A Tender Spring

Today is my birthday.

It’s also the anniversary of the shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007. 

This week marks the anniversaries of Waco, Columbine and Oklahoma City, all of which I very clearly remember watching unfold.

And now Boston.

Since 2007 in particular, I have deliberately avoided media on my birthday. I don’t want to spend it filled with teary reminders of tragedy and horror and ways the world will never be the same. I don’t want to corrupt the light and airy joy of a newfound spring with the weight and sorrow of manmade hells. I spend every day immersed in the world’s troubles; I want one day’s rest, and I have demanded that it be April 16th since the day six years ago when 32 college students died. 

But it seems the universe refuses to comply with that demand. It seems this day is not just about me. From the moment I logged into Facebook to read well wishes from friends, I was barraged with images from Boston and Virginia Tech. I cannot avoid the world and its troubles today.

When I saw the horror begin in Boston, I desperately wanted it to have been a terrible accident. I wanted it to have been a couple of propane tanks, or a gas line… something unintended. Somehow that would have taken so much of the pain out of the injuries, so much of the heartbreak out of the deaths. But as I kept close watch over the developments, it felt more and more like what it was. And I felt less and less like someone who has any say at all in how life unfolds.

I thought of Jack. I have a ridiculous number of marathon-running friends, and I knew Jack wasn’t in Boston yesterday; he ran it in 2002 and he never runs the same marathon twice. But I knew he and my other runner friends would be wrenched by what had happened. I checked to make sure none of them were at the race; they weren’t. I thought about the two marathons I went to with Jack, the one where we spent three hours in the medical tent after he crossed the finish line because what started out as stubbornly tight calves turned into debilitating dehydration-related cramps that signaled the danger of a heart attack. I thought about what it might have been like as he lay dazed, pained, shaking and high on valium, if a sudden stream of terribly bloodied and limbless runners arrived. And kept arriving. And just kept arriving.

Though I have cut off contact with Jack, I did access the one thing I know is available in case I wonder if he’s alive: his Twitter account for work. He had posted a link to a blog post he had written on his company’s website – something he does from time to time. Jack is a beautiful writer, and before I knew it, I was reading what he had written. 

I wondered last night if I could put together a blog post on Boston, and pretty quickly dismissed it. One of the saddest things about it is that there seems to be nothing left to say. There have been too many Bostons. I have used up all my words.

There are already many images of Boston that I can instantly recall without aid of internet or television. But I’m grateful for the one that I seem to see most often in my mind. It is the image of people running into the blast zone, seconds after the explosions erupted, to help whoever was hurt. Not all of them were emergency workers. Not all of them were event staff. Some of them were just runners, runners’ friends or fans, Bostonians in the area for what the city commonly calls The Best Day.

No matter how much the darkness seeks to shroud April, human nature tends toward the sun. 

On my birthday, perhaps I am blessed to be reminded that, in the wake of too many tragedies, there have been so many glimmers of light.

The sun is coming through the clouds now. And I am going to go for a walk in the park, to see the new buds on the trees, the daffodils in bloom, the children at play.

To greet the tender spring.

 

The Virtue of Basements

I’m still getting used to having a house instead of an apartment. I suppose that’s understandable, since I lived in one apartment or another for 13 years and I’ve only lived in my house for five months. Sure, a house is more responsibility, and if something breaks I can’t just call maintenance and make them fix it for free sometime in the next six months. Instead, I have to call the builder and make him fix it for free sometime in the next seven (until the 12-month builder’s warranty is up – after that, I plan to either fix things myself or ignore them and hope they go away). He no-showed me yesterday morning after I told him the house is settling on my back door and I can’t open or close it without scraping the drywall above it, and that if the outlets in the living room work, the one that controls the jacuzzi jets upstairs does not. He no-showed me several times when I had a couple of other things that needed attention the month after I moved in. But he’s a pretty good guy, so I just bug him every day until it gets done.

And there are lots of times that I have to remind myself that I can do anything I want now. Like when I walk a little too hard across the floor. First reaction: “Oh, the neighbors downstairs are going to think I’m an elephant.” Second reaction: “The only thing downstairs is the basement. Haha! I win!” and then I stomp just because I can.

When I take a shower, I no longer have to think about communal hot water. Sure, I have to pay the bill, but only one person lives here and that means I can take up the average amount of water for four people and still not be judged by society, because society judges based on a family of four. I don’t have to worry about trying to shower before or after the guy upstairs or the old lady next door.

I don’t have to turn my television down when I get home late at night from work (for 1.5 more weeks) and want to watch The Daily Show or catch up on my DVR until 1am. I generally don’t like the volume that loud anyway, but no one can say to me, “Hey, I heard your TV at 1am.” And I can yell at the TV during sporting events without concern for others’ opinions of me as a lady.

I can flush the toilet late at night and not worry about waking up the baby downstairs. Or accidentally slam a cabinet because the handle slips out of my grip. Vacuum whenever I want. Clang pots and pans. Sing out loud a lot. Do laundry at odd hours.

Last night I woke myself up coughing my head off because I got a cold from Neph 1. Before buying my house, I would have worried that I’d wake a neighbor. Now, I have the freedom to worry only about dying alone and not being found for days.

I can paint. And I did. I painted the shit out of that house. Soon I’m going to paint the front door.

Wait. I just read a how-to thing on painting a metal exterior door. I might not do that.

But this morning I might have discovered the thing I like best about my house. As temperatures on the east coast made a bizarre climb and I refused to turn on the air conditioner out of principle, it occurred to me that it might get too warm for my wine.

And then I remembered.

I have a basement.

A gloriously cool basement.

Ah, the joys of homeownership.

Don’t Will Your Children To Me

My friend Meg recently told the rest of the Ohio 5 that, if she and her husband meet an untimely demise, she had assigned each of her children to one of us for safekeeping. She has four, so that works out, except it doesn’t work out at all because you can’t split four kids up in the event of their parents’ untimely demise.

And this past weekend confirmed that I’m not taking all four of them.

Meg and her family ventured out from Ohio to me for a Spring Break visit. And the kids, who are 5, 4, 2 and 7 months, were darling. But there are four of them. And they make noise. And one of them kept throwing up.

Seriously, though – I have lots of experience with and patience for kids. The kids were totally fine. They are very well-behaved and very well-mannered and they will eat anything (except “artificials,” because somehow my dear friend who I love has managed to feed her children nothing with artificial ingredients despite being on the dole because her boorish husband refuses to take up anything that provides steady pay…or any pay).

But, as parents everywhere but mostly who read this blog will understand, they wore my single, childless ass out.

Also, I inherited a nasty cold from my darling nephew on Easter Sunday that kicked into gear a few days ago and contributed to the exhaustion. Jesus is risen, but I’m down for the count.

The tribe arrived at my house Friday morning, bright and early, after spending the first part of their vacation somewhere else. They arrived from their hotel having not fed themselves. I wasn’t surprised; in fact, I had expected and prepared for this because one time they visited Joey (he gets the third kid) at his mom’s house in Ohio, having changed the plan from just Meg and one kid to the whole family descending, and the Boor sat on his duff and demanded lunch and dinner. But the Boor surprised me by making their breakfasts himself.

I had to go to work, of course, so they decided to make use of the day by being touristy. By the time they arrived back at my house, with keys and the alarm code, it was 10:45pm. I got home at 10:55. The kids were doing okay, but #3 was clearly in the early stages of Meltdown Mode despite having slept on the train, and #4 was getting very fussy. He has a terrible cold, too, and was hacking up a tiny little lung between wails. I knew how he felt.

Kids 1, 2 (that one’s mine) and 3 bedded down together in my basement, all in a row in the queen sized bed. #4 slept in a cushion on the floor in my room, which Meg and the Boor were using for the weekend. The grown-ups managed to toddle off to our respective beds around 1:30am. We were up at 7, with me in the kitchen making an egg bake full of veggies, because the kids love veggies.

Seriously.

I had used some professional capital to score a few free tickets to the children’s museum. I had never been there, but clearly I had to do something with these kids, and the museum wasn’t far away. So by 10:30am we were on our way to fun and adventure in the city’s largest Petri dish.

Honestly, all I could think, with my chest-rattling, throat-ripping cough and progressively stuffy head, was Germs. Germs germs germs. Snot. Poo. Germs.

I never used to think that way. But apparently in my stage of life, when I’m in a building full of howler-monkeys whose paws are all over everything, I can’t avoid it. Ironic, I know, considering I myself was a cesspool of infection. But I coughed into the crook of my arm, Purelled my hands every hour and tried not to touch anything. When I headed into a bathroom and saw myself in the mirror, a tired, watery red-eyed woman looked back. I washed my hands in hot water and used the paper towel to open the door.

When I wasn’t trying to track four kids at a time, I amused myself watching the other kids’ parents. Mostly the dads. They were all wandering around in running shoes or Tevas, high-end cameras around their necks, seemingly pretending to enjoy parental involvement on this early spring Saturday with their hover-mother wives. With newly-sprouted pot bellies and graying hair, they seemed to send up thought bubbles… “What has happened to my life? I used to sleep til noon. And then drink beer and watch basketball in my shorts.”

For a while, I sat in the tiny tot playroom with Meg and #s 3 and 4 while they ran or scooted about sock-footed and #4 gummed plush toys that I’m sure no other child had ever gummed before. Ick. Into our section came four hover mothers and their little ones. Their names were Phoenix, Mason, Morgan and Rain.

I tried not to bang my head against anything. No offense to any of you who may have kids with these names. It’s just that when they’re all in one place like that, it sort of makes me roll my eyes. I know trendy names have been cool since the 90s, but sometimes I think this generation’s parents compete with each other to find out who can fill a teacher’s classroom with the most pretentious set of monikers.

Soon Phoenix, Mason, Morgan, Rain and their hover mothers were joined by their camera-wielding fathers/husbands. Who looked at each other occasionally with glances that seemed to say, “Wanna go to the bar?”

After that, Meg and #3 and I went to another room meant for water play. Yep. Water play. #3 happily threw toys into a shallow table-pool full of pumps and sprinklers and the like, squealing and clapping and splashing around, and I obsessed over how many of the kids had put the toys in their mouths or grabbed them with grubby hands they’d just pulled out of their pants. I watched a baby nom on the edge of the table. Meg barely reacted when #3 suckled the top of a toy boat and soaked the front of her shirt. Another kid bent over and drank straight from the table’s 1.5″ of what I’m sure was super-clean and freshly filtered water.

Ew ew ew.

After hours of playing and picking up e. Coli and stuff, plus a walk around the touristy downtown spots and a very late lunch at which #3 whined until the Boor ordered her to lie down in the booth, at which time she promptly fell asleep, we piled back into the Volvo station wagon with the Jesus-related license plate. Upon approaching my neighborhood, the Boor parked the car at the park instead, and we all climbed out. The Boor ignored all hints, subtle and otherwise, about #1 needing a bathroom and me needing a couch, water and a chance to prep dinner. And this was six hours before I practically crawled upstairs to bed.

Up at 7. Pancakes and bacon. The Boor talking to me about democracy vs. fascism vs. oligarchy vs. something else I had no mental stamina to give a shit about at any time, let alone 7am. Lots and lots of questions from the kids. After eating, unable to breathe and completely lacking in energy, I sat on my couch while the Boor did the dishes and Meg repacked their bags. I did #1′s hair in a style like my own and answered more questions. Meg asked if I was tired of them yet.

The questions. Not her family.

They left at 9;30am. I had spent a total of about 39 hours with them. And I spent the next 13 on the couch, trying to recover. I reported to our friend Angie (she gets #1) on how things went with a single sentence.

“Dude, I could never hack parenthood.”

Epicness

You guys, this day was so I don’t even know what that I can’t come up with a first sentence.

So I gave you that one.

It started with me having to run interference on Facebook posts. My sister, who often gets caught up in what she thinks is a good idea without realizing it could, um, totally hijack someone else’s day, posted on Facebook about how I was getting these governor’s awards at this luncheon. She posted my name. She posted a weblink to the Thing.

Nooo. What are you doing?!

And then one of my best friends, who is also Facebook friends with her, reposted it.

Oh, come on, no!

And then my aunt.

No no no no no!

Yelling that. Aloud in my kitchen.

So then I had to text all of them and tell them that I really appreciated their support but that I had deliberately not advertised this and could they please take down the Facebook posts? Because now literally 2,000 people know and I’m going to get questions I don’t want to answer. There are a lot of implications – strangers knowing too much, family and friends with whom I didn’t share the information asking too much, work possibly seeing it and questioning whether it was okay for me to lobby for a law while being professionally involved with my company.

Take it down, please. Now.

They did, fortunately, but I wound up crying. It was 9am and I was already on emotional overload. I was getting two governor’s awards for my victims’ advocacy work. I was giving a speech. Once it was a five-minute speech. Then I was told three minutes. Then I was told between three and five minutes, so I sort of merged the two, made it a Best Of and had Sam edit it. Which meant switching some things around a little and recalibrating. Fine. I can do those things. But the message of the speech… the impact of a stalker, the need for victim notification of prisoner release in cases of misdemeanor offense, the long-term effects of being a crime victim, the need for people who dedicate themselves to helping… it was heavy. My parents were coming. They would hear this speech and likely be set on edge and maybe even upset by it. Rick would be there. Or not, depending on his meeting.

An hour before the event began, my parents called to tell me they were stuck in bad traffic from an accident exactly nowhere near where they needed to be. I wasn’t sure they would make it in time to hear my speech, which would, of course, upset them. Then, sitting in my car in the parking lot outside the luncheon site, I drizzled a not insignificant amount of red nail polish on my blue spring coat.

So things were off to a great start.

My parents did make it in time. Somehow. So did Rick. He slipped in a little late and sat in the back, instead of at the table with us, the group of people receiving an award for the work we did. He did that work, really. But he came over after my speech, tapped me on the shoulder and said he was sitting elsewhere so he could slip out to tend to other professional obligations when he had to.

Seeing him felt sad. And good. And made me miss him. And made me hope. And felt awkward.

But I was glad he made it to get his award. And to hear my speech and see me in my really nice dress and heels with my hair up. He likes that look, and I’m a big believer in the lingering image.

I think my speech went well, but to be honest, I’ve blocked out parts of it. I wondered afterward if I had really said everything. I had written it all out, then rehearsed it so I would know it well enough not to have to read it word for word. But a whole section is missing from my memory.

The other speakers had lived through experiences so much worse than my own. I try not to qualify it that way. I try not to invalidate my experience vis-a-vis someone else’s, but when you’re speaking after a woman whose husband was killed and before a woman whose husband beat her and then murdered her two young children, you do feel like you’re unfairly spotlighted.

When the time came to give me my individual award, I looked toward the back of the room and saw Rick standing there in the doorway with the senator. He was backlit from the windows and surrounded by white marble. It was like he was glowing. I felt a pang. A few minutes later, when they announced our group award, I avoided looking at him but couldn’t help noticing the grin on his face. He deserved this, and he deserved to be proud. I was proud of him, too.

After that, he and the senator came and sat at our table, where my parents had joined us because our group was so scattered throughout the room. He wound up talking to my parents for a while. I have no idea what they talked about; several people had come up to me and I was justifiably distracted. And somewhat willfully ingoring his presence. Not because I didn’t want him there, but because I didn’t trust myself to act like there had never been anything between us.

After we left and I led my parents back to my house, I checked my phone and saw I’d missed a call. From the university. I returned it.

They offered me the job. Maximum salary allowed, title I wanted. I start May 1.

As promised, I texted Rick to let him know. His response: “Awesome! Awesome! Awesome! CONGRATS! You’ve had a very big day, if I do say so myself.”

It was a big day. A big, difficult, surreal, emotional on every level day. So much so that I don’t think it’s registered.

My mother wanted to frame my awards and hang them. In my bedroom.

No no no no no.

 

Random Unimportant Things That Are Bothering Me

The other night I had a dream that I was half-heartedly giving someone a handjob.

I’ll pause so you can clean up whatever you just spat out. Next time you should swallow.

– That’s what he said. –

Aaaand we’re back. Okay. So there I was, you know, jobbing. Except in terms of effort it might have been more like an unpaid internship set up by someone else. I was barely trying at times. I knew the guy, but I can’t remember now who he was. Someone I’d never seen naked, I know that. Apparently the who of this dream is immaterial to the psychological reason behind it. Rather, the lasting impression was that I reeaaaally didn’t feel like doing what I was doing. I wasn’t mad or anything, just completely uninterested. Like, I was rolling my eyes.

I know. This is how a lot of women feel, a lot of the time.

Do you think “handjob” is in the dream dictionary?

Now I keep looking at every guy I know when he walks by or whatever, like, “Was it you?” Then I picture a thought bubble over my head with an image from the dream and a question mark next to it.

I would like the Byronic Man to draw this post in stick-figure representation.

*****

I am seriously concerned that something about being photographed makes me intermittently cross-eyed. My cousin got married over the weekend. The ceremony was lovely, blah blah, but the reception was totally kick-ass. Anyway, pictures. How do I wind up looking like my left eye is trying to focus on the left side of my nose? If not that, then I look psycho trying to prevent that from happening. Or to prevent my eyes from looking squinty because I’m smiling and my apple cheeks have crept up my face. You think I’m exaggerating, but even BIL 2 was like, “Dude, you looked psycho that time. Let’s try again.”

Also, my hair was annoying.

*****

I am still waiting to get the formal offer for the university job. I have taken to calling the situation an Agreement In Principle. I have taken to calling it that having no idea if that’s really what it is, but as we know, I have trust issues, so nothing is real until it’s real. A week ago, I emailed my would-be boss to ask for an update and she replied that she wasn’t sure of the protocol but that she had started the paperwork to make me a formal offer.

It’s going to be fun working for the state.

*****

Baseball has begun. People are vomiting baseball talk all over my Facebook news feed.

For my reaction, see the first story, above.

*****

Okay, personal question: what’s the longest you’ve gone without having sex? It’s been three years for me. I feel like that’s a long time. It is, right? That’s a long time. It’s so long, I’ve gone from replaying it in my head to seriously craving it to barely even remembering it. I’m almost 36, healthy, fairly attractive - this is supposed to be my prime, and I got nothin’. When Rick and I started dating I thought maybe I would finally be reminded. Then we agreed to go slow, which frankly I do think is a good idea. And then, of course, we stopped dating.

If I ever have sex again, there might be a screeching noise like what happens when one opens a door that’s rusted shut.

*****

Yahoo has a “trending” section, and lately they’ve been posting the names of a lot of dead people I’ve never heard of. But their deaths are “trending,” allegedly. I feel like it’s mean to call bullshit on the trending of a death, because it’s insulting to the decedent. But still it’s like, “I have no idea who that is. Why is that trending?” And I refuse to click on it because that’s how it trended in the first place.

I actually think about that. Willful refusal to click due to principled disagreement with the trend.

Take that, internet.

Stop! In the Name of Love

I have gone back and forth about doing this post because I mean really, does this need to be belabored?

Oh, wait. Yeah. It kinda does.

The Supremes have spent the last two days hearing oral arguments (which sounds dirty, but isn’t) about California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state, and the Defense of Marriage Act, which President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1996, defining marriage as being between one man and one woman. The issue, as it almost always is with the Supremes because they’re obsessed, is the laws’ constitutionality.

The thing is, this is one of those issues for which it seems a lot of Americans don’t care at all about the constitutionality. Which is what makes it pretty unusual, since we’re always harping on that particular document, and usually with good reason.

I’m interested to see how this comes out (haha, I said “comes out.” Like gay people.) because this is a situation in which I personally find that a strict originalist view of the Constitution will bear out the fact that the document says… um… nothing about who can get married and who can’t.

Ruh-roh Rustice Scalia.

I mean, it does say that black people are only 3/5 human… but I don’t think the strict originalists are really keeping to that definition. The 13th Amendment took care of that. And then the 14th Amendment says:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

And Article IV, Section 1 says:

Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.

Which means if I, a straight person, were to get married in New York, it would have to be recognized as a valid marriage everywhere else. But Congress can establish whether the marriage was legit in the first state.

Now, I’m not a Constitutional scholar. I’m not even a lawyer. Not one single credit hour of law in college. I worked at a law firm part time for a little while and I dated a guy with his JD, but I don’t think that qualifies. But I am a citizen… considered unequal until 1920 and sometimes even now, since I’m a woman, but we’ll forego that particular argument at the moment, I’ll stick my thumbs in my ears and wiggle my fingers because I own property, and we’ll just settle on I’m a citizen. So the Constitution is important to me. And I don’t see an argument against same-sex marriage in it. So I guess it’s good that the Supremes have been contracted to figure it out.

I find that almost every argument against same-sex marriage is based on religion. As I have said many, many times in this blog, I fully respect a person’s faith, regardless of what it is, because I expect the same respect for my faith. I certainly don’t expect to change anyone’s minds. Instead, what I’d like to do is to point out something I think is a simple but pivotal aspect of this discussion:

The law is not about religion.

A friend of mine on Facebook unwittingly started a conversation about this the other day. One of his friends, who appears to be a fundamentalist Christian, pointed out three passages in the Bible that he felt supported his belief that same-sex marriage should not be allowed. I read the passages, one of which was in Leviticus (the third book of the Old Testament/Torah) and reflects a pre-Christ view of a harsh and punishing God… and two more, which were from Romans, a book in the New Testament attributed to Paul. My friend’s friend was gentle and respectful in his points, but based his entire argument against same-sex marriage on religion and these passages.

A minimally scholarly understanding of the Bible demonstrates the difference between the Old and New Testament tones in Christian belief, as well as the fact that Paul was not an apostle of Jesus and never knew Jesus when He was teaching, but came to his conversion after Jesus’s ascension. So technically, his writings were inspired by his faith, but not directly taken from Jesus’s words.

It’s easy to get caught up in the understandings of faith and forget the fundamental truth of this same-sex marriage question: that it is about whether same-sex couples should be afforded equal rights and protections under the law. And, more broadly, but no less significantly, it’s about whether the federal government should control marriage in any way… a question that, to some degree, is answered by the federal benefits extended to married heterosexual couples.

It’s not about religion. No matter how much someone believes that same-sex relationships are against God’s laws, or will, or word, or design, the questions of Prop 8 and DOMA are not about religion. They are about law, and the Constutition, and citizenship.

There are varied interpretations of those, too, of course. That’s why we have the Supremes. But on Tuesday, I found a passage I had forgotten existed despite the fact that it’s inscribed on a wall.

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Those words are inscribed on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial. Because he wrote them.

He also was one of nine men who wrote the Constitution.

I think, understanding that religion does not govern the rule of law and the outrage of some does not mitigate the rights of others, Thomas Jefferson would agree…

…It’s time.

 

 

 

Fourth Round Upset

If any of you had me losing to the universe in the March Madness relationship tournament… congratulations. You’ve won. Allow me to play “One Shitty Moment” while you snip away the tattered remains of my love life.

Oh, it’s not really that dramatic, don’t worry. I can be around sharps. 

Yes, you finally get to hear the end of the Rick Saga, because it has reached its end. Yesterday I messaged him asking for a conversation and he called me five minutes after he read it. Much was said, but the upshot is that he thought he was ready to date, but he isn’t, and he’s so overwhelmed emotionally that he hasn’t been able to deal with his life beyond work. He’s thrown himself into the job to distract himself from everything else. Duh. And he’s so uncertain about what he wants for his personal life that he’s even wondered whether leaving The Ex was the right decision. He doesn’t know whether to move into a new place or move back in with her. 

So, yeah.

That was really the only part of the conversation that surprised me, or any of you, probably, if you’ve been playing our game at home. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I slept well or that I don’t have sort of epically puffed-up eyes from crying myself to sleep. I really hate that particular feature of crying myself to sleep, by the way. Like insult really needs to be added to injury at that point. My eyes are assholes.

It was a long and honest conversation during which we agreed that there will be no hard feelings or awkwardness if the university ever fucking calls me and offers me the goddamned job. He says he’s truly excited about me getting it (allegedly) and looks forward to having a friendly face around that he can vent to sometimes. At which point I fell silent, because after approximately seven eons of dating and two years-long, particularly cruel bouts of unrequited love, I have finally realized I can’t be “friends” with someone I’ve been interested in. But I didn’t need to say that out loud at this point. 

I’m still waiting for my Cinderella story. But I’m seriously, seriously considering quitting the game and taking up competitive eating instead.

Roller Derby. So That Happened.

I’ve just had one of the more surreal experiences of my life.

Have you ever been to a roller derby? Are you familiar with this? I don’t know if men do it, but the women’s version of roller derby is apparently all the rage right now. When I got the Facebook invitation from my former neighbor, Cammie, I was pretty surprised. Cammie isn’t really the roller derby type. Whatever that means. She’s an archivist at a university library. She’s not prim or dowdy or anything – the first time I met her was when her friends left her drunk ass in my care while they went to search for her apartment keys in her car, which had been left at whatever bar had over-served her. Cammie, who is maybe 95 pounds soaking wet, sat slumped on my floor with her back against my couch, eyes closed, occasionally muttering that she hoped she wouldn’t get sick on my stuff.

But the next day, she wrote me a thank you note.

Anyway, so I went to the roller derby. You guys, this is some serious roughhousing. I don’t really know how it works except one of the girls on each team has a star on her helmet, and she’s like Head Bitch In Charge for however long she has the star, and she’s the one who has to power through the crowd and lap them. And however many times she laps them or something, she gets points for the team. The stars are removable, so the Head Bitch changes up every so often, though I have no idea what the guidelines are for that. And the rest of the team is trying to block their opponents from getting to the Head Bitch, while also trying to block for her. This sometimes resembles a really aggressive game of Red Rover. There are maybe, I dunno, eight chicks on a team at a time, but they rotate and they seem to have another eight on the bench at any given time. There are some other rules and there are at least three referees in actual referee clothing. One of them was also wearing a kilt. They skate around and two of them are responsible for holding a hand up and pointing continually at whichever HBIC is in the lead at any given time. And then there was this other guy in skinny stonewashed black jeans who kept frantically writing things on a white dry erase board and showing it to people in some sort of official capacity, but I could never see what he’d written or figure out what he might possibly be keeping track of.

There might be fouls, but I’m not sure. There was a lot of what I found to be errant whistling from the refs. If your job is to knock a bitch down, it’s hard to know when you’ve crossed a line.

Oh, and the derby girls have names! Names like Cramp Crusher and Ima Psycho and Anita Bandage.

It was a back-to-back bout (they’re called bouts), so it was kind of long, but by halftime (they have halftime!) of the second bout, I was actually getting into it. Still, I was trying to ignore the three annoying announcers (three), one of whom was wearing a gold sequined jacket and top hat. I make it a policy to ignore anyone who wears sequins unless it’s a prom or a bride. That goes double for men. 

It took me over an hour to realize that these teams actually have coaches. How does one coach a roller derby team? I couldn’t figure it out. But sure enough, the guy in the skinny stonewashed black jeans would run over (he wasn’t on skates) and hold up the white dry erase board to the coaches. Who were wearing – are you ready for this? – lavender suits. Not deep lavender… it was pale, so that I thought it might be a dove gray color. But no. Lavender. One of Cammie’s friends did some recon to find out for sure.

After the first bout, one of the members of the team came up to the bleachers, where about 300 serious roller derby fans of all walks of life, young and old, goth and average, punk and non-punk, were seated. She personally shook hands with most of us and thanked us for coming. Up close, I realized… she was at least 45 years old.

Which made me feel like such a bum, because this is some physical stuff and I’m sitting on the bleachers all, “Oh, that would kill my back!”

The second bout was much rowdier. As a woman from the first bout sold beer in the stands with one of those carriers you see at baseball and football games, the action on the floor was intense. I was chatting with Cammie’s friend Deb when I suddenly realized the entire arena had fallen silent. I mean silent. 

I looked up.

One of the roller girls was splayed out on the floor, face-down. Possibly dead.

Everyone else had taken a knee. You know how they do in football, when someone gets hit really hard and appears unconscious, and everybody gets down on a knee and prays or whatnot? That’s what was happening. And me, talking to Deb about knishes, all insensitive-like. And now I was all, “Aw, man… somebody got killed at the roller derby and I missed it.”

There were medical personnel surrounding her, and though I couldn’t quite tell what they were doing, I kept looking for blood and/or teeth. Finding none, I waited along with the rest of the crowd.

She was alright. She came back later.

About an hour after I’d arrived, I saw a girl sit down three bleachers in front of me who looked like a former coworker. Sometime after the woman didn’t die on the floor, I saw her and her friends get up to leave. Turns out, it was the former coworker, sans about 30 pounds since the last time I saw her. And you know who she was with?

Gwyneth.

Yes, Gwyneth. The woman who stole the affections and attention of my non-boyfriend, Jack.

I had exactly these thoughts:

Oh my God. Is he here? (No.)

Seriously, she is really young.

And skinny.

When did she get glasses?

I probably stared at her the whole time she was arranging herself to leave, saying goodbye to her friends and heading up the bleachers toward the exit. I had strangely few feelings. I briefly fantasized about a whirl around the derby floor, pulling her hair and smacking at her with open fists, but it’s pretty obvious based on any reality whatsoever that I would come up the loser in that bout. She’s a marathon runner. I haven’t gone to a gym in nine months. Really, I never blamed her for anything – it was completely Jack’s fault – she probably had no idea how devastated I was. But still… what are the odds? To run into her at the roller derby?! Really? Three hundred people out of an entire metro area population, and we’re both there?

Gwyneth goes to the roller derby?

I go to the roller derby?

Sometimes I wonder if I just dreamed the whole thing. But there are pictures of the derby on my phone. So I guess not.

And I didn’t even get a beer.

Flop.

ABC has a new show called “Splash.” Perhaps you saw it. I didn’t mean to, but it was happening right next to me and it was kind of like a car wreck.

Near as I could tell, what happens is, Louie Anderson does a slow free-fall off a diving platform, watched by a live audience who are in rapt attention and, in some cases, covering their mouths in fear. When he gets out of the pool, Joey Lawrence interviews him. (What the hell happened to Joey Lawrence, by the way?) Then Louie walks over somewhere a few feet away and Charissa Thompson (from ESPN2. Not ESPN… ESPN2) interviews him. This is all very serious, as if he just competed for a gold medal in the Olympics. Then he faces a former Olympic diver and a dive team instructor, and they give him scores. Totally seriously. And then a tweet pops up on the screen from a random person saying she’s glad diving is finally getting some attention because it’s so crazy hard to do.

And I believe that. I believe that actual diving, in which you point your toes and do a bunch of flips and twists and stuff, and you try to enter the water while creating as little splash as possible, is difficult to do.

So after that, Katherine Webb comes out. I immediately have my doubts because she’s wearing a bathing suit that would definitely, definitely come off if I wore it and dove from a 10-meter platform. Who is Katherine Webb? you wonder quietly to yourself. She’s the girlfriend of a college quarterback, and also Miss Alabama, made more famous by Bret Musberger’s compliment of her looks on live TV as she sat in the stands at her boyfriend’s bowl game than by her crowning as Miss Alabama.

Anyway, so she dives, which is kind of impressive because she does a backflip. And keeps the bathing suit on. But her score for that is somehow lower than Louie Anderson’s freefall.

They interview her. Somehow her makeup has not run down her face. Her conversation with Charissa Thompson is like Hot Brunette With Wet Hair Talks To Hot Blonde With Dry Hair. Ratings gold in the male 14-Dead demographic.

Then some guy who’s a trick skier or something comes out in trunks and he’s all cut and muscley, and he does a dive with a couple flips and a couple twists and somehow his score is only a little higher than Louie Anderson’s.

Then out comes – are you ready for this? – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He’s wearing a purple robe and he looks, I swear, like some kind of wizard. For some reason he is not wearing his goggles, which is weird because he wore them to play ball but apparently does not think he needs them to swim. He dives off the kind of diving board we’re all familiar with – the bouncy kind that’s not high off the water. And he totally belly-flops.

Admittedly, I crack up laughing.

But I cannot believe this is where we’ve gone as a society. This is entertainment now? Watching Louie Anderson plummet off a slab into a pool in (thank God) a full body bathing suit?

Look, we’re writers. We all know “reality” television sucks ass. It started more than 20 years ago (gah) with the first Real World on MTV and it’s been a long, steady progression into hell since. But now we are seriously entertaining ourselves watching a fat guy and a midget (a midget, people) do dives?

And yes, I totally resorted to assholery in my description in the previous sentence, but do you know why? Because that’s what ABC did in casting them. You put Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Louie Anderson and Chuy Bravo in a diving “competition” with Katherine Webb and Rory Bushfield (the extreme skier), you’re totally going for the Some Of These Folks Are Not Like the Others vibe. Unabashedly.

So if you watch the show and enjoy the spectacle of the comparative figures… you’re an asshole, too.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, there’s no charity fundraising involved or anything. It’s really just like watching the folks at your community pool try to dive, but with cameras and lights.

Who came up with this idea? Who sat in a board room and said, “Okay, here it is. Ready? So great. Okay. So. We take these D-list celebrities, right? I mean people you haven’t seen in decades. Sometimes people you’ve never even heard of, right? And we have them dive into a pool.”

And the exec said, “…And?”

And the idea guy said, “…Isn’t it awesome?”

And then they made the show.

In other news, ABC has announced that its next show will feature camera crews watching me get out of bed every morning, just in case I fall down.

Go ‘Merica.

 

Your Life Is Important To Us. Please Continue To Hold.

As Josh Lyman once said in an episode of The West Wing called “The War At Home:” I’m on hold. I’m on hold. I’m in some kind of hellish hold world of holding.

Super episode, by the way.

So. I’m still waiting to hear from the university about the job. I’m not going to hear about it until at least next Monday, when Joanne gets back from vacation. She did email me yesterday, the first day of her vacation, to ask me for three references. I had already provided a list of three, two of whom are either recently retired from her department or currently working one floor below her in the president’s office. So I guess she wanted three more.

I could go for days, boss. Refer away. Or whatever.

But seriously? Make the call. You’ve told me you want to hire me, you’ve told me you don’t know why I didn’t get the last job I interviewed for there, you asked me for free advice, some of which you actually took, you sang my praises to Rick twice the next day… HIRE ME ALREADY. Or I’m totally billing you for that shit.

Meanwhile, I had to schedule the interview I don’t want, for the job I don’t really want. That’s because I had put my old and potentially new again boss on hold, because I was on hold with the university. And then when I learned I wasn’t going to hear from the university until at least the 25th, I couldn’t keep David on hold anymore. So that interview is Friday.

Which is Rick’s birthday. I had foolishly taken it as a vacation day, thinking maybe I’d make him a nice dinner. That was more than a month ago, when we were swimming along nicely. Cut to now, at which point I haven’t seen him in almost a month and didn’t hear from him between Friday afternoon and this morning. And all he can say to me anymore is, “Did you hear anything about the job yet?” Even though I have told him I won’t hear until next week. It’s like that’s the only way he can think of to continue some sort of contact.

I almost gave the vacation day back, but then I realized it would be the best way to go to the interview I don’t want for the job I don’t really want.

Since I turned my blog into an interactive forum on dating, I’ve been doing what it seemed most of you recommended: responding when contacted, but not reaching out. Which is really no different from what I’d been doing all along. So no behavior modification was necessary. Psyche modification – different story.

Therefore, I am grumpy as hell. Which, I’m told, hath no fury like a woman wondering what the eff is the deal with the seemingly endless procession of men in her life who can’t get their shit together with super glue, compounded by the nearly four-year search for a way out of a basement that didn’t include a spoon and a Raquel Welch poster, which is presently taunting her because it’s like she can smell the fresh air but she can’t get to it.

Or something like that.

Even Sam isn’t getting back to me. Days have gone by and nothing. I think he might be dead. I emailed him yesterday to ask. No reply. So it’s possible I’m right.

I’ve heard it said that God has three answers: Yes, No and Wait. I suppose it’s possible that I’m getting a bunch of Waits lately. But still, I would think God would have a better way to communicate. Burn a bush or something.

But tell me what the burning bush means first, so I’m not all, “It’s a sign! Wait… what?”