So Here

 

I’m not much of a joiner, nor do I really like playing tag. Also, rules chafe.

Thus, I’m not a particularly good candidate for the “meme” challenges and thoughtful awards that litter the blogscape. That noted, when kind fellow bloggers throw an award or a challenge my way, I do appreciate the acknowledgment. I do.

In the last month or so, a few blog-patriots have given me the challenge to list ten things about myself that no one knows. So, okay, it’s come up enough that I’ll do it; but I ain’t passing it on or tagging anyone else. Just write your blog posts, honies, and I’ll come read them. If you want to make lists, you should do that. If you don’t wanna, then don’t. ‘K?

Ten Things. Some of them my husband already knows, as he is my central repository for minutiae that require expression. But it’s what I got.

1. I just spent eight minutes taking the price tag off a dowel that now runs across the top of a fabric banner, which we will hang in a “dead space” at the bottom of our staircase. As I cursed the price tag glue and twining (’round and ’round the stick it went), I kept thinking to myself, “Here’re eight minutes of my life I’ll never get back. Here are eight minutes of my life I could have used to fold that basket of laundry. Here are eight minutes of my life I could have used to sniff glue, intead of peeling it.”

Constantly filling my eyes with birdies and bright orange, though, may just keep me off the glue during the imminent dark months of winter.

2. Streaming my own variety of “radio stations” over Pandora.com is a great way to find new music or just get a better sense what Those Kids Today are listening to. Although I can input any musical artist at all and then listen to “comparables” for hours, I’ve been using it to listen to more of The Killers, The Strokes, The Shins, The Ting Tings, and even one article-less group, Kings of Leon.

When I tire of pretending to care what Those Kids Today are listening to, I create a station for an artist I actually like, such as Lucero or Husker Du, and get all rock outy and nostalgia-afied. The other day, I played the They Might Be Giants station for Paco, and while he pipped around to the selections, it was acutally Groom who had to go over and hug the computer, commenting, “This is my favorite station ever.”

3. I am outrageously shallow and enjoy diverting my brain with the lives of celebrities. That part of my brain also really likes to go out and shop for boots. Generally, as is also the case with boots, my brain tends to love or hate celebrities. Although I will never know them, nor they me, celebrities cause in me an emotional reaction. I adore Russell Brand; I despise all reality show bimbos who, should their airplane go down over the Atlantic, sport implants that would keep them bobbing in the ocean loooong past when life rightly should have been snuffed out.

Interestingly, here’s what I realized last night: I flatline when it comes to Melissa Joan Hart. She engenders in me zero reaction. She is like vanilla pudding served in a clean white porcelain bowl, if you were to leave out both the bowl and the pudding.

4. My left hand smells like laundry detergent right now. Wouldn’t this be one hell of a puzzling mystery, if I hadn’t been doing laundry? How would the detective who finds my corpse explain the fact that one hand–only one hand–smells of Tide? Maybe I was making pipe bombs and–haHA, Karma lashed out!–one accidentally exploded and killed me.

I guess I’d rather just do laundry and get the hand smell that way. All in all, it’s one of the better hand smells. That detective should thank me for not springing a vastly different hand smell on him, in fact.

5. My Girl is growing up, which is part of the reason why I cropped this photo severely. Plus, some of y’all are big preeverts and should take your wanker selves off the Internet and stop looking for pictures of kids, you internally-broken skeezoids.

Anyhow, she’s growing up but is clearly in the ‘tween years, when the idea of middle school still has mystique. Here’s the thing no one knows about me: I just want to keep her in a bubble bath, reading books, through the middle school years. She might emerge pruney and dehydrated, but at least her self-esteem will be fluffy and clean.


6. Because Girl is growing up, and we’ve had to admit she will one day get moods and boobies and tampons, she’s going to have her own room for the first time. We’re currently working on shoveling out our guest room so that we can paint it TURQUOISE and ORANGE and YELLOW and maybe RED!!!! With polka-dots!!!!!! Groom has spent hours going through the closet, pulling out papers and running clothes and CDs of unknown origin. The other day, we put safety goggles on Paco, gave him a mallet, and let him bash up a stack of CDs. Now our back yard glitters with silvery shards, and Paco is feeling better about his beloved “Dee-Dee” moving down the hall. His one caveat is that, into perpetuity, he gets to smash things we no longer need. Tomorrow, I’m going to lay out my uterus on the unmown grass and tell him to hack away.

7. Speaking of Paco amusing himself in the back yard, we had one dry day recently, during which he built a veritable Hadrian’s Wall of leaves, only declaring it done when it was as tall as he. I regretted his Northern European bloodstock, as the wall took a damn long time. On the positive side, it did keep him from setting fire to stuff for at least an hour.


8. The mornings already are so dark, a state made worse by unrelenting lines of rain in the region, that I fear I will have bedsores by March. This morning, as is his habit, Groom slipped out of bed early, and during the brief moment when I roused, I thought, “What the hell is in his body that makes him wake up and get up? I don’t have that thing. If I lived any closer to the Arctic Circle, I’m pretty sure I would spend six months of the year under my duvet.” Half an hour later, again as is his habit, Groom brought an armful of sleepy boy into our room and dumped the softness into the bed with me. As the limp lad and I cuddled in for ten more minutes of warmth in the darkness, I realized that I could spend eight months a year under the duvet with the right company.

9. I’ve never shoplifted.

10. Completely without plan, I recently managed to get all twenty of my fingernails and toenails on different cutting schedules, something I hadn’t even known was possible until I did it. After a few months of, “Ooh, this one’s a little long; I’ll just do a quick snip” followed three days later by “Time to go after that hangnail, and as long as I’m at it, trim down the whole nail” followed four days later by “Hmm, that one’s snagging a bit,” I ended up with every single nail at a different stage of growth, a state that illustrates better than anything

the tiny insanities
that rule our lives
yet no one knows about

unless we announce them.

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26 responses to “So Here”

  1. Logophile Avatar
    Logophile

    LOVE the wall of leaves!

    Most celebs give me that feeling you described about the pudding and the bowl, 'cept without them.

    The exceptions are the really yummy ones I want to eat lunch on.

    Reading in the tub, is there anything better? I submit that there is NOT.

  2. Shieldmaiden96 Avatar
    Shieldmaiden96

    A HA! Reading in the tub is why the page-edges of every book I owned before age 14 are warped, including every book Laura Ingalls Wilder ever wrote (though not as much 'Farmer Boy' because Almanzo's family was kind of weird).
    We used to smash things in college. It was very cathartic. I distinctly remember a bathroom scale, a printer (pre-Office Space), and a copy of that awful book we used for research papers on how to write footnotes and such by Kate someone.

  3. yinyang Avatar
    yinyang

    Yay for the Girl getting her own room! I got my own room for the first time right around that age, and it was sweet.

  4. chelle Avatar
    chelle

    Never ever?!?! Not even like a pack of gum?

    I am so totally shallow!

  5. phd in yogurtry Avatar
    phd in yogurtry

    I must say, you bring a certain illustriousness to the table of meme.

    My husband has that "hop out of bed early" gene. I do not. I wish, wish, wish I did. Or at least, let me try it out for a year. See if I'm more productive.

    And I love me some Pandora, too. Great for finding new artists and none of the repeats, commercials or idiot DJ comments.

  6. phd in yogurtry Avatar
    phd in yogurtry

    p.s. I do like your dowel fabric banner. I am doing a mental inventory of my home wall space as I type this. Bedroom could be the winning location. Would make a cool project.

  7. heartinsanfrancisco Avatar
    heartinsanfrancisco

    You mean fingernails are not supposed to be all hamajang? I am always the last to know EVERYthing.

    The morning cuddling sounds sooo nice. Word to the wise: Get as much of it as you can now, store it cryogenically or something, because there will come a time when he is embarrassed by any kind of physical closeness with Mom. If you want to shoot the messenger, I totally understand.

  8. secret agent woman Avatar
    secret agent woman

    So poignant to watch them approaching teenagehood. If that's a word. I used to read in th etub, too, and also walking through the halls of my school.

  9. Jazz Avatar
    Jazz

    and not so tiny insanities…

  10. Jeni Avatar
    Jeni

    You, shallow? Never! Well, if you really are that, then it makes for some damned good readings here!
    I so agree with your thoughts though about keeping your daughter sheltered away in bubble bath with books -as well as the snuggling as long as one possibly can with a small child too! (Miss Maya is my bed buddy -supposedly until her parents get the bedroom all fixed up and painted for her an her brother to share. I dread going up to look at it though -not sure if it is because it signals the emptiness of my bed, being just me as the occupant, or because Maya selected the colors -a very bright (blindingly so) PINK and an equally bright TURQUOISE! Go figure, huh.)
    I'm also with you on having a strong dislike of MEMES, virtually any kind of 'em. Occasionally, I will oblige but I try to dodge those suckers as much as possible!

  11. Sid Avatar
    Sid

    Man I totally miss the days when I have 8 minutes to spare sniffing glue.

  12. Jenn @ Juggling Life Avatar
    Jenn @ Juggling Life

    That hop out of bed early gene . . . oh, how I wish I had that. I just know that it would change my life.

    Reading in the tub is truly one of life's great pleasures.

  13. lime Avatar
    lime

    well, i am with logo on the celebrity issue. i suppose it is good that you and i have one or two points of divergence in our otherwise psychic sisterly ways otherwise paco might be entirely shocked to find himself dumped under the duvet with me and i'd be REALLY upset when he started whacking on my uterus in the bakcyard, even though i don't so much have any real need of it anymore…well except for that whoel giving shape to the internal structures to my pelvic floor doesn't decide to droop too much and require excessive kegelling at every waking moment, which then leads the cashier at the grocery store to ask why i have such a look of concentration. it's another fine example of a tiny insanity ruling a world silently until it is announced, but of course that was was only hypothetical.

  14. Midlife Jobhunter Avatar
    Midlife Jobhunter

    I, too, am not much a fan of memes. Enjoyed Paco in the leaves. And girl child reading. Nails? I never file more than one at a time.

    Has to be the most interesting set of 10 I've ever read.

  15. diane Avatar
    diane

    I always take my awards and run, I'm an award slut.
    I know how you feel about middle school. My oldest daughter used to throw up in front of the house every morning while she was waiting for the bus to middle school. Poor kid. She loved high school though, go figure.
    I've got a few things of Cute Hubby's that I would like for your son to smash up. I'll be right over.

  16. ds Avatar
    ds

    "The Hadrian's Wall of Leaves" Ha! There is nothing better than reading in a tub–if only my tub would allow it.
    Vanilla pudding in a white bowl, except… Love it!

  17. Michelle Wells Grant Avatar
    Michelle Wells Grant

    Best confessional ever! Sorry to make you do it .. I agree witchaya. (I shoplifted a Mabeline mascara from Woolworth's when I was 12! My life of crime stopped there.)

  18. actonbell Avatar
    actonbell

    Too bad it took so long to get the blasted tag off, but that's a pretty wall hanging, it was worth it:)
    I really like The Shins, but none of the young people I work with have ever heard of them. Hmmm
    I don't know who Melissa Joan Hart is. Heh.
    Lovely photo of your daughter! She's lucky to have you. I always wanted a polka dot room…or at least a room of my own!
    My hubby gets up early too, he ran in the rain and the dark this morning. I don't have it, either, and wish I could stay in bed half the day. It so comfy there.
    I've never shoplifted, either. I'd definitely be caught.
    Great list!

  19. Prefers Her Fantasy Life Avatar
    Prefers Her Fantasy Life

    Great meme!

    I once got caught shop-lifting the George Harrison album, All Things Must Pass.

    Thankfully, that stage did.

  20. Patois Avatar
    Patois

    I love that you announce these!

    Ting-Tings? Yeah, baby!

    Preeverted souls screwing around the web? Boooooooooo!

    Pretty girl. Pretty boy.

    Ah, bliss under the covers.

  21. Green Girl in Wisconsin Avatar
    Green Girl in Wisconsin

    HOW can you not cut your nails all at the same time? That is odd. That room plan sounds so cool for your Girl.

  22. Suldog Avatar
    Suldog

    Jeni, from Down River Drivel, directed me your way, saying that you were (and I quote) "just as off the wall much of the time as you are."

    I'd hunt her down and punch her in the face, if I were you.

  23. Becky Cazares Avatar
    Becky Cazares

    Makes me want to be a preteen again and read books in bubble baths (and on the couch and on a hike and by the fireplace and on the bed surrounded by pillows). I think you and Girl just revealed to me my ultimate retirement plan!

    Lucky Girl. I never had my own room… well until my sister left for Bible college. So, okay, my SENIOR YEAR in high school I finally had my own room! Lucky Girl.

    And I think you discovered the ideal way to keep Paco sweet and cuddle-worthy. Give him an outlet for his aggression! Perfect.

    There was something else… Oh, yeah. Hate celebrities (esp. those famous for being famous) but love, love, love gettin' up with the dawn!

  24. Hannah Avatar
    Hannah

    "When I tire of pretending to care what Those Kids Today are listening to, I create a station for an artist I actually like.."

    Wow! That sounds awesome! I better get my keister over to Pandora.com!

    P.S. Yes I am a dork that says the word "keister"! LOL

  25. Pearl Avatar
    Pearl

    It's the tiny insanities that are the most fun, don't you think?!

    Pearl

  26. Jeff Avatar
    Jeff

    Hmmm, nice runner. Apparently great minds think alike!

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