Monthly Archives: February 2011

Day 76: Shoes!!

Posted on February 26, 2011 | 2 comments

Day 76: Wear shoes that are one size too small, then you will experience huge relief when you come home and take them off!

This wasn’t a tough challenge for me. In the very beginning of my journey through the book I revealed my tiny little shoe problem.  I have tons of shoes I rarely wear anymore.  Some because I don’t really have  a need for my Frankenstein-esque clodhopppers and some because I can’t squeeze my 10.5 size feet in to my size 10 shoes.  But since I have been squeezing my ass in to jeans I never thought would fit again recently I figured, hell, why not? Maybe my shoes will fit again, too.

No dice.  These were none too comfortable, and will surely feel fabulous to take off this evening.   As you can see the entire subject exhausts Fisher.

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Day 75: Tuaca anyone?

Posted on February 25, 2011 | 1 comment

Day 75: Today every Book owner is to reserve a table at Gino’s Italian Restaurant for eight o’clock on the 4th of July next year.  Phone number: (225) 927-7156 Gino’s.  4542 Bennington, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Open 11am-2pm and 5-10pm Mon-Fri, 5-10:30pm Sat. Closed Sun. MC, VISA, AE, DC, DISC.  No checks.

Another one of the book’s challenges that encourages you to screw over a restaurant.  I refused the dine and dash and elected not to mess with my pizza man.  And I won’t be calling this mom and pop restaurant in Baton Rouge and making a reservation I have no intention of showing up for, not on the 4th of July or on any other day.

I can’t really think about Italian food and the 4th of July without feeling a little wistful. There was a time when I thought I’d spend every 4th of July from now until forever sitting on the beach, feet in the sand, with a belly full of pasta olio, lasagna and sauteéd spinach and mushrooms.  Maybe even  a spoonful of cannoli filling. We’d walk back across the street from the beach to Lodivichie’s and have a drink with our friends.  Em might be falling asleep and I’d scoop her up from the jogging stroller and put her in the buggy that attached to the beach cruiser and head back across the street for home.

Many of my memories of the beach and the time I spent there have faded, both the good ones and the bad.  It’s easier that way.  Negativity serves no purpose, I simply don’t hang on to things that bring me down.  Sadly, the wonderful moments in time, sweet days when Em was teeny and I was navigating the first years of motherhood on no sleep and nothing but pure love, those moments are fading, too.

It was a lifetime ago.  July 4th, 2007.


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I Stand with Planned Parenthood

Posted on February 24, 2011 | 5 comments

Edited to add:  I wrote this on February 24, 2011.  It makes me super sad that this is still relevant.

Recently House Republicans voted to stop federal funding for Planned  Parenthood.  Presumably because Planned Parenthood performs approximately 1/4 of the abortions in the United States.  It is important now more than ever to speak up about what Planned Parenthood really does.

There are not a lot of things I get up in arms about.  But my reproductive rights and how I feel about being a mother are two of them.   The mother I am today is in some small way directly related to the woman that Planned Parenthood helped me to become.  And to the mother they helped me to not become so very long ago.

Dear Planned Parenthood,

Thank you.  Thank you for more than a dozen gynecological exams in times when I was without adequate health insurance.  Thank you for the many condoms you gave me when I was too chicken shit to purchase them.  Thank you for the birth control prescription, and for filling it for free on a few occasions when I was dangerously close to letting it lapse.  Thank you for not making me think I was stupid or that I had been careless for getting my first HIV test in 1996.  Thank you for having a rapid test available.  That was the longest hour of my life and the very worst cup of coffee I have ever had.  Thank you for making me feel like I was strong and smart and brave to not have a child when I was 21 years old and for believing me when I said that I had been on birth control and it had failed me.  Thank you for making me feel like an individual even though you perform abortions in groups of eight to minimize the time that the physician needs to be there and to keep the costs down.  Thank you for all of the negative results you called to give me for sexually transmitted diseases.  And for the very reasonable waiting period to receive them.  And for making it seem like a perfectly good idea to go ahead and get tested before making sex a part of a new relationship.  Thank you for making me feel like the kind of strong and sensible woman that would ask a partner to do the same for her.  Special thanks to the Planned Parenthood in Hampton Roads for being next door to a Party City and across the street from a Mattress Discounters.  This provided me endless laughs. Planned Parenthood, in allowing me to not become a mother when I was twenty one years old you empowered me.  And I became a woman that was strong.  And brave.   And proud.  And cautious.  All things that made me a great mother ten years later.  I don’t know about you, but those are all family values in my book.

Sincerely,

Kelly

I don’t use this space as a soapbox often.  I write a lot about being a mother, and my journey to becoming the woman that I am.  Please take a minute and voice your thoughts to Planned Parenthood and our Congress.  Planned Parenthood hands out health care.  And confidence. And safety.  Every day.

My 21st birthday.  I was still a baby….

Day 74: Express Your Views Today! The book asks you to go to their website and log on and express an idea, but I abstain from jumping through their hoops designed to drive traffic to their website.  I will take this opportunity instead to speak up about something that matters to me.

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Day 73: Get a hobby

Posted on February 22, 2011 | 3 comments

Day 73: Get a hobby. Wikipedia defines a hobby as “an activity or interest that is undertaken for pleasure or relaxation, typically done during one’s leisure time.”  Until this past year I really didn’t have any leisure time to speak of, so it is no w0nder that I didn’t really have any hobbies.  But now that I do, thanks to the help of MQD I am sometimes gripped by the need to “do something” that is just for me but I don’t really have the desire or the cash flow to back it up.  But I think I have found it.

My intermittent obsession with fitness is another post all to itself, but I think I have stumbled in to a new obsession that might actually, if I can figure out a way to swing it without having to sell my ass on a street corner, become a hobby.  I bought a ten class pass (which sounds like a super good album name) to a Bikram Yoga studio recently.  I enjoy yoga, and try to catch a class at the gym I belong to as often as I can. But I don’t feel that same sense of fuckyeahikickedmyownass like I do after a good run after a yoga class. But Bikram?  I feel like a badass when I leave.  And it’s not just the 105 degree room.  It’s the focus for ninety minutes on something.    And admittedly, the fact that I am drenched with sweat doesn’t hurt. The class tends to fill up prior to the start so it requires I get that there about twenty minutes early to get a spot.  So, that ninety minute class quickly becomes two hours.  Two hours, 120 minutes (great MTV show, sigh) of time for me.  I sweat, and I smile and I sweat and I breathe.  And I don’t think.

And I feel like this when I leave…

Shout out to Burke Lake park, what! what!

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Day by day, letting go… Day 72

Posted on February 15, 2011 | 8 comments

Day 72: Today is Closure Day.  The book suggests you call up your kindergarten and tell them you have left your favorite toy there, and that you need it for your psychological health.  I sleep with a Snoopy I have had since 1979.  I most certainly did not leave anything behind in my kindergarten classroom.   It’s not my style.  I don’t really do Closure.  Or Letting Go.  I leave the door open.  I hold on.  It’s my nature.

The idea of just “letting go” is foreign to me.  I am the girl that saves everything.  Everything.  Exhibit A.  My mother made my dad get rid of this nasty blue bathrobe when I was eight or nine.  And I loved it.  So I saved it and wore it for another year or so… Eventually it was in pieces, and it had to be thrown out.  And I saved the belt.

(Strange side note, there was a short-lived sitcom Day By Day on circa 1988, I loved that show and the teenage son always wore a blue bathrobe. He was so cute, I just knew he’d love me! And then later he played Greg in all the Very Brady movies…)

Exhibit B.  Deeper in my trunk I find this little gem.  From an old friend on a visit home from California.  This is a pretty fair indication of what 1998 looked like.

I still keep a lot of things, but when I moved out of the house at the beach I learned that stuff was just “stuff.”  The memories I have of the people that have touched my life are no more or less real by virtue of my having a shoebox full of cocktail napkins and movie tickets.  That having been said, I was gifted recently a box of knick-knacks and items I had left behind.  I was grateful that Jer had saved them all these years.

In that box was  Exhibit C.  Folger Shakespeare Library’s production of Taming of the Shrew, circa 1991, they handed out these buttons.  This one makes me the happiest.  Unlike Lucentio, I still “burn” and occasionally “pine,” but I no longer feel as though I will “perish”  without these objects of my desire.

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Day 71: See more of the world today

Posted on February 8, 2011 | 7 comments

Day 71: See more of the world today.  Take a train or a bus one stop too far.

I am not a public transportation gal but I figured I could still participate in the spirit of the challenge.  After all, just being out of the house, off the couch, seemed like a change of scenery.  Em has had the Winter Funk, in the form of the flu and strep, an over achiever already, my girl.  So, we have been cooped up in the house for the vast majority of the last week.

This morning, after I dropped Em at school, I was thinking about how lucky I am.  She was talking about kindergarten and mentioned something about “if we live in Chapel Hill.”  I told her that I suspect we will stay right here.  And as I drove away from school and looked up at the… wait for it…. Carolina Blue sky I thought about how much I enjoy living right here, right now.  And not just because of where I am in my mind right now.

So, off I went to work, with the intent to “see more of the world.”  Small back story, I have a tendency to get lost.  On the way home from the grocery store.  I was absent on the day a “sense of direction” was handed out, evidently.  The GPS has been my savior.  There are four different routes I can take to my office.  One is most direct, and used when I am not taking Em to school and have no errands to run.  Mostly highway-ish and I run the chance of missing my exit.  Or taking an earlier one, because after all the sign I drive by daily sure looks familiar and in a moment I think “Man, is that the road I take to my office?”  And somehow in a strange mind-body disconnect my car is turning and my brain is thinking “No, I don’t think this is right, why are you going this way?”  The other three are all variants that include a stop at Em’s school.  This morning afforded me the opportunity to take my favorite route.  Lots of wide open green space.  Few landmarks.  Many chances for me to look out the window and wonder where the hell I am.

Off we go…. skeptical that I will not get lost.  (I apologize that you can not see my clean colon from this angle, perhaps my glowing epidermis will satiate those interested in following the effects of my cleanse.)

After I turn off of one of the more heavily trafficked roads I get to see one of my favorite trees.  When I eventually finish my back tattoo it will have this tree worked in to in some way.  I love everything about this tree. And the house beneath it.  I’d like to live there.  And have a bunch of kids.  And a rope swing.  And bake bread.

After visiting my tree I travel a short way and eventually come upon a very, very tiny green sign.  When I see that sign I know it is my turn.  At least 20% of the time I pass it. This is a problem because after I turn it looks like the next picture for about three miles.

And, as you may have guessed, it looks just like that if you keep on driving past that green sign.

This is, oddly, my favorite part of the trip.  I don’t hate that feeling of wondering if I am lost.  Because I can always turn on my GPS and check, of course, but mostly because it makes my morning commute slightly more exciting than it might be otherwise.  Instead of thinking that I am scatterbrained I like to think of it as living in the present.  As I drive along that tree-lined road I wonder if I already turned at the tiny green sign, or if I drove right past it.  And most mornings I really have no idea for about four minutes.

Eventually, I see my favorite car.  And I know I made my turn.  I am not sure what it is about this car.  I love the color.  It is the perfect yellow.

Shortly after I pass the car I pass a teeny, pea green house with a sign out front.  There are several small businesses along the way, a tax accountant, a home day-care, a family selling firewood.  But my favorite is definitely this little Beauty Parlor.  I like to pretend that Truvy is inside with a teasing comb in her  back pocket, pouring cups of coffee for her pals.

It’s right around this time that I start to wonder if I will need to turn right or left at the next stop sign.  I know, intellectually, it is left.  But every time, without fail, right seems like the way that I need to go.  This is an inkling that might have been serendipitous if I’d ever just turned right and kept driving.  Down about another three miles from there is The Barn at Valhalla , the place MQD and I are getting married.  I did not know it was down there until after I had seen their website and we’d decided to have our ceremony and reception there.   I don’t think it’s a coincidence that something makes me feel like I need to keep driving that direction every time I sit at that crossroads.

In case I am getting swept away it is right around this point that I keep my eyes peeled for Big Al’s Cheap Tires and bang a right towards my office.  Once I make that turn my traveling companion perks up.

If we’re lucky we will see a whole bunch of cows and horses in the next mile and a half.  This morning, since I had my camera at the ready and the time to stop, the cows must have been sleeping in and the horses were not up by the fence.

This is either just before or after my favorite farm sign, Kart Wheel Farm.  I like to think that the people that live there have a sense of humor.

Lastly,  I pass one more landmark.  It is a very small sign but it is the sign I draw to someone’s attention when I am giving them directions to my office.  It is a sign that is  actually ironic, a word I have come to find irritating, thankyouverymuchAlanisMorrisette. I know I am less than a quarter mile from my office when I pass the Gone Fishing sign.

A couple of weeks ago I said I was going to commit to shaking the blues.  I think I am well on my way.  I like where I am right now.  I like where I am headed.  I even enjoy the hell out of driving to work.  How’s that for some cheesin’?

 

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Day 70: Take this quiz to find out if you’re a Psychopath

Posted on February 1, 2011 | 1 comment

Day 70: Take this quiz to find out if  you’re a psychopath.

Do you Posses these Traits?

Not at all: 0 Sometimes: 1 All the Time: 4

1. Glibness & Superficial Charm ~ (1)You can’t be a bartender and fancy yourself and actress if you can’t pull off superficial charm and a glib response to most any situation.

2.  Grandiose self worth ~ (0) I think of all my faults an elevated sense of self worth is certainly not one.

3.  Tendency towards boredom ~ (4) This would mean I am smart, right?  Don’t all smart people get bored.  If it requires only a teeny bit of your brain to get through the day don’t you think you’d be inclined to get a wee bit bored on occasion? Lucky for me my tendency towards boredom is paired with an ability to be easily entertained.  So, boredom passes quickly.

4.  Pathological lying ~ Nope.  Honest to a fault.  I think the only person I lie to on occasion is myself.  When there are things I am not ready to see…

5.  Cunning and manipulative behavior ~ (1) Again, aren’t all reasonably smart people capable of being cunning and manipulative?  It’s not the way I would prefer to get what I want, and with those closest to me I find it never works (maybe because I surround myself with people that are bright?) But I could not in good conscience say Never.

6. Lack of Remorse ~ (0) Nope, not ever.  I apologize for things that are not even my fault, like the weather.

7. Shallow affectations, monotone voice ~ (0) Ha.  Ummmm….. no.

8.  Lack of empathy ~ (0) Nope.  I have so many emotions to spare I like to go ahead and suck up and then express the feelings of anyone who even looks my direction.

9. Poor behavioral control ~ (1ish…) I wish I could give myself a 2.  Behavior?  That’s a vague word.  I have ZERO control over my feelings and emotions and they come out whether I want them to or not.  For example, I might be very angry (and unfortunately, anger makes me bawl.) And those angry tears would come flooding out of my eyes whether I wanted them to or not, but I could totally stop myself from actually throwing a chair at someone.  That warrants a 2, no?

10.  Parasitic lifestyle ~ (0) Nope.  I like to make my own way.  Mostly I like to call the shots, and you can’t do that when you’re living on someone’s couch.

11.  Promiscuity ~ Is there a score for a reformed 4? I’ll say 1 to account for my youth and balance out my serial monogamy of the last decade and a half.

12.  Behavioral problems early in life ~ (0) Not unless a tendency to kiss ass and apply for the position of Teacher’s Pet is a behavioral problem.

13.  Lack of realistic long term plans ~ (4) I struggle with this big time.  Not because I make unrealistic plans but because long term goal planning leaves the door open for failing to achieve them. And that kind of thing gives me hives.

14.  Impulsiveness ~ (4)  A trait I don’t hate.  I am grateful to have pretty kind impulses for the most part.

15.  Irresponsible behavior ~ (1) If staying up too late to watch crappy horror movies with the main squeeze is irresponsible I am guilty.  If blowing off dinner on occasion in favor of a glass or three of wine is irresponsible, again, guilty.  “Call me unreliable, throw in undependable, tooooo…” Ahh, Frank…

16. Failure to accept the consequences for your actions ~ (1) I think all of us fail to see the consequences of our actions occasionally, so we fail to accept them at first.  I contend this makes me human.

17.  Many marital relationships (1) Umm… I’d guess 2 marriages would give me a score of 1?

18.  Juvenile delinquency ~ (0) Nope.  I preferred my delinquency of age.

19.  Callousness ~ (0) Not a bit.

20.  Criminal versatility ~ How’s about a 1 or a 4?  I mean, I sure as shit hope I am criminally versatile should the need arise.  If you could only pull off one kind of crime wouldn’t your options be limited? Given the wide range of ways I have figured out how to make a living on the straight and narrow… I trust I’d score a solid 4 here if I put my mind to it.

*For more reliable results ask a friend to answer this for you, Surrender to police if you score over 40.

I can breathe a deep sigh of relief.  In all sincerity, speaking of mental health… I just finished an amazing book.   In college I was in a play “The Color Wheel” written by an amazing young woman, Stacy Pershall, that I also had the pleasure of meeting way back when.  Recently she was on my mind so I hunted her down on facebook, and found out she was expecting some Big News! This past month her memoir has been released and it is incredible.  Read it. Enjoy it.  Share it.  Her story needs to be heard.

Stacy Pershall’s Loud in the House of Myself: Memoirs of a Strange Girl can be purchased at Amazon or hopefully at an independent book store near you!!

 

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