I’m in a funk, y’all. It’s not a Bah Humbug-y kind of funk, it’s just a fierce wish that Christmas vacation will get here TOMORROW DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN kind of funk.

There’s frustration in the air around here with everyone I know. We’re frustrated that deadlines are passed or attention isn’t paid to them, we’re frustrated that cars or houses need to be repaired, and we’re frustrated that extra bills are coming due right here at Christmas.

What’s a frustrated girl to do? I don’t know, y’all. In the last few days I’ve been trying to come up with some low-cost or free ways to relieve stress and have a little fun while I’m doing it. So far I’ve bought HBO, but that didn’t really up my jolly factor to be honest.

Every night when I go to bed, I think “I hope tomorrow will be better,” and y’all, it’s just not. The end of any semester is always hectic, but this one is particularly so. Reports are due, papers are late, grades haven’t been put in and I don’t have the energy to work when I get home – even though home is the only quiet place I have. Sort of.

Wow, this is depressing.

Next Thursday I will start my holiday vacation and it will run until January 3^rd. We haven’t been out of town all year long, so I’m hoping that somewhere in that 2 week span I can scrounge up some extras to plan a little overnight stay somewhere. I will also be spending my break moving my house back around into some kind of order that doesn’t suffocate me. (Two years ago we rearranged to accommodate my business, but we didn’t do it right, and now we’re stuck under piles and piles of heavy, too-big furniture with nowhere to move and no way to fix it.)

So there you have it. I’m crabby, I’m tired, I’m at a loss for how to get happy again and I’m about to spend the last $1000 I have on car repairs. Santa, oh dear sweet Santa, WHERE ARE YOU?!

Yup. That’s about how it went.

I’m a joiner most of the time. I like to get on a bandwagon but – a BIG BUT right here – I’m pretty good at jumping off at just the right time. Just before it gets superbad on the wagon, just before there’s mutiny and starvation, I jump off and congratulate myself for avoiding catastrophe.

And so now we have a bandwagon and some Oxy. TRY TO KEEP UP.

I’m disappointed in the blogosphere this year, to be quite frank. I was so pumped to head to Blissdom in February, BlogHer in August, and The Blathering in October. I really had it all set up in my mind for how it would go: I would finally FINALLY meet IN PERSON all these great people I’ve known for a while  and we would realize that we were twins unfortunately separated at birth but who have prospered and thrived in our own ways and have now come back together to create this unstoppable team of writing and design.

So yeah. Maybe I set the bar a little high.

Anyway, I’m disappointed that I didn’t get to go to any of these events this past year, but I’m more upset at the relationships that have gone sour among bloggers and writers and designers I respect. I’m embarrassed that the wagon I jumped upon had an underlying message of, mostly, hate. I hate that I lost some time I could have spent reading and researching more things I’m interested in rather than analyzing and discussing situations and relationships I have no business knowing about.

In short: I’m mad that I trusted and respected a writer who does some low-down, dirty stuff to other people.

The notes for what I’m talking about are below. Apparently I forgot the part where I’m supposed to talk about where I’m from and why I pronounce things the way I do. I’m from right outside of Raleigh, NC, have lived in North Carolina mostly all my life, and that accounts for everything that comes out of my mouth, I’m afraid.

Say the following words:
Aunt, route, wash, oil, theatre, iron, salmon, caramel, fire, water, sure, data, ruin, crayon, toilet, New Orleans, pecan, both, again, probably, spitting image, Alabama, lawyer, coupon, mayonnaise, syrup, pajamas, caught
And answer these questions:
What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
What is the bug that curls into a ball when you touch it?
What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?
What do you call gym shoes?
What do you say to address a group of people?
What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
What do you call your grandparents?
What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
What is the thing you use to change the TV channel?

Here goes. Maybe just laugh quietly to yourself, ok?

Some nights I turn on Pandora and try to choose something soothing, but inevitably I either sing along to the songs, get annoyed with Pandora’s choices or just get annoyed in general that I’m having to listen to something. Other nights I try to meditate, but my mind OH HOW IT WANDERS. There have to be ways to quiet my mind at bedtime. Just before writing this I made a list of all the things I’m worried about or that weigh heavily on my thoughts. The plan, you see, is that this would take all those thoughts out of my head and deposit them somewhere else for safekeeping until tomorrow.

Not so much. That list has 19 things on it. NINETEEN. Granted, some of them I listed twice. Some of them are weirdo health things that are most likely anxiety induced but worry me just the same. Some of them are work related and some are holiday stuff. Yes, YES I AM ALREADY WORRIED ABOUT THE HOLIDAYS. Where will we spend Christmas? What am I getting everyone? Will there be enough money to go around for the entire family? What if there isn’t? What if I can’t convince family members that we should skip gifts this year and do something good for the planet and/or its people?

And then there’s the weird paranoia that I’m not supposed to talk about on the Internet but that has to do with…a word that rhymes with jerk. But not spelled that way, IF YOU GET MY CRAZY SUBTLE CLUES. Which leads me to think about my list of things I need to do tomorrow, and why not just worry about them now instead of waiting until the morning? If I think hard enough about it now surely the answer will come to me, yes? And if I consult my Google calendar 42 times in the next 15 minutes than surely I’ll be prepared for all my appointments tomorrow, yes?

Help me stop the madness, y’all. There’s a yoga class I want to join this week but I am the opposite of flexible, and I don’t have a mat and is it okay to wear pajamas to yoga? Because that’s not so much relaxing sounding in my head. And then I could take a hot shower but wet head in the bed? No way. Milk? I’ll just have to pee more. All the lights out for quiet time? Obviously you’re not listening.

And yes, before you ask, I consume caffeine. Two Coke Zeroes a day at max, and I try really hard to quit at noon. So the solution for tonight is to write it all down right here and hope for the best.

Wish me luck, y’all.

Me: TOTALLY DIDN’T DO IT WHATEVER IT IS.

Him: Yes ma’am, that’s right. We’ll just peek right here under the [something technical that didn't make sense].

Me: I don’t know what any of this is.

Him: All you really need to know, ma’am, is that these are moving parts that don’t work anymore.

Me: Fucking European cars.

Him: That’ll be $1000. Well, $967 with the discount.

Me: Sure thing, buckaroo. I’ll schedule that repair RIGHT AWAY.

Anyway, something about these last few weeks has prompted people in my life to raise my Sensitive Meter level sky fucking high. On most days I can laugh and joke about myself just as well as I can about other people, but on those other days I become a papier-mâché bubble that’s easy to crush.

I don’t really know how to thicken my skin up, or how to ignore people who wander around tactlessly yammering all day. I also don’t know how to politely tell someone they’re an ass, or at least do it without crying and looking like a fool.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be that person who can tell someone they’re an ass? I tried the other day when, as I was walking out to my car at lunch, my boss looked out the window and turned to our intern and said, “Look at her. I’ve seen parked cars move faster than her.” They both thought that was hilarious and told me so when I got back. I told them it wasn’t funny.

It would’ve been nice not to have gotten my feelings hurt yesterday on the phone, when my mother says to me, “Of course I’m still here; I’m just listening to you ramble on.” Lesson learned: stop calling my mother until I have something real and important to say.

I wish I didn’t want to go home and change clothes now, after my co-worker told me this morning that I looked cute in my dress, but “one of those shaper things would probably keep you from looking like you’re pregnant. Which isn’t bad! I would love it if you were pregnant!” (I’m not. And this dress is going straight in the burn pile.)

And my doctor surely meant well yesterday when she told me that she thought it was high time I started going back to therapy. I must have looked at her funny because she said, “Well, you’re fine of course, but talking to a qualified person might do you some good.” Sounds to me like my mother got to her, oui?

Maybe it’s the stressful start of the new school year that has everyone on edge. Maybe it’s the economy making everybody grumpy. Or maybe I just need to find some new people to hang out with. Either way, the moral of this story is to a) quit being sensitive if you’re like me and b) quit being a jerk if you’re like the other people.  OR, and this is my favorite option, change those signs on your back to a giant, 100-point Times New Roman FUCK YOU.

My mother bought me a new bathing suit from the mall in the town we were visiting. I stood in my dad’s apartment, in the hallway between the home office and his bedroom, showing the suit to my parents and my brother. Then someone mentioned that it was too snug, or it didn’t fit, or you’re too big for that, aren’t you?  We can’t have you looking that way when we visit the country club for the first time, you know.

In 9^th grade I wanted to wear Levi jeans and short shorts. My thighs, however, were too large and so instead I got Lee jeans. Everyone knows Lee jeans are for LOSERS. But they fit the curvy girl whose normal-if-not-small ass isn’t plank enough for Levis. Instead of short denim cut-offs like the rest of the girls had, I got to choose my outfits based on khaki, black, navy or white Bermudas. Those, see, covered up the thighs.

In 10^th grade my mother bought me a beautiful black dress, my first cocktail dress, with pearl buttons down the front and a scalloped sweetheart neckline. I got my first pair of black cocktail heels and I wore my hair in curls. I looked beautiful. But not long after that night with the boy I liked, a neighborhood kid pointed at my calves and asked me why they were so floppy.

And of course, the very last summer I was a camp counselor, two hometown girls were campers that same year. They were about 7 or 8 and I passed by them one day on the way to the dining hall, where they were pointing and giggling in my general direction. I knew these girls and babysat them at home for years, so I walked up and ask them what they were up to. They looked frightened and then one pointed at her friend and said, “She wants to know why your legs blew up.” Horrified, I asked them exactly what they meant by that and then sent them on their merry, sobbing, ashamed little way. I will never forget that moment and I feel sure that they won’t, either.

That same year, a friend called me on summer vacation. My brother answered the phone and yelled to me, “Gallon-size thighs! Somebody’s on the phone for you!”  My friend heard it and reminded me of it years later.

Those are my formative memories of body image. Of course, my mother sat me down far earlier than all of this to explain to me that, despite the fact that my teenage acne was normal – if not mild – we would still be going to extraction appointments at the dermatologist. She didn’t want my childhood to be marred by the memories of a bad complexion. She wanted my childhood to be perfect.

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Now when I talk about my shape or figure or giant ass or rolls and rolls of stomach, I turn it into everyone’s favorite joke. Don’t mind the hippo over here! Or, and this is my personal go-to: y’all, am I as big as THAT LADY over there? My friends, bless them, always roll their eyes and say, “Elizabeth. Of course not. Don’t be silly.”

We all know how my reality TV addiction can be, so it’s no surprise that  these two combined moments that have just come back to haunt the teenager I was.

Stacy London from What Not to Wear always figures out the really insecure girls and what their deal is before even they do. Did they just break up, or are they a haggard mom with too much on their plates? Sometimes she’ll stand in the 360° mirror and look at a woman and say, “Do you think you’re beautiful?” Oh, c’mon, Stacy. Isn’t the obvious answer always no?

On Celebrity Rehab this week, the horse trainer brought in to do a little equine therapy with the addicts talks about seeing something in a horse’s face that should resemble a feeling we already know. After several wrong answers, he finally tells everyone that what they should be seeing in those huge brown watery eyes is devotion and nurturing. All the addicts are like, “Do whaaa?” and then there’s a commercial.

But in those two television BREAKTHROUGH MOMENTS OMG I realized that no, I don’t think I’m beautiful. I try not to think about my size and physical appearance until it relates to my health. (Which is also why I don’t go to doctors, incidentally.) I try to be conscious of negative self-talk, which I learned in therapy is so very hateful to do to yourself. So I don’t talk shit to me, but I think shit about me. And also, no one – I mean NO ONE – tells me I’m beautiful. Not beautiful inside or outside or upsidedown or backwards. I don’t want to hear if it isn’t true, but if there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that I might have something – albeit small and remote – beautiful about me, I wish I had the courage to ask them to share that with me. When I think of my soul, and whether or not it’s beautiful, I qualify that thought with “…yeah, that part would be okay until you remember this OTHER part, which is really bad.”

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How much of this shapes who we are now? I don’t mean like, okay, Susie is shy because people called her fat, I mean like HEY. DO YOU GAIN WEIGHT BECAUSE THEY TOLD YOU THAT YOU COULDN’T? Or something equally horrible?

Are you beautiful because you think so, or because you’ve been told you are, or because it actually is the truth that you wish you’d hear from someone else other than yourself?

I love myself, I really do. But I don’t think I’m beautiful, and I’m damn sure no one else thinks I am, either.  Finally, I do not know what devotion and nurturing look like, but if I had that or practiced that or whatever, would I know if it knocked on my door?

I consider myself a pretty decent person, most of the time. I have so very many faults, but in general I’d say the good outweighs the bad. One of my strengths is my dedication to friendships. One of my weaknesses is letting failures consume me. Imagine the pickle I find myself in, then, when I can’t let go of the friendships that have let me go.

Recently I discovered that some friends of mine have just picked up and moved on. Just like that, snap of the fingers, poof, disappeared, no use for anything, GONE. And while the perfectionist in me wants desperately to shift this loss into the big W column, the overly-sensitive part of me is crushed.

This happens over the years; I get that. People change, lives morph into shapes we don’t recognize or expect and you find that the things you thought you had in common probably weren’t every really things to begin with.

Or you realize your former best friend hit on your fiancé. Another story for another time, Internet.

How do you reconcile yourself to the fact that you are no longer needed? Once you were the common thread, the planner, the scheduler, the Look how happy we are as a group! See? See! goddamned Girl Scout leader, and then one day you are the thorn in the side. You are the one other girls would like to pass off on someone else. You are the so-easily-forgotten one. You are, well…nothing. And holy hell, y’all. It’s a hole on the inside that is so painful I sometimes can’t breathe.

Try as I might, I can’t get over my broken heart. I can count on one hand the number of people in my life I knew I could count on, the people I knew would be there for me no matter what hell reared its ugly head. I can count on that same hand the number of people who have let me down.

I don’t always remember to call and wish someone good luck before a big meeting, or send an anniversary card, or email when I should. But I do remember what it means to be decent to someone. I remember to ask about your children and your job and what’s important to you. I remember how it felt to hug and comfort you when you cried. I remember how hard I cheered for you and supported you when I was the only person to show up. I remember dedicating myself to being whatever you needed, whenever you needed it.

And yet here I am, at 32 years old, still wondering how other people forget.

This was taken about a quarter mile from the farm. We kept saying that we don’t understand how a tornado behaves, not that anyone does. Why does it tear a path and suddenly stop? Why does it miss large structures and take small ones?

I love that we live in a county that is bordered by a large city on one end and lots of farmland on the other. In 30 minutes we can enjoy restaurants, concerts, museums and all the fun city stuff fun city people enjoy. But then we can take a short drive and be out. Out of the noise, out of the traffic, out of everything. It’s peaceful, like this.

Newcomers to our area come for the weather, ironically. We have warm, mild winters and hot, humid summers. In between there’s not much of either – instead there’s rain, sleet, snow, hail, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods. A famous saying around here is that if you don’t like the North Carolina weather, just wait five minutes. These people didn’t have five minutes.

Everywhere we went today there were old people and young people, all suited up with work gloves, rakes, ropes and chainsaws. We saw a man carry a big blue cooler, wider than he was, across railroad tracks. There were cars on the side of the road for half a mile, with neighbors and family members helping load up what was left of belongings.

We finished our drive around the county and were about a half mile from home, just across the railroad tracks and behind the grocery store. This was a mobile home owned by a man I know, although he thankfully wasn’t living there.

In Raleigh and Sanford, there was damage on a larger scale, if only because the structures were larger and the concentration of people exposed to the storms was wider. There were deaths all over the place and some of those included children. Tomorrow there will probably be more people found. North Carolina hasn’t seen this type of tornado damage in over 25 years.