Caterwauling

No, that’s not how long it’s been since I left my desk at work (although it’s been more than 13 HOURS). It’s the 10-year observance of the passing of Princess Diana.

It’s been all over the cable news channels today, and I hate to admit it, but it was a welcome break from Ben Bernanke and Prez-e-dent Shrub. (Incidentally, did you catch “Celebrity Rap Superstar” last night? They had better grammar than Shrubbish in his talk today.)

Anyway, I remember where I was when I heard the news. A lot has changed since then. Different city, different circle of friends. I know how to get in touch with all of them, although wanting to? Meh. Those ships sailed and even sank, for the most part.

I was 23, working a job I HATED, and I went drinking every weekend and pretty much most weekdays, too. Now I’m 33, working a job I love, and working nights and weekends instead of partying. Awesome. I’m probably earning four times as much, but I’m paying about five times as much for rent. Gained two cats and too much weight. Lost a ton of friends and probably that much weight … and gained it back again. Was smoking a pack a day then; now smoking a pack a month.

I remember wanting so very much to be taken seriously in my career; now I’m wondering where the hell all this responsibility came from. I was an angry, disgruntled supervisee who detested every idiot above me who couldn’t spot talent if it was shoved in their mouth like a ball gag. Now I’m going with the flow and being hands-off and open to every new idea I hear, having learned what it was like to not be provided that opportunity for most of my career.

I’m still as relationship-stunted as ever. I still run at the first sign of not even conflict, but lack of absolute adoration on my part. It takes a LOT for me to let my guard down even the slightest bit, and I want to be wooed and courted and romanced and dazzled. If I’m not, I’m gone. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, end of story. If you’re going to show me something, you need to show me everything.

So many things have changed since that night in which the four of us then-friends sat in an empty apartment, listening to the news of the princess’ death on the radio because that was our only connection to the outside world. My grandparents are gone. Only two friends from that time in my life are still around. I’ve attended as many weddings as I have funerals and bought more baby gifts than both combined.

I’ve lived in almost as many apartments as years that have passed. I rose in one field, started over at the bottom of another and am rising to the top of that one, only to be experimenting with a new field that combines the best of both. I’ve gone from spreading myself thin with several jobs at once to spending the same amount of time at one, but that’s what I wanted.

I’ve got the same cat and added another. I’ve got more friends that I’ve never met than I have in real life. I’ve met a lot of famous and pseudo-famous people and traveled to a bunch of different cities. My dreams have gotten smaller due to disillusionment and yet grow bigger as I decide that hey, they’re still good dreams after all.

It’s been quite the decade, and it’s only just that — both a milestone and a stepping stone.

Here’s to another eventful 10 years in which I will look back and be amazed and just how fast it went by and how far I managed to go. Cheers to looking back, fondly.

I can’t believe how uninspired I am to blog right now. It’s amazing what a little peace and happiness does to a girl’s mindset. I really don’t have anything to complain about.

And that, my friends, is a sign that Armageddon is probably approaching.

Mom always said things would look better in the morning. I think it’s less that you’ve had some time to live with whatever your situation is and more that, if you’re like me, you can’t think without coffee. And a few moments without thoughts in your head is the greatest peace of all.

All this crap that’s going on in my head, I decided to do something about it. Probably not the “right” thing, but I’m tired of trying to guess just exactly what that happens to be. I just sort of laughed at myself a few minutes ago, realizing that I haven’t acted or felt this much like a teenager since, well, I was a teen. And I eventually realized all that angst was just stupid and useless.

So, too, is all this.

Oh well. It’s my right to go off the deep end once in awhile. Maybe one of these times, I’ll actually learn how to swim to shore a little more quickly!

Today’s plans are so very up in the air. Either my mom is coming to visit, or I am going to go visit a friend out-of-state. In a way, I’m sort of hoping neither one works out, because I would love to either work on the house today or go out and take a class. (It’s 10 a.m. — you’d think I’d have more of a game plan by now.)

I do know I need to figure out something to cook/bake/buy for a par-tay tomorrow. I cannot even tell you whether my stovetop/oven/microwave even work at this point — I’ve never used ‘em.

And because things have gotten ENTIRELY too serious around here lately, let’s move on to more important issues — pop culture!

So is Paris Hilton back in the slammer to stay? I don’t honestly believe that she got such a crappy sentence for driving with a suspended license. Lindsay Lohan can be cracked out in the front seat and she can go check into Hotel Rehab and everything will be forgotten. There are worse people on this earth, doing infinitely worse things, who get off scot-free, and that’s the real travesty.

I admit I don’t feel sorry for the heiress that jail simply didn’t agree with her, but the time to hand the judge a brown paper bag filled with unmarked bills was before she got checked into the prison system, not after. Now, even I want to see her spend 45 days in jail, after she got to escape and go home, however briefly.

Is John Edwards right that her even getting to be sent home was an example of us having “two Americas” (i.e., the rich getting special treatment)? Sure. Why not?

But I thought that with jails being so overcrowded, anyone who can pay their way out of their sentence, well, could. That’s the two Americas of which he speaks. Now, it’s just one big fat fucked-up America, one dedicated seemingly solely to sensationalism, that sponsors today’s message.

Speaking of John, last week in an extensive interview series on CNN about presidential contenders and faith, Soledad O’Brien asked Edwards what the biggest sin he ever committed was. Jeez. I think I’m going to start asking that of people I’m about to hire! He said something noncommittal about how he’s always conscious of sinning every day, blah blah blah.

I think at least a fun answer to that would have been, “Staring at your cleavage during this whole interview.” Clearly there’s a reason why I will never be able to run for president!

I can’t make a better case for socialized medicine than Helen did in her “Doctor, Doctor” post.

I will say, however, that I think it’s goddamned ludicrous here in the States that you go to a dentist for some emergency work because you’re in pain, and that dentist (or whatever type of doctor) has the right to run a credit check and never call you again because you’re not worthy of treatment if you’re uninsured and have a credit score below a certain number. Even if you might just have the means to make payments.

And it’s not that these medical magicians even love the big insurance companies; they’re somewhat forced to take lower levels of reimbursement in exchange for the guarantee of being paid for services rendered. Nobody wants to put their services “on sale” but if salaries have to be paid, you take it where you can get it.

A lot of people posit whether universal health care, other than being a tremendous cost, would sacrifice the quality of services rendered. From my view, I have yet to enter a hospital or doctor/dentist’s office and leave feeling like a miracle happened or that anyone cared enough to provide more than a bare-bones level of service, if that. At least with socialized health care, you could excuse the impersonal care because at least everyone is entitled to some. Which is more important?

A lot of the health care costs in this so-called “land of the plenty” are reactive, anyway. Preventive care would save a whole lot of grief in the end, and you wouldn’t have people like me who are conditioned to avoid medical professionals at all costs because the out-of-pocket expense (even with coverage) is enough to make us wonder, well, do I REALLY need to address that?

I fear we’re all in deep doo-doo if we ever stopped feeling ashamed enough to admit we actually do care about our health. My dentist needs to do about $1,500 of work on me that’s not covered by my plan; I’ve been dodging his assistant’s calls for six months. And they’re not a big fan of payments, either — if you don’t have it up front, then seeya.

I don’t know. If the incompetence exhibited at Veterans Hospital (dig through the archives; I can’t bear to look at those posts) is an example of socialized medicine, then we’re all doomed. But one of the issues that will persuade me to vote for a candidate in the upcoming presidential election is a solid plan to ensure that every American has access to health care, because no circumstance should be extenuating enough to tell someone that their life isn’t worth anything in this world.

Sabre did a great blog entry a few days back and pointed to an entry on Joss Whedon’s blog about the stoning/kicking to death of a young girl, Dua Khalil, by her (male) family while passers-by preserved it on their camera phones.

Read Whedon’s post here because I can’t say anything more brilliant about it than he does. The CliffsNotes version (below) is enough to make you sick, when you realize this is happening in our lifetime, in plain sight, and captured not for the depravity of the situation but, as Joss alludes, as some sort of an homage to the very event itself. *twitch*

“How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. …

“Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, ‘If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.’ It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? …

“It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I’ve looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I’ve shorted out. I don’t pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I’m not for a second going down the ‘women are saints’ route — that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart?”

Infuriating that this is all just another headline, in the end. When I read the blog entry, I wondered if he weren’t talking about an old issue, because I’ve heard it too many times before. It sickens me that it’s “new” news. It kills me that no one can just live their lives; happiness can yield a fearful situation, if in fact the story is true that she was stoned because of who she was seen with.

It’s her people, for crying out loud — why not try to run the dude out of town, if it has to be that way at all? Treat a woman like she’s stupid and weak and doesn’t know any better, for her whole life, and then punish her for a decision she makes about the company she keeps? God (or Allah or whatever) forbid that the family take responsibility for the way she was reared. Maybe THEY should be the ones bludgeoned to death for not protecting her from the temptations of the outside world that they themselves are allowed to enjoy but that she should never even stop to wonder about.

The mind boggles.