Meanies

Life has a funny way of keeping things balanced. Alanis Morrisette inaccurately called it irony (can I get props for that reference that was topical fifteen years ago? and then some more for the archaic use of the word "props"?) but often life wants to throw some bumps out there so we can keep appreciating all the goodness there is.

I love people. I mean really love them. I want to hang out with them, get to know them, hear their stories, but it is undeniable that some people simply insist on being less than charming. I'm not really sure why this is. I know sometimes it is on accident because we don't know how to properly communicate our feelings. I know I'm guilty of that…

When I was in junior high I told my friend Jake he couldn't walk home with me from school one day. It was just for one day because *sigh* John was walking me home... John was an extremely handsome twelve year old and I thought this was it, my big shot at hand holding! Well, I blew it and my hand remained unheld for another lonely year. Things went back to normal. Jake was allowed to walk home with me and everything was right in the world. I didn't even realize that I had hurt Jake's feelings until we were freshmen in college and he confessed over a can of Miller Lite. I apologized profusely then, and Jake, if you are reading this now, again: I am sorry! I will never let the promise of hand-holding get between us again. Also, I'm sorry for publicly announcing you ever drank Miller Lite just now...

Now that I am a quasi-adult (quasi because I watched The Princess Diaries last night) I'd like to think that mean-ness has gone away. Unfortunately, that isn't true. There are always people with a self-serving need to put others down, and there are really only three things that I find I can do about it.

First off, as hard as it may be, I have to feel sorry for The Meanie. Meanies are notoriously unhappy people, thus causing them to be so darn mean. While the natural reaction may be to curse the very name of The Meanie and write a scathing critique of everything The Meanie has ever done wrong in his life, it takes a real charactered individual to just say: I hope things get better for you, I know it's hard to be a meanie.

Secondly, it's important to know that no matter what The Meanie says, I know who I am. It's very hard to reason with a meanie, but it should be easier to reason with yourself. If there is a hint of truth in what The Meanie says, that doesn't have to bring the whole world down around you. You know who You are. If you can counter an off-handed rude comment with true self-reflection, you have definitely won.

Finally, the universal solvent: ice-cream, the very delicious healer I fully intend to partake of as soon as I've finished this blog. Meanies hold no real power so long as life remains balanced and there is still ice-cream in the world.

To all the meanies out there: knock it off. And to all the knowers of meanies: You know who You are, now go eat some ice-cream and watch a princess movie for crying out loud!

Orphaned Panties

Hey, ever seen a pair of your underwear in the lost and found? …Me either… except this one time that I did. Apparently a pair of my delicates was left in the dryer… I think… but you never know. Perhaps there is someone else in my building that enjoys the fit of gap body's teeny bikini cut. It poses a great dilemma: take the probably-mine-panties, or leave them there on display?

The real kicker here is that this is not the first time this issue has come up in my life. When I was a freshman in High School there was a pair in the lost and found of the PE locker room that looked suspiciously familiar… I snuck them into the trash can just in case they could be somehow traced to me. I feel fairly confident I burned that trail, but now this new abandoned panties incident could, yet again, be very incriminating...

Single Ladies

Ladies and Gentlemen, for the first time in roughly seven years, Kelsey and I are simultaneously single. Hooray! Just in time for some wicked awesome spring break partying… which will most likely be centered around watching copious amounts of Gilmore Girls… but it's the thought that counts.

I feel it's important to celebrate these key points in our friendship, because someday, when Kelsey is settled down with seventeen kids: one naturally born, the rest adopted, and I am an old crow of a spinster, insisting that my next great piece could only be written if I lived in Malaysia for a while, we'll look back and smile.

Coincidently, I was reviewing my blog stats the other day, and noticed I get a fair number of views from Malaysia, so Hey There! To you all specifically. Cheers to all my single ladies!

Kelsey Forster: Coolest Girl I Know

Today is St. Patrick's Day, but more importantly, it is the birthday of my very best friend, Miss Kelsey Forster. Kelsey and I have been best friends since the first grade. Well, we are now in the sixteenth grade, so fifteen years, and going strong! We are going out tonight, so a few minutes ago I wrote her this poem:

Happy Birthday Kelsey,

You've always been a friend to me,

And so tonight beside the sea,

We'll drink together happily,

And if holding your hair is a job to be,

I hope that lucky bitch is me.

Masterful as it is, that is not all I have to say about Kelsey. She is the best kind of friend, and I'm so lucky to have her. And so, in honor of Kelsey and all her glorious Kelsiness: I am using today's blog as a forum for delightful Kelsey anecdotes. Anyone who knows her is welcome to add Kelsey-filled comments to this Kelsey tribute.

Without further ado, a Becky-Kelsey Tale:

Every Friday the 13th, Kelsey and I watch scary movies. It started around age nine when we stumbled across the movie Killer Klowns From Outerspace on television, and both thought ourselves way too cool not to watch it. The only problem was, of course, Kelsey really was too cool not to watch it, where as I was completely terrified. I had nightmares about alien clowns from then, way into my teen years.

In any case, we got through it and so a tradition was born. Every year, we'd get a little older, and the movies would get a little scarier. Kelsey the stoic, and I the huge wuss. One year she casually fell asleep during the climax of What Lies Beneath! So calm cool and collected. Kelsey was off dreaming of sunshine and puppies, while I was forced to sit alone, looking through my hands at Han Solo doing terrible things. Again it was confirmed that Kelsey is simply way cooler than me.

And so it went for years, until we were eighteen. Coincidentally, this was the first year I decided to bring a date (just in case Kelsey tried any of that sleeping funny business) and he was pretty into the idea of a scary movie. Our selection was Jeepers Creepers. Jeepers Creepers!!! Who the heck made that movie?? Barely ten minutes in, I hit pause. I thought I could pretend I was being coy, maybe make a hilarious joke at the expense of one of the characters on screen… they saw right through me. And yet, miraculously, Kelsey was not bothered, she too looked very shaken, and for the first time I realized that she was scared too!

We watched the rest of the film with the remote sitting between us so either of us could hit pause when necessary and we could let our suspense-endurance bar reload. Since then, I believe the scariest movie we've sat through was Young Frankenstein, and so the tradition continues.

Happy St Patrick's Day and St Kelsey Day!

Belly Dancing

There is an innately sexy feeling involved in wiggling your hips. What can I say, hip shaking makes me feel like a woman. When I was in Chicago, I was there to completely immerse myself in comedy. Well, comedy is a boys club, so I was surrounded by testosterone constantly. The boys club isn't impossible to deal with, as long as you have balance. I didn't, until I started belly dancing. It saved me.

Now, I'm not overwhelmed by men, but I am surrounded by intellectual endeavors. Reading, writing, editing, repeating. So tonight I had my first re-start at belly dancing. Adding some healthy, balanced, wiggling to my diet of daily activities. Trust me: them hips were wild.

Swamped

This week I am totally buried under work. I have three papers due one after the other, and two large projects, for which nobody can get schedules aligned. It’s very frustrating. Today was a day, rare and beautiful, when I had nowhere specifically to be. My options were open that I might plan out my day however I saw fit, at least that is how it began...

There I was, getting myself together for a day filled with homework, when the universe saw fit that I should be swamped by more then just homework. I flushed my toilet, as is my costum once I have used it, but the contents did not disappear. Oh no, instead the toilet water rose toward me ominously. I threw the back lid off and halted the water. I waited for the water to settle down, plunged like no one’s business, and flushed again... to no avail. Again I waited, again I plunged, and again the water leered at me, ever closer to the edge.

Well, I left the bathroom a moment to formulate a new game plan and returned to discover the toilet was leaking out the back, turning my bathroom into, you guessed it, a swamp. I will relieve my weaker-stomached readers and assure all that it was just water... but toilet water! The stigma of toilet water is not lost on me, and it took great strength for me to stand in the bathroom in my panties and galoshes (thus keeping my pants and feet safe from harm) and battle valiantly with my plunger!

At long last the plunger and I met victory, and the bathroom was restored to it’s former pretty clean glory! Hoorah!

Lament of the thing that never was...

I had a wonderful day today. I had my computer cleaned up and revamped with some updated software that is going to make me so very much a badass. In order to do this, however, my computer was wiped completely clean. I, being a young woman who is oh so “with it”, backed up everything important on an external hard drive. There were a few left over things that got wiped because they were too old to care about or projects that I knew were never going anywhere.

The guy at the apple store must have asked me fifteen times if I was sure I wasn’t going to miss anything and I assured him it was alright, because it absolutely was. Until hours later, in the back of my mind a lightbulb illuminated. On the computer there was this one file I “didn’t care about”:

It was a silly video of me singing a song that I had recorded directly onto the computer. I suddenly remembered the day of this project, I had redone it over and over trying to get it to work. The sound was a mess, I didn’t like my facial expressions, the light was coming in at strange angles; you name it, it was an issue. I finally got something half-way decent, and then couldn’t get it to upload to my old blog where I had intended to impress my three followers. It was a completely frustrating project, and after stealing the above still shot for my vanity, I pushed it from my mind. The still managed to ride onto my hard drive with the rest of my photos, but the video was lost.

Realistically, if the video stayed with me, I may not have ever looked at it again, but when I realized it was gone forever, it was martyred. The lost chronicle of my life! How will I ever remember those happier times? I was in Chicago, playing my ukelele. My uke has a broken string right now... boy those were simpler days. I was wearing my colorful beaded necklace. The one that needs to be untangled from a bracelet now... boy those were simpler days. Plus, I was sitting on my pastel quilt. That sweet quilt that at this very minute is sitting in my laundry basket waiting to be washed... boy those were simpler days.

So now, though reflecting on how silly it is, I can’t help but feel slightly nostalgic. Unabashedly, lamenting a thing that never was.