What's in the Bag?

It takes us longer than it should to leave the house every morning. By "us," I mean Jude and me. Anyone who has ever tried to leave the house with a toddler knows what a process it is. Jude is at the independent stage where he likes to put on his own hat and coat, meaning that if I ever have the audacity to try to help, he will grab the coat and say "I want to do it!" That is great, in general, but not so much when we are trying to rush out the door. Besides the coat and hat, Jude will pick out toys to take to daycare. Never mind the fact that daycare is, in fact, one giant toy store and that there are more toys on the shelves there than any child would ever have a chance to play with in a lifetime. Still, every morning Jude packs his own backpack (and a backpack made for a toddler is the smallest, cutest little accesssory). This morning, he stuffed the usual cars and dinosaurs, and also stuffed in a teddy bear that he hasn't even touched in the last year and a half. "Do you really need all that stuff?" I actually said to him as we loaded ourselves into the car. What a hypocrite I am. For every day, I drag along a black bag with me, loaded full of stuff that I cannot bear to leave the house without. Let's take a look inside that bag, shall we?
I bring my own lunch to work (today, leftover chicken and pasta). I also bring bottled water and cans of Sierra Mist, which I keep in the fridge in my office. I have a CD player at my desk, so every day I bring 5 CDs with me (5 seems to be the magic number of music I can conceivably cram into my work day). Today, those CDs were: the soundtrack to Almost Famous (which, by the way is one of my all-time favorite movies. I would have to call it a feel-good movie since every time I see it, I literally feel good); a Harry Chapin CD (The Essential Harry Chapin, though the name is a misnomer, as it does have some good songs, but doesn't have Sequel or Tangled Up Puppet, so it is not the essential Chapin); Cake's Comfort Eagle (just one of those rare CDs where I love every song; smart and strange pop music); Harvey Danger (just plain fun music to listen to) and A Chorus Line (so sue me; I love show tunes).
Dig a bit deeper into the bag and you'll find not one, but two writing notebooks. That's right; I have to carry around two separate notebooks in case one will not adequately contain the genius of the thoughts that occur to me through the course of the day. One is very large and crammed full of weird, random notes and the other is tiny, small enough to fit into my coat pocket if I were so inclined to throw it in there.
Then, the next layer down is always the book I am currently reading. Right now, that opus is An Orgy of George (which isn't nearly the book you'd think from the name, but rather is a collection of books written by George Carlin, who is cranky and cynical and -- I think -- very funny. A very light, quick read, which is perfect for lunchtimes).
Then, digging through that layer, I find my healthcare essentials: a bottle of multivitamins and dental floss. Also in this layer are random greeting cards (in case I run into someone on the street who is having a birthday or needs a pick-me-up) and my postage needs (stamps, envelopes, etc. just in case I need to mail something during the times I am not at home or at my desk).
The next-to-last layer is the most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly. When will I get a chance to read it, what with working and making notes in my notebook and spending lunches reading my book? Who knows? All I know is that I can't seem to leave the house without it.
Then, the bottom layer of the bag is the most recent Writer's Market. I guess the assumption there is that if I ever manage to complete something I have written, perhaps I would want to try to sell it. I am not even in the finishing stages of writing anything, let alone the marketing of it, but I carry it with me wherever I go nonetheless. I also keep a pack of gum down at the bottom of the bag. Overall, this is a heavy bag, but I drag it to and from work daily. I think I have some sort of illness, but I can't seem to part with anything in the bag.
So, I am in no position to chastise anyone for caring along his stuff. I'd like to think that we all have stuff that we carry with us; my stuff just happens to expand to fit into a black gym bag.

Putting the Fun in Dysfunctional

Over the weekend I was able to watch not one, but two different movies, both dark comedies (dramadies?) about dysfunctional families. Little Miss Sunshine, the first, was wonderful, funny and sad (my favorite combination in film or books – if you can do both well, then bless you). I enjoyed it a great deal and would highly recommend it. Of course, next to the family in the second film I watched, Sunshine’s family hardly seems dysfunctional at all. I’d been dying to see a film adaptation of Running with Scissors since I read the book. I’ve since devoured every book I could from Augusten Burroughs and Scissors isn’t even my favorite, but it is funny and insane and I really liked the book. I also really liked the movie. Sure I love books, but I do appreciate that film and print are two different mediums, so it doesn’t bother me if the film based on a book is not the same as the book. I don’t hold to the idea that the book is always better. Since I am a sucker about reading reviews, I tend to hit the imdb after I watch a movie so that I can be a part of the name-calling and assorted insults that comprise the posts written for each film. One delightful chap called this movie a steaming pile of excrement (yep, those were his exact words). I can understand possibly liking the book better or not caring for the movie, but excrement? That seems a bit harsh to me. At any rate, for anyone who has read the book or even anyone who hasn’t, I would recommend the film -- if nothing else, as a way to feel a bit better about your own family for a while.
In the small town where I grew up, I was a bit of an anomaly because my parents were divorced. Of course, now it seems that the opposite would be true. I always thought my family was dysfunctional, but as I age, I realize that we are and always have been disgustingly normal and even a bit boring. Sure, there are worse things than discovering that you have a boring family, but it was a let down to discover that we weren’t so special and strange after all. It seems I shall have to try harder to inflict strangeness into my own life.
And speaking of strangeness, I just finished reading Christopher Moore’s A Dirty Job. It is the funniest, saddest and looniest novel I have read in some time. Since I love Douglas Adams so much, I have often held him up to be the funniest writer I have ever read (and I have read and reread the Hitchhiker’s Guide books several times, though they still aren’t quite as, well, loony as his Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, which I read in high school). Christopher Moore may just be as funny. I basically snorted and guffawed my way through the book, though there were some pages so sad that I would cry, just to be laughing again on the next page. I’ve read a few of Moore’s books now (a big, big thank you to Brian for the recommendation) and Job just may be my favorite. It has inspired me to continue working on my own novel, which has languished in book limbo for the past few weeks so I could shoot my writing load in brief bits on this blog.

I Just Don't Understand

My mind wanders when I drive, dangerously so when the weather is treacherous, but it only happens when I am alone in the car. This week I was thinking about the negative comments I had made in the past about a couple of different movies. Movies I really hate stand out because there are so few of them. There are many movies I love, many movies that I like and even some to which I am completely indifferent. I find that if I am disappointed in a movie, then, well, I am disappointed. To me, that is still miles away from hatred. I reserve my hatred for movies that I really, well, you know, dislike. The two I can think of right away are Palindromes and The Doom Generation. As with any movie discussed on the internet, those who really like the movies claim that those who do not simply do not understand the movies.
This led me to wonder about the link between understanding and loving. Is it possible to love something – or someone – that you simply do not understand? I will admit that I did not really understand either Palindromes or The Doom Generation. Both seemed rather pointless to me and I was annoyed while watching them. But, then I can’t say that I really understood Mulholland Drive, either, but I really liked the movie. So, I can’t say that there is a direct correlation between love and understanding in my own cinematic universe.
Of course, this led me to wonder about whether it is possible, in relationships, to love someone you do not completely understand. To this, I have to shout a definite “yes!”
I love both of the men in my house, the very tall cute one and the very short cute one, but I can’t pretend to fully understand either of them. No matter how long I live with them, there are mysteries that I will never solve, and once that may have bothered me, but, now it does not. For example, what would possess someone to dump any entire box of minute rice all over the kitchen floor? This, I admit, I do not understand.
So, I asked my husband if he thought it was possible to love someone you didn’t truly understand. He replied that he thought it was possible to love someone and not understand why. Later, he elaborated, using Eraserhead as an example (a movie on which I cannot comment, as I have not yet seen it). “I don’t understand it,” he said, smiling at me. “But that is what I love about it. There are plenty of movies that are really easy to understand. But I don’t think you have to understand something completely to love it completely.” I agree. Now, if I could just get him to stop dumping rice on the floor.

The Best Night of My Life

Lately I have been thinking about high school. Maybe it is the Veronica Mars marathon I have been burning through the last couple of weeks (and really, there aren’t enough superlatives to describe it. I love it, and it doesn’t even vaguely resemble my own high school experiences). I am in the middle of season two and even Mr. Barefoot seems to enjoy it, though I have found that he most enjoys the scenes where Veronica showers. Maybe it is the planned 15-year reunion of my classmates of my tiny graduating class (we didn’t have a reunion after 5 or 10 years like normal classes might). Today, though, it is the sudden influx of prom-related catalogs that flooded my office when the mail arrived. Most of them found their way to the trash posthaste, but I did save one from the recycling because of curiosity, and maybe a bit because of nostalgia.
Of course it was going to be a night I would never forget. It was Prom Night, in big glorious capital letters. That is a really intense pressure to put on an evening. As it turns out, it was a nice night that I still, years later, remember, sort of. There was a dress, that I remember, black with spaghetti straps and cute, perfectly suited for my petite frame. Of course, I still have the dress packed away somewhere, which helps with my recollection. There was a date. I remember that he was very tall, cute and funny – all big pluses to a prom date, though in my case, a platonic date. We had been friends and there was never a hint of romance about our going together. He told me a few years later that he is gay, and it is to that revelation that I attribute his total lack of fawning over me and all of my feminine, prom-dressed glory. And there was a theme. I am certain of that; proms have themes. I just don’t recall what the theme was. I am certain that there was dancing, though I cannot recall a single song that was played. In short, it was a fun night (I am fairly certain), but it was not the best night of my life. It wouldn’t even rank in the top ten nights of my life.
I don’t view my high school years with rose-colored glasses (or with any warm reddish-hued glasses, for that matter) because they were not the best years of my life. I dated someone once who claimed that life would never get better than it was in high school and I told him I thought that was sad. His mom yelled at me for saying that (don’t even ask). If the best years are all behind us, what is the point? Sure, warm fuzzy memories of the past are nice and can even keep you warm when you are shivering on your deathbed. But if you are not currently on that four-poster bed of death, why not move forward with the assumption that the best is yet to come. It may be a radical thought for one of my advanced age, but, lovely as taffeta and balloons may be (were there balloons at my prom?), I still think there are so many more opportunities in the race for Best Night of My Life.

Even Bloggers Get the Blues

In college, many students have a tryst -- if not a full-blown romance -- with chemicals of various kinds. Such experimentation is common for many students, though not me, not then. My college-years experimentation took vastly different forms: experiments with poetry about the nothingness of being, experiments with soul-crushing, spirit-breaking emotionally destructive relationships. Ah, good times.
Many years after college, I had my first tryst with chemicals: antidepressants. Well, first tryst if you don't count the courting of alcohol I did very briefly. After a few humiliating drunken episodes, that affair ended abruptly and we never saw one another again. Who needs alcohol, though, when you can have Effexor? It isn't as cinematic as heroin, but, then, neither is my life.
For as long as I can remember, I have been writing (which, currently, isn't all about the nothingness of being), I have enjoyed movies about haunted, poetic drug abusers and I have suffered from dark episodes of depression. I just assumed that everyone felt that way. But, it seems that sitting in a doctor's office, crying controllably is not something that everyone does. Hence, the Effexor that was prescribed at that very appointment. For a time, things were good between us, my little pink beauties and I. I felt mostly like myself, only a bit less sad. But, after a year and a half, I decided to cleanse my system and stop all medications. So I did.
Mostly, I am okay, but there are still very bad days. Yesterday was one such day. It was gradual, seeming like another bad day where people were just being annoying. You know, a typical Thursday. But it was not so. Little by little, the clouds outside my office doors swept in and by midmorning I could not control my crying jag. Nothing screams 'office professional' more than sitting at one's desk crying. I willed it to stop, tried to pull myself together, but in the end it didn't matter because I was in my office alone for a couple of hours. Long enough to cry until I was exhausted. I called Mr. Barefoot because nothing makes his day like receiving a call at work from his crying, depressed wife. Talking helped and the clouds thinned a bit, but they did not go away entirely. To his credit, Mr. Barefoot puts up with this better than I have any reason to expect. In the late afternoon, my office building was deserted and I spent the afternoon unable to concentrate on anything, staring a some inane article in Entertainment Weekly until it was time to go home. I felt physically exhausted and lay on the couch until dinner, something I rarely do. My day was saved by a munchkin who loudly declared "I go hide." He crawled up on the couch and under the blanket with me. The smile on his face parted the clouds in a way that my little pink buddies never could manage to do.
I felt better the next morning.

Believe Me (Or Don't)

Recently (okay very recently – like five minutes ago), I was engaged in a conversation at work about whether certain jobs should be restricted to females. Of course, I was initially outraged, but then the coworker (actually one of my superiors) amended his argument to mean pregnant women only and I had to agree. Of course there are physical limitations placed on a body lugging around her own body weight and someone else’s. Then, we discussed the idea of women having careers versus having babies. I feel I am doing both with relative success (of course, “career” in my case means office drone and unpaid freelance writer and “babies” means one well-adjuster toddler). He concluded his statements by saying “well, that’s because you’re not a feminist.” For a millisecond I was outraged. Me, not a feminist? Me? I am all for women doing whatever women do. Does that make me a feminist? Does that just make me a woman? I realized I don’t know. I don’t even know what the word really means (and, for those of you who have read more than one of my posts, you know I don’t like to do any actual research). That made me think about all of the labels tossed about every day, those words we use to define ourselves and others. Me? Married. This one I am sure about, as I had a wedding and have a husband. So I feel safe calling myself “married” or a “wife.” Mother. Though my son was, in strict Shakespearean terms, “not by woman born,” I was still awake through the operation where they cut through many layers to wrest him free of his warm uterine home. I have been with him every day since birth, nursing, loving, caring for him, so I feel comfortable calling myself a mother, as is any woman who opens her heart and home to a child. Any other labels I shirk off. Well, I rather like “friend,” so I will embrace that label and I have gotten used to “sister” as my siblings and step-siblings call me, but that’s it, I think.

This leads me back to the disturbing (to me) idea that has been with me lately: I am unsure of my own core beliefs. I admire people who have strong beliefs, but I never saw my own flexibility as a problem until I became a parent. Now, not only do I have to figure out what I believe, I have to pass those beliefs along to the next generation of barefoots (barefeet?). Already, I agonize over what to teach my son in terms of religion. This is an area where my coworkers have a distinct advantage over me. Because I am not certain of my beliefs, I am not sure what to impart to my child. I waver between faith and disbelief, not always in equal portions, so maybe all I can teach is to have any open mind, to form his own opinions. I do believe people should be nice to one another. I believe in basic common courtesy. I believe in always offering the last piece of pizza to someone else, but if no one else wants it, I believe I will take it. If there is one thing I am certain of, it is that I have many, many opinions. Of course, that could all change tomorrow.

Music Critic?

One of the very greatest things about having a blog is that you (meaning I) can have an opinion on anything and can post thoughts about said opinion without having to do any actual research or really have any knowledge. Based on that, I have decided to post my thoughts and ideas about music. Please keep in mind that I haven’t listened to the radio or watched a music video in a couple of years, so I should be in a good position to review the current state of music.
What do I like? Well, I like what I like, just like anyone else does. Depends on my mood. If someone had asked me back in 1995 what kind of music I liked, I could answer pretty easily: I liked the Barenaked Ladies, Tori Amos, Jimmy Buffett. (Now, maybe had someone asked me what I liked back then, I wouldn’t feel the need to foist my opinion on the world, but no one did ask, so now you’re all being punished). Today, if someone were to ask me what kind of music I like, I would answer: I like the Barenaked Ladies, Tori Amos, Jimmy Buffett. Maybe I am arrested when it comes to musical tastes. My tastes haven’t changed so much as grown, expanded. Yes, the Barenaked Ladies were my favorite band in 1995; I would still consider them one of my favorite bands. For many years, though, I leaned on Gordon, as my favorite of their records, but now, (today at least), it is Maroon. But there are others I love as well: Ben Folds, Ben Lee (pretty much anyone named “Ben” has a shot at being a favorite of mine), the aforementioned Tori Amos (though, again, her early album Little Earthquakes is my favorite, but I would still buy anything she puts out), Leonard Cohen, the Violent Femmes, Bob Dylan, Damien Rice, Pete Yorn, Beth Orton, Nick Cave, Morrissey (and The Smiths, but, let’s face it, The Smiths are just Morrissey and a couple of other guys) and Death Cab for Cutie. Bonus points to a new favorite, a band called The Decembrists, introduced to me by a friend who is infinitely cooler than I am. So, I am not opposed to learning more about music, to listening to what the cool kids are listening to. I just need incentive to turn off my CD player and turn on the radio.
Sometimes, a specific song gets put on repeat on my car stereo or the CD player at my work. That song, of course, depends on my mood, but I bet it is never anything that is even in the top 100 songs that people download onto their ipods. The most recent is a Damien Rice song, “9 Crimes,” but before that, the Tom Waits song, “The Fall of Troy,” which is one of those songs that is so damned beautiful that I can’t believe I am not listening to it right now (right now, actually, I am listening to a Nick Cave CD, which is how he made the list, I think. More than his music, though, I like the total attitude of really not caring what the hell people think about him. Plus there is a really random cameo of him in the Wim Wenders’ film Wings of Desire. I dig that.) For a while, it was “Famous Blue Raincoat” from Leonard Cohen. As I said, it all depends on mood. For my money, though, nothing can beat a sunny afternoon, sunroof open, listening to Jimmy Buffett. Everyone has his or her own sunny day music, but I have been in love with the Buffett since 1992. If he were to dress up Gregorian Chants with his Caribbean-tinged music, I would buy that album.
There is always a story behind each musician, each song that I have fallen in love with and I am sure that holds true for everyone. I haven’t given up on finding new favorites; I relish the idea of finding new gems. I am just a bit behind the times. So, consider this: whatever you are listening to now (be it on the radio or on an ipod or XM Satellite), I will discover this music three or four or even five years from now, long after everyone else has lost interest and moved on to something new. But, if you would like to give me a push in the right direction, please feel free to mention a few of your favorites.
Oh, and now I know what emo music is, so I intend to really research the music sometime this year. Or next. So, if you can think of a band I might like, send me the details and I will likely get around to listening to that band right after they break up.