I'm Ape For You!

I've recently realized that this fine coffee mug from the Milwaukee County Zoo has a chimp and an orangutan hugging each other like best buddies.  This mug also says "I'm Ape for You" in big letters on the side.  In real life these guys would tear each other apart.  Seriously.

I will potentially write something of substance soon.  I just thought this new mug discovery was funny.  It's cute anyway, and maybe we could learn something from these little fake illustrated apes.  Or just drink coffee out of them.   

Barnacles

I had to snag this photo from à la garconnière.

All the things I own I will share with you

If I feel tomorrow like I feel today

We'll take what we want and give the rest away

I've spent a lot of time, in life and in this blog, waxing "boo-hoo." I'll admit it. Some of it has been a necessary catharsis, and some of it has been self-indulgent whining. Nobody is perfect, and I shall refrain from casting stones from my glass house.

At the moment I'm feeling pretty content. Urges to keep one foot (or the entire left side of my body...) out the door have waned, and I'm feeling like there's a person who might actually "get" me. Scary, right? It's hard to find someone who knows exactly what you're talking about when you confess that you made something up at your first confession because you got stressed out about not wanting to go down in flames in front of the priest, your family, and the entire parish. That's a special bond right there. P.S. I was 10 at the time. Talk about neurotic.

The interesting part is, that behind the puppy love and the smooches which annoy anyone and everyone in a 2 mile radius, there's a shared financial/employment struggle that could very easily be a disaster. Money or lack thereof always seems to derail everything. While our empty wallets are very much a roadblock to many things, for example a long dreamed of trip to Mexico, it's not a relationship roadblock. I'm not resentful and I want to share the little bit that I do have. I want us to be a team, each of us be on the other's side. Refreshingly, I feel like we are that.

Of course it's fun to have someone to go to the movies with, yell Simpsons quotes at, go on sweet little dates with, but sometimes it's actually more satisfying to have someone to lean on when it's going all wrong.

Sisterhood

What is Blog for Choice Day?

Each year, NARAL Pro-Choice America poses a question to pro-choice bloggers before the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and then asks them to blog their answer on January 22.

This Year's Topic

In honor of Dr. George Tiller, who often wore a button that simply read, "Trust Women," this year's Blog for Choice question is:

What does Trust Women mean to you?

As most of you know, I'd classify myself as a woman's woman. I like to wear pretty dresses, and have dinner parties. It's not a crime, people. I also know how to use power tools. I have a hard time with women who claim that they don't get along with other women, and yet it seems that they're everywhere, claiming that other women are "catty," "bitchy," or don't "get" them.

Every day, in high school hallways, or, I'm sorry to say, in more adult scenarios like a bar or on the bus, it's hard not to hear women calling other women bitches and sluts, putting other women down because of their weight, or smugly analyzing some starlet or high school classmate's "poor" life choices. It's shameful, but I won't lie, I've definitely been guilty of this at one point or another. This is partially a call to myself to stop setting myself and my sisters back.

Worse than this is the way many of us, myself included, treat ourselves. Just this morning, I sat around my bathroom pulling at my blouse, sweating, tearing my hair because I just felt undeniably fat.

It's time to start trusting ourselves and trusting our fellow women. This means respecting ourselves and each other. Band together. Cut the bullshit.

In 1981, Regina Polk spoke to a Teamsters' stewards seminar about reminding union members that every right, every wage increase, and every benefit is something that is fought for and earned. As a fighter for workers' rights, especially women's rights, Polk's words are as relevant here. Row v. Wade isn't something that was just given to anyone, it was something that activists had to struggle to take. It's something that a lot of women's (and men's) hard work, struggle, blood, sweat, tears, and sometimes defeat went into.

Apparently in this country, we have to struggle to keep our hard earned victories. Earning them is not simply enough, and let's be serious, it takes a lot of people's collective hard work to fight. Instead of being jealous of one another, or thinking of ways to cut each other down, as women, let's trust each other. Let's try to hold each other up.

Solidarity, sisters.

P.S. Regina Polk's wardrobe would put mine to shame, and she was still a Teamster badass, so we can really be anything we want to be, with each other's support.

I found out about this thanks to Paige Worthy's blog. Thanks, Paige!

A Little Bit of Resolve. A Little Bit Late.

Photo by Ben

For a variety of reasons, I've been hesitant to post a requisite "New Years Resolutions!" post. This is probably because generally I find New Year's resolutions to be silly and trite, but in the interest of my ever-evolving quest for self-improvement and my insatiable lust for finding a little bit of accountability, here are some goals, some hopes for the future, some things for me to keep in mind. Maybe they'll inspire people to not just make silly resolutions for the sake of a new year, but think about improving the quality of their lives.

• Commit myself to better dental hygiene. This one's a sad one, but let's face it, not all of us have been good little flossers. I found my old Timmy the Tooth timer. So far he's both mocked me, and helped me brush longer.
• GET A JOB! I will not do this in an extremely self-critical way, that's just proven to be counter productive. It's hard to look at job descriptions if you're crying all the time.
  
• Cut myself a little damn slack.
  
• Stop being so oversensitive. This one has been a lifelong disaster, like a rollercoaster with the tracks bent out of shape. It's wrong when you're 7 and your mother has to tell you to lighten up and take a joke. I still can't take a joke. I'm working on this one.
  
• Try to work out, without feeling like a shitty person when I don't. Self-abuse is rarely a good motivator.
  
• Make out more.
  
• Become disgustingly adept at vegetarian cooking. And I don't mean heating up Chick'n nuggets (though my lust for them is out of control).
• Write more
• Make more art
• Get involved.
• Don't worry. Be happy.
  

Par for the course... this is not a hole in one.

Why is it that we always want to believe the worst about ourselves? Hear only the bad things others say about us? I'm sure there have been countless blogs, musings, diary entries, and the like, on this very subject. I'm sure one could devote an entire course of study on why people are so hard on themselves about everything from their ability to get a decent job, to their lack of skill in the kitchen (at least that one isn't me). Why is it that a perfectly lovely phone conversation, a calming "how was your day" chat, can get perfectly derailed by one flip comment? Is this a woman thing, a low self esteem thing, a person thing?

Yesterday, a friend of mine sent me a message, mental cogs grinding furiously, because she'd accidentally "liked" a Facebook post that wasn't particularly likable. Suddenly, a tiny Blackberry related error became a whirlwind of "will everyone think I'm a bitch?" Certainly technology has made it easier for misunderstandings to crop up and mushroom horribly out of control, but what is it in us, psychologically, that fuels these little fires?

I've had a few sleepless nights this week, spent obsessing about this very subject. Slips of the tongue analyzed to death. It's hard to dive into something new when you suspect that the other person always has one foot out the door. The problem is that this type of suspicion is like a familiar friend, a security blanket frayed around the edges from self-indulgent stroking. I've been down this road before, the memory whitewashed by the years, and then cropping up in a new person, a new place. I want to jump into the deep end, but something is holding one foot on the deck, just in case. Wouldn't want to get all my toes wet. Someone needs to just push me in, but unfortunately, I suspect that the only person who can do that is myself.

So my tears won't fall...

Post holidays (which, this year, were everything any young lady, including myself, could dream of) all I can think of is Hyu Sakamoto's tune Sukiyakyi which is loosely translated as "I look up when I walk." I am reminded of 5th grade recesses in which my feminist, but serenely un-severe, teacher told us to ",walk with a purpose." I've been spending these many years searching for just such a purpose.

Here I am. I am ready to march forward into 2010 with a purpose.

Home and Hearth, Kith and Kin...

Tell me I'm the best Christmas present you've ever gotten.
You are.

As we start to get older, the holidays tends to bring people of a certain age to discussion of home, displacement, growing up, etc. I'm starting to notice a shift in myself that has been growing, slowly, like a crack in your car windshield. The farther away you get from Christmas breaks from school and talking about going "home" for the holidays with the intense need to get away from dorm food, and as significant others or close friends fill in certain gaps in your life left by your parents, the more confused you get about where you fit during the holidays.

When my mother passed away last year, two months before Christmas, in typical fashion, my sister and I plowed forth in an attempt to scrape together some semblance of a holiday, with little room left for reflection, maybe because at the time that sort of contemplation would have shattered us like blown out Easter eggs.

In preparing for the holidays, I've thrown myself full force into the superficial trappings of Christmas, egg nog, and ornaments, and the Grinch, but as the holiday itself, and my Christmas Eve birthday, draw near, I'm starting to feel a bit blue, detached, like there's something missing. I almost said no when sister asked if I still wanted a red velvet birthday cake. I want my mom to make it. Since we've started doing holiday functions at sister's house, that connection between myself and my home feels like it's dwindling despite the fact that my father lives directly next door. My precious baby Christmas ornament lives on my sister's tree now and the angel on the Advent calendar sits on a little shelf waiting for me to put her on the tree. I can't help but miss the days spent in pajamas with cousins tearing open gifts and as we got older poring over the crappy holiday blockbuster movie listings for our ridiculous trek to the cinema after the parents decided it was bedtime.

This year a new beau asked me what I was doing on Christmas Eve, and at first I was a bit shocked. I'd never really considered an alternate activity. Nothing and nobody (including the CCD Christmas pageant) has ever been able to tear me away from the same exact birthday activity that I've acted out my entire life. It's like a slightly tastier version of the film "Groundhog Day."* Even during my horrible, "I hate my family, I only want to hang out with friends" early teen years, I would never betray birthday Christmas Eve tradition. We skipped Christmas day altogether some years, but never Christmas Eve.

I think Christmas Eve in our family is the one constant that we'll always have, and I fear the possibility of any change in programming. Even though there's a big empty spot, there's a sad comfort in eating the same soup, the same cookies, the same birthday cake and waking up to the same casserole brunch the next morning, year after year. Here's hoping that the comfort of familiarity will help me shake off some of this lost feeling.

*For the record, I hate that movie more than almost anything.

!

She wrote his name in marker in all her bras and underwear...

I'm hesitant to write too much here and possibly "jinx" things. I know, I know. I really am a teen. I even have a giant zit, mocking me from just below my lower lip. My inner blabbermouth won't let this blog go un-posted in, and in order to acquiesce to its fervent demands for disclosure, I will say this: I am in big trouble.

Same Ol' Crap, Merry Christmas...

Right around Halloween, and for approximately the thirty following days, I went on an endless rant against all things Christmas. Not really against Christmas, but I just couldn't fathom why these people would be putting their decorations up. I was still clinging to my fake spiderwebs and slightly sagging gourds from the pumpkin farm. Don't you dare make me give up my rubber centipede and my jiggly skeletons, not yet! I began to get extremely militant about it. And loud. Imagine that. Then suddenly, on the morning of Thanksgiving, I went on a cleaning rant, taking down all traces of All Hallows Eve, leaving nary a decoration on the wall but a few gorgeous little hand turkeys. Those are still up, I might add. Hand turkeys are decor for all seasons... all seasons in which one might want a turkey.

Then suddenly I wanted nothing but Christmas. Maybe it was the frosty, sea green ice cream trees in the freezer case at the store, or the crispness in the air, or the realization that my birthday is less than a month away (!!!), that made this little Christmas baby take it all back. I didn't mean it, Santa, really. Now I find myself wanting nothing but to bask in the radiant multicolored glow of my tree, make popcorn strings (eat popcorn strings), listen to the same Christmas mix CD over and over again, trying to figure out how one can listen to "Baby It's Cold Outside" and watch "Rudolph" at the same time. It can be done. Others will just damn you to Hell for it. I can think of little else besides candycane reindeer, and the gentle sounds of my Frosty the Snowman music box in all it's battered, dusty glory. If I could burrow into my Christmas tree with a Santa mug of eggnog, I would. Maybe I'll try later if I can sneak another mug into the house unnoticed. I'm not sure what it is inside me that snapped, but until Christmas, I'll be making tiny Santa hats for my animal friends, and watching every claymation 70s Christmas movie that the Family Channel has gifted upon me this year (and no they are not playing the Life and Adventures of Santa Claus and for that I hate them).

My best ornament ever:

Hello, Friends

Thanks.

I tend to put up a hard front, and keep my important cards close to the vest. Either that or I make fun of everything. That said, I really am thankful for all of the people in my life that I consider to be family, blood relative or not. Life is a lot easier when you know there are so many people just waiting to hold you up.

Gobble, Gobble...

Time to take a break from the self-indulgent boo-hooing that I've been doing on here of late. Hopefully a long break. What can I say, the occasional late-night glass of wine tends to pave the way for the occasional late-night posting of whiny blogs. Also, I'm a whiner. Obviously. At least I'll put that card right out on the table. Instead of the clichéd whiny girl rant, I shall post a clichéd list of things which I'm thankful for this year. That's how I roll, my friends.

• A pretty rocking family, including the most adorable baby in all the land. I dare your baby to compete with her. That baby will lose.
  
• Friends willing to not only put up with, but encourage the kind of behavior that makes most people want to either roll their eyes, laugh in my face, or slap me upside the head. The kind of friends who concur with the brilliant plan to do a Photobooth photo shoot of baby dolls in a bar are better than gold.
• The ability to recognize my own whining at face value and laugh at it.
  
• Dinosaurs
• Hand turkeys
• Things made from and flavored like pumpkins
• Sister
• The ability to find a picture of a pin-up girl dressed as a pilgrim, holding a turkey who is making the oddest face to ever grace a fowl's head.
  
• Uncle Fun

We had a promise paid, we were in love...

The day we went to that concert, a homeless, drunk man harassed me outside my apartment for the first, but not the last time and I'd never felt so violated, and yet I felt that you didn't care much. At least not as much as you should have. It was a gift for your birthday, those tickets. José, a special pact between the two of us. You never knew that I'd hoped to play those songs at our wedding, but I know that it wouldn't surprise you. You always pretended that nothing I said could surprise you. What would have surprised you is that my feelings about that had been stripped away like the peel of an onion. José would have once brought me to tears, but I can see the beauty in his music again, without you.

A friend discussed the idea that a mate is the person whom you can see yourself with down the road with, five, ten, twenty years into the future. For me, that person was once you. For you, that person wasn't even yourself. You have no concept of a road into the future. It's pretty hard to compete with the vision of nothing.

Time to do the nighty night....

This Fraggle book truly is an essential when it comes to forcing your children to go to bed at bedtime. Oddly enough, this book, which was never a favorite bedtime story of mine, (those top prizes went to my mother's two most hated books "Karoleena's Red Coat" and "The Very Special Badgers") is one that sticks with me to this day. I try to make myself remember the message of what I dub "The Wembley Book" when I'm getting grumpy about going to bed at a reasonable hour. The basic premise is that there's nothing that you're missing, no party, no goings on, by going to bed when you should. Tonight is yet another night when I could use the benefits of "The Wembley Book" to coddle me and ease my fears that I could be missing something so exciting and exhilerating... and yet, I'm just puttering around and drinking a glass of wine. In all seriousness though, on nights like this when I'm left to my own devices, dreading the oncoming work week and the not so bright early morning, I could really use someone who could read me "The Wembley Book" and pat me on the head and turn out the lights.

S.S. Snack Attack

Some photos from the opening of S.S. Snack attack, an art show by myself and Stina Kaczmaryn. I'll let the fun speak for itself.

I am prepared for amazing things to happen. I can handle it.

We have a whole life to live together, you fucker, but it can't start until you call.

A Book by its Cover

If I look like a child in an old woman's coat, it's because it's the truth.

Sleeping in a Lion's Den

Once I stole your Bob Dylan CD and drove around town listening to nothing else. I imagined Bob Dylan arriving in New York at age 21, looking like the young kids who hang around on street corners in our neighborhood. The way he said "Green-witch" reminded me of you.

I used to know that every song on that album, but now the things that stand out from the backdrop are a song about Woody Guthrie, and this:

A lot of people don't have much food on their table, 
But they got a lot of forks n' knives, 
And they gotta cut somethin'.
  
Got that right

I Hope You Have a Nice Trip, See You Next Fall...

Autumn is hard. For a girl who prides herself on steeliness it is difficult, having to smell, feel, hear, taste a season. Hard because it means something. Fall has always been that time for me. Apples never taste so crisp, so tart at any other time of the year. Leaves crunching beneath the feet. The air smells different. Is it because I share a hometown with Ray Bradbury and all his Hallowe'en carnival madness? If that was so, I may as well live on Mars... and yet... It makes having to attend municipal events based on this very nostalgia that much more bizarre.

I love the fall because it truly is the time that I feel emotions most deeply. Maybe I should fear it for the same reasons, and yet I do not (or maybe just a hair). I've always loved the changing of the colors of the leaves, the briskness in the air, and the sudden impulse to pull a jacket towards oneself. I love the artistry of a hand crafted caramel apple and the silliness of a child's Halloween costume. I've never felt anything as deeply as I've felt "FALL" and oddly enough it's hard to admit that it's my true vice, more than the call of a fine wine, exquisite sex, or a the artistry of a gourmet meal. I'd rather have my ear screamed in by the teenaged employees of Great America's Fright Fest than any other siren song. This is the modern times' Dust Witch.

Bittersweet is the only word that can truly be used to describe this feeling and yet, it can never fully describe the pounding in my heart and ears, the chill on my skin, the freshness in my nose, the crisp taste on my tongue, and the mist in my eyes.

The sound of a foot crashing through a pile of crimson and gold leaves, the taste of cheap chocolate on the tongue, the impressions and tightness of the band of a cheap drugstore mask; These are all the marks of the season, the intonations of both the newness of the school year with it's pop culture folders and newly sharpened pencils, and the the dying of a season, the smell of mud and leaves and life returning to the earth for another turn.

The stakes always feel higher for me at this time of year, perhaps because everything is felt with that much more intensity.

My Baby's All Grown Up: Volume 3 of Rachel's Bridesmaid Tales

This weekend was the bridal extravaganza known as Melissa's wedding. Thanks to my commitment to try to stop crying in public, I chickened out of a speech. It probably would have been a more speech-like version of this. This fine photo is the first picture of me and Melissa together, and is the photo inside the locket she gave me as a bridesmaid gift. Outside my immediate family, I've known this little lady longer than anyone, even my sister, who was a mere sea creature swimming in my mommy's big belly, making her sweaty and uncomfortable at the time this photo was taken. Melissa's been like another sister to me, complete with all the heartwarming moments, tears, embarrassments, great times, and petty jealousies that come along with being that close to another girl. As my father would attest, Melissa can be a handful. Ok, let's face it, he dreamed of a permanent "time out" for all of us when she'd come over. That said, and despite the fact I thought I'd never consider any boy good enough for Melissa, I think she's found a perfect complement in Joe, and now I know that nobody could ever treat such a great girl so well, handle all her craziness, put up with her messiness, and love her as much as I do. Despite some of the feelings I've had surrounding weddings recently, and all the inevitable jealousies that come to a so-called spinster of nearly thirty, I had a great weekend celebrating my dear friend's wedding. Congrats to Melissa and Joe. I love you guys!

Here are about five million photos:

Ladies at Kit Kat Lounge

Another kind of lady at Kit KatBaby girl!Making new best friends!Makeup for the big day!Me and the brideSistersMelissa and Caroline, one of the maids of honorCandid shot with RhiannonBouquetImportant propsMight as well have a sense of humor about itPlace settingFirst dance with Joe

Grandma stole all Christy's dance moves
Hava Nagilah- this is right before Joe fell off his chair
That crazy Curren familyNewlywedsWhite girls can breakdanceOwlface
Onward to the Honeymoon Suite