Less than one week now until the big mess of an anticlimax known as my birthday and I am pretty sure that I am seeing things. In the corner of my eye, I keep seeing little twitches and vibrations on my screen, sure that there has been a change that someone has sent me a message or an email or...? And I can only assume this is a product of my desire. That, indeed that corner tab is not moving, only that I so wish it to that my eye has produced a spasm just to give me that single, short moment's reprieve.

I have been itching for a road trip lately. Not sure where to go, the few places within reasonable drive distance all rather...unappealing destinations. I was on my way back from the airport in the grocery getter and felt a sense of dull happiness at being on the (sorta) open road that I hadn't felt with that awareness since college and the days of endless back and forth between Lawrence and the Ville.

Driving, for me, has always been fertile creative ground, especially when I am prone to sadness--which, luckily for me and all my rapt readers (ha!), lately I have been--and has produced a number of short pieces for writing classes, all with themes of emptiness and open space and possibility and smog.

It hasn't felt as cathartic as that brief, late night drive was. I was tempted to just keep going. I feel the need to shake off my life right now so strongly, that there is some irrational, terrifying, urgent siren call to just fuck off and not come back. Take all my money ($31), shirk all my duties, leave all my acquaintances and just blow outta here. It is a dream.

In that dream it is warm and dry and I have some futureless, somewhat personally fulfilling job like bartending or driving a school bus or working the cash register at a convenience store. Somewhere small, lots of small places. Where I eat canned beans and PB&J and sleep in my van and spend my free time--so much of it!--walking around, picking through antique stores and talking to old strangers and musing about the world on driftwood benches around a lake.

Some sort of comforting nothing. With goals and achievements one in the same, doing what I want to do, and wanting what I do. Everyone around and nobody with me but me. Low expectations and pleasant surprises every day.

I'd write a book on the customer copy receipts that no one wanted and staple it together with a psuedonym like "Almetta May Van Duesel" on it and pay my $127 dollars to have it copied three dozen times at a Kinko's onto smooth, bold colored paper and send it to my loved ones. The people I used to know.

I'd sit at the ratty booth at some creepy truck stop diner and smile all my teeth at the greasy guy at the pie bar with almost none and get back to my novel, tea in hand, one foot out the door.

Puddle O' Muddle

So, I find myself two months older than I was the last time I posted. It is ridiculous, I know, you can save your lecturing, I have done enough berating of myself.

I know it is a sorry excuse, but really, truly, I HAVE been nutty busy, between holidays, a record amount of work for the magazine (five? six items in the Feb issue and a feature due out NOW for March?), travel, and trying to maintain some semblance of a happy, normal personal life, I have just been wearing myself thin. I am just waiting for some sort of diagnosis, I am sure I have a deficiency of some sort or a pissed off thyroid or the beginning stages of diabetes. But, more than anything I guess that the real reason for my absence (and total neglect of my creeping, blog-hack, relation by marriage) was a strange new life form that I hadn't seen in a while: happiness?

I guess I have been more happy lately, more looking to real people in my life for support/fulfillment/constant yammering rather than the cybernetic nobody that reads this blog. Weird. Totes weird.

As much as it pleases me, I think it is sad that I will have so much less man-alysis to do on this thing now, and, that which there is to be done may actually be too--gasp!--private to do here. I wouldn't want to alienate anyone, nor am I totally free to bitch about you the way I want to if YOU ARE READING THIS.

Now, for the news:

Since our last non-versation I have acquired a number of things (including a taste for terrible, made-up-word puns as a writing style, please see the above paragraph as well):

• A new appreciation for the rampant smug self-satisfaction that is basically the foundation of all current music. Not that I am hatin', sometimes I would have JUST as hard a time giving my self-stroke a break if I were these guys, however, I do not count aging Brit-pop Oasis as one of these artists. But I still really liked the completely detached, mental-masturbation style of Liam Gallagher's stage performance. It was fascinating, like watching a gorilla pick at himself in front of the packed zoo window. Thanks for taking me, Dave.
• A new pair of perilously hipster heavy black specs, that, in truth, I do not have the hairstyle to support.
• A pair of purple corduroy skinny jeans that fall into the same category as my spectacles.
• A new car that decidedly moves me back to normal gal status, as it is NOT a particularly hipster thing to have a small-model SUV. Geez, maybe I should trade it in for a Schwinn before the hipster train that all my friends are on pulls out forever....wink, wink, loving nudge.
• A much more rich film vocabulary, hats off to you, Fu. I have, in the last six months of my existence, seen as many movies as I think I have in the whole rest of my life, and I am somewhat wary of saying, this is pleasing me, more and more, you infectious film geek. For all I know, by the time you are done with me, my insides will be all popcorn and celluloid.
• And, not to ignore the requisite dose of melancholy that usually attends these blog posts, a weird condition of late that lends me to vacillate wildly between conditions of intense anxiety and insecurity--most of which tend to eventually work themselves out through pouches just below my eyes that allow for some very cathartic things called tears--and bouts of giddy elation, often accompanied by intense, far more intense that is the norm for me, sexual desires. I am all but consumed at these times by my weird, hormonal horn-doggy self, it is highly stressful, let me tell you. SO, there you go, I am still adrift in strange waves of sadness, totally discontent with a number of aspect of my life, so please do not feel like the world has been flipped on its head, but at least this time, I balanced it out with some good, old-fashioned pervishness. Isn't that wonderful and lovely?

Good day to you, good people, until we meet again.

And for you, rogue label maker and profile defiler, YOU WATCH YOUR BACK. And please see the handy use of your labels, below. F'in Punk.

Gross-Out Blog

DISCLAIMER (though really, to be fair, un-needed, you all know what you are getting into and with almost every post there is an accompanying admission that it will probably bore all readers):

If you are uninterested in what one elitist snob I know called a "whine blog" please proceed elsewhere. While the rest of you may have drugs or shrinks or healthy, non-busy, in the same city, same-sex friends to entertain your issues and coddle you through them, I do not. This is therapeutic and the only way I keep myself from riddling my ACTUAL life and all the people in it with endless psychosis and actually make it through every day. SO, if you don't like it, fuck off. I will stop by to read your endlessly brilliant analysis of Band of Horses and There Will Be Blood, later. Probably not. BO-RING.

;) I say that with teasing affection of course. I just had an obnxious weekend of a pseudo-break-up with someone I was never with--over texting, no less; feeling perilously let down regarding a friend's maybe-addiction; having NOTHING to wear; falling down, being manhandled and borderline abused and then called a bitch repeatedly. So I had a moment of venting to do. Not even about you, button, turnip, poodle, schnauzer. The good news was I hit my first NBA game. And we won. An unceremonious, not super-well played game, but a win nonetheless. And I could use a win.

END DISCLAIMER
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Last night, I was standing at the window picking my nose and found myself staring at a pink foam Princess magnet that my sister sent me. I don't generally like to put things actually ON my refrigerator, as it would so detract from the dirty hippy motif that rules the home/fridge and ruin the carefully crafted illusion that I do not really live there.

Fresh out of the shower (which, I must mention, has become an ever-increasingly ugly prospect, this whole bathing thing. Mid-November Denver in a crappy-insulated house in a room that doesn't belong or have a vent just does NOT welcome wet legs. Sigh.) I stood at my window staring out at the far-too-early darkness, wrapped in towel, and thought just how much I had grown into that pink foam above-my-bed- label. A delicate, sea-shell princess, this one. Of course, the sort of princess that, just now when I was itching my ear, I accidentally wedged a strand of hair in the waxy canal. When I pulled it out...I liked it. That sort of princess.

But really, outside of that, I have come to have very high expectations. I find myself feeling satisfied less often and critical more. I have been a little irritable, relative to my normal mood. I have been feeling wider swings of emotion. I seriously considered trying to get back on some meds. I mean, I realize that PMDD is clearly a fictitious diagnosis aimed at giving people who don't have the time/motivation to get any therapy nor have any real, serious problem, a little boost to get em past the rough patches. This is ok with me. Unlike Tom Cruise, I have no problem with needless mind-altering drugs being prescribed to treat the symptoms and not the cause. That sounds just right.

BUT, because even that would really take more effort than I am willing to put out, I decided to take advantage of some of my monthly automatic withdrawals. No, no, this is not the time right before that time when I get reclusive and pouty like clockwork. I am referring to those purchases, long-term contracts, if you will that take $16, $25, even $35 out of my checking account each month and have gone neglected far too long.

I have returned to 24-Hour Fitness. My hips hurt, I am pretty sure that I don’t actually do anything particularly fruitful there and those guys with the shiny gloves and the biceps that are bigger than my head (by a lot, for reals) truly give me the creeps. But I am pretty sure I am getting my money’s worth. Right.

I also went back to tan. Or, rather back to orange. And all of this brassy-bronze, gyrating and squeezing really made me realize how much I dislike jiggling all over. So, I have also back a glorious WeightWatchers comeback (though I have yet to finish a week ON program, a feat that has eluded me since October LAST year) and am totally certain that in just a few short weeks, I will be JUST like the woman that teaches the pole dancing class I took.

Side note: I plan on climbing backwards up a pole by this time next year, if not sooner, due to my rapidly perfecting physique. Duh. I am taking donations, as it is what I want for Christmas. The class, you fools, not the ability. But if you know someone who can get me that, right on.
But all of these new operations, along with my general inability to feel stable and organized or even productive about them has left me feeling intolerably antsy. Even as I type this, my finger keeps wandering to my mouth, trying to fish out the hunk of lip I just bit off. That’s right, it’s a nervous habit. Anxiety + oral fixation = Holey Lips, Batman!

But it is not just those things. I am nervous about money of late. Mine, Citibank’s, my family’s, Fanny’s and Freddy’s and Eddy’s and who knows. I just don’t know if I have the gumption to make it through a depression. Depression, yes. But A depression? Sheesh. Well, at least I would have my stripping to fall back on. You know, it is a cousin of the world’s oldest profession, she’ll hook us up. Get it? Hook?

Additionally, I am having a major relapse of quarter-life crisis, obsessing over wasted time, missed opportunities, ones that I am GOING to miss if I don’t get my shit together, all kinds of useless thoughts that actually PREVENT action while requiring it. What a mindfuck.

At this moment I look for other jobs daily WHILE I try to stick with this one in hopes of a promotion/bonus. But there is the looming idea that we will just go extinct, here, in our ultra-floundering business. That’s comforting. I want to travel but have no money. I want to take this dance class but have no money. I need new glasses, want to mail a package, think my brakes are about to go out, would love a new car, new boots, to go back to school but I have no money. And I don’ t think any is coming my way.

Lost in the confusion of all this (to which one can add sporadic stresses of what is feeling like an increasingly chaotic magazine-work element to my life) I want to apply to grad school and am totally paralyzed by laziness (first of all), the total disorganization of trying to figure out what needs to be done to do it (could be helped—though not alleviated—if I weren’t so lazy. Lazy and, honestly, scared. Scared that I wouldn’t get in, sure. I AM applying to pretty unattainable schools (NYU and Northwestern, I think). But that’s not even the primary concern. Scared that I would get in, maybe. Scared to think about a change that huge. Scared to put that much into it and have it be all for naught, unnecessary, stupid, laughable even. I have already DONE that, for chrissake.

I can’t even sit still at my desk. I keep flipping back and forth in windows, opening new tabs on my IE, not even using them, trying to find the track list to Finally, Lillian and Dan, ONLY b/c it would be a good distraction, getting up and wandering into other people’s cubes so that they can be as disturbed and unproductive as myself, getting smacked—quite literally, slapped in the face—by my boss, feeling the crazy coffee jitters of some insanely high-caffeine brew on a small cup of Crispix, feeling like I desperately need to make a list and not even knowing what to put on it (no idea! Of what? What to do? In what period of time? With what money and time? Where do I start? Do I even HAVE things to do?). I even looked up Princess in urbandictionary. I keep opening my iTunes and staring at it blindly. Should I get something? Should I organize it? Add to it? Even turn it on? (It has been open and non-functional now for two hours, currently I think that music would only make me CRAZIER!)

All while pointedly NOT doing my job. I have done literally nothing this week. Other than show up late, take ten minutes too long at lunch, do my OTHER job while here, MASTER JoJo’s Fashion show and Games.com, waste time, money, effort, energy and still not do the ONE. MUNDANE. MIND-NUMBING thing I should do for this company. I SHOULD get fired. For sure.
But then who would they slap?

Me, I'm The Asshole

To tell me the truth, I really don't want to write a thing right now. (And on that note, I, as usual, suggest you not read this, unless, like me, you have a nice, healthy masochistic flair or any tendency toward voyeurism. I have both in spades, so, if you would like to observe my failed human spectacle, I get that.)

I feel mean and uncommunicative. I want to say "Fuck you, blog." Well, really, I could address that to a number of people/places/things or any other Twenty Questions category right now, but I think I will stick with directing my anger one place--kind of. Especially because it is so infuriatingly directionless.

Sort of.

The very worst part of it is how annoyingly conscious I am about how I feel, why I feel it and how--most likely--irrational, silly or fleeting that feeling is. I KNOW it is. I REMEMBER how happy I have been for the last few days. Almost entirely, if you were wondering. Well, not so close to entirety after I had to come back to h-e-double toothpicks, also known as work.

I need to get out of this place. It is framing my whole perspective in dark, heavy, monastic wood. Fantastic for a stark, nicely contrasting effect on your Martha Stewart Goldenrod-painted walls. Not so beautiful when crammed into a rapidly gloaming brainscape. It makes me a stern, bitter nun, easy to anger, quick to reprimand, wrinkled and scowling always.

P.S. This is not me.

I normally have more patience for inane argumentativeness from people with a piddly sense of humor or something to prove. I usually would, not noticing, tune out the fact that my cube neighbor spends 5 of her 8 work hours on the phone with her boyfriend, lending me an earful of cooing, idiosyncratic love babble and pleading compromise and insipid inside jokes. Normally, I would never use the word insipid. Most of the time I wouldn't mind so much that she almost never refers to "her son" by his name or even by a nice, traditional pronoun. "Her son," is far too important. Her life around "her child," far too dramatic and to be taken VERY seriously. "Her little boy" is the center of her universe. And apparently the center of our miserable, temperature dysfunctional, smelly, germ-incubating, mind-fraying and soul-eating cube universe, too.

Typically, hauntings of my room mate's filthy habits (and the weeks-old, molded-into-their-vase WEEDS she picked!!) wouldn't last alldaylong. Normally, my colleagues rehashing of the same, stupid crap, doing the same pointless things every day only exists just beyond my mood.

But my dark, Victorian-furnitured mood is not so resilient. Absurdly, I am pretty certain it has something to do with the DNC. That sounds queer--rather, it IS queer--but all the goings-on, all the people, events and issues at such a frothy head in my city right now have cast in an embarrassing, depressing, painful light how unfulfilled both my desire and my potential is. Or at least I think it is. I just want so much more.

I want to be in it. I am sad I miss out on so much from my safe distance, from my terrible, suburban-job perch and my still-sort-of-insulated(isolated?) life. I want to be involved in something that means something--if only to me. I want less routine days. I want stimulus. I want an outlet for my unique brand of not very special and completely untalented creativity. I want to direct my passion outward instead of letting it point deeper inside myself, where it festers and becomes discontent and loathing. I want something to offer in conversation that is really mine and that people might actually want to hear. Other than my increasingly more dating infused life (though this means something different extra-recently than it did even a few weeks ago).

I want this icky, rejected, not-loving-myself feeling to get the hell away from me. I want to actually BELIEVE what I for SURE know about a certain few deeply flawed, completely aimless, aging and incapable, sorta gay, high-pitched laughing, body-shaving, manipulative, emotional juveniles, which is that I deserve better and I DON'T EVEN CARE. But somehow, the inky mark of feeling hurt and unwanted and therefore not good enough is a stain I just can't wash out. Even in the light of much better, more real and I think pretty solid prospects. (At least one, maybe.)

I want to quit feeling sorry for myself and quit hating myself for being the sort of weak, sniveling little bitch that lets me feel sorry for myself. However, I think that my intrepid, uncontrollably optimistic and dizzyingly hyperactive traits normally do a good job of keeping this self-pity out of my normal, every-day activities and moods. It only leaks out on occasion, when it's got all swoll up from some little (or big) blow.

Even then, I think most of the time I reserve it for my blog, where anyone can ditch my rant whenever they see fit. Or never read it at all. Or decide they can't condescend to be friends with someone who spends so much time on such trifling, shallow garbage. I would get that, too. However, if you DID have that grossly masochistic, voyeuristic, slightly stupid need to read all the way to here, you will be glad to know that, now, I feel better.

Or, at least, the tears have started to eek their way out.

But, that is actually sort of the same as better.

Gross.