I'll Be Here AND There

I have started something new! Don't worry, I am not leaving MiddleSister. I will be posting here intermittently, (no less intermittently that I already have been) however, please take a moment to join me at my new blog as well, Desolate in Denver. I had to create a new blog that involved me getting out of the house a little because in all honesty, I am going crazy without a job, and housewifery isn't really my thing. So, yes, I will still be here at MiddleSister with the usual goofy stories on as regular a basis as possible, however, I hope you can also get some enjoyment out of the things going on here where I will be writing a little more often and working the advertising angle a bit. Even if you are not living in Denver, I think you might find some fun and interesting stuff to do in your own town. Alpaca farm, anyone? :) See you around!

Due to Trying Economic Times...

Please don’t expect the usual today. I am venting a bit.

I knew it was coming. I started my new job in August; the banks started begging for government money in September. My company made the first round of layoffs in November. I kept quiet, did my work, tried not to cause any problems or be a bitch to anyone, and attempted to look busy even though I really wasn’t. That worked through two more rounds of layoffs, my friend from the marketing department even getting cut two weeks ago. Then Monday morning my boss sent me a meeting invite with no subject. Just me and her. I knew it was going to happen before it actually happened, but for some reason there was a relative calm involved. At least on my part; my boss looked like a wreck. I went back to my desk and turned on my computer. The headline on CNN read “68,000 Jobs Cut Today in North America” I am suddenly not alone.

It was a good job, albeit short-lived. The pay was great, I never felt stressed out, and I left at four everyday with everything in my inbox completed. While writing about electronic components (motherboards, AC/DC converters, accelerometers, microchips of various shapes and sizes) was new to me, I never once found it all that interesting, and creativity in a company comprised of almost solely engineers is seemingly frowned upon. I never felt passion about working there, but I did feel stability.

I write this from my favorite neighborhood bar. Mike and I frequent this place because of the great burgers, nice staff, and the proximity to our house (stumbling distance for sure). I have never really been in here in the light of day, though. There are three older gentlemen to my left talking animatedly about past drinking encounters and establishments. Another man sits to my right in silence, sipping a Budweiser and staring at ESPN, still donning his knit hat with Elmer-Fudd style earflaps. There is one guy in the far corner at a table sitting in front of his own laptop. I imagine that he is working on his resume, which is what I should be doing. The Beatles sing Blackbird out of the speakers. I am so not ready to be out of work again.

I am trying to have a good attitude. Having been laid off before, I have learned that being positive is important. So here are the positives as it stands right now:

I am going skiing tomorrow with my also-laid-off marketing friend.
My hair looks awesome because I dropped $200 on it last weekend before I knew what was coming.
They say the economy should hit bottom and head back up any time now.
I have a few writing projects that could potentially use a dusting off so that they can become more than just projects.
I get a paycheck and health benefits through the end of March.
My dog is very happy about the situation. He knows the drill: more walks, more tennis ball throwing, more rides in the car.
I have some freelance work basically lined up already.
Umm.. I write this from my favorite neighborhood bar.

The last time I got laid off, the company I was working for eliminated their entire marketing department so I had many friends in the same situation. We were in our early to mid-twenties, and they made the mistake of giving us six month’s salary in one check. We did what any other intelligent, unemployed young people would do: we took our giant checks and went to Vegas. I am older and wiser now. With that comes being scared shitless even though I don’t have to be. Mike does well in the recession-proof beer industry, which actually tends to thrive in times like these when people need a cheap way to forget about their troubles. I am not above letting him handle things until I find something. I feel above it, but I’m pretty sure I’m actually not. Life has a funny way of always working out; I know this. Even the shittiest things have a way of teaching lessons and all of that other crap that supposedly makes you a better person.

This could be a chance in disguise, the kick in the ass I needed, or a break with a reason. I know these things. And I know that I shouldn’t be whining right now because there are 67,999 other people who are going through the same thing I am this week, (and apparently millions more since September) and I’m sure many of them don’t have a beer-magnate sugar daddy to save them. Still the visions of buying our cute little Craftsman bungalow and having an awesome wedding are suddenly slipping down the drain, and I am feeling a little pissed off about it. Wasn’t Barack Obama supposed to put on a red cape and come save everyone?

I am going to give our President a few weeks. And I am going to give myself a little time to figure this all out. And I am going to be productive with this time that I have been given. I can catch up on the laundry and be a mooch and write the great American novel at the same time. Stay tuned.

Not Marlo Thomas, But That Other Girl

In the past, I was never one to picture getting married. I never went husband hunting. I never accepted dates with the thought in my mind that I would potentially marry the suitor. I never swooned over white dresses and flowers and never felt even the slightest bit jealous during the seven times I have served as a bridesmaid. I have even been proposed to before in a young, dumb, lovestruck moment, and as young as I was, I still had the wherewithal to say no. Then I broke up with that guy a week later because it was just too much pressure.

I planned on making my own way in the world. Living the single life, getting a couple more dogs and a house with some land, maybe adopting after forty, traveling the world, writing quietly in a sunny corner of my own house, on my own terms, doing things my own way. In fact right now, as I type these thoughts on to the screen of my little MacBook, it all still sounds really appealing.

I’ve changed though.

I don’t know what the life-altering event or moment was, but I have definitely had a serious change of heart. Maybe it was meeting the right guy, or reaching a certain age, or becoming the recipient of a ticking biological clock that I never asked for or expected. Maybe it was seeing my niece and nephew and my best friend’s daughter and how they become more like those people that I love each day--- yeah, I’ll take some of that. Maybe it was realizing that sad and scary things are going to happen in life, and while being independent and self-sufficient will always be considered virtues in my mind, I now know that there will be times when I need a true teammate and he needs me back. Maybe it is a combination of all of the above. I just never thought I would turn into that girl, but I think it may have happened while I wasn’t paying attention.

Maybe just a tiny little bit.

Mike and I are going on four years of togetherness. We are in our early thirties. We love each other and want to be together. We share a home and a budget and chores and furry children. We both want children of the non-furry variety. I was ready just to dive in and start with the babies, but Mike thought we should be all traditional-like and get married first. This discussion took place about a year ago. We’ve looked at rings. We’ve talked about potential wedding venues and styles. We’ve talked about the future children we would have, potentially redheaded, and definitely tall, and surely with golden eyes. Daniel (if I get my way) for a boy, Alexis for a girl. These are real discussions we have had. He even screwed himself by setting a deadline, stating “We will definitely be engaged by the end of the year”

Then my friends started to get in on the action.

Mike and I went backpacking in July and all of my friends convinced me that he was taking me out into the middle of the woods to ask me to marry him. I bought into that theory. It made sense, right? Just the two of us and our trusty dog alone in the wilderness. Side by side climbing mountains, making macaroni and cheese, and sipping whiskey from a flask by the fire. The blue skies, the birdsong, the majestic Colorado mountains on all sides. What a perfect place to propose. Ok, except for the shitting in the woods, and the dog romantically sharing our two-man tent. Giant blisters? Check. Dreadlocks forming in my formerly cute hair? Check. Both of us smelling very similar to large farm animals. Check and check. Maybe the backpacking proposal scenario wasn’t the way to go.


A couple weeks later, I raced in a triathlon on my birthday. A girlfriend became convinced that Mike was going to propose as I crossed the finish line. She spun a romantic tale of me triumphing over a major physical challenge on the same day I turned 32, and then being rewarded at the end of it all with a giant romantic and public gesture from my ultra creative and adoring boyfriend. I was horribly sick during the race, and it was 97 degrees outside that day. There were a couple times during the last stretch of the run where I thought I might not make it. The thought of Mike asking me to marry him as I crossed the line pushed me through. As I finished the race, Mike was standing at the line poised to go down on one knee, when suddenly he whipped out his effing iPhone and began telling me what my splits were (worse than last year when I was not in the throes of bronchitis, and when it was 70 degrees outside). My dad stood beside him and said “You don’t look so good, Cara; you’re very red.”

Needless to say, there was no romantic marriage proposal.

There have been other opportunities over the past few months, too, but no such luck. However when the holidays rolled around and Mike voluntarily booked a romantic, secluded, riverside cabin in wine country where we would stay for two nights before heading down to his parents’ house in San Francisco, I knew what was coming. He did this voluntarily. He PLANNED stuff out that didn’t involve purchasing furniture or six hundred-dollar ski boots. He did it all on his own.

I told friends and co-workers that this was it. That was a really dumb thing to do.

Upon arriving in the Russian River Valley, we stopped at the grocery store before heading to the cabin so that we could enjoy a light dinner of wine and cheese and fruit and dark chocolate. It was all very romantic. I began to analyze every move furiously. I applied lipgloss approximately every three minutes. I fussed with my hair and tried desperately to make my 22-hour-roadtrip sweatpants look as sexy as possible. We sat in front of the fire. We sat in the hot tub. We snuggled up on the couch. We gazed into each others eyes. And then... nothing happened. Except for that I started to get a little tired of being so polite and ladylike.

The next morning we were going to taste wine at several vineyards. I put on a little extra mascara and actually blew out my hair.

I wasn’t real smart at the first tasting. Mike was buying wine from the guy behind the counter, and apparently when they find out you’re buying, they start to get a little more liberal with the pouring. I was really enjoying myself. I was sampling champagne and pinot noir one after another, a lethal combination. As we were leaving, I stated tipsily that I needed a sandwich to which Mike replied, “You are so cute.”

Ummm, just for the record, neither one of us say things like that very often. I mean we both dish out the compliments on a regular basis, and we are affectionate and loving, but we really don’t dote that much. I knew it was a sign. But first, I needed that sandwich.

That night, back at the cabin, we cooked together and talked and laughed and joked around the way we do all the time. After all that fun, we went to sit on the couch in the living room in front of the fire. Mike dimmed the lights and handed me a glass of wine. I got super nervous. This was it. I was going to get engaged right then. I was going to say yes and spend the rest of my life with this crazy redhead whom I adore. I was going to get jewelry! Mike sat down next to me, threw his arm around my shoulders, kissed me haphazardly, half on my cheek, half in my hair. Then he said the words I will never forget.

“Packers-Bears have Monday night, wanna watch?”

And under normal circumstances my answer would have been a resounding yes. Do you know why? Because unlike so many other women, I actually know football. This alone should be grounds for proposal! But alas, it was not to be. And so I did what any other low-maintenance, sports-loving, marriage-quality girl would do. I shrieked at him. And I teared up. And I became everything about being a girl that I have always hated “What in the hell are we doing here? We came here to watch FOOTBALL!?!?” I was aghast and Mike was, well, he was simply floored. Needless to say, it was a long discussion that followed.

His beloved Packers lost to Chicago that night, and I lost the game I had been playing with my own emotions. I admitted defeat, and gave up trying to control everything. I am not proud of my behavior. I am not that girl. Adding insult to injury, a girl who is dating one of Mike’s buddies told one of my best friends that all I talk about is getting married. I don’t think she realized she was talking to one of my closest friends and that it would get directly back to me, and you know how girls can be sometimes. But still, as a smart woman with what I believe is a lot to offer intellectually and conversationally, it stung a little bit to hear that. (in my defense, another girl at the table had just gotten engaged, and we were on the subject, but whatever)

So, I am going to take a moment to write my own vows. Only these aren’t wedding vows.

I am vowing to let it go.

I vow to not mention weddings or marriage to Mike or to anyone else until I actually have a wedding and a marriage to plan. And even then, I will keep it to a bare minimum, because everyone knows that girl, too.

I vow to wait patiently for what I know will happen in due time, even though it makes me feel like one of the secretaries from Mad Men waiting around for a man to save her. Still, I vow to enjoy the moments we have together as a young, childless, unmarried couple while I still can.

I vow to not again, in passing, say things to Mike like, “Did you know that babies born to women over the age of 35 have a forty per cent increased chance of Downs Syndrome?” and then glide effortlessly out of the room, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

I vow to be the low-maintenance girl he loves, and I vow not to put pressure on him.

I vow not to be that girl anymore.

Till death do I part.

A Cabbage Patch Christmas Special

It was December 1984. I was an eight-year old third grader dealing with a serious issue, and I needed some answers right away. Some of the kids in my class had started fairly somber discussions about the fact that Santa Claus may not actually be real. I joined in with a couple of the other believers, arguing the fact that Santa Claus did indeed exist and offering proof in the form of munched-on cookies that I had left for him last year and a pink bicycle under the tree that I was certain my single mother could not afford. This debate going down right in the middle of Mrs. Green’s class was a heated one, so much so, that I turned to my mother for some adult wisdom. I knew she would be straight with me.

However, instead of being straight with me when I asked her outright if there was a Santa, she pulled off a skilled Freudian move. “Do you think there’s a Santa?” she asked me in the way she had of always talking to children as if they were grown ups.

I thought about it a lot. What did I think? Was it possible that I had been a victim of a cruel prank each year for my entire life? Was my mom really the one putting the gifts under the tree each year like the kids were saying at school? It seemed totally plausible and absolutely impossible at the same time. That is when a genuine stroke of genius hit my tiny eight-year old brain.

The holiday season of 1984 went down in history as the year of the Cabbage Patch Kid. There were stories all over the news every evening about how the illusive dolls were impossible to find. Mothers and fathers were fighting and pushing and yelling in order to get their hands on one of the ugly things for their precious children. There were brawls in the aisles of K-Marts across the country, and footage on CBS of grownups playing angry games of tug-o-war with the innocent, dimpled cloth children. It was mayhem, and my little sister and I watched enrapt, totally impressed that a toy for kids our age could garner so much adult attention. The news stories were all saying the same thing: it was completely impossible to get a Cabbage Patch Kid.

I’d only seen one of them in person once. A girl in my class had one and brought in to show it off. It had blonde yarn hair with wide blue eyes and a blue and white checked dress reminiscent of Dorothy’s in the Wizard of Oz. I asked if I could hold the doll, and the girl was actually a real bitch about it, so I let it go. Some people’s kids. Either way, I knew we were kind of poor, so I understood that this was probably going to be as close to a real live Cabbage Patch Kid as I ever got. Until, of course, the aforementioned stroke of genius.

I told my mother right then, about two weeks before Christmas, that I would know there was a Santa Claus if I had a Cabbage Path Kid waiting under the tree for me that year. I even added on that my Cabbage Patch Kid would have green eyes like me, just to make sure that Santa, whoever he or she may be, knew that I meant business.

Had I been old enough to notice such things, I’m sure there was an obvious twinkle in my mother’s eye as I said this. I know the twinkle well from my older years, but as a kid, I just wasn’t as attuned to those nuances.

Sometime during the previous July, my mom had been out shopping while my sisters and I were at my dad’s for the weekend. She had picked up a couple of strange looking dolls on sale thinking that they might make cute Christmas gifts for me and my little sister. She stuck them up on the top shelf of her closet with a few other gifts that she had purchased throughout the year and there they sat. Those poor little Cabbage Patch Kids sat in the dark closet for the next six months, never realizing how popular they had become out in the real world. My mom just sat back and watched all the crazies with what could have only been a slightly smug look on her face.

On Christmas morning 1984, my sister and I ran down to the Christmas tree the way that small children are wont to do. We tore into our stockings and the piles of fabulous gifts under the tree. Among many other things, there were Cabbage Patch tee shirts and cassette tapes for each of us, and while I appreciated these items, I was still vocal about the fact that they did not count. Just as I was about to throw in the towel and write off Santa Claus for good, my mom pointed out two larger wrapped boxes, side-by-side, tucked at the very back of the tree against the wall. Bingo. I knew the shape of the box by heart. I grabbed my sister by the sleeve of her nightgown, “Courtney, look!”

Hungrily, we ripped the paper from our respective boxes. Two Cabbage Patch Kids with green eyes. Mine was a pigtailed redhead named Lee-Ann Lottie (scarily, this is what my real children may actually look like if I hang on to Mike). Courtney’s was a brunette who actually bore a striking resemblance to her. They had been delivered to us straight from Santa Claus, and we were basically the luckiest kids in the world at that very moment. It was a Christmas miracle right there in our little townhouse. Just for that last bit of proof, I pulled Lee-Ann from her box and yanked down her tiny pants. Sure enough, right across her right buttock was the signature. Xavier Roberts. It might as well have been signed by Santa himself; I was officially a believer again.

A few months later, because she felt it was time and because I was obviously a little too dense to figure it out on my own like all the other third graders, my mother explained to me how the whole Santa thing really worked. I took it sort of hard, but told her that I understood. She then asked me not to tell my sister, who was only six and was still young enough to believe. I promised not to…

…and then went directly upstairs to find Courtney. I found her in the bathroom sitting on the toilet with a Berenstein Bears book in her lap. “Corky, we have to talk,” I told her, trying to portray the seriousness of the situation on my face. I went on to explain to her everything my mom had asked me not to. She got upset and went running to my mom who had no choice but to confirm the bad news. I had done what I felt I had to. It was only fair that we should both be given the option of grieving the loss of Santa at the same time. My mom told me a few years ago that she got a call from Courtney’s teacher not long after my spilling of the beans. Apparently some of the other first-graders’ parents were upset that Courtney was explaining the Santa concept to their children prematurely. I’m sure my mom wanted to strangle me at that point.

A couple of months after we lost our mom in 2006, I randomly opened one of her boxes of stuff right before Christmas. I am not sure what I was looking for, and I had been pretty reluctant to open any of it until that point. But for some reason I opened a box that was full of random paperwork and photographs that had been haphazardly tucked away. I sat on the floor of my little office ,which had been converted into a storage room for my mother’s things until I could figure out what to do with them, and I went through that single box. There were a few old bills, a 1950’s picture of my great grandfather and his dog back in Ireland, some random photographs of my sisters and I as little kids. I pulled out my mom’s nursing license and her citizenship papers, probably two of the most important papers that she had in her lifetime, and right beneath them were the two most important papers that she had left behind. Two ornate birth certificates from the summer of 1984 for two very special dolls, signed by Xavier Roberts. Right then, right when I was so broken, so devoid of holiday spirit, and so desperately craving something, anything at all to believe in, I got all the evidence of Santa Claus that I will ever need, and I will never doubt again.

The Furniture Row

Mike and I belong together, this much I know. What is baffling to both of us, and to many of our family members is how we figured out that we belong together without killing each other. The writer and the engineer, the creative and the math-nerd, the seat-of-the-pants flyer and the extensive analyzer.

We somehow managed to get through the first year and a half of our relationship by cracking each other up while enjoying many of the same outdoor activities. I think all of the skiing and hiking and wrestling with my dog and laughing like crazy was enough to keep our minds off of the fact that we are fundamentally and absolutely complete opposites to our cores. We drank a lot, too, so that probably didn’t hurt either.

After that first year or so, he stuck by my side, no questions asked, while I went through the hardest thing that has ever happened to me and the subsequent grief-stricken personality 180 that accompanied it. Strangely, though, even with a personality 180, we still remained opposites, and while I won't attempt to explain how this is possible, I'm sure Mike could provide you with some analysis of the situation if you really need to understand. Anyway, this led to us moving in together two years ago where it quickly became clear that we were going to have to work really hard to overcome our giant personality differences. We have worked at it, and so far no on has gotten hurt, at least not irreparably so. We remained in love and happy and meant for each other. Until this week, after almost two years of living-in-sin bliss we decided to make our first large purchase together.

We need new furniture. In a very bad way. We needed new furniture two years ago, but it kind of got away from us, and so we have spent the last two years attempting to make my ten-year old, first-apartment, American Furniture Warehouse clearance special look clean in lieu of the fact that it has survived Blue's puppyhood along with several out-of-hand red wine nights with the girls back in my old apartment. The dog hair is permanently woven into every inch of the fabric of this couch; no amount of vacuuming or brushing can remove it. The arms of the once-trendy and decorative chair were destroyed during a particularly traumatic time in my cat's life. The once silvery-grey color is now a musty brownish-green, and the pillows are so misshapen that they resemble musty, brownish-green sacks of trash. This is not the furniture for classy grown ups to have in their cute little Park Hill bungalow. This stuff is at the end of its life, and even desperate college students would have put it out of its misery months ago. Off we went on our mission forgetting momentarily how horribly we shop together.

I knew there was trouble when Mike and I first moved in together. I asked him to go grab some dish soap at the store while I wandered in search of mascara. After getting my preferred brand of mascara, and then poking around with some of the fancier lotions that Target has to offer for a few minutes, I went in search of Mike leaving a scented trail of green tea and freesia in my wake. I rounded the corner into the household aisle and stopped short. There was my boyfriend at the end of the aisle reading the labels of two large bottles of dish soap. His forehead was creased in concentration and his lips were moving, reading the words on the back of each bottle. Then he stopped reading and actually started to think. He was thinking about soap. Really hard.

“Hi,” I said, although I was reluctant to break his concentration. He looked up at me, his eyes still glassy from his soap coma. “Come on, just get the one that’s on sale” I grabbed the bottle from his left hand.

“That one is more expensive per ounce,” he informed me, “this one is a better deal, but it could be drying to our hands”

This very important four-dollar decision took about 20 minutes and a couple of math equations. Furniture costs a thousand times that. That is 20 thousand minutes of analysis according to my math. I didn’t think we were going to make it through this. But alas, we did.

Tuesday night we headed into Sofa Mart after I got done swimming at the gym. This is when we discovered that shopping for sofas after a day at work followed by a strenuous workout is very similar to grocery shopping when starving. Every couch I threw myself down upon suddenly became the most comfortable couch I had ever encountered. I was just so happy to be off of my feet. As the only customers in the giant store on a weeknight during a recession, we quickly became the salesman's favorite people in the world. Especially once I began lying down and dramatically stating, "We'll take it" or "Sold" over and over on every single couch with Mike turning narrowed eyes on me each time. I sat on every leather couch in the place, found one that was attractive, fit into our budget, and seemed to me like it would fit into our living room, and told Mike that we should get it. The salesman perked up from his spot on my future recliner and moved to get the paperwork. "We'll sleep on it", Mike said, causing the poor guy to slump back into the chair.

On the way home, Mike explained to me that we still had several stores to check out, many more couches on which to sit, and numerous additional sales people who were all dying to be bothered by us. I was confused. I had done my furniture shopping, had made my decision, and was eagerly awaiting the date of delivery so that my living room would look gorgeous and modern. Mike had other plans entirely.

And these plans involved graph paper and rulers and some advanced schematic design.

He put himself to work, one eye on the Nuggets game, one eye on his project. He measured and drew a to-scale rendering of our living room, and then cut out mini-versions of the furniture I had chosen based on the specs the salesman had given him. He then proceeded to move the little paper cutouts around in circles on the page until he declared that the furniture I had so painstakingly decided on based on amenities such as “brownness” and “proximity to the entrance of the store” would simply not fit in our living room. “Ummm, ok,” I said, eager to be helpful, “we just won’t get the ottoman.”

Mike shook his head and went back to his nerds’ version of paper-dolls while I stared at my laptop pretending to write while trying to think of ways to get out of going to look at more furniture even though I did actually care about what we ended up with. With electronics, it is much easier. I feign stupidity and tell him that he can decide, and I will chip in for whatever he gets as long as I am not forced to go and look at seven-point-three million HD, LCD, flat screen, super-duper, crystal vision, sports-monster televisions. The TV that I bought at the same time I bought the godforsaken furniture was 100 dollars at Target, and it is a Daewoo. I’m not kidding. Daewoo. And guess what. Ten years later, the picture is still great, and we can even play RockBand on it. Who needs a 1500-dollar Samsung?

After four days of shopping in seven furniture stores, three trips to Macy’s, and only one argument, we will have our new furniture in just a couple of weeks. And we even both learned something. I learned that not every single decision can be made on a whim (although I stick to my guns that this method has served me well for my life thus far.) Mike learned that, at some point, it becomes time to simply decide, even if not every single sofa in the 48 contiguous states has had his ass in its seats. And as usual, we both remembered that our differences are what keep our relationship so fun and interesting and stimulating, and yes, sometimes frustrating, but usually in a good way. We love each other and are capable of making large and important decisions together despite our differences, which is a skill that will serve us well in our long, healthy future together.

Speaking of which, what in the hell is taking him so long with that ring?

Never Let Them See You Sweat

It’s official. I have to switch gyms.

I have mentioned before how I always feel awkward at the gym, but last week, I really took that to a new level. I went straight to the gym after work and actually felt kind of pretty strolling in wearing a cute dress, control top pantyhose, and sassy heels, my Nike gym bag slung ever-so-casually over my shoulder. I walked straight back to the locker room, changed into my workout clothes, and got ready to hit the floor. I realized that I had forgotten a ponytail holder. This wasn’t a HUGE deal, not like forgetting running shoes, or even a sports bra, however, it still takes away from the sanctity of a workout when you have wet, sweaty hair stuck to your face and neck. I decided that I would go to the front desk and ask for a rubber band thinking that having a few broken hairs would be a fair trade for keeping my mane out of my face for the next hour. First though, I had to pee.

The bathrooms at 24Hour Fitness are not always in the best of shape. So while I am not normally a huge germ freak, I do take serious precautions at the gym in order to protect my nether regions from horrible locker-room concoctions like staph and athletes’ foot. So, I spread toilet paper liberally on the seat before sitting down. (my bad knees just can't handle the squat method)

After going to the bathroom, washing my hands, and shutting my locker, I strolled towards the front desk to ask if they had a rubber band I could have. They did not, so I decided I would check the depths of my gym bag pockets one more time before resigning to a sticky workout. As I was walking back towards the locker room, I absentmindedly reached to scratch an itchy spot on my lower back. That is when I discovered that I had about three feet of toilet paper hanging out of the waistband of my workout pants and trailing behind me like a cheap wedding dress.

Devastation ensued.

I had paraded through my crowded gym with a toilet paper tail while the onlookers could only stare, rather than graciously stopping me. And who were these girls in the packed locker room who let me walk out like that?

As I yanked the TP from the back of my pants, I looked up to see three guys standing together in front of the water fountain all staring at me with smirks. I disappeared into the solace of the locker room and hung out in the doorway for a minute pleading with my cheeks to go back to their normal color. It took every ounce of courage I had to go back out into the gym for my workout, but I did it.

After the first five minutes on the elliptical with my hair already plastered against my neck, one of the smirkers from downstairs hopped on the machine next to mine. I looked up. He smirked again. I rolled my eyes. And then I proceeded to do what any self-respecting woman would do in this situation. I kicked his proverbial cardio ass.

I looked at his screen and, with purpose, set my cross-ramp higher than his. Then I upped my resistance so that he looked wimpy by comparison. He looked at my screen and turned up his cross-ramp. I only cranked mine higher. He started going faster. I zoned out on my “best-workout-mix-ever” playlist and got my pace up about three times faster than his. When he got off 30 minutes later, I went for ten more minutes, completely aware of his stares from across the room. I finished my workout and walked out on wobbly legs, smirking at him where he was sprawled innocently on the ab roller.

“Take that!” my smile said, “This is MY gym! I will wear my toilet paper proudly, and I will beat you at any machine out there! Bring it!”

In what can only be a moral to this story, I spent the rest of that evening feeling like crap from over-exerting myself and suffered from a pulled muscle for the rest of the week.

Totally worth it.

Prisoner of Wishing

I overslept by a few minutes this morning; Mike startled me out of a dream to rouse me. Just seconds before, I had been following my mom around our old house. She was looking for something, and I was helping her look while carrying a bag of chocolate chip cookies. I was shoving cookies in my mouth one after another. Upon waking, the dream immediately began to fade, and because I so rarely dream of my mother, I tried to make my brain hold on to it. I stumbled sleepily to the shower, threw my pajamas on the floor, stood beneath the hot water and closed my eyes, willing the image to come back, desperate to remember her voice.

I focused. The cookies I could explain. After spending the past few months working out and limiting calories like a fiend, I am accustomed to waking up with a rumble in my stomach and very odd dreams about junk food. But what was my mother looking for in my dream? I kept thinking about it and trying to get it back, and eventually it came to me. My mom had been searching for her MIA-POW bracelet. Room to room she wandered through the old townhouse we had moved into when I was in 6th grade. And I was following her, helping her look, still eating the stupid cookies. It made total sense. Except for the part where it didn't at all.

My mom was born in 1953, slightly too young to be a real hippie in the 60’s. There were no cross-country treks to the Haight-Ashbury, no real love-fests or drum circles, and she was too young to be allowed to march on Washington without parental supervision. However, the attitude of the times had definitely affected her, and she spent her life knowing, preaching, and demonstrating the importance of tolerance, peace, and equality, and she made sure that those values were passed directly to me and my sisters. She told us stories of the 60’s on rare occasion. Her best friend, Teri, usually had a starring role, and her stories of rebellion seemed thoughtful and with purpose, in contrast with my high school crimes of skipping class and smoking Camel Wides for the sole purpose of pissing her off.

At some point in the early 70’s, right after high school, she and Teri took a trip to San Francisco. I am pretty sure that was where she purchased her MIA bracelet. A student group in California had started printing the simple, cuff-style bracelets bearing the name and rank of a soldier missing in Vietnam to bring much-needed attention to the MIA-POW issue and to the families who were struggling in the vast unknown. I imagine that my mom purchased it because it was something she believed in strongly, although I know that the bracelets were also very trendy with the aspiring-hippie types. My mom hung on to that bracelet for the next 20 years.

Until I got ahold of it.

The hippie culture came back in style while I was in high school, although we called it grunge. It was an Eddie Vedder- and Kurt Cobain-fueled attitude and uniform that bore a small resemblance to the hippie lifestyle of the 60’s, at least that’s what my friends and I told ourselves. (Hell, we even tried to bring back the Dead.) In trying to keep with staying super-cool and hippie-ish with my high-school friends, I frequently begged my mom to let me borrow her MIA bracelet, knowing that wearing a real piece of the 60's would make me even more popular than my ripped flannel shirt and Lollapalooza tee already had. While she had always been generous with her things, that bracelet was the one thing she wouldn’t let me borrow. In retrospect, I think it was the last remaining tangible piece of her sordid youth after marrying into an instant family, having kids, and divorcing all while still in her 20’s, and she wanted to protect it, keep it sacred. But I wasn’t thinking in retrospect then; I was a selfish 15-year old who only cared about being cool.

So I took the bracelet out of her jewelry box one morning before school and wore it. Over the course of the day, after bending the three-dollar, 20-year-old piece of aluminum for the umpteenth time to keep it from slipping off my bony wrist, the bracelet broke into two pieces. I was initially very upset. However, after thinking it through, and being the honest, responsible, and respectful little snot that I was, I threw the broken piece of history into the dumpster, and then swore to my mother for the next two years that I hadn’t seen it every time she went looking.

I never told her what really happened. Even later when we became friends in my twenties I still didn’t spill it. I told her about smoking pot in high school a couple of times, and I told her how old I was when I lost my virginity, and I told her who really stole the bottle of tequila from the pantry (not, as she had so innocently assumed, the house sitter from the summer vacation of ’92.) But I never told her what I did to her bracelet. Maybe it was because it never came up, but probably it was because I still felt horrible about it. Still do. In fact, even more now.

So, any psychoanalyst worth her salt could easily pinpoint the meaning of this morning’s dream, the one that has been haunting me all day. It’s pretty easy to figure out a dream when it is about something that actually happened. What I couldn’t understand, though, was what brought up that old bracelet-guilt after almost 20 years.

At some point today, it occurred to me, and I was actually able to decode the way my normally jacked-up mind was working

The feeling that I have had in my adult life every time I have thought about that bracelet is actually very similar to the feeling that I had last night watching Barack Obama win the presidential election. I know that sounds weird because I was ecstatic last night. But as that initial euphoria wore off, there was momentarily a familiar wishful longing.

I wish I wasn’t such a spoiled brat when I was 15. I have wished a million times since that day that I had just left that bracelet where it belonged, nestled on the blue velvet that lined my mom’s antique jewelry box. I wish. I wish. I wish.

I wish that my mom would have been around to see what happened in America last night, to see that the things she believed in and instilled in her children were actually, finally coming true in the rest of the country. She would have been so happy; she would have cried tears of joy just like I did.

I wished that Senator Obama would win, and it came true, but I also wish that history wasn’t happening without my mom around to see it. I wish she wasn’t MIA. I wish. I wish. I wish. Sometimes I feel like I will never stop wishing.

(But, on the bright side, I am glad I didn’t really eat all of those cookies.)