I saw a man/woman today. Or maybe it was a woman/man.
Hard to say. It definitely wasn't one or the other.
It was at the airport.
Manly muscular/body-builder arms, but with boobs, and a purse (maybe a manbag), and long hair. Possibly an Adam's apple. I think some make-up. A very snug, cropped half-tee-shirt (complete with Harley Davidson logo). Wearing all black. And with a female companion.
Too manly to be a woman. Too feminine to be a man.
Scary either way.
It.
C.T.
You know, like other writers on strike lately.
Don't worry.
I've just been busy and not able to write much this week.
But not on strike.
I don't get paid for my brilliant writing, anyway. So there's not much point in striking.
Or maybe striking would help me GET paid.
I wonder who I should strike to get paid to write.
I'm new to this whole strike thing. Not sure how it works.
C.T.
It is postal holidays.
I watched two movies over the weekend. Normally, I would put them in the mail on Monday and I would have two shiny new movies by Wednesday.
This plan didn't work this week because yesterday was a postal holiday. For the Veterans.
Now I won't have any new movies until THURSDAY. What am I supposed to do until then?
Now, I have nothing against veterans. In fact, I like them. But I don't think it's necessarily fair that us Netflix patrons have to suffer in order to celebrate our veterans. Can't I watch a movie AND be a fan of those who served our country?
In fact, what if the movie I want to watch is Saving Private Ryan, but it doesn't come on Veteran's Day because it's a postal holiday. Or Band of Brothers. Or Black Hawk Down.
Or Private Benjamin.
Or what if a veteran wants to watch a movie on Veterans Day? Must we punish them on their own day?
Can't the post office and Netflix find a way around this? I mean, it is for the Veterans, after all.
Clearly, I am the only one thinking of our veterans.
C.T.
I have found that I do not know the words to any songs, at all, in the whole world, ever.
But when I'm out in the yard doing yardwork with my ipod, I've found that genius lyrics will leak into my brain while listening to the same songs I always listen to on a normal day when words don't really get through my thick skull.
I think when I'm in the yard, my brain finally lets go of everything else and I'm free to let stuff sink in that I really need to hear. I stay in my head too much. I get stuck in there sometimes.
Suzie McNeil sang this to me in the backyard the other day while I was wrestling with a pile of leaves:
Been living my life with a weight on my shoulder
Growing older but not wiser
Weeds are showin’ through the cracks in my lonely heart
There is only so far you can go in your head
Your life hits a wall when your soul isn’t fed
I also dance a lot in the yard, but that's just an extra perk of believing that no one can see me in my backyard. I believe that to be true.
But the dancing doesn't really teach me anything. It's just fun.
C.T.
It's not like, a national holiday or anything. It was just, well, yesterday.
And yeah, I'm not embarrassed to talk about bras on my blog, y'all. Bras are a part of life.
Now, for some people, bras are a fun part of life. There's like, a million kinds of bras in the world. I'm sure that's fun.
But, for those of us in the world who are girth-challenged in the bra department, there are like, four bras in the whole world.
So, buying new bras is not so much fun as it is a necessary chore. I wear out the four bras I have. I go replace them with the exact same bras.
New Bra Day.
I'd much rather buy something fun. Bringing home a bag of the exact same bras that I just threw out is not all that fun. It's preyy much just running an errand. There's no "shopping" involved. You just go to the bra aisle and hope they are on sale this year.
It's kinda like buying white socks. Or toilet paper. Or new pens. You know, things you need but aren't exciting and you find white socks or toilet paper or pens that you like, but then again there aren't really that many varieties of white socks or toilet papers or pens.
So you just get the same thing when you run out of or wear out the last batch.
New Bra Day.
Maybe if it actually WAS a national holiday, with like, a cake, or fireworks, or at least a new color every year, it would be fun after all.
C.T.
For most of my life, I have not been able to see clearly without the help of really, really, ridiculously thick corrective lenses known as spectacles, and/or contacts. I started wearing glasses when I was five years old. Later in life, I was not-so-proud to be the only kid in the 5th grade who had to wear contacts.
I guess I've always been an overachiever. Even my eyeballs excel quickly at progressively poor eyesight. They get worse every year, for almost all of my years.
But through a very generous partial sponsorship from a kindly couple known as My Parents, I will soon have new eyeballs through the wonders of LASIK surgery.
Today, I went for my eyeball consultation. For the sake of anonymity, we'll call him Dr. Foothe.
My day started by wearing my glasses all day. My prescription is several years old. Therefore, I don't see so good with the spectacles anymore. But, afer I had them on for awhile this morning, I remembered how much I like the way I look in my glasses. It's kind of a part of my identity. It will be a little weird that I won't have the glasses anymore. I even made my C.T. logo to include my glasses because I am so darn cute with them on. I think I've always seen myself in glasses even though I've worn contacts for a whole lot of years.
This afternoon, I went to see Dr. Foothe. Along with about 50 other people. For those of you who may not know about Dr. Footh (since he is disguised here on my blog), he is the LASIK expert around here with the TV commercials, the full page ads in the paper, the celebrity clients. He also did my mom's eyeballs. He's the go-to guy for new eyeballs.
He also has the personality of a flattened cardboard box on a bad day having just taken some downers after being in a coma for about 14 years.
Thankfully, he's really good at what he does. And for that reason, I don't care if he is the dullest person on the planet. If he can make me see again, he is my hero.
Anyway, the consultation is a 3-hour ordeal. There are people constantly going from one place to the next. There are about 108 eyeball tests that they do to your eyeballs, but none of them last more than about two minutes, so you're pretty much running around this office for most of the three hours.
And then waiting. A lot. I learned all kinds of interesting things about my phone while I waited. And about eyeballs.
After every test, they send you back out into the waiting room to wait for the next person to take you somewhere else for another test. I waited in several waiting rooms, actually. One room had two rows of chairs against opposite walls, facing each other, with barely enough room to walk between them. In this room, you wait for the tests that require eye drops before you get the tests. Which means you sit there while a nurse-type-person comes along and puts drops in everyone's eyes.
Yeah, you just sit there with people watching you suffer through drops. I hate drops. And apparently a lot of drops are involved in this whole procedure. I have to start drops two days before the surgery, then for a lot of days after the surgery.
I think I'm more afraid of the drops than I am of the surgery itself. I can't help but freak out a little bit when I see a big blob of liquid coming towards my eyeball.
While you wait, there is a video in the main waiting room that plays over and over. It's full of celebrity testimonies about their successful new eyeballs. At one point, Lance Armstrong's mom is saying how kind, warm, and compassionate Dr. Foothe is.
So, when I finally got to meet Dr. Foothe, I (naturally) expected him to come in to the room, give me a big hug, want to talk about my feelings . . . and his, then joke around for awhile (because I'm really funny, you know?).
Instead, Dr. Foothe barely said two complete sentences. He wasn't rude or anything. He is just obviously not a people person.
He did look me in the eye at one point and say, "I think we can help you." To which I said (loudly), "GREAT!" followed by one of my best short, friendly laughs. To which he did not even flinch. But in my brain I was laughing hysterically because Dr. Foothe is literally hilariously dull. He's like a character you would see in a skit on SNL or something. You hear stories about how dull he is, but until you actually experience it firsthand, you will never understand the depth of the lack of personality involved here.
Anyway, Dr. Foothe was only the halfway point of my consulation. There were many more tests. And many more drops. They looked at my eyeballs, mapped my eyeballs, took pictures of my eyeballs, literally POKED my eyeballs with instruments on more than one occassion.
I did not so much like that.
After the very first test of the day, the guy looked at me and said, "I'm going to tell you something you probably already know. But you are REALLY, really nearsighted. I mean, WOW."
Um, der.
You also walk around a lot without being able to see anything. Because after a few tests, and drops, and eyeball dialation, you just can't see so good anymore. So I have no idea if people are looking AT me, or NEAR me, or PAST me, or what. It's all a blurry sea of blobs asking you questions and telling you eyeball stuff. And you are in a sea of other people going through the same thing. And everyone just sits around and squints at each other.
At the end, they ask you how you want to pay for the surgery (they kept asking me if I was going to write a check to cover it . . . um, NO). And they give you instructions for when you come back for your surgery. In fact, if you come in the next day they give you a discount. Which, while this may sound tempting that I could have my new eyeballs as soon as tomorrow morning, it actually freaked me out.
I do not want to do this tomorrow. I have to have some time to process and plan my schedule. I have to come to terms with the fact that after many, many years, I will be able to wake up in the middle of the night and actually see all of the monsters that are in my room to eat me while I sleep.
Or to fully understand that the next time I travel, I will not have to limit my trip according to the tiny amount of contact solution that I can carry in that stupid tiny ziplock bag on the airplane.
I've gone most of my life not being able to see. A few more weeks is not really going to make that much of a difference.
But when you say, "No, I don't want to come in for this surgery tomorrow," they look at you like you are crazy. A lot. Like I'm an idiot for not wanting new eyeballs TOMORROW just because they can do it TOMORROW.
The last person I had to go through before I could leave gave me instructions, etc. But she seemed not to be quite completely loving her job. When I arrived for my appointment, it was daylight. But three hours later, it was dark outside. Yet this very last lady that stood between me and the door said to me, "Since your eyes are dialated, you will need to wear THESE the rest of the day." And she handed me some of those giant, really dark sunglasses.
I looked at her, looked out the window at the pitch-back darkness, and I said, "Really? Even though it's dark outside?" Um, isn't this place supposed to help me see better? Dialating my eyes, blurring them with other drops, then sending me out into the DARK with sunglasses seems not to be helpful, or safe.
She looked out the window and said, "Well, you know, like if you go to the grocery store or something where there is light. Then you should wear these."
Um... ok.
I can't believe that 30 years of bad eyesight can be erased in literallly minutes. I'll be able to see better than I ever remember being able to see.
And you people with the jokes and the stories about LASIK gone bad, note that I know that you can't see . . . but I will be able to see SOON.
And if something does go horribly wrong, you will be the people to take care of me for the rest of my blind life....
C.T.
I was talking to my very Small Friend tonight via the cellular telephone-ograph, and she pretty much literally and physically MADE me join one of those myfacespace sites.
She is small but she is very persuasive. And a little bossy.
So, there you have it. I'm on myfacespacebook. Trust me, I never thought I'd see the day that this would happen. It's just not my thing.
I hate those sites.
But Small Friend enticed me with online Scrabble. She spoke of a world where I can play Scrabble with her online. I do loves me some Scrabble. And I do loves any chance to beat Small Friend with my wordsmithing.
So . . . otherwise, what does one do with a spacemyfacebook page? I mean, I've been set up with my own page for like, an hour, and I still have no friends.
Am I a myface loser? Should I have at least one friend by now? I had a pretty good day today, but now I'm at home with no friends on my spacebook page and I won't lie, I feel a wee bit rejected and insecure. This is not good for my self-esteem, y'all.
And I think I probably accidentally invited several people to be my friends as I was setting up my page. So when they check their email in the morning, I guess they'll have some sort of e-note from me asking for their friendship. But is it sad and needy to have to email people and ask them to be your friend on the interweb? If they are really my friends, should I really even have to ask for them to be my online friends? And if we are now friends online, how does that affect our non-interweb friendships? Can those worlds collide? Or is that a no-no.
I don't know the rules. Is it like what happens on the interweb, stays on the interweb? And vice-versa?
I don't think I asked these people to be my friends in the first place. Like, there was no exchange of "Hello. Will you be my friend?" when I first met any of these people. So why do we do this online?
And after I've asked someone to be my friend online, if they don't want to be my interweb friend, will they just ignore me in real life from now on? I'm a bit worried that since I've joined mybookspace I have just lost all of my friends because now I'm all up in their face pleading for their attention online, as well as on a normal day in the real world. And this will be the chance they've been waiting for to break up with me.
I think I'm scared to get a friend rejection. I hear you can say no to people who ask to be your friend. What if I check my email tomorrow and all of the friends I may have accidentally invited into my web of online friendships have very intentionally responded with a "no, I do not want to be your friend."
I'm not sure I can handle that rejection. I was better off not knowing that you didn't want to be my online friend, and your denial of our interweb friendship probably also means you don't want to be my friend out in the world, either. Essentially, you just broke up with me but it's all my fault because I went and joined myspacefacebook tonight and it led to us no longer being friends at all.
Can we at least talk about it first? How does that work on the interweb, exactly. Nevermind. Let's just break up. I'm sure I won't be able to find the "can we talk about it before you reject my friendship" message invite.
It's possible I don't want any interweb friends. I don't know what to do with people outside of the interweb, so how am I supposed to know what to do with people online? I feel like it's twice the responsibility to have to care for a friendship both in real life AND on the interweb. That's too high-maintenance.
Do people really care about my favorite TV shows, my interests, my favorite quotes? Don't you already know this about me if you're already my friend? Seriously, it's a lot of work to tell you people all of that information again by typing it in those little boxes on my page.
Is this page something I have to visit often? If you become my friend, but I don't come around for awhile, does that make me a bad friend? I already feel guilty about it if I forget to check on our online friendship tomorrow.
Although I don't really know what I'm worried about right now. I don't have any friends.
And where is the Scrabble? That's all I really want. I put a lot of work into this thing tonight, and I can't find the Scrabble.
This is all very stressful.
I think maybe I will be a facebook hermit. Just like in real life.
C.T.
So, the brown version of the black Worst Socks Ever don't do the same thing the black Worst Socks Ever do.
I wore the brown version of the socks today, and I was shocked when I made it home and found that I'd worn the socks all day and I did not have a hole in the toe of the left sock.
So maybe I DON'T have a gnarly sock-slicing big left toe.
Come to think of it, maybe it's that one left black SHOE. And not the sock.
No, it can't be. Other black socks don't blow a hole with that one black left shoe. It only happens when I wear those black Worst Socks Ever with that one black left shoe.
Maybe I should try the BROWN left sock with the black left shoe to see if the brown strain of socks are impervious to the giant toe hole.
Ladies and gentlemen, you have just read a conversation that I just had with myself in my head.
It probably should have stayed in my head.
C.T.
So dark.
Before I left work.
I was frightened. And sad.
When it's dark before I get home, it's like I'm in a coccoon when I get home. It's 7:00 and it already feels like midnight by the time I get home. It makes me feel like I've been at work for like, 12 hours, to come out of the building into the dark.
I need to be able to gaze out upon my yard upon my arrival home. But in the dark the only thing out there is that evil cat lurking around. So, I certainly can't go out there.
I feel confined to my home.
Apparently the loss of Daylight Savings Time turns me into a shut-in.
I need Meals on Wheels. And someone to take out my trash.
I need to hibernate until the sun decides to stay out until a more reasonable hour.
C.T.
I go to the gas station by my house to get a Sunday paper just about every Sunday. The guy at the gas station knows that when he sees me, I am there to buy just a Sunday paper. He notices when I've missed a week. It's our thing.
One time he got brave and asked me why I only buy the paper and nothing else. I guess it's odd that I only go to that gas station for a paper, and only once a week, and I never buy anything else there. Not even gas.
Today he asked me why I only get a Sunday paper.
There are lots of reasons:
It's my Sunday morning ritual to sit in my chair with my coffee to read the paper. Without this as part of my weekly routine, I might surely crumble. I literally get excited when I leave the house to go get my paper. I get the coffee going, then I go get my paper, and by the time I get home my coffee is ready.
I also like physically reading a paper. I am strapped to a computer pretty much all day every day, either at work or at home. I get my news online most days. But on Sundays, I like to kick it old school with a real, live newspaper.
There's also the sale papers. I love those. I don't need to buy anything, but I love seeing what's on sale. Especially at Target. That's the best sale paper in the world.
But I didn't explain all of that to my gas station friend. Instead, I said, "I don't care about news the rest of the week."
He found that to be funny.
Maybe next week I'll tell him that I can't actually read but that I use the newspapers to sleep under. Or that I use the Sunday paper to cut out letters to paste together threatening ransom notes to send out to random people in the phonebook.
C.T.
Back when I was in college, I joined a service sorority for one semester. I was pressured into it because they needed some new leadership, I hated it, I was involved in plenty of other things, I quit after one semester.
As such, I have no affinity to it. But, every year I get a newsletter from them.
The first couple of years, I just threw it out. Then one year I decided I didn't want to get it anymore, so I found a name on the newsletter and I e-mailed a request to be taken off of the list.
Since I work in direct mail, I like to do stuff like this to see how these requests are handled. I was also a sociology major for a semester, so I tend to like to experiment and observe. And sometimes torment people to see what will happen....
As of today, I've made the request to be removed from the mailing list every year for the past several years. Last week, I got another newsletter.
Clearly, I have not been removed.
I've even moved several times during this time period, and every year I get a newsletter at whatever my current address is. So clearly they can UPDATE my address, but they can't REMOVE it.
Some years, I get a response back to my request to be removed. One year in particular, a girl argued with me, saying they have no control over the list since it comes from their national office and there was nothing they could do about it.
I asked if she could forward my request to the national office. She repeated that no, there is nothing they can do about it. This essentially tells me that I'm going to get mail from them for the rest of my life.
To this I replied, "Ok, next year when you are sticking the labels on your local chapter's newsletter, when you see my label, peel it off and throw it away."
I know full well that you have to honor requests to be removed from a mailing list. These silly excuses don't fly with me.
It's not that I hate the newsletter. It's all part of the game, you see.
This year I got a response back that says they do not control the list and that I had to contact someone in the Alumni office. So I forwarded the whole thing to this person in the Alumni office. We'll see what happens.
I figure that several years ago after my first request, they added me to a "Mail Every Year No Matter What" list and that it has now become an annual tradition to send mail to me, then have some sort of social event around my annual request to be removed from the list. I assume that I have become legend, and that my photo is up somewhere and every year they tell the tale to the new pledges. I'm sure it's part of the rush activities for each pledge to come up with some new excuse to tell me when I make my annual request.
It's all part of the game.
C.T.
I hugged my Jeep today. Why? You might ask . . .
SHE IS PAID OFF TODAY.
She deserves a hug for that.
So do I. But she didn't really hug back. She's just a Jeep.
Go out and hug your car. And if you see me while you're out, hug me too.
I need a hug.
C.T.
I did not bring any work home this weekend for the first weekend in a lot of weekends. I also do not have any plans for this weekend. At all.
I've been waiting for a weekend like this for a long time. When I don't get enough solid, consecutive down time, I'm pretty much a mess and an idiot, and sometimes a jerk. Which is pretty much where I am now.
I require at least a day a couple of times a month that I don't have to get out of my pjs if I don't want to, or shower, or talk to anyone, or leave the house. I'm a month or so behind on that.
But now that it's here, my weekend of nothing with the sole purpose of resting and getting myself back together so that I can function better than I have been lately, I feel like something is missing.
I don't know what to do with myself, and I'm pretty sure I'll be bored in about 5 minutes.
I don't really want to watch any tv. Or a movie. I have some writing I've been itching to get to for over a month, but all I feel about that right now is .... eh. Maybe tomorrow.
My yard is covered with leaves and I HATE that. But I don't think I'll feel like raking tomorrow.
I am starving right this very moment, but since there is no food within arm's reach of where I am on the couch, I'm seriously arguing with myself if I can make it til tomorrow without eating because I just don't feel like taking 10 minutes to make some food.
It's bad that when I don't have work to do . . . I don't know what to do.
More is missing lately. This is the time of year with lots of activities and time to spend with friends and family, and it's hitting me lately that part of that is missing since I'm far removed from my old church and the friends that I had there. I've missed events and people lately that are always on my calendar at this time every year. It's not the easiest time of year for me and it helps having distractions. There are certain times of year when it helps to have people keeping an eye on me.
It's strange to be out of that loop. I was in it for a really, really long time. It's been amazing (not in a good way) to see how quickly I'm out of it.
An empty weekend is a scary thing now that I'm faced with one.
C.T.
Last weekend, I spent some quality time with some yard therapy. I planted my annual pansies so that my yard isn't completely dull and depressing for the next four or five months.
The next day, I discovered this:
See those cute little yellow flowers on the ground in between my pots? Yeah, that's not where I put them.
I put it in the metal watering can on the right where there is now a big gaping hole of dirt.
The squirrels sense my dislike of the fall and winter months and my predisposition towards being depressed and cranky until March. They are clearly trying to push me over the edge as soon as possible.
Or maybe it's that evil cat.
Whatever. They are both on my list.
C.T.
On a normal day, I have very vivid dreams. More at night, really. When I sleep. Not so much during the day. So I guess I should say that on a normal night, I have very vivid dreams.
I have a crazy vivid imagination, you know, at all times of the day. I'm very visual. I remember things as scenes more so than events or words. So I guess that translates into my head when I'm asleep.
It's like a movie in my head every night.
So on a normal night, I have pretty crazy dreams. But when I'm stressed, my dreams go totally wheels off. And when I'm sick, my brain cranks things up even a few more notches.
Lately I've been pretty stressed and whatnot, and then this week I've been afflicted with the funk. So, my dreams this week have been pretty much funktastically wheels off.
When I'm especially tired, my brain seems to soak up random things around me throughout my day. Then those things will reappear bizarrely in my dreams. Like, Cupcake got a cup of ice a couple of weekends ago, and then I dreamed that there were lots of cups of ice just like it . . . everywhere.
Sometimes the dreams get so crazy that I've decided to start Googling them to find out what they mean.
The other night, I dreamed that I was trapped on a boat with a bunch of people and we were being eaten and chased by zombies. It was like a bad teen slasher flick in my head.That one was probably directly related to watching a zombie movie the night before. I don't think I really need to Google that one.
For several nights in a row, I dreamed that I lost either my purse or my wallet or that they were stolen. In one dream, I left my wallet on a bus, which is random because I never ride buses. Upon Googling this, I learned that it either had something to do with stress, or something about money, or apprehension about changes.
Whatever. All I know is that on top of all of my other current stress, I'm now paranoid about losing my purse. I'm constantly making sure it's nearby.
Last night's dream was just all kinds of wheels off. All kinds of craziness was going on, but all I really remember is that at one point, I was peeling onions with Britney Spears.
Um . . . peeling onions with Britney Spears, y'all.
Huh?
At least it was old fantastic Britney when she was awesome, and not new white-trash Britney who is less awesome and just mostly sad.
Googling "peeling onions with Britney Spears" yields nothing productive. But peeling onions in dreams means something about unraveling the mystery.
So, I can only assume that I am meant to be the one to figure out the mystery that is Britney Spears.
I will get right on that.
C.T.
In my pjs.
Dark house.
Tiny, not-so-fun size candy all for me.
Boo-humbug pumpkin on the porch.
Sprinklers on.
NO TRICK-OR-TREATORS.
Success.
C.T.
And the new albums from The Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears are out today!
Everybody. Rock your body. Like it's 1999.
Backstreet's back.
Apparently.
And don't worry, the Spice Girls start their new world tour next month.
Because it's 1999. Apparently.
C.T.
