I won’t be windsurfing.
Instead, I’ll be walking around in the post-acupuncture blissed-out haze I’ll be fortunate to have. Someone cancelled, and this back of mine that has been wonky since last Wednesday will be getting much-needed treatment. Lucky.
I’m bummed. I wanted to windsurf, but I won’t take the chance when I’m getting these warning twinges.
What’s happening? The same stuff that began a month before my back injury in 2008.
Basically, I’d lost 50 pounds that year via mostly cycling. With the wrong cycling posture, and with zero ab-work, the pressure on my lumbar built the entire summer. It began with excessive tightness and tension twinges. Then the shit came down and crippled me for about six weeks, affecting me for nearly a year.
To say I’m alarmed to feel ANYTHING similar is a bit of an understatement, since it was only in about Sepember 2009 that my back began to feel normal again.
Right now, everything revolves around my back. The unfortunate reality is, I don’t have extended medical, so any money that gets spent is gone for good, and I’m really not in the position to afford more than “basic maintenance” right now.
Luckily, I bought two (6)-packs of acupuncture in the hopes I’d get the money refunded from my last medical claimed. That failed and I’m out the money, but you can’t go wrong investing in health, and I still have the treatments for use.
So, it could be worse.
This morning I called and no appointments could be had. I pleaded desperately for first place on the waiting list.
Desperation, for the win! Got The Call at 1:12.
4:20 is when my road to wellness goes VrRRoom.
If I’m lucky, I’ll get cupped too. (Neat Eastern treatment that leaves one with huge welt marks but is amazing for muscle issues. OMG. I hope! My only real experience with it had me with better shoulder/neck-muscle loosening than a $90 massage would give me.)
Yep. Acupuncture. So, no windsurfing for me.
This summer is ending with a whimper, not a bang. It’s pretty anticlimatic that way, but…
It’s still a time of monumental change. Last Thursday, I submitted my application for a program I’m so wanting to get into. I got the call for a personal interview within a day. Tomorrow I go in.
Big things going down in Steffville.
We’ll see.
The back? Stupidity. Mine. I’m angry. I’m resolved. Sort of hit a mental bottom about it, because I remember how bad things got with the back and I can’t believe I’ve let myself slip to this point. I’ve been in a heady place about it yesterday and today.
The back problem’s mostly from overdoing it last week — I’d have been fine with overdoing it had I been maintaining my rehab work, like I’m supposed to, for the rest of my life. But totally have NOT been doing that. Last week? Two insane days of lifting boxes, climbing stairs, bending, etc, followed by 110km of cycling over the next few days, well… oops.
Note to Self: 40 isn’t that far away. Don’t be a dumbfuck.
Despite my freak-out at times this weekend, I’m cautiously confident this will pass pretty soon. The acupuncture appointment? Made me so damned happy. Nicely timed, my friends.
So, I kinda have missed out on the last great weekend of summer, and have had to cancel the thing I was looking forward to all summer as a personal check-point of sorts, but… it could be so much worse.
It’s a reminder, these lines we have to toe in order to keep ourselves safe, of just how important our bodies are. And balance, Grasshopper, seems the most important thing to attain for one’s body.
Stretching, a variety of exercise, posture, mindfulness — one without the others, for me, tends to be as harmful or more than not doing any at all. It’s like trying to live on only one kind of food. I could, but there’s no telling where it’ll lead.
A reminder, indeed.
A little fear of god and a very real threat of slipping back to a life of chronic pain is all one needs for motivation, if one has any brains at all.
Fortunately, I’m smart like dumptruck. Smarter, even.
So, then: Pincushion time. Yo, fix my Chi.
Monthly Archives: August 2010
Closet Skeleton Pioneers
A friend of mine laughed at me the other day when I suggested that I was an “oversharer” on the internet.
“Hah! You? Oversharing?”
Yes, I know. Just a smidge. The thing is, I’m pretty good at toeing a line these days. I don’t tell you what I don’t want you to know. Pretty simple.
Learning how to toe that line, though, WHOO. I done fucked up on more than just a few occasions, s o much so that I jokingly referred to myself and those like me, who’ve been oversharing for years, as “Closet Skeleton Pioneers”.
By that I mean that everyone’s got skeletons in their closets — some lover they treated like shit, a job they stole office supplies from, a friend they betrayed, a speeding ticket, you name it.
EVERYONE has been a dick at one point or another. Dig deep enough and you’ll find dirt. (If not, you’re boring, live a little.)
Luckily for me, I hit the age of 21 before the internet got invented.
And my record’s been expunged. Hardy-har, right.
The point is, despite what you think you know about me, I consider myself a really ethical person and there are things I’ve done and said that I hope never see the light of day because I don’t want them taken out of context, since we all know context is EVERYTHING.
And that’s the problem. When you see a photo on the web or a snippet of a conversational exchange, context gets lost and objectivity goes right out the window with it.
We all know that’s true of many events in our lives.
Don’t we?
So who the fuck is doing all the judging?
Are you? Are employers? Is your lover?
Who’s doing the judging when my friend on Twitter reacted yesterday morning after he received an email after a husband found his wife “Facebook cheating” and sent the entire exchange out to their kids’ school’s parents mailing list? Ain’t just the hubby judging now, is it?
What were employers digging up that led Germany to introduce a new law that will make it illegal for them to do job-applicant background searches on Facebook? Probably they were digging up a lot of skeletons, right?
It goes without question: Things you say or do on Facebook, Twitter, and in other areas of the web can absolutely destroy your life.
But who is doing the judging?
There’s a reason it’s so damn hard to become a Saint in the Catholic Church, you know — perfection’s pretty fucking difficult to come by.
When I was a kid in Bible school, I was told a story about Jesus intervening in a stoning, saying to the angry crowd of sanctimonious rock-chuckers “Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone”, or somethin’ thereabouts.
Really: In 2010, who’s without sin?
I mean, the Catholic Church outlawed SPEEDING, for crying out loud. Everything’s a sin. The Pet Shop Boys had it right.
When I look back upon my life
It’s always with a sense of shame
I’ve always been the one to blame
For everything I long to do
No matter when or where or who
Has one thing in common, tooIt’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a sin
It’s a sin
Everything I’ve ever done
Everything I ever do
Every place I’ve ever been
Everywhere I’m going to
It’s a sin
Was Neil looking back at his life on the web? Woulda if he coulda then, I bet.
So, let’s just accept that everyone’s imperfect, and, instead, (like this guy here and his “degrees of evil” guide to killers), get ourselves a handy cheat-sheet of just what level of assoholic or just plain edgy social behaviour one is guilty of and how it ranks them on the Good Versus Dick scale, okay?
Such as:
- Never emails or messages you back, but pathologically lurks and knows Everything That Happens every time you talk in person. Creepy but not mean.
- Likes kinky sex and lets everyone know it.
- Thinks “cleavage” and “profile pic” are synonymous.
- Considers social media his personal dick-dipping pool and has more numbers in his contacts than the CIA does.
- Just LOVES drinking wine and doing so liberally. While telling you all about it. Every single night.
- Keeps getting caught in masturbatory lies that make them sound great, but you know through the grapevine that they’re barely making rent and are shopping at Thrift Stores, while judging others for doing the same kinda “posing”.
- Has, like the majority of people over 21, tried marijuana or something else questionable at a party at least once.
- Speaks frankly about their disgust for political figures or employers.
- Has a spouse yet endlessly flirts with others, without boundaries, and in public.
- Has a pulse.
I mean, seriously. Half the things I do on a daily basis would probably get me fired from most jobs, because I’d never keep my mouth shut about what I hate and why. My old employers got a giggle out of it, but I assure you — it’s an acquired taste.
Despite what you may think of my loudmouthed, in-your-face, drinks-too-much, full-of-innuendo online persona (and, yes, it somewhat exists offline, and without a backspace key), I’m a good person.
I’m a really, really good person.
I hold the door open for men and little old ladies. I say “please”, “thank you”, and “sorry.” I look people in the eye. I pay my taxes. I’m honest, I don’t steal. I’m a quiet neighbour, a good daughter, a great friend. I bake muffins for lovers. I pay back my debts.
So, if you want to jump to conclusions about me based on the image I portray on the web — knowing I’m a creative person with a gift for fiction — then you’re entirely entitled to do so, and I’m entirely entitled to think you’re a narrow-minded presumptive dick who’s not worthy of my time.
Or maybe I just see you as someone who needs to think outside the box a little more.
Who I am online might have hurt me in the past but it helps me now. I have something to gain from keeping this persona/point-of-view alive. There’ll always be a price I pay as a result of it, but I’m hoping that’s just the cost of doing business.
I’m not the only web-user with a persona, or with skeletons; I’m just hyper-honest about it.
As time goes on, though, all of us will have our skeletons exposed. Then, with more to compare and contrast, we’ll know who the real assholes are — unless, of course, none of it’s true.
And that’s the problem with reaching any conclusions based on the web.
How do you know it’s true? When everyone can enter information and nothing’s necessarily vetted on the web, how do you know it’s true?
Simple: You don’t.
Here’s how I operate.
I watch for how people actually are with each other, online and otherwise: How they argue, how they’ll never let up, how they want the last word, how they judge others, how they talk about others, how they scheme or gossip. Because it’s in their everyday words and behaviour that we really see who people are — special events, like parties with hijinks, are too out-of-context to really give us an inkling of who someone is.
Me, I’ve written a lot over the years, on topics about everything from drinking and drugs to kinky sex, but you’d be wrong if you thought I was particularly wild or exciting anymore.
I’m being boring nowadays. I just make it sound exciting.
And there you have the web in a nutshell, and why laws like Germany’s are long overdue — when it comes to the internet, you can’t believe everything you read. You certainly can’t dismiss it, either. But there are no litmus tests or polygraphs one can administer to online “personality” accounts to judge the veracity of their content.
It’s time people started realizing you really can’t judge any of us on the little you see of us online, and that the skeletons in our closet aren’t nearly as big or scary as you think they are, especially when brought into the light.
If you want to supplement what you know of someone by how they are online, and you can do so judiciously and with many grains of salt, then knock yourself out.
Just don’t be surprised when that spotlight hits your life, too.
In fact, some of your skeletons probably look awfully similar to ours. After all, dontcha know? It’s quid pro quo season on closet skeletons.
Everybody Has Reversals
One of my favourite movies is the little-known David Mamet skewering of Hollywood, the filmmaking parody called State and Main.
In it, supposed screenwriter Phillip Seymour Hoffman laments being kicked off his first movie.
The bookstore owner, played by Rebecca Pidgeon, says to him, “Well… Everybody has reversals. If you were never down, how would you know when you were up?”
It’s a pretty universally held-belief espoused by everyone from Rumi and Kahlil Gibran to my neighbour Bob down the street.
Graffiti I love from Vancouver's Granville Island. Unfinished on purpose or interrupted? No idea. Love it.
I think we get it, right? Gotta be sad to know happy, poor to know rich, fat to know thin.
I’m identifying with the latter as I acknowledge I’ve been backpedalling against my own reversals of late.
I had set myself a weight goal in May and I’ve moved the opposite direction. I’ve been kind of mentally lost at sea as I’ve been screwing up the courage to make the journey to where I need to go: self-employment, et cetera.
That means I delved into emotional eating while I’d been on edge and in fear.
Failure is something I’m really scared of. So scared, in fact, I’d rather not try at all and have the excuse that I’ve yet to get around to it, than to do it and face-plant.
I’m getting past that in my (cough) old age now, and starting to have the “feel the fear and do it anyways” ’90s mantra pumping through my head, but it’s been taking a while.
I know what I want now, and that means the emotional eating has begun to become more obvious to me — I’m realizing what I’ve been doing, I’m conscious of the shame that has come with it, and the depression that comes with realizing I’ve been failing myself for a while now.
I’ve been trying to hide it.
But there’s only so much you can hide when you’re carrying around the evidence on your ass.
Seriously, right? That’s what it boils down to: Who the fuck do you think you’re kidding, there, tubbo?
Granted, I’ve only gained 2 pounds more than I started the summer with, but I’m still pissed off about it, because I know HOW to defeat it, and because I’ve fucking cycled more than 1,100 kilometres this summer — all for naught! All that sweat and pain and endurance so I could barely maintain my weight? Fuck!
This week some things are coming into play — I’ll be talking to a professional trainer to see what we can maybe do for each other. I finally made a connection last week with someone and we’ll see if it’s a promising venture toward the weekend. Here’s hoping.
As a result of getting a “yeah, let’s talk!” from the trainer, I realized “Well, I’d love to get the help, but you know what? I’ve done this all by myself before — I cut out butter, I ate better, I worked out 6-8 hours a week… I didn’t need a trainer then, and I don’t need one now.”
So, I decided I’d get real. I celebrated with a cheeseburger, but then I knuckled down and chucked out the butter, made some mental commitments as to what I’m willing to do, where I’m willing to go, and grocery-shopped accordingly.
I also decided that I don’t need a trainer, no, but I want one.
Sooner or later we all have to realize that we can only get ourselves so far on our own. There’s only so much we can consider inside our little brains and only so many experiences we can have first-hand. There’s only so much we can excel at in life without others’ help.
Eventually, help really is something we all need to accept.
I honestly believe the last five years of my life have been specifically about teaching me that it’s okay to ask for help and that it’s okay to turn to others. You can’t possibly know how far I’ve come, but I still have far to go.
Times like these are when I’m proud to say at least I’ve learned how to make the first move.
It’s been a very difficult lesson, gaining the humility that is needed to admit help is required.
The two lessons I’m most proud I’ve taken from the last 10 years are: 1) That I know I’m strong enough to overcome everything that gets put in my path, and on my own, and 2) That I’m finally comfortable asking others for help and admitting that I just can’t do everything, and that it’s given me a tremendous amount in life.
Where I’ve gotten myself is this:
- I’m more than half-way to the body and the health that I’ve wanted all my life.
- I’ve overcome most of my injuries to the point where my days seldom get clouded with the thoughts of pain and discomfort that used to swirl like blackness around me.
- I no longer feel my goals are hopeless but instead feel anger that I’ve been letting them slip by because I know in my heart I should be all over ’em like Oprah on a ham.
- I’m ready.
Yes, I said the big word: Anger.
I’m fucking pissed, buddy. I’m mad. I’m bitter. I’m choked. I’m gonna kick some ass. MINE.
It’s all MY fault. It ain’t about the media or the government, life beating up on me or any of that shit. This weight I’ve regained is ALL MY FAULT and I FUCKING KNOW IT.
Oh, sure, you want to do the “Hey, love yourself” or “Embrace yourself and be gentle” la-la-love-in bullshit? KNOCK YOURSELF OUT. Ain’t my cuppa, honey.
It was THIS MOOD that launched me on the path that saw me losing 70 pounds, saying NO MORE, and going hard after what I wanted. It was THIS MOOD that said I’m entitled to better but only if I earn it first.
I’m not being mean to myself, I’m saying I’m better than this. I’m saying I know I can do this. I’m saying I have this in me. That’s love, man. I know I’m built for this. That’s love.
I don’t need to light candles, run a bath, and sing “Kumbaya” to myself, okay?
I need to put the fucking butter down, pay attention to when my belly is full, stop living the college dorm “HEY, LET’S GET BEER” life of excess that my summer has been. That’s love, man.
Am I pissed off at myself? Sure.
Am I gonna hold a grudge about it? Fuck, no.
By this time next week, I want my attitude to be “Hey, I’ve done well this past week. Let’s go windsurfing!” ‘Cause that’s scheduled for then, you know. That’s how we say “ENOUGH” in my world.
Kumbaya, motherfucker. Reverse this!
Unbottled
I’m awash in lazy contentment like a kitty sprawled in a sunbeam. It’s been had a long week filled with accomplishments, lotsa physicality, and a whole lotta thinkin’ goin’ on.
Through it all, I’ve kept most of my stuff bottled up. Writing wasn’t on the landscape this week. Sometimes I put a lid on it all and let things simmer and meld for days on end, like an Italian slow-food-of-love cookin’ affair. Thought-stew. Stewing.
I’ve been organizing my home. Gruelling. 2 days, 48 flights of stairs, 14 Swiffer cloths, a roll of paper towel, a bunch of rags, 95 degrees, and a lot of elbow grease.
I’d actually written about what I expected of the experience, but got was so absorbed in my other work that I never edited or posted the piece.
This is how it began:
Big sigh. I’m on the verge of something I’ve wanted for a long time.
I’ll have the most space ever in all my storage areas. Nothing will be crowded anymore, anywhere.
I’ll have a cardio machine in a non-intrusive corner of my bedroom, my living room even more spacious for working out, and probably have the best floorplan I’ve ever had.
My bathtub works again and I haven’t seen a cockroach in two months. I even pad around barefoot sometimes.
I’m so fuckin’ thrilled I could cry.
Tomorrow starts the Great Ordering of the Steffiverse. Finally, chaos will be banished.
For someone who has a fear of clutter and a penchant for lapsing into mild-mannered agoraphobia, it’s been a hell of a few years on the home front.
My friends who’ve been by my side through The Decade From Hell can attest that my home has matched my life for much of that time. The more I’ve shed of worries, weights, and problems, the more my home has opened up and reflected my personality more than my drama.
And here I am, largely on the other side of that.
***
Basking in mostly order and slack today, I’m in the midst of defining what I want the future to be over the next year, as I figure out this massive application for a self-employment program I desperately want to take, deadline Thursday.
I’ve recently been putting the feelers out, talking to people, networking, all that. I’ve really been surprised in the last couple of days at just how many people have responded positively to requests from me to put in writing that they’d like to work with me one day soon, as required by my application.
Judging by the variety of people I’ve received letters from (and I only needed 2, have 10), it’ll be a really exciting 2011. If I do get accepted into one of the programs I want desperately to attend, I know it’ll throw doors open that only I can be responsible for closing.
I don’t have any doubt in what I’m capable of, I just question how well I’ll do at making that happen. It’s like writing — just because I can form an idea doesn’t mean I can translate it into words on a page, though I may try.
But in creating a new surroundings, I’m hoping to create a new mindset open to new possibilities and inviting of opportunity. It’s the proverbial “starting somewhere”.
***
Someone told me once that purging your belongings to create space is how you persuade the universe to gift you more. You know I’m not Frou-Frou / New-Agey Girl, but I do believe we have more power to create our life than we’re often led to believe, and in a less mantra-ish kind of way than necessarily espoused by pop-guru thingies like Eat Pray Love.
Photo by Ihtatho.
The reason it’s so important to me to get my home under control when it’s in a state of chaos, which was most of the time, is because I really feel it reflects who I am at any point in time. I really do. When it’s in chaos, I know I am too, and that inner-chaos is reflected everywhere around me, visually reminding me that I am actively failing at, well, just about everything.
So, I’m getting there. Every time I organize, there’s less to sort through. I don’t feel I’m done. I can live with less. Over time, I want to explore Less. For me, less will become more.
***
I saw a line on Facebook today — that repository of deep and meaningful [said dryly] social fluff — where someone proclaimed something like, “Don’t worry about people from the past, there’s a reason they didn’t make it into the future.”
I suppose that’s true of who I once was. There’s a reason that version of me didn’t survive. There’s a reason this version of me is in flux.
Simply remembering “there’s a reason” can be infinitely valuable, after all.
Though, I must say, sometimes it’s good to remember not everything needs a reason.
***
Sometimes, you know, I sit back and think, “Hmm, I’m glad I’m a writer. Maybe now I can find some sense [or pattern or direction or reason] in all of this.” I sit down, I write, and, yeah, at the end I’m just as lost as I was when I began.
Like now. I still don’t really have a handle on where my life is going. How could I possibly? I’m hoping. Like when I tried playing horseshoes last week, I had no fucking idea how I’d get the shoe around the peg, but I aimed and I hoped.
Life’s just like that. You can’t know. You can’t be sure. You can’t be decisive. Instead, you just roll with the waves as they land on you, and hope you catch the right breaks when they do.
That’s where I am. I know what I control, I know what I don’t. What I do control, I’m trying to rock. When it all comes down, I want to know I did what I could, and I did it as best I could.
Then we’ll see.
Then we’ll see, indeed.
***
I think September has often been the most change-inducing month in my years. Twice, I’ve kicked off September just being lucky to be alive, riddled with injuries suffered in motor vehicle incidents. Other times I’ve done wacky things like moving to the Yukon. Once I quit a job, told the boss to go to hell, and started the path for losing 70 pounds. Another time I blew my back out.
See? September’s a license to get wacky around these-here Steffparts.
But this year, I’m applying for something that could set me on a completely different path.
Last week, I laid the foundation by creating a new homespace that could allow for order, success, and new acquisitions.
This week, I lay a new kind of foundation in the hopes of gaining education. And other stuff.
Next week, who knows.
And that’s kinda what I love about it. September looms. A season of change. I’m ready for more.
A Stitch in Time
I sold a sewing machine last night, for far less than I’d wanted to, and found myself ever so emotional after the fact.
I remember the day my mother bought that 1917 Singer (Model 027) oak-cabinet sewing machine, some 30 years ago. We’d had a yard sale, with my parents constantly on their “reduce the clutter and make some bucks for the mortgage” kick. An old lady came by to browse, admiring a couple of the antiques my mother was trying to unload so she could obsessively pick up more antiques, feeding her new passion.
They got gabbing, as yard-salers are so likely to do. Naturally the old woman started talking about this old sewing machine. In the end, Mom took a walk, bought the thing, and Dad got stuck not only cleaning up the yard sale, but taking all their earnings over to pay off the old woman and tote the heavy damn machine home.
I’m sad. I’ll miss the machine and what it represented. Memories of Mom hunched over and pumping the treadle, stitching together my clothes and bedding. A rolling shadow across a winter night’s living room wall: Mom and her mission to clothe us all.
The last time she ever sewed on it was sometime in ’98, making a fleece jacket for my almost-a-toddler nephew then, hunter-green with teddy-bears all over it. I found the patterns in the bottom of the machine yesterday, then decided to recycle those, too.
The woman who bought it was a new grandmother, moving into a smaller apartment and excited about the life ahead of her as she’s about to turn 60.
My mother never hit 60.
It was a bitter-sweet night. I fought some tears as I imagined how much my mother would approve of that woman taking possession of the machine. I remembered sadly the excitement she had for being a grandmother herself, the oath she made me give her about how good an aunt I’d always be after she died.
Our lives don’t go how we want them to, they never do. Little things around us can remind us of that. As much as I loved that machine, I think it made me remember sadness more than happiness. Never a good thing.
***
I’m 37 in about 6 weeks now. Sometime before then, I have to arrange for a windsurfing lesson. My mother did windsurfing only once, and I still remember it.
She went with my brother — it wasn’t my kinda thing (read: meant actually using energy and burning calories) — but I remember how the next few years began to be of rapid change for her, as if doing the windsurfing was her way of saying I’m Changed, I’m Tough, I Want More.
She then learned to sail, got her real estate license, separated from my father, climbed mountains in China, raced boats in the Mediterranean, and had an affair with a sailor who lived on his yacht, all in the decade before her death.
I would very much like to become my mother’s daughter, and look to be on schedule to do so 10 years earlier than she did. It makes me laugh that I now see what role her windsurfing may have played in her life, since I didn’t think of that connection when I seized the “70%-off” Groupon deal for a $15, 2-hour lesson — mostly because my goal had been to learn to surf this year, but becoming unemployed meant that couldn’t happen for financial reasons, and I thought “Windsurfing’s a good consolation prize.”
It’s funny how life works. I can surmise it was the windsurfing that threw open her threshold of change. I’ll never know for sure, but I’d like to believe so, as my lesson looms in the next two weeks.
I’m in this place of late where I’m thinking of where I’m going next — the long-term future I face in life, and what all might entail with that. My mother was in this place in the months before her death, before she even knew she was sick.
It’s a very weird place to be now. They say that the mid-30s are when a young woman misses her dead mother the most — because she’s now becoming the woman she saw her mother as being, a woman she never saw the “after” phase for, because her mother died too young. The loss, they say, can become more core-shattering and filled with a deeper longing than she’s ever experienced before, even years after thinking she’s done “mourning,” just because of that experiential transition between ages that we all go through. Without the corresponding parental figure there, it’s sort of a more bump-in-the-night experience, one of loss and wonderment.
I certainly understand that these days. Some of my recent accomplishments have rung painfully hollow, leaving me emptier than I could have imagined, mostly because I know it was so important for my mother to find herself as a stronger, more independent woman than she felt she’d been, and that she would really enjoy watching the process I’ve been going through. I can imagine the things she’d say, and that hurts at times.
It hurts today.
There’s nothing a child wants more than to show their parents just how far they’ve come. I never had that chance with my mother, someone I admired more than most people I’ve ever met. To get robbed of that is a lifetime of loss and “something’s missing”.
I’m not feeling sorry for myself, it just is what my life is. I wouldn’t be who I am with my mother alive today, so I’m not really wishing she never died. I don’t know what I wish. I just know I feel this whirlwind around how full of “searching” she was at her death — like I am now — and how torn she was about her obligations.
And it was all tied up in that little sewing machine that’d been eating up a third of my storage space for the better part of the last decade.
And now it’s gone.
But here I am, still on this journey to take me someplace that I think my mother could tell me an awful lot about, from first-hard experience, if only she was still alive.
But she’s not.
So I get to experience it all, and find myself in quiet moments at the end of the night, when I get to think, “Gee, how would Mom have felt today? What would she have learned? What would she tell me?”
It’s been eleven years this week that she died.
I always worried I’d forget her face, her smell, the way her hands felt when she held mine to console me. And maybe there’s an aspect I forget, but somehow it’s more real to me than ever before, it hits me deeper than it ever has.
They say the first sign of true adulthood is when you really start understanding where your parents were coming from, what they had to endure to get where they were going.
Lately, I feel like I was a child until this year. Now I really get it. I get what kept my mother awake at night, what made her want for more.
When youngins in their 20s tell me how mature they are, I keep chuckling, because I remember how wise I thought I was (because everyone told me I was) at such a young age.
I didn’t know jack. Still likely don’t.
Funny, selling an old antique and getting a little cash for groceries proved to be one of the most emotional experiences of the last year for me, and one of the largest lessons in how I’m Not That Kid anymore.
I’m not that kid. Not a kid. I’m a woman pushing 40 who’s learning more and more of the simple truths that makes quiet everyday-days feel A Little Bit More Meaningful.
Goodbye, sewing machine. Hello, wisdom.
And please, don’t do the whole “Oh, I’m sure your mother is watching” blah-de-blah thing, okay? It just rings so hollow sometimes, regardless of how you intend it. I know. Trust me, I fuckin’ know. But thanks. Just don’t.
The Customer Ain't Always Right
“Pulling a JetBlue” has entered the modern lexicon, thanks to the inimitable exit Steve Slater pulled when a passenger was a fucking dick and wouldn’t apologize.
Like the classic movie Network, it seemed Steve Slater finally just had enough — tired of the ignominy of a life of service in the skies, he was “mad as hell” and wasn’t gonna “take it anymore.”
Steve Slater on his MySpace page, presumably on a day he LIKED his job.
Good. Steve Slater’s my hero of the month, personally.
We live in a society that puts up with everyone being an asshole because there’s this “customer’s always right” mentality.
No, you know what? A lot of customers are assholes.
If I had to serve you people every day for the rest of my life, I’d put a fucking bullet in my head. Seriously.
I imagine why things like Twitter and Facebook have taken off is the protective shield it allows people for finally speaking up to what they think — especially the “little” people in service industries.
You and I both know 75% of them would never dare speak up in such a fashion in person, unless it’s only letters on a screen.
But then we head back out in the world where everyone’s more selfish, ignorance is rampant, and people bite their tongues in the course of daily exchanges, and there’s this festering resentment everywhere we look.
Me, I’d rather live on the planet where you can stop mid-statement, look quizzically at your work colleague, and inquire “Gee, are you gonna be a dick like this every time we hook up, or can we get to a new place NOW, not later?”
Imagine the bullshit it’d cut through.
Instead, we keep smiling and nodding, trying to tactfully dance out of awkward situations instead of saying, “Hey, not cool.”
I’m not sure if I have some form of speaking Tourette’s that gives me wide berth when it comes to blurting uncensored things, but it sure as fuck simplifies my life more than it complicates it, ‘cos I often blurt those things you’re likely to only think.
“Oh, that’s just Steff.”
Goddamned right it is.
Try it, speak back a little. Say no. Don’t be sorry. Own the right to speak up. Be like Steve. Walk out.
But don’t tell me it’s okay to be treated like shit, whether it’s by a customer or not.
The customer is NOT always right. Sometimes they’re really, really stupid.
Like the time I worked in a bookstore, and a woman was looking for a copy of The Talmud, so my colleague and I simply directed her to the “Religion” section.
“Religion? It’s there with all the OTHER so-called faiths? Just stuck in the same section with all the other not-Jewish books like that?”
My colleague looked at her, stunned, and said, “What? Would you rather we kept them in a SEPARATE section? Would it be better if we marked them to show how special they are, with something like a gold star? And if people brought a book back, instead of sullying the others with the rejection, we should just burn those unwanted books? Would that be better than the “RELIGION” section?”
I’m pretty sure she never returned to the shop, but I’m hoping the lesson got through to her defectively thick brain (and it really makes me miss working retail).
It’s an example, though, of stupid customers. Some can even read yet sink to immeasurably stupid depths. I know. Shocking.
Steve Slater got tired of it.
He probably got tired of all the things I’d like to beat out of my society with a fucking bat: entitlement, petulance, arrogance, impatience, ignorance, indolence, and, most of all, STUPIDITY.
Here’s a cheat sheet for EVERYONE that probably got under Slater’s skin, which is to say about 40-50% of people:
You’re not as special as you think you are. That job you’ve had modest success with could be done by most lab monkeys. Your money doesn’t elevate you. Your degree ain’t what it used to be. (Look who they’re admitting). Your fancy clothes don’t give you “asshole” exemption.
Here’s a reminder of how to be a decent human being so that the people who are paid to put up with your bullshit don’t have to make an emergency exit and get slapped with legal charges.
Because, trust me, a lot of us are fucking fed up with the Fuckwit Factor that comes with living in the modern world.
a) When you’re dealing with human beings in the flesh, get the fuck off your cellphone until you’re through. Seriously. Fuck.
b) Say “please” and “thank you”, because you’re not entitled, and it’s not much, but it sure helps to make a long, underpaid day a whole lot less insufferable.
c) Hold the door open for a split second when someone’s five feet behind you. It’s simple manners and you’re not THAT important that 5 seconds of your life is gonna undo the time/space-continuum there, buddy.
d) Don’t kid yourself — people in jobs “less” than yours work every bit as hard as you, if not harder. Most have had bad luck in areas that hindered them academically or professionally. You’re a product of good fortune as much as you are of work. Respect others.
Life’s short. It’s hard enough without entitled fuckwit assholes raining down their assoholic tendencies on anyone in spitting distance. It’s also hard enough without the disenfranchised outsiders thinking their life on society’s perimeters makes them a moral superior to everyone else.
Be better. Trust me: You can. Everyone’s become more of a dick than they were 20 years ago. It’s time to reverse this.
Meanwhile, where do I get me one of them fancy exit-when-you-gotta slides, there, Steve?
And the beer, Steve: BRILLIANT touch. I think I love you, Slater.
Oh, Silly Little Troll. Okay. I'll Bite.
An anonymous snivelling little loser troll decided to pick on me tonight and I decided I would pick back, just for the heck of it.
Personally, I think reading my reply is pretty good for a giggle, and think it’d be a crime if I didn’t hyperlink to it from here.
So, read the Pride post, and check out the comments. Apparently I’m a closeted bisexual who’s kinda a loser.
Here! Enjoy! (On both counts.)
Aging: Becoming My Mother's Daughter
Next month is my birthday. I have about 6 weeks of being 36 left.
I’m told I look younger. This is good news, I like it.
Truth be told, I really don’t care about looking “36”. Not yet. I probably will. Likely when it starts to show. When I’m 42. Heh, heh.
But you know what?
A shot taken of me by my friend Rick Rake at an event on July 28th, 2010.
I’ve worked for that age. The sun damage my skin shows now is in stark contrast to the pasty-white well-hidden tubby non-outdoors girl I was for the majority of my life. When I was a kid, I was the fat kid who whined and lied about pretend injuries to get out of sports. Every hike I was supposed to do, I got out of.
I was so not a joiner. I was pudgy, pudgy, wheezy girl.
Not so much these days. I’m not where I need to be, but I’m better than I’ve been since I was 18, and there aren’t a lot of 36-year-olds who can attest to being healthier than they’ve ever been — than they’ve literally EVER been.
Despite that health, I’m caught with fatigue a lot of the time. I just deal with it. My friend who’s 42 tells me she was always tired for a few years in her 30s. I’m assuming that’s where I’m at. I eat fairly well, exercise 6 or more hours a week. What more can you ask, right?
Honestly? My newly-appearing wrinkles give me pause. I’m not sure I’m wild about them just yet. I do, however, like the “character” they give my grin these days and the way they highlight the twinkle in my eyes.
I think I wear the few wrinkles I have well. I know my mother wore her age fantastically, like a perfect-fitting pair of jeans.
People were devastated when my mother died. She was a sexy-as-hell redhead at 57 when cancer took her 11 years ago this week. She looked fantastic. Dead? How ironic.
I’m thinking a lot about her this week. Maybe it’s part of my reclusiveness of late. 11 years. Wow. Mind-boggling. Can’t help but reflect on anniversaries, and I’m not thinking so much about the loss of her this year as I am about the woman I’m becoming on my own life journey, and if it parallels my mother’s. Wish I could ask.
I think a woman’s 36th year is pretty pivotal in who she is. She’s now out of the “targeted demographic” most coveted by marketers, she’s starting to pay attention to wrinkle creams and thinking biological-clock type thoughts if she’s not already a mother. It’s the beginning of the transition from “breeder” to “matriarch”, a different kind of role that women seem to play when they hit early middle ages.
One day we’re the chick next door that the guy wants to hang out with and tries to sleep with, the next we’ve become Mrs. Robinson and anyone we chase under our age begets us a label of “cougar”. It’s a quicker transition than you might think.
I’m not sure if I’ve hit that stage yet, since friends still think I look 28, so I might be able to get away with more.
That youthful appearance may not linger a lot longer, as the greys and wrinkles begin to mount.
I both like and loathe the greys I have now, even if few in number. They multiply.
Today, I’m thinking about getting a punk-rock haircut again and embracing the salt-n-pepper look that’s coming on. There’s something tasty about edgy prematurely-greying people. Very, very tasty. I can pull that off. Not like I’ll be all grey tomorrow anyhow.
Age, I guess, really is a state of mind. I know some folks at 36 who look like they’re in their 40s. How you live really starts to show through in a hurry, and it’s your choice. This is the age that your lifestyle becomes visibly apparent to everyone.
Because of that, getting older doesn’t scare me. It’s probably to do with decent genetics (that come with a ticking time bomb but sure look pretty) and probably because I feel like I’ve been through enough in life already that whatever’s coming down the pipes is something I know I’ll just handle. Scared? Who’s scared?
No, I ultimately like my age. I’d rather be turning 37 than 22 again. You couldn’t give me enough money in the world to relive my 20s. My 30s ain’t been no walk in the park, either, but from 35 on? Yeah. I like it. Liking it more all the time, the further I get from my past and the more progress I make on this vision of who I always cheated myself out of being.
Some of us SURVIVED our 20s. Some of us kind of defied an awful lot of odds to get past where we were. Some of us really fucking love coming into our older, more comfortable selves.
I wish the media could understand that. I wish marketers got it. My age is almost like a battle-wound scar. Like that scene in the movie Jaws, where Quint, Brody, and Hooper are shooting the shit about old scars:
Brody: [pointing at Quint’s tattoo scar] What’s that one?
Quint: Oh, that’s a tattoo. I got that removed.
Hooper: Let me guess. “Mother!” [laughs]
Quint: Hooper, that’s the U.S.S. Indianapolis.
[Hooper’s face drops]
Hooper: You were on the Indianapolis?
Brody: What happened?
Quint: Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin’ back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We’d just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail.
As far as some of us are concerned, we probably shouldn’t even be alive. Enough’s gone on that, y’know, our survival’s really by the grace of God or whoever else was in the kitchen. Signs of age, to some of us, are like proof of getting to The Other Side.
At this point, I don’t see myself changing my hair to hide the greys. I’ll never be slowly salt-and-peppering again in my life, I want to enjoy the awkward and cute transition.
I also don’t see myself trying to hide wrinkles with Botox, ‘cos I never thought my face would be thin enough to have wrinkles — I thought it’d be unhealthily fat and smooth for decades yet. Wrinkles? SERIOUSLY? Okay, bring ’em.
There’s something satisfying about slowly becoming my mother’s daughter. I’m one size away from being the same size as her before her death, even if I’m 40-50 pounds heavier. Muscle tone!
Every now and then, I look in the mirror, and a woman who sort of reflects the mother I had as a wee little lass is the woman staring back at me. I still can’t believe that’s who I’m becoming. When I was 5 going on 6, Mom was the age I am now.
I never saw myself being here, now, looking more and more like her as she was then, every day.
But I’m starting to really, really like it.
Pride Day in Vancouver
The Canadian government has been keeping its nose out of people’s bedrooms since 1969. Since then, any consenting adults could have any sex they like, provided the participants were of legal age, not dead, and not an animal. Basically.
From the Canadian Encyclopedia:
From Confederation to 1969, under Canada’s criminal law, homosexuality was punishable by up to 14 years in prison. In 1969 the law was amended by exempting from prosecution 2 consenting adults of at least 21 years of age who engaged in these “indecent acts” in private. Since then, the speed of social change in attitudes toward homosexuality has accelerated because of general tolerance (eg, for common-law couples and single parents) and organized gay liberation campaigns.
Many Canadians no longer consider homosexual acts “indecent.” At the time of the 1985 edition of this encyclopedia, one province and several cities had enacted laws against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. By 1996 the majority of Canadian provinces had legislated against discrimination, as is also the case in the internal rules of numerous public and private institutions ranging from churches to universities to Canada Post to major banks. The Canadian military have gone much further than the American military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy by banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. When the age of consent for vaginal and oral sex was lowered to 14 in the criminal code, consent for anal sex remained at 18, until a high court decided in 1995 that this distinction unlawfully discriminated against homosexuals.
Gay rights have taken a long time to evolve, despite that forward-thinking law. Vancouver, however, has been considered a very “pro-gay” city for a long, long time.
Some could argue there are aspects of the “noses out” policy that are lip-service more than reality, and cite examples like Little Sisters’ Bookstore’s epic legal battles to get materials across the border without being tapped with some vague obscenity legalities.
They’d be right, too.
But today we celebrate how far we’ve come, and we’ve come a long way, baby.
My best friend’s been out for 10 years now. Mostly out, anyhow. Mostly’s pretty good, when it involves his career and community services. The only people who don’t know would seem to be choosing ignorance, at this point.
And that still happens.
Tomorrow, we worry about that.
Tomorrow, we remember that there are places gays don’t marry, don’t get accepted, can’t live out loud, and have to fear repercussions for being themselves.
Tomorrow, we acknowledge the idiocy that is religious sanctimony that believes “gay” can be doctrined out of ungodly homosexuals.
Tomorrow, we remind ourselves that even in forward-living towns like Vancouver, gay-bashings happen, discrimination continues, and education needs improving.
Today’s about it being today. It’s about the fact a gay female judge can flirt with the girl contestants on a mainstream show like American Idol and it not won’t be a controversy. It’s about gay marriages gaining steam in America. It’s about men holding hands in the streets without being worried about the average person attacking or slandering them.
Today, it’s about the change we’ve seen, so that, tomorrow, when we’re daunted by how far is left to go, we can know it’s less a journey than it once was, and that’s something to take pride in.
Today, it’s also about being proud to be a Canadian, and living in a country that said, 41 years ago, that governments had no right to tell anyone who they could love.
That’s what today’s about.
Pride, baby.
Happy 10th, M, and anyone else who’s come out at work, with friends, or with family. Way to represent.