Friday, October 24, 2008

Like a Rolling Stone

Today I am hoping our blog will go interactive.

Earlier this week, my best friend, Girl Wednesday, made a brief comment about rethinking the city in which she lives. In other words, she is considering whether she should consider moving. I couldn't help but think, "Move here! Live next door to me! We'll do yoga and attend PTA and see the newest Reese Witherspoon movies and commiserate about the weather and life will be soooo wonderful!"

Now, I would plead my case to GW in earnest if it weren't for the fact that my husband and I are planning on moving ourselves. We don't yet know where we will be moving to. We are from different, distant states (we now live in a third, entirely different state), and we are considering both of those places as potential destinations. We are also considering moving to the place where we met, in yet another state. Though we are open to where the opportunities take us, there is a particular region we’d prefer to end up in. But no matter where we do end up, we will certainly be hundreds of miles away from many loved ones— close friends and close family members.

I have accepted that I am living the kind of life that does not keep me in one place. It would be really nice to have stayed in my hometown, and to have continued the same friendships through the years. Even staying in the city where I went to college would have provided a sturdy, consistent social base. Yet I have moved around a lot since high school, always to the benefit of my academic and/or professional life (or my husband’s).

I have truly enjoyed living in many different cities and states. What I find most fascinating about different parts of this country is not how different they are, but how similar. However, I am hoping that my days of bouncing about are coming to an end. I want to have a home, to put down roots. But where? I can’t be everywhere. It makes me extremely sad to think that my children won’t see all of their grandparents on a weekly basis. And that I won’t be there to see all of my nieces and nephews (literal and honorary) grow up. Major and minor events will go by, and I’ll be wishing that certain people could be there. It’s easy to enough to think, “Well, that’s just the way it is.” But lately I’ve been thinking, “Is it?” There are people out there who don’t feel the need to always be leaving, who have no strong sense of wanderlust. They may want to better themselves, but they don’t think it’s necessary to go to a distant, unknown place to do so. They don’t feel the need to leave to pursue the very best opportunities. They will be successful right where they are, thank us very much. They know others, of course, in different cities who they enjoying seeing when they can. But for the most part, the people they care about are all around them.

Personally, I couldn’t have not left home. I chose to go to the best schools I could get into, do the work that interested me, and compromise to be with the person I love. And I couldn’t have come back. To be honest, most of the people I would have stayed close with from high school also left. I know there is a group from childhood that’s still around, but I really can’t picture myself within it now. I’m glad I left. I just think it stinks that through those travels, I have met awesome people who have become great friends, and I don’t see them that much. We will always be far from immediate family, but we’ve come to accept it. We hope that some of us will eventually move closer together; as for the others, we are willing to budget a lot of time and money to maintain our relationships through the years. At least “everything is so easy now—with the internet”. But it’s not the same. And in my heart of hearts, I still imagine one day GW and I, pushing our strollers side-by-side.

So what do you think, blogosphere? Did you leave the place where you came from? Do you regret it? Is this something you struggle with? Is your significant other from far away? Has that caused problems for you? How did you or will you decide where to put down roots?

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Kitten Conscience

I am going to keep this blog pretty short today.

Today I am taking my two kittens into the cat clinic to get spayed. Rationally speaking, obviously, I know it is the right thing to do. But, for some reason I feel terrible doing it! I feel so guilty knowing that I am taking my kittens in to have their reproductive organs taken out! I had to take their food and water away last night around 6pm so the anesthesia doesn’t affect them during their surgery.

I had gotten these two cute kittens about 7 months ago. My husband (then fiancé) was always at his school studying and I was getting lonely. I thought the perfect solution was to get a cat to keep me company. Once I decided to get one, I realized I should probably get two so they can keep each other company during the day while I am at work and he is at school.

I found these two kittens from a true “cat lady”. I went to her home in March to pick these cats up and she told me she had 35 cats at her home! She had me sign a contract saying I would get the cats the proper shots, get them spayed, and never get them de-clawed. Two weeks later they got their next set of shots, I have no problem keeping their claws in, but I have been putting off getting them spayed.

The last two to three months I have been getting a new voicemail every other day from this cat lady. She was trying to scare me by explaining how cats go into heat and run out the front door when you walk in, they get pregnant, and then you will have to put their kittens to sleep because there are already too many cats. I have to say that I agree with her. I don’t want more unwanted animals on this planet. But, I still feel guilty doing this to them. I definitely know I wouldn’t want my reproductive organs torn out!!

I am a pretty rational person. I make rational decisions, don’t get too emotional, and try to use reason during my decision-making processes. So, I really don’t understand why I have gotten so torn about doing this for my kittens. But I have.

Regardless, I am dropping them off at 7am so I can get to work by 7:30. I will pick them up around 6:30 after I get off work and fight traffic. I know it will probably kill me to see their little tummies shaved, but I realize that it is necessary.

I apologize if this post was boring for people to read…but it has been a huge struggle for me the last few weeks and the day is finally here to have the procedure done! I am sure I have not been the only pet-owner who has ever had to deal with these worries. Maybe I will google search it and see if other people have written about it. Isn’t it weird how you can read about someone else’s struggles and it can provide a little more comfort to your worries? Writing about it has helped me feel a little better, but not much.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Zoom Zoom

Lately my life has been feeling like a car commercial.  Not like the hard-rock, Grand Canyon kind or the goofy, family-van kind.  But rather, the kind where the sedan is cruising smoothly at night, along a cityscape.  At first the music sounds like synthesized angels choiring and then the car blasts forward into the horizon and the music explodes into a strong, cascading  symphony.  
I find great comfort in these commercials.  I don't really know why.  I like the way the nighttime feels around the car.  Like the overnight train I rode from Paris to Nice- speeding in cushioned darkness.  I find comfort in the little lights of the car's console.  I like wondering what city we're driving near, and what's happening there, what's the air like there?  Sort of similar to the way I take evening city strolls- especially in the fall and winter- catching glimpses inside apartments.  It's warm inside, and people are going on with their well-lit lives- eating at the dinner table, watching late-night TV.  I feel comfortable for them.  
And then the music shoots the car along the C.G. superhighway.  And I feel like if I close my eyes, my life will drop altitude, suddenly propelling me into slow motion.  My hair whipping around my face, the night wind blowing my belongings around me as if none of it matters, as if I'm standing at some important intersection, some central moment, the deal-breaker scene in the movie about my life.  
Maybe I'm making too much of a car commercial.  I am facing some important decisions now.  I'm looking for a job, which causes me to rethink the city in which I live, the apartment for which I pay rent, everything I do.  So maybe I am making too much of everything, looking for signs, mistaking the little events for the broader ones that I couldn't possibly visualize accurately right now.  I keep thinking about daily events and decisions as if they were being retold in an "E! True Hollywood Story."  
But it's just a 30-second commercial.  And when the 30 seconds are up, I realize I'm not behind the wheel, but more like I'm hitchhiking on the side of that C.G. superhighway.  And that sleek vehicle, shooting out into the starry horizon, leaves me in the dust. 
Yesterday I saw a posting for a Sears portrait photographer and it reminded me of a now retired department store that was right near our old apartment in Queens.  We used to take the escalator up and right at the top was the stand where you could get your portraits taken before an array of paper backdrops with pastel and neon designs.  What if I walked away from city pressures and the pressures of my industry and walked into suburban Sears and filled out an application?  When I walk past the "help wanted" sign in the window of my neighborhood Urban Outfitters, I have the same thought.  Folding flannels seems like such a simpler fork in the road.
My boss admitted having these urges- when she was a producer on the road and she was checking out her rental car in a foreign city.  She said she fantasized about working at Hertz for a living.  Just type in the customer's name and hand them the keys.  You could disappear in that thought for hours.  As if working at a minimum wage job (on your feet all day, thanklessly, mindlessly, fantasizing about someone else's lifestyle) is an afternoon on the hammock.  I get it. 
It's just that sometimes it feels like all I've done for myself-- by going to grad school and fighting the late hours and low pay to stay relevant in my celebrity-studded, who-you-know industry-- is complicated things.  And by the time I get to this thought I feel very, very tired.  
So I'm going to go back to my life where my former career services advisor tells me there are "absolutely no jobs right now" and where I seriously pause to read a job listing for a department store photographer for which, I sadly realize, I am wholly under-qualified.  
My British friend once told me he is baffled by American car commercials.  He said in England, car commercials are slow-paced, and set to classical music.  How refined.


    
    

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Abandoned

I’m not a very girly-girl. I wear makeup purchased from the drug store. I only wear lip-gloss on special occasions, and I actually think I own enough shoes. And I have a phobia of hairdressers. It started when my mom cut my hair super short when I was in elementary school. Boy short. So short that she had to let me pierce my ears at seven so that the women in the grocery store line would stop calling my brother and I twins. So then I decided to try and grow it out in fifth grade. It looked awful. Combined with the awkward stage and some giant glasses, I was convinced that the unruly mop on my head was the root of my unpopularity. In sixth and seventh grade, I wouldn’t let anyone touch my hair. I was trying to grow it out. Mostly, I just grew a ratty, curly, nasty, mess. Finally, I came home and had my mom cut it off and started blowdrying it straight. So then I let my mom cut my hair all through high-school. I finally found a hairdresser I liked when I was in college, but she was back home, and although I tried to coordinate my appointments while I was home, I had a few really bad haircuts in the rural Midwest town where I went to school. And then my hairdresser at home quit, and I had to start fresh, all over again. I got one really, really good haircut while I was in DC for a summer during graduate school. I tried to go back when I was home the next summer, but that stylist had left. I ended up going to a new guy who actually left my hair different lengths on the two sides. I had to go back and get him to fix it two days later.

I finally found a hairdresser when I was in my second to last year of grad school. It was the first time I’d found someone who actually remembered my name, asked how my life was going, and who seemed to enjoy catching up with me every six to eight weeks. Sure, it’s all part of the business, but it was comfortable. And it was hard to leave behind when I moved to the city.

So, imagine my surprise when I actually found a hairdresser I liked last year. I went in with very low expectations, and was incredibly impressed. I was sold after one haircut, and didn’t have to spend any great amount of time getting referrals or reading reviews on yelp.com. She was actually helping me grow my hair out. She had taught me about products. My hair is finally past my shoulders. It actually looks like the pictures I’d take with me when I got it cut. I finally felt settled. I’d moved to a new city, started my first real job, and was living in my own downtown apartment. Doctor- check. Dentist- check. Tailor- check. Hairdresser- check.

I started a new job last month and was too busy to make it in at six weeks for my normal trim. And even though I’d been putting it off, I was excited to go tell her all about the new job. And filling her in on my wedding plans. And just catching up. Sure, it was going to be inconvenient to have to go three metro stops just for a haircut, but I was willing to do it. I was willing to figure out how to fit it in during my busy work weeks, because, after all, she was my hairdresser.

But today, when I finally got around to booking an appointment, I couldn’t find her name on the drop down menu for the online scheduling system. I called the salon directly, and confirmed that she no longer worked there. I suppose it’s too much to ask for a mid-range salon to contact you and let you know that you’re leaving. I can’t blame her for not bothering. I mean, after all, it was a big city salon over the metro stop that specializes in walk-ins. But I couldn’t help feeling betrayed. You see, for some reason, all having all of these things, hairdressers, doctors, a drycleaner who actually creases your pants the way you like them, and a grocery store where the clerks are friendly and ask you how your day has been—these are the little things that make living in the city tolerable. These are the things that make me feel special, wanted, as though I belong here. But perhaps the relationship has always been a little more one-sided than I had realized.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Festivus for the Rest-of-Us

I was talking to a friend this afternoon about the blog we are all a part of (ps, just noticed that Word doesn’t even recognize the word “blog” it just put a red line under it and suggested that I might mean bog, blob, or blow. While blow may be what my entries have done the past few weeks, I actually mean blog. I’m sure a Mac would have recognized the word). Anyway, I digress……

I was explaining to my 55 year-old friend that this was an opportunity to talk about what I was thinking, feeling, etc. Anything I wanted to get off of my chest, all the while pretending that others care. Immediately she said, “you know what you can blog about? What I don’t like – the pharmacy techs at work who wear their thongs sticking out of the top of their pants. It’s nasty and unprofessional.” Obviously, the woman’s on to something. Don’t we all feel that way? Especially if your size XXL thong is topping out of your size 6 pants. Ack.

So that gave me the idea to have a week of helping others. Why not give back to the community in this time of crisis by letting them have an all-out bitch fest? So welcome to the Airing of Grievances. I gave some friends and co-workers the opportunity to go to town on what really gets under their skin. And boy did they.

I hope it made them feel better, and I hope some of it resonates with you all.

• People who drive for miles with their blinker on. Are you seriously going to turn right from the right lane on the interstate. I doubt it. Oh, and if you do, good luck.
• Co-workers, or even bosses (ahem.) who think they know it all. They have a better story for every one story you tell. Your cat’s sick? Well their cat once had polio. AND SURVIVED. Don’t tell me you really know it all. 47,983 divided by 56. The square root of 3,983. Diagram one of Palin’s sentence then, Bitch.

"It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-where do they go?"

• Ex-girlfriends (or more like someone you’ve only been out with three times, *snap*) who don’t understand what it means when we don’t call you back. For days at a time. Get a copy of He’s Just Not that into You. And a clue.
• People who clip their nails in public. What else is there to say? Don’t do it at your desk, three doors down so I can hear the little metal thingies go clink clink clink, don’t do it on the Metro (right GT?!), and, God forbid, don’t do it on an airplane and put the clippings into the seat back. Yuck. This goes for toes and fingers Airplane Man.
• People who waste everyone’s time with a question or a choice they don’t have ready. Don’t call my office and go, “uhh, so I uhhh, do you uhhh?” Get your shit together before you call. And to the people in front of me at the counter who get up there and look like they’ve never seen the menu before, ever. Even after standing in line for ten minutes, I’m guessing you’re not a McDonald’s virgin, so get off your phone and order already.
• Men with man boobs. (Okay so this would go more into the physical attributes that people can’t necessarily control category, but I hate them. So, whatever).
• Sickies who don’t cover their sneezes. That’s what your sleeve, shirt, kleenex combination of the above, is for. Use it. These are the same people who also don’t wash their hands after they pee (or worse, poop). One of everyone’s favorite GM stories is the time I chased a woman out of a pottie because she’d gone out without washing her hands. Mind you I was sick for the fourth time that year and obviously cranky, but I said to her “it’s people like you who make people like me sick.” Yikes. Not my finest moment, but message conveyed – check.
• Rolling suitcases and the people who don’t know how to use them. If you wouldn’t run over my feet with your car, don’t do it with your rolling suitcase. And if you can’t lift it over your head and into the bin, you can’t have it. Check it under the damn plane. I’ll pay the $25 just so I don’t have to watch you struggle.
• Public displays of phlegm. The substance and the noises. Enough said.
• Smokers who think they have the right to smoke anywhere, even in non-smoking places. Even when there’s a sign. Especially when there’s a sign. They seem pretty sure, like the rest of us, that as long as it’s not the airplane lavatory no one’s going to haul them off to jail for it. But the shared bathroom at work? Really? You can’t walk another 50 feet outside? My favorite line is when asked about it the smoker said that the sign was “for crack and stuff. Not for cigarettes.” Heh. Well, now I know.
• And last but not least, people who say irregardless. Dude, totally not a word. Oh, and DC-people, you have not been “tasked” with anything. Because task is not a verb.
I was almost done with the list when I got a message from my friend Jeremy, the last one to respond, who answered with “People who complain too much.”
So ignore everything I just said.