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I can’t believe it’s been more than a year since I left NY.
I love fall in SF. The air so clear and crystalline, it seems as if I can look out my window, over Lake Merritt, clear through to Hawaii. That every light coming from SF at night is pointed right at where I sit in my apartment in Oakland.
I miss the color of the sky over the Hudson River during sunset in the fall. The piles of leaves up to my knees in Harlem because the city never gave enough of a shit to clear anything in that neighborhood [snow, leaves, criminals....]. I miss taxi rides. I’m certain the moment I stepped foot into that city, I’d be reminded of all the things I couldn’t stand. But mostly, I just want to go back. For a week. A month. A lifetime.
In New York
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of
There’s nothing you can’t do
Now you’re in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new
These lights will inspire you
Let’s hear it for New York, New York, New York
Is it weird that this song makes me want to cry?
Yesterday, it took me over an hour to drive the 25 miles that exists between my front door and the cold mirrored doors of my office building. By which point, I was shaking from a mixture of anger and caffeine withdrawal. I swore to love BART more. So I took it this morning and read some disturbing Vietname War literature.
I fell asleep last night at 7 PM. I woke up at 6 AM, still tired. I walked immediately to the kitchen and drank surgary juice and ate some Starburst candies.
If PMSing weren’t such a bitch, being a girl would be fine. Then I wouldn’t think that I was seeing my dead aunt everywhere and crying every time I heard that stupid John Mayer song come up from the movie “The Bucket List” or whatever it was. I nearly hugged a stranger the other night, I was so convinced she was my aunt. I was overjoyed. And then nothing. I just stared at the likeness. And followed her through a couple stores until my heart felt thoroughly bruised and I thought I might go blind from all of the eye-widening I was doing to stop from crying. I sat in my car for a long time in the parking lot trying to swallow the idea that everyone else around me was considerably happier and less crazy than me. It seems unlikely.
I’m just tryna change the color on your mood ring.
Lately I’ve had dreams of an ex in which we’re still dating and I’m still uncomfortably happy.
But I don’t get it yet.
And then I wake up and am uncomfortably unhappy.
I volley between wishing I had grown up faster and thinking, no, I was just stupid.
How much longer do I have to be stupid? What will be the next big eye-opener?
Will I recognize it before it completely kicks my ass? Or will I only know once I’m in the dirt?
I had to close the books for end-of-month today. Which means I depended on everyone else doing their jobs during the month. That’s all. I just need people to do their motherf*cking jobs and then that makes my end-of-month not so remarkable. Instead, I spent my day crushing my eyeballs in my hands, massaging my temples until I gave myself cowlicks, and yelling at people to JUST DO YOUR GODDAMN JOB.
I made a full grown man tear up.
Honestly, my sympathy levels hit the floor. I really don’t care what you do with your day as long as your shit doesn’t mess with mine. I will make you cry over and over again if you threaten my work or my job. That’s all. It’s so simple.
Also, did you know the bay bridge is down? Idiots. If they would just work harder on that new one. Or, I don’t know, improve public transportation.
I got a crock pot. I can’t decide if that makes me old or domestic. Maybe both?
This past weekend I told Patrick that if our relationship-shitty week turns into a relation-shitty two weeks, I’d move out. Suddenly, everything was better. I don’t know what to make of that.
It’s raining something fierce outside so I kept the boots.
It may sound like those two facts are related but actually they aren’t. My boots aren’t waterproof and the rain didn’t force me to not put those boots back in the original packaging and send it off the UPS man today.
That, and I still don’t own a vacuum cleaner.
My priorities are MESSED UP.
I am lusting after a vacuum cleaner right now. Behind this window, in which I’m sharing with you my deeply embarassing glee over a household appliance, are ten other windows open to various reviews of two cleaners that I am comparing right now.
I am debating returning a woefully expensive pair of beautifully handstitched riding boots to own one of these vacuums.
It might be better if I were to just return the boots, not buy the vacuum, and just hire a cleaner. This way, I will not have purchased something for which I can use to yell at Patrick.
I spent $way-too-much on this vacuum and all I’m asking is for you to push it up and down the floors of our tiny apartment for like TWO MINUTES A WEEK and you CAN’T EVEN DO THAT?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?
And after enough of those conversations at top volume, that vacuum might find itself in pieces next to the cat litterboxes.
Mostly, though, I’m doing this to procrastinate. I have an application due soon [like it should have been in the mail yesterday] and none of the 15 essays written for it [weirdly enough, it's not for a program in writing, for which you would think 20 pages of creative thoughful subtly argumentative fare would be but you would be wrong]. So far today, besides vacuum cleaner searching, I’ve had a hearty breakfast [sourdough toast with butter and blackberry jam, two cups of coffee, two Aleve, grapefruit yogurt--not as interesting OR good as it sounds--, and a Chinese apple], perused jewelry online, watched two hours of the Food Network, washed two loads of dishes, separated four loads of laundry [yet to be washed], made myself noodle soup [miso base, peas, noodles, tofu, basil, spinach, looooove] for lunch and have been shopping around for dinner ideas as well.
Speaking of shopping and dinner [and procrastination], have you seen “Sandra’s Money Saving Meals”? Hosted by that same terrifying woman of “Semi-Homemade”? Whenever I watch her money saving meals show I feel anxious and guilty for spending more than $5 per person on a meal. She must spend an entire three days of the week at the grocery store calculating the savings between buy this box or that box or that box over there versus making the same boxed thing from scratch using these items or those items or these other items purchased at the Chinese supermarket versus the Mexican supermarket, and she does this for EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN item in her show. It’s like watching Jim on Mad Money. All of these sound effects and little caption boxes coming up to show you that you could have spent $1.99 on a box of just-add-water pastry dough or you could have shamed yourself buy spending $0.50 more on the box of refrigerated ALREADY PREPARED pastry dough. She also claims to have purchased a pint of blueberries for $1. Which basically means that she clobbered some poor old man hustling these blueberries on the side of some dirt road in the middle of Tracy, CA and as she was running away with her loot, she threw a dollar over her shoulder [probably in dimes, the cheap skate]. While watching her show alone, I had to pop another two Aleve with a shot of Pepto to curb the stomach bleeding.
Anyway, it’s time for me to find the most time-consuming, energy-intense stew to make for dinner. It’s been so cold outside. My baby will need the proper fuel in his tummy before cleaning the apartment and doing the laundry since I have some essays to write, dammit.
Right after I do some jumping jacks while listening to my noodle soup slosh around in my tummy. Poke. Poke.
I made attempts to negotiate contracts with insurance carriers this week for our surgical center. Do you know what that means? It means hours and hours on the phone. Half of it spent trying to track down a legitimate human voice. Another third attempting to find someone who carries real power and authority who then spends the remainder of those hours insisting on his/her lack of sway in the company and about how s/he will have to refer to upper management. Weeks later, the vicious cycle of follow-up phoning continues. For Blue Shield, I kept getting referred to different phone numbers and ended up in a crazy loop if calling the same six numbers which all had automated systems that referred to the other five numbers. Once I finally did get a real actual living breathing person on the phone, I nearly burst into tears which of course squelched any credibility I could possibly have with my soft little girl voice.
Until I started quietly, sternly, persistently demanding that I speak to the manager of whatever useless ingrate could not give me worthwhile answers. That finally got me somewhere.
Why is it that when you’re nice, no one listens and when you’re mean, everyone takes notice? My job is making me mean. Er. Meaner. To strangers. Who should be able to do things for me. Because I’m polite. Until I get meaner.
Finally, I hit some kind of gold.
I called my boss. He whooped and then said, You know I don’t think workers’ compensation covers strokes so you might want to relax.
I nearly had a brain aneurysm. Relax? Ha. I don’t get paid to relax. Immediately, I began to sweat.
My desk at work is a disaster. Six or seven piles of paper. A “To File” folder three inches thick with papers. A “To Address” pile that blocked the sunlight from two huge windows overlooking the hills looking in on my mess. So I purchased file cabinets and decided to not do anything with my piles [except to add to their volumes] until I got my file cabinets. Until I actually got them. Today. In pieces. I shook the giant box my [first of two] cabinet came in and listened to the satisfying jingle of many little disassembled bit. So now I’ve decided I won’t do anything about those piles [except to heap greater volumes of work upon them] until my cabinets have been assembled.
By whom? Magic constructive fairies, of course.
Today, I had really not wanted to go into work. What I had wanted to do was to complete one of my nursing school applications. But, no. I had to order shoes and a purse yesterday at work. Which came with free overnight shipping. So I had to go to work. As Kat said, there would be shoes at the end of it. That and my business cards would come today. Shoes and a feeling of legitimacy as represented by heavy, embossed paper which is recyclable in only the loosest of definitions [terrible Berkeley graduate that I am, I settled for paper made of 40% recyclable paper, imagining some young slave laborer poring over my tattered business card years from now, picking out the recyclable fibers with dull, shitty tweezers while going blind in the process and bringing home his daily wage of a dime back to his family every night, feasting on saltine crackers]. So I sat around work today, staring at my piles, watching them fatten and thicken, saw and dismissed the arrival of one of my filing cabinets, and waited patiently for my shoes, purse, and sense of personal pride in my meager accomplishments. In essence, hurtling without hesitation or even grand gestures towards a quarter-life crisis.
It all came and I was disappointed. The coloring on the cards was wrong but I ho-hummed about that and kept them all anyway. Everyone else at the office thought royal purple was fine. I wanted navy. The shoes were fine but likely not worth the money [the wads and wads of it]. The purse was nicer than I’d thought but also bigger than the pictures online had implied. Mostly I was marveling over the near instant gratification of shopping online for purses and shoes. Free overnight shipping. The perfect three little words to send my heart aflutter.
At least, that’s how I felt after the kind of week I had just suffered.
To top it all off, I now have a functional kitchen sink, after two weeks of no such luck. As an important aside, I continue to have a boyfriend whereas had that kitchen sink not been addressed by, say, an hour ago, there would also be no such thing.
All in all, a lot of small things came together today to make my Friday rather nice. Which provides for a nice dichotomy since my evening is about to be shitty [having the same shitty argument with the [tenuously-termed] [do I hear impeachment????] boyfriend about the same shitty thing which makes practically every Friday night this year feel significant in some awful way but also insignificant for being one of many Fridays that plays out in this same shitty way].
But other than that, my Friday before that moment will be good.
Until just two minutes ago when I saw my kitten beat a giant horse fly into submission and then eat it alive– its pathetic anxious buzzing coming through Pele’s nostrils as Pele himself looked confused and put off.
I read this article a couple weeks back. The one part that I want to discuss says:
I’ve never liked men. I like guys.
Guys are often in between things like jobs and houses, which means they’re more likely to stay up with you all night, drinking wine and playing gin rummy. They’ll rub your belly. They’ll lick chocolate off it. They’ll like your cute little dog. A guy is never going to shoot Old Yeller in the woods.
Then again, guys don’t remember to tell you the doctor’s office called. They don’t check your tires before your big trip. They don’t say, “Call me when you get there.” They say, “Love you, have fun,” because they can’t imagine anything bad happening to you. Which is good, and somehow bad. Guys don’t tell you what to do. This also is both good and, oddly, bad.
John Wayne was a man. The young Marlon Brando was a guy — didn’t you see the hurt and indecision in his eyes in “On the Waterfront”? Rock Hudson was a man. James Dean was a guy.
I never wanted to marry a man. I married a guy.
When my guy and I were falling in love and so happy about it that we broke three of my lamps, a friend said, “Someday you’re going to want more than someone who listens to you.” But I really wanted someone who did that.
Another friend said, “I also meant everything I said at 22.” But my guy’s still with me 17 years later. Of course, there remains a fissure between what he says he’ll do and what he actually does. Still, he’s true to me despite my own difficult nature.
A few years ago, when he and I drove past a man mowing his lawn — red face, crew cut, calves all muscle — I sighed and said without thinking: “Men. Sometimes I hate to see them.” This surprised my husband, who laughed but shook his head. That’s about as much as he criticizes me.
On the other hand, I want the E.M.T.’s who show up when I’ve collapsed to be men, not guys. I don’t want someone responsible for saving my life to be torn up about the death of his dog or how some chick hurt his feelings.
Guys can wallow in confusion. They can decide to leave their brides on one side of the country as they head to the other. Guys like “On the Road.” Go, man, go. They like the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s 1964 anthem to Guyhood, “It Ain’t Me, Babe.” No, no, no.
But, as I can attest, guys also can sweetly stick. Yes, they’ll walk past whole bags of garbage without seeing them, they’ll play their guitar while the dog snags an entire meatloaf from the counter and eats it, but they’ll say, “Hi, sweetie,” when you walk in the door, laden with groceries. And they’ll go into therapy to better understand their crazy selves.
Guys wear the kind of clothes they wore as boys even when their hair silvers: cool jeans and baseball jackets coupled with stupid T-shirts boasting faded logos from exotic locales. Men like innocuous dress shirts or pastel polos with colors as nauseating as chewable Tums.
My father was a man, not a guy. But he favored bright red shirts. With black ties. And black sunglasses. I figured him for a gangster when I was small. I can’t imagine him as a boy, but someone in the family must still have that ancient portrait of him as a baby all frilled up like a tiny queen. I never once saw him cry.
Guys are boys who didn’t grow up to be men.
[The rest of it continues to be depressing and shocking in its depressing-ness. I read it and hastily sent it off to KW and then once I got to the part about molestation, I was sorry I sent it. KW, accept my apologies for scarring you that day with the remainder of this article.]
Since reading the article though, I classify all the people I meet of the male persuasion as boys, guys or men. This isn’t as clear cut as it seems. I’ve been forced to create situational classifications as well.
If a burning tree were falling over my head, Bob is a man. Both otherwise, he’s a guy. When he’s not being a complete asshole.
Now, for those of you with dangly bits, are you Bob?
“Across the happiness data, the one thing in life that will make you less happy is having children,” said Betsey Stevenson, an assistant professor at Wharton who co-wrote a paper called “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.” “It’s true whether you’re wealthy or poor, if you have kids late or kids early. Yet I know very few people who would tell me they wish they hadn’t had kids or who would tell me they feel their kids were the destroyer of their happiness.”
-from the article Maureen Dowd wrote to make me want to hang myself
