As a writing student I get to read many other’s work. I love and hate this simultaneously. I do understand that the writings my fellow studnets bring to class are rough drafts, and therefore still…well…rough. I too, need the second pair of eyes on my work to see where I am being vauge, annoying or just plain dumb.
However, there are words and phrases that make me angry. I have no GOOD reason to dislike them, I just do. I am unfair for the fact that I loathe certain sayings, and I just don’t really care. And there is a chance that some of you reading this write some of the things I hate, and you are free to gossip about me because of it. I just cannot help my pet peeves.
7. “…but I digress”
I dislike this.
6. “commence”
I actually was writing this blog last week, and then someone used this word and I put off posting a few days because I had no intention of picking them out specifically. But seriously, who commences? I had a fellow classmate use this word in a memoir piece one time. He mentioned how he commenced by the lake to partake of cheese and poetry.
5. “were, was, had” etc.
This is a problem for me personally. I wrote a twenty page memoir last year for class, and the instructor returned it to me telling me to remove all of those words and I would see how the piece would change dramatically. It worked, but it’s so much easier to say “I had cake” as opposed to “I disgustingly devoured an entire cake”
4. “swimmingly”
As in, “My new job is going swimmingly.” I have no idea what that means. Good job? Bad job? Even if it is common knowledge this is my irrational list of hated words and I won’t back down.
3. “Pecking order”
I don’t know that I am in any place of any pecking orders, but if I am, take me off the list.
2. “Between you and me…”
I have a feeling that anyone who says this is hoping you rush out and spread the juicy tidbits that they just offered.
1. The final sentence of YOUR most previous blog post.
I am kidding, but I figured that I may have offended some with the first six and now I have offended you all.
Coming Tomorrow: an in depth look at puppies, the color pink, and other pleasantries.
My best estimate at the date of this photo was the winter of 1982-83. My family lived in a little town, forty-five minutes from Minneapolis, where it seemed to snow 300 days a year. That out-of-place redhead on the left is yours truly, even the dog was a blond.
Many times when I am asked how I can stand the winters here in Minnesota. I think about when I was a little kid, living in that house out in the sticks. My parents decided between themselves when I was seven months old and too young for a family vote that we would move to this little town from Minneapolis and that they would conscientiously NOT buy us toys. Never had a Barbie, never got to partake in Teddy Ruxpin’s story telling abilities. Yes, we did have toys, but they were minimal and we were expected to go outside and get in the dirt, snow, and trees for our entertainment. Also, we had no cable. What we did have was a lovely wood panel television set that sat on the floor of our basement and allowed me to watch different Strokes and The Cosby Show as well as various black and white movies that I would view along side my dad when it was actually unsafe to play outside in the cold.
But if it was not too cold, we were out there. We grew up outside. I imagine many people feel this way, that they feel they were in the fresh air far more than the successors of their generation.
When outsiders and visitors ask how I can handle getting into my car in the morning when it is twenty below zero outside I’m not sure what to tell them, it is just what I know. Then again I cannot fathom living with temperatures above one hundred for three months as those in the southwest go through every summer. It is just what they know.
I don’t want to go to bed in a house that is warmer than seventy degrees and I would prefer taking a walk in 30 degree weather over 85 every day with no exceptions. I still in the winter wake up and before coffee peer outside my bedroom window hoping to see a fresh coat of white. And though those twenty below days can be painful on my fingertips while I pray that my car will start, I would not trade them for a warmer day ever. Not ever, not for all the OK Soda in the world.
I love winter. Please come now, dear frost and chill.
Upon the advice of a co-worker, today I went out and bought The Max Where the Sidewalk Ends. I haven’t looked at that book since I wore banana clips on a regular basis. I was giggling though it at Target next to some new parents buying a fuzzy-touch-the-page book for their little one remembering the absurdities that Shel Silverstein writes. Here’s Lazy Jane, which for whatever reason makes me smile.
The Big Day is just a few weeks away and I have little clue of what I am going to pretend to be for the day. I will likely dress up only for work as Halloween falls on a Friday and I will be spending the night walking door to door with my 7 year old as he hopefully remembers to say “Thank you.” to everyone who shells out free sweets. Here are some wonderful costumes that I am not going to copy:
I just put the best one first.
Lloyd Dobler
I actually like this one.
CHEESE!
Too bad there are not any Jack in the Boxes around here.
Send your child as a biffy!
This kid got beat up…quite often.
I was thinking of going as William Wallace, and if I can find that much plaid I still might do it. I just need to figure out the face paint. What are you going to be?
You can certainly buy items of pleasure, glee, or ecstasy.Though, what makes me delighted might make others stomachs turn upside-down i.e. Martha’s annual Halloween Issue is not so much for everyone.What would it take to be happy? Is total relative happiness a new car away?It possibly could be if your only day to day gripe is the rusted hole on the floor that creates so much highway noise that it gives you headaches for the first three hours of your work day.If that lady or fella received a car which was quiet on the ears.Would happiness be achieved?What is it that determines the answer to the question if one is generally happy?Can happiness be lost with one point of life changing that affects all others?Is happiness an opinion of drinking vessel contents?
Then there are the “little things” people.I consider myself one, most of the time.For instance, now, in the diner “Wild Thing” byTon Loc is blaring over the sound of hash browns,bacon and pleasant customer conversation while I am shoving a cup of 3 ½ star coffee and perfectly basted eggs into my mouth whiletyping blogs on my day off and I was able to sleep in this morning.Good day.Happy day.But what about those unlikable little things this morning that I had to complete and the traffic I had to stomach to arrive there. Then I think about the disastrous apartment I have to return to when this meal is over. How do you get past the unhappy aspects, dwell on the positive and move forward without allowing the gunk in life to build up on the bottom of your shoe like gum that attracts dirt and leaves.
In 2007 The New York Post reported that an amazing 94% of people polled claimed to be either “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with their lives.These stats make it appear that we are doing pretty good. .But how many of those “somewhat” folks are also “somewhat wretched”?
If you had access to huge funds, what would you change for the purpose of increased happiness?Think beyond a DVD player in your bathroom and the watch with a diamond dial.Or maybe you never thought of it there to begin with:
*Can you buy happiness?
*What about your life is unhappy?
*What is buyable?
“Joy is very infectious; therefore, be always full of joy.” -Mother Teresa
You could live through sayings such as this.
I think most people would first consider their day to day jobs which are the source of their spending in the first place.Is that part of your life a source of unhappiness?Or is it where some joy comes from.Even if it is a wonderful time, would you quit anyhow?Would the pressure of a job be alleviated if you knew you did not have to go?Is there someplace else you are dying to be in place of your daily schedule?Would you begin hobbies, spend more time with children or family and friends?
Would you venture out of your entire world to escape from where you are and start new?Would you desire to leave the home you occupy now and pay someone to dispose of what you left behind to escape?
What would I do if I could buy bliss?If I could choose my daily to-dos and home and sleep schedule?I could easily write a ten page essay on the changes that would be taking place.But if it came down, would I really do that at all?Would I have sudden motivation to actually spend my nights in a state-of-the-art dark room?Would I want the responsibility of being a home owner?If I tried, would I actually like being a stay at home mom?Could I truly endure the amount of vacations I would like to take each year?
Probably.And every Saturday, as I stand in line at the gas station for a lotto ticket, a one dollar dream, I am going to imagine waking my son Max up in his new bunk bed before I make him breakfast on my Viking Stove where I will put the dirty dishes into a dishwasher and then drive him to school in my 2009 car with a working speedometer and radio before I head back home to pull weeds in my vegetablegarden and do laundry in an electric machine before taking a bubble bath and watchingCosby re-runs on the plasma TV situatedin my maid cleaned bathroom. 😀 What would you do?
The anticipation begins the first Friday in September. A visit to the news stand to witness the issue is not yet released. I go through the same frustrating endeavor the next two fridays. Finally, the third Friday of September I wallow into Target, beaten down and hopes shot. I see the most glorious magazine cover I will lay eager eyes on for the next twelve months: Martha’s Halloween Issue.
Call it October if you wish, but the only thing that matters in those glossy pages are the recipes for pumpkin stew that I will never cook and the goblin crafts I will never make. Doesn’t matter though, it’s a breaking through from hot weather to holidays, the smell of flowers removed with the the aroma of fireplaces. Zen.
There’s no retreat back to summer now, it’s Halloween, tomorrow is Thanksgiving and then Christmas the day after. At least, that’s how it will feel on January 1st.
There’s a debate in my head that’s been going on this week. My goal is to once a day sit down and smack my hands against the keyboard and hope that one of a hundred of those days I might put something out I am proud to have written. What I choose to say varies. I certainly don’t have a format or structure that I follow as in this is a blog of hobby. I have met a lot of people from blogging, which I understand sounds peculiar to some. But, most of you understand what I mean. Most of you I have never been allow the pleasure of engaging in hand-shaking or even hearing your voice. This is life on the internet.
Sometimes, you break over that electronic barrier and get the opportunity to sit across a table from someone in a crowded bar while attempting to make yourself drunk enough that you are not nervous, but not too drunk so you don’t make yourself into a Lohan-esque fool. I chose to do this a year ago with a blogger, tg aka Tim aka boyfriend extraordinaire. I was hesitant, at best. I had developed a friendship with the person, and honestly feared I might really like him. Not in the way I like your new shirt, but in the way I had been avoiding for the past five years since shoving the idea of relationships into a bottle and corking it tight.
We’d emailed. We’d instant messaged. We’d even texted. But never spoke on the phone or saw each other in person despite that we lived in the same metropolitan area. And then he said this:
“because you are an anonymous bunch of electronic letters on my computer screen…”
For whatever reason, I did not want to be that anymore. So,we met at a bar and talked for hours just like they do in those romantic comedies. If only those romantic comedies had the main characters discussing how the bartender looks just like Harry from Dumb and Dumber while trying to take his picture without his knowledge.
It’s not the best picture, but I promise you, there’s a resemblance.
Ok. Now I will stop with the trip down memory lane and use a cliche’ I hate, “cut to the chase”. I have a list of things I need to and want to do, like
Be a good Mom
Work
Finish these stupid Spanish class assignments.
Write a blog every day.
Work my laundry down to a pile shorter than myself.
etc.
Today, specifically, I wanted to finish my weekly Spanish classes and write a blog. And I will. But something is in my head now, that was not there before. Tg has cancer. It was a funky mole, that was diagnosed as melanoma. Skin was cut on either side of the mole, and came back from the lab as clean and melanoma-free. Big sigh of relief. Next step was a CT scan. I know all forms of cancer are not a good thing, but in the realm of cancers, this is near the bottom of the list of ones you want to have. What has been described to me as “flecks of melanoma on the lung” were found via the scan. I would like to think a miracle doctor could reach down his throat with a sharp tool and snip them off, but I am told it is not that easy. There’s gonna be “treatments”, which I am scared of more than the cancer. Though I am sure they will be beneficial. I am uncomfortable with things I do not understand. I do understand what foods are good and bad with cancer, and hopefully I won’t drive tg away with the broccoli and flax seeds I wish to prepare for him daily.
And I feel guilty. I chose to poison my own lungs for years, yet I don’t have to suffer. I don’t have a desire to be grim. I don’t want to sit and drone about this and nothing else for months. This is what I have been debating about, do I keep it personal, or do I share? I certainly don’t want to rake in attention. I am not asking for advice. I want to fix it, and I do not know how.
Being as I talk immensely about my offline life on this blog, I have had a tough time writing this week, because it has been on my mind quite a bit. And just so you know, he’s not sick. No typical symptoms have been shown. I am very hopeful things will remain this way.
Ok, tomorrow I will talk about Martha Stewart’s Halloween issue. Now, I’m going to go and speak Spanish phrases I do not understand into my computer’s microphone for my online clase de espanol.
I know it is very presumptuous to get online and say that you are sorry for not posting, as though there are those out there that sit and wait for words to pour out of your fingers and onto the computer screen. I am busy with school and work and…life. Max turns 7 this week. I promised my new boss that I would type up some stuff for him, which I have yet to do. I have to write a poem to be critiqued in class, which I just would rather eat my garbage than sit down and write. And so on.
Today was not spent pouring iced tea into restaurant glasses. I’m trying to get “stuff” done. I didn’t get much of that to do list checked off, but I had a good rest anyhow. Tomorrow it’s back to work and so tonight, I ponder, “When am I going to catch up with errands, bills, school etc.?”
I recall having these same thoughts just about eight years ago, while married, and people would pop out of their stable and successful bubbles and alert me that these would be the good days that I will fondly remember. Comments like these, followed by stories of their own, about struggling when they were young and could only eat rice and beans with the occasional can of tuna made me long more for the time when I could wash my clothes in a shiny Maytag in the comfort of my own home.
I guess I have regressed back to the days I look forward to talking about later in life when I will eat off diamond studded plates while sitting at my golden breakfast nook. I will tell The Max of when he was young and how we struggled in simple American ways. Some examples:
Parking
I work downtown, so I have to pay for it, deep. There’s honestly no way for me to catch a bus and make it to work on time. I drive my car. My car has no A/C, looks like it was put through a war, and as of last week, the spedometer is stuck on 20 mph while the odometer hasn’t budged in many many miles. The parking lot closest to my work would cost twelve dollars for the entirety of my shift. Sixty dollars a week, over 250 a month. I could park further and save about 20% on that total, but I don’t. Instead, I buy a measly half an hour-three dollar ticket and pray that the parking attendant notices that there is indeed a ticket in the window and doesn’t peer to closely at the time on the ticket. So far, I have not been towed.
Rum and Cokes
I love Coca-cola., Not the hugest fan of rum, but it does the trick when I am watching baseball at the tavern. What also does the trick is filling an enormous empty vitamin bottle with rum and ordering one coke with the free refills and adding my own vitamin juice when the server walks away. Although, I will tip as though I paid for three drinks. Hopefully the servers don’t confuse this with me hitting on them.
Bathtub laundry
I don’t actually wash my clothes in the tub, I use a wash tub and place it in the bath to avoid splashing on the floor. I usually avoid telling this to people, as I am looked at like a freak, but DUDE! I save 20 bucks a week washing clothes the way my great grandma did every day.
Vacations
The world’s largest stack of oil cans.
This may be my favorite way of saving money. As I have over spoke of before, I like to skip the expensive attractions and map out routes that I will drive and stop at special places, like the world’s largest prairie dog.
Maybe someday I will not have these things present in my life, well the trips can stay.
It’s true, we only have 100 days until THE BIG DAY. Don’t tell me that it is too soon to begin thinking about Christmas. It’s just the time to start working on lists and recipes and crafts. Here’s a list of 100 things I have to get done before December 25th.
100. Buy Christmas Socks, wear to work. Wear again to work in April when laundry has not been done in a week.
99. Drink Egg Nog
98. Learn How to wrap presents like an adult and stop lying that The Max wrapped them
97. Visit a mall Santa
96. Carol or at least sing “Last Christmas” by Wham at karaoke night
95. Knit a scarf for someone, a whole scarf without giving up and making yet another washcloth
94. Play in the snow, if by chance there is not snow, drive to Duluth
93. Drink a peppermint latte
92. Bake cookies, freeze cookies, forget they were there until February.
91. Use the threat of Santa at least twice a day for good behavior.
90. Go see any random churches Children’s Christmas pageant, they are all the same and all humorous
89. Buy at least one plush toy that sings when you squeeze it’s paw.
88. See at minimum 5 Rankin Bass specials.
87. Purchase 64 dollars worth of Christmas scented candles and burn them all before Thanksgiving.
86. Wear footed jammies.
85. Buy Christmas cards and address them immediately. Then put them next to the cards from last year still sitting on top the microwave.
84. Eat a Candy Cane
83. Scratch my initials on fake window snow at the grocery store.
82. Make hot chocolate for max after a day of sledding. Use marshmallows. Call them snowman poo.
81. Search youtube for old classic McDonald’s Christmas commercials.
80. Watch the Macy’s parade and freak out when Santa appears.
79. Attend opening night of the Hollidazzle parade.
78. Wear a Santa hat at least once to work.
77. Wear a Grinch hat at least once to work.
76. Search for three hours for a gift for my brother-in-laws, end up giving socks.
75. Buy a tin of tri-flavored popcorn for someone who I know will share.
74. Listen to the XE Christmas jukebox
73. Listen to Delilah.
72. Think about New Years resolutions, and remember that I never make any.
71. Try very hard to resist putting decorations up until after Thanksgiving, crack about the 14th of November.
70. Buy my first ever real tree, being as the old fake tree fell apart last year.
69. Bake Yulekake bread from my great-grandma’s Scandinavian recipe
68. Make popcorn garland
67. Listen to my father’s story about how my great-grandpa took over being Santa Claus.
66. Repeat the story to Max.
65. Bake peanut butter cookies with Hershey’s kisses.
64. Eat them
63. Call my great aunt
62. Become over-amped when the advent calender starts.
61. Celebrate my birthday, love the fact that it’s during the holiday season.
60. Drink some rum and cider.
59. Watch “It’s a Wonderful Life”
58. Wish I was participating in Black Friday, while pouring coffee for customers who are.
57. Buy a poinsettia
56. Read Martha’s December issue…34 times
55. Have Max write Santa a letter.
54. Write Santa one myself
53. Drive at least one place where I have to turn back because of too much snow.
52. Go ice skating
51. Bake a pumpkin pie.
50. lay under the tree and look up at the lights.
49. Take a walk in the snow.
48. Drive around neighborhoods with terrific light displays
47. Pay through the nose for Christmas Break Daycare
46. Buy Mistletoe
45. Eat Little Debbie holiday trees.
44. Vow to only take one peice of Fudge.
43. Take 17.
42. Get stomachache
41. Play boardgames with the family.
40. Sing the twelve days of Christmas, wonder who wanted “French Hens”?
39. But stocking stuffers in Targets dollars bins.
38. Scrape that last bit of mascara from the nearly dried out tube, because Mom will give me mascara in MY stocking.
37. Miss my grandpa and grandma
36. Over dress The Max for social outings, because I was always overdressed for social outings.
35. Receive and love the cards sent to me.
34. Skip work one day to go to the mall.
33. Buy a snappy top to wear to Christmas parties.
32. Watch Chip and Dale climb through the Christmas tree.
31. Hang a wreath on my front door.
30. Drink Jones Holiday Sodas.
29. Regret it.
28. Follow Santa’s Sleigh Sky Watch on the radio.
27. Wish I had a yard to put plastic reindeer
26. Give the bell ringing Santa a buck, maybe more, maybe less.
25. Check out the 25 Days of Christmas show list on the Family Channel, or wherever it is nowadays.
24. Blog at least 16 times about the holidays.
23. Eat prime rib.
22. Hope I am creating as many Christmas memories for Max as my parents did for me.
21. Get some red and green dishes.
20. Make Rudolf ornaments
19. Say HO! HO! HO! at random, on the elevator, when the creepy guy is riding.
18. Clean up non-stop falling needles
17. Dye my hair red and green striped.
16. Make snow angels
15. Sit for an hour at the Christmas porcelain town display and wonder what the little people are doing inside.
14. See a live showing of “A Christmas Carol”
13. Eat more fudge, wash it down with more eggnog…this time spiked.
12. Buy a holiday blend of coffee beans.
11. Watch “Miracle on 34th Street” but only the black and white version.
10. Make a poorly constructed gingerbread house and eat it when it’s still soft.
9. Read Luke Chapter 2
8. Tie red bows on everything
7. Buy max something too expensive, that I know he’ll love
6. Get pictures done for Christmas cards
5. Explain how Santa gets into apartments
4. Buy unshelled mixed nuts
3. Ask my dad what he wants, knowing his response will be “world peace”
2. Love every minute of the season.
1. Crash in a pile of wrapping paper on Christmas night and hope the next 265 days go by really fast.
The Pilver 