"This was on the fifty percent off rack," the customer huffed with a flump of cloth to counter.

Lying, breathed a tiny voice at the back of my head, and my hands stilled momentarily before going on with the business of removing security tags and folding.

Where the hell have you been, little voice that tells me when people are lying to me? I asked of myself silently as my out-loud voice let the customer know that unfortunately, these things had a habit of happening, people picked things up and put them down, nothing to be done for it, I would be unable to give her the fifty-percent discount she was demanding, did she still want the shirt?

Without even a hint of shame: Busy.

Sure you were, little voice that tells me when people are lying to me. Sure you were.

...Well, welcome back, in any case.

Thanks.

((In conclusion, some days I really hate how my brain works.))

Me: WHERE IS MY BRA
The Internet: HOW THE HELL ARE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW, WOMAN, WE ARE THE INTERNET
Me: WHAT THE HELL GOOD ARE YOU, INTERNET
The Internet: Gigantic porn database?...ooh, try the freezer.
Me: ...FOUND IT, THANKS INTERNET

This exchange happens with far more frequency than it should.

Edited to add: Here is what happens when you actually ask the Internet where your bra is: https://www.google.com/#q=where+is+my+bra

...actually, I do have things to say, they're just not wording themselves yet.

I caught an accidental glance of myself in the mirror at work the other day. Who is that, my instincts asked with a judder of defensiveness that ordinarily saves itself for when well-dressed ladies do that thing ladies do where they elevator-eye your outfit, then sneer.

I hate that.

It was something in my resting-face. It had at some point turned disdainful, possibly due to the makeup.

Which was strange, not only because I didn't at first recognize myself, but because at the time I had been sure I was exuding sad. So I've finally gotten what I always claimed to want...a face that naturally doesn't show what I'm thinking.

The problem being, of course, that if I have no cognitive connection between what I think I'm expressing and what I'm actually expressing, I have no idea of knowing what sort of an impression I'm giving off.

Or how much that impression has to do with how I treat people, or am treated by them.

I spent some time with this thought.

I am still spending time with this thought.

I was going through past posts and changing my name and various identifying features over to new, made-up ones, and I stumbled across this old post, written in response to a guy in my writing class who got snooty about my writing. I posted it, then took it down because there was an off chance that he would read it, and it had basically been written to hit all his psychological Big Red Buttons in ascending order of impact. So I didn't want him to read it. Because he seemed like the sort of guy who might show up at my house with a weapon if he did.

There is no way that guy is reading my blog now, and for some reason reading it brought back some pretty fond memories, so I'll post it now.

My dear and most condescending sir,

Much as I appreciate the time and effort that went into your communication re: How I Can Become A Better Writer Just Like You, I'm afraid I must decline to apply any of your useful, helpful and obviously well-meant suggestions.

There are many things that can be said to attempt to justify, though of course such behavior is beyond justification, my scandalous refusal to submit to reason. For the first, I'm afraid my simple-minded sex must be at least in part at fault. As you are likely well aware, we of the lesser-brained sex must cling to stubbornness, lest our weak-willed ways lead us astray in this time of moral turpitude. We are, sad to say, emotional creatures as well. Learned stubbornness and the emotional swelling of our womanly hearts make a most dreadful combination, which in turn leads to writing that unfortunately seeks to explore the inner workings of one's mind and soul, rather than car chases and knife fights.

As you suspected, I am, in fact, far too simple-minded to know how to write an action sequence, and your help in this matter will not go unrewarded. I had never before realized that all my writing needed was a good old-fashioned spilling of entrails upon one's doorstep to make it truly shine in the aether. However, such a thing is not to be! I feel that my ego must not exceed my abilities! I, sir, do not mean to shine in the aether; such a path is not for me or my sort. I am, in short, afraid. Yes, afraid! to attempt to tackle the grand precipice of literature that is cannibalism, self-mutilation, rotting mounds of human flesh, and other techniques that you make such free use of in your own illustrious writings, lest my feeble brain fail to comprehend the many and varied subtleties employed therein. I would fail, dear sir, and in the failing so break my word-filled heart that I would be forced to never put pen to paper again. Such would be the pain of failure on that  grand a scale. As you yourself were so kind to condescend to say, you would like to see more of my writing, were I willing to rise to the challenge of writing more like you. You did not think through the implications, my dear sir. It is a challenge that is beyond my simple yet charming ways. I, sir, can never aspire to be like you.

Again, allow me to express my appreciation of your continued critique. I can only imagine that you are a busy man, and taking the time out of your life must have been quite a stress upon your already-weary brain. I would suggest that, in the future, you not waste your time trying to teach the unteachable or bring literary enlightenment to a mind permanently darkened.

Yours in affection,

A Velociraptor, Susie

What I Say: Hey, do me a favor and let me know the next time a realtor is showing the apartment? 

What I Assume My Mother Hears, To Judge By Her Reaction: I have lately taken to having loud and energetic sexual relations with a significant portion of the animal population of southeastern Australia. I have told all of your friends about this predilection of mine, and they wish to know what you did wrong to bring about my current depraved state. You may scream incoherently, now.

I WANT TO KNOW WHAT TRANSLATION SOFTWARE SHE IS USING.

Lady at the Bus Stop: Never get old, sweetie. Just stay young.
Me: The only way to stay young is to die young! I'd rather get old!
Lady: ...That was the best thing you could have said to what I said.

On The Subject Of Liars

So I've been lying a lot lately. Not small, horrible lies, not the sort with malice or a need to deceive inherent in the lie itself; no, I've been making up mad tales and doing my best to make the people around me believe them. For instance, certain regular customers of mine have been asking me lately where I've been; my schedule is such that it makes tracking me down a somewhat arduous process, and my absence is apparently noticeable. It has become my habit to claim, and when questioned insist, that I have been in diplomatic custody after trying and failing to take over a small South American country via military coup.

This tendency of mine is by no means an unusual or unexpected thing. When I sprained-nigh-broke my ankle, anyone who asked me what happened was treated to a sweeping epic concerning a battalion of velociraptor-riding ninjas doing their best to defend a small beachhead under attack by cyborg-Vikings.  The only thing that makes the talespinning of recent history remarkable is that, lately, I have found myself in the unique position of actually being believed.

The uncertainty in their eyes is palpable when I inform them in all seriousness that no, the diplomatic wing of the United States government wasn't particularly pleased at the concessions it had to give in order to secure my release, but in the end it was decided I was so excellent, so brilliant a mind, as to be worth the time and effort and trade agreements. My customers are relatively certain that I'm lying, but there is enough conviction in my tone to cause them to doubt themselves and everything they know about the world. Sooner or later, of course, they work out that I'm kidding, that I must be kidding, mustn't I? Because I have only been below their personal radar for a month or so, which is certainly not enough time to actually stage a military coup.

Yes, one of the customers I was talking to was unsure enough that he actually worked out the last time he'd seen me, just to give himself mental comfort.

The thing is, I don't think this is an example of how good a liar I am. I'm a crap liar, and everyone who is even vaguely familiar with my ways and means knows it. I can't actually lie convincingly about anything, which is why I resort to wild, sweeping dramas that could not possibly be true. So why, then, am I even slightly believed?

To attempt to answer the question, I'm going to tell you about a man I've met who goes to my school. I will not be giving his name here, as doing so could buy me all manner of trouble...suffice it to say, I call him The Liar, and he is quite possibly my very favorite person in this school to watch.

The Liar established his credentials the very first time I met him, loudly and repeatedly. He informed me within approximately forty-five seconds of my having encountered him that he did not belong here, that community college was beneath him, that he couldn't believe how stupid the people here were when compared to his own gleaming intellect and knifelike insight. He complained of being smarter than the teachers, smarter than the administration, smarter than every single person he had met up until that point, and the implication was heavy that he automatically considered himself smarter than me, by dint of my very presence in this school.

This was enough to make my inner trickster-ears perk. I have taken to liking superiority complexes, considering that I harbor a rather healthy and cheerfully-defended one within my own heart. Anyone who insists upon his so vociferously and so immediately is worth listening to, if only because people who do that are usually trying desperately to prove something.

"I don't need to be here, you know," he informed me, after complaining about the pricing of the courses. "My stupid fucking job is making me go back to school."
Oh?
"Yeah. I'm going to be promoted and in order to get the position I have to have a fucking degree."
Faaascinating. What job is this?
"Oh. I'm head of the international department of Vogue Magazine."

...............

Really?

He went on to talk about how he got paid more money than God, hung out with Lady Gaga the night before ("Her name is Stephanie, you know, I knew her before she was big"), got his job because Oprah really liked him, was in control of the jobs of eleventy thousand assistants who all feared his wrath and did whatever he wanted, had every single celebrity ever ohmygod on his speed-dial, and other claims that only served to make my straight face increasingly difficult to maintain.

After he got up and walked away, I turned to the girl next to me and said solemnly, "Do you know, I don't think a word that man just said is true."
And she goggled at me, and said in tones of scandalized horror usually reserved for tabloid fodder, "Really?!"  Her friends turned to stare, too, as if to say to themselves, who is this outsider among our number and how may we best rip out her eyeballs? "What made you think that?!"

She wasn't being sarcastic. This made me wonder if perhaps I was the crazy one, if someone who was complaining about the prices of community college one minute and claiming to be a millionaire the next was actually a perfectly forthright individual and I was full of insidious and unwarranted suspicions.

Have you ever had a multiple-choice test before you, and you shade in B, then think better of it, erase B and fill in D instead, only to discover when the tests are handed back that your original thought was correct and it had been B all along? Are you the sort of person to get really annoyed by this? 

I am. And I have spent all too large a percentage of my time metaphorically erasing the correct answer at the behest of other people and my own self-doubt. Thus and so, irate at the whispers of "D, Truth!" coming from the sidelines and the vague feeling that reality as I knew it was no longer mine to claim, I glanced at the time, saw that I still had a half-hour before class started, and pattered off to the library to research the cast and crew of Vogue Magazine.

Stupid, stupid Liar. You should never, ever give your full name to someone whose head cocks inquisitively when you tell her stories. Because she might do something obsessive and insane like Google you, then Google the magazine you say you work for, search through their listings of employees, eventually call up the office of the magazine you say you work for and pretend to be your sister looking for your work number and talk to multiple receptionists trying to locate your office, then, to put the cherry on top of the whipped cream, check the entertainment news to find out if Lady Gaga has even been on the same coast as you in the last month.

She hasn't, by the way.

And nobody at Vogue has ever even heard of you.

This discovery filled me with far more glee than it ought to have. I called up multiple friends and did little verbal dances into their ears, telling them about this guy I met and how I thought maybe he was full of shit and had then proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was completely full of shit, and for the most part the reactions I got were along the lines of this:

"...wait, you actually called the home office of Vogue? What the hell is the matter with you?! Who does that?!"

((((I do that, friends-of-Susie. Obviously. It is part of the reason why you are friends with me.))))

At first, I couldn't wait to run into the Liar again, so triumphant was I, so hells-bent at showing him that there was at least one person in this school whose eyes were dyed-wool-free. Vogue, I was going to say? Really? Are you sure about that? REALLY REALLY SURE? And then, I was going to throw all I had discovered into his face, and quite possibly do a little touchdown-dance in conclusion.

But then, one day I did run into him, charging down the hall, the girls I had mentioned my suspicions to trailing in his wake like so many ducklings. They all stopped, they all glared, and the Liar...

...I kid you not...

...commenced to strut. And he continues to strut, to this day. Every time he sees me in the hallway, his voice gets louder and his assertions get more strident and his chest thrusts out and his steps turn mincing, and I don't even think he realizes he's doing it. Because that time we met and he was in front of his friends, I saw something they didn't; a flash of uncertainty.

Because I know, and he knows I know, and there's nothing else he can do except pull his pride in on itself and carry on living fiction with his head held high.

And I find myself kind of liking him for it. We scrabble together what we can in this world, you see, we take our shit situations and we do the best we can with them and sometimes, you discover something that makes it all a bit more tolerable: that if you walk like you know where you're going, the rest of the world hardly has a choice but to follow along.

That's not why I started lying, of course. I just started it up because I realized that this school is full of gullible fools who might actually swallow the huge piles of crow I am handing them, and a girl's gotta do something to keep herself entertained.

And in a world where everything has a shot at being believed, why shouldn't I have a velociraptor army or three?

Roofstomp

I hadn't known Clark even went to this college; nevertheless, there I was in the cafeteria and there he was, looking all-elbows gawky and terribly awkward, stretching to find a place to sit. There was a moment of mutual recognition that passed swiftly into acceptance and we peeled away from the crowds and out of the cafeteria. "I know a place where there are chairs," he said, proud of knowing something I didn't, "nobody knows about this place," and he lead the way to a quiet corner of the third floor of the college where all the chairs go to die. There, students go to study, but mostly sleep, and we kept our voices low and spoke mostly of nothing-much, work stuff, school stuff. When we ran out of things to talk about (we have nothing in common save for workplace), we fell into staring at a snoring someone-or-other across the room.

"I'm going to see if there's a way onto the roof from here," I announced eventually.
"Okay, sure," Clark said, and in his sarcasm was a challenge, so I nodded and beelined to the stairwell, up one flight, up another flight, past a metal door that should have been closed, "What are you doing?" from Clark, "Going to the roof," a door that should have been locked was open instead and there we were, on the roof, and the wind laughed proudly (the wind hates closed doors) and the sun stared down uneasily, sure that we weren't supposed to be there,  "Holy shit, we're on the roof," said Clark.
"Yeah."
"We actually went to the roof."
"Mm-hmm." I hadn't previously explored that area, hadn't previously known there was access to that area, although of course there's access to every roof if you know where to look, so I dropped my bag into the door and padded away, leaving him there to decide whether or not to follow. It was only a moment's wait and then Clark thumped along after me, which I hadn't actually expected. A pleasant surprise, that.
"Susie."
"Yiss."
"We're seriously not supposed to be here."
"Nonsense. If we were not supposed to be here they would have locked the door, don't you know anything." On top of a college, on top of the world, it really is only a matter of perception, "sweet, c'mon," and we dodged between the air vents and climbed a ladder, found our way to another roof and a higher ledge and Clark asked, "Do you do this kind of thing a lot?"
I shook my head and answered, "Not since last semester, look, Roya's office, say hello to Roya, she's not there right now."
We sat on the tarred roof for awhile with our backs against a vent, then wandered our way back, stopping from time to time to make comments meant to indicate to ourselves how much more awesome we were than the people who chose not to be on roofs that day...

...because it is a choice, you see...

and when we parted ways, Clark grinned without meeting my eyes and said, "Well, I guess I have a story now."

and all I could think was, holyshitImadehimastory. But I figured the sorts of people who take you up on your very first illegal roofstomp aren't the sorts of people who get all squealy about that sort of thing so I grinned, feeling cool, and said back, "Always walk like you know where you're going, man."

To Be A Woman

There's a status that's been making the rounds on Facebook lately; at least, I have to assume it's been making the rounds, as it's shown up in virtually every female's status message lately. I try never to actually keep track of what is making the rounds on Facebook. In fact, when something shows up more than once, my eyes tend to automatically glaze over and skip ahead.

However, this one caught my attention.

"Can you carry a 9lb baby in your stomach for 9 months and survive hours of labor? Can you cook, clean,and talk on the phone all at the same time? Can you bleed for a week and not die? Can you walk in 5 inch heels? Can you cry all night then wake up the next day like everything is okay? Remember guys, women are only helpless till their nail polish dries :) Put this on your wall if your proud to be a woman !!!"

I know. Ignore it, Susie, ignore it, Susie, it's only a Facebook status, it's not worth working yourself up into a froth about. At first, that was what I kept saying to myself, too, so I posted a few snarky responses and let it be. 


MY RESPONSE:
"If I walk around in five inch heels I will kill myself and probably a significant number of innocent bystanders. And if I try cooking and cleaning and talking on the phone, the lasagna will have dishwashing fluid in it, the dishes will be washed with ricotta and the person on the phone will think I am DEAD because of all the SCREAMING, followed by sudden silence. I never have to wake up after crying all night and pretend everything is fine, because I don't cry all night. Nobody cries all night. They'd die of dehydration first. Furthermore, when my nail polish is wet, I am not helpless; have you ever gotten nail polish in your eyes? It hurts. Like hell. So honestly, I question the validity of this entire status."

And I do. Let's take it sentence by sentence. A woman, according to this status, can be broken down into the following categories:

•  Giving birth
• Running a household with some measure of competence
• Having her period
• Wearing fashionable shoes at the expense of personal comfort
• Having emotional breakdowns that last all night
• Wearing nail polish.

Overall, the picture painted by the implication that this is what all women have to be proud of is disturbing, if you consider that it takes feminism and pushes it back by at least fifty years. 

Okay, so giving birth is cool. Mind you, it's something that, to judge by some of my classmates, any drunk sixteen-year-old girl with three IQ points to rub together can do, so I'm not as impressed as perhaps I could be. 


Simultaneous cooking, cleaning and talking on the phone is equally cool. In fact, I think that should be elevated to an Olympic sport. I have since conducted experiments to see if I could do it, and it wasn't pretty. Does doing laundry count as cleaning house? Because if it does, I can at least say I can cook and clean at the same time. Talking on the phone while cooking is, for me, a terrible idea; the last time I tried it there really was screaming going on, and then I abruptly hung up on the Meerkat (do you remember that non-conversation, Meeks?)


Having your period is not something to be proud of, nor should it be listed as a point of pride for all womankind. It's biology. Interesting biology, I'll admit, but it's stupid to take pride in an inconvenience. I'm not going to reward a dog for biting my leg, I'm certainly not going to give my uterus cookies and assure it that it's a good girl when all it's doing is causing me pain. 

WEARING FIVE-INCH HEELS IS STUPID. IT IS STUPID. IT IS STUPID, DO YOU NEED ME TO SAY IT AGAIN, IT IS STUPID. I've met women who can pull it off, hell, probably I'm a woman who could pull it off, but all you want to do when you're done pulling it off is PULL THEM OFF. And then pull off your feet. And then NEVER WALK AGAIN. All for the sake of a fashion industry that is actively out to make all women think they want to be Barbie. 


Crying all night, if you put aside the physical impossibility of it, is a sign of a serious emotional problem. That's my first problem with that bit. My second problem is the implication that it takes a real and proper woman to not only have whatever severe psychological problem that would lead to crying all night, but also to COVER IT UP. Because female emotional problems are what, not worth getting into? Not worth talking about? Not worth working through or even acknowledging? They are, in fact, only worth suppressing and pretending everything is fine? That's something to be proud of? Fuck that. 


And finally, we come to the icing on the cake. Let's quote this directly, this one is worth quoting directly:


"Remember guys, women are only helpless till their nail polish dries :)"

How do I even start? What is it that offends me to my very core about this statement, is it the smiley face? Is it the lack of comma between "remember" and "guys"? Is it the implication that all proper women wear nail polish? 


Well, yes, but also no. No, the operative word in that sentence is "helpless". Helpless, because of nail polish. It is, much like the woman in question's nails, brushed over with the thin veneer of "only" and "until", it's tricked out to seem empowering, but the disturbing and somewhat diseased heart of the statement is this:


If a woman is attacked and she has a choice between defending herself or waiting until her fucking nail polish dries, she will wait until her nail polish dries. Because it is more important to look sexy than to stand up for yourself. It's more important to be a sex toy than a human being, it's more important to keep up appearances and the standards that have been forced onto you by an outside party than to stay true to yourself, it's more important to have your period or cry all night than to be a free, upstanding, proud and dare-I-say-it mighty individual in your own right.


This is what Facebook wants me to be proud of? This is what gets Liked, this is what gets reposted, this is what we think of ourselves? This is what the suffragettes fought for, this is what generations of women have stood up for, this is what we've evolved to as a society? 


How can I not get angry? 

The thing is, I am proud of being a woman. It's just, my woman is not a nail-polish-wearing prancing little princess whose great prides in life are doing the dishes and walking in terrible shoes. I know that woman, I've met that woman. She's not proud.  She's not happy. Truth be told, she's not much of anything. I wonder what that woman sees when she looks in a mirror, I wonder what she thinks when it's three o'clock in the morning and she can't sleep. I could never imagine being her. 


To be a woman. much like to be a man, is to be an eternity's worth of possibility. Did you know that? Did you know that the definition of any one being, regardless of gender, is to stand on a cliffside staring out at an infinite horizon full of things to be, definitions to rewrite, boxes to outgrow? I think that's why I get so offended when I am stuffed into a box and labeled with a black marker and taped tight and stuffed into a corner. 


It's feeling more and more these days that that's what society wants to do to each and every one of us. 


They box us in, and they call it pride.

*thumbs up*

All is well! Merely busy. Go about your business!

All Updates All The Time

...you'd have 'em, if stuff didn't keep on happening. 

Life's been complicated of late. If it's not birthdays, it's dark revelations about my past, if it's not dark revelations about my past, it's video game obsession, and if it's not any of those things, it's the fact that I'm grumpy (or high on pain medications) because of my stupid broken foot. 

Promise, guys, there will be something of interest someday.

September, the second installation of the twelve-part By Any Other Name, will be up as soon as I can get the internet to behave with something vaguely resembling reliability. In  theory, I'm going to be able to do a month a week; this is, of course, entirely dependent upon both the internet and inspiration working with some level of regularity.

Oh, and if my various other-life responsibilities allow it. DARN YOU, DENTIST, PARENTS, UNFULFILLED SOCIAL OBLIGATIONS, WORK, BIRTHDAY AND LIFE. DARN YOU TO THE PLACE WHERE THERE ARE NO SOCKS.

ETA: Last night, I was listening to a coworker ramble on about how much he hated institutionalized education. After a half hour, I ran out of noncommittal grunts and got tired of cycling through the five vague noises of interest, so I looked up from my book and snapped, "Bullshit. You are full of shit."

Much to my shock, the world did not end and he did not kill me; instead, we had an interesting conversation-sum-argument and ended up coming to some form of common ground.

So apparently there's nothing wrong with disagreeing with people when you believe them to be wrong.

This realization has sent me 'round the twist, I don't mind admitting it.

By Any Other Name

August

The heat is a thing alive, wrapping around shoulders and tangling through legs, thick and rattling with the calls of cicadas. Somewhere nearby, someone is having a party, and the music thuds and whines,  a discordance occasionally pealing with laughter that sounds just a little too desperate to be real. Streetlights buzz uncomfortably and send orange light wandering through the branches of trees.

Two figures have taken to the streets tonight, perhaps seeking wandersome relief from their peers shouting at the party, perhaps slipping out from one of the other houses whose windows flicker blue with television. Or perhaps they have come from nowhere at all. One swings a bottle, occasionally hands it to the other when some unspoken communication indicates that it is wanted.

They walk like they know where they are going, although one occasionally slows to examine a thing that catches her interest: a leaf, a plastic bag, a flower or lawn gnome, a newspaper abandoned in the gutter. They do not speak, and the comfort in the silence indicates that this is a matter of choice, rather than a thing born of awkwardness or dislike. They have spent enough time in one another's company that they do not need to fill the silence with useless noise. Their shadows circle them uncertainly as they pass beneath the streetlights.

The smaller one hurries to catch up to the larger, reclaims her bottle, breaks the quiet that follows them, in spite of the sounds still emerging from the party at their backs. "I wish I could remember my name."
The other pauses, eventually replies, sounding slightly irritated. "What do you need a name for?"
"I don't know. Just feel like I should have one, sometimes."
This seems silly to the larger one. They both have survived this long without names; they are who they are, whether they are named or not. "Should is a strange thing."
"I suppose."  They walk onwards. "Everything else has a name."
"We are not everything else." Now the silence between them grows a twinge of disagreement, which colors the air. "What would you have your name be?" asks the larger, when the air becomes too thick.
"Oh, I don't know that. It's just..." It is a hard thing to try to explain. "The wind whispers. It wonders who I am. And I know who I am, but I can't tell the wind, can I?"
"You can't tell the wind anything. It doesn't listen. It just whispers, then passes to whisper to another." Another pause. "Having a name would not change the wind."

There is no way to explain that she knows that having a name would not change the wind. Nothing could change the wind, which goes where it pleases, does what it likes, and never bows to anyone. But having a name would, perhaps, change the way the wind was heard, make the whispers mean something different. "I had a name," she says finally, because to say anything else seems impossible.
"You lost your name." The bottle changes hands again, one woman to the other.
The statement makes the smaller feel defensive, as though she did something wrong, as though this existence is somehow her fault. "So did you."
"I do not think about it," says the larger, truthfully. Her name, having been lost, is no longer a thing worthy of consideration. But she looks at her companion, and her bearing has changed, and it seems that more needs be said. "You are more than a name."
"Everything is," the smaller agrees, but that wasn't her point, not even slightly. "But everything has a name, regardless."

A passing breeze takes an interest in the two figures who walk as though they know where they are going, perhaps because they don't. The wind likes contradictions, so it pauses a moment to play in their hair and make the branches of the trees dance and hiss. What it whispers in each ear, they will never speak of, not now that each knows what the other thinks.

Underscored by the shouts of revelers, the silence stretches, and it is less comfortable than it was before.

"It's going to rain," says one to the other, as the bottle makes its way back to her possession.
"It's going to storm," the other replies.

And they walk on.

Time flows ever-onwards, and questions of worth...of self, of others...continue to surge up to be eventually soothed.

An angry someone-or-other is currently demanding I make some sort of amends to him for dropping him on Facebook. He seems to be of the opinion that dropping someone you haven't talked to in over two years is somehow a horrible offense, and is using the moment's curiosity that caused him to realize that he could no longer view my page as reason to subtly press the claim that he cares much more than I do about other people.

He certainly cares more than I do about this given situation, but as to the more extreme accusation...I'm not sure.

---

This Didn't Happen

"Hey."
"Hey."
"What do you want?"
"Uhh....why do I have to want something? Maybe I just called."
"You must want something, you're talking to me. People don't generally do that without ulterior motive."

---

It has been a long-standing complaint of mine that the only time my phone rings, the only time my chatwindow bleeps, it is because someone, somewhere, wants something. The truth of this statement is, first and foremost, dubious. Furthermore...it is only recently that I have begun taking into consideration the thought that when you call someone just to find out how they're doing, it's because you want something, too. Everyone wants something from everyone else. It's just, sometimes the thing they want is surcease from loneliness, something to assure them that they are not alone in a world that frankly gets more terrifying by the day.

This is a thing I do sometimes. The world is large and frightening and I am but a person, a sometimes sad, sometimes lonely, sometimes depressed, sometimes bored individual. So I pick up the phone, so I sign online.

Which means that when I call people, when I chat them, it's because I want something, too. The reason I cut the gentleman in question instead of sending him a message was because I didn't care enough about his company to seek it out. He did not fulfill any given need, so I cut him out and didn't give the matter much more thought. Truth be told, he was one of approximately thirty or so people I also dropped on that particular day.

Does this make me cold? Does this make me apathetic? Or does it make me human, susceptible to human failings? Should this even be considered a failing? I know I'm neurotic. I know I'm paranoid. I know that sometimes I am these things with good reason, and sometimes I'm these things because habit too long established is a hard thing to put aside. Cold, though, stonehearted, apathetic, these are things that I am having trouble equating with my personal mode of life. I have been treated with apathy too many times to be able to allow the possibility that I am capable of being apathetic to settle comfortably into my heart.

Of course, Facebook doesn't matter, and the ruffled feathers of someone who in all honesty does not care about anything outside of his ability to stir mud wherever he can find it doesn't matter, but as that was the scenario that put the thought into my head, it's only fair to mention it.

I begin to suspect that I, who have accused people of not caring throughout the course of my entire life, have finally realized the advantages of apathy. I don't like it, mind you. It does not at all sit comfortably with me, which is why I'm even writing this entry. I don't think I will ever be able to just...walk away, get called on it, and not have some version of this cycle of introspection rev itself into being.

 But there was a time, perhaps two years ago, that I would have begged this person to take me back, be my friend, answered his angry email with something doormattish and pathetic. Anything to prevent his dislike from hitting home, anything to avoid having someone out there with a less-than-stellar opinion of me. But there are a lot of people with a less-than-stellar opinion of me anyway, so why should I have to put up with someone I don't like?

Ah. And there's the rub.

Probably someday I will be able to go through this process without spending a half-hour writing up a blog entry to detail my own feelings in the matter. Probably there will come a day when I'll just laugh about it, or at least shrug it off.

Then again, maybe it's the lack of shrugging that not only makes me who I am, but makes me worth caring about. Is that ironic? Or is it just appropos?

I get lied to a lot.

Oh, not by everyone, not by a long shot; the guy I married has never, not once in our entire relationship, lied to me. And we've been dating/married/whathaveyou for eleven years now.

Mind you, I'm not the most honest person on the planet. In fact, I think that my relationship with truth could be charitably described as "uncomfortable". If one were feeling less charitable, of course, one could say that honesty and I tend to avoid one another in the corridors, like ex-lovers who know full well what one another's kinks are, who don't particularly want to think about that sort of thing ever again. 


So possibly my being irritated about other people lying to me is more than a bit hypocritical.

...oh, this was shaping up to be a truly delicious rant, but I just reread what I was writing here and realized some things that caused my ire to deflate.

1. My husband has never, ever lied to me.
2. I am a liar AND more than a bit of a hypocrite.
3. He holds honesty on such a level of importance that he has never lied to me, and yet he STILL LOVES ME.
4. Screw the people who have lied to me, how fucking lucky am I?!

Ah, well. Totally pointless blog entry.

One of the things that scares me, really and truly scares me, is the thought that you go through all of this living, all of this experience, all of these stories, only to discover that you're one grain of sand on a beach of trillions.

It's not that I think I'm special.

It's just, none of us are.

One of the things I like to do sometimes when bored and replete with alcohol is mix said alcohol in the blender with various and sundry other things in the kitchen.

Vodka tastes good when blended with cherry Italian Ice and pomegranate seeds.

It does not taste good with French toast and maple syrup.

More on this later.

Work and other interests have been eating my brain recently, leaving me with little in the way of time or energy to devote to random blog posts. Or any writing whatsoever, a fact that is causing a portion of my being to circle restlessly and make nervous little whining noises. 

I'll be back in the swing of things eventually. I've had a number of ideas surface briefly to be scribbled down on scrap paper and pocketed, but I'm lacking the time to sit down and flesh them out properly. 

Thirty is coming on fast. I know I'm supposed to be having some sort of mental breakdown or period of intense introspection or maybe just an hour or two of being depressed about how old I've become without noticing, but so far, no dice. When mention of my birthday does bubble up in the course of everyday conversation, people tend to study me with narrowed eyes, half-expecting me to start weeping copiously (and Pavlovianishly) at the very mention of the three decades lived. 

Of course, they don't know I've been claiming to be thirty ever since I turned twenty-eight. My reason for this is simple, if kind of strange; I really like multiples of three. I have a fondness for multiples of five as well, but they're nothing when compared to multiples of three. 

No, I don't understand it either. But I didn't want to be twenty-eight, which has nothing whatsoever to do with three or five, and I certainly didn't want to be twenty-nine, which SOUNDS like a multiple of three but is really just a tricksy bastard with no more to do with three than twenty-eight had. Thirty, though...well. Thirty is replete with threes and fives. There are ten threes! Ten of them! And six fives! Why on earth would anyone settle for something as unbalanced as twenty-eight or slippery as twenty-nine when you could have a lovely,  comfortable, solid thirty under your belt? 

I'd have claimed twenty-seven (three times three times three! Three threes!!!) except there is something inherently dishonest and bothersome about claiming an to have been an age that you've already been. Somehow, claiming to be older than I am seemed more honest. 

Again, no, I don't understand it either. My logic is my logic, no matter how illogical, question it at your own peril.

And while you're at it, get off my lawn. You damn kids and your frisbees. 

When I woke up this morning under the unfortunate circumstance of having to go to work, the first thing I noticed was that I still had the multi-colored tophat that I had been wearing the evening before, perhaps crompled a bit but otherwise unharmed. Vague memories of being up a tree flitted through my head as I wandered into the shower, trying not to wake the people sprawled asleep in the library. Leaving for work uncovered more people sprawled asleep in the living room, who I hadn't previously known were there.

There were foam swords in the hallway that hadn't been there before. Other foam swords were later discovered tangled in the hydrangeas.

Thud-thud-thwomp, I knew I had gone to bed sometime around two and woken up some four hours later and was not particularly concerned with keeping the noise down.

I opened the front door and gazed out upon the world; my little pine tree gazed back (with its eyes) and waved a bit (with its arms). Some enterprising souls had decided my pine tree would make a good treemonster, one that had a startling resemblance to Oogie Boogie. "Hallo," I said to it, and trudged onwards.

I remember there were ninja battles, and some spontaneous Shakespeare recital, at one point Chris decided all the minions of Skeletor were hiding in the shadows and needed to be found and destroyed. I know there was a period of time spent hiding under my desk being shot at while someone irritably requested that the war be held on account of philosophical meanderings regarding the function of fiction in modern society. I suspect I decided someone's leg would be a good thing to make friends with, and I remember there were a few minutes where I was just circling Patty and circling Patty and circling Patty and circling Patty.

I know for a fact that I was taken hostage and had to rescue myself.

I know my cupcakes (raspberry-filled chocolate cupcakes with espresso-chocolate frosting) got me declared an entity of pure evil.

There was a lot of shouting and laughing going on, and everything tasted fantastic, and somehow, magically, Trick Ponies kept finding their way into my hands, in spite of Trick Ponies only existing in Chicago and not being the sort of drink one can make with any particular ease. Yet somehow a recipe was made up and somehow they kept appearing, and when you get right down to it you just shouldn't look a Trick Pony in the mouth.

...Yes, in fact it was one of the best parties ever. However did you guess?

I have been actively forbidden from reading Hemingway at the current point in time.