Tonight I started listening to 8 Track (if you don’t have that app, download it immediately), and it reminded me of the days when we would make tapes FOR things. And give them Titles of Importance. My favorite tapes of all time are the ones other people made for me in high school, when we were digging music that was a little off the beaten path – this was way before “hipster” and “indie” entered our vocabulary.

I remember though, in college, sitting on the carpet in Josie’s room, smoking Camels and listening to her music, which was far less mainstream than what I listened to. Her bands were super sharp and edgy and I felt very cool listening to them. She made me a CD later on as a Christmas gift and did that for several years after for friends. I drank a lot of Bud Light in that room.

Lindsey and I loved fierce chick singers and we had this great ritual for every time we crossed the state line back into NC: light a Marlboro, honk the horn and turn on the Indigo Girls because we could harmonize. We harmonized the SHIT out of the whole Indians & Saints album, over and over.

Then when Tarrah cleaned on Sundays she would bust out the good tunes on the Top 40 station. She would bring her ironing into my room, where I was drinking cold beer in the afternoon and watching Lifetime movies. I did her ironing and then would head next door to rock out to the same shit everyone else was listening to. This was all until that night we ate Taco Bell drive through – for me the first time ever – and we sang Jo Dee Messina. Tarrah was then my country girl.

And Kristen used to play “Life in a Northern Town” on repeat in her room. Mostly it was to drown out the reminder of her crazy ass roommate and my CERTIFIABLE roommates. It totally worked. I hummed that song forever on my walks to and from the metro station.

Is there even that kind of shit anymore? Does anyone make CDs or MP3 lists or whatever FOR anyone anymore? Do they Title them with the Importance of the songs contained within?

I fucking doubt it.

Kids these days.

Okay, so it’s glaringly obvious I haven’t posted in here in a month or so. The lowdown: I have a job interview tomorrow, I’m trying to juggling my current job with my other job (my small business) and I’m bouncing balls all over the place. It’s also that season where there are parties and obligations that, though my shrink tells me differently, I absolutely cannot say no to. Also, BB and I have been sick – that icky sick where you don’t know what you have, you’re not gonna waste a $65 copay to find out, and if you could just sleep uninterrupted for 4 days, you’d be fine.

Incidentally, you all are fabulous. I have no specific reason for that, other than to give you a compliment so you’ll continue to read. Wish me good vibes for tomorrow at 10am, when I will surely put my foot in my mouth over and over, only answer half the interview questions and be laughed at after I leave the room. Yes, I’ve done this before.

TRUST ME.

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?

So in place of that I’ve been spending a lot of time looking around my house and being generally disgusted with everything in it. It’s kind of like how you look at your closet every season (or every Monday morning) and it’s full of crap but you hate it all and have nothing to wear. JUST LIKE THAT. Except it’s my house and I don’t want to invite people over because the furniture’s torn all to hell and the walls have nicks in the paint and old nasty grout makes us look like we don’t clean our bathrooms. (Which we do, I PROMISE. Every mofo Sunday afternoon. With Pinesol.)

I am not the crafty sort; the craftiest thing I think I’ve ever done was this jewelry hanger thing I made out of a picture frame and some old fabric. Today I discovered Sweet Paul and this amazing idea for repurposed jewelry. A couple of weeks ago I took some old gold to a local jeweler and got 59 whole dollars for it! The rest of the crap is all broken but not hideous, and now I have something to do with it. These magnets will hold stuff on my inspiration board.

What goes on it? Well, who the hell knows, y’all. That’s the beauty. I’m not so hot at the decorating, but I can copy the shit out of stuff. So that’s my new plan: collect pictures and fabric swatches and whatever else I can clutter up a board with and then COPY IT. All over my house. So that eventually it will look like this:

via Traditional Home

And this:

via Architectural Digest

And, of course, this:

via CasaSugar

HAHAHA. These are my dreams, y’all. NOT REALITY.

What do your inspiration boards look like? Do you have them? What goes on them?

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.

______________________________________________________________________________

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.”

__________________________________________________________________________

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 also made a sudden discovery tonight: I LIKE CAMPING. I’m not sure that roughing it can be defined in only one way, so I’m going to define it MY way: camping is, not sleeping in your own bed, it’s being able to see stars/moon/sun/streetlights from your bed, and it’s taking enough food into that sleeping area, wherever it may be, that you don’t rely on trail mix and melted snow if you get lost. BURGERS, lost people, PORK CHOPS. As some of us may recall from childhood, camping was a fort in the backyard. As adults, I say we bring back the Living Room Fort. We bring it back with pillows, blankets, those old refrigerator boxes, laundry baskets, step stools, THE WHOLE SHEBANG.

As if these weren’t already good enough ideas, I bombarded my mind with extra ideas it needs. (It always needs extra ideas.) My ideas are as follows:

1. Make a new friend everyday. Now admittedly, some of us don’t run into a lot of people throughout the day and that can make this task seem daunting. A new friend can be the Canada goose who poos on your sidewalk. Your new friend can be the multi-pierced fellow at the grocery store who wants to touch your produce. It doesn’t matter, y’all. You’re just looking to make ONE new friend. Pick an interesting one.
2. Be glad for one thing everyday. Today, I am glad that the people who live behind us in the weird house with the sketchy brown fence didn’t get hurt during what appeared to be, at the time, an electrical fire. Although, she’s a former art teacher, so BB and I concocted some fun, what-if stories that we’ll just share at a later date. (What if she was burning some kind of giant plastic bleach jug for an “art” project and then her family got home and was all “MOM! That’s bleach and FIRE!” And she’s all “No, kids. This is art.”)
3. Oh, my other idea. This one rocks so steady, I can’t even stand it. Here it is, are you ready?

That’s right, y’all. THROWBACK VINTAGE ’60s style MOTOR-FUCKING-LODGE! My SIL stayed for a night this weekend and absolutely fell in love with it. The little guy at the front desk flips open the book to see if there are rooms available. And if there are rooms, he will hand you a real key with a giant plastic number as he pencils in your reservation. WITH A PENCIL. And dogs are allowed and even encouraged. And I just can’t say with any certainty that it will be the finest place I ever stay in, BUT! I think we might try it Brady style. Load up the wagon, stock the kitchenette, bring our beach towels and get the sheets sandy. I mean, hello…it’s the ATLANTIS LODGE.

Bitches.

NBC

Like an afterschool special, I am here FOR YOU. A community service, if you will. A fount of good information to help you be your best you.  So today, I ask the question:

Did you know?

1.       That the reason aluminum is the main ingredient in deodorant is because that’s what keeps you from stinking? And that “all-natural, aluminum-free” deodorant is code for makes-you-stink?

2.       That giant glue traps designed to catch roaches can stick to a cat’s hind end?

3.       That a combination of scissors, Palmolive and Wesson oil can’t get that kind of glue off?

4.       That my vet will bathe a cat for only $20?

5.       That Facebook might be just the thing to get a man out of his dark, jobless depression?

6.       That while the rest of the country is buried in ice and snow, North Carolina has 70 degree weather with howling winds and eerie pink skies?

7.       That Doritos, Gatorade, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Quaker and everything in your pantry is a PepsiCo product?

8.       That trying to ban PepsiCo products is next to impossible?

9.       That Coke Zero is the best-tasting thing since Coke?

10.   That my world is upside down?

Anyway, this weekend I was all I’m gonna organize! I’m gonna get shit done! I’m gonna I’m gonna I’m gonna! and now it’s Sunday night and I haven’t even finished that one load of laundry. HOWEVER. I’ve yet to find a person out there who hasn’t read Stieg Larsson’s Millienium trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc.) and I’ve been anxious to watch the movie. A quick search of the on-demand movie channel revealed that the first two books are now movies in Swedish with English subtitles. Let this not deter you, Internet! These movies are OUTSTANDING.

If you’ve read them, you know how graphic they are and the movies do the nasty parts some serious justice. They are entertaining and stick with the story pretty closely, but by far the most fun for me was learning Swedish words. For instance, did you know that “okay” in English and “okay” in Swedish are the same? ME EITHER. And “holy shit” and “what the fuck” sound exactly the same, except with extra syllables. I always thought Spanish was fun, but Swedish? Well. I haven’t asked anyone about this officially, but I’m pretty sure Swedish is a combo of German, French and English, and maybe some other languages, and they use all those fun letters with the dots and slashes through them, like the No Smoking signs. SO FUN, RIGHT?!

Now this is interesting: I just looked on Wikipedia and it turns out that Swedish is the official language of Finland, too. Which totally confuses me, because I would think that Finnish would be Finland’s language, but does that mean that Finnish isn’t a language? Or do people in Finland not like their own language? Or is it like Canada, where people speak English but probably don’t want to, and feel like Americans just shoved English down their throats and so they rebel by saying “oot the door” and other weird stuff?

These are the questions that keep me up…in the afternoon. I didn’t even nap today thinking about this stuff. I blame Stieg Larsson.

In other news, everyone in these movies drives a Volvo. Or, if they’re executives at their jobs, they drive Audis or Mercedes. Can you imagine living somewhere where there isn’t a tacky 12 year-old domestic death trap parked on every street corner? Me either. And all the houses in Stockholm looked really quaint but modern and Ikea-y and the rural towns have names like Uppsala and Hedestad. I said on Facebook today that I wanted to plan a trip to Sweden soon and one of my friends sent me the current weather in Stockholm, which was 22 degrees, and I said that I didn’t mind because hello? It’s colder than that in Pittsburgh today. (I only know that because I’m watching the Steelers play the Jets, and that’s only because my friend Kristen showed me Heinz Field when I was there a few months ago and now I feel beholden to Pennsylvania.)

Tomorrow I’m going to see the lu-lu doctor, which is not the vagina doctor. Apparently this is confusing to some people. I’m going to ask her what I’m supposed to do about taking my crazy meds when I’m sick with a stomach virus, and also about Ambien amnesia, which is happening more and more. Maybe I’ll come out of there with some new prescriptions, and if that’s the case, I’ll be sure to let you know what’s good and new on the crazytrain market.

Until then…

Var är toaletten? (I’m asking you where the toilet is, please, when I’m in Sweden. Or Finland.)

I vow to try really hard to remember to use my muscles a little more often.

Since Christmas, the house has been quiet but tumultuous, if that’s possible. I had a three week break from school over the holidays, which I really enjoyed but which threw my circadian rhythm off so much so that I worried for days about oversleeping on my first day back. The first week back was a blur of training, registration, lesson planning, putting out fires and getting back into a regular sleep schedule. The second week back was about as awful as I would expect in January. We discovered mistakes we’d made with advising this past semester and had to rectify those quickly, until it snowed and I got the stomach flu and we had extended drop/add and my co-workers were short staffed and OH GOD THE STOMACH FLU.

From what I know, it’s spread like wildfire around this town. From what I’ve heard, it’s all over everywhere. I think I’d rather be shot in the toes than have that again. Not even kidding.

So I guess the point of my story is that my mind has been elsewhere and I’ve suffered because of it. There are so many things that I think Oh! I need to remember to blog about that! and then a day goes by and I forget, or it’s not relevant anymore. I watched some serious TV over both the holiday and The Illness of January, and I’m happy to report that “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is my new discovery. It’s just…genius. I can’t believe I hadn’t found it before, but I owe that show a debt of gratitude for helping me climb out of a panic attack the other day. The thing about a stomach bug is that if I can’t keep anything inside me (I know this is gross, but most of y’all are moms and your gross-o-meter should be tolerating higher stuff than this) I can’t keep my medication regulated. So it stands to reason that without the good drugs, I am a pure-T nutcase. I’m telling you, this week was not pretty.

Catching up on Google Reader was a treat this week, as I’m woefully behind on my reading and have so much more to go. A lot of your posts have given me good ideas and some have even helped me come up with things to talk about in my class this semester. Y’all are so smart. I feel so…inferior.

In other news, things that have been rocky are slowly rocking themselves back right again. I wish so much that I could talk about this here, but the important thing is that you know I am and will always be a shiny, sparkling, extra wonderful, fantastical rock star. I just don’t see how you could argue otherwise. I didn’t make new year’s resolutions because frankly, who keeps them? (not me), and most of them cost money (gym, diet crap, buy a fancy planner, buy organization shit that will sit in a bag for a year) so I just scrapped that plan. Instead I am resolving NOTHING. I promise you absolutely nothing, I don’t guarantee a single thought, idea or gesture, and I surely am not planning to live up to anyone’s expectations.

See what I did here? I lowered your opinion of me so when I do good shit, you’ll be all surprised and impressed. I said it already: I’m a genius.

Finally, this exercise of the writing here has sparked some ideas so I’ll be back in the next few days to write specifically and, perhaps, intelligently. I ask that you stick with me, and I ask that you do this one huge thing for me that would make me happier than all the Doritos on the planet: send your love, your happy thoughts, your prayers for good and your healing powers to my friend. She is an even brighter and shinier star than I, and she needs a few peanuts in her gallery.

Thanks bunches.