The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Storage

I don't part with things lightly. I mean tangible things. I still have play programs from 4th grade, every stupid notebook I used in high school (which are 1/4 thorough notes, 1/4 half-assed notes and half doodles) and most of the kitchen utensils I've carted from San Diego to San Francisco to Oakland.

I am moving in three weeks. Twenty days. To a real apartment that is all my own that no one else lives in. By myself. Sans room mate. No boyfriend. Just my cat. Get the picture? The only stuff in the drawers will be my stuff, the only clothes in the closet will be ones that I wear, or at least ones that I plan to wear at some point and are really an investment in future fashion. I digress. The point is, it's MY space so I want to be really clever about what I fill it with.

To lighten the packing I will have to do at some point (if I can ever stop watching Project Runway, reading 'Cleaving' and texting everyone I know) I have started being ruthless with throwing out items. I totally tossed half of my crappy spatulas, my rusted whisk, a bunch of kitchen towels and a few pots and pans. I feel saintly and practically Buddhist, my mind is clear of clutter and my worldly posessions dimish by the day.

Except for one tiny detail.

I've been buying a lot of new stuff.

BUT HERE IS MY LOGIC!!!! I had about seventeen knives, all in various stages of dullness and crappiness, that needed to be thrown away. Well, you can't really expect to cook without a knife unless you plan on opening a lot of things ferally with your teeth. So I threw out sixteen knives and bought one perfet new one. Now I have two- one for cutting big things and one for cutting small things. I will not "need" another knife for at least four years. Of course I'm sure I'll purchase one, because I'm a sucker for things that are stabby and shiny, but I have no knife needs.

As I throw things away I realize why it's so hard for me. I imprint on material posessions the way that people look at photo albums. Sure, it's just a half-empty bottle of grapefruit perfume to the casual observer, but to me it's the exact smell of the summer of 2002. One sniff and I am taken right back to how I felt, to what I was doing and to who I was. How can I throw that out? The same goes for the hideous wooden armadillo door stop that my Mom gave me when I moved into my first apartment. What the fuck do you need a door stop for in an apartment, anyway? I keep it because it was so sweet of her to challenge her agorophobia to drive it all the way over to my new place. When I think about throwing it away I feel sick inside. I'm terrible at saying good-bye to anyone or anything. It's even hard for me to finish a book sometimes because it means that the story is over.

So here I sit, surrounded by things that speak this language only I understand, wondering what to leave in an alley and what to find a place for in my new home. Many things are changing. This will be my third move in thirteen months and I hope it will be my last for at least a couple of years. I want so badly to cling to something familar, something comforting but I know that the only way I am going to keep growing as a person is by learning to let feelings happen and not to hold onto things that distract me from pain. It's very sad that I am leaving behind a comfortable life in pursuit of one that is going to be a mystery. It's very sad that I can't fit all of my stuff into my new place. But, as a very wise musical once said, "To walk away, you must leave something behind..."

What am I leaving behind?

A whole collage of images just flooded my head, some of them sweet enough to bring me to tears and some of them nasty enough to make me almost forget about the sweet ones. Everything balances out for the best and I just keep trying to have faith that for every memory that is part of my past, for every heartache that is part of my future that there are new adventures to embrace and new loves to discover. Moving on isn't easy but I know that I'm ready to walk away.

Modern Love

With Valentine's Day approaching I have been doing an awful lot of thinking about love.

I think about love the same way I think about spiders. I am deathly afraid of spiders and will do all things possible to avoid coming into contact with them. If I see one I will freeze up and panic, like I can feel their little death ray warming up to shoot me with horrible venom and webs and goo and- well, you get the idea. I am not the kind of person who can casually pick up a spider and deposit it outside and move along with my day; I have to kill them. I have to kill them with implements that keep me as far away from their dripping fangs as possible. Necessity isn't the mother of invention, girls killing spiders is. I have used everything from a high-power squirt of leave in conditioner to a Sweet Valley High book to a pizza box reinforced with duct tape. The bottom line is that they're going to die and I'm going to be far away when that happens. After I send the little bastard on to his great reward I feel a silly sense of calm and realize how irrational I am. The corpse is so tiny, how could I possibly be afraid? Then it gives one last spastic death twitch and I run into a different room screaming.

The same thing goes for love. I am terrified of it. When I feel it coming on I start to look around for materials to build a weapon with. Insecurity? Infidelity? Sarcasm? Neediness? What do I have on hand that can sabotage these feelings before I make some horrible mistake and admit my vulnerability? And what am I so afraid of, anyway?

The first thing that comes to mind is how silly I will seem if I tell someone that I'm in love with them. This is a common belief; why do you think people don't just go around everyday telling others how they feel about them? We don't want to be the one to love someone more than they love us, that's like being the first person to jump into a pool before you know how warm the water is. No one wants to come up gasping for air like a sputtering retard. If you tell someone that you love them there is this obligation for them to either:
a. say it back
b. say it back and not mean it and leave you writhing in exposed agony when you find out they lied and it awkwardly ends
c. not say anything and leave you writhing in exposed agony until it awkwardly ends
d. tell you that they "aren't there yet" and, again, leave you writhing in exposed agony until it awkwardly ends

The second thing I'm afraid of it changing the dynamic. If you're getting along great with someone and you suspect that you both have strong feelings for each other, saying "I love you" can totally wreck that. The times I've said "I love to" to a man it meant just that. I worry that it will be taken as "I love you and am ready for a ring and your baby in me and our lives to end in mutual twitching misery and boredom." Nothing is further from the truth but if you try to convince someone of that it just makes it seem like you're protesting too much (suspicious). So why say it? Why put a new layer of uncertainty on something? If you say "I love you" it eventually turns into this thing that you say before you hang up the phone. It becomes a stage of your relationship, and that stage usually leads to that writhing-exposed-agony-

awkward-ending that I spoke of earlier. When I love someone I don't want it to be a closing statement. I don't want it to be a way to sign a card. I don't want it to be these three words that are devalued because of a compulsion to express myself. I want it to be something that I say, and that is said to me, when emotions are so overwhelming that no other words will do. A perfect example would be that moment where you totally give up on a day being good. You trip, you skin your knee, you get caught in the rain, you lose something important, you have a meltdown crying fit when your dress doesn't fit correctly...if someone grabbed me by the shoulders and told me, at that moment, that they loved me I would know it was true. Or if we had a moment where I made them laugh so hard that they almost peed their pants. Those times when another person is capable of making you want to be a better person, or help them in their struggles, or when you're seeing them at their worst and you know that they are still what you want. That is when you say "I love you".

The third thing about love that freaks me out is where it goes. Like a spider that you see on the ceiling and then a second later it's gone- where did the little bastard scurry away to? When are you going to see it again? Is it going to bite you in your sleep? And where does love go once you hang up the phone or spend days apart? I worry sometimes that I don't leave enough of an imprint on people for them to remember to love me when I'm not around. I worry that it's easy to replace me. When a relationship ends, even one that was filled with love, it's like a switch flips. One day the love is there and then its gone and it's replacement is angry texts, back-pat hugs and a sense of unfamiliarity where there used to be intimacy. The change negates everything you trusted and the shift of emotion is so thorough that it leaves you weightless and insecure. Did that love just vanish? And what do you do with the mess it leaves behind? Sometimes I'm so afraid of being hurt that it's enough to keep me from letting love just happen.

My second long term relationship ended a while back. It needed to happen, it is for the best and we're both going to be fine. I have no animosity toward him because I'm not letting the love we had leave me. He deserves to be happy; so do I. He is an incredible human being who just didn't happen to be the "right" one for me anymore. It's hard to come to terms with this at times, as I really thought this was the proverbial "IT" for me, but the fact that it ended in no way means that it wasn't a very special, significant and beautiful relationship. Neither of us did anything wrong which makes it very easy for me to remember all of the reasons why this person was in my life for so many years. As I heal from our separation I feel old defenses start to resurrect themselves. As the prospect of "dating" manifests itself I begin to question everything. I don't want to be afraid of my feelings and I don't want to smash them before they even see the light of day. I am reminding myself that love, and loving people, doesn't have to end in humiliation and heartbreak. I have no real evidence of this but I'm not letting my heart harden. I don't want to be one of those people that hides under a bed, or in a web, or gets smashed with a book but the risk of all of those situations has to be worth what could be waiting for me....right?

Backwards

I saw a dead body tonight.

It's not the first time I've seen one and I don't know if I was upset, although I was certainly shocked. I've seen a few dead bodies before- mostly family members-and have not seen a lot of dead bodies "in the wild" so to speak.

This one was a man outside of my gynecologist's office. Ironic, right? There was one young EMT covering the body up. My immediate reaction was so inappropriate. I just started laughing. It occurred to be how absurd it was for me to be standing there, drinking a smoothie, starting at a dead person. One the sidewalk. In The Sunset. In broad day light. On my way to get birth control pills.

I walked into the building feeling a little stunned and not yet sad. Mostly I just realized that I don't want to die alone on a sidewalk. I thought about how lonely it would be, the last thing you see a nail salon, or maybe a meter maid.

I reached out and texted someone, felt better, had a conversation, tried to distract myself with a magazine. When I laid back on the doctor's table I stared up into the ceiling, past it into the sky and up into the clouds. I hope I die somewhere I loved.

Pork Only Has One "K"

I have a few co-workers who are poor communicators, and I spend an inordinate amount of time putting out the little brush fires that they leave in their Godzilla wake of burning tanks and screaming school girls. Their misused words especially grate on my nerves.

Therefore, for the record:

Tenet vs. tenant
-Belief systems have tenets, apartment buildings have tenants. Telling the employee that "a fundamental tenant of our bonus plan...." makes no sense. Are there little people living inside a bonus plan? Do they pay rent and call payroll when their shower is leaking? Do we allow dogs in our bonus plan? If you were to order take-out, where would it be delivered?

Accept vs. except
If you want to accept an award, and you inadvertently except it....well, I think you would notice the difference. So would the person presenting it to you, who would think you were a foul douche for turning down their gesture. So would the job candidate whose application you were happy to except.

Alternately vs. alternatively
The first is to go back and forth between multiple items in turn, while the second is to consider another option. If you that "alternately, we could simply fire the employee....", I really don't think that you mean to fire him, bring him back, fire him, bring him back, fire him...do you? That's kind of cruel. I might laugh the first time but doing it until the poor kid chokes himself on post-it pads and paperclips? Not cool. When you say "I alternatively assign filing to Jane and Tom..." do you mean that you ask your employees to file while wearing a nose ring and a Nirvana t-shirt? Or do you ask them in a new, alternative language- perhaps dolphin?

Rescind vs. resend
Listen, if the union accuses you of bypassing them and asks you to rescind the message you sent directly out to their bargaining unit members, and you then send them out another message stating that you are "resending" the original message...you're keeping me employed. Thanks.

Irregardless.
Oh, my...I just can't. I'm sorry. It's too painful.

Conversate
Look, you can do many things in this grand free country of ours. You can have a conversation. You can converse. You can wear Converse, like I do, if you so choose. One thing you can absolutely NOT do is conversate. Why? BECAUSE IT ISN'T A WORD, YOU STAGGERING PIRATE FART!

Ensure vs. insure
You can ensure something happens by careful planning, due diligence and hard work. You can insure something from happening by purchasing a policy from an insurance company. If you really want your employees to "insure you get your mandatory training done on time...." well, I just don't think you can buy a policy protecting that. I really don't. Also, Ensure is the stuff that old people and sick kids drink. Maybe you COULD ensure a care by dumping a few gallons of the stuff all over it? Although, I don't know what your insurance company would say about the claim to follow.

Biweekly vs. bimonthly
Biweekly means every two weeks. Bimonthly means every two months (you want to use semimonthly if you mean twice a month). Believe it or not, it makes a difference and someone with a literary background reading your memo just might not actually show up until August if you ask them to "report bimonthly". Same goes for semiannual vs. biannual.

Nonflammable vs. inflammable
The first might be safe to hold a match to but the second wouldn't be. Therefore, asking the safety manager to be sure to order the inflammable coveralls for employees in the boiler plant....fuck. If I were one of those employees, I wouldn't appreciate that. Especially after I turned into Freddy Kruger and got knife gloves.

Although not technically bad grammar, typical office catch phrases like "think outside the box", "let's be pro-active" and so on just make me seethe.

Don't even get me started on "literally" and "basically". Because, basically, at the end of the day, when we wrap our arms around the situation while running it up a flagpole to see who salutes, if I hear either of those words used again simply for emphasis, I will literally throw up.

So here, dear manager, is a $5 bill for you to go buy a dictionary. Please, please, take the time to read it.

Present!

As I was just throwing up in the bathroom something occurred to me....what haven't I done in a while?

Write!!!

Right!

I haven't updated my blog in a gazillion years and it was totally unintentional. Work got really busy and then for the last two weeks I have had the germ. Then I had out of town guests and, oh, it's been a whirlwind!

Let me make this clear: I cannot remember the last time I was this sick.

It started off as a stomach thing that plagued me for a few days, went away and then came back as a viral throat/respiratory infection that a co-worker remarked was the same exact symptoms as swine flu!

OMG, right?

Well, I don't have swine flu, as two hours in the ER confirmed. I do have some nasty fucking virus that has been ruining my life lately. My first Pride weekend living in San Francisco and I will most likely be confined to bed with books and the Travel Channel. This also means I will most likely update with a real entry tomorrow (one that I have already written, no less!).

So anyway, unlike my human husk, this blog will not end up a digital carcass. Im'a pump some life into it this weekend.

Unnecessary Artwork

While poking around the OSHA website looking for record retention information for my company ergonomic files, I found this little gem of entirely bizarre artwork:
http://osha.gov/OshDoc/toc_FatalFacts.html

I know that safety is important but, really? Do we need meticulously vague renderings of accidents to encourage safety? More importantly, the employees that would be in danger for getting hit with a crane or falling through a roof probably won't see these. If you read carefully, you will notice that "The cases here described were selected as being representative of fatalities caused by improper work practices. No special emphasis or priority is implied nor is the case necessarily a recent occurrence. The legal aspects of the incidents have been resolved, and the cases are now closed."

So why post them? Is this OSHA's morbid scare-tactic to ensure good training. Still, though, the humor is not lost on me. Here are a few of my favorites. They're quite reminiscent of Edward Gorey artwork:

When I Grow Up...

My last post got me thinking about why I like what I like. If you take a moment and think about something you really, really love (summer, robots, curly hair) and then stop to think about what led you to like it, you might do what I did....waste about an hour and half. I think that its important to be true to yourself. Before I do something major in my life I catch myself thinking: "Would my thirteen year old self approve of this decision?"
I try to be honest about who I am, its not always easy, but I like to think that the young woman I was in my formative years would enjoy the (ahem) woman I am becoming. The things I loved and idolized then are my sources of inspiration now.

So anyway. I was analyzing my own closet (hoping that something amazing and bias-cut would suddenly appear) and I realized that it looks like a dressing room from some sleazy burlesque performer...and that is sort of what I always wanted. I am still in the processing of shedding the weight that will allow me to fit into most of the garments but I admire all of my stuff every once in a while to stay motivated. I ran my hands over the fringe, the gabardine, the satin and the rhinestones, inhaling the scent of estate sales and cedar. I have spent the last fifteen years amassing my collection of vintage dresses and nothing gives me the same sort of thrill that seeing a bit of crepe-backed satin poking out from the Goodwill rack of corduroy and denim. I pulled out one of my favorites- a violet taffeta a-line dress from the mid-fifties that has the sweetest bunch of milliner's blackberries on the bodice. I bought it because...oh well, here is where this entries theme comes in:

I bought the dress because it was very similar to something that a certain fashion icon of mine wore in one of her movies. I quickly Googled to see if I could find a picture of her in it but, sigh, no luck. Then I decided that it would be a good idea to chronicle my top seven style icons of all time. So here goes:

1. Dolly Parton in "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"
A little trivia. I started watching this movie when I was about seven years old. I didnt know what a whorehouse was, let alone what one would do in one, I just knew that Miss Dolly Parton with her Martha Washington white curls was the most epic thing my young eyes had ever laid eyes on. My Mom had a pair of six-inch red Candies and I used to shuffle around in those babies with a feather boa wrapped around my head. If my sister wanted to rile me up, all she had to do was whisper to me during the opening credits, "I get the red dress!"
I would get livid! The "red dress" can be see here on the cover and was an amazing piece of design. As I grew older, I lusted after her metallic saddle bag that she matched with two different ladylike western two-piece suits complete with gold embroidery and matching leather boots. I just recently watched this movie and it occured to me: I really kind of idolize the fashion sense of prostitues. Keep reading...

2. Liza Minnelli in "Cabaret"
My world came full circle when I saw this film. I was fourteen. My Mom introduced me to musicals as a child but didnt care much for Bob Fosse herself; hence I discovered Cabaret all on my own one day at Blockbuster. If my life was a movie, this would be the scene where jazzy angelic music swelled and light burst through the clouds to illuminate my path into womanhood.
When I saw the opening credits, heard the music and processed the eyebrows of Joel Grey I knew that I had finally found my patron saint. I watched the entire movie, transfixed on Liza channeling Miss Louise Brooks (who's haircut I already had). I immediately realized that I belonged in Weimar Republic era Berlin dancing at a cabaret and learning to say "screw" in German. I immediately absorbed everything about Liza- even down to her fierce eyeshadow. I began to notice that others of my older, gothy brethren had been influenced by this film indirectly for years. I bought a ton of 1930's slips from a flea market and wore them to school, much to the confused dismay of my Mom. She finally accepted it but drew the line at my drawn on beauty mark, which she stated had to be a weekend-only thing.

3. Jewel McGowan
I started swing dancing in 10th grade and fell hard for the aesthetic of the 40's. This was well before the internet was in every home so I had to depend on researching late-night movie channels for glimpses of a time when Hollywood Lindy Hopped. I learned quickly that Jewel McGowan (who often partnered Dean Collins) was the shit. Her hips swiveled like an office chair and she is considered to have been the best swing dancer of all time (Youtube her, she is magnetic!)
My friends and I would spend hours hanging on to our door knobs and leaning back to practice her svelte, effortless moves. Not only was her dancing stylish, her wardrobe was so unique! She brought a little taste of Germany (notice a theme here?) to the ballroom in her durndl and leiderhosen day dresses. She dressed to move and it was from her that I learned that one's clothing should compliment one's passion. There was something so clean about her, something that you couldn't buy or copy, that you just had to be.

4. Susan Sarandon in "Pretty Baby"
1917 New Orleans in the Storyville (again with the idolotry of brothel-chic).
White, gauzy dresses and matte red lips.
Finger waves, mint juleps and chaise lounges.
I have always been really obsessed with New Orleans, I'm not sure when/why that started but it bleeds into the music I love (Tom Waits), the movies I watch (Angel Heart) and the eras in history that I most often read about.
Pretty Baby is an amazingly articulate, poetic imagining of what life in the Red Light district of New Orleans was like- I don't know how accurate it was but the clothing was delicious. When I first visited New Orleans (pre-Katrina) I wasn't at all dissappointed- it was exactly the way I had imagined it and the outfits of Susan Sarandon in this film would have been my ideal wardrobe, except it was like two million degrees outside with about six hundred percent humidity....so I stuck to shorts and tank tops that hid the sweat stains (ew)

Well, these first four took me longer than previously anticipated so now I am going to have to brush my fangs and tuck myself into bed so I can be fresh and pretty for work when my alarm goes off at it's ghastly (practically night-time) hour.

I will finish this tomorrow!!