-eharmony.com has supplied me with about 20 matches, 80% of which list Tuesdays With Morrie as the best book they've read recently. Also, under the heading Can't Live Without, "my car" and "televised sports" routinely appear. I'm going to put on a blindfold, turn around three times and point my finger. Whichever 28 year old medical student of Indian descent I land on gets contacted, and the sound of the email hitting his inbox will distract him from what he is doing, which is placing his copy of The 5 People You Meet in Heaven on his Ikea bookshelf with exacting delicacy . The email will read, "Wanna come over and talk about some of the most influential people in our lives, aka Our Grandmas, and our individual approaches to the things we have in common (making our friends laugh, "through humor")? I on-demanded Sports Center."
-My new boss actually used a Myers-Briggs Typology test, photocopied straight from Please Understand Me II, to assess my on-the-job personality. I'm hired, even though I'm an ENFP! I'm working for minimum wage at a dental office with my mom. I'm going to bring my mug to work and drink instant coffee out of it. I'm going to be happy to have someplace to go three days out of the week where I can ease into working after a protracted absence and so I'm not going to complain about the more obviously lame facets of this arrangement. Maybe I'll start thinking Dilbert and The Office are funny. Who knows.
When there is a disaster (murder, fire) in television and movies,there is oftentimes a scene wherein the mother/wife of one of the more high profile victims stands in front of a bunch of cop cars or ambulances while her face becomes a mask of horrific understanding--eyes dilated and vacant, dry lips parted slightly. Maybe half a second goes by before the vice squad detective or health care professional emerges with a blanket, which he places over the woman's shoulders with grim kindness and leads her out of the scene. We can't see what happens to the woman next, but I like to think that she is taken to a place of comforting anonymity, connected in no way to her broken life, where she can just go to sleep for a little while.
I'd like an authority figure to catch me shuffling feebly towards 2010 and identify me as someone who needs a blanket, then usher me into a place of sterile silence like some government-issue Sandman. I would go to sleep and afterward I would know what to do with myself. There haven't been any disasters; tonight I just did not know what to do with myself. I worked on a creepy internet project I've made as an elaborate joke for my housemates. Got a few cheap laughs out of it but ultimately productive feelings were eclipsed totally by creepy feelings. I wanted to kill time with an internet quiz in the style of a Which TV Character Are You? or Myers-Briggs Typology Test, so I went to eharmony.com. I'm happy to report that their personality test took almost an hour to complete. Apparently, believing in the creative potentiality experienced while eating eggs benedict with friends is NOT one of their 29 Dimensions of Compatibility. There were no matches.
There are some pictures of me at around age 10 wearing a candy necklace and otherwise looking deranged. That's because I was just one step into the process of transforming myself into Nona F. Mecklenberg, younger Pete's friend on The Adventures of Pete and Pete. The F stood for Frances but it may as well have stood for Fashion, with her bowling shoes, tube socks, and elastic floral print skirts. She made me long for a pair of rainbow striped pants and a blue knit hat with pearl beads. It probably would have been cute to wear these things when I was in 4th grade, but I don't think it was quite in line with my mother's vision for me and anyway we shopped at Mervyn's. I still have latent Nona tendencies. The best thrift store in the world is a mere block away from my house and I'm making up for lost time. The translation of Nona onto an adult body, however, is kind of bag lady meets Blossom.
And of course there is Ramona Quimby, the reason I've had a bob haircut for most of my life.
It has really been storming here in that dark-at-3pm kind of way. Wind howls around the house at night and the tree slaps against the window in the classic horror movie style. I cower under my 5 blankets (arranged in an ascending hierarchy of itchiness) and have appropriate miserable sweaty nightmares. The latest-- I host a dinner party, suck out the souls of my guests with a single glance, have my evil henchman drag their catatonic bodies away, then I rail against the heavens and my own evil ways for awhile before instructing my assistant to bring me a few fresh ones! I invite your amateur analysis. Also, as I was traipsing through the rain today, I stepped in a puddle so large that I was submerged up to my knees, soaking my ridiculous winter costume which now includes an electric blue wool cape with a pattern of Russian nesting dolls on the lining. It's ok, though. As a Californian, I believe it is my duty to spend at least an hour a day in total outrage over THE BUDGET CRISIS and THE IMPENDING DROUGHT... so I welcome the rain and many future soggy wardrobe failures if it means I can, without guilt, spend a few more minutes musing over Dear Abby's latest tawdriness. And, let's face it-- I'm always looking for an excuse to listen to that Cowsills song.
Gentle reader, have you ever fallen in love? If you're like me, this happens sometimes. If you're really like me, it isn't reciprocated. If you're really really like me, then the morning found you in yogurt-stained pajamas amassing a collection of songs that remind you of, on the one hand, that beautiful nervous feeling and, on the other hand, a lack of reciprocity. You suffered a sleepless night spent mining previous conversations for romantic subtext, remembering the sensation of your hand in his and how, if it were transmuted somehow to music, the song would be "Good Vibrations," then crafting impassioned, bleary-eyed declarations of loving intent which would bring you to new heights in vulnerability were you to actually utter them aloud, a few whiskeys in, after a party on some winter night in your hometown, your hands and feet freezing but with nervous-adrenaline sweat running down your sides.
I think Superbowl Sunday is the perfect time to prepare an umbrella for next week's impending showers, aka, Valentine's Day. Grab yourself a domestic beer and gear up for romance. This Superbowl Sunday, I'm going to be testing a fragrance product I just made up called D00d Repellent(TM). I'm not really sure of the ingredients yet, but I'm guessing it's comprised of 14 parts Swarthy Italian Good Looks, 78 parts Glint in the Eye Suggestive of Clinginess, 1/5 wet cigarettes and spit collected from a bucket outside of a bar without windows, the rasp of an old bum as he sings "shoofly don't bother me!" and just a sprinkle of Essence of Unwashed (one of my other fragrance success stories, bottled right at the source-- my armpit). Good news: it's already working! Available at Walgreens and wherever fine fragrances are sold. Enjoy those sports, ladies.
Carla and I were in Target the other day, looking for a spray bottle with which to punish our bad cat, when in the toy aisle I chanced upon Abuelita Rosa. "This is the saddest toy ever. It's just a doll of a Mexican grandmother," said Carla, unaware that describing a toy as "sad" activates my Sympathy for Inanimate Objects Gland. This overactive gland is the reason why I have over 100 stuffed animals in a refrigerator box in my closet, many pairs of ugly, ugly shoes, and a collection of Garfield anthologies. "No one will love them if I don't," I tell myself. It is the primitive and incorrect form of rationalization most commonly used by pet hoarders. Abuelita Rosa remained in my arms until checkout, when I decided that I didn't have an extra $20 (frivolities fund hit hard by recession and recent move) and bought some $3 practical (ugly) underwear instead.
Fake Latina singing grandma reminded me of my grandma who spoke no Spanish and I found myself blinking back tears. This sort of thing happens more often than I'd like to admit.
Many of my flummoxed friends probably recall my response to the movie Electric Grandmother, which was roughly 8 minutes of uncontrolled sobbing. This movie falls into a genre I just made up called Children's SciFi/Hallmark Shmaltz. Plot Summary: A family of 2 boys and a girl receives an amazingly lifelike robot grandmother to help take care of them. She sings them songs, teaches them lessons, and shoots Tropicana out of her index finger--- you know, all the standard grandmotherly stuff. Here comes the part that brings on the waterworks: when the children grow up, android grandma is put in some kind of Electric Grandma brand storage facility and is otherwise forgotten about UNTIL the grown children grow old themselves. They hobble over to the warehouse, haul out Nanna, and she takes care of them in her gentle, grandmotherly fashion as their frailty and senility reduce them to childlike states.
Up until just recently, I couldn't even hear the title Electric Grandmother (it came up more often than you'd think!) without bursting into tears. Granted, the steady stream of fake estrogen coursing through my veins makes me particularly responsive to the sentimental, but this movie hit an especially tender place. I was partially raised by my grandparents, and it seemed like they remained 65 years old for 20 years. Some part of me wanted to believe that my grandma would really stay 65 forever, and that when I grew up and had children of my own, she would take care of them the way she took care of me-- with a serene, positive, and warmhearted energy, singing them to sleep in the orange tweed rocking chair, making them oatmeal but calling it "mush." To be able to have a grandma all the way through adulthood... it seemed so sweet, but Electric Grandmother reminded me that it's only possible in science fiction. Truthfully, I'm tearing up even right now.
Time for an update from your recessionista: I have moved out of my parents' house and into the apartment belonging to friends Jon and Carla. They are a near-married couple, so the pseudo-parental dynamic has made for a smooth transition out of my family home. It is strange and wonderful to be living instead of dying in my hometown. Now that the need for friends and pleasant environs has been sufficiently met, I find myself able to focus on goals larger than "find modicum of privacy" or "make eye contact with acquaintances." In other words,
I NEED A JOB
and also,
I NEED TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL
and one more thing,
romance? Eh? Ok, nevermind.
I'm combing those want ads and pestering those contacts with renewed zeal. I'm reading books, in addition to Linda Goodman's Sun Signs (though I kind of love Linda Goodman's Sun Signs) with a slightly more academic bend. I will inject my life with much-needed meaning. 2k9 is already becoming great.
