According to the terrible crosswords I occasionally do in Us Weekly and Star, "ades" means drinks. Like, lemonades. Or lime-ades. I didn't think you could use a suffix in a crossword, but apparently what I don't know could fill a warehouse. I couldn't tell you how to effectively use hot rollers, either.
We had a gig last night at that stupid tourist attraction that is so thoroughly entrenched in the minds of the masses as a Chicago landmark that you can never convince an out-of-towner not to bother with it cuz it's basically a waste of everyone's time. I have only ever been there once when I wasn't being paid to be there, let's put it that way. And I was with my in-laws (well, ex-in-laws now, but whatever) at the time. It's big and and striking-looking and all that, but seriously, people! We have so much more going on than a goddam ferris wheel and some fireworks.
Although if you'd like to know more about ferris wheels and why they are important to the Second City, I suggest you read "The Devil in the White City". But you still shouldn't bother with Navy Pier.
Anyhoot, we had a gig there and there were gift bags involving screaming monkeys and flash drives. There was also a little person hosting the show. I kind of wanted to befriend him, mainly because his patter was so fucking filthy, I couldn't help but think he was probably a nice person. He also seemed like someone who would understand the ins and outs of being a charming oddity or moving wall-paper. Kind of like that time I wished I could make friends with that nice break-dancer boy, or the girl who worked as a human sushi platter. Too bad I'm a socially-retarded wienie-burger who doesn't know how to talk to people. Le sigh.
Oh man, I totally want kitfo right now. Spicy raw meat. Nom. I will settle for an American Spirit and then about seventeen glasses of water to try and kill my buzz before I go to sleep. I have a private class with Little T tomorrow morning at eight thirty, and while I'll happily show up hungover as fuck, reeking of cigarettes and bad decisions, to teach my kids at That Place I Work With Kids, I want Little T to view me as a somewhat stable adult who has her best interests in mind.
On a completely unrelated note, I went on some dates with a dude who has spent the last however long Serving His Country. My eighteen-year-old self would be disgusted. My twenty-seven-year-old self is a little more open-minded, but mostly wants to see how such a spectacularly incompatible pairing pans out.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
A Party You Don't Want To Go To
Here are some things that I don't like.
1. Looking at pictures of myself performing.
2. Looking at videos of myself performing.
3. Talking to people about my performances.
4. Taking compliments or feedback about my performances.
5. The way I look in my costumes.
6. The way I look in general.
7. My lack of self-control.
8. My amazing ability to eat everything in sight and pack on pounds at a rate of knots.
9. How much time I spend thinking about how I look and what I eat and how much I suck because of those two things.
This week, instead of eating, I will do other things. Here are some other things I will do.
1. Practice. For hours and hours and hours. Practice until everything is perfect every time. There's nothing like setting achievable goals.
2. Work with my diabolo. It makes me happy and stops me from thinking too much.
3. Drink water. Even though fish fuck in it.
4. Read children's books in Spanish. I have to start remembering all the stuff I've forgotten from last semester before fall classes start, and perusal of libros infantils en espanol (yes, I know I missed the accents marks. Shut up,) is a good way to do that.
5. Go running. Because giving myself shin splints and destroying my knee cartilage will definitely distract me from the heft of my thighs.
6. Sew and glue sequins on things. It's hard to cram food into your face when your fingers are covered in E-6000.
7. Make lists of all my wonderful, wonderful qualities that are not reliant on having no cellulite and fitting into a size four. Although someone my height should be a size two. Which I'm not. And never will be, because I'm a lazy, fat, greedy slob who can't control herself. Oh, am I digressing? Sorry.
Here is the first of those lists.
1. I am good at spelling.
2. I can type quickly.
3. Children like me. They would probably still like me if I was fatter than I am.
4. I read a lot. People seem to think this is a good quality to have.
5. I am a good student. I might not be the smartest, but I am usually the hardest-working.
6. I have an excellent collection of jewelry shaped like violent things.
7. I am a good writer. You may disagree with this, but I am going on what various professors have told me, so while I may suck balls at blog creation, I'm apparently quite good with essays.
8. I'm good at picking act music.
9. I will probably never make you feel bad about yourself.
That last point gives me pause. I might be Positive Fucking Patty and build your sense of self-worth all the way the kingdom come, but when it comes to myself, it's all put-downs and loathing, all the time.
As evidenced by the previous exercise. People who like themselves don't need to make lists of their positive attributes. I wouldn't say I'm throwing myself a pity party, per se. More of a disgust party.
Which ends now. If I can't think anything nice about myself, then I'm not going to think anything at all. If anyone needs me, I'll be practicing diabolo.
1. Looking at pictures of myself performing.
2. Looking at videos of myself performing.
3. Talking to people about my performances.
4. Taking compliments or feedback about my performances.
5. The way I look in my costumes.
6. The way I look in general.
7. My lack of self-control.
8. My amazing ability to eat everything in sight and pack on pounds at a rate of knots.
9. How much time I spend thinking about how I look and what I eat and how much I suck because of those two things.
This week, instead of eating, I will do other things. Here are some other things I will do.
1. Practice. For hours and hours and hours. Practice until everything is perfect every time. There's nothing like setting achievable goals.
2. Work with my diabolo. It makes me happy and stops me from thinking too much.
3. Drink water. Even though fish fuck in it.
4. Read children's books in Spanish. I have to start remembering all the stuff I've forgotten from last semester before fall classes start, and perusal of libros infantils en espanol (yes, I know I missed the accents marks. Shut up,) is a good way to do that.
5. Go running. Because giving myself shin splints and destroying my knee cartilage will definitely distract me from the heft of my thighs.
6. Sew and glue sequins on things. It's hard to cram food into your face when your fingers are covered in E-6000.
7. Make lists of all my wonderful, wonderful qualities that are not reliant on having no cellulite and fitting into a size four. Although someone my height should be a size two. Which I'm not. And never will be, because I'm a lazy, fat, greedy slob who can't control herself. Oh, am I digressing? Sorry.
Here is the first of those lists.
1. I am good at spelling.
2. I can type quickly.
3. Children like me. They would probably still like me if I was fatter than I am.
4. I read a lot. People seem to think this is a good quality to have.
5. I am a good student. I might not be the smartest, but I am usually the hardest-working.
6. I have an excellent collection of jewelry shaped like violent things.
7. I am a good writer. You may disagree with this, but I am going on what various professors have told me, so while I may suck balls at blog creation, I'm apparently quite good with essays.
8. I'm good at picking act music.
9. I will probably never make you feel bad about yourself.
That last point gives me pause. I might be Positive Fucking Patty and build your sense of self-worth all the way the kingdom come, but when it comes to myself, it's all put-downs and loathing, all the time.
As evidenced by the previous exercise. People who like themselves don't need to make lists of their positive attributes. I wouldn't say I'm throwing myself a pity party, per se. More of a disgust party.
Which ends now. If I can't think anything nice about myself, then I'm not going to think anything at all. If anyone needs me, I'll be practicing diabolo.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Melting in your mouth
I still haven't been to the lake. Things keep happening to prevent me from having to time to spend an afternoon alternating between submerging myself in water and lying about in the sun, which bothers me. I might be done with school for the summer session, but I still have a large, unpleasant pile of work going on, and it's really cutting into my drinking / novel-reading time.
I should be working right now. I should be practicing for that gig in Indianapolis later this month, and also practicing for tonight's show. I am not. Instead, I am sitting in the office hoping that those students I just taught are no longer hanging out in the hallway because I want to go get a diet Coke and some M and M's from the machine, but walking by them would mean having to stop and talk and pretend to be human. I am in no frame of mind for that.
I'm not actually crabby or angry or foul-tempered today, just tired. I hung out with Bruiser last night, eating pizza, drinking beer, and smoking cigarettes on his back deck until two am. Bruiser is the latest addition to Iphy's Dating Game, and is turning out to be quite interesting, actually. He is a little older than me, and unlike most of my gentleman callers, has even more baggage than I do, in the form of an ex-wife and two young children. I have never really had to negotiate the child factor before.
Baby-daddy has Red Rum, but we were only friends when I met that ungodly spawn, plus I was still married, so there wasn't really anything to worry about. Red Rum and I played trains and read Dr. Seuss for a few afternoons and got along swimmingly. He must be...yowser, almost six now? Man, I haven't hung out with BD in forever. I don't miss him casually bragging about all the festivals he goes to for free, but I do miss hanging out at the bar and laying around on his couch watching "Portlandia", eating pretzels.
But back to Bruiser...I know from books and TV (where I learn everything, ever) that the kids are always going to come first, and that's how it's supposed to be, and if it WASN'T like that, then there would be cause for concern. I know that the "so, do you want kids someday?" conversation no longer applies. I know that he probably isn't looking for something particularly serious (marriage will do that to a person). I know that he and his ex get along fairly well and she's also dating, so she's probably not going to accuse me of destroying her family and come after me with a buzz-saw or anything.
There are things I don't know, however. Is it OK to fool around with someone when their kids are asleep upstairs? Is it OK to ask a lot of questions about their kids, just because you like kids and you like talking about kids and all the weird shit they say and do? When are you supposed to meet those kids, if ever? How friendly are you meant to be, if and when that happens? Should you ask the ex's permission if it ever comes up that you might be spending time with those kids? I can see why some people just immediately write someone's date-ability off if they have kids. People with no encumbrances are much less difficult to work with.
However, I think it's worth the awkward dip into unchartered waters. A guy like Bruiser is something of a rarity, it seems. A guy who wants to hold your hand while walking in public, who makes reservations after studiously researching restaurants on Yelp, who buys you earrings at a street fair, who laughs at your jokes, who sends the right amount of hilarious and dirty text messages, who looks at you sometimes like he wants to eat you up, who is disturbingly smart in some areas and remarkably down-to-earth in others, who disturbingly resembles a certain celebrity you didn't even know you found attractive, who has the kind of body that makes you bite your lip and shake your head a little every time he takes off his shirt, who you can stay up all night chatting to over Parliaments and mid-range beer...well, it's probably worth it to make time with a guy like that.
Guitardbot is still intermittently about the place, although trying to find out how he actually feels about anything is like nailing water to a wall, so we'll see how long that lasts. I'm actually supposed to go and see his band tomorrow. I don't know how that'll go down. It's becoming quite apparent that we differ vastly in opinion when it comes to music. I don't care how influential and significant they were, Sonic Youth are, as Juno so aptly put it, just noise, and I am never going to enjoy listening to them.
I used to have a blog on MySpace. (Remember MySpace? Like Facebook, but not successful enough to make a movie about?) Since it was MySpace, everyone knew it was my blog, everyone knew it was all about me and my friends and my co-workers, and there were a lot of things I couldn't say on there. It wasn't really a place to specifically rant and vent, as I occasionally do on here. Weirdly enough, I think it reads more interestingly than this one does.
Holy fucking shit, I love M and M's.
I should be working right now. I should be practicing for that gig in Indianapolis later this month, and also practicing for tonight's show. I am not. Instead, I am sitting in the office hoping that those students I just taught are no longer hanging out in the hallway because I want to go get a diet Coke and some M and M's from the machine, but walking by them would mean having to stop and talk and pretend to be human. I am in no frame of mind for that.
I'm not actually crabby or angry or foul-tempered today, just tired. I hung out with Bruiser last night, eating pizza, drinking beer, and smoking cigarettes on his back deck until two am. Bruiser is the latest addition to Iphy's Dating Game, and is turning out to be quite interesting, actually. He is a little older than me, and unlike most of my gentleman callers, has even more baggage than I do, in the form of an ex-wife and two young children. I have never really had to negotiate the child factor before.
Baby-daddy has Red Rum, but we were only friends when I met that ungodly spawn, plus I was still married, so there wasn't really anything to worry about. Red Rum and I played trains and read Dr. Seuss for a few afternoons and got along swimmingly. He must be...yowser, almost six now? Man, I haven't hung out with BD in forever. I don't miss him casually bragging about all the festivals he goes to for free, but I do miss hanging out at the bar and laying around on his couch watching "Portlandia", eating pretzels.
But back to Bruiser...I know from books and TV (where I learn everything, ever) that the kids are always going to come first, and that's how it's supposed to be, and if it WASN'T like that, then there would be cause for concern. I know that the "so, do you want kids someday?" conversation no longer applies. I know that he probably isn't looking for something particularly serious (marriage will do that to a person). I know that he and his ex get along fairly well and she's also dating, so she's probably not going to accuse me of destroying her family and come after me with a buzz-saw or anything.
There are things I don't know, however. Is it OK to fool around with someone when their kids are asleep upstairs? Is it OK to ask a lot of questions about their kids, just because you like kids and you like talking about kids and all the weird shit they say and do? When are you supposed to meet those kids, if ever? How friendly are you meant to be, if and when that happens? Should you ask the ex's permission if it ever comes up that you might be spending time with those kids? I can see why some people just immediately write someone's date-ability off if they have kids. People with no encumbrances are much less difficult to work with.
However, I think it's worth the awkward dip into unchartered waters. A guy like Bruiser is something of a rarity, it seems. A guy who wants to hold your hand while walking in public, who makes reservations after studiously researching restaurants on Yelp, who buys you earrings at a street fair, who laughs at your jokes, who sends the right amount of hilarious and dirty text messages, who looks at you sometimes like he wants to eat you up, who is disturbingly smart in some areas and remarkably down-to-earth in others, who disturbingly resembles a certain celebrity you didn't even know you found attractive, who has the kind of body that makes you bite your lip and shake your head a little every time he takes off his shirt, who you can stay up all night chatting to over Parliaments and mid-range beer...well, it's probably worth it to make time with a guy like that.
Guitardbot is still intermittently about the place, although trying to find out how he actually feels about anything is like nailing water to a wall, so we'll see how long that lasts. I'm actually supposed to go and see his band tomorrow. I don't know how that'll go down. It's becoming quite apparent that we differ vastly in opinion when it comes to music. I don't care how influential and significant they were, Sonic Youth are, as Juno so aptly put it, just noise, and I am never going to enjoy listening to them.
I used to have a blog on MySpace. (Remember MySpace? Like Facebook, but not successful enough to make a movie about?) Since it was MySpace, everyone knew it was my blog, everyone knew it was all about me and my friends and my co-workers, and there were a lot of things I couldn't say on there. It wasn't really a place to specifically rant and vent, as I occasionally do on here. Weirdly enough, I think it reads more interestingly than this one does.
Holy fucking shit, I love M and M's.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
So this is what happened
So first of all, the president decides to have his birthday party around the corner from the place you work, so you can't catch the train in because it's not running.
So you take a cab, because you got all caught up writing those skill sets for that standardizing thing they're doing this fall at that one place you work, and you didn't really leave the house early enough to factor in not being able to take the train. You briefly beat yourself up for having to pay twenty dollars for your own lack of organization, then shrug it off and forget about it. Then you realize you've forgotten an essential item of work clothing, which you have to go and buy from a store around the corner. Make that a dis-organizational cost of twenty eight dollars. Face palm.
Then you get to work and you realize that there's some other program going on in the space and your class doesn't start for an hour and fifteen minutes. One of your kids has also not realized this and is looking very confused, asking you what to do now. You go upstairs, with the kid in tow, figuring you'll just sit in the conference room and hang out until the class starts. But all the other big kids are there because they're having a meeting of some sort with the Powers That Be. So you sit down with that one kid and draw with markers while the meeting goes on. You also plays noughts and crosses and hangman, and feel annoyed that the big kids have to sit through a pointless, boring meeting full of endless blathering on that wastes time and achieves nothing. You also feel glad that you're not actively involved, because making that one kid guess "chicken butt" when you're playing hangman is much more entertaining than discussing the company's plans for progressive levels of instruction.
So then it's your class, the one where the kids really like you for some reason, and you teach it, and it's rad, and you feel pretty good.
Then it's the big kids and they do their Big Important Act for the Big Important Thing in Washington or wherever the hell it is. Aaaaand...your kids sort of suck. It isn't really their fault, or your fault, either. They got thrown on to an apparatus that only one of them has ever used before, working under conditions that none of them are used to, with a month to put together an act. So you have to cut some stuff and rearrange some stuff and plan an extra rehearsal and it's all pretty much OK. You still wish that they could have been wonderful and perfect and had a super-awesome expertly choreographed act that they performed with flawless technique...but you tell them that they worked hard and did a good job and it's all coming together the way it should.
So while you're putting your shoes on, the stupid hippie in charge gets on your case for being late for this one thing with this one Rich Kid whose parents might bankroll a bunch of shit or something. You know you should be on time just as a general rule, but you've been late to a bunch of other classes and she's never gotten on your case about it before. She only cares this time because she wants to kiss up to this Rich Kid's parents so they'll give a bunch of money to the company. She pretty much tells you this when she informs you that you are to do everything possible to keep Rich Kid and his family happy. You consider asking whether blowing Rich Kid's father would fall into the category of Keeping Them Happy, but decide it might be counterproductive. Instead you agree to mend your wicked, tardy ways, hastily tie your sneakers, and haul ass out of there. You rant to your skinny juggler friend (who works with you at this one place) about what a stupid bitch the hippie in charge is. He agrees with you whole-heartedly.
So you get done teaching and you want to go practice, but the president's still having his birthday shin-dig and it's basically impossible to get on a bus or a train or anything. So you walk for about a million miles, then get on a bus that takes about ten thousand years to get downtown, then walk for another million miles to get to that OTHER bus, which takes another ten thousand years to arrive. You get to the practice space at the time that you're usually getting ready to leave it. You are not amused.
You are even less amused when you can't find either of your i-pods and can't work your acts to music because of it. You wonder if this will incur a dis-organizational cost of about three hundred bucks to replace the lost i-pods and decide to wait a few days and see if they show up before buying anything new. You practice, and then you feel a bit better.
Then you have to get home. You started later than usual, and practiced for longer than you thought you would. This means that there are no longer any buses running to your place of residence. You munch spicy almonds and contemplate whether you should walk through the scary, rape-y industrial area to the train, or shell out for a cab. Eventually, the amount of almonds you eat makes you think that a walk would probably not be the worst thing in the world. So you chug on over to the train, singing Johnny Cash songs in your horrible, off-key voice that is 99.9% effective in warding off would-be muggers. Then you wait for your train for about a jillion years, then ride on up to the 'hood, after which you walk to your house, snapping your gum as obnoxiously as possible.
And you FINALLY get home, and your room-mate is stomping about cleaning things, and everything smells like bleach. You can't be bothered figuring out what she is so passive-aggressively demonstrating anger about, so you head to the couch and you write a bunch of stuff in your blog for the first time in about a zillion ka-billion years.
And then you feel sort of better, but you're still quietly hoping that your stupid-ass hippie boss gets scabies from bathing infrequently, and your room-mate passes out from all the bleach fumes and bangs her head on the tiles. You also think Obama should hire a better logistics team so that his goddam birthday party doesn't effectively isolate an entire neighborhood by cutting off all public transportation to and from it. You ruminate on the fact that you are really not a very nice person, then decide that maybe you are just not very nice when you are tired and inconvenienced and dealing with difficult people. You can't be all that bad if that one kid was happy to hang out with you and draw pictures of penguins and play word games for over an hour during that boring-ass meeting. You will probably be ok.
So you take a cab, because you got all caught up writing those skill sets for that standardizing thing they're doing this fall at that one place you work, and you didn't really leave the house early enough to factor in not being able to take the train. You briefly beat yourself up for having to pay twenty dollars for your own lack of organization, then shrug it off and forget about it. Then you realize you've forgotten an essential item of work clothing, which you have to go and buy from a store around the corner. Make that a dis-organizational cost of twenty eight dollars. Face palm.
Then you get to work and you realize that there's some other program going on in the space and your class doesn't start for an hour and fifteen minutes. One of your kids has also not realized this and is looking very confused, asking you what to do now. You go upstairs, with the kid in tow, figuring you'll just sit in the conference room and hang out until the class starts. But all the other big kids are there because they're having a meeting of some sort with the Powers That Be. So you sit down with that one kid and draw with markers while the meeting goes on. You also plays noughts and crosses and hangman, and feel annoyed that the big kids have to sit through a pointless, boring meeting full of endless blathering on that wastes time and achieves nothing. You also feel glad that you're not actively involved, because making that one kid guess "chicken butt" when you're playing hangman is much more entertaining than discussing the company's plans for progressive levels of instruction.
So then it's your class, the one where the kids really like you for some reason, and you teach it, and it's rad, and you feel pretty good.
Then it's the big kids and they do their Big Important Act for the Big Important Thing in Washington or wherever the hell it is. Aaaaand...your kids sort of suck. It isn't really their fault, or your fault, either. They got thrown on to an apparatus that only one of them has ever used before, working under conditions that none of them are used to, with a month to put together an act. So you have to cut some stuff and rearrange some stuff and plan an extra rehearsal and it's all pretty much OK. You still wish that they could have been wonderful and perfect and had a super-awesome expertly choreographed act that they performed with flawless technique...but you tell them that they worked hard and did a good job and it's all coming together the way it should.
So while you're putting your shoes on, the stupid hippie in charge gets on your case for being late for this one thing with this one Rich Kid whose parents might bankroll a bunch of shit or something. You know you should be on time just as a general rule, but you've been late to a bunch of other classes and she's never gotten on your case about it before. She only cares this time because she wants to kiss up to this Rich Kid's parents so they'll give a bunch of money to the company. She pretty much tells you this when she informs you that you are to do everything possible to keep Rich Kid and his family happy. You consider asking whether blowing Rich Kid's father would fall into the category of Keeping Them Happy, but decide it might be counterproductive. Instead you agree to mend your wicked, tardy ways, hastily tie your sneakers, and haul ass out of there. You rant to your skinny juggler friend (who works with you at this one place) about what a stupid bitch the hippie in charge is. He agrees with you whole-heartedly.
So you get done teaching and you want to go practice, but the president's still having his birthday shin-dig and it's basically impossible to get on a bus or a train or anything. So you walk for about a million miles, then get on a bus that takes about ten thousand years to get downtown, then walk for another million miles to get to that OTHER bus, which takes another ten thousand years to arrive. You get to the practice space at the time that you're usually getting ready to leave it. You are not amused.
You are even less amused when you can't find either of your i-pods and can't work your acts to music because of it. You wonder if this will incur a dis-organizational cost of about three hundred bucks to replace the lost i-pods and decide to wait a few days and see if they show up before buying anything new. You practice, and then you feel a bit better.
Then you have to get home. You started later than usual, and practiced for longer than you thought you would. This means that there are no longer any buses running to your place of residence. You munch spicy almonds and contemplate whether you should walk through the scary, rape-y industrial area to the train, or shell out for a cab. Eventually, the amount of almonds you eat makes you think that a walk would probably not be the worst thing in the world. So you chug on over to the train, singing Johnny Cash songs in your horrible, off-key voice that is 99.9% effective in warding off would-be muggers. Then you wait for your train for about a jillion years, then ride on up to the 'hood, after which you walk to your house, snapping your gum as obnoxiously as possible.
And you FINALLY get home, and your room-mate is stomping about cleaning things, and everything smells like bleach. You can't be bothered figuring out what she is so passive-aggressively demonstrating anger about, so you head to the couch and you write a bunch of stuff in your blog for the first time in about a zillion ka-billion years.
And then you feel sort of better, but you're still quietly hoping that your stupid-ass hippie boss gets scabies from bathing infrequently, and your room-mate passes out from all the bleach fumes and bangs her head on the tiles. You also think Obama should hire a better logistics team so that his goddam birthday party doesn't effectively isolate an entire neighborhood by cutting off all public transportation to and from it. You ruminate on the fact that you are really not a very nice person, then decide that maybe you are just not very nice when you are tired and inconvenienced and dealing with difficult people. You can't be all that bad if that one kid was happy to hang out with you and draw pictures of penguins and play word games for over an hour during that boring-ass meeting. You will probably be ok.
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