She's done it again: my violently anti-social Australian Shepherd has handily underscored my own personal deficits by achieving something we all once thought was impossible-- she's made a friend.
Today, while I sat moping on the front stoop, having been snubbed by the Breeders (total grim coincidence-- nothing to do with the blog and my karmic fit of conscience), Abby trotted over to the dog who lives next door, gave her a wide smile, and then slammed both front paws flat against the earth with her ass high in the air-- the play bow. What followed was the most joyful and elaborate choreography I've seen outside of a concert hall. Both dogs are mutts, but both are sleek, leggy, and built for speed. They tore tight figure eights in the grass, churning up clumps of dirt and leaves, and weaving over, under, and above each other, tumbling and diving and yipping and then both skidding to simultaneous halts to crouch briefly before leaping back into the chase. It was like watching two Russian prima ballerinas dancing a tribute to the Motherland, if Russian prima ballerinas occasionally sniffed each other's asses.
Watching her brought me some small measure of joy after a morning were I'd had flashbacks to the dismal politics of high school pecking orders. Life as a military spouse in the tiny, tiny town is apparently a much more delicate task than I had imagined. Providing further detail would be fruitless, since I myself don't understand how it all fits together. In some ways I feel like I finally understand the stress of being a CDC outbreak investigator-- you've got a town full of people vomiting blood, and then some random scraps of facts like "Farmer X has some sick pigs," "a busload of Canadian tourists came in for a convention and one had a cough," and "the city just started spraying for mosquitoes." All you really know for sure is that things are hopelessly fucked up, and now you've got a whole stack of tiny incidentals that somehow add up to the cause of it all.
Having been on the receiving end of a karmic kick to the crotch anyway, I figured why not put the Breeder post back up? After all, what is a blog for if not to document life's crotch kicks and high fives in real time for later frame-by-frame analysis.
The frame I want to focus on tonight is the one right after the blow, when the kickee's face is still in that universal "O" of shock, and before any decision has been made about further damage control or active retaliation. It's a frame I tend to get stuck in. I like to freeze the action and step outside, Matrix-like, and float all around the situation, admiring the placement of the kick, the way the kickee's back is hunched in receipt of the momentum, and then the little insignificant details-- look at the dead leaves on the sidewalk beneath them, look at their shadows, what pretty clouds...
It's as if at the moment of impact, the start of a conflict, I suddenly shatter into a thousand possible conclusions and reactions, each shooting out from a central point in a slow and graceful sunburst, kind of like the explosion of the Death Star in the uselessly souped-up version of Star Wars, Episode Four. It's a handy trick for intellectualizing emotional pain, but it also leaves the kickee standing there, vacant and pontificating, while the kicker winds up another one.
Abby's reaction would be simpler and much more honest-- bared teeth and a quick bite to the muzzle-- but I am somehow expected to employ finesse. What I'll likely resort to is my old standby, which is often misinterpreted as coolheadedness or thick skinned resilience. I'll stand back and wait. Somehow there exists at the core of my being a cheerful assumption that the first kick was a mistake. Surely you didn't realize that was my crotch you were punting! Only after kick number two will I rev up a response, and only, of course, after more analysis and some spirited coaching from my beleaguered support staff, who have been forced to review the footage as well.
Call it being a pussy, but even more than being safe, I like to be right.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Repost Riposte
Originally titled "Life Among the Breeders"
I've recently discovered a new and searing social awkwardness, a discomfort so powerful it scatters my entire sense of physical equilibrium and leaves me wondering if I'm about to pitch out of my chair and onto the floor.
The only thing I can compare this to is the days of junior high, when for no discernible reason, I insisted on attending dances in the cafeteria only to creep wretchedly around the perimeter in slow, clockwise circles, praying for no one to notice me and then praying just as hard for the opposite. It's that kind of discomfort.
I've begun to keep company with breeders.
Let me make clear at the outset that I quite like these women-- they're funny and engaging, and they make delicious muffins-- I just keep running into the regrettable inconvenience that I have not yet knitted together my own little burbling bundle of genetic material, and this keeps me from having anything to add to discussions of, say, chapped nipples and episiotomy stitches. At least, not anything appropriate.
I'm also left to figure out what to do with my hands when the conversation falls quiet and everyone else is tickling toes or planting big blubbery kisses on fat little tummies. They all seem so wholesome, so purposefully engaged, so motherly, and then there I am in their midst, fiddling with a fork and nervously dragging the tines through congealed cinnamon glaze. I feel almost suspect, sinister, like in my childless hedonism I might as well be tying off the tourniquet and juicing up a big syringe full of smack.
It never quite made sense to me that anyone would genuinely enjoy a junior high dance-- I mean, how could you? It's dark but there's still that old meat and canned corn smell of public school cafeteria, the disco ball adds a nauseating sense of vertigo, and the DJ has to keep everyone happy so the music careens across genres to encompass rap, techno, country, pop, and Tejano. Motherhood seems about as compelling to me, and yet, oddly, like the dances in junior high, I occasionally find myself drawn to the idea, or at least drawn close enough to feel an intense shudder of awkwardness and doubt before I hurry back home and pop a birth control pill.
In all my laps around the GJHS cafeteria, I think what I was looking for was some tiny glimpse of the future, some theoretical time when the prospect of wandering out into a crowd of heavily cologned boys and dancing with one wouldn't make me want to retch in pure fear(incidentally, I only ever danced with one boy in junior high-- he later turned out gay). Maybe hanging out with the breeders is a similar exercise in hope.
I've recently discovered a new and searing social awkwardness, a discomfort so powerful it scatters my entire sense of physical equilibrium and leaves me wondering if I'm about to pitch out of my chair and onto the floor.
The only thing I can compare this to is the days of junior high, when for no discernible reason, I insisted on attending dances in the cafeteria only to creep wretchedly around the perimeter in slow, clockwise circles, praying for no one to notice me and then praying just as hard for the opposite. It's that kind of discomfort.
I've begun to keep company with breeders.
Let me make clear at the outset that I quite like these women-- they're funny and engaging, and they make delicious muffins-- I just keep running into the regrettable inconvenience that I have not yet knitted together my own little burbling bundle of genetic material, and this keeps me from having anything to add to discussions of, say, chapped nipples and episiotomy stitches. At least, not anything appropriate.
I'm also left to figure out what to do with my hands when the conversation falls quiet and everyone else is tickling toes or planting big blubbery kisses on fat little tummies. They all seem so wholesome, so purposefully engaged, so motherly, and then there I am in their midst, fiddling with a fork and nervously dragging the tines through congealed cinnamon glaze. I feel almost suspect, sinister, like in my childless hedonism I might as well be tying off the tourniquet and juicing up a big syringe full of smack.
It never quite made sense to me that anyone would genuinely enjoy a junior high dance-- I mean, how could you? It's dark but there's still that old meat and canned corn smell of public school cafeteria, the disco ball adds a nauseating sense of vertigo, and the DJ has to keep everyone happy so the music careens across genres to encompass rap, techno, country, pop, and Tejano. Motherhood seems about as compelling to me, and yet, oddly, like the dances in junior high, I occasionally find myself drawn to the idea, or at least drawn close enough to feel an intense shudder of awkwardness and doubt before I hurry back home and pop a birth control pill.
In all my laps around the GJHS cafeteria, I think what I was looking for was some tiny glimpse of the future, some theoretical time when the prospect of wandering out into a crowd of heavily cologned boys and dancing with one wouldn't make me want to retch in pure fear(incidentally, I only ever danced with one boy in junior high-- he later turned out gay). Maybe hanging out with the breeders is a similar exercise in hope.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Benevolent Censorship
I've removed the post "Life Among the Breeders" and here's why:
1. I believe in karma, and smartasses like me are constantly having to keep an eye on the karmic credit line. Much like pathological spenders, we sometimes fall prey to the belief that if something sounds witty, or particularly apt, then it is the equivalent of finding the hidden sale rack in an upscale department store-- the thing, in other words, justifies its own worth and must be purchased/said. This is not always true.
In the case of this posting, I had to ask myself which was worth more to me-- the chance to write down some snarky observations about being childless among a bunch of new mothers, or actually getting out of the house every now and then and talking to other human beings.
I did not remove the post because of the comments it solicited.
2. I used to know someone who said exactly what she wanted to say whenever she wanted to say it. Often she framed these things in witty prose, and often she submitted these things, with some success, for publication. I learned from watching her that there is danger in living your life purely to generate things to write about. The people you love become characters, and how you treat them becomes plot. This sucks.
3. Believing in online anonymity is like believing in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, or Republicans with a sense of reality-- all bloggers would be wise to live with one hand holding the possibility of being linked to their blogs in Real Life.
That said, I'm trying to develop a code of ethics for my blogging, and so far it looks like this:
1. Thou shalt not blog at or about work.
2. Thou shalt not blog about the intimate details of thy married life, or about thy spouse unless; a)it is something complimentary, b)it is non-identifying, and/or trivial, or c)you have his expressed permission.
3. Thou shalt not grind axes in a public forum-- this is the equivalent of writing slanderous things on bathroom walls, only less effective.
4. Thou shalt not use the blog as a repository for things, both positive and negative, that thou hast not the grapes to say to the people who should really hear them.
Any suggestions?
1. I believe in karma, and smartasses like me are constantly having to keep an eye on the karmic credit line. Much like pathological spenders, we sometimes fall prey to the belief that if something sounds witty, or particularly apt, then it is the equivalent of finding the hidden sale rack in an upscale department store-- the thing, in other words, justifies its own worth and must be purchased/said. This is not always true.
In the case of this posting, I had to ask myself which was worth more to me-- the chance to write down some snarky observations about being childless among a bunch of new mothers, or actually getting out of the house every now and then and talking to other human beings.
I did not remove the post because of the comments it solicited.
2. I used to know someone who said exactly what she wanted to say whenever she wanted to say it. Often she framed these things in witty prose, and often she submitted these things, with some success, for publication. I learned from watching her that there is danger in living your life purely to generate things to write about. The people you love become characters, and how you treat them becomes plot. This sucks.
3. Believing in online anonymity is like believing in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, or Republicans with a sense of reality-- all bloggers would be wise to live with one hand holding the possibility of being linked to their blogs in Real Life.
That said, I'm trying to develop a code of ethics for my blogging, and so far it looks like this:
1. Thou shalt not blog at or about work.
2. Thou shalt not blog about the intimate details of thy married life, or about thy spouse unless; a)it is something complimentary, b)it is non-identifying, and/or trivial, or c)you have his expressed permission.
3. Thou shalt not grind axes in a public forum-- this is the equivalent of writing slanderous things on bathroom walls, only less effective.
4. Thou shalt not use the blog as a repository for things, both positive and negative, that thou hast not the grapes to say to the people who should really hear them.
Any suggestions?
Friday, October 13, 2006
Maintenance
I got my windshield replaced earlier this week. Honestly, that's about the best I can say about the week as a whole, and it involves passive verbs. I didn't replace my windshield, I got it replaced, or more accurately, my husband, Grand Master Champion of Little-But-Huge Maintenance and Scheduling Details, got it replaced.
Once, when I was in about the 8th grade, I think (my adolescent timeline is murky with hormone tsumanis), my dad sat me down in our study and asked me gravely, "You know why the Third Reich became so powerful after World War I, don't you?"
"Overpowering evil?" I posited. "Possession of the Ark of the Covenant?" I loved the Indiana Jones movies.
"Maintenance," he said. "They were masters of maintenance. All the little details that make a society run-- the train schedules, the city sanitation, payrolls, all that. They were very organized, and this was powerful and effective for a people who had been economically devastated by years of war, and then by the Treaty of Versailles. The Germans were ready to follow anyone who get things organized and bring life back to normal."
"So... but they were Nazis."
"Yes, but they became very powerful very quickly. And it was through concentrating on organization and maintenance, taking care of business. Those things are important, and can get you places in life."
This was my dad, the history major's, way of making a point about my school work and organization skills. I missed it entirely. Nazis, was all I could think. Nazis are organized! I continued in my pattern: slack, cram, collapse, repeat.
Perhaps my husband would have heard this conversation and taken away from it what was meant. He gets it. He's achieved the zen-like state of organization of finances and tasks that allows him to see far ahead, a mountain view of our situation, while I still muddle around in the valleys, focused on other things and grateful for the budget room to get nice coffee.
This is not to say that I never mastered the skill-- when I was single and on my own, I had a pretty good system going, if maybe a little rudimentary. I treated my one credit card like it was radioactive, and would become more so with each use. I paid it down every month with a secret, defiant glee, never knowing that carrying a bit of a balance actually improves your credit score. And I saved. I piled up my acorns into a single savings account, one without an agenda, and also without a very impressive interest rate. As finances go, I was drawing stick figures on cave walls with the burnt end of a stick, and feeling pretty good about it.
And then my husband came along singing hymns of aggressive growth mutual funds, Roth IRA's, and 529 B's. Plato's Cave Allegory, (the all-purpose Freshman Comp gem), neatly illustrates my reaction: blinding light! Grunts of surprise and protest! Suspicion! And then, finally, tentative questioning, grudging acceptance, and an upright walk into the outside world.
I've delighted in learning about finances, but that's where my enthusiasm for maintenance ends. Bill schedules, oil changes, transmissions flushes, tire rotation, air conditioner filters, water softener drops, flushing out the rain gutters, renewing magazine subscriptions, GOD-- it makes me want to slam my own head in the front door repeatedly. I forget these things with what can only be called an active spite. And when I do remember them, and endeavor to take of them, I do it with the stomping petulance of a four-year-old. I hate that these things never change and never stop needing to be done. It reminds me too much of Sisyphus, and of horrible secretarial jobs I used to have.
I recently had the chance to revisit the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, and was relieved to see that my type hadn't changed since I'd last taken it in college. You never know. I had this fear that military wifedom would wipe me smooth like a river stone and build a more boring, and more competent, version of me. Happily though, I'm still an ENFP, which explains (but doesn't necessarily excuse) my loathing of all things maintainence. I also got my husband to take the test, and was equally relieved to find that he's not lying when he claims to enjoy taking care of the more mundane tasks of our existence. He really does get some sort of pleasure out of that, thankfully.
Wouldn't it be great if there was someone who absolutely adored sunrises, all kinds, and was always afraid it wasn't going to happen the next morning? And wouldn't it also be great if the sun, (some kind of anthropomorphized sun, like the one that dumps raisins into Raisin Bran), actually enjoyed rising, but also appreciated being appreciated for it?
This is how I feel every time my husband changes the oil in my car, or patiently explains to me for the hundredth time how our IRA's work, or does something like arrange to have my crappy cracked up windshield replaced-- I'm wildly grateful, not only for the actual thing he's done, but for the fact that I don't have to beat myself for forgetting to do it, or scowl my way through doing it myself. And then I can concentrate on bringing the things to our marriage that I'm best at bringing-- like new and complicated pumpkin carving patterns, (we just did a Steve Irwin tribute pumpkin), and new alcoholic drinks*.
*The Floribama, in tribute to our time in the hurricane-ravaged Florida Peninsula: mix equal parts Crush orange soda and cheap lite beer. Voila! It sounds gross, but you'd be surprised how refreshing this is, especially on a hot breathless night sitting with strangers in a parking lot, trying to catch any kind of breeze because there's no electricity.
Once, when I was in about the 8th grade, I think (my adolescent timeline is murky with hormone tsumanis), my dad sat me down in our study and asked me gravely, "You know why the Third Reich became so powerful after World War I, don't you?"
"Overpowering evil?" I posited. "Possession of the Ark of the Covenant?" I loved the Indiana Jones movies.
"Maintenance," he said. "They were masters of maintenance. All the little details that make a society run-- the train schedules, the city sanitation, payrolls, all that. They were very organized, and this was powerful and effective for a people who had been economically devastated by years of war, and then by the Treaty of Versailles. The Germans were ready to follow anyone who get things organized and bring life back to normal."
"So... but they were Nazis."
"Yes, but they became very powerful very quickly. And it was through concentrating on organization and maintenance, taking care of business. Those things are important, and can get you places in life."
This was my dad, the history major's, way of making a point about my school work and organization skills. I missed it entirely. Nazis, was all I could think. Nazis are organized! I continued in my pattern: slack, cram, collapse, repeat.
Perhaps my husband would have heard this conversation and taken away from it what was meant. He gets it. He's achieved the zen-like state of organization of finances and tasks that allows him to see far ahead, a mountain view of our situation, while I still muddle around in the valleys, focused on other things and grateful for the budget room to get nice coffee.
This is not to say that I never mastered the skill-- when I was single and on my own, I had a pretty good system going, if maybe a little rudimentary. I treated my one credit card like it was radioactive, and would become more so with each use. I paid it down every month with a secret, defiant glee, never knowing that carrying a bit of a balance actually improves your credit score. And I saved. I piled up my acorns into a single savings account, one without an agenda, and also without a very impressive interest rate. As finances go, I was drawing stick figures on cave walls with the burnt end of a stick, and feeling pretty good about it.
And then my husband came along singing hymns of aggressive growth mutual funds, Roth IRA's, and 529 B's. Plato's Cave Allegory, (the all-purpose Freshman Comp gem), neatly illustrates my reaction: blinding light! Grunts of surprise and protest! Suspicion! And then, finally, tentative questioning, grudging acceptance, and an upright walk into the outside world.
I've delighted in learning about finances, but that's where my enthusiasm for maintenance ends. Bill schedules, oil changes, transmissions flushes, tire rotation, air conditioner filters, water softener drops, flushing out the rain gutters, renewing magazine subscriptions, GOD-- it makes me want to slam my own head in the front door repeatedly. I forget these things with what can only be called an active spite. And when I do remember them, and endeavor to take of them, I do it with the stomping petulance of a four-year-old. I hate that these things never change and never stop needing to be done. It reminds me too much of Sisyphus, and of horrible secretarial jobs I used to have.
I recently had the chance to revisit the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, and was relieved to see that my type hadn't changed since I'd last taken it in college. You never know. I had this fear that military wifedom would wipe me smooth like a river stone and build a more boring, and more competent, version of me. Happily though, I'm still an ENFP, which explains (but doesn't necessarily excuse) my loathing of all things maintainence. I also got my husband to take the test, and was equally relieved to find that he's not lying when he claims to enjoy taking care of the more mundane tasks of our existence. He really does get some sort of pleasure out of that, thankfully.
Wouldn't it be great if there was someone who absolutely adored sunrises, all kinds, and was always afraid it wasn't going to happen the next morning? And wouldn't it also be great if the sun, (some kind of anthropomorphized sun, like the one that dumps raisins into Raisin Bran), actually enjoyed rising, but also appreciated being appreciated for it?
This is how I feel every time my husband changes the oil in my car, or patiently explains to me for the hundredth time how our IRA's work, or does something like arrange to have my crappy cracked up windshield replaced-- I'm wildly grateful, not only for the actual thing he's done, but for the fact that I don't have to beat myself for forgetting to do it, or scowl my way through doing it myself. And then I can concentrate on bringing the things to our marriage that I'm best at bringing-- like new and complicated pumpkin carving patterns, (we just did a Steve Irwin tribute pumpkin), and new alcoholic drinks*.
*The Floribama, in tribute to our time in the hurricane-ravaged Florida Peninsula: mix equal parts Crush orange soda and cheap lite beer. Voila! It sounds gross, but you'd be surprised how refreshing this is, especially on a hot breathless night sitting with strangers in a parking lot, trying to catch any kind of breeze because there's no electricity.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Treading water (poorly)
Once when I was about 8 years old I got swept down a waterfall. This was in San Marcos, Texas so we're not talking about a thundering, vertiginous, mist-producing waterfall like the kind you see on screen savers. As waterfalls go, it was more of a water-stumble, but it had enough height, volume, and velocity to give an 8-year-old a rather sudden and unpleasant yank beneath the surface and a few accompanying bruises and scrapes from rocks and glass on the way down, and enough of a current to not let go of a passenger right away.
The experience has since crystallized into one of those Metaphorical Moments, handily foreshadowing things to come-- the fall itself was my fault for bumbling around too close to a water-stumble and losing my balance, but at the time I blamed my dad, who was on the bank nearby exhaling his way into unconsciousness in order to inflate my plastic raft (which would only have carried me over the edge even quicker than my own two legs, come to think of it). I ended up being pulled a ways (a mile! to an 8-year-old, more like 100 yards to an adult) down the river and expending nearly all of my energy frantically fighting the current, and finally catching up, completely exhausted, against a sand bank.
How I felt then, sitting on the sand bank is close to how I feel today, but maybe with less shock. The past two weeks have moved with the speed and treachery of a San Marcos water-stumble, and even though I'm now a much larger and slightly less clumsy adult, I still had my feet knocked out from under me, and treading water has proved only slightly more successful.
I got a look from a student today that pretty much summed it up: it was the kind of bored, slightly patronizing curiosity with which you might look at a dog as it tugged and tugged on something way too large to be moved. This particular student defiantly maintained a pristinely white sheet of paper after I'd been spewing an hour's worth of Things You Need to Know in Order to Pass My Class. Fine, I thought, on your head be it. But it still wears me out and wears me down just that little bit. There are hundreds of her, hundreds for which I am responsible, and every day they wash over me like water and I wonder how much I'm helping and how much I'm just using up more than my fair share of oxygen.
The experience has since crystallized into one of those Metaphorical Moments, handily foreshadowing things to come-- the fall itself was my fault for bumbling around too close to a water-stumble and losing my balance, but at the time I blamed my dad, who was on the bank nearby exhaling his way into unconsciousness in order to inflate my plastic raft (which would only have carried me over the edge even quicker than my own two legs, come to think of it). I ended up being pulled a ways (a mile! to an 8-year-old, more like 100 yards to an adult) down the river and expending nearly all of my energy frantically fighting the current, and finally catching up, completely exhausted, against a sand bank.
How I felt then, sitting on the sand bank is close to how I feel today, but maybe with less shock. The past two weeks have moved with the speed and treachery of a San Marcos water-stumble, and even though I'm now a much larger and slightly less clumsy adult, I still had my feet knocked out from under me, and treading water has proved only slightly more successful.
I got a look from a student today that pretty much summed it up: it was the kind of bored, slightly patronizing curiosity with which you might look at a dog as it tugged and tugged on something way too large to be moved. This particular student defiantly maintained a pristinely white sheet of paper after I'd been spewing an hour's worth of Things You Need to Know in Order to Pass My Class. Fine, I thought, on your head be it. But it still wears me out and wears me down just that little bit. There are hundreds of her, hundreds for which I am responsible, and every day they wash over me like water and I wonder how much I'm helping and how much I'm just using up more than my fair share of oxygen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
