My Life is a Table

Every now and then, I get the urge to move. Move myself, move my body, move my life.

And since I know that it's not exactly practical to pick up and start a new life in Wisconsin, I respond to that urge in any number of ways. I buy a new outfit I don't need. I get a tattoo. I clean my office. I exercise. Occasionally, I move my apartment around, though there's barely room for the small amount of crap I have to be reconfigured in new and interesting ways.

Last night was one of those nights.

It started with a TV that I am "TV-sitting" more or less indefinitely from work. It's a huge TV and comes with a DVD player. I have at home already a very tiny TV that everyone I know laughs at, but that I think is helping me to develop keener eyesight as I squint to make out what those crazy kids from "Hell's Kitchen" are doing on a screen half the size of a postage stamp.

So I moved the tiny TV to my bedroom and put the massive one in the living room where I could instantly begin worrying about it falling over and crushing Baby Girl to death in a tragically ironic meeting of materialism and mass media and gravity.

But I digress.

The point is that this new monster in my living room made me feel antsy. Unsettled. The way I've felt in most aspects of my life, lately, now that I think about it.

And having no money for a new tattoo or an idea of what to permanently stamp myself with this time, I decided to move furniture. Not even a lot of furniture - just one piece, in fact. This may not seem like that big of a deal, but it symbolizes a lot, I think.

I pushed my dining room table up against my kitchen wall so that there's only room for 3 seats at it. I set it up as a desk. I put my little book-a-day calendar on it. I put my French workbook and flashcards on it. I put my little "pen pot" on it. I put my iPod dock on it to await a new baby iPod that I'm hoping the iPod stork will bring some day. I put a space on it for the new baby laptop I'm hoping the laptop stork will bring some day. I put my work in progress on it: articles I want to write, articles I want to read, books I need to do my research on. I put my bills to be paid on it.

If you're thinking that this maybe leaves no room to eat on, you're absolutely correct.

This slight change in the Space That Is Dirty Girl says these things:
1. Baby Girl and I are just going to eat at the coffee table from now on, since she loves eating there anyway (and I don't turn on the TV - I think she just likes her little chair that is just her size at the low table, and I like sitting on the floor, and who gives a fuck where we eat, anyway? She still gets her veggies).
2. I never have anyone over for dinner. I love to cook and I love to cook for people, but I just don't currently have the kinds of relationships with other adults that allow me to make dinner for them and use my matchy-matchy placemats, as much as I'd like to.
3. I have designated a space for me to exist in outside of my relationship to my child or to the TV or my bed (though I wouldn't mind fucking on my newly-defined desk).

It already works great, by the way - last night, I balanced my checkbook and drank a martini on it.

It's Not My Birthday, But I'm Dressed Like It Is

Last night, on a whim, I slept au natural.

I don't usually do this - it's too distracting, for one thing - and it just usually never occurs to me.

I have no idea what brought this on, but I was struck by the fact that one's one squishiness is much more readily apparent when one is lying on that squish and every slight movement makes the squishy...well, squish.

I've come to the conclusion that sleeping in the buff is overrated unless there's a second party in my bed. But maybe that's just me...

Dirty Girl's Hierarchy of Needs

I often feel like my life is just breaking down around me. Not in any huge psychological way, but in a largely physical way.

My digital camera has been on the fritz for months now - it appears to be frozen with a cache full of pictures of the back of my head as I attempted to get a clear shot of my true hair color without actually showing my face. I haven't been able to take pictures or mini-videos of Baby Girl for weeks now. Every time she does something cute, I'm reduced to screaming, "Wait! Wait! Please, just put it on hold and come back to it in a few weeks when Mama's raise kicks in!"

But even worse than that is my iPod. I've had my iPod for about three years and have loved it. It gives me the energy to work out. It makes me feel like I'm living in a musical. But it happens to be dead. It's long past the repair stage of the game - I'd pay as much to buy a new (nano)* as I would to fix up my 30G (that I don't really need 30 G of).

But I have no money. I am negative broke this month. I also need to place an order for new contacts, I need new bearings for my skates. I could use some new pants to fit my ever-expanding derby butt.

But apparently, my needs don't fit the typical need structure. I'd be perfectly happy starving to death under a flimsy piece of cardboard outside the public library downtown as long as I could listen to Afroman's "Because I Got High" while I wasted away.

So I may be laying out money I don't have very very soon for a product I absolutely, without a doubt, need.

*I'm facing difficulty in purchasing said iPod. Since I work at a university, I should be getting the education discount, which, despite all my technological savvy, refuses to show up on the order page. I've talked to customer service, removed all cookies from my computer, tried everything. No discount to which I am entitled. Oddly enough, our campus also has - and I'm totally serious here - a vending machine that dispenses iPods. While I have some major concerns with sliding my credit card into a machine for what is a Very Expensive Metaphorical Bag of Doritos, the lure of having my new iPod in time for my noon workout is very, very strong indeed.
**Update: Apple no longer allows the education discount to apply to iPods. Fuckers.

Second Coming

Recently at work, an email went around encouraging us employees to explore "Second Life" - a gi-normous virtual community in which people play and work (and apparently can earn real money, too).

The object seems to be the same underlying many people get involved in online communities: to be themselves as much as they can be without the burden of preconceived notions or prejudices. People can and do reinvent themselves or (in my opinion) tend to become more themselves when they are understood as people in terms of their own creativity and their power to express themselves largely through the written word (or at least a doctored version of it...lol. ;) TTFN!).

I'm all for it, of course. I'm a little confused as to why my boss is essentially encouraging me to play on company time, but hey, whatever!

The big problem for me is not reconciling the "why" of this with the apparent fun of it. No, it's a much more "me" problem: hair.

I've created a self in Second World. But I don't understand me. Or at least, the appearance-building side of me. You see, my virtual self (who I can dress and make up and create a body shape for)(not at all unlike the Sims, a game I enjoy purely for the way it speaks to the 11-year-old-girl-need of mine to be a fashion designer and interior decorator) looks okay. But she doesn't have all of her hair. I have no hair on top at all. Some minor digging into the subject has told me that hair "comes" in two pieces in Second Life - you have to get some Second Life money and then buy more hair if you want it.

This, in my humble estimation, is nuts. Or maybe it's a way to recognize newbies - we all have half a head of hair until we find some way to get some money (and you can't prostitute your e-self on this, unfortunately. That would be the easiest way, I'm thinking).

I'm not convinced my boss wanted me on this to have me sit around playing with hairstyles all day, but it's a great diversion....

Might As Well Be Me

I've never been a lottery kind of a person. I'd rather have my dollar than a piece of paper with the chance to win millions printed on it.

However, I work in an office that collects money weekly for lottery tickets. And while I feel certain that me staying out of the pool pretty much guarantees that they'll win at some point, I have a hard time doing so. Every week, they get two dollars out of me and every week, we lose money. I swear, I could be drinking beer with that money!

All of that said, this didn't stop me from buying a raffle ticket in the lottery's newest game where they sell a pre-set number of tickets and the draw for prizes - the odds are actually a lot higher that you'll win something. Of course, you pay $5 instead of one for that privilege.

Can you imagine what my blog would be like if I actually won millions of dollars? Every day, you'd tune in to read about:
1. My new dresses
2. The wine I'm drinking
3. My new house in which I would hopefully be fucking in every room before I every put a stick of furniture in
4. My new furniture on every piece of which I would hopefully be fucking once I'd christened the bare rooms
5. How many bon-bons I'm eating
6. My new rollerskates - maybe a different pair for every day, like days-of-the-week panties
7. The things I do to fill up the long, long days of not having to work
8. The daily massages I would receive from a lanky Eastern European fellow named Sergei
9. All the fancy pens (Pilot Dr. Grip Gel) money could buy
10. The thousands upon thousands of books I would be buy and read and then, because throwing them away would be wasteful and keeping them would be impractical, I would store in the bathroom to tear out a page at a time to use as toilet paper.

Man! That would be one sweet life...

My Heart Is an Unripened Strawberry

Note to Self

Dear Dirty Girl,

Do not watch any more ABC television in the evenings, unless you want to go through an entire box of Kleenex and a jar of peanut butter.

Best Wishes,
Yourownself

Dr. Feelgood

Some people think I don't go to the doctor when something ails me because I'm a tough kind of a girl. I'm sorry to have to admit that it's because I have had reaffirmed for me over the years on a regular basis that I am the queen of the vague diagnosis and subsequent vague treatment.

This Saturday, our league decided to do a land workout instead of a skating one on Sunday. We ran, did lunges, squat-walked, skipped, ran backwards, and sprinted. We stretched before and after and I felt fine (even to the point of thinking I hadn't gotten that good of a workout). Then I woke up Sunday with sore legs. I thought, "Okay, so it was tougher than I thought." I started to do chores around my place and, when I'd take more then five steps in a row, I felt like someone was hurling a rusty pickaxe through the heel of my foot.

I was beginning to Doctor Google home treatments when I remembered that I am something of an athlete. This was no time to self-diagnose. Plus, my foot really hurt like a bitch when I walked on it.

I went to an urgent treatment center, where I waited for three hours to be diagnosed with absolutely nothing. I was instructed to load up on ibuprofin and told to ice the foot when it hurt. The doctor seemed so intrigued by the fact that I played roller derby that she seemed mostly unable to comprehend that whatever I had done to my foot had not actually occurred whilst skating. So I'm sitting here with a still-ouchy foot and and an economy-size bottle of generic advil.

This is why I don't go to doctors. The only time I've ever been conclusively diagnosed with anything was when I was pregnant with Baby Girl, and even then, I was certain the doctor was going to tell me, "We're pretty sure you're pregnant, but it really could be a variety of things. Why don't you go on home and take it easy for 8 or 9 months and we'll see if it clears up on its own."

Sometimes It Would Serve Me Well to Remember I'm Dealing With a Toddler and Not a Frat Boy

The Scene: My Bathroom, This Morning...

Dirty Girl: Baby Girl, it's almost time to go. Go get your shoes.

Baby Girl: No, you do it.

Dirty Girl: No, they're your shoes, you do it.

Baby Girl: No, you do it.

Dirty Girl: No, I asked you; you do it.

Baby Girl: No, you do it.

Dirty Girl (getting completely exasperated): Oh, yeah? Well, your mom can do it!

Guess I lost that argument.

Some Mornings

You log on to blogger and think, "Damn! I should've come up with something to write about last night!"

What do you want to hear about, folks?

So Afraid to Break the Rules in All the Wrong Places

Well 1 out of 3 ain't bad. The derby drama is rectified, mostly because, yes, you have drama when you get a bunch of women together but you also have a lot of ability to listen and be mature. Women can fix women more easily than they can fix anything else.

But my other stuff? Well, it's all in limbo, folks...but it got me thinking. Okay, so I haven't stopped thinking about any of it for months and months and months now. But I am moved to write about it today in the context of acceptability.

So much of what we do in life is dictated by other people - we do things we don't want to, that aren't us, that we shouldn't - because someone else came up with the dictum that it should be so. When I ask for a deserved raise, I get the run-around because that's what the workworld is like. But when I am expected to shut up and go away because I'm young and a woman, that's because someone somewhere down the line perpetuated the idea that women can't push. And to push would be dangerous for them professionally.

I, for one, am getting tired of feeling like I have to be a certain way because other people think I should. Fortunately for me, I don't actually act on that feeling - I'm me these days, unapologetically.

What do you all do to break the "rules" that you just don't feel bad about?

Oh, To Be a Canuck, For Reals

I wrote this out last night, long-hand, while Baby Girl and I were out for dinner (entirely an unnecessary expense, particularly considering yesterday's post). And so:

**********************************************************************************
I'm overhearing the weirdest conversation. I am in O'Charley's with Baby Girl and the waitress we always have is at the table behind us. She judges me with her eyes when I order beer, more so when I ask for the second beer, though she has no way of knowing that I live about 100 yards away and that we have walked here with the shorter of us in a stroller.

Anyway, she is having a conversation at the table behind Baby Girl about going to Canada - she's leaving next week [non sequiter: Aretha Franklin is singing, "Think, think, think about what you're trying to do to me..."]. I don't know if her move is permanent (God, I hope so), and she's saying, "Healthcare is free. I could be a millionaire!" The people at her table seem to accept this with knowing head nods. I'm not sure what they're nodding at.

I know that healthcare is free in Canada, but I'm not sure that means that Ottowans are, as a matter of general course, driving Miatas all over the tundra.

Anyway, the fact that she's leaving (and obviously leaving this job, which is this only means through which I interact with her), means that I can stop saying loudly mid-meal, "Hope you're ready for a quick walk home, Baby Girl!" so she knows I'm not strapping my daughter into a carseat to drive her off in a drunken joyride while I, all the whilst trying not to get unintentionally ass-ba-joinked by the gearshift of my Corolla, simultaneously smoke crack and get fucked by a dark-haired boy with brown eyes and a crooked smile in full view of her before we all plummet to our deaths off the side of the Grand Canyon, which is nowhere near here.

This waitress never seems to notice that Baby Girl eats her broccoli, slowly and carefully, but entirely, while I drink two tall Amber Bocks and write tomorrow's blog entry on the back of - what is this? Huh. An invitation to reestablish my dental insurance - an invitation to reestablish my dental insurance. She's off to Canada, and I'm due to have a (hopefully) less judgmental waitress - maybe one who will throw a shot of whiskey in with my beers, just cause.

I mean, anyone who's watched my daughter scream at me, "NO TALKEE ME, MAMA!" (I swear, she's so not PC, doing her toddler-ethnic-minority-voice) knows that I'm fucking entitled to that boilermaker. And now that Baby Girl just blew a kiss to me and accidentally in the process spit a mouthful of partially-chewed-up broccoli in my direction, I feel I'm multiply entitled. I'll still take that green, smelly kiss, of course.

And, if she's off to the land of the millionaires and Alanis Morisette, my waitress can at least share the wealth before she departs...

What's In Your Wallet?

Divorce is seriously expensive. Not only do you have the cost of lawyers and setting up your own home and (in my case) buying a dependable car over the piece of shit that got handed down to you like everything else you've ever owned, you pay for the things you indulge yourself in to make yourself feel better: little black dresses, vodka, knitting supplies, rollerskates.

After a bit, that catches up with you. I have not used my credit card since October except for my $15 monthly Netflix charge. My credit card lives in a tin box on top of my refrigerator (please don't come over to my apartment and steal it, dear readers. There's so much more in my home that I'm sure is more worth stealing: my painting of Bea Arthur, my broken closet door, my stained blue armchair that's covered in cat hair) so I won't be tempted to use it in a moment of weakness at something not worth it, like a pretzel from Auntie Anne's at the mall.

I have been working hard to pay off that debt, though it's slow going.

Apparently, the nice people who own my credit card have begun to notice this. For the last two months, I get mail nearly daily from them. It's clear to them I'm trying to break up (if you ever watched the British version of "Coupling," then you'll know what I mean when I say that they're the unflushable...), and they're not happy about it.

First, there's been the accusations that there's someone else; 75% of the mail I get is them trying to lure me back to using them by offering fantastic rates on transferred balances.

Once it became clear that, no, I just didn't want to be with them, they broke out the big guns - free return address labels. A whole six free return address labels (and frankly, I think it's deceptive for the envelope to read "Free Gift Inside" for six stickers)! When THAT didn't work, they began to send me blank checks that I can write my own amount in for and deposit into my checking account (which I actually use, and it's clear that not only is there not another man in this relationship, I've switched sides and gone over to ladies-only) because It's Just Like Real Money!

Let me tell you, it's never just like real money. And don't worry, Credit Card Peeps - I promise I'm coming home to you after I pay you off completely. It just might be years before that happens.

10 Things That Are Still Good

1. Brie
2. The fun of cleaning out my ears with Q-Tips
3. Getting into my car after it's been in the hot sun all day and feeling that awesome dry heat for 5 glorious seconds before it makes me uncomfortable
4. Baby Girl
5. True Mom Confessions
6. The lyrics to "How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You"*
7. Making out in stairwells
8. Flip-flops
9. Rollerskating
10. Mix CDs that people make for me

*I needed the shelter of someone's arms, and there you were...

Aw, Now Ya'll Done and Made Me Feel All Loved

Thanks, kids. I appreciate everyone's kind words...

You'll be relieved to hear that I played hooky from derby practice last night (Hi, ladies! Sorry I skipped! Not really!) and bought fauxshi (the sushi made at my local grocery store) and a great bottle of wine and then stayed in, ate, drank, and sat in the hottest bath I've ever drawn and read in this month's Cosmo how to have better orgasms and more of them (advice, I'd like to point out, that I don't actually need).

I cleaned my apartment a little - cutting down on clutter literally is good when you can't clear the shit out of your head. I took out trash. I watched "The Next Best Thing" on TV - and I typically loathe reality TV, but my dislike apparently doesn't extend to shows involving bad celebrity impersonators. I had a very bizarre dream (stress-induced, no doubt) about living in a house where someone had killed their whole family - apparently, I was sort of Jennifer Love Hewitt (just call her "Love") in Ghost Whisperer. Understandably, I didn't want to live in the house.

Don't worry, this blog isn't about to become the forum where I tell you what I dreamed last night. No one has the right to make other people listen to what they dreamed the night before except spouses; in fact, this might be the only reason I can see that is a really truly good reason to get married.

Anyway, I'm keeping on keeping on. What else can you do, right? It's all just life...

Misery Loves Company

Something I've struggled with in my many, many years of blogging is how much to share. Not in terms of explicitness (obviously), but in terms of the bad shit. When I'm having a clunker of a day, do I come on here (or my old blog) and just lay it all out?

I see the purpose of blogging as largely for entertainment value - is there any entertainment to be had from the fact that, on top of all the other crap going on in my life right now, I lost a much beloved flip-flop last night to a raging river where my parking lot used to be in a mad dash to my apartment office to pay my nearly-late rent in the middle of a monsoon? Okay, so maybe there is some entertainment to be had from that.

So I want to come on and be like, "Guys, I just don't have it in me today to talk about my proclivity for bedroom toys that come in cute colors and buzz...I'm having a shitty day." But where's the fun in that?

I am dealing with some drama with rollerderby right now; not only am I not a drama-person, I find it alarming that a sport that involves wearing rollerskates and stripey tights can even have drama in the first place.

My love life is fucking miserable because of someone I adore so much that I wake up in the middle of the night unable to breathe because I'm so in love, constantly devastated, horny as fucking hell, and - oh, yes - in love. Today is not the day for me to share the details on that situation; suffice it to say that the person in question is absolutely perfect, wonderful, and amazing.

But the icing on the cake is that the person who verbally okayed my promotion two weeks ago is now trying to weasel out of it. I am doing everything I can to make it happen, and I have confidence in my ability to do so. But I am crushed every day at work by the disrespect for the work I do and the presumption that it's okay for superiors to use the fuck out of me as an employee.

So, yeah, I'm having a shitty couple of days of it. It's not entertaining in the slightest. I know all of it will work itself out, and it's not in my nature to be depressed long-term when I know things will eventually be better. They will be, and that's okay. But today, folks, I'm giving myself permission to sit here with the grumpiest face on I can possibly muster and feel sorry for myself. So there.

I Own More Little Black Dresses Than Anyone Possibly Could Use in a Lifetime

This morning, I dressed for work with especial care.

You might think it's because I have something important planned for the day, something where it's important for me to look good.

We're holding interviews for our receptionist job at work today. Now, I have no idea why this moved me to look good. Three out of our four interviewees are women (middle-aged women, too, I suspect, who probably are not going to be attractive in the ways that I find women attractive [although, to be fair, maybe someone will suprise me - I guess I shouldn't presume they're not going to be hot]) so it's not likely that I'm going to be trying to find a date in the group. I'm not in the hot seat myownself today, so it doesn't really matter how I look...

No, I suppose that in some bizarre place in my mind, it's important that these people come away from the interview today with the sense that our workplace is full of supermodels. Well, that and the fact that it isn't unusual at all to walk into our office and find one of us who shall remain nameless but whose name rhymes with Birty Birl on rollerskates.

It's Not Even 9 a.m...

And I'm utterly exhausted.

I got plenty of sleep last night. It's just that in the two and a half hours I have been conscious, I have argued with Babygirl about whether or not is was necessary to wake up at all (it was), whether or not a very sopping wet diaper needed changing (it did), whether or not pants were absolutely crucial to one's attendance at school (they were), and whether or not shoes needed to be on the right feet (actually, I gave in here. What do I care if she insists on wearing them on the wrong feet?).

Oh, and then I wrapped up a morning of stellar parenting by letting her eat a baggie of potato chips at 7 am in the car on the way to daycare after a very heated argument about whether or not I could a)look at her or b)talk to her. I don't know who's in charge of paychecks for motherhood, but someone seems to have forgotten mine this month.

Pomp and Circumstance

I head home this weekend for my younger brother's graduation. Due to some late babymaking on Mama Dirty Girl's part, I have a half brother who is 10 years younger than me.

I have been to so many graduations for immediate family members in these last 10 years that it's starting to get silly. of course, the first one I attended 10 years ago was my own, from my tiny high school.

So if I think back to me 10 years ago, I'm mostly amused by what I thought would come next. I'm not sure I ever had a realistic idea of what college was going to be about, but boy, was I ready for something (with my native-american-styled bone choker and froggy backpack in tow).

I know you think I'm getting ready to reflect big on the last decade of my life, but it's just not headed that direction. No, I'm thinking about the heat and the bordeom. I return to the scene of that particular graduation with not so much nostalgia as a more well-developed sense of just how long these things drag on, even with tiny graduating classes...