2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

 

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,000 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 33 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Just Fake Enough to Pay My Bills

Today was my first day off work in 26 days.  My last day off was after 19 days in a row.  My next day off will be 20 days from now.  I only have two days off for the rest of the year after that.  But at least I have two jobs.

It sucks to have to work like this.  But I am grateful to have work, as underemployed and underpaid as I am.  But I’m not sure how much longer this can continue.  I am going to crack at some point.  I am trying to find something better, at least something that pays better that I won’t hate too much, something that will allow me at least one day off a week.  But I am not optimistic.  Things are not going to get better any time soon in this country.

So I will continue to work these jobs and be careful with my money and try to rewrite my resume to apply for the few opportunities I find.  I will continue to be honest and hardworking and happy to be able to just barely pay my bills.  What else can I do?  As long as I am able to support myself I will not complain that life sucks, because it can always be worse.   

This is not the life my grandparents imagined their grandchildren would have.  This is not why they came to America.  This is not why they sacrificed and struggled.  But I fucked around a lot when I was younger, I didn’t stay focused.  I have only myself to blame.  All the stupid shit I used to do, all the partying and mouthing off to bosses and customers, that’s my fault.  It sucks that my shitty job history is a huge part of what prevents me from being considered from better jobs.  What can I do about that?  Not a thing.  So I have to just deal with it.  It’s another sign that I am supposed to create my own opportunities.  I am not meant to work for other people.  I will consider myself successful when I don’t have to punch anyone else’s time card to make a living.

Having today off was a blessing.  I spent the entire day in the kitchen.  I made chicken stock and baba ghannouj from scratch, plus I made apple and pear croissants with brie and spices.  I put up a few pictures that have been sitting on my floor since I moved in here almost four months ago.  It was a lovely day to myself.  But that makes it far more difficult to return to work tomorrow.  I am not going to be a happy fucking camper.  But I will be just fake enough so I can keep paying my bills.

Wasting Light: Foo Fighters

This is not so much a record review as a love letter.  I am hardly impartial when it comes to Foo Fighters and I cannot imagine not liking anything they do, especially after almost 12 years of hardcore fandom.  But I am especially enamored of this album.  At the end of every song I am compelled to shout “fuckin’ A, Foo Fighters!”  I don’t know that I have ever felt that way about another album of theirs—or anyone else’s. 

The album-opening “Bridge Burning” yanks you in by the throat and then kicks you in the chest back to your seat.  “These are my famous last words!” it begins, and goddammit, he ain’t fuckin’ around!  Reminiscent of 2002’s One by One, “Rope” brings it down a bit—but not much, as the screaming is just getting started.  “Dear Rosemary” is a cool, catchy number that you’ll be singing when you wake up in the morning, especially the “This was no ordinary life” hook that features Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould.  “White Limo” is pure thrash metal screaming fuckery and my favorite song on the album—a difficult decision to make, but I base this on the number of times I have obsessively played it over and over in the five days since the album was released.  It’s the song that reminds you of what a metal fiend Dave Grohl grew up as, despite his underground punk street cred.  Primal screaming at its rock-n-roll best!  “Arlandria”, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways!  “Shame, shame, go away/Come again some other day”; who hasn’t felt that way?  “These Days” is simply beautiful.  The Foo sound of The Colour and the Shape is all over the brilliant and catchy “Back And Forth”.  “A Matter of Time” reminds me a bit of There is Nothing Left to Lose, sort of pop and sort of hard and completely awesome.  Everything about “Miss the Misery” is amazing, and it’s the song whose lyrics gave the album its title.  “I Should Have Known” is a great, great song, and probably the most introspective and open to speculation by fans and critics alike.  I won’t go into that here, but it’s the kind of song that we can all relate to, and our hero Mr. Grohl certainly had more than just you-know-who on his mind when he wrote it.  There are definitely some familiar guitar riffs and lyrics on “Walk”, the perfect song to end this incredible album.  It’s sort of like Dave’s come to terms with his past, the past that other people won’t let him live down.  He’s talked a bit more about it in interviews recently, most notably in the excellent Back and Forth documentary, and in lines like “Learnin’ to walk again/Learnin’ to talk again/Can’t you see I’ve waited long enough”.  Again, the brilliance of Dave’s song writing is in making his lyrics fun to sing and accessible to everyone while maintaining his privacy and sense of mystery.    

If you’re already a Foo fan, you’ll love this album.  If you’re not sure about Foo, this is the perfect way to get all up in that shit and stay there!  Wasting Light is all I expected it to be and more, and totally worth waiting four years for.  I cannot imagine a more perfect collection of songs.  Foo Fighters are the best band in the world, genius live performers, and just really cool, talented, regular guys who know how lucky they are to play music for a living.      

I Am A Domestic Goddess

I am ridiculously happy in the kitchen.  Ri.  Dic.  U.  Lous.  Ly.  Whenever I am lucky enough to be able to spend the day cooking and baking I have such great fun.  But I also wish I had a husband and children to cook and bake for. 

I think I want to be a housewife.  Really, I do.  What is a more important job than taking care of your family?  I want to write and do documentary work as well, but I notice more and more how energetic and satisfied I feel when I’m in the kitchen coming up with tasty dishes. 

Maybe my age has something to do with it, the fact that I am 37 years old, single with absolutely no prospects, and only have a few years left where I can have a baby.  Clock is ticking!  Maybe my dismal financial situation is also part of it, the fact that I am overeducated, underemployed, and embarrassingly paid for the work I do.  I am humbled by the fact that I make just above minimum wage at two jobs that, combined, do not pay my bills, bills which do not include anything extravagant (unless you consider cable, internet, and a land line plus cell phone extravagant) and earnings which do not allow for any overpayments on credit cards or deposits to the savings account.  I am more humbled by the fact that millions of Americans are trying to raise families on the same wages I use to support myself, and the fact that many Americans have no job at all. 

What I am certain about is that I want to be a wife and mother.  But I have realized that it is probably not meant to be.  I am trying to not be sad about it, because as a friend pointed out to me today, I already take care of a lot of people.  That is true.  I love my family and I love my friends like they are blood, and I do my best to take care of everyone however I can.  It’s a beautiful thing to share your love with those around you.  I have a lot of passion, more than I can handle sometimes, and it would be lovely to have a husband and children of my own to share my life and love with.  If that never happens, it means I am meant to find other ways to express my passion.  I am not sure exactly how I am supposed to do that.  Over the past year or so I have been thinking more than ever about getting married and starting a family.  I can’t say that I have gone out of my way too much to try to meet anyone; I have had friends introduce me to two guys, neither of whom was remotely close to being my dream husband, though they were both pretty nice guys.  I have no idea how to meet a straight man I can deal with.  Where would I find such a man? 

Part of what I think stops me from being more proactive despite claiming that all I really want is to get married and have babies, is the bad experiences I have had with guys in the past.  I have been thinking a lot about these guys over the past few months since one of them passed away and I randomly saw another one a month before.  I had not spent much time thinking about either one (or any of the others) recently because I was occupying my fantasies with my Ideal instead, thinking that I had moved past all the damage and pain these guys had caused.  But seeing one and hearing that another had died made me revisit all the drama I had ever gone through over the men in my life.  I guess I wasn’t as over it as I had thought.  And that is not to say that I was not over them, because I certainly was, but the lingering effects of the horrible things that happened in those relationships had obviously had more of an impact on my daily life than I thought. 

Aside from that, I have been thinking lately about why I have been so lazy about writing.  I had all summer after graduation to write and work on lots of projects I did not have time for during graduate school.  I took a break right after graduation, but then I got used to not having any obligations.  I was slow to start looking for work.  It was great to just be, to only have myself to answer to and to be able to spend more time with my family and friends.  I would finally have time for husband-hunting and writing and relaxing!  Well, I got plenty of rest and relaxation, but that was it.  Why can’t I get motivated?

So what does this have to do with being a housewife?  Housewives are not lazy, that’s for sure.  I spent a lot of time in the kitchen this summer, lots of time reading cookbooks and watching the Food Network, lots of time thinking about the cookbooks I want to write.  How many recipes did I write down?  Well…

I enjoy doing things.  I have always had fantasies about the kind of life I thought I would have someday, and I wrote lots of stories about that when I was younger.  I thought I would be living those fantasies right now.  Not so much.  I am making less money now than I ever have (adjusted for inflation and such, of course), I am less motivated to do anything to achieve my goals, and I am more in need of focus than ever.  Maybe my desire for housewifery is another escape like school was.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved being in school.  But it was partially an escape from the dreariness of the low-paying, unsatisfying jobs I found myself in year after year.  But if I am happiest in the kitchen, cooking and creating and generally being a domestic goddess, and if little else in this world makes me feel that way (the only other thing I think I love equally is volunteering for charity organizations), isn’t that what I am meant to do?

On Forgiveness

“Take forgiveness. Two levels here. One level: forgiveness means you shouldn’t develop feelings of revenge. Because revenge harms the other person, therefore it is a form of violence. With violence, there is usually counterviolence. This generates even more violence—the problem never goes away. So that is one level. Another level: forgiveness means you should try not to develop feelings of anger toward your enemy. Anger doesn’t solve the problem. Anger only brings uncomfortable feelings to yourself. Anger destroys your own peace of mind. Your happy mood never comes, not while anger remains. I think that’s the main reason why we should forgive. With calm mind, more peaceful mind, more healthy body. An agitated mind spoils our health, very harmful for body. This is my feeling.” 

The Dalai Lama, The Wisdom of Forgiveness

 

“Again Jesus said [to the disciples], ‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.’”

(John 20:21-23)

 

“You shall keep relationship with one who cut it off from you, you shall give one who disappointed you, and you shall pardon one who oppressed you.”  

Messenger of Allah, as reported by Oqbah Ibn ‘Amer

 

 

 

I have been thinking a lot about forgiveness and anger lately.  There are people in everyone’s life who are easy to forgive, and those for whom finding forgiveness is nearly impossible.  But I have learned that to forgive is necessary for a happy life, not as much for the person who is forgiven but for the person doing the forgiving.  What good does it do to stay angry at someone who has done you wrong?  Anger certainly has its place and is often justified, but holding that sort of negative emotion is really very destructive to the body, mind, and soul.  The Dalai Lama has said that one must separate the anger we feel toward bad behavior and the person committing the act, and that makes perfect sense.  In Christianity, that is called “condemn the sin, not the sinner”. In other words, don’t hate the playa, hate the game.   

This should not be interpreted as excusing anyone’s hurtful behavior.  But I believe that it is necessary to understand why someone behaves as they do, and to figure out whether they are also victims of someone’s hurtful actions.  People are not inherently bad; they learn such behavior, and usually inflict pain on others to alleviate their own.  Once we understand this it makes forgiveness that much easier.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  It is excruciatingly difficult to forgive people who have committed acts of violence or betrayal.  But those are the ones we most need to forgive because their actions create the most pain.  I am thinking of three people in my life who have done things that the average person may not think deserve forgiveness.  And I thought I had forgiven them long ago.  But I still feel a certain amount of anger toward them, and it has made me think about what forgiveness really means.  It certainly does not mean that you need to let people back into your life who have caused you harm.  But if you still have anger toward them, have you truly forgiven them?  I have tried separating them from their actions, but when you see such people committing the same misdeeds against others it becomes difficult to not believe that they are their sins.  Still, it is essential to forgive, though it may take years to fully do so.

One of the people I thought I had forgiven passed away recently.  I guess I never really thought too much about forgiving him, I just tried to get over it and forget all the bullshit that happened.  Not that there weren’t fond memories, but looking back at the big picture it was just a hot mess from start to finish, and I had my share of blame.  But the hurt I caused was only to myself, and that is difficult to deal with, more difficult than forgiving someone else.  When I found out he died at age 28, I was at first shocked to read it, but then remembered that I always knew he would never make it to 30.  I don’t know all the details about what happened because I had no contact with him for four and a half years before his death, but I have to assume that his drug and alcohol abuse had a role in his death.  I have cried about it on and off in the week since I heard he was dead, at times feeling angry because he took himself from us so soon.  The last time we spoke was shortly after I found out he had been cheating on his girlfriend with me, and he told me about the ridiculous amount of drugs he had done the week before.  When I questioned him about it, asking what his family would think if something happened to him, he simply said, “They might be sad for a while, but they’d get over it.”  Wow.  He really did not love himself.  People have been saying how much he loved life, what a great guy he was, all the things you say after someone dies.  But he did not love life; he loved to party.  If he loved life, he would have taken better care of himself. 

So now I wonder if I ever forgave him.  I always cared about him, no matter what bad things he did.  But he hurt me too much for me to stay around.  And I see now that what hurt me the most was how he treated himself.  Some people are just self-destructive.  You can love them and worry about them and enable them, but none of that matters if they don’t care about themselves.  Sometimes you have to step away and love them from afar.  Of course, I have thoughts like “I should have stayed friends with him, I could have saved him” and “I should have reached out to make peace”.  But I was not capable of doing those things.  Nothing I could have done would have changed anything.  I have to let it go.  He is finally at peace, and for that I am grateful.  I forgive him.

Another person I thought I had forgiven has recently been stirring up some drama, and even though I am not involved with it he threw my name into it.  I have gone out of my way to avoid any and all contact with him for a year and a half, yet he keeps mentioning my name to people, generally in a good way, but most recently as an insult.  He also continues to indulge in the behavior that finally caused me to end our five-year friendship.  After a lot of serious meditation and prayer, I forgave him.  It is a long process, indeed, but it is worthwhile.  The fact that I continue to feel repulsed by the thought of him, and the fact that I want absolutely nothing to do with him whatsoever make me think I have not truly forgiven him.  I certainly do not wish to resume any sort of friendship, but at some point I hope to be able to say hello if I see him.  I am not at that point yet, and I may not be for years.  But learning that his hurtful behavior continues makes me feel sad for him, more sad than angry, I think.  I know him better than anyone ever will, and I understand what a mess he is.  I also understand that some people will just never learn.  As a Christian, I cannot give up on anyone’s salvation, so I continue to pray for him and will love him from afar.  Do I have faith that he will change his ways?  Not so much.  But do I think he deserves a space in my heart?  Absolutely.  He hurt my feelings more than anyone ever has.  Whether he did things on purpose or not is irrelevant; pain is pain, and I know his behavior is a result of his own pain.  I have forgiven him for what he did to me, but I don’t think I have forgiven him for what he continues to do to himself and others.  But I hope to someday do that.  I don’t want something to happen to him and then I am stuck wishing I had made my peace with him while he was still here.  I cannot force myself to interact with him.  But I can keep working toward letting go of my anger.

The third person I have been thinking about was involved in the worst physical harm I have ever endured.  I have only just realized in the past week the impact that harm had on the following decade of my life.  I was spiritually and emotionally damaged, pretty much FUBAR, but I did not recognize it as such at the time.  It certainly took me a long time to move on after everything ended between us, but he seems to be the one I am most ready to forgive and let back into my life, if only in a very small, very casual way.  Maybe it’s because our experience was many years ago and I have changed my life so drastically since then.  Maybe there are still feelings I did not realize I had.  Maybe I understand that God takes people away and returns them to you for good reason.  I am so willing to move past the past, but I am cautious.  I don’t know how much I thought over the years about forgiving this person because that just wasn’t the trip I was on back then.  Instead, I just wanted to forget it and move forward.  That was the best I could do at the time.  As much as I have grown, I still worry about falling back into old habits.  I did a lot of self-destructive things back then, and even though I have given up all that, I am nervous that I may slip.  I am not sure that I have forgiven myself for what I did.  But I am willing to look at this person with new eyes and hope that there has been progress made in his life over the past decade.  If I can make such dramatic changes in my life, anyone can.  I feel like I have forgiven him now. 

I never question whether I should forgive someone; I just wonder when it will happen.  Why would I destroy myself with anger?  That is really what happens, I mean, the person you are angry with might be suffering to an extent, but anger and bitterness consumes and destroys you, not them.  Even if the person I am angry with seems to be going about their business, I wonder how often they think about what they did wrong.  Deep down, everyone knows what is right and what is wrong.  They do not always know how to do the right thing, but they must be forgiven for their ignorance.  We all deserve to be forgiven.

Straight People Can Have Babies with Any Whore They Like!

Future dads Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka (picture courtsey of US Magazine http://www.usmagazine.com/momsbabies/news/neil-patrick-harris-to-be-a-dad-2010148)

So, Neil Patrick Harris and his man are having twins!  Yay!  Ignorant homophobes who use the Bible to justify their hatred are up in arms. But I have yet to hear any of them criticize Kelsey Grammer for (a) divorcing his THIRD WIFE, and (b) getting his 29-year-old girlfriend pregnant BEFORE SAID DIVORCE IS FINALIZED. Kelsey is, as we all know, a conservative Republican, so there are different rules for him.

Exploding ants!

I have developed quite an ant problem in my kitchen, and I don’t want to use chemicals to get rid of them. This is my favourite idea from The Frugal Life:

Indoor and Outdoor Ant Control Supplies:
1 1/2 cup Cream of Wheat
Instructions: Place a dish of Cream of Wheat where the ants can access it.
Note: After they eat it, the cereal expands and the ants will explode. 

(exploding ant animation courtesy of http://www.bubblegum-productions.com/abc/explode.gif)

Hot mustard? Hell to the yeah!

I don’t shop at Whole Foods very often.  For one thing, it’s a bit pricey.  But I also have an organic grocery store much closer to my place, Nature’s Bin, so I would rather go there and support a local business.  But I happened to be on the other side of town a few weeks ago so I stopped by Whole Foods.  While I was looking for things to eat for Lent I came across this mustard I had never heard of before.  I am a mustard lover, and I love super-hot food.  I am usually not impressed by most products that claim to be hot, but Jolokia really is great!  It’s great on sandwiches, fish, potato salad and any other dish that needs a little kick in the ass.  It was around $10 and worth every penny. 

Bringin’ Frumpy Back

I have been living in sweatpants for over a year now, and I must explain how liberating it is!  I used to be one of those people who didn’t understand how or why anyone would go out in public wearing sweats, but now I have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to put on jeans and a sweater and—gasp!—makeup.  I have rebelled against my former glamour girl self, I have realized, and I feel happy about it.

Through the years my self-image has had ebbs and tides.  Makeup was never an essential for me, really, at least, not so much that I looked like I was in drag.  In junior high and high school I never wore it and I really didn’t have much fashion sense either—tight jeans and oversized t-shirts (it was the 80s/early 90s) were the only things in my wardrobe.  I tried looking cute my first year or two in college, but I’m not quite sure it worked.  Until I had a gay BFF who told me to stop wearing my high school jacket that had “1991” on it, I really had no idea what I was doing fashion-wise.  I didn’t really care much, either, I don’t think. 

Once I had the gay best friend by my side and my first credit card in my wallet I was ready to transform myself.  It was about 1995 and belly shirts were all the rage.  I shopped at Caren Charles weekly and soon added Rave and other such trendy shops to the list of places I went to burn up my growing number of credit cards.  I would just put on something hot and hang out at K-Mart or the mall—I was not really a bar person yet, at least, I didn’t go by myself. 

That was the start of the Glamour.  The best friend who came after was much more interested in fashion, much more intellectual, and much less co-dependent.  He is really the one who helped me learn how to dress.  We had great fun together and he always gave me great advice and compliments.  When he moved I was on my own, in both fashion and life, and things took a dramatic turn. 

I pretty much started dressing—and acting—like a stripper.  Yeah, 7” heels, dressed cut down to there and up to there, tons of glitter all over myself, and I was a hot, drunken, whorey mess.  (Still, I did not wear a lot of makeup, just enough to look good.)  I was somewhat scandalous before my friend moved away—okay, I was very scandalous.  But things got out of control!  But I was having fun (from what I remember).  I spent lots of money—rather, credit—on shoes and outfits and purses so I would never wear the same thing twice.  I fancied myself quite the local celebrity and loved the attention I got from the gays for my fabulous ensembles!  There was no end in sight for the spending and the sluttiness.

And then, I went bankrupt.  I tried to avoid it by working three jobs at a time to pay the nearly $40,000 in credit card debt I had.  But I was killing myself.  I filed bankruptcy, guiltily and reluctantly, and when it was discharged I was able to return to college to complete by BA.  My spending habits quickly changed after I filed, and I started writing down every penny I spent—clothes and shoes were not at the top of my list anymore.  After I graduated I moved out on my own and I continued my new ways, at least as far as money was concerned.

I still dressed like a streetwalker and my drunken skankhood continued.  When I left the house to run errands I made sure I looked tasty.  All I wanted was to be the center of attention.  And I was.

A few bad apples—rather, douchebags—spoiled the bunch, and I decided that I needed to impose a moratorium on all hoin’ until further notice.  I had some shit to work through and penis just distracts me, whether I’m actually getting any or not.  Though thought of it, the prospect of it, the potential for it is too much for me and I get all cracked out, so I realized that I needed to keep my cooter to myself for a while.  I started dressing a tad bit more conservatively, I suppose, and stopped flashing my beav to everyone (FYI: all of this public nudity took place in gay bars; I couldn’t even tell you the last time I stepped foot in a straight bar), though I did flash my boobs on occasion. 

The final step in this transformation from whore-to-future-housewife was my decision to stop drinking.  It caused issues with my BFF at the time (with whom there were already many, many other issues) and I stopped going out altogether, not only because I didn’t want to be in bars every night but also because I had started grad school and had two deaths in the family all at the same time.  Spending time alone at home, wearing my sweatpants and t-shirts, studying, thinking about my life up until that point, all the stupid shit I did, was a turning point.  Stepping back from all the drama and scandal—and booze—helped me to realize who I am and what is important.  I had many epiphanies during that time.  I was becoming more comfortable with who I am without all that bullshit.  It was awesome!

During the first year and a half of grad school I still attempted to look presentable, but in my fourth semester I was like fuck it.  I had no reason to put effort into it because I felt so much better wearing sweatpants and wearing no makeup.  I have oily Slavic skin so makeup doesn’t stay on very long, and my weight fluctuates so much that my jeans never fit quite right.  But sweatpants are always my friend.  Until the past month or so I didn’t think much of any of it. But my complete devotion to the almost 20 pairs of sweatpants of which I am now the proud owner, the inevitable sigh and automatic no I offer to every invitation to socialize with people face to face instead of on Facebook, the absolute joy I feel when I get to spend the whole day at home (or with my family) doing only what I want to do.  I have no more sense of obligation to anyone but myself, my family, and my closest friends, and all of that really boils down to only feeling obligated to become engaged in things I am truly interested in. 

I have considered that much of this may be due to the social anxiety that created the former life I lived for 14 years; I am usually uncomfortable around people so drinking helped me become more outgoing, my clothes (or lack thereof) were the subject of interest, my tattoos another way to call attention to myself and to express what I could not otherwise say.  All of that behavior has some root in my insecurity, I think.  This time out of the spotlight has been good for me, and I do not miss being out all the time and being drunk and loud and naked.  I like myself so much better now, I know myself so much better.  I am glad I lived the life I lived.  But I am far happier these days, living my life in sweatpants.

Advice for the New Year

Celebrating the new year is often accompanied by resolutions.  Usually, they are things like losing weight, saving money, swearing less, blah blah blah.  I am not one to make resolutions, but I do have some advice for those who do:

 Don’t be an asshole.

Keep reading throughout 2010 for tips on how to make that happen.  Have a happy and safe holiday!