Saturday, January 31, 2009

at last, some context

I wrote a list of 25 “random” things about myself on a social networking site for all my “friends” to “see”.  I am posting it here with bonus items. So often I find myself wanting to write something down but realizing the story will make so much less sense than it would if I had at some point bothered to mention that time I accidentally went to a lesbian bar when it was full of naked dancing women because I thought “Revue Night” meant open-mic poetry. Without that kind of background it is often difficult to see what my point is. And so:


1)      The first 20 or so items I generated for this list were too X-rated, humiliating, or illegal to make the final cut. Consequently, I had to make two lists. I was plenty stoked about this, because a) I love lists, and b) I love dicking around writing stuff that doesn’t need to be written.

2)      I have a secret space in the corner of the internet reserved for stuff that doesn’t need to be written, including but not limited to lists of scandalous activity, stories about my ex-husband, and evidence that my parents were secretly huge stoners.

3)      I’ve come to suspect that I experience emotions in a way that is wildly disproportionate to the actual instigating experience. It’s all YAY! BOO! SOB! GRRR! with me, and sometimes the various emotions will combine in a way that is almost totally unrecognizable. It’s confusing to those I love and kind of a pain in the ass for me. 3a) I’m not sure I know how to properly use the word “disproportionate”.

4)      I have always been prone to crushes of colossal proportions. Given (3) this should be no surprise. I can’t even begin to think about the amount of time and money I have blown on crushes without feeling kind of sick: time lost due to swooning and weeping, and money lost to the delusion that if I buy enough pairs of earrings, that gay guy at 2 + 2 will suddenly become interested in a 14-year-old me.

5)      I have been in love either  0, 1, or 5 times. Maybe 2. My uncertainty in this regard is all a function of (3) and (4).  I think I’ve been in love at least once. In fact, I think I’m in love right now. Does being in love sometimes make you want to pull your hair out because your beloved will not stop babbling on about the proper way to execute a down block/a fascinating research idea/his pants? If this is consistent with “love” then I think I’m in love right now.  If we go with the most generous estimation of number of love experiences (i.e., 5), then I think I was in love for the first time in high school, and I still get slightly twitterpated when I think of him. Shhh. Don’t tell.

6)      Most of the nicknames I use for my children are food-based. My middle has the most nicknames, and they’re all ham-based: Hammykins, Hamtastic, Hamalamadingdong, Ham Sammich, and my favorite, Hambrosia. My daughter is Greenbean and Peanut. I’m still exploring names for the baby. So far my favorites are Porkchop and Puddin’.

7)      Nineteen to go! This is fun. Okay. I’m drinking rum as I write this list. Which brings me to:

8)      The older I get, the more profoundly socially phobic I become. If it wasn’t for social lubricants I would never leave the house. Think I have a problem? Suck it. You can call me Dr. Has a Problem.

9)      I’m way lippier in the written word than I would EVER be in person.

10)  I have a disco ball in my living room, and a chandelier in my dining room. The disco ball has an accompanying blue light that I whip out when I’m trying to set the mood for a party/orgy.

11)  Okay, I’ve never actually had or even been involved in an orgy. But there’s still time!

12)  I must confess that (4) is probably the reason I almost have a PhD in psychology. I had a wicked crush on my first psychology professor. I don’t think I’ve ever been so sprung on a man who I was not openly pursuing. That whole thing really blew up in my face, and yet I still love psychology. That’s devotion!

13)  I have received two formal marriage proposals. Both were on holidays (the first, St. Patrick’s Day, the second Valentine’s Day) and both came from men who were kneeling next to the bed I was in/on. WTF, proposing men? PS – One of these men was perched atop a pile a laundry. Double WTF.

14)  I had a tremendous crush (surprise!) on a really hot female graduate student when I was an undergrad. A friend once hypothesized that my X-Men power was turning ridiculously red whenever she came around. He may have been right, because I have yet to do anything quite as remarkable…

15)  Unless you count gestating tiny adorable X-Men with my Brain Scientist. Our oldest just turned four and is reading, doing math, and using words like “conscientious”. Our ten-month old is walking and starting to say words. It’s both freaky and charming.

16)  Ten more to go! I’m fine with watching movies I’ve never seen, but would probably prefer to watch the first two parts of the Godfather over and over again. Up until recently I had serious issues with the third film because of the whole Sofia Coppola thing. It was only on my last viewing that I was able to get past all the obvious flaws and really attend to the story. I have to say, I really love the way it ends.

17)  The crush mentioned in (14) caused me to pester my closest friend about going to a lesbian bar until she finally caved in. We went on something called “Revue Night”. I remember being so delighted that the lesbian bar had an evening devoted to poetry. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that “Revue Night” actually meant dancing naked women.  Don’t get me wrong – it was awesome and all. However, I will admit that a) I was flabbergasted, and b) it took me some time to find the right balance between looking enough to see the naked woman dancing OVER THERE and looking so much that the naked woman over there felt compelled to come over to dance RIGHT AT OUR TABLE, maybe expecting money or something.

18)  I also love watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy over and over again. I love the series, but I particularly love Eowyn in “Return of the King”: I AM NO MAN. That makes me teary and tingly every single time. I also cry every single time I watch “A Mighty Wind”.

19)  I always thought I wouldn’t be able to stand the pain of childbirth until I experienced an unmedicated transition on Pitocin while hunched over with an epidural needle in my back. To labor I say BRING IT.

20)  It turns out that I whisper when in a lot of pain, and when in moderately extreme pain I sing the Sesame Street pinball song: “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.” I never would have guessed.

21)  When my daughter was three years old she went on a field trip to a bowling alley. I was a chaperone, and when I was helping other children put their shoes on someone’s grandma decided to give my daughter a ride back to the pre-school without telling anyone. For fifteen minutes our entire bowling alley full of people thought she’d been abducted. That was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced, and if I can live the rest of my life being able to say that I will consider myself very fortunate. 

22)  I once made turkey for an entire third grade. Every year at my daughter’s school the third graders have a Thanksgiving feast. The year she was in the third grade lots of people volunteered to bring gravy and pie, but no one signed up for turkey. I couldn’t bear the thought of all those little eight-year-olds with sporks full of gravy and no turkey, so I bought frozen turkey breasts, thawed them over night, cooked them early in the morning, and hauled them to her school. Being eight months pregnant causes one to do some wacky shit. Come to think of it, the next time I was eight months pregnant I made her class Valentine’s Day cupcakes shaped like human hearts. They were red velvet and filled with red jelly and as frostingly anatomically correct as a baked good can get. They were fabulous and delicious and kept me up until three in the morning. That is only the beginning of the list of ridiculous things I have done for her. Further proof that children can turn you into a total lunatic.

23)  Only three to go? Okay. I have nightmares about being forced to skydive.

24)  When I am feeling particularly crabby I go here http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/sam  and wait. When the Brain Scientist finally happens by and offers an unsolicited opinion (which happens all the time), I click on the box in the upper left and try to look bad ass. Try it! It feels great.

25)  Wow. Last one. I have a feeling no one’s actually reading this by now and I am JUST FINE with that. Anyway, finally: I have a pillow named Tom Quinn. He’s a body pillow that the Brain Scientist bought me the last time I was pregnant. He is snuggly and plush and named after my favorite MI-5 agent. But hey!  I’m only on season 3 right now, so please don’t say anything about what’s to become of him. Right now my favorite joke is to offer to loan him to the Brain Scientist. I tell him he can flip Tom Quinn over and call him Zoe. Man, that just cracks me up.

26)  BONUS ITEM!: Every once in a while I have a day where I wake up and think that Ringo is my favorite Beatle. I’m not sure what’s going on with that. 

27)  BONUS ITEM!: I had a very difficult time calling this a list of random things. These things are not random. Further, they correlate in a way that makes me seem like a moody, horny degenerate.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think I love you.

Sam said...

Do you know how long I've been waiting for a new post? A VERY long time. I read a few of your comments on other blogs and was very amused and then came here and read a few posts and then WAITED forever. I've probably already commented and told you this but since I have a very new baby I think I forgive myself. Anyway, sounding crazy now but YAY you posted and it was good. Thank you. Do it again please.

KRD said...

I will be the Honey to your Trixie! I love that idea. I am also your real friend.

Swistle said...

You had me at putting the word random in quotes.