the first.  And that is my complete ignorance of how to actually use all of those aforementioned fancy machines.  Put me in a room by myself and I'll happily sit down and start pushing and pulling till I figure it out.  I'll quote Bryan Regan.  It will be fun.  

But as we've already established, you're not alone at the gym.  You're surrounded by an entire flock of the people you find yourself most uncomfortable with (to be fair, I'd probably find myself more uncomfortable with, like, a room full of neo-nazi militant ultraconservatives, or perhaps a room full of cracked out pimps).  That is not a situation conducive to me dropping my guard enough to look like an idiot as I figure out the machines.  

And lastly, there's always the problem of me being fat and out of shape.  After my 20-30 minutes of walking I'm tired.  When confronted with all those bros and all those crazy machines my tiredness says "eh....you can always use the machines some other day." and it turns out my tiredness, when united with my uncomfortables and judgies, is a super persuasive kind of feeling. 

Perhaps one day I'll conquer the weight machines.  Maybe I'll even do it in front of all the bros and conquer that issue too.  I'd like to think I will.  But definitely not today.  Nah, it can wait for another day for sure... 

Prompt 28: My Favorite Movie

nope.

movies I really like

• The Giant Mechanical Man
• Moulin Rouge
• The Fall
• Ever After
• The Dark Knight
• V for Vendetta
• You've Got Mail
• one BILLION others

Prompt 27: A Picture of You Last Year and Now and How You Have Changed Since Then

This picture is of me and Phish on Valentine's Day last year at blues.

That pictures is of me and Brock at graduation.  We managed to run into each other both days!

Obviously, the biggest change is that I am graduated.  I am not as skinny as I was then.  I don't go dancing quite as much.  My hair is longer.  That's about all I've got...

Prompt 26: A Photo of Somewhere I've Been To

THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY!!!!!!!!!

please note the people on the top...to give you an idea of scale

Prompt 25: What's In Your Purse?

Though it is, in fact, a pretty large purse, there is really hardly anything in it.

• wallet
• keys
• tiny mirror
• box of tic tacs
• headphones
• partial roll of tums
• if I'm going anywhere, typically my phone is in it as well
• on Sundays I have my journal
• sometimes I have my iPad with me

I'm not good at being one of those people who is prepared for any and everything with their purse.  For that you want Kara.  

Prompt 24: A Letter to Someone who has Hurt Me Recently

Sorry, this ended up being kind of intense... :-/

Dear friend,

I ran into you the other day.  I hadn't seen you in a couple years, since before you had your baby.  I was excited to meet him and to see you.  I smiled at you and your spouse and crouched down to see your lovely little boy.  I'm so glad I got to meet him in person.

But when I stood back up I noticed that you weren't really smiling.  Not a real smile.  I know because we used to be best friends and I was very good at making you smile.  I tried to start a conversation but you only replied with one-word answers.  Your spouse and I chatted easily, but you stood there in silence.

You're married now, so it makes sense we wouldn't be as close as we used to be.  But I know that we were growing apart long before you ever met your spouse and that a large part of that was my fault and it hurt your feelings.  I'm so sorry about that and I've been trying to make it up to you for years now.  It was something I needed to do and I wish I'd known how to do it more gracefully, or at least how to tell you what I was doing.

But I thought that maybe you had forgiven me for that.  You invited me to your parents' house for your wedding.  You were almost like the old you.  You invited me to dinner with you and your spouse and brother and again, you were friendly and I thought maybe we were, if not the friends we once were (there was a reason that had to end) at least friends who remembered that we used to be inseparable.  Friends who were ok with the fact that we couldn't maintain the relationship we'd had in college, but would always care about each other.

But when I saw you standing there, acting polite of all things, I knew that I was another victim of that selective memory I had witnessed so many times.  The memory that turned exes you had thought about marrying into random people you'd hung out with a couple of times but were never really serious with.  I saw that our relationship had met the same fate.  We weren't dear, close friends...I was just someone who you'd known a few years back.

And that hurt me.  You hurt me.  Your polite fake-smile and your one word sentences.

That's why I left so quickly.  I didn't want to force you to keep being polite, but much more I didn't want to keep listening to you as you told me that you, someone I will always care about so much, no longer cared about me.

sincerely,

me

Prompt 23: A Photo of Something that Means A Lot to Me

I feel a little bit self-conscious about using this.  I feel like I mention my grandma too much, for some reason.  That is her spoon ring, which she wore virtually every single day (I believe she used it to keep her wedding ring, which was just a little bit big, on her finger).

I keep it on that chain (because grandma had unbelievably skinny fingers) and I wear it on days when I miss her.  Which I continue to do with a regularity I never expected.  I wore it today, in fact.  It's comforting to have something of hers that I can keep with me.

And...I think that is enough about that.

Prompt 22: 15 Things About Myself

1. I love twinkle lights.  If I could I would have them everywhere always, especially outside
2. I would rather wash the dishes then put them away
3. I am 27 years old, turning 28 in September.  Somehow I manage to have severe anxiety about running out of time in my life whilst also kind of looking forward to getting old
4. I get what I think are panic attacks, but I'm not actually sure...
5. I did not learn to ride a bike till I was 12 or 13, nor did I get my driver's license till I was 18
6. I actually like a simple McDonald's hamburger now and then (#judgeme)
7. I have a mole right in the middle of my sternum that I share with my mother, my grandmother, and I believe my Aunt Vickie as well...though I think mom got hers removed a few years back.
8. (numbers 9-14 were submitted by Taka and Michelle because that's more interesting than just having me write)Emily has amazing taste in music
9. Emily has the most extensive movie knowledge of anyone ever (this is not true)
10. Emily only washes dishes by hand
11. Emily is very well-read (only sort of true...so many more books for me to read!)
12. Emily can have entire conversations using only movie quotes
13. Emily gives the best commentary during movies (I could find several people to disagree with this statement)
14. Road trips with Emily will inevitably include a Disney sing-a-long (as well as Mika and Queen)
15. Emily cannot handle spicy food (this is 100% true, but on the other hand I can out-sour everyone I've ever met)

Prompt 21: A Photo of Something That Makes Me Happy

Today is a good day to write this post because it was not the happiest day at work I've ever had.  Sometimes Caleb takes on contract assembly work for me (that is, other companies hire us [me] to assemble small numbers of products for them) especially when work for me is thin on the ground as it has been for the last month.  Unfortunately, the latest contract job he got me didn't come together until this week...aka the week when we finally did get actual work of our own to do.  Suffice it to say, this has been a crazy week, made doubly so coming straight on the heels of all my previous down time.  I worked over 40 hours in what was supposed to be a short week.  I detail all of this simply to set the stage for my day today, which was the day I finally started this contract project.  Or rather, tried to start it.

See, the core of my job is PCB assembly.  That means that I build these:

quite literally, actually.  That's one of the sensors we sell, the GP9, which I assembled last year (and, incidentally, it is the picture I took for the website).  I don't know how well you can see, but each of those little parts has a little label next to it, like C1 or U9 or whatever.  Those labels tell me which part goes where by way of what we call a BOM (Bill Of Materials).  I go through the BOM one component at a time to populate a board.

In a perfect world the BOM lists each type of part together--all the capacitors, resistors, ICs, etc together.  It's easy to read, it's clear, and it absolutely does not inspire within me the urge to rip my hair out of my head.  The world was not perfect today as I looked at the BOM for our contract project.

The most ridiculous part of this entire story is the fact that, after spending literally 8 hours going over this BOM, sorting out all the parts, asking poor Caleb all the questions, repeatedly bashing my head into the desk, and otherwise cursing every single person who might have even glanced at this BOM and not fixed the one billion problems I was having...there actually only ended up being 2 real concrete mistakes.  Just a lot of technically benign stupidity.  Which was awesome because it meant that all of the stress I'd passed on to Caleb had really been mostly my own fault.  Bless him, he did such a good job of not slapping my face when we finally settled on the two mistake conclusion.  He's such a good boss...

Briefly, my problems involved incredibly unhelpful product descriptions, missing parts, part descriptions which didn't match part numbers, and part numbers which didn't match actual parts.  The same part was listed multiple times as a new part.  And I refuse to feel guilty about my struggles in the face of the ultimate two mistake total.  I maintain that anyone would have been confused by the mess that was that BOM.

All of this is to say that my day was deeply frustrating.  Frustrations with other people, frustrations with myself, and, of course, dealing with Caleb's frustrations about the whole thing (not least being the fact that I spent an entire day dealing with this madness).

And yet.

In the midst of this I decided I must needs listen to something happy or truly my brain was going to start pinging.

this is where I would put the video of Rory complaining about her brain pinging if I could find it.  But I couldn't...which is incredibly lame and causes me to question the state of the internet

So I decided to listen to a song that I discovered yesterday by creepily stalking my friend Jarom on Spotify.  And by stalking I mean that it showed up on my player that Jarom had listened to this song and for reasons I do not understand, I thought "huh, that looks good...I'll listen to it!"  Understand, the thumbnail they give you of any given album is literally the size the north face of a sugar cube.  And the song was called "Ala Barfi" by Mohit Chauhan.  Which is fine, I'm just saying that, as the title was in a foreign language I had exactly none connection with it.

All that being said, I did listen to it for some reason and discovered perhaps the happiest song I've ever heard.  I proceeded to listen to the entire album (technically, a soundtrack to a movie somewhat unfortunately named "Barfi") as I struggled through the annoyances of the day.  And somehow, magically, it was exactly the right thing.  My mood picked up and I was able to simply find the entire experience amusing rather than hair-rippingly frustrating.

Which is to say, I am not posting a photo of something that makes me happy, but rather posting that song.  If you have the interest I heartily suggest going and listening to the entire album.  But that first song was really the best one.  So, without further ado, here it is

also, for the first time I find that I want to watch a Bollywood movie...like a lot...

Prompt 20: The Meaning Behind Your Blog Title

Ah, now that's not bad, as silly prompts go.  

To be honest, there isn't a whole lot of meaning behind my blog title.  I wanted something that I liked the sound of, something that was broad enough that I could post about whatever I wanted, and basically just something that felt right.  I asked Caleb what he thought and he said that the title did seem adequately broad, so basically that sealed the deal.  

And even though it is really pretty generic, I do quite like my blog title. 

You'd think I'd have more to say on this topic...but you'd be wrong... 

Prompt 19: Another Picture of Myself

Dude, seriously?  You had such a hard time coming up with prompts that you included "a picture of yourself" three times? (it's also the prompt for the last day)  Come up with better prompts.

seems pretty accurate.

What's that?  You want a different one?  Ok...

This is possibly my favorite picture of me ever.  Possibly.




Can you tell I'm blasting through these trying to get caught up?

Prompt 18: Something I Crave A Lot

Things I crave a lot:

• sleep
• sugar
• cookies
• ice cream
• otter pops
• white rabbit milk flavored candies
• Good'n'Plenty
• various other candy
• milk
• 2%
• chocolate
• random movies/books/songs
• long drives
• meat
• dancing
• movement
• connection
• good conversation
• affection
• alone time
• fall

that seems like a pretty good list for being right off the top of my head...

prompt 17: A Photo of Me and My Family

I know, I know, I'm like two weeks behind.  Like anyone actually cares.

This prompt is actually kind of hard because I, like my mother before me, don't really like being in pictures.  That said, I just graduated, so tradition dictated that I take a few pictures with the parental units.  Separately, of course, because that's how we bounce in this family.  Also noticeably lacking are any and all siblings.  But here are pictures of me with the various sets

I think I have the same face-shape as my dad.  Also, in comparison to both him and Cristy...I have a gigantic noggin'!

apparently my mother was not even a little excited about my graduation because this is her expression in literally every picture.  Sort of a "meh" kind of look...

prompt 16: My Celebrity Crush

This is a really hard question because I have many celebrity crushes and they change often.  For instance, today I put on Law and Order: SVU to play in the background whilst I was at work and, as always happens when I watch that show, I fell deeply in love with the magnificent Elliot Stabler aka Christopher Meloni

look at these babies...so silly

I'll be honest, I don't think you could find a more viscerally attractive man to me than Elliot Stabler.  He's big and strong and about as protective as it gets and I am a total sucker for that.

Then again, as I admitted in an earlier post, I absolutely have a thing for Chris Thile

I find him nerdy and adorable and I have this weird dream of us singing together cause I think our voices would match really well.  And, I'll point out that he's about as opposite Chris Meloni as you can get.

Before I started watching L&O:SVU, however, I was watching Elementary.  In my defense, I fell in love with Jonny Lee Miller several years ago when I saw him in...Emma and Mansfield Park and Eli Stone.  But this show has not helped with the obsession.  Because tattoos!  And scruff!

But I originally fell in love with him for his eyes.  I mean...look at them (cause those pictures up there are useless except for the tattoos)

Of course, if we're gonna talk about kind of goofy looking British men who I love passionately, you know who must be included

Objectively I can understand that he's not actually an especially handsome man, but that doesn't change the fact that I absolutely love his face and his all of him and would definitely make out with him at a party and try to convince him that we should go out for dinner.

Interestingly, as I'm thinking about all of these, most of these guys, with the marked exception of Meloni, are guys that I find adorable rather than "sexy" (so to speak).  Thus, this next guy fits right in

You literally cannot get more adorable than Lee Pace.  Like...it's physically impossible.  With his sweet grin and gigantic eyebrows and his chucks....he is truly the pinnacle of adorable man-person.

But let's get crazy, cause you know I have some random people on this list...

but only young Gene Wilder...he got scary in his old age

I honestly believe that young Tim Robbins is my celebrity soulmate

this guy won me over when he played young Captain Picard and
if he were taller I would be hopeless

Anyway, I can't think of any more legitimate crushes off the top of my head.  That is, I could come up with an endless stream of guys I think are attractive, but these are the guys I fantasize about meeting by chance and the two of us fall madly in love and get married and defy Hollywood pressures to remain happily married for forever.  Which is not to say that this list is complete.  If I think of any more I'll be sure to come update it.  And I haven't even touched the topic of lady crushes, which is a whole other thing...

next up: Post 17: a photo of me and my family


ATTENTION!

not long after I wrote this I cam across this picture

on this site.

I feel that it is important to include Fass here because, setting aside the issue of height, because I think he's a bit compact....he is kind of a perfect looking man.  I mean.  Really.  Look at his face.  Look at it.  and his shoulders.  and his hands.  and his all of him.  That man is the essence of masculine beauty right there.

Prompt 15: Something You Don't Leave the House Without

To be completely honest probably the only things that I definitely never leave my house without would be some form of corrective eye-wear and clothing.  Literally everything else you can think of to take with you out of the house I have forgotten at some point or another.  And if I wasn't utterly blind without them I probably would forget my glasses/contacts too.

Prompt 14: A TV Show You're Currently Addicted To

I have discovered a very odd tendency lately in my TV viewing.  I have this habit of getting into a show and then just suddenly I stop watching.  I think it started with Being Human (the BBC version).  I watched the entire first season of that show in one sad and unproductive day and I was totally involved.  And then season two started and my dear sweet Russell Tovey suddenly started behaving like an absolute dick.  Pardon my vulgar language, but that is really the only way to describe it.  I stopped watching right there.  One episode in to the second season.  Since then I have stopped watching quite a few shows.  I've started and stopped watching Buffy quite a few times, I've stopped watching Supernatural, I stopped watching Bones, and I stopped watching Luther.  

This is not the same thing as just sort of phasing out with the knowledge you'll come back and finish eventually.  That is what has happened with House and with Star Trek: TNG.  I know I'll come back to TNG eventually, when I'm in the mood for it again.  And admittedly, I suspect I'll come back to the others too.  I imagine that one day I'll come back to Supernatural and get beyond season 5.  In fact, right this very moment I'm trying to come back to Once Upon A Time, a show that Matt and I watched together during its first season and absolutely adored.  Then season 2 happened and I made it about half way through before I stopped.  

There are two sides to this, I think.  The first is something I've talked about before a couple times, and that is my inability to maintain healthy levels of attachment to fictional characters.  I get way too involved and I've found that the only way to deal with that is to just cut myself off from the show.  When I start to care too much about Spike or the Doctor or Sherlock I simply stop watching as a sort of splash of cold water to the face: these people and these stories aren't real and you need to stop caring.  It is how I deal with the betrayals that come with network TV where plotlines and character developments happen that only make sense if your decisions are entirely built around gaining and keeping viewers rather than writing and maintaining a good story.  Hence my decision to stop watching Being Human when George completely breaks from character.  It's how I deal with extreme tension (*spoiler*Luther getting framed for the murder of his ex wife falls into this category) that I don't want to have in my life.  This, btw, is part of why I'm immune to spoilers.  Fun fact about me: I frequently go onto wikipedia/IMDb and read the synopsis of whatever show that I'm watching so that I know what is coming and I don't have to have anxiety about it.  This is the only way I can make it through stressful stories fairly often, and even then it sometimes isn't enough.  Especially when the stressful story starts verging onto the mangling of the story/character for the sake of drama. 

And the other part is my simple desire for stories to have ends.  One of my favorite aspects of British television is that they do not sacrifice story arcs on the altar of numbers.  Which is to say that if a show was written to have three seasons and then end, it ends after three seasons no matter how many people were watching it.  There are, of course exceptions to this *cough*doctorwho*cough*, but in general, they allow good things to end whilst they're good rather than flogging them along far beyond endurance simply to make as much money as possible.  A good example of this being the US and British versions of the Office.  This is why I stopped watching Supernatural at the end of season 5.  It was such a solid end to the story.  I'm sure that the rest of the seasons have plenty of amusing parts, but I wanted to respect that ending.  Of course, rarely do I have such a solid and clearly final ending to latch on to.  But even so, there are times when I feel like that story has ended and I have neither the desire nor the energy to carry on (see Doctor Who, the David Tenant years).  

All of this is to say that it is hard for me to give you a show I'm currently addicted to because the shows which best seem to fulfill that criteria are also the shows I am most likely to stop watching, often right at the climactic moments. If you follow me on facebook at all you know that I have cherished a deep love of Fox's The Blacklist (James Spader!!!!!) all winter.  I thought that it had ended for the summer several weeks ago, but when Matt just told me that there were actually 3 or 4 more episodes for me to watch I was not excited.  I had been ready to stop and now you want me to go back and reinvest before next winter?  Ugh!  I know they're gonna do something awful to me...  You could not get more obsessed with Doctor Who than I was (that's a lie, you totally could...) but it has literally been years and I still have no desire to dive into the Matt Smith years.  I was literally on my bed screaming (which, if you know me, is not how I react to movies and TV at all) and yet I probably won't watch the third episode of Sherlock till season 4 comes out...if then.

So I guess in the end, the only real answer to this question has to be Gilmore Girls.  The show of my heart.  The show that will never get old, no matter how many times I watch it.  The show that always soothes my anxieties and is always the right thing to watch no matter the mood.  Gilmore Girls is the show I will always be addicted to, no matter what other shows come and go from moment to moment.  And I think that is the best possible end to this long and rambly post.  

Next up is prompt 15: Something I Don't Leave The House Without