Thursday, June 30, 2011

Ask me ___questions, I will tell you ____lies

You guys were totally easy on me with these questions. Way to make me feel/sound suuuuper boring!


Whatcha Readin'?
Ahem. You don't really want to know the answer to this.

Two summers ago - the summer that D$ and I got married - my sister came up to Portland for the summer "to help with the wedding." Except she wasn't much help because we couldn't get her to stop reading these totally dorky books with ridiculous titles like A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings. I gave her raft of shit about it - incessantly yelling "A Storm of Swords!" at her in my best nerd voice.

...And now I am totally obsessed with the series and can't stop reading it. I just finished the second book (which is over 900 pages, btw) and am planning the rest of my day around getting a copy of the third one. Will Daenerys make it across The Narrow Sea to claim her throne? Will Catelyn see her children again? Do I like Tyrion, or hate him? What is going to happen with Arya? (I have my guesses about that one). These are important questions, people. 


Besides that, I have some books on Self-Esteem and Anxiety that my new therapist told me to read. Have I even opened them? No.



Did you wrap your cat in a sweater or did you find her like that? 
Have you ever tried to wrap a cat in a sweater? I think it would be pretty hard. Also that isn't a sweater. It's a blanket my grandmother knit me and the cats are obsessed with it. 

No, Uncle Fester definitely did that to himself and then lay there for several minutes in an effort to win the "cutest four-legged creature on the block" award. He totally won.

He often does the same thing with: paper bags, luggage, my underwear drawer.



What is something you'd change if you could, and why?
About me? Besides my mustache? Right now I'd really like to get rid of the anxiety that I feel pretty much constantly, about everything in my life. (If only I had someone to talk to about that, or some books to read or something...)




What is the temperature right now? How lovely is Oregon summer? 
So when I said "it is sunny all the time" I meant "it is sunny sometimes but otherwise still rainy and cold more than I want." Right now it is partly cloudy and maybe 60 degrees. Tomorrow it will rain and Saturday it will be 80 degrees and sunny. Do not be jealous, Jehara - the weather in Oregon exists solely to break your heart and confuse your wardrobe. A few weekends ago I got summer fever and hacked a pair of pants into cutoffs only to change into jeans and a coat three hours later. I will say that it is gorgeously green and I smell roses and lilacs everywhere I go. So that's nice. I guess.



That's all you got, people? Give me some hard ones! BIP where you at?

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Do my work for me!

D$ and I mostly use our smart phones to send each other photos of the cats

You guys, my brain is empty. I think about y'all often and wonder how you are doing. As I'm falling asleep or driving to work I maybe compose a post in my brain (or a few sentences of a post) but it's gone before I get to a computer. In fact, I've been avoiding computers all together (forgive the lack of comments on your blogs recently). I think it might be that I'm really into reading books right now. Or the fact that it is sunny and D$ and I are having fun all the time or that my sister moved back into town.  

Alas, my blog traffic counting machine tells me that basically no one is reading this anymore and I'd better get cracking if I want to maintain any readers at all. 

Since I can't muster anything good to say, I'm going cheap. I'm opening myself up for questions. Sure, only 2.5 people read this blog and sure, they probably have never thought about me more than the time it takes to wonder why my cats like armpits so much. Yes, maybe it is totally arrogant and weird to invite the Internet to ask you questions. But hey: it's almost a holiday weekend and I'm throwing in the towel.

So, get crackin' on question-asking in the comments. Be creative. Just remember that I'm trying to be anonymous, so if you ask something about personal information I will either not answer it or lie profusely. 

Also, if you ask "Why can't you learn to use commas correctly?" I will cry. So don't ask that. 

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

My feminist husband

While D$ and I were cleaning up from dinner tonight I somehow got onto the topic of Anthony Weiner* and what a first-class idiot he turned out to be. I was bemoaning his poor wife - who is clearly awesome and D$ said:


                  "Well. I like to think that smart, powerful women don't let themselves be held
                    back by the stupid shit their husbands do."

Word is bond, yo.

*Quick synopsis for you Brits: young, up-and-coming Democratic congressman from New York who is also considered to be a potential NY Mayoral candidate is caught sexting and sending lewd photos of himself to underage girls (and of-age women) via Twitter, text, e-mail. Happens to be married to a kick-ass woman who is in Africa with her boss HILLARY CLINTON when the scandal breaks...oh and also happens to be pregnant. 

Friday, June 10, 2011

Whew

I had my first therapy session a few hours ago.

It was...awkward? Anxiety-ridden, but also not. To be totally honest, it felt like going on a speed date with Carl Jung.

I wasn't nervous beforehand (except I found myself wondering "what does one wear to therapy?"). I wasn't nervous as I walked up, but the minute I entered the room I felt jittery. Hyper aware of myself - the sound of my voice, my posture, how I was responding to questions, etc. I found myself trying to please the therapist and then immediately trying to squelch that impulse. I felt myself working to be honest and not default to my normal routine of projecting a "charming and funny young woman with her shit together" while simultaneously trying not to over state an issue just justify being in therapy.

I thought it was going to be more of a "get to know you" but man if we didn't just jump right into some topics. Ask me a question and I will give you a response, even if that response seems like a weird thing to say to a stranger. She asked a lot of questions (mostly about my family and why I was there) and I sort of felt scatterbrained as I jumped from topic to topic. I walked away feeling a little windswept but mostly positive, like, "Hey, okay, that wasn't so hard."

But now it's an hour later and I feel really raw. My eyes feel like I've been crying, or am about to cry. I want to take a nap. I want D$ to come home and snuggle me for approximately seven hours. I want to cry and maybe laugh at the same time.

Jesus. What am I going to do when we actually start talking about things? 

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Newsflash: Weekends are awesome*

Guys. I finally figured out how to have weekends.

After our hike D$ and I went out separately with friends. I met up with D$ and his new best-buddy later quite late in the night and let them buy me drinks while they got wasted and happy. The next day D and I lazed around the house and snuggled.

The weekend after that I: went on a long walk with my oldest (as in longest-knowing, not as in grey-haired) friend. Got dressed up in D$'s favorite green dress to go with D$ and the same new best-buddy to a Portland Timbers game. Drank microbrews and screamed cheers about my city. Found myself post-soccer game at a very strange party in a very posh apartment. Ate lots of free expensive cheese. Went out t0 breakfast and watched Bridesmaids with a dear friend. Shook, stomped my feet and laughed until tears rolled down my eyes.**

Then there was last weekend. D$ and I drove from forest to river to desert to visit our friend A in the very small town where he lives. A said you have to approach the town like a Study Abroad experience, and we did. The first night we went to a members-only "business men's club" with a stuffed bison head over the bar. We also went to a bar where - I shit you not - the short, blond, gap-toothed waitress was wearing a Merlotte's t-shirt. In the morning we drove to the Walmart to get bullets, targets and Coors Light (I am absolutely not kidding about this) and then drove out to federal land and I bruised my arm shooting a real-deal Remington shotgun. I hit one target and was damn proud of it. That afternoon we happened upon cheap tickets to the Sasquatch music festival and drank beer in the sun to the tunes of Iron and Wine and Death Cab for Cutie. I learned that MDMA = Ecstasy, and, no, strange young lady, my husband does not have any so please don't ask him again. I also learned that I'm not as curmudgeonly as I thought I was*** but I'm still not so hot about the combination of outhouses + hundreds of drunk people. The next day I hiked in caves and rode on the back of a motorcycle and then D$ drove us home to the kitties and a freezer full of Popsicles.


I did not spend these weekends cleaning**** or doing laundry or grocery shopping. I did not spend these weekends helping my parents or cleaning my car. I did fun things, with my husband and with my friends. And you know what? I didn't die from not being super-ready for the work week.

Have you guys been having weekends like this all along? How did I just figure out that it is okay to have fun on the weekend and not use it for errands and cleaning?

Also, what should I do next weekend? I'm thinking after last-weekend's escapades I should balance it out with a poetry reading, pedicure, maybe an art show.

Oh wait - actually next weekend I'm running my very first-ever 5k (in a costume) and then watching as my husband and my father drunkenly play bass drums in my favorite parade of the year.

Catch me if you can, y'all.


*If my step-brother MK were here he'd take one look at the subject of this post and say (in his best Ace Ventura voice), "Thhhhank you, Captain Obvious!"
**GO SEE THAT MOVIE. RIGHT NOW. Stop reading this post. Go!
***Although I cannot even TELL YOU how much I hated the skinny white girls and boys wearing fake "native American headdress" shit. I seriously wanted to slap them. How in the world do they now know how offensive and weird that is? 
****All right, fine, on Monday I did break down and vacuum the carpets a little and go grocery shopping and get food made for the week. But that was only a few hours of the day and the rest of it was fun, I promise. Plus, D$ helped.