Day 118: Donuts Should Not be Agents of Misery

The Donut of Misery. The “donut” as it’s called is a countdown of sorts created by a soldier or marine in 2003 or so the story goes. You input the date of the event you are counting down to and it keeps a constant count right down to the second until that time comes to pass. It is aptly named because the time during deployment is miserable for all involved. Whenever the husband deploys we use the donut of misery to mark time and give us a way to look forward to his return.

The name refers to its shape, which is donut like in that is circular. Ironic to use it for a negative purpose since for me, donuts equal all things good in the world. I feel like no matter how bad something is, if you have a donut it makes it at least a little bit better. They are the ultimate in comfort foods, sweet, satisfying and decadent. So why name something representative of misery with a title of something so wonderful?

Maybe that’s the point. You take the absolute worst time of your life and put a positive spin on it and just count the minutes until the good emerges. So much of life is like that. We get through it by looking forward to the good times in life. Everyone knows there will be bad times, but we try not to focus on those, instead, we set our sights on what we see in the horizon. The next promotion, vacation, weekend together, whatever is good in your life becomes an anchor of sort. So I guess in a way, no matter how bad things get, we all have a donut. That life saver thrown to a drowning man, the circular band of a wedding ring, the time chart counting down to a moment of reunion, and the donut itself. Round, sweet, satisfying and a life saver in so many ways.

Day 117: What'd You Call Me?

I have been called a lot of names in my life. Below is a partial list of both names and words used to describe me. I’m sure I’ve left out a few, but have tried to be as complete and accurate as possible. In some ways all of these are true, at least partially.

Bitch. Little girl. Sunshine. Whore. The one with the pretty eyes. Smart, very smart. Most arrogant. Judgmental. Big feet. Sweet pea. Honey. Mouthy. Lots of potential. Not living up to your potential. Fat. Skinny. Smiley. Opinionated. Sexy. Intimidating. Dirty-minded. Know-it-all. Immature. Sense of humor like a 10 year-old boy. Sports aficionado. Sweetheart. Young looking. Individual. Independent. Atheist. Liberal. Player. Big for my britches. Lonely. Lucky. Negative person. Idealistic. Pessimist. Way too cynical. Silly like a little girl. Goofy. Dork. Sci-fi nerd. Pack rat. Slob. Obsessive compulsive. Talks too fast. Walks too fast. Not ambitious. Original. Not tech savvy. The black sheep. Daughter. Sister. Girlfriend. Wife. Defenisve. Self-aware. Too hard on yourself. Writer. Assistant. Server. Lesbian. Slut. Baby. Always getting lippy. Antagonistic. Always looking for a fight. Wimpy. Too strong-willed. Short tempered. Liar. Interesting. Intriguing. Avid reader. Broke. Adopted. Sad. Unnecessarily lonely. Manipulative. Shy. Funny. Sarcastic as hell. Crazy but in a good way. Insensitive. Over emotional. Melodramatic. Cold. Walled off. More like a guy. Feminist. Humanist. Friend. Contrarian. Lover of controversy. Thinks too much. Never think before you speak. High and mighty. Walks a fine line. Have a bad attitude. Chosen. Special. Blunt. Obnoxious. Too loud. Quick learner. Good student. Lost. Homebody. Extrovert. Needy. Selfish. Unforgiving. Beautiful. Goat cheese. Esterline. Environmentalist. Vegetarian. Army wife. Superficial. Shallow. Analytical. Over thinks everything. Immoral. Ethical. Walks to the beat of her own drum.

Day 116: Somebody Slap Me, I'm Hysterical!

The hysterical crying comes in short bursts. Sometimes it’s 30 seconds, sometimes two minutes, but it rarely lasts as long as three. I say hysterical because the weeping isn’t motivated by sadness alone, it is a combination of grief, anxiety, disbelief and terror. It comes on quickly and is just as quickly tamped down, beaten back with a deep breath and moment of rational thinking.

This is the phase I am now in I suppose. There is nothing to be done but accept it and deal with the ramifications as best I can. Mistakes, like death, have stages. I went through denial, ignoring, self-righteousness, acceptance and now I am in panic mode. Panic because I am self-aware and awareness is a trap. You need it to survive, but its very existence dictates that you fully feel and acknowledge your own mistakes. I killed the best thing in my life once and now I struggle with that knowledge even as I strive to be a better person and rebuild my happiness.

True, you can’t ever have something be the same once it’s gone, but maybe in the resurrection you find that it can be better. This is what my conscious mind hopes for. I can rebuild it, make it better, faster, stronger. My life is now the Six Million Dollar Man project. Positive thinking does not come naturally for me. I am what I refer to as a cynical idealist, meaning that I live in two extremes. On one hand I see things at their worst and very often expect the worst so that I can avoid disappointment. On the other, I choose to ignore the more rational outlook or even optimistic one and go straight to idealism. In my perfect world, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter mate and their spawn grows at an excelled rate, becomes a liberal Democrat and crushes the spirit of the “Coul-baughs” spurring them to join a Buddhist temple and take a vow of silence for the rest of their lives. So no, I can do utopia, but I’m not great at the act of positive thinking.

These days, that is exactly what I am trying to rectify, but the hysterical crying sometimes juts forth, breaking the surface of my determined positivity and casting a panicky, breathless, sob filled few minutes on me. There is no prediction for when this happens and it does not seem to matter if I am in public or at home alone. One minute, I’m eating my homemade vegan, gluten-free apple crisp sweetened only with organic agave nectar and the next I’m having difficulty catching my breath from the sheer force of the terror-filled grief that overwhelms me.

I often wonder if others have these moments as well? Does your past haunt you? Do your recent choices cause you not just doubt, but panic? Do the tears interrupt an afternoon of football? Perhaps the depth of my sadness is so great that my mind and emotional well-being recognize my inability to deal with it all at once. These little breaks of composure are the incremental processing of my pain, sadness and fear. I do not wish any of this on others, but I hope I’m not the only one. It would be nice to know that others have doubts and fears that come back to bite them in the ass now and again too.

Day 115: Why is There a Stranger Between My Legs?

It feels like it’s getting increasingly more difficult to find a physician that both listens to you and is amenable to giving you what you want. There’s no trust or true relationship between doctor and patient and maybe that’s partially because of the increased accountability physicians face these days. Every painkiller, every test, every everything seems to be monitored. There just isn’t any room life for personal interaction.

My recent visit to the OB/GYN is a prime example. This is the most intimate of exams and while I’ve definitely had my fair share of strangers between my legs, I usually prefer to either not talk at all or to not recite some rehearsed dialogue they give to everyone with their legs open. So my doc, who actually I think was a trained midwife, is running through some speech that I can tell she’s recited a hundred times before. Half of the items she mentions does not even apply to me. What’s worse, she is Asian and quite a bit shorter than me and doesn’t ever quite lift her eyes all the way up. The effect is that she is speaking directly to my naked breasts.

Luckily, I’ve also had the experience of more than a few people talking directly to the girls, so this wasn’t all that new to me, but was the first time it’s happened with a medical professional. One of the most uncomfortable moments, both physically and conversationally came when she inserted a few digits to get a lay of land and casually commented how young I look for my age, before saying “To me, you look like a supermodel.” I kept waiting for her to break out the smokes so we could light up together.

My real goal in going to the doctor was to possible extract a prescription for painkillers for my headaches and to take care of my annual business. Keeping in mind that this is not a GP and therefore she might not be comfortable with the pain meds, I approached her more as a friend, hoping she could commiserate in how difficult it is to function with a migraine or bad tension headache. She seemed to understand that point just fine and agreed how awful it is to suffer from chronic pain and that responsible use of darvocet or vicodine can be life savers in managing with the most extreme episodes. Then she quickly changed the subject and managed to insult me and invoke God at the same time.

This happy conversation came at the end when I was tenuously clutching my paper sheet over my naked lower half and trying not to shiver in the freezing exam room. Which, if I might interrupt myself, brings up another good point. Why the hell do they always keep these rooms so cold? Nothing inspires relaxation more than the gentle invasion of a metal speculum while you’re shivering in your well-vented hospital gown and paper sheet. Anyway, so my woman tells me that at 36, my eggs are old and not so good for pregnancy, but should God not bless us with a child, it’s still okay.

After a 45 minute wait in reception, another 10 minutes in an exam room and $144 dollars later for insults, God and awkward statements while in even more awkward positions, I felt hustled. I tell you what, the dentist never makes me feel cheap and he gives me free floss and a toothbrush for my dime. Someone should combine these services. A dental cleaning and annual exam complete with minty fresh breath, free dental hygiene items, and white toothed smiles all around. Then again, I did once catch my dentist staring at my chest, so maybe it’s all the same.

Day 114: I'm Ready for my Close-up (and a job)

You may or may not know that I am unemployed. After 10 months of fruitless searches for professional employment, I am once again facing the prospect of the dreaded service industry. I say dreaded for several reasons. One being that I am old and they are young. Another is that my feet are no longer ache-free after being on them for several hours. Finally, I admit that my capacity to listen to inane or outright stupid conversation is nearly depleted. Truthfully, not even the prospect of a good income makes this possibility any more palatable, but unfortunately my bank account does not care. So it was to Craigslist I turned for suitable positions in service purgatory and there I discovered that I would need to put up more than a resume to get hired in this town.

A trend I quickly noticed in the Charlotte bar scene is the requirement of a photo submitted with your online resume. I am a supporter of the ACLU, I feel it is a very backwards practice to request photographic knowledge of a potential interview candidate, but then again I’m a realist. I worked in this business long enough when I was college to understand the importance of maintaining a hot staff. The question for me, isn’t one of ethics in terms of submitting a photo, it’s one of self-esteem. If you do not get a call or interview based solely on your resume that only means that your professional qualifications were found lacking. Once you go the photo route, however, you don’t know if the following silence is based on your professional resume or your genetic one.

Another questionable point in sending a photo is the choice of the photo itself. If this were a corporate job (well, hopefully a professional employer would never ask for a photo), my choice would be simple; you send in a headshot in professional attire and call it a day. Of course, that is not the issue I’m facing. Nope, in this world you must decipher how important looks are and if you’re going to need to tart it up a bit. Then again, it is likely unwise to send the photo you took in your lingerie to brighten the husband’s day at the office. So what do you do and should you even go there in the first place.

For me, desperation won out. I sent the photo, actually a couple, and got a response requesting an interview for the very next day. I’m still not sure if it will be me or the girls interviewing for the position, but it may not even matter. Half of serving is about prostituting yourself whether you’re wearing khaki’s and a polo or a skirt and halter, it’s all in how you present yourself and relate to the guest. At this point, I’m perfectly happy to let the girls bring in some cash, they’re not doing much else and it’s about time they start earning their keep. Victoria’s Secret isn’t cheap, you know.

Day 113: Under Pressure, It's the Terror of Knowing

I procrastinate everything. While I’ve never been certain why I do this, I think it has something to do with my being good under pressure. As long as you get what you need done, why not wait until the last possible moment? My husband will be home from Iraq in less than two months and I’m suddenly starting to see all the things I’ve ignored the last 10. It’s time to finally get in shape, clean and organize the apartment, get a job, plan where we’ll be come January and tie up the dozens of other loose ends I’ve left dangling. At a time when I should be relaxed and looking forward to his homecoming, I am frenetic.

We practice so often the philosophy of living in the moment, that at times planning ahead is almost too much to bear. My focus since he’s been away and I have made a new life for myself in a new town, has been simply to exist. I live my life one day at a time and rarely make plans further than a few days or at most, a week out. Now that the end of my solitude is coming into focus I am a bit disconcerted. The realism of his return and the uncertainty of what our newly recoupled life will be like has set me off balance.

All of the hard work I put into surviving our separation and in getting my own head together, is now somehow being deconstructed by the very thing I’ve been happily anticipating. Who will I be, when I am once again one of two? Certainly I have been married regardless of his presence, but it felt more conceptual in some ways. With no one to come home to, no one to rub my neck when I have a headache, no one to eat the parts of the sushi platter I don’t like, it has a been a marriage of words and ideas more than practice.

So here I am, struggling to tamp down my anxiety and happy anticipation for his return while also battling mountains of junk mail I’ve let pile up, clean laundry I decided to stack on dressers instead of hanging up, financial concerns my continued unemployment is causing, and a nervousness that I cannot seem to quiet. I am hoping that under pressure, I am once again able to force myself into productivity just in time for his return. Sometimes I think that a diagnosis of some terminal condition would be just what I need to finally achieve my goals and coax me out of my apathy. Then again, life IS a terminal condition and thus far that knowledge has not inspired me to do shit.

P.S. No one tell my husband I used that photo of him.

Day 112: If You're Going to Insult me, I Wish You'd Just do it Already!

Ever meet one of those people who say things that on the surface sound like compliments, but carry with them an undercurrent of something insulting? You can’t put your finger on it, and no one else really catches it, because they aren’t coming straight out and calling you names, but even so it just feels insulting? Well, I know a girl like that. She is strange in a way I can’t quite articulate. She looks at you a little too closely and a little too critically. And no matter what she says, it always comes out as a judgment. There is nothing overtly wrong or insulting about this girl, but when I see her, I kinda want to punch her in the mouth nonetheless.

The first time I met her she sat down at a table with my neighbor and I at our local pub. Because of the way she acted towards me I assumed she thought my neighbor and I were dating and she was jealous. I quickly made several references to my husband to allay any concerns she might have. After hearing that my husband is in the Army she spent 20 minutes or so discussing her brother who is in the Army as well and then unexpectedly said, “Hmm. That shirt looks different on you than I’d expect.” I replied by staring at her, mouth slightly agape while silently saying, “Fuck off, bitch” in my head. Once recovered, I said something that approximated a thank you, pretending that her statement was intended to be of a complimentary nature.

The evening continued in the same vein and when later my neighbor confessed that they had indeed once had a fling, I put it to bed.

Tonight I ran into her yet again. Same weird intenseness when she looked at me, same odd conversational tactics. This time she told me that she liked my lipgloss color and that she was surprised it didn’t look worse on me given my reddish hair color. This is the point when I wondered if she is really just that socially inept that her accidental insults are truly accidents or if she is just a bitch. If it’s the latter, I’m wondering how I can expose her to the others at the table so that I will be justified in telling her to bite me.

I’ve met people like her in the past and I never know quite how to take them. This may be in part, to my inability to not say exactly what I think at all times. Whatever I’m feeling shows on my face and whatever I’m thinking, pops right out of my mouth. I am the type of person who almost always let’s you know exactly where you stand, so it’s difficult for me to related to someone who both expresses herself poorly and seems to always say one thing, while making it clear she feels something else. I don’t like people like her. I believe in being direct with people. I don’t need her to like me, but I also prefer that she not pretend either. You may argue that she is just strange and did not mean any ill will, but when she asked if I thought my husband would be glad to see me when he got back from Iraq it was pretty hard to ascribe altruistic intentions to her words.

I know I’m not easy to get along with at all times. I have a big mouth, endless opinions and an uncanny way of supplanting small talk with awkward statements of political beliefs. That being the case, I still certainly hope that given the choice of a war zone or coming home to me, my husband would be happy to see me. How does one interpret any other emotion in such a question except one of malaise? Unfortunately as an adult and pacifist (actions only, desires don’t count), I do not have the luxury of punching in her in the head or telling her to blow me, it is expected that I behave with decorum and thus far, I think I have. One more comment about my hair though and that bitch is going down whether the others at the table understand or not.

Day 111: A Woman, Her Mother, Her Baby and a Banana are Hanging Out in a Parking Lot

This is the text I got tonight from a friend: “I am trying my first sewing project with my Mom’s direction. We had a guy arrested today for jerking off next to us in a parking lot.” There are several expected responses to this statement. On one hand, I was fascinated that my friend might be taking up sewing since it is completely out of her nature. Two, when did she get a sewing machine? Three, there are multiple questions about the self-pleasuring gentleman and the circumstances surrounding this . . . um event, that I could have pursued. What I really wanted to know, however, and the first question I asked was, “What were you doing hanging out in a parking lot?”

It’s not everyday you pull into a spot at the mall and after changing your baby’s diaper and having your Mom feed her a banana that you look over and discover that a guy parked next to you, WHO SAYS HELLO, is doing the one man dosey doe. There is also the curious question of why one of the women in the adjacent car began to slowly unpeel a banana, tossing her hair as she did it , before feeding it to another woman. I mean, who does this? Oh wait, I forgot that the woman with the banana was Grandma so probably no alluring hair tossing going on there and the "woman" she fed it to was actually a 14 month-old baby. So what exactly about this situation put this guy over his excitement threshold to the point that he whipped it out right there and went to town?

I’m guessing none of it actually. I think given the fact that this guy was parked two spots in and not in the back of the lot, means that he was just looking for a little public attention, not a specific audience. We all have different triggers for what gets us off and this guy clearly needed exhibitionism. Even so, I think when you add a baby to the situation it enters a whole new level of creepiness. Anyone who has read more than one of my blogs knows that I am pretty open minded when it comes to sex, but somewhere between Grandmas and babies, even I lose my woody.

In a society plagued by images of sex in almost every commercial, billboard, or magazine ad is it really necessary to seek a public display? Or is it possible that we have oversexed our society to such an extent that the only real outlet for pushing the boundaries is such an exhibition? We have so much sex in our society that nothing is extreme anymore. For instance, it used to be that a woman flashing her ankle could set a man to perspiring. While I am not advocating this type of sexist restriction, it does seem that at a point when hard-core pornography is criticized for not doing more extreme acts, maybe we’ve just become too desensitized to sex in general. Everything is bigger and better and that includes these types of transgressions. So now, rather than some guy opening his trench coat to flash you, you have a guy slapping Mr. Happy. I’m a little afraid (and more than a little curious) to wonder where we go from here.

Micro minis, extreme fetish porn, jacking off in a parking lot, barely there clothes in commercials . . . what barriers are left to break down when these things become normalized? For now, I guess it’s just nice that such an act is still offensive enough to warrant an arrest, although I admit to thinking that this guy was probably just trying to get his pleasure and didn’t mean any harm. Then again, there can only be two possible avenues for a story that begins with, a woman, her Mom, her baby and a banana are sitting in a car . . .. One is a joke and the other is a sex offender. I guess my message is just to keep it at home, or else to park in the back of the lot and look from afar, there’s no need for chit chat to enter into it.