Caterwauling

No, I’m not going anywhere, but I’m thinking about not coming back. Happy holidays, and be well. Stay out of trouble and take care of yourselves.

On iTunes: Jewel, “Deep Water”

Although I am admittedly not much fun to be around these days, Ted and his incredible family beat me over the head and dragged me out of the cave for The. Best. Meal. Ever. He’s nice enough to give you the recipes, so I suggest you copy them and try them ASAP (and have me over to dinner so I can taste them to make sure you made them right!).

In addition to being a terrific friend, Ted can cook! My belly is a happy one. And, not to mention, I got leftovers! w00t!

That’s not to say that Life didn’t pull on the shitkickers and remind me that happiness is fleeting. (Turning the hairy eyeball toward these asshats. Merry f’ing Christmas to you, too. I’ve got a full litterbox with your names on it!)

On iTunes: The Byrds, “Turn Turn Turn”

Nights are the worst for me — that’s when I do my hard-core fretting about the future. I do my best work in the early evening, so you’d think I’d be relaxed, but no, that’s when the brain switch flips into the upright position and spirals into orbit.

This morning, I awakened on the couch and saw Bon Jovi performing on NBC. *drool* Called my mom to alert her to the broadcast, and afterward, we ended up talking about a family friend whose luck makes mine seem like a tiptoe through the tulips.

After hearing about his kids who keep wrecking his wife’s car (one teen got drunk and totaled it last night and left the scene. Idiot.) and how his wife took his van (that he uses for business) and littered the inside with McDonald’s wrappers and wouldn’t even pick him up from work because she wanted to go shopping. He had to beg someone for a ride home, only to get there at 9 p.m. to see the house in shambles, no food to eat and the wife nagging him to go get milk for the ungrateful kids. What does she do for a living? Spend his money. She doesn’t work, doesn’t look after the kids, doesn’t do shit. Oh, and what was she shopping for, you might ask? A brand-new car.

So, after hearing all of that, I felt terrible for him. To work his whole life and to end up with that crazy mess on his hands. The man has not a moment to himself and not a shred of sanity left. The wife/kids destroy everything and can’t even save him a plate from dinner at the end of the day.

I wouldn’t say this makes me feel better, but it does give me a broader perspective that everybody’s life sucks right now. Really. Sure, I see all the people in the stores with their bursting-full shopping bags and their hideous holiday decorations, and I get envious (minus the ugly decorations!). This year, Santa Claus isn’t coming, and you know what? It’s surprisingly a relief. I don’t think I’ve ever been materialistic to a point where receiving a gift would actually matter to me. And it’s forced me to think creatively about how to enjoy the holidays at little to no cost. I’ll visit the National Gallery of Art and hit the ice rink at the Sculpture Garden and maybe even finally get to Eastern Market.

What this brings me to are reasons to be happy, even if it’s ephemeral. So many of us are struggling right now — in diametrically different ways, but still trying desperately to hold ourselves together in one way or another — so if we still have our health, let’s celebrate it. Let’s try something we’ve never done before. Let’s be our own miracles. Let’s not curse out the moron who cuts us off on the interstate but hope instead that he or she doesn’t hurt anybody in a careless fit.

I’m a big believer in what goes around, comes around. If all you have to give someone this holiday season is a smile, then by all means, do so. If you have the power to do more, then that’s even better, but it really doesn’t take much to turn somebody’s world around. When people are at their lowest points, all they really want is an acknowledgement that they still belong to the human race. And I want to thank everyone who has done that and so much more for me.

On iTunes: A Girl Named Eddy, “People Who Used to Dream”

When you spend as much time alone as I do, you’re bound to meet your demons head-on — particularly if you’ve been running from them for years. And sometimes, even the Muse needs to take a vacation from me, so I’m left to do the battle alone until she returns.

I try not to spend a lot of time dealing with Regret. I figure, I don’t have enough time in a day to think about the things that are productive, so why get whiplash looking back? But sometimes, when the current stretch of highway is a scary one (I feel like I’m driving endlessly around the Beltway right now), I start glancing in the rearview mirror, wondering what made me decide to get into this lane and what would have happened if I had taken the exit that had just passed. What makes me stay on this crazy expanse of interstate? What makes me get that gut feeling that I will benefit if I wait three more exits?

I’ve seen what anxiety, stress and worry has done to my family (my grandmother worried herself into a stroke, and some days, I feel like I am going to follow that same path), and that scares me even more. I want to go back to how I was in college — I had the standard mountain of debt and all the angst that accompanies coming into one’s own, but I barely gave two thoughts to not making it. Survival has always been my traveling companion, and I’ve just assumed that I would reach my destinations unscathed.

Turning 30 has brought a weird nostalgia, though, for a time I never knew. I was grooving to some ’60s tunes today (”Scarborough Fair,” anyone?) and really felt like I’d missed my calling. I should have been a flower child, wearing patchouli and protesting against war and for women’s rights. I probably would have married an ambitious corporate type — someone stable — and cleaned up my act, only to do professional lobbying for the causes that ignited me.

That’s the life I want. I’ve been so career-driven that, when the work trickles away, I find how I’ve sacrificed relationships and friendships because I was always too stressed out or too busy to cultivate them. I’ve let hobbies and passions fall by the wayside. I’m looking at all of my barely started creative projects and wondering if I could get any money for the materials so I can keep the Internet going for another month. I look at my female friends who were, like me, so “I must be career-oriented” — the friends who are now content to be wives and lovers (but not mothers — this group wasn’t the kid-friendly type!). I witnessed that last night, and I found myself wistfully wondering what it would be like to work part-time so that I could keep up with my volunteer work. And by rights, that’s what I’m doing anyway, only without a steady income coming in to make sure I could keep up my humanitarian efforts.

I heard a horrible story tonight on the news — how a woman and her four children were evicted from their apartment and she locked the two younger kids in her storage unit while she worked. The newscasts are just fascinated by this snapshot of what they call “the working poor.” But, really, isn’t that most if not all of us? I know I digest myself over finances (the lack thereof), but there’s a humanitarian cause that makes me pound the table — when people are working and still unable to afford shelter. But let me add the codicil that the woman’s community is outraged, of course, because there are children who are homeless. And, yes, that’s a travesty. But what about the fact that the woman can’t afford to have a roof over their heads, especially as winter dawns and as Santa Claus won’t be coming?

That’s my problem with society. The kids can always be shoved into some type of group home or foster situation. Not great, but whatever. It’s better than being on the streets, for the most part (and yes, I’ve seen exceptions). But what about the adults who can’t get the ends to meet within the same zip code of each other? Too bad. The homeless shelters are full. When you can’t pay your rent, they padlock your place, and all the stuff for which you have worked so very hard is locked away, inaccessible to you. Don’t think I don’t think that can’t be me someday, and maybe that’s why I’m so passionate about that. Even when I had a reliable income, I was always one paycheck away from being on the street. And even right now, I know I will somehow be OK for December, but what about January? And while I don’t condone the woman’s actions of putting her kids in a storage unit for the day, well, I understand the desperation that forces such deplorable decisions. May none of us ever be faced with such choices.

In any event, I don’t regret the decisions I’ve made. But that doesn’t stop me from wondering where I would be if I hadn’t depleted so many financial and emotional resources going down dead-end streets and cul-de-sacs. But it’s not too late. I’ve got to keep my eyes on the horizon and try not to fall into the grooves and potholes that continually threaten damage. I’ve got to recapture that period in my life when I didn’t know how I was going to cross the finish line — I just knew I was going to do it with dignity and a sense of satisfaction that there would be a reward for honesty, integrity and plain old hard work. And whenever the day comes, I will have flowers in my hair, if only in my mind.

On iTunes: Simon & Garfunkel, “Scarborough Fair”

How is your self-esteem? Do you have enough? Could you use more? Yeah, me too.

I was doing some thinking today at my favorite park — I was swinging on the swingset (one of my favorite stress-relievers in life), lying all the way back with my hair grazing the ground, watching the world from my upside-down position. And that kind of opened up a new perspective that I hadn’t considered on why so many of us are hitting roadblocks in our relationships, in our careers, in our ambitions. We don’t have enough belief in or respect for just what it is that we personally can accomplish.

From the time we are babies, we are confined somewhere — in a womb, in a playpen, in some kind of seatbelted apparatus. But despite that, when we are free, we learn to crawl, to walk, to run toward all of those objects that everyone tells us “no” and “stop that!” when we try to grasp them. And eventually, we learn that we get yelled at when we do certain things, so we don’t do them for that reason alone. But does it mean that the things are wrong to do in general or was our only fault in the situation simply going against an adult’s wishes?

That said, we are conditioned from Day One to mind our place. And essentially, that means we’re all just big babies. But with nicer underwear.

Most kids, if we weren’t bullied in school, then we bore witness to it. We saw what happened to the kids who were different in some way. Think about it. Were you overweight, did you wear glasses, or did you have another physical or even personal characteristic that kept you from fully blending into the masses? Were you outspoken and defiant, did you dress differently (whether on purpose or because you couldn’t afford what was trendy), were your intellect and interests on different levels than your peers?

What I remember from that time in my life was going from being an outcast to befriending some. And something weird happened — I wasn’t so weird anymore. More popular people would befriend me and tell me to ditch the “losers.” In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t, but the memory of that time is so powerful — that feeling of being included by those who previously made your life miserable. I wish I’d stood up and told the two-faced jerks to suck it, and I probably would have formed lasting friendships with the people that I stupidly left behind. I’m not in touch with anybody from those days — not surprising, eh?

But then, you escape the confines of high school and go to college or wherever you spend your next years, becoming enlightened and liberated and learning that the world is so much bigger than you’ve seen. You absorb all you can about your subjects, your comrades, even the weird Resident Adviser on your floor because she’s too eclectic to be ignored and, ultimately, too fascinating to resist midnight smoke and tea breaks with during exam week.

She is the girl you remember. She marched to the beat of her own drum. She is the girl you wanted to be. She is the girl I became. The one you really don’t think about when you meet me and yet the one you can’t forget because of something I said or the way I said it or, possibly, because of the absolute and utter passion I injected into whatever belief I held. I don’t ask you to believe the same as me, but I will tell you in no uncertain terms why you should just listen to me. Because I remember what it was like during that brief period when I didn’t stand up for what I believed.

But then you find a new venue … the real world. And it’s high school all over again without the ’80s hair.

And it’s back to the square root of self-esteem. The reason nobody has enough of it is because certain people can only feel successful if everyone around them is failing or, at least, feeling too uncertain to ask questions. And the easiest way to make that happen is to convince them of it until it eventually happens. Even the strongest among us can eventually succumb to mindfuck. I’m not saying that the bullies aren’t talented, but when the talent they decide to use is masterminding everyone else’s misery to escalate their own success, well, what a wasted resource. Really.

I was telling a friend the other day how so many hacks will always have a warm bed in which to sleep while the idealists who are truly potential change agents will die alone on the streets with only their dreams to keep them warm. He who refuses to play the game in the pre-established way is barred from playing again (e.g., “you’ll never work in this town again”).

This needs to stop. No matter what age we are at, we need to band together and save ourselves as a community. Why is the creative (or just plain different) class rejected to second-class citizenry when we are the ones who can become single-handedly responsible for the success of every individual who wishes to feel the rewards of honest, sincere contributions to our society? Be better than what they want us to be, friends, because even the best insurance plan can’t mend a broken spirit — yours or those of the people who were counting on you to be strong enough to help them, too.

On iTunes: Bon Jovi, “Bang a Drum”

Subtitle: (Dis)Orient(ed) Express

I once did a posting called “On the Blue Line,” referring to my observations on the Metro. These days, I take the Yellow Line because, well, the station closest to my house can suck it, charging me $10 to get out of the lot after midnight on a Friday. Bah.

Anyway, I opted to Metro down to the Love Cafe for Fray and of course cake (Mojito Rum Buttercream tonight, thanks). The joy was overwhelming as the escalators were off and/or in disrepair at both my station and at the side of the U Street Station where I exited. Minor delays, but nothing eventful. At that point, anyway.

So, Fray. Good Fray Day. (I think that could be a new religious holiday for the non-Catholics among us (I say this despite being baptized) — Good Fray Day!) *ahem*

Where was I? Oh yeah, stories and stuff. Tiff did an amazing job pulling the event together on no budget, Tom was perhaps my favorite storyteller of the night and an excellent right-hand to Tiff, and, well, there was cake. AN EIGHT DOLLAR PIECE OF CAKE, but cake so good I just wanted to do graphic things to it. (Sorry for that visual, Tiff. Really! LOL)

Anyway, Tiff was trying to nudge me to go tell stories when the mic was open. I wanted to. Lord knows I have about six million of them, and I always love hogging the spotlight when there’s a live mic around (*cough JournalCon cough*). But I couldn’t find my voice tonight, even though I was desperately patching together story remnants in my head to make a cohesive one, just in case. But it never gelled. Bah. Clearly, I’m not gellin’ tonight.

Speaking of patching remnants, I wanted to impale the knitting club with their needles — they were clearly having a stich-and-bitch session. This group of chatty women knitted together in the cafe, and they weren’t exactly quiet when I was hanging around next to them, trying to hear the storytellers. So I moved into the draft of the front door, but at least I could hear.

A really good story that stuck with me was Amy and her “meat dance.” A former vegetarian, she was asked if she ate meat by people who clearly anticipated the answer to be no. And she remembered a lovely Greek sandwich she’d eaten earlier and did a little meat dance in her seat (kind of like the Cabbage Patch or Churn the Butter) and said “It. Tastes. So. Good!” ROFL. I know one of my readers can appreciate the meat dance as much as I did.

In any event, it should go without saying that featured speakers Bill and Julia were superb, having us laughing and crying, respectively, and sometimes having us do both simultaneously.

Anyway, back to the Yellow Line. First, I had the pleasure of Tom and Tiff’s company on the Green Line (minus the stankalicious guy who waited on the platform right next to me for 16 minutes. Pooh!). But, alas, I was left to my own devices and bravely hopped onto the Yellow at L’Enfant Plaza.

I was in for a good ride. Until. …

We had just made a stop and inched forward three feet and THEN WE STOPPED. The driver patiently explained something to the effect that “We have zero speed capacity.” He came on seven or eight more times, getting edgier each time, to repeat that information and to say, “And no, I am not going to open the doors. I cannot open the doors. We have left the platform and the doors WILL NOT OPEN.” I guess some of the people in the other cars must have been asking.

Me? Oh, yeah, that’s the fun part. I. AM. CLAUSTROPHOBIC!!!! The only thing I fear more than failure and down escalators (major fear of falling) is an enclosed space. I mean, you don’t want to ride with me in the winter because I’ve got the sunroof open — anything to feel/hear the breeze. I must have been suffocated in a past life.

Anyway, the announcements kept up regularly, and the driver said there was a big computer failure somewhere and well, deal with it. I love WMATA, don’t you?

In any event, I occupied myself during my imprisonment by listening to a guy two rows of seats behind me. He was speaking in a normal tone of voice, asking such questions as “Why” and “I don’t understand how it happened this way” and “It wasn’t supposed to be like this” and “What am I going to do?” Quite honestly, I suspected he was a mindreader, because, well, those are the kind of things I say to myself on the Metro.

But that’s the thing — he was saying all of these things to HIMSELF. This just goes to show how our society has (d)evolved in just the past decade — I assumed he was on a cell phone! Nobody shows up on our radar anymore as people about whom to be concerned … we don’t think to look for phones or hands-free devices. In any event, this only served to exacerbate my claustrophobia.

Maybe 10 minutes passed, and we were off. My stop was the very next one (”Hallelujah and holy shit” — Clarke Griswold) and I managed to be the first of probably 80 people out of the station. I jumped into my beloved Samantha and pealed the hell away from my parking space.

I really do love D.C. Honestly and truly. But some days, I really love it when I cross that invisible line into Old Dominion … particularly when it’s my foot on the gas pedal.

On iTunes: Bon Jovi, “I’d Die For You”

Dear Bon Jovi:

P.S. Jon, I would rather get you for the holidays any day.

On iTunes: Bon Jovi, “We Can Dance”

Fray Day at the Love Cafe tonight! Come out for Cake. Yes, that’s Cake with a Capital C because it’s from Cakelove. Mmm, cake.

Oh, yeah, and there’s some awesome storytelling, too. But seriously, there’s cake involved. What more do you need?

Yay to Tiff for coordinating the event!

On iTunes: Bon Jovi, “Something For the Pain”

Dear Karma:

Love,
Dawn

On iTunes: Bon Jovi, “Something to Believe In”