the sloppy copy

When I was a kid it bugged me when Mom or Dad or Other Responsible Adult would drive the same route over and over and over again. I became downright giddy when we took the highway instead of back roads, or back roads instead of the highway, or a completely new way I’d never seen before. To my mind, there were no fewer than 25 ways to get to the grocery store and I wanted to see them all.*

So imagine my surprise when I realized this morning – literally, 3 minutes ago – that I’d been approaching a particular long-standing goal of mine in a very linear, uncompromising, it can only be done this one way, damnit! fashion. Without being too specific, I’ve just been assuming that I’d have to go back to school in order to get any kind of measurable shit done with my life.

This has been my attack plan for years. YEARS! And instead of taking the literally 10 seconds to consider the alternatives, I wasted my energy on figuring out how the hell I was going to basically rearrange my life around more fucking education, dreading the entire thing, and resigning myself to selling a kidney on Craigslist to finance it all. Ugh. Talk about a downer, bro. No wonder I’d made zero progress.

I very briefly considered if there was a mental roadblock at play here: Oooh! For complicated Reasons, you’ve subconsciously set yourself up to fail! Oooh! The plot thickens, and — nope. Fuck that. I just let my brain become – what’s the opposite of distracted?

Hey! There’s a first time for everything.

*This is not an exaggeration. This girl used to take the Wunnenberg Street Guide to Saint Louis County into her room and lay on her bed studying it for hours. I wish I could say I was kidding.

map porn. Talk cartography to me, baby.

Today I woke up and realized that, really, I have the freedom to do whatever the hell I want. Go for a run. Make some pancakes. Drink my coffee by the lake. Hell, even sleep in for another hour. My life is great; my responsibilities are not overwhelming.

So I put on this song and danced in my living room.

“Oh my gosh you guys, I just read the most informative article online,” someone says, and my Anger Spiral begins: blood pressure spiking, eyes crossing, teeth clenching and, if it’s really bad, something explodes inside of my skull. 

Sometimes I’m the one who comes across the “most informative article everrrrr” and the reaction is the same. Like today, when I found something about “15 Natural Ways to Avoid Getting the Flu” blah blah blah. The title alone caused me to twitch, and the article itself was as terrible as I hoped-whydidIclickonthatwhatismyproblemwhatthehelljulie?!*

Here, let me summarize it for you:

1. Don’t fucking lick your desk at work. Don’t lick bathroom door handles. Don’t lick your friends. Don’t lick the goddamn floor. And if you think this is ridiculous, I just saw you bite your fucking fingernails and WHAT IS THE LAST THING YOU TOUCHED? 

2. Take vitamins. Not because they do shit for you, but because having an impressive display of vitamins in your kitchen is an instant credibility-booster because look at you, douchebag! You know stuff about things! Actually, just buy a shit ton of vitamins and put them on your counter. Invite people over. Wait for the swoon. BECAUSE THESE IDIOTS CANNOT WAIT FOR YOU TO TELL THEM ABOUT THE BENEFITS OF ECHINACEA. 

Except NO, asshole. NO ONE CARES. You will invite people over, and no one will show, and you can’t catch the flu from imaginary friends.

Problem solved.

3. Sleep. And drink water. And don’t cram shitty processed food into your mouth-hole every single goddamn meal. You only get one body; it’s not a contest to see who wears theirs out the fastest.

See, Gentle Reader(s)? See how important this gem o’ the Internet was to your well-being? A downright groundbreaking piece of journalism, right there – and completely paraphrased for your quick review!

You’re most welcome.

that’s not B12, that’s horse tranquilizer.
photo courtesy of shitty stock photos I googled

*If I had a dollar for every time this exact thought crossed my mind I’d be blogging this from my private island.

Today Graphic Designer Friend invited me over to her house to watch some Sunday football. We had it all planned out: stop by the grocery store first, stock up on provisions, and then back to her place to settle into the couch and take full advantage of a magical thing called NFL RedZone (more on that ‘magical’ bit later) for an entire lazy Sunday afternoon. Her roommates popped in and out, and Iowa Girl stopped by with her little one in tow, and it was altogether a great damn day.

But first: a confession.

I was a little nervous about the whole thing. We’d had it planned out for maybe a week. I’d excitedly agreed to her suggestion of a “football day,” as it’d been over a month since we last hung out. She could have suggested a “grave robbing day” and I would have most likely been on board.

But then I thought about it further (the football thing, not grave robbing). I considered my dearth of football knowledge and mentally weighed it against her fanaticism. I began to worry that I’d be poor company. I imagined her trying to hold in-depth conversations re: strategy or plays or… whatever… and becoming disgusted with my inability to contribute anything meaningful other than “Wow, those cleats sure are pink!”

I know this is gonna shock y’all, but baseball is my first and true love. This is extremely closely followed by hockey. College basketball comes third. I guess football would rank around the fourth spot, but who gives a shit about someone’s fourth-most-loved organized sport?

Despite being raised in a football-loving home, I never took to it. Since almost before I could remember, my immediate family has had a weekly football pool. I have fond memories of my dad typing each week’s matchups on a typewriter with fucking carbon paper so that all three (eventually four) of us could “make our picks.” I dutifully “watched” games with Dad, but for any number of reasons, my little brain just never soaked it all in. I failed to absorb the rules, the overview, the anything. My knowledge of the sport is strictly color-commentary: I know the famous players, I know all the teams. Ask me if the Rams are in the AFC or NFC and I will give you a blank, slack-jawed, stare. Admitting this publicly is shameful. I pray my parents don’t read this.

Because, for whatever reason, they just assume I’m on the same page. Both my Dad and Juanita talk about football with me like I understand what they’re saying. If I straight-up told them now that I have no idea what a “first down” is, they would laugh. Not at my ignorance, but because they’d probably think I was kidding with them.

I once dated a football-obsessed man whom I practically begged to explain football to me. And he was super excited about it at first. We set up a Sunday where we would watch a game and he promised to explain everything that was happening. But then the game came on and “his” team was apparently sucking it up so he bailed. “It doesn’t matter. This is a terrible game,” he said when I asked what was going on.

We didn’t last, for what it’s worth.

Fast forward to today – a day that I imagined would end with me bored to tears, bored to anger, or a terrible combination of both.

Okay. So I exaggerate a bit when I say I don’t have any idea what’s going on. I know enough to know when things are getting interesting.

Enter RedZone.

Like – what? A channel that only shows the game at the “exciting” parts? And all the games? I was beside myself. This was awesome! I cheered at appropriate moments, without even sneaking a sideways glance at other people to make sure I was right! Talk about a power trip. I suddenly became a football fucking expert. “Did you see that guy and the thing he did? That was impressive!”

Well, maybe not an expert…

My brother recently got a gig accompanying some high school choirs. Or something. I don’t know the details, only that he had a rehearsal and a performance today, scheduled at close enough intervals that he wasn’t able to go home between them to catch today’s baseball game.

Julie: The game is at 3, that works out well.

Brother: Yes – I should find a sports bar.

Brother: Show back up tanked, aggressive.

Julie: Stumble in, demand a dressing room.

Brother: This is my show, damnit.

Julie: Sing loudly over the performers, choppy segue into the score of Cabaret, pull out a bottle of champagne, break it over the piano as your finale.

Brother: Piss on the piano

Julie: I AM STILL RELEVANT!

Brother: Daddy never gave me attention! Look at me now Daddy!

I wish there was an okay way to tell someone “Wow, your newborn infant is actually pretty cute, and this impresses me because normally those just-born pictures that people post online and/or frame are really quite hideous – the kid’s all red-faced and wailing and looks like Ed Asner mid-aneurysm” without:

a) Offending them because this is not their first child and I failed to issue that compliment the first time(s) around because kid 1* really did look like an elderly gentlemen in the throes of a significant medical event, or

b) Being weird because I really, truly, cannot compliment someone without giving an absolutely terrible comparison example (“Your shoes are great, much better than if this was the 1930s and you had a clubfoot and needed special orthopedic footwear – by the way, what the hell is a clubfoot? It sounds like something that happens when your toe gets stepped on when you’re out at a bar and someone plays Lady Gaga on the jukebox.”

*You thought I was going to make a Radiohead reference, didn’t you? Ha. I win.

Today, I learned through The Blogess that a Life List is like a Bucket List only with a much happier and positive-sounding name. Don’t you like Life List better? I do.

I’ve made some half-hearted Bucket Lists before but never gave them too much thought. It’s not that I don’t have goals; these goals are just stored somewhere up in my brain bin, independent of any formal written record.

One of my friends from college makes a similar list. The year she was going to turn 30, it was “Thirty by 30” and the year after that, “Thirty one by 31” – that kind of thing. She even blogged it, too, which I thought was pretty cool. I lack the discipline (or desire) to do something so structured, so I’m not even going to entertain that idea for myself.

There is, however, something about putting paper to pen (or fingers to keyboard) that ups the accountability ante. I’m tempted to record a “formal” one myself.

Does it count if “write a Life List” is the first item on one’s Life List?

True story (and Bucket List related, too): Last week I visited my brother in New England. One day we drove up to New Hampshire and took a cruise on Lake Winnipesaukee. It’s a big lake, yes, and very pretty, but our main motivation was to see the setting for 1991 film What About Bob? – a movie with which we (along with Juanita) are strangely obsessed. Would you like me to recite it for you? Because I can.

Though I posted my previous post for a reason, I get all fidgety and cringe-y when shit gets real, and thus: I must make myself feel better by telling an outrageous story.

Phew. I feel better already.

Guys? Have I ever told you about the first time I ever got drunk in public?

I’d never drank in a bar before.

Scratch that.

I’d never gone out to a bar for the sole purpose of becoming intoxicated.

I’d been out a few times for “social drinking.”* But this was different; we were going out to celebrate! To blow off steam! To hang with friends! To get waaaaaaaasted!

Or at least, that’s how I (perhaps mistakenly) interpreted it.

Myself, a friend I’ll refer to as E, and another guy – shit! What was his name? Let’s call him Punk-Ass – wandered into a bar called the Adam’s Apple. It was sometime around 10:00 or so in beautiful downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan.

This is where the details get fuzzy.

Punk-Ass had been talking at length re: his copious alcohol consumption prior to our entrance in the bar. Fully expecting him to walk in and immediately start pounding shots, imagine our shock when he got some sort of Schmirnoff malt beverage to daintily sip while E and I ended up playing a game called How Many Beers Can We Fucking Drink Before Julie Has To Be Carried Out?

Answer: Eight.

I say this because I think I stopped at seven.

Also, we were at the bar for about an hour or so.

To this point in my life, the majority of my alcohol consumption had been some aforementioned malt beverages and mostly hard liquor, and usually mixed together. It was the kind of thing that hit oneself hard and fast: you had a few shots’ worth and boom.  You knew you were done.

Anyway, I’d never in my life gotten drunk on beer and didn’t realize that (at least with me, maybe?) it takes a bit for it to catch up with ye.

At about six or seven beers in, E tasked me with getting us some smokes. But, being absolutely obliterated, I could not work the cigarette machine.** Meaning, I stumbled over to it, stared at it for a good minute (deer-in-headlights style) and then turned around and walked away.

E was also drunk, but had considerably more experience pounding back Bud Lights like a champ. I, on the other hand, stepped out the door and the sidewalk immediately began to spin beneath my feet. Punk-Ass had left us long ago, having finished his single Fruity Malt Beverage and went back to the hotel to go to bed like a responsible person.

I imagine it took us about a half hour to navigate the half-block journey back to the hotel. Drunk as I was, I do remember being extremely careful about avoiding the decorative concrete planters built into the sidewalk.

Also, I think I threw up in one.

During our journey-across-the-street, we passed a dude taking a smoke break outside the hotel. Still drunkenly wanting a cigarette, I casually asked the gentleman if he wouldn’t mind sparing one.

Except I think it came out something like this:  DUDE. DUDE. Can I bum a smoke? DUDE.

I honestly don’t even remember if he obliged, or if I even smoked it if he did. I can imagine E distracting me and taking it out of my hand, probably to smoke it himself.

We made it back to the hotel and I laid face-down in bed, pausing in my apologies to my friends long enough to puke into a trash can that someone else kindly set beside me. I remember more than one person noting just how quietly I vomited, and I still don’t know how to take this compliment.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

*a term that briefly lost its meaning from the ages of 21-26.
**I haven’t seen one of those in ages! Do they still exist?!

You are on fire. 

Okay, not literally, though that might actually be the worst feeling in the world. 

Let me start again:

You are on. On top of your game, on top of the world. You have found your groove, just plugging away at something. Overall, you are kicking ass.

Let’s say it is a work-project-something. You are just all over it. No one has ever done a better job than you. You have been complimented on your progress. You are feeling good. You are feeling better than you’ve ever felt doing your job. You were unsure of yourself before, but now you’ve figured it out and got this shit on lockdown, whatever the hell that means.

Bring on more responsibilities, you are thinking. Look how awesome I’m doing now!  I can do ANYTHING! You have cracked some sort of Super Secret Code of productivity and efficiency. This is going to be a good goddamn day.

Someone – a boss? A coworker? comes over and asks a question. “Did you remember to…?”

Or the more-dreaded “Are you aware that…?”

Oh.

You did not remember to. You were not aware that.

Well, shit.

Suddenly – whoosh! There goes the air from your sails, the helium in your balloon. In the teeniest of tiniest of time frames, you have been reduced to a withered, sloppy, shell of a person. No longer feeling ten feet tall, you feel as if you are physically shrinking. Or is that wishful thinking? You cower, and lower your voice. Did anyone else hear that? Why didn’t anyone say anything to me sooner?

Your boss wasn’t yelling at you. Maybe it was just a passing thought. Maybe he was even smiling as he said it. But – for reasons beyond your comprehension – his bit of constructive criticism wedged itself into a heretofore-unknown chink in your armor of self-confidence. He completely-unknowingly found your weak spot, and you are now toppled, crushed and crumbled in a miserable mess around it.

But time hasn’t stopped as you lay there at Ground Zero. Your phone continues to ring, your job continues to need did. But you’ve been rebooted; you second-guess every word, every action, every thought. The only thing of which you are completely and totally sure is that YOU KNOW NOTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING.

It might not happen often, but when it does:

ho. lee. shit.

* Of course, I am exaggerating. I can think of zillions (there I go again) of worse feelings in the world. This just currently tops the ever-changing list. For example: my Dad once got metal shavings in his eye. To remove them, they had to numb his eye and DIG THEM OUT. While he LITERALLY watched them coming at him. HOLY SHIT. Actually, I think this has happened to him twice.

My father is a BEAST