I never could relate to that part in Fight Club in which Tyler tells Jack that self-improvement is pointless. Isn't self-improvement the meaning of life? Better yourself until you die so that you can go knowing that you did absolutely the best you could. Everyone benefits from you living up to your own high expectations. We've all been around those people that do nothing to better themselves or anything around them. Tiresome.

It's hard, though, isn't it? I fight laziness and moodiness every day, to varying degrees. Telling people "no" when I feel taken advantage of. Sticking up for myself at work. Suffering fools. Knowing when confrontation is necessary. Eating well, getting enough exercise, not smoking, et cetera ad infinitum.

Maybe I interpreted that scene incorrectly.

I'd like to be able to save some money out of each paycheck but somehow I never seem to be able to! I don't buy lots of frivolous crap, just mostly food and clothes. Eating out is so expensive but I love it. I was looking online at flights to random places for my vacation-week in September (Too soon? Too bad. 23 weeks y'all!). I could fly to Tokyo for a couple thousand or I could take a train trip to Montana for around six hundred. I have 11 more paychecks 'til then but saving even $100 out of each one seems pretty impossible. I'm paying off so many debts. A few hundred every month goes to them pesky debtors.


He's breathing, can you see it? Eeeeee! Via.

All in all, I had a very nice week off work. My mama came up for a night and we played Rummy, made corned beef 'n' cabbage, and watched movies. One of them was "Emma" which I'd never seen before (boycotted due to name stealing). It was okay but I think I prefer to read stories/books that are set in the long-ago-days rather than watching movies that are set in that time period. Maybe because modern actors are miserable at the accents (Gwyneth Paltrow is no exception).


This is stitched with thread! By: Jillian Tamaki, via.

After my mama departed, the Dear Boy and I spent a night on the coast in a cute lil vintagey cottage. More Rummy, some shopping, and the best crab melt I've ever eaten in my life! The rest of vacation-week was lounging around and going out to eat and SLEEPING IN. Heavenly.

Coming back to work has been pretty turbulent. One of the first things Wicked Lady said to me was, "I had such a hard time while you were gone!" Well, that's too bad, Wicked, because I'll be taking my two weeks of vacation time every year just like everybody else. Suck it. I was pretty frustrated all day yesterday because the whole office was a mess with everything disorganized and nothing restocked (and by restocked I don't mean ordering supplies, I just mean taking some supplies down from the storage shelves and replenishing what's needed). Simple things and she's just too lazy for any of it.

Also, she doesn't recycle. I overheard this conversation today:

Guy from Alabama: "Oh yeah, I'm in Oregon and all Oregonians recycle so I should probably do it too."
Wicked Lady: "Not ALL Oregonians do. I hardly recycle anything."

:o Amazing.

Vacation Weeeeeeek

I am in the thick of my vacation-week. Learning a couple new songs on the guitar: Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen and Marry Song by Band of Horses. I'm slowing down the Springsteen and plucking it with a syrupy country rhythm. Marry Song is just a baby so far but I'll probably end up playing it pretty straight-forwardly.

Tomorrow, we're off to the coast for a night in a tiny cottage by the beach. La vie romantique!

Getting some writing on the book done. I realized the other day that I never heard back from a novella-in-process contest I submitted it to on McSweeney's back in January. Those jerks. Hey, here's a sampling for you, if you'd like one:

I remember once catching a fish with my bare hands in the river. I was down there with Robert’s nephew, Andrew. He’s a couple years younger than me and was visiting his uncles for the summer from Long Island. His skin is so pale I can see the veins underneath his eyelids and one on the tip of his nose. He silently sat on a boulder, like a gloomy pretzel, tapping a stick on the surface of the water. I tried to be friendly, asking him questions about school and sports. He shrugged limply at my fumbling and I grew silent too. I watched the river. It was a clear, sunny day. A young bull trout shimmered deeply and caught my attention. I crept down into the water, crouching, and waited. The fish swam between my ankles and with one quick dive of my hand, I snatched it from the water. Andrew held his tapping stick in mid-air, his mouth a neat, round O. A quick rush of boyish pride tripped me as I surged towards the bank, fish flopping in my hand. I fell, coming down hard on both hands. All my weight pressed onto the trout, making its skin pop like hotdog casing. My fingertips slid along its soft ribcage. Andrew blinked a few times at my bloody foul and burst into laughter.

Mister Rogers defending PBS to the US Senate

This is the greatest thing I have ever seen in my life. Thank you, Barry. To quote you, "he could make kids as well as anyone believe he was completely sincere despite having never met you."

I love you, Mister Rogers, and I always will. You took a large part in persuading me to keep making up stories and to feed my imagination with wholesome things whenever I had the choice.

Had a saga of a bad dream last night. As always, it starred my sister reaching a new low. A couple of her friends had joined her in her quest for ruin, robbing the nice people of Portland for their money and credit cards. Somehow, again, she had the wool over everyone's eyes and even convinced my other, well-meaning sister to smuggle syringes onto a plane for her (something about a new diabetes diagnosis)! Woke up at 4:30am, sobbing dryly, and knew I wouldn't be getting any more sleep for the night.

I've never had something needle at me so persistently for this long. It's been so many years now. So many years. I'm usually pretty alright at letting go of things that strain me emotionally and while I have distanced myself considerably, here it creeps, into my dreams. I can't fucking abide the mistreatment that has inevitably come every time I've put a smile back on my face, hoping for the best, saying, "I'm there for you now and I trust you."

I reason, endlessly, that there's nothing I can do anyway. With or without me, she'll make her decisions the way she wants to make them.

I am a wellspring of hurt.

To Do List

1. Be brave


2. Be nice


3. Stay organized


4. Write more


5. Wallow less

Photos by: Francois Trezin

Tralala

Via.

Oh, look. It's Monday again. Again and again. The upside is that at the end of FIVE DAYS from now, I'll be on my vacation week. Hell yuh! Sleeping in, writing, relaxing, tralala all over the land. Mostly I just want to do whatever the fudge I want. ALL DAY LONG.


By: John Campbell.

Non-Required Reading

I hardly ever get fashiony in here, but it is an interest of mine, so forgive me.

I want every single thing in the new Rodarte for Opening Ceremony collection. Love that we're getting away from blacks and grays, in fashion, and leaning more towards browns, nudes, and pastels. Hot cha! I haven't worn black in years cuz it's probably the least interesting apparel choice. And frankly it does nothing for my coloring.


Boooo, you look like a million weeps, lady (via).

It occurred to me the other day that I need to link some of the blogs I read. A nice little sidebar thang, am I right? Okay, will work on that today, time permitting. DONE. See? Wanna be added? Lemme know.


Via.

Maybe I will straighten my hair tonight. I'm going out dancing.

Did y'all know that "penultimate" simply means second to last? Well, if you're my mom and you're reading this, you probably did.

Sorry about this post. Move along.

For a second just now, I thought I smelled a huge field of spring flowers. Mm, that was nice.

Get down, girl, go 'head, get down. Get down, girl, go 'head, get down.

Today I learned that a nice young lady that I know would never consider herself a feminist because she feels that in the areas of domestic violence, sexual harassment, and divorce, males get the short end of the stick. This surprised me very much! Sometimes I think I may be a bit like the proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand. Aren't all my smart, forward-thinking, young lady friends feminists? Indeed not, I guess, and this makes me a little sad.



I work for a construction management company with project managers and engineers. I see myself and my female coworkers (of which there are only three out of an office of about 25) not receiving due respect every day. Everything from our ideas not being weighed on the same scales as the men, to the objects on our desks (a bag of potato chips leftover from lunch, as an example) being treated like their property instead of our own.

At the same time, there's no chivalry here either. I've carried heavy box after heavy box across our parking lot while two male employees smoked cigarettes and watched. Colorful language is used in mixed company and they don't even try to conceal their (rude) bodily functions in front of the ladies.



Now, I am a fan of chivalry and also a feminist. Feminism is the belief that women are not inferior to men. Chivalry is the culturally accepted way of behaving honorably, especially around women. I always try to act chivalrously when I am alone with other women. Opening doors, letting them lead in conversation, paying for things, etc.. In mixed company, it's the role of men, but I think it's important for females to uphold this custom when it's just us. It's not an antiquated or dated American idea; in today's Japan, for example, there are numerous social customs, like chivalry, that everyone is expected to follow.



Getting back to the oppressed male, even when I was little and I heard someone say that white people have the least amount of rights, I knew that was wrong. Just seeing how the non-whites were treated at my (elementary) school told me that much about America. So I've been thinking today about how anyone could possibly think men get the short end of the stick when it comes to domestic violence, sexual harassment, and divorce. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief [Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003], "women accounted for 85% of the victims of intimate partner violence, men for approximately 15%." Perhaps because of this, the cops take a wee bit more convincing when a man says he is being beaten on by his girlfriend, and while this is a shame, it is definitely not grounds to denounce feminism. Also, prenuptial agreements were invented to cease gold-digging and in the wise words of Kanye West, "If you ain't no punk, holla, 'We want prenup! We want prenup!' It's something you need to have 'cause when she leaves your ass, she'll leave with half." Ha!

Ha!

(Art by: Katai Stienstra, found via.)

Toolsday

I wonder about sincerity a lot. I wonder what people are like when they're around people they are fully comfortable with. I've always treasured that day in a friendship when my friend starts using silly voices and making funny faces around me. It means I've made it into their sanctum.



Some people are at their most comfortable around their family, I've noticed. I guess if you spent every day of your childhood around the same people you no longer worry about what they think of you. I have a big family. Three brothers and two sisters, all older than me. To be fair, one of those brothers was raised mostly by his mom in Ohio but he was in my life for a couple spans.

My dad, sister, and I picked him up from the airport when he was a late teenager after last seeing him when he was in grade school. He was tall and looked a good bit like us but he was a stranger. He entered the fold cautiously and although him and I talked about lots of things, we never learned much about each other. He's gone again now, last seen homeless and on drugs. The death in life.



In other news:

I've been watching a lot of documentaries lately. We hooked up our VCR to get the internet (okay, it's a BluRay Player but I really like to give the Dear Boy a hard time by calling it "the VCR") so we can watch Netflix Instant from the couch. It's great! There are oodles of documentaries in their library. Recently, I watched Jesus Camp, which is about evangelical christians, and specifically about their aim at America's children.

If you didn't know, evangelicals are the ones that speak in tongues and claim one needs to be "born again" to reach heaven. In the movie, they spoke about how children are easiest to convince of god's importance and of the place they feel Jesus should have in our lives. Children have hardly any reservations about putting their hands in the air and speaking nonsensically to the ceiling or moaning and rolling about on the floor. They are full of spirit! Ha! ha!


Photos by: Yuanling Wang

Last night we watched American Meth which is, of course, about meth. This one was pretty hard for me to sit through. They talked to a lot of addicts and even lived with one meth-addicted couple for a short time. The couple had four young children, the oldest only eight, whom they forgot to feed or care for while on meth benders. What drug addiction does to your lines of thinking is horrifying and familiar. It's hard to watch people lie to themselves and abuse their innocent loved ones. I've been on both sides of that coin and I try to reflect on it as seldom as possible. Moving on!

Remember this post, gentle readers? Well, I bought a piece by the same artist today!

This one:



Letterpressed on paper, framed, for fifty bucks. Niiiiiiice.

You Gotta Help Me Make a Stand

I'm always trying to force my thinking into a different direction than what it is naturally tending towards. Addiction, worrying, and cynicism put me in tail-spins all the time.



Addiction is probably the largest beast. It's not about drugs these days, obviously, but any little thing. I am stubbornly attached to ritual and routine and can rut myself up pretty bad if I'm not careful. Before I realize what's happening, I'm doing something every day in the same way and sometimes it isn't beneficial to me or those around me. There's a term out there for this sort of thing starting with "obsessive" and ending with "disorder" but as long as I can keep my good grip on the reigns I ain't accepting it. Addiction. Not disorder.



Even though I fully know that it doesn't do any good, I worry endlessly as well. Loops and loops of "what if"s. Combined with a tendency to be cynical, and honed story-telling, the possibilities are great and very bad indeed. I have a habit of mistaking my own speculation for fact, too, which really doesn't help at all.


All photos by: Jay B. Sauceda, via.

As I grow up, I more easily recognize when a wave of this garbage is coming on and try to duck out from under it before it gets me, so that's good. I try not to sit and stare out a window for an hour, wringing my hands and fretting up a storm any more. I find that the more I tell others "chin up" and to "throw away those thoughts" the more my ego steps in, having me take my own advice.

Minding Manners

Today I am thinking about if people ever think about what they say. Small example, of coworker, who we shall call Ponytail:

Me: "Here's a confirmation for that fax you sent earlier."
Ponytail: "Only one page?"
Me: "Yeah, it prints out only the first page of your fax with the confirmation there at the top."
Ponytail: "Okay, no problem."

Didn't ask if this was a problem for you, Ponytail.

Now, I know this sounds over-reactive but it's a phrase he uses in all his conversational exchanges even though it comes off a bit rude in most. To me. Maybe to you too. To me, it makes him sound as if he thinks everyone should be apologizing to him.


Via.

Another irritating one is those small phrases people overly use, like "and the other thing is..." which isn't so bad, I guess, until you work with the lady who uses it in statements like, "He was a really great speaker and the other thing is he really made you interested in what he was saying." Actually, lady, those two ideas are the same. A semi-colon there in place of your catch-all phrase would work super well. Super well!


Via.

I think I probably pay too much attention to how I come off socially and I probably shouldn't worry because people just aren't paying attention, that's all. Nothing personal. I mind my manners and make sure to be polite, cheerful, and funny as often as I can when I am out in the world. Makes everything nicer, I say.

Recently I've had a rash of cashiers who do not address me in any way during our transaction. No smile, no nod, no "hello," no nothing. Next time, I am going to ask, "Are you alright?" and if they wonder why I'm asking I'll tell them, "You seem like you're having a bad day." How can you get mad at a stranger concerned with your well-being?


Via.