Wondering Women

The guy who invented the polygraph test, the one that detects lies, is the same man who invented the comic book character Wonder Woman. All along I just thought there was some guy out there baffled by how his wife always ferreted out his lies.
Now all the mystery is gone. Thanks a lot Psych textbook.

How about that introduction, huh? You guys all feeling primed and interested to listen to what I have to say?

I couldn't really care less. I've written so many essays in these past two weeks that writing and all of its semantics are about as relaxing for me as a colonoscopy. There will be no wonderfully written and elaborate transition sentences.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I plan on sleeping, don't get your hopes up. I did get a nice package in the mail though, from a personal wonder woman of mine. Though if she were a superhero she'd be more along the lines of Party Planner woman. (Seriously, I know it's not great, get off my back. It's eight am, I have a class in twenty minutes and I wanted to blog.)

Back to my package. It was wrapped in a box that was colored to look like a spy-cam/secret agent gadget, complete with full keyboard. I felt terrible ripping into an old Halloween costume prop. I know I ruined the magic by not waiting until my birthday, but see, there's this thing with PartyPlanner Woman. You don't just have a birthDAY, you have a birthWEEK. So I figured, I'm just starting early. You're allowed to do that, go ahead and check the birthday manual.

Inside there was literally a little party for me. All the fixin's--streamers, balloons, the works. Even a cake. Well, Oreo cookies with birthday cake filling, but let's be real. Oreo's and cake are both beautiful.

I started blowing the noise maker while I tried to get the hat on, dancing from side-to-side. I was going to take a picture, then realized my camera is still broken.

 Tomorrow, I'll put up the cards I got from my Mom, because she loves me and sent me a card, too. Pretend that I'm six-years old again and eat myself silly. Streamers hanging from the ceiling because I say so, and it's my birthday.

Flashbulb

Good memories are nice.

They're the not bad ones.

Sometimes it's hard to remember that. Bad memories, the little black holes they are, swallow out the rest and there they sit. Just sopping up the free rent in your cranium. Lazy squatters.

Once in a while it's nice to get a jolt of something I'd forgotten. Not great moments nor exciting ones. But ones where I was content or just relaxed. Here's a moment I hadn't thought of in ages. It caught me off guard in the middle of the night and I've sort of held on to it, for good measure. Why, I couldn't say.

The first time I went to Europe, I took a boat ride in Paris through the canals. I was really tired after walking the whole day, so I sat down beside this kid. A little girl, maybe four or five years old, sitting next to her mom. She kept taking off her shirt and babbling in ...French, I suppose. I really didn't have a clue. It wasn't English though and that's all I could at the time. She kept making smiley faces at me and giggling and I would wave at her or stick out my tongue. We kept sort of playing with each other, but not ever talking or touching.

It was a really beautiful warm evening and this little girl kept taking her shirt off and on and her mother seemed to be embarrassed, but not too concerned. She would quickly turn to her mom to say things and the look back at me expectantly as her mother just nodded slowly and grinned at me.
I remember that she had these clip-on plastic earrings. The little girl.
 Before I got off the boat, a gave the girl my pin from the trip, the one with my group name on it and stuff. She put her shirt down after having pulled it to cover up her face and I told her, half hoping she'd understand my English, to keep her shirt on so people would see the pin. Thinking that maybe it would save her mother some grief.
She put it on. But I don't know if she understood me.

I wonder if she still has that pin sometimes.

Little Self Help and Motivation

Check out my crazy self on a college evening. Snug deep in my sofa of study. Surrounded by my posse. Yep, there's my laptop, my binders, my study guides and outlines, backpack, pens and pencils. The whole lot of them showed up to cheer me on! How very thoughtful...

My roommate walked in and looked at me. Not for too long though, this isn't out of the ordinary. Just means exam time is rolling around. A sly glance to my feet however and I felt the need to explain,
"I needed some motivation," I said. "These are my ass kicking boots."
(Pardon my language, it's just a direct quote after all.)

Pink is the color of determination.

Motivation, indeed. They sort of began as a joke, a little quip between myself and Ms Edenland after reading this post. I felt I needed some Angry Cowgirl boots. We all need a pair and figuratively we all have that pair we slip into when times need to get tough. And the Tough need an excuse to be, well, tough.

I've got my boots now though, a thoughtful gift from my Mom, who kept throwing by tentative glances and asking if I liked them. Pink, being a third-party suggestion, happened to be both a nod to the irony of my lacking feminism and my steps toward breast cancer awareness support. They maybe cute, but they'll stomp all over you. And that's how I rock them, because they're powerful.

Which is fun because Life has been good to me in the past few months. Apart from a few major catastrophies everyone in my immediate circle is doing great. In fact, minus a two-story fall off a building and a full hip replacement, we're peachy keen!
Lacking the appropriate weather or reasons to wear them hasn't stopped me. I just decided to introduce them to my life in baby steps. Even homework requires a bit of buckle-down to business. You know, just little requests: Hey there, boots. It's finals week. I need your help; Can you do that? Oh great. That'd be great.

Because we all know that soon enough I'm going to have to go Full Metal Jacket on their backsides with a 0600 wake up call and barking drills before we assemble to march. But we'll get them there, one step at a time. Their time will come and for now, I don't want to startle them off.

Waiting on the Inhale

I always dig for a meaning. Dig. Dig. Dig. Maybe one day I'll make it to China.

Until recently, I haven't been sure about my direction here and I've just now resigned to take no direction and just write the posts that want to be written. 

If someone told you to document your life through a soundtrack. Where would you go? Based on that exact second, it could be anywhere. Maybe China, if you dig deep enough.

Here's your task break: Pick out eight huge life events and put them to music. Did your first marriage make it? The day your childhood dog died? High school graduation? On a sprectrum of personality, what do you define as THE best of day of your life? I swear, the next time you're in your car driving, you will evaluate every song you hear to see if it matches your rendition of holding your son for the first time.

Because nothing is ever as beautiful as it was in our head.

I like to hope this song will age with me. It would nestle into one of my life milestones well. I love me some Pearl Jam. Eddie Vedder has always touched a nerve with me. There's a guy who has had some Life and Knows and I have respect.

The song is called Just Breathe and I first got the CD only two days after I found out mom had breast cancer.
That's right. And I sucked it up and toughed it out. Because that's how I do.

For the first few weeks I didn't even tell anyone. Who wants to hear about your problems when there are plenty going around for everyone else? Me and my pride would just go nurse our own wounds, searching through internet archieves of medical databases and plot and plan the statistics out.  Thank you, very much!

It seems like you have to feel the music the first few times of hearing something before you can really listen to the words. Because driving home alone one night, and this song came on and I really heard the lyrics.
 "As we sit alone, I know someday we must go, oh oh."
"Did I say that I need you? No? Well did I say that I want you? Oh, if I didn't I'm a fool you see, no one knows this more than me."  Did they know?
And there's so many more. "Stay with me, let's just breathe."  

Stay with me.

It was like the thoughts in my head were echoing around outside. I cried like I was drowning. Came up gulping hard-choked gasps only to go back under again.  He just sat and sang and let me finish in my own time. I'd save myself.
Just breathe, he told me.
Just breathe.
Breathe.

I whimpered in my car for a while before I could actually walk inside again, tough-faced and masked for the world to see, but the Eddie knew and the moments of realization I had to this song are rather pivotal. It all came out in my car, and no one saw because that's how I am. That's what this song was for, for me though. It's purpose.

Really makes me listen differently when I have the radio on. Where did someone else dig to when they heard this song?