Month: March 2010

CSGL – 30 Days of Summer

I think I’ve mentioned before that I have a narrator.   This voice in my head that tells me what’s happening to me, usually in real time.  (Is it just me?)   Most frequently the voice mimics Jane Austen.    One too many re-treads through Mansfield Park, I think, did me in.    However, the voice does shift from time to time from different influences.   A book I’m reading, a song I like, or a movie I’m watching.   Or, perhaps, the kinds of movies I’ve been watching.

Being as I am spoiled digital rotten, I have a Netflix account with a full DVD and Instant Watch queue.   Lately I’ve been trying to make my way through all the films that were nominated for Oscars that I never did get around to actually going out and seeing.   Also, I’ve sort of become obsessed with documentaries, because you have no idea how much stuff I don’t know.

So, I’ve been sitting here over the last few weeks – and by sitting here, I of course mean laying in my bed – watching lots of poignant shit.   All the while with this Object of Crush in my head  and all the ups, downs, and intrigues of a single girl’s life with single girl friends, and the well-intentioned but off-base remarks from male buds swimming in my overactive imagination.   Well, wouldn’t you know it, but that voice in my head, well it’s a mix of some sort of indie movie heroine and, well, Morgan Spurlock…you know, the guy from Super Size Me, except this is more like his television series 30 Days.

And it’s like there’s a hidden camera crew following me around for a month while I trip, stumble, start, sprint through my life, which though very mundane and not a very good plot for a movie, is somehow being turned into the next best thing since (500) Days of Summer.  (Similar sort of soundtrack, actually.)

But are you ready for the twist?   (There’s got to be a twist, right?)   In my indie-movie-life-documentary, my role….well, I’m certainly too clumsy to be the hip ingenue, aren’t I?    It’s like the bumbling sidekick suddenly became the focus of the film.

It’s totally whacky and zany.   It sure as shit ain’t gonna win an Oscar.   But maybe, just maybe, it could be a darling at Cannes.

Probably not though, I mean, shit the only thing that happens in this movie is the lead character lies in bed on a Tuesday night, while her friends are out bowling, and types on a laptop about the voice she hears in her head saying something like “For the Next 30 Days, PeggyLuWho will toil under the burden of infatuation and anxiety, lose sleep, write more numerous and self-deprecating, naval gazing blogs than she has in the last two years, while trying to keep up with the endless adventures of best mates.  Will she find true love and everlasting frienship?    Will she listen to Regina Spektor or The Shins or Vampire Weekend on her iPod tonight?”

Why does this all sound so much more lovely when it’s happening in my head than it does in black and white on my macbook screen?

Nightmare Scenarios

Here’s a list of things I don’t want to hear from people who have read this here blog:

  • I’ve been reading your blog, and I got you this sock monkey!
  • I’ve been reading your blog;  am I the Object of Crush?  (from, you know, Not Him)
  • I’ve been reading  your blog….you’re weird.
  • I’ve been reading your blog; can I give you the number of my psychiatrist?
  • I’ve been reading your blog; why do you listen to all those crappy bands?
  • I’ve been reading your blog, and I found out where you live, and I’ve been hiding in the bush outside your window for the last 90 days.
  • I’ve been reading your blog;  actually, I submitted some of your writing as my own, and just got offered a book deal.  Thanks!
  • I’ve been reading your blog;  your mom sounds hot.  Can I have her number?
  • I’ve been reading your blog, and I want to meet you and go on a date.  (yeah, this sort of happened once, and now I know why it’s a nightmare)

Trying New Things

Today I went and did something I swore I would never do.  I went to a record sale.  That’s right, vinyl people.

Now the reason why I wouldn’t do this before, is two-fold.   First off, I have spent the last six years of my life trying to de-clutter and make my life smaller.   Vinyl seems like the kind of thing to collect, and I don’t want to collect much of anything.   I have been loaning out books with the thought that I am fully OK with not getting them back.

And for music, I have started downloading albums instead of buying CDs, because my CD collection weighs too much.     My entire music collection is housed on the same hard-drives that I write my blog on.  I can grab this laptop, my passport, my credit card, and a few photo albums and be gone in an instant….if I was so inclined to do that.

The other part of the reason why I haven’t ever gotten into vinyl was just that I sort of feel like I missed a boat somewhere along the line.   My parents were never big music fans.  Growing up, I think there were all of 25 albums in the house.   And less than a dozen 8-tracks.   In contrast, I have 376 albums on my computer.   So, I think a lot of people who collect vinyl are people whose parents had cool collections.   I’ve heard lots of my friends talk about inheriting their folks’ records.   I just never was introduced to it, and I never had an in.

However, at work, there’s a ton of my friends who are collectors.   And they’re all at work talking about their new finds.   Truthfully, most of them try to discourage anyone else from picking up the habit.

Now, I don’t know that I’m going to become a record collector.   The whole experience was kind of intimidating, to be perfectly honest.   I don’t know anything about records, or what any of them are worth.   I don’t really have any idea what kind of cool stuff is out there and what’s random and rare.    So, today I was just hoping something would hop out at me that I must have.   That didn’t happen.   But it’s an interesting new thing that I’m checking out, and you never know what might happen.  I could get totally swept up in this.

But there’s something to the flipside…. I hear something on Pandora, and I want to check out, I look on Amazon, and hear more of it, and if I want it real bad, I can download it and have it in my collection in moments.   I guess i’ve become spoiled in that regard.  If there was something that I wanted on vinyl, best case scenario, I’d order it and have it shipped to me.   I guess I’m just spoiled.   Spoiled digital rotten.

Just sayin’

Afeared

Things That Sort of Scare Me….

Or That Completely Scare the Shit Right Out of Me

  • Snails
  • Their homeless cousins – Slugs
  • Teenage Boys
  • Sock Monkeys
  • Scary Movies
  • Ghost Stories

Or – Scary movies about teenage boys telling ghost stories, and then slugs start raining down from the sky, so they go hide out in their tent where their sock monkeys have come to life and lunge at their throats with their big scary red mouths and try to bite their major veins and arteries.

Just sayin’.

CSGL – Girls’ Night Out

After everything that’s been going down, it was a fortunate thing that this last Sunday, Kayphore and Cookie and I had planned a little night out for ourselves.   Of course, we had the typical evening of female bonding and enjoyed the traditional entertainment for such an occasion  …  Professional Wrestling.   WWE Smackdown to be exact.

I am not a regular girl who likes regular things.   I attract other girls with eclectic tastes.   And by eclectic, I do mean, “of course I want to see overly muscled, nearly naked, poorly acting, greased up dudes roll around on the ground with other similar dudes.”   Because really, who doesn’t love that?

Now I know what you’re thinking.   I know because I hear it often enough.    And I hear it often enough that I usually don’t mention that I enjoy the wrestling, like, ever…. to anyone.   This has been a carefully guarded, deep, dark secret for quite some time.   I’ve decided to bring it out into the light and show it off a little, because it really doesn’t make any sense to me that anyone could be befuddled by my enjoyment of such a thing.  I mean, it’s gaudy.   It’s ridiculous.  It’s goofy.  It makes no sense at all.   It’s over the top.  It’s laughable.  It’s horrible.   And damn it’s funny!   I like professional wrestling like I like all those damn Bring It On movies.    And The Cutting Edge franchise, as well.   I’ve paid good money to go see Cool as Ice starring Vanilla Ice.    And I’ve read those damn Twilight books and seen the movies, not because I’m on Team Jacob, or like things that Sparkle, but because they’re just bad.

Why, you ask?   Because I’m a unique sort of person who gets enjoyment out of things that are, by definition, god awful.    I love the things that are so bad that they’re good.  I like not liking them.   I like not being the least bit fooled by the pratfalls of professional wrestling.   I like that Stephenie Meyer can’t  write her way out of a paper bag.   And yet, there’s something about it that’s sort of pure.   I think that what really draws me to Crap is its lack of pretension.    Bring It On is not aiming for high-brow, not trying to win a seat at the cool kids’ table, or looking down its nose at anyone.   It just is what it is, and its ease with itself is infectious.  When you’re watching WWE Smackdown at the Arco Arena, screaming at the Villains and hollering for the Good Guy, well, you can just be who you are.

All the better if you’re able to be with two of your best friends in the world, too.   Two girls who love me for who I am, all my imperfections, my insecurities, my loud mouth, or my quiet, bashful, and nervous times.   The ones who not only understand, but who share a few of my idiosyncracies.

And above all else, they can tell when I’m Acting Normal from when I’m being myself.

Of course I love professional wrestling.   It’s so fake that you can’t help but be yourself when you watch it.

Just sayin’

Unshockingly Not Sleeping

It’s probably not escaped your attention, if you’ve been here any length of time at all, that I have two problems.   For one thing, I’m a horrific insomniac and spend many days dragging ass as a result of the many nights I toss, turn, post blogs, toss some more, and tear my hair out.    For a second thing, I have by and far the most inconveniently overactive imagination.   When those two traits conspire against me at the same time, well, it can get pretty ugly over here in Whoville.   (Am I the Grinch?  Not yet, but if I don’t sleep soon, you never can tell to what I may resort.)

And so it comes about that I sit here awake, and since I happen to be sporting the Mother of All Crushes Wholly Unbecoming A Woman My Age (MoACWUAWMW), guess what that imagination is doing to me?   I have no reason in the world to suspect that He is going to ask me what I’m doing this weekend, and after I rattle off the list of stuff I have planned, and He notices that I have nothing going on this Friday, He of course asks me to go bowling.    And since this is a figment of my imagination, and not at all anything like reality, I quickly reply “Sure; that sounds fun,” before I truly understand what’s happening, and then I stammer out, “Um, oh, wait, um, is this a date?”    In reality, if this happened to me I would most likely be wondering in my own head what it meant, arguing with myself, and finally deciding to assume that it’s not a date, because nothing that much like a romantic-comedy plot-line would ever actually happen to me.    Of course, then I would proceed to lose lots of sleep over it.    Anyway, I digress, because in my imagination, he laughs at me, and then says, “Yes, of course it’s a date.”

And in my imagination, I respond with a simple “oh good” and then blush deeply.   But not the kind of blush I do in real life, but more like that super-endearing anime princess kind of way.

And, then I giggle of course, and it doesn’t sound like a gerbil being squeezed to death at all, and no one gawks at me or asks me if I’m dying or faking.   (What?  It’s my fantasy.    Give me this one, OK?)

So, all of that seems lovely, doesn’t it?  But not enough to keep me up all night, right?   Well, of course not, but once we’ve agreed to go on a date, then I have to imagine what I would wear, and how I would tame my hair.   And then there’s all the conversations that I can’t stop myself from imagining happening.

Then it occurs to me that the least I could do is get a blog post out of this.   If I’m going to be awake, that is, I might as well be doing something with the fairy-tale in my head, right?  Right?

And maybe, just maybe, if I could just get some sleep, I might not scare the crap out of my Object of Crush looking like a crazy woman with the bags under the eyes and what-not.

Just sayin’.

The Magic of Pi (a.k.a. My Friends and I Like Puns)

So, if you’ve been paying any attention at all to me or my blog, you know that I’m really great at making conversation at parties…..or not.   Since I usually localize my awkward around some sort of food spread, I have been referring to this for some time as “chatting up the bean dip.”   Usually I’m standing there, eating way too much bean dip, and screaming at myself in my own head, “THINK OF SOMETHING TO SAY TO ANYONE, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!”    I like to go real easy on myself like that.

Anyway, so since yesterday was the 14th of March (3.14), Kayphore put on her second annual Pi Pie Party.   You know, because Π is roughly 3.14.   It’s a math pun.   Get it?  No.  OK, well, just go with me and keep in mind that we’re all nerds.

The annual Pi Pie Party involves two things, making a pie and then eating a whole lot of pie.    It’s a pie baking contest combined with a contest with your own will power to shove as much pie into your pie hole as possible.   I know that eating a bunch of pie just sounds like fun, but trust me when I say that it can be a lot more complicated than that.

But it’s a party.   And that is its own challenge.   So, I decided to sort of combine my awkwardness with the theme to make a joke that only I would really get.   Why?   Because I’m a nerd.   A shy nerd.   A shy nerd who is too easily amused.

I conceived of the perfect pie to sum up (hahaha ….more math puns) my party induced social awkwardness – the Vegan 5-Layer Bean Dip Pie with Fritos Crust.     I chose to go with a vegan pie so that every possible party goer could sample some.   I didn’t want to limit my audience.   And after last years massive sugar crash, I decided that a savory pie was the way to go.    I looked for a recipe for a corn chip crust, and found one that was pretty basic.   Crush up the corn chips and mix with butter, form into a pan, and bake.   However, since I was going to be going for vegan, butter was out.    I opted for olive oil.   I have to say, the crust did not turn out the way I wanted it to.   Other pi party attendees commented that I had not crushed my chips enough.   Next time, I’ll have to try finer chip crumbs, and also some sort of binding unit to add to the mix.

In the pie shell, I layered refried black beans, chopped black olives, salsa, guacamole, and vegan “sour cream”.   If you ever find that you can’t come across vegan “sour cream”, try vegan “cream cheese” mixed with lemon juice.   I topped the whole thing in a sprinkling of green onions and served it with Fritos scoops on the side.

I actually got a few compliments on it, so it wasn’t a complete disaster, or anything.   Of course, once again, I did not win any of the prizes.   But the party did end up being fun, and I did manage to carry on a few conversations with a few actual human beings.   There were many more attendees than last year’s pi, which was equally fun and nerve wracking.  I think I made a fellow nerd giz in his pants when I told him where I work.   That never gets old.

So, now I have two imperfect pie recipes under my belt.   It might help if I started making pies in-between pis, but honestly, I’m not that sort of well prepared type of person.

Just sayin’.

CSG has A Crush

When was the last time you had a crush on someone?  I mean, really legitimately had a Crush on someone?   Junior High or High School, perhaps?   Well, my 32-year-old ass has got one.  Got it real bad, in fact.

I’m sure this guy has no clue.   Also, I’m about 90% sure that he’s off the market.   And yet, I’m totally dumb for him, and I can’t stop my brain from wandering in his particular direction.   Unwelcome and unbidden thoughts popping into my little brain while I’m trying to go about my life, attempting to be a human being.   It’s really hard to look at HTML when your brain is flashing kissing scenes in your head.    Can I just reiterate that part where this person is oblivious to me?    Maybe if I keep reminding myself, it’ll all go away.  I don’t want to be this stupid.

The thing is, though, that all this stuff, for me, well it’s been awhile.   Let’s think about this.   I’ve been single for almost two years.  Actually, next Saturday will be exactly two years.    So, while I’ve stuck my pinky toe in the dating pool a few times in the last two years, mostly it’s just been a big fat awkward mess.   A mess that isn’t helping my confidence level at all.   I mean, how do I Do This?   How does a Crazy Single Girl let it be known when she wouldn’t mind too terribly at all if you brushed the hair out of her eyes, ran you fingers down her cheeks, lifted her chin…Oh crap.  I’m doing it again.

Anyway, so before a year and 51 weeks ago, I had been with the same guy for over two years.    We started dating a day or two after my previous boyfriend dumped me.  (I don’t recommend this, by the way)   So, in effect, it’s been almost five years, since I’ve played this game, and I am having trouble getting back into it.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, how do you let someone know that you have been thinking about him.  Thinking about him more than just a little, but rather a lot actually.   And I’d like to spend more time with him.  Listen to him talk about anything.   To sit him and stare into his blue eyes. (of course they’re blue)    How do you even begin to tell someone all that, you know, without sounding like a complete nutter?

The answer is, you don’t.   There’s no way to dive into all that without coming across as a stalker.   So, the question is, how do you start?  Where do you start?   What do you say that will eventually lead the conversation in that direction?   I wouldn’t even know where to begin.   And I don’t want to be an ass, assuming that I’m right and he is off the market.

And so, you see, I have a silly crush, and I don’t know what to do about it, and even if I did know, I shouldn’t do anything about it.

Just sayin’.