Archives for November 2012

She has unmemorable features: a straight nose that is free of lumps, bumps, or that noticeable skew of a healed fracture. It’s covered with a light spray of freckles now. Summer has passed and as the cold dark days drone on, the freckles are fading. They seem finite now, as though you could count them and not lose your place. Her eyes are hazel and her vision is perfect, and she’s always sort of envied the girls who need glasses; she’d like a pair. She imagines she’d pick a trendy statement pair, so as to give people something to notice. As it is, when Kelly runs into people she sees them straining as they search their memory to recall if they’ve met her, and if they are actually able to place her, they almost never remember her name. She thinks the glasses might help.

Her hair is brown and wavy and she often slides it into a ponytail. She longs to be one of those women who can look chic wearing a ponytail but instead finds that she looks more tousled second grader than polished sophisticate.

She often purses her lips together, a habit formed during her two years of wearing braces. Two years of hiding her teeth and now that her teeth are straight and even, she still presses her lips together tightly. When she laughs though, she forgets herself and her face and mouth loosen and you can see those teeth and a bit of light in her eyes. She catches herself almost as quickly as it starts and pulls her lips together and continues laughing in this restrained way.

Kelly runs and so her body is long and lean and shapely. She’s not particularly fast but she’s consistent and she’s awake every morning an hour before she needs to wake up, sneakers laced up, feet rhythmically pounding the pavement as she runs. She repeats a mantra in her head as she runs, it helps her keep her pace, keeps her moving steadily: I. Can. Do. This. I. Can. Do. This. I. Can. Do. This…

She has a job she loves in a bookstore. It doesn’t pay much but she’s surrounded by books all day. Books and people, curious people who want to read books and want to find books and she walks past the shelves and she smiles when she sees people leaning into the shelf engrossed in a book. She’s supposed to make them stop, politely and nimbly so they don’t feel they’ve been chastised but feel motivated to carry the book to the counter and make a purchase – but she can’t bring her self to do it. There’s nothing better than finding your place in a book, she knows, and instead she wanders and she watches and she cranes her neck sometimes to see the title or the cover. Later, she’ll look for the books herself – the books from the most enchanted readers. She’ll buy them using her employee discount (it’s not much, she knows, but it’s something) and take them home and try to find that world when she gets home. She feels a little disappointed when she can’t lose herself in it, wonders what those bookstore people were seeing that she can’t.

She shares an apartment with her younger brother, Brian. He’s a bit scattered lately, has trouble holding a job, but Kelly doesn’t seem to mind. She lived alone before Brian took up residence on her couch but the silence was so heavy. His presence is welcome and they are close. She loves having her brother around, their shared history a constant source of conversation, the remember whens and what about that time when…? Brian shares her aversion to goulash and similar mushy-noodled meals that they had so much of when they were younger, their mother a less than stellar cook who relied on meals out of boxes. Kelly feels protective of Brian, and finds his aimlessness endearing rather than annoying. The baby of the family, everyone has always taken care of him and now that it’s just the two of them on their own, Kelly finds she’s still brushing his stray crumbs off the counter and putting the cap back on the gallon of milk.

At 26, she’s far from an old maid but has yet to really figure what she really wants to do with her life. She feels like she should have a plan, something bigger than the bookstore, something bigger than running in the mornings, and cleaning up after her brother. But, she likes her simple life and doesn’t know where to begin in learning how to make her dreams bigger, in reaching higher and she feels like maybe, just maybe that should bother her more. But it doesn’t. Not yet.

Last week, I was driving home from work and as I stopped at a red light on a hill, I watched these birds flying around in formation around the steeple of a church. They were swooping and dipping and circling around, and yet somehow all managed to stay together in what appeared to be a beautifully choreographed dance in the sky.

I was captivated by what I was seeing, but at the same time I thought to myself, If I were a bird, it is doubtful I would be able to stay with my fellow birds. I would be the one flying in the wrong direction, soaring up when the others were swooping low, I would take this delicate and beautiful thing and I would take away the synchronization and make it clunky and jerky instead.

Because that’s what I do.

And I’m not even really sure what I meant by that – is it that I don’t have the grace (uh, where’d that bruise on my knee come from anyway?)? Is it that I just don’t want to follow the rest of the crowd? That routine and sameness bores me?

I don’t really know. It was just this overwhelming feeling, while watching the birds that I would be the one doing it wrong, I’d be out of “step” (flap? wing?) somehow. That somehow amidst this beauty and wonder, there I’d be, making a mess of things.

It’s been one of those weeks, a week where I’ve felt out of step, a week full of stress and feeling sensitive. A week where I have felt…less than… in so many ways. It’s a horrible feeling, that feeling of “not good enough” – that feeling where you don’t measure up or compare, once it gets ingrained in your thinking, it’s hard to banish it, until your brain is so consumed by it, this not-good-enough-ness that you can’t imagine how anyone could see any good in you ever, at all.

Yeah. One of those weeks.

I wonder if those birds feel like that with their swooping and dipping and circling the sky. If one of those birds ever thinks to itself in its wee bird brain, “Maaaaaaaaan, it’s cold out here, I’m freaking exhausted and I think there is someone tossing breadcrumbs in that park down there a few miles back. I’m so over this!”? Are they content to circle and swoop and not veer from the pattern or are they longing to escape it.

Because that would be me. Don’t make me circle. Don’t make me keep on keeping on. Let me land for a few minutes and rest my wings. Let me catch my breathe and take a break from flight. I would be the tired bird, of that I have no doubt.

What am I even saying here?

I don’t know.

Birds are a bunch of conformists and I’ve had a bad week. I guess that’s it.

Don’t be a bird.

Or be one.

I don’t care.

(How many more days of writing every day do I have left?)

“Who cares about this stupid election? We all know it doesn’t matter who gets elected president of Carver. Do you really think it’s going to change anything around here? Make one single person smarter or happier or nicer? The only person it does matter to is the one who gets elected. The same pathetic charade happens every year, and everyone makes the same pathetic promises just so they can put it on their transcripts to get into college. So vote for me, because I don’t even want to go to college, and I don’t care, and as president I won’t do anything. The only promise I will make is that if elected I will immediately dismantle the student government, so that none of us will ever have to sit through one of these stupid assemblies again!”

– Tammy, From the movie ELECTION

That quote has been in my head quite a lot for the past several months and while a huge part of me would like to say, “Nope, don’t care” the thing is, it IS a big deal and I DO care. As do most of you.

I think.

This hasn’t ever been and never will be a political blog. I have always stood by the fact that there are people who talk about this stuff far more eloquently than I ever could and I think that’s okay. I don’t have time to study statistics and nuances – and I’m content with leaving that to the people who are truly passionate about those little details (in politics, is there such a thing as a little detail? Probably not).

I have known for quite some time who I am going to vote for. It was a no-brainer for me. While I don’t really understand how one could be undecided in this election cycle, what with the over-saturation of facts, opinion and blahblahblah in every media channel, and while I don’t actually know anyone who is undecided at this point in time – I have no hate for ’em.

I think it’s pretty awesome that we have the right to vote and I will exercise my right to vote. I will vote for the candidate who I agreed with most strongly on many issues.

That may not be your candidate.

That may be your candidate but my reasons are different than your reasons.

It may be your candidate and we may be voting for him for the same reasons (OMG! VOTING TWINSIES!).

But, in the end, it doesn’t matter.

There’s the distinct probability that a lot of us are going to be unhappy with the outcome. It’s the nature of the beast.

The backbiting of this election season has made me crazy. Since when do we all need to see eye to eye on everything anyway? You don’t have to agree with me about politics or anything else. I think crunchy peanut butter is disgusting. I hate snow. I prefer peanut m&m’s to plain. I hang my toilet paper so it rolls under. I’ve never seen any of the Harry Potter movies (and don’t care if I ever do). I don’t like cats. Or cheese. And I could take or leave bacon.

And yet?

Yet some of y’all find reasons to like me anyway.

I know, I know – the leader of our country is a bigger deal than peanut butter – but – the principle is still basically the same, and it’s generally a good rule of thumb to DON’T ACT LIKE A JERKFACE, PLEASE AND THANK YOU.

I have no idea what the outcome of the election will be. None. That’s kind of scary.

But there’s nothing I can do about it. I read what I needed to read. I made my decision. And I’ll vote.

After that, there’s nothing I can do.

None of the bitching or whining or name-calling can make anything any different than what it’s going to be.

Isn’t it grand?

There’s a Pollyanna streak in me a mile wide, that bit of “can’t we all just get along”, the conflict avoidant Libra-peace maker side of me that really dreads the fall out following this election given the drama preceding it.

I can only hope that everyone is too exhausted to whine, but… I know better.

Vote. Make them give you the awesome sticker (I BETTER get a sticker). And then? Find a way to make peace with however the next four years needs to go, because being a jerk won’t change an outcome you don’t like.

For what it’s worth, I imagine if my candidate of choice loses I will be upset. But I too promise to try to not be an asshole about it. And you can hold me to that.

November 1st triggers a lot of people beginning NaNoWriMo – a program where, in a month, you somehow manage to force enough words out of your brain that you could conceivably have a novel.

The thing is, I’ve never been good with that kind of thing. I used to write fiction quite a bit – and I was okay at it, actually. For a short story. The thought of trying to weave and hold plotlines together and develop characters in their entirety and make them real people and do all that writerly stuff to them.

It’s a bit intimidating.

The thing is, there’s a reason blogging suits me. I like sounding like myself when I write – I suppose I could use this voice for a novel. But just one. And then never again.

UNLESS. UNLESS I opted to write young adult lit – in which case, I could keep banging out the same tone, the same book over and over and over again and really if anyone noticed, they wouldn’t care (much).

(Look at me underestimating my hypothetical reader. YET ANOTHER REASON WHY I’VE FAILED THIS WHOLE NOVEL WRITING THING ALREADY.)

But the thing is: I love writing. I do. I love words and… I don’t often challenge myself to do anything beyond simply spew the words out whenever the spirit moves me. There’s something to be said for a challenge, I think.

So, I’ll be looking for some writing prompts, and if you have quotes or questions or post ideas, feel free to leave them in the comments or email me. Because someway, some how, I am going to write every freaking day for a month.

Maybe the challenge is not so much finding the words but the courage to actually write from the heart and share it – instead of playing it safe and blogging about the weather, maybe for the next month there are days where I dig a little deeper.

I used to say that if I ever did write a book, it would likely be essays, a memoir, some slice of life thing – there were moments along the way that I thought I’d end up writing a book about step parenting, about what it was like, about the whole wicked stepmother myth, and hell, I’ve got drafts here on this blog about that – but the thing is… You can’t write about parenting without writing about the children. And so I got to a point where to write about my experience was to share not just a part of my life, but a child’s life as well.

And – well… now that I am not necessarily having to live that anymore… I don’t know that I’d write it.

(It’d have been an interesting book, though.)

I can and I do write about regular parenting moments a lot – and I suppose that’s always fodder, but the older my children get the more I am cautious what I write. Maybe the trick is to keep it more about me than them – and to refrain from criticizing the children my kids hang out with that I am less than enthused about (there’s always at least one, right? My luck, that one would have a mom who likes reading blogs and she’d read this and say, “HEY! That sounds like my kid!” and then I’d be sooooo screwed, y’all).

I don’t write about work much – and probably won’t ever. Too many horror stories. Also? I think I have coworkers that read (HI! How are you! I wrote this post at home and not at all during business hours!).

The human mind is a crazy and whacky and wonderful thing and surely my own has enough going on to fill 30 days with words.

And if not? There’s always the weather to talk about.