Friday, December 30, 2011

The End of Year Purge

What a year, huh folks?

(sorry, I couldn't resist pretending to be a cheesy emcee holding a microphone on a stage, if only for one line)

But seriously, a lot has happened this  past year.  I got a new job, I moved into a new place, I dated some different guys- some good and some bad- but ended the year with a damn good one, and I got pregnant.  All in all, I'm exiting 2011 quite different than I entered it.

My only regret is that I didn't end up having done more writing and painting than I did.  I enjoy doing both, but when inspiration isn't striking me in the head, it's tough to get motivated to do either.

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One thing I'm trying to do more effectively is to purge my negativity, otherwise it just festers within.  There's a fine line between healthy venting and going on and on about pet peeves, but I'll give it a shot.



What is it about the internet that turns people crazy?  Or maybe, it's that crazy people flock to the internet.  Maybe I'm one of them (I'm sure of that, actually).  I'm sure I wear on people in my own special way, but since this is my blog, I'll share three internet 'types' that especially wear on me, and the hope is that by venting I can let it go a little better.

1- Flame Warrior Guy

Flame warrior guy's only objective is to shake the hornet's nest until all hornets are buzzing angrily and out for blood.  He'll do anything to get his way, and responding reasonably to him only causes him to ratchet up his asshattery to the point where the only options are to get angry or exit the interaction altogether.  Unfortunately, though, when you're somewhat responsible for general behavior on an internet forum,  you can never really exit, you can only hope that flame warrior guy goes away before you or somebody else has to forcibly exit him from the cyber-premises.

2- Passive-Aggressive Guy

I respect this guy less than the Flame Warrior, because at least that guy is up front about what he wants.  Passive-Aggressive Guy acts as if he wants an honest dialogue, but in reality, the cake he's just gifted you is chock full of razor blades and poison.  His plan is somewhat vexing because confronting him only elicits a "what me? I didn't mean anything by it" response, sometimes complete with a smiley-face.  In short, there's nothing worse than not knowing where you stand with somebody, and Passive-Aggressive Guy's chicken-shit interactions are only visible through smoke, mirrors, and deception.

3- Dramatic Addict Guy

Dramatic Addict Guy is a real beating.  Usually, Dramatic Addict Guy is not a bad person, but he can't seem to get out of his own way, mostly because he doesn't want to.  See, Dramatic Addict Guy craves attention, and if he can get it mixed in a sweet cocktail of sympathy and compliments, all the better.  Once he gets that high he'll come back for more.  This is the reason why you'll see Dramatic Addict Guy do things like:

- Musing openly about the possibility of disappearing, usually using phrases like "I'm so tired of this, nothing I do is good enough, maybe it's time for me to move on...".  As long as Dramatic Addict Guy can stay on the radar, he's happy.  Unfortunately, he'll often do not-so-good things for this purpose, such as:

- Habitually ending up in dust-ups of questionable fault, but of widespread hard feelings, punctuated by:

- Making trite woe-is-me public messages for all to see.  These messages rarely defuse the situation, in fact they often exacerbate it, which often leads to:

- Offering an elaborate, melodramatic and (most importantly, because otherwise would completely defeat the purpose) public farewell messages.  The goal here is to incite a barrage of "please don't go!" messages into his inbox which causes him to:

- Not leave at all, despite the very non-ambiguous declaration otherwise.  If he's fortunate, he'll then get some "so glad you stayed!" messages, which is a nice little attention-high aftershock after the bukkake sensation of all those pleading messages which "convinced" him to stay in the first place.

-Rinse, Repeat...and it gets repeated often.

Over time it becomes hard to like Dramatic Addict Guy because from the outside, there's nothing else going on besides this exhausting high-low cycle.  And unless you're the type that relishes the opportunity to be involved in others' needless drama, there's not much incentive to reach out to them.  It all makes you wonder why they bother coming online at all, since it's obviously so laborsome.  But the answer is obvious:

Because they don't have anything else.

They don't have a real life, so they construct one and live it online.  And because of this, and also because mundane passing of time is not interesting for themselves or others, they construct these dramas to react against.  It keeps it interesting I suppose, just not always in a functional or enjoyable way for the rest of us that are subjected to it.

But these 'types' are minor inconveniences, and I think they are pet peeves of mine because my actual life involves more than enough drama for me, I can't imagine willfully creating lots more online.  All in all, my online experiences are great, and I've made some really good friends in the process.  I hope to keep them and maybe make a few more along the way.


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I think I've dated a few guys that must work out here...

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Rihanna, "We Found Love (in a Hopeless Place)"

So, does that mean she found love in Detroit?  In a Wal-Mart?  In the Cleveland Browns' locker room?

She should be more specific.

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My hopes for the new year:

A healthy baby
More, better paintings
At least two stories, perhaps erotic, perhaps not
Peace...within my life, at least.  I've got it now, let's hope it holds for a while



Happy New Year, everyone!







Thursday, December 22, 2011

A Necessary Self-Exile


I've spent the last five days in Jamaica with a friend and her family, enjoying my total lack of a schedule and great weather.  Here, during the winter, it's a high of 82 and a low of 72 every day, and sometimes it rains in the morning, and sometimes it doesn't.  I think they just have a single static image of their daily weather forecast that the put up on the screen every night.

It's good to get away sometimes, and they say that it's not the distance that matters but I definitely would not have have gained the perspective that I have if I simply went to somebody's lake cabin in Texas.  To gain this perspective means getting away from my surroundings as well as everyone in my life in order to see things clearly again.  A lot of things have happened in my life over the last few months and though not all of them are bad, the sum of them have succeeded in cloudying the waters of my mind.  When people talk about taking time to get their "head right", that's what I'm doing now, in Jamaica- and without the use of ganja, believe it or not.

I think I could live here, even knowing the difficulties, but alas, I don't, and probably never will.  My life waits for me in Texas, and I'll return to it shortly.  Until then, I'll enjoy just a little more dancehall, jerk chicken, and warm December sun between the palm trees.

I hope everyone's having a happy holidays so far.  I don't feel like Christmas just yet, but when I'm back home in the cold, I'm sure I'll get that way quickly.

I leave you with a little local flavor.  I'll miss this place. :(




Saturday, December 17, 2011

The Good News

So I hinted at something fairly ominous in my last post when I said I was going to have a big day, and it's time to clarify that.

I ended up getting really good news.  I got the results of my paternity test back, and my boyfriend- who wasn't my boyfriend at the time of conception, mind you- is the father of my baby.  I'm still pregnant, early on in fact, but I needed to know, and I owed it to the guy that loves me and promised he'd love me no matter what came of the paternity.

So now, a big unknown has been taken off the board, and I can  begin to make sense of where my life is (a baby on the way) and where it's going (what kind of life will I provide for my baby?).  Not that I have any of that figured out yet, but I'm now in a place where I can.

First things first, I'm headed to Jamaica with a family friend for a few days.  I'd planned on using this time to get my head right before facing a reality where my boyfriend is not the father of my child (I really thought this would be the case).  But now, I can just go and enjoy myself while I'm not yet big as a whale in a swimsuit.

I'll probably be posting a thing or two while I'm gone, and will have a virgin daquiri in all of your honor. :)


Wednesday, December 14, 2011

In my own skin



I've gained 12 pounds, I feel bloated, but I still feel sexy, except for when I don't.  Sometimes it's all I can do to keep my stomach from churning out everything in it, and I can't even pretend to wear my regular pants anymore (at least not without button extenders), but I still have that same fire inside.

My breasts hurt like hell, even from hugs or if I roll over onto them, I've had to buy new bras and I'm sure I'll have to do the same again, but I also know they look good- at least until they sag from breastfeeding :(.  My thighs are bigger, my waist is thicker, and all of those will only keep growing, but on a good day, I've never been a better woman.  I'm going to be a mother, but I'm already changing.

Tomorrow is a big day.  I'll share as much as I can about it, no promises.  My life's changing, and another huge fork in the road lies in front of me.


Sunday, December 11, 2011

Tim Tebow and the Mojo


One of the things that I like best about sports is that whole category of things that happen that just can't be explained rationally.  I call it "the mojo": the way certain teams have the upper hand over other teams, the way you sometimes know when a 3-point shot is going in before it even leaves the hands of the shooter, the way your team can be up 10 points in the second half, but you feel defeated as if the game is already lost (and more often than not, when you have this feeling, your team does go ahead and lose).  Sure, all of those things can be explained, or at least assigned meaning: mental edge, good form, momentum, etc.  But I like to think there's something magical about life in general, and that one place where it makes itself be known, let's itself be seen, is in sports.

Anyone who has even a passing interest in the NFL knows who Tim Tebow is.  Nominally, he's the current starting quarterback of the Denver Broncos, but that's not what he's famous for.  He's also perhaps the league's most prominent devout Christian, but again, that's not what's giving him his buzz.  He's famous for not being that good of a quarterback in any area except for the win column, where he's 7-1 since he was made the quarterback by default, basically because the others on the team sucked worse than he does.  Consider that he went all of last  year and the first part of this year as no better than the backup.  Why?  Because he has weird mechanics, and is not particularly accurate: two usually lock-tight reasons for not playing a backup quarterback.

But he's not famous just for being a bad, yet winning, quarterback.  He's famous for often playing horribly (like the 2nd or 3rd stringer that he is, talent-wise), then pulling it together and almost literally willing his team to victory, week after week.  He'll miss receivers all day long, but when it matters, he'll string 3 or 4 completions together to put his team in position to win.  When he's running the ball (which he does a lot), he'll lower his shoulder and attempt to run over his potential tackler as opposed to sliding to avoid him.  In those closing minutes and seconds of a game that Denver's trying to win, he becomes the most difficult human being on the planet to bring down, or deflect a pass from.  He has the mojo.

So, what gives him his mojo?

Is it confidence?  Well, that's probably the most important component.  To lead other men, you have to appear confident that you have the ability to actually lead- and he does.  But that doesn't explain the late-game heroics.

Is it selflessness?  That certainly doesn't hurt.  He's not a slider, he doesn't duck hits, and he clearly gives every ounce of effort, unlike many many players (I'm looking at you...3/4 of all wide receivers in the league).

Is it humility in the face of stardom?  Probably has little to do with it, but he's got that in spades.  You'll never hear him take credit for team wins, in fact it's the opposite.  "My team makes me better, they help me improve," he'll say.

Some overzealous Christians even imply that his strong faith has given him his mojo.  Clearly that's nonsense, but since we can't account for it any other way, I'm just as comfortable with that crackpot theory as with any other.

Also, it must be said, especially with such a dominant defense, that Tebow is not the sole reason why Denver is winning so often since he started playing, though clearly they're connected.  Whatever the mojo is, it has seeped into every element of the team, and has worked it's mysterious power on other teams.  Fluke fumbles, missed kicks, inexplicable mistakes: they're all aiding Denver's success ever since Tebow started playing.  By now, Tebow's in the heads of other teams, making them look over their shoulders as the game nears its end, which is the hallmark trait of the mojo.

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So why do I care enough to write about it?  I love the Tebow mojo.  I don't necessarily love Tim Tebow, though I admit to being confused about all the people who really seem to hate him.  And it does help that by all accounts, he's a very good person who wants nothing more than to be a good teammate and help his team win, both of which he's doing a bang-up job of.

I love the Tebow mojo because it's one of those era/events in sports that needs to be recognized while it's in progress, because once it's gone, it's gone forever.  It won't last forever, or even probably that long.  For all of Tebow's mojo and heart, defenses will figure him out, opposing offenses will find the flaws in the Denver D and do the kind of damage that can't be remedied without a whole game's worth of Tebow magic.  When that happens, will he be up to the challenge?  Probably not, but then again, the Tebow mojo was nowhere in the neighborhood of the probable prior to it's inception, and now look where we are.

Admittedly, it's a minor little era/event, too.  Jordan's (first) retirement, Nadal beating Federer, the Red Sox beating the Yankees in the ALCS; those are all major sea-change endings of eras, and beginnings of new ones.  This is just the magic of one player's effect on a team; a team which probably won't make it out of the first round of the NFL playoffs, but then, it's not about where it ends, it's about what happens week to week.  Will the Tebow magic continue?  Every week, the odds are it will end.  So far, the odds haven't amounted to a damn thing; the mojo bowls the odds right over.

Lots of people, my boyfriend included, actively root against Tebow and the Broncos, as if he, and they, are some fraud just begging to be exposed.  What's fraudulent about the mojo, the fact that it's not logical?  Why would we dislike him, because he's not a prototypical NFL quarterback who scored well in the combine?  Why would I want it to end?  Why would I root for the death of this mojo?  Can you imagine how boring sports would be if everything was predictable and went according to plan?  To me, the mojo: the magical, the unexplainable- is the best part of sports.  But one day, maybe next week, maybe in January, the mojo will fade, and we'll be looking for the next place for it to pop up, and transfix those of us that truly love sports.

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Maybe in three years, when Tebow is some other team's backup quarterback and tight end, the announcers will occasionally remind us of that special time in the 2011 season, when the otherwise listless Broncos took flight with him at the helm.  Then again, maybe he'll be a starting quarterback in 3 years, but he's just as likely to be somewhere in Southeast Asia, helping build a clinic in some rural village.


Will you still be undefeated, Green Bay?  Will we care?  I have nothing against Green Bay, but there's nothing particularly magical about their superior players and schemes predictably running roughshod over each week's scheduled victim.

We have all of January to worry about that.  But in the meantime, go look at Tebow's completion percentage, and his first-half numbers.  Notice how subpar he is statistically, then remind yourself that sometimes statistics don't mean a damn thing.


Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Boxing


How many of you are in a relationship with somebody who does something potentially dangerous for a living, or even as a hobby?  I would imagine this list to include firemen, policemen, soldiers, coal miners, sky-divers, rock climbers, and in the case of my boyfriend, boxers.  

Don't get goo excited, he's not anybody that you have heard of, or even anybody that you might have accidentally seen on ESPN at 3am when you're half asleep after having returned from a night at the club.  No, he's one of the hundreds of guys across this country that fight in gyms, in armories, and in private buildings.  He doesn't make his living doing it, and there's really no practical way that he possibly could, so he fights a few times a year and otherwise works a day job.  

The popularity of MMA has taken so much potential talent and interest away from boxing, that the federations have been crippled, especially in the upper weight divisions.  A heavyweight fighter with a middling record has little option but to fight on private (read: unsanctioned) cards, and hopefully make a little money that way.  They aren't bound by the normal rules, and there's no group to punish a fighter for taking steroids, or hitting below the belt, or any of that.  A fighter that wants to fight accepts those as the conditions for doing what they love and train to do.  So, that's what he does, and it makes me very nervous.

Watching somebody you love in a boxing match is not fun, and watching boxing in person is way more visceral and violent than it is on TV.  I've seen two in person now, and it might as well be a different sport when you're there in the same room, hearing the impact and watching the physical reactions.

This is a video of Miguel Cotto's wife and son after his fight with Manny Pacquiao.  Needless to say, they didn't handle well the sight of their loved one taking the punishment that one takes over the course of a boxing match.  He didn't die, but after having been in that woman's shoes, I completely understand the reaction.


As a sidenote, I have no idea why she thought it would be a good idea for their young son to witness their father's fight.  That child's mental trauma was very avoidable, I think.  I'm going to have a child in June, health and good things willing, and I just can't imagine that I'd ever subject him or her to that.

He's 24 now, so by the time a child would be old enough to go, I hope he's long since hung up his gloves.  I'm trying to talk him into a new hobby/career in training, and slowly ease him out without him giving up the thing he loves completely, but we'll see.  He's been doing it a long time, I'm not sure how easy it would be for him to walk away.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Unlikely Christmas Spirit


Have you ever played the "a year ago, would you ever have guessed..." game with yourself?  I find myself doing that a lot lately, only because the first 18 years of my life were spent in not always good, but ultimately predictable circumstances.  For instance, at any given time, I would more likely than not live in a run down apartment under the semi-purview of some lady that my dad was dating.   The specifics weren't always the same, but they were similar enough to wear on me.

The last three years are a vastly different story.  Nothing of any consequence has been the least bit predictable ever since I made the decision to move to North Texas.  So, yesterday's "would you ever have guessed" question was this:

Would you ever have guessed that you would have your own Christmas tree, purchased from a tree farm that serves free apple cider and offers hay rides, and would share it with three others, two of which don't even live with you? 


Answer: No, I wouldn't have.

I've never really been a Christmas person.  It's not that I dislike the holiday the way I do Thanksgiving (tons of baggage there...maybe another time..), it's just that it's never been one of massive fanfare for me.  But for some reason, this year I feel a little more Christmas spirit seeping through.  This year, for reasons I can't even account for, I wanted a Christmas tree.

I've never had one of my own, and I hadn't planned on having one.  But one day last week, I woke up and realized that it's what I wanted.  The people around me all had differing reactions to this news.

Shari, roommate: "(giggles) That's funny, girl.  Should we decorate it with condoms and lube-packs?"

Loni, next-door neighbor/duplex-mate: "Really?  I didn't expect you to want that.  (then smiles)  I like them, though.  Sounds fun."

Juan, boyfriend: "You mean you weren't going to get one, anyway?"

I was going to have my own tree, but the more we all talked about it, the more sense it made for it to be a tree for all four of us.  Juan's cousin didn't want to put a tree in their apartment, Loni's family had never made Christmas a priority, therefore she'd never had a tree before, and Shari's mom had given her some ornaments from her childhood which, since leaving home, had never left the box that they were stored in.

So, on a cool, grey Saturday morning, the four of us set out in a friend's borrowed van to find our tree.  An hour later, we arrived at a tree farm roughly a half hour from the nearest gas station, ATM, or reliable cell phone signal.  We sat on a flat trailer lined with hay bails, being pulled by a tractor to the tree field.  There were probably an equal number of fresh stumps as trees; somehow, on December 3, we were far from the early birds in the Christmas tree hunt.  Unfortunately, the ones that were left showed definite signs of distress; the drought has not been kind to the tree farming business.

After rigorous debate, we selected a tree that stood maybe a foot taller than me, with bare patches and a skinny, crooked trunk, but tons and tons of character.  There were fuller, straighter, greener trees to be sure, but this one called out to me, much like the hapless runt in the puppy litter.  I'd found my tree.

About fifteen seconds later, Juan had sawn it off at the stump and we were dragging our forlorn evergreen back toward the hay-ride trailer stop, awaiting our ride back to the farmhouse.  I couldn't help but think how much fun my dog would have had if I'd thought to bring her.

Of course, the fun didn't stop there.  The first tree stand that we bought didn't work due to narrow and extremely twisted trunk.  Loni says our tree has scoliosis; I agree with her diagnosis.  We sent Juan back out to Home Depot for tree stand #2, and an hour later, plus some mechanical retrofitting, our tree finally stood proudly in my living room: relatively stable, if not straight.

We put on the lights and the star last night, and over the next few days, we'll get the ornaments up.  Loni has a few trinkets that she is attaching hooks to, and I secretly went out and bought some ornaments when I bought the lights- you gotta start somewhere with these traditions.  I don't think Juan has any ornaments, nor the desire to buy any, but it's no less his tree, given his time spent here and all the work he put into getting it upright.

I don't know where my new Christmas spirit comes from.  Maybe it's has to do with finding the closest thing to family in the close friends I've made over the last year or two.  Maybe it's having a kid on the way, and subconsciously trying to establish family traditions.  Maybe, given my dislike of Thanksgiving, this is the holiday that I choose to be thankful for all the good things in my life.

I do have a lot to be thankful for.