Do you go to the cat scratch club?

I had to share this.

Oh, [I'm a] Dream Maker, You...

...Heartbreakers of my childhood got me thinking.

Maybe I can use my love of shoddily editing myself into photos (a love that I've actually kept hidden from this blog until now) to make some of my older sister's childhood dream (boats) come true. Yes. How productively unproductive.

You're welcome, Caroline.

Also, I had to fulfill one of my own dreams too.

Because Sex doesn't sell, Embarrassing does.

For many years now, I have classified certain instances as "butt clench moments" regardless of whether or not my partner(s) in conversation are familiar with my coined classification. Right now, I'm feeling considerate (or is that listlessness? eh.) so I'll be more thoughtful than usual and take the time to clarify.

butt clench moment, n. /bʌt klɛntʃ ˈmoʊmənt/
1. Occurrence when a person is embarrassed, either vicariously and/or personally, to the extent that he or she cringes so much that his or her butt clenches. (Toes might also curl, but not a requirement.)
Etymology: 2000, MHG coined the term to describe the way she felt when the boy cast as Joseph in that year's Christmas pageant started crying on stage after a failed attempt to warble his solo. 


Now that we're all the wiser, I'd like to share the source of some of my personal BCMs.
A list of my celebrity crushes throughout the years after the jump.

Autumn in New [England] (Brief Followup)

Mistakes were made.

There was a spill.

The candle threw up.

poor thing.

Autumn in New [England]

Yesterday and today I took afternoon walks ("constitutionals," as the old folks say these days) on the minuteman bike path that reopened my eyes to the beauty that is fall in New England. This isn't to say that I'm just one wood cabin away from writing Walden: The Sequel. Not at all. I still love you, television. But really, Autumn. It's never been my favorite season for reasons I can't justify. Something about this time of year has always put me in a funk. My dad says it might have something to do with a discordance between the lunar and solar calendars. Any explanation past that is over my head. (Actually, that explanation is already over my head.)

Funkiness aside, the beauty of the season is undeniable. Even the name, Autumn. It's like butterscotch. And I love how the stress shifts from the first syllable to the second when the noun becomes an adjective. Autumn to autumnal. Although, I feel like Will Ferrel in his "loovvaaas" character would say, "autumn" to refer to the season.

In case you are not familiar:

Here sit the lovvaas in the hottub

Something about the imminent cold and blusteries outside seems to awaken my inner warm and fuzzies. I want to spend a day in Concord or go reaal crazy and hike out to Salem for a scare or kiss Plymouth Rock (oh, wait. I was thinking of the Blarney Stone. Common Mistake.) Maybe I'll even take a weekend trip to Sturbridge Village. Okay, no I probably won't. But maybe I'll talk about it as a possibility if someone asks me what my weekend plans are.

The advent of Halloween makes me want to go somewhere where I can pretend that the times we're living in aren't nuclear or digital, they're colonial. (So types the girl on her laptop as she microwaves a bag of popcorn.)

Unfortunately, I think this sudden seasonal enthusiasm and desire for simpler times seeped into my baking this evening. I lit a "pumpkin spice" candle and  decided I was going to make pumpkin sugar cookies from scratch. "I'll just eye it, like I did in highschool," I said foolishly.

Whoever said that baking is a science might be right. Whoever said that eggs are a necessary ingredient in cookies is definitely correct. Whoops. The cookies were on minute 4 of 15 when I had my epiphany. I was about to warn my sister about eating the raw left over dough because of the salmonella and then I realized, warning not necessary. Whoops. The result was like a crunchy, sugary, butter. (If you must know, I ate three.)

Like a rock.

Happy autumny'all. I don't care if that doesn't work.
(I'm too busy still trying to make "fetch" happen.)

It's Trippy (Memory Lane)

Oh. Muh. Gaaah.
I can't describe how amazing I feel when I look at this picture.
It's like...sparkle meth.

This sensation isn't just visual. I take just one cuh-suh-ree glance and my mouth fills with the hint of a cherry-flavored plastic, like I'm trying once again to eat Caroline's Cherry Merry Muffin doll, or sucking on a "Nurse Barbie" prop lozenge. My olfactory memory whiffs back to birthday celebrations of yore, to those party supply stores and goody bags that smelled like smarties candy and conical cardboard hats.

WIZARD.

When I was a wee lass of four years, my two best friends (Mariah and Elizabeth) and I were obsessed with The Wizard of Oz. It was cooler than milk-water. We each had our own pair(s) of Ruby Red Slippers,* and discussed at length--well, as lengthily as our cavemannish vocabularies would allow--the perfect way to coiffe Dorothy pigtails. The verdict? Begin two side french braid pigtails, ending each right as you tuck under the ear lobe, then curl the free flowing 'tails into spirals. (You're welcome, lazy 'trix or tease'ers. Oh, and respect Dot, won't you please? Put a shirt underneath that gingham apron-dress-hybrid.)

*I know the original shoes were silver, but I think your average four-year-old girl would take Judy Garland's fashion advice over Frank Baum's. Ignore the fact that they're both dead, please.

During my very first sleepover, held chez Elizabeth, she and I decided to watch the Wizard of Oz. Well, I don't know if "decided" is the right word. It was more of a ritualistic act, a shared practice of a beloved and never-questioned Saturday night custom.

"Blessed be thou, O Wizard of Oz,

who gives us the yellow brick road."

...you know, that sort of thing.

As the movie started, we began to bicker about who got to wear her Dorthy shoes. Hellooo, I was the guest. (And, yeah, I had left mine at home--I know: iiiiiiiiidiot.) When our fighting took a turn for the nasty Elizabeth's mother had to intervene, and eventually we came to the agreement that we two gollum-itas would take turns wearing the preciouses.

Me or Elizabeth. (Okay, probably just me.)

So throughout the screening Elizabeth's mother would set the kitchen timer for 15 minute increments and we'd watch the movie, pausing every so often to pass the sweaty little slippers off to the other person. The arrangement seemed perfectly level-headed to me at the time, but I understand now why Elizabeth's mother looked like she was hiding a smirk.

  LET ME TAKE YOU 
DOWN

I think that part of the reason people enjoy drugs (specifically everyone's favorite leafy gateway) is because drugs make you stupider--stupider, like when you were young. When I was little and my brain was still developing, I would get lost in anything that sparkled or contained a wide array of colors. (Hence my smeaghoulish lust for ruby slippers.)

For example: I hated going to the dentist (I was such a unique little girl) but every year the dentist's office would send us this reminder postcard that had seven toothbrushes fanned out against a black background. Each toothbrush was a different color of the rainbow, and each toothbrush head had a perfect 'S' of toothpaste squirted on it whose shade matched the color of the given toothbrush exactly.
You follow? I'll try to illustrate.

+
SSSSSSS 
Bah. This hardly compares to the original.

Oh my heavens, it was amazing. My parents would see me studying the postcard and say something to the extent of,

"Aha, Marg. Hyuk hyuk, You know what this means..."

Then they'd look down at me and promptly try to shake me out of my trance. Heck, they probably could have spanked my bare baby bottom and I wouldn't have noticed, provided they didn't break my gaze in the process.

When I finally did connect the dots between 'pretty postcard' and 'drill-in-mouth-is-gagging-me time,'  I'd whimper and steep in my self-pity until the hypnotic missive worked its magic once more and soothed me back into a pseudo-psychedelic stupor.

...aand that's how kids got high off household objects
when I was growing up.

What Ever Happened?

Maybe I'm just clinging to the past, but things seemed simpler then.

Stories didn't need sensationalism to be great.

Whose culture is this and does anybody know?

That's an ending that I can't write, 'cause I've got you to let me down.

Do you hear what I hear?

said the shepherd Boy to the mighty King

'Teen buzz,' aka 'the mosquito ringtone,' is a high-pitched sound effect that teenagers can use on their cell phones to alert them of incoming calls and texts. Young ears are able to detect the ringtone while the high-frequency noise usually goes unnoticed by their adult teachers and parents. However, this is not the alarm's only purpose. In fact, it was originally used by a store in Britain to ward off teenage loiterers.


Over breakfast the other day, my father and I reminisced about a family dinner a couple years ago during which he had told us about the invention and played a clip (similar to the one above) that featured the sound. All the kids heard it right away. My mother, who is already hard of hearing, shook her head unsurprised: she heard nothing. My dad squinted his eyes and tried to tune in, to no avail.

The mosquito ringtone seems to me like a high-tech version of the bell from The Polar Express. As we shift from adolescence to adulthood, the peal weakens with each additional year, until one day we don't hear it at all.

Soon we are middle-aged and resentful of teenagers, who linger around like they have nothing better to do with their young healthy legs.

"Not on our watch," we spitefully say,
and turn up the volume, repelling the pubescent pests with a silent roar.

Then we watch the youths scatter away, pesky little reminders of our past-selves and the vitality that time continues to suck from our bodies.

Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?

As this past summer wound down, my younger sister Lydia and I did some unwinding of our own. It was ugly. Our daily routines paralleled those of the housewives featured on Intervention. (Well, ours excluded the substance abuse, but only if you rule out Pirate’s Booty and television as abusable substances.)

I don’t know exactly what made my father snap. Maybe our body odor gave him headaches. Maybe he was offended by our brazen renunciation of his Tele-ban practices. Maybe old man was just jealous that we’d been spending most our time living in a languor paradise. He never even thanked us for the many gifts we left for him around the house (including but not limited to: sneakers, DVD cases, and string cheese wrappers).

Bottom line, he snapped. Unfortunately so did his logic. I guess we drove him to an unreasonable state of mind, because his chosen method for curtailing our free-spirited ways was to hold the car keys hostage.

I've often wondered how he arrived at this decision. Perhaps the thought came to him when he was holed-up in his sanctuary, a square home office approximately the size of two tollbooths. Comfortably surrounded by his political biographies and jazz records, he’d rub his hands together and imagine the fruits of his genius.

“They won’t be able to leave! Bwah! Those lazy daughters of Susan have probably forgotten how to walk! And then they’ll have to be productive, or else they’ll never earn their freedom!!!” 

...then he would maniacally laugh. (That, or just go back to programming software.)

The next afternoon when Lydia and I came downstairs for breakfast, Dad watched with smug anticipation as we padded around the kitchen, his two little trolls scavenging for grub.

After a couple minutes, he realized he couldn't wait for us to notice the empty key rack on our own because, knowing us, that could’ve meant days, or whenever we ran out of cereal.

Just as Lydia and I began to settle into our regular couch positions, Dad cleared his throat to make an announcement. He started his speech, using pauses rather than volume for dramatic effect.

“Ugh. Get on with it, Lord Jim…”

“Tell me about it, sister. Booo.”

Lydia and I were using our secret eye-rolling code language to communicate with each other.

Soon, a familiar bark interrupted our exchange.

“Hey! Did you girls hear what I said?” 

We looked up and he repeated himself.

"I've taken away the car keys."

*            *           * 

Mere days before this lecture, I had seen the movie 500 Days of Summer. In one of the scenes, the ideal and the real unfold simultaneously on a split-screen. On the left half of the screen we see how the protagonist had imagined a party was going to go, and cringe as it increasingly veers from the night’s actual course of events on the right.

I believe my father had a similar experience when he delivered that lecture. To illustrate:

However, [500 Days of Summer split screen + my dad's backfired plan] does not merit the conclusion that all planning or optimism leads to inevitable disappointment. In fact, I know I could greatly benefit by having more of both in my daily life.

Sometimes I let plans scare me because I think that I'm committing to an exit-less path, but that's not true. I can always turn back. I can't necessarily make a perfect U-turn, but I can always choose a new route.

Equally true is the fact that some paths will end before I want them to.
Part of growing up is getting dumped, graduated, fired. They're all moments in life when someone tells me that I have to move on before I feel ready or want to do so.

When these moments come around I don't exactly freeze so much as I move at an immeasurably slow pace. In the face of uncertainty I don't know what to do, so I do very little at all. I say I'm in shock; anyone else would say I'm a mess.

However, I have confidence in my baby steps during this unfamiliar stage of my life thanks to support from familiar people. I rely on my siblings to make me laugh and tell me that I'll figure stuff out. My mom, the CEO of our family, helps me determine what I need to do next and makes sure that I follow through with it. And then of course there's Dad, the molder of my (sometimes too) wacky sense of humor and keeper of our house.

Given that we're both currently "working" from home, we spend a lot of the day together. This intense proximity has strengthened both my love of and impatience for his idiosyncrasies. I have a knack for bringing the 'dis-' to his 'order,' and we both have a range of roles that we play whenever that cacophonous union occurs.

He's the man who makes sure to smile as he critiques my dishwasher-loading technique, and I'm the girl laughing his seriousness. He's the man who gets mad at me when I "forget" to pick up the dog's poop before the lawn is mown, and I'm the girl lying to his face, promising him that next time I'll remember.

He's the man who, in the midst of my summer of sloth, impounds my getaway ride and holds me hostage in a house that I already know basement-to-attic, on the same old road where I've lived for my entire life.

And to this man, a man who finds me irksome yet keeps me close, who ties me down when I am barely moving, I should not be the girl who rolls her eyes.

To this man, I should be the girl who smiles genuinely and tells him, "Thank you. I enjoy your company as well."

Airing out freshman memories before they go stale: Part 2

Of the ten people that did make 34^th street’s cut, one who was particularly relevant to my own Pennesis is the character that Street aptly dubbed The Awkward Sophomore. 

(No awkward sophomore pictured, just two awkward freshmen.)

Oh dear Graham Trewgarl*, my very own awkward sophomore, a poem for you:

Graham Trewgarl, Graham Trewgarl

How does your awkwardness grow? 

With goodbye notes 

Full of priceless quotes 

You tape to our doors when you go.

Sorry, I'm back. I promise I was not typing in tongues; I just jumped the poetry gun (which is no doubt a weapon made of wildflowers, English Breakfast tea, and latent sexual angst.) 

A little backstory: As I said, Graham Trewgarl was our hall's very own awkward sophomore. He had a pretty big room across from Mo's and kept to himself most of the semester, entertaining the occasional guest who would stop by to play video games and talk in muffled tones (or so I gathered from my post out in the hallway.)

However, as first semester began to wind down, Mo coaxed Graham Trewgarl out of his lair (ironic considering traditional hibernators' seasonal patterns.) 

I discovered their budding friendship one afternoon when I came to wake Mo up from her daily nap with the serene sound of my eating her goldfish (a beloved daily ritual for both of us, I'm sure) and found, much to my surprise, Mo already awake and chatting with Graham Trewgarl! It was awkward and somewhat unnerving. I probably lost at least 7 ounces during that period. 

The friendship got a bit weirder  remained the same when Graham confessed to Mo that he had slightly more-than-friendsy feelings for her. Although Mo didn't reciprocate his feelings, they continued to hang out, and we all got to know Graham Trewgarl a bit better.

However, sometime around winter break Graham Trewgarl announced that he was taking a semester off to work on various movie sets and would not be rejoining our hall second semester. We each said our awkward 'oh no's, and I'd like to think they were all heartfelt. Sure, he would avoid us sometimes, and yeah, he wasn't a champion chatter, but he was still a part of our breakfast-club-on-ritalin-and-sports-scholarships hall. We all thought we were sad to see him go...until we got the goodbye notes. 

Typed onto strips of paper that he taped to each of our doorknobs, Graham Trew's goodbye notes were kind of like a white man's fortune cookie. Except, instead of a fortune, these texts were either insults, compliments, insults veiled as compliments, stamps of approval, or messages to the extent of "Everyone else got a note, don't worry about it. Bye." And unlike a cookie, they almost always (see exception "Julie" below) left a bitter taste in their recipients' mouths.

The highlights that stand out in my mind are: 
(keep in mind these quotes are from memory)

Mo’s:
"So I told you I liked you. Way to avoid me for the rest of the semester."

Elise’s:
"You are so loud. Loud in the bathroom. Loud in the hall. Loud with your voice. Damn, girl. Why you so loud?"

Mine:
"You’re nice—almost too nice."

Tiffany's (my asian roommate):
"We both know there are too many white people on this hall."

(blogger's note: Dear Graham, You are white. You're white! Is that the real reason you're leaving? To reduce the number of white people on our hall? Because, um, you're white, Graham Cracka. It’s like those girls who say they “don’t like girls.” All those assumptions you make about/use against other people could just as easily be thrown back at you. Finally, and more to the point, you’re white.)

Julie’s:
"Wow, I really wish I could’ve spent more time getting into a deep conversation with you. You seem like a great person and I’d really like to make out with you once you and your long-distance boyfriend have broken up."

(okay, so maybe part of this quote is "subtext," but anybody at a 5th grade reading level could see what was written between those lines.)

Now, I realize that said notes were written almost four years ago, and Graham’s opinions may have changed considerably since then, but that does not make them any less hih-lar-iii-oooous. Especially given that said letters were distributed en masse and left like valentines (minus candy--boo) and call Elise "loud" and Julie "perfect" and me "too nice" with italics, which is a font detail that takes extra time, kind of like the extra time he's probably spent thinking about how he's going to knock Elise or me out because we're just a little too conscious for his liking. 


But it's cool because, as I mentioned in the previous post, earlier that semester (by the grace of Jordan's still-in-high-school girlfreak--I mean, girlfriend) my trusty little cell phone and I had already weathered brain assessments (a little too tumor-free), face makeover plans (a little too not-on-fire), and speculation about the size of my vagina (a little too not-little.) No comment on the validity of these claims. Especially the last one. Eyes up here.

So it's cool. Our bridge is not burned so long as my facefire doesn't set it off and that's highly unlikely because I've placed the bridge across my giant vagina so that people don't fall in when they visit the area ("The Grammill Canyon," I think is what the locals call it) and even if our bridge does burn, the brain tumor is likely to wipe out any memory of why I might not want to be friends with him, so I think worst case scenario is that we, Mr.Trewgarl and I, have ourselves a fresh start.

Nice. Almost too nice.


*Name has been changed...ish

Airing out freshman memories before they go stale: Part 1

Penn’s weekly humor magazine, 34^th Street, recently published an article documenting the ten people you meet freshman year and, oh boy, did it bring back the mems. (What’s that? “mems” isn’t working? Oh, okay.) However, one character from my freshman year experience that did not make the list but definitely made my own "top 5 most emotional moments of freshman year" list (spoiler: the evoked emotion = fear) is a not-so-lady-like lady I'd like to classify as The Jealous High School Girlfriend. 

Jordan was a freshman football player in two of my first semester classes whom, I'll admit, I didn't find terribly hard to look at. However, I had my own long-distance thing going on--just your typical highschool relationship: expired by Thanksgiving, thrown out by Christmas--and I had already made the decision to save any infidelity for my 50s, when I'll go all Mrs. Robinson on some Benjamin Braddock of the future.

Jordan had his own long distance noise, a fact I learned when I suggested that we "study for the test together" and he responded with, "I have a girlfriend." His response struck me as a bit of a non-sequitur. (Let me clarify, I suggested this with my books held nerd-style against my chest, my finger no where near my mouth, and both eyes fully open--not even a squint going, let alone a wink.) 

At first I worried that eight years of all-girls school had impaired my proficiency in late-adolescent innuendos. But then I realized, nope. By saying, "I have a girlfriend," Jordan meant, "I have a batsh*t crazy girlfriend who probably verbally abuses me."

(Actual crazy not pictured)

Lesson learned...a little too late. 

One friday evening I texted Jordan about the homework for that weekend, and he texted back with a response and then some small talk. He suggested we go out to ice cream sometime (bogus for many reasons, one of which being the dearth of ice cream places on campus...unless he meant soft serve in the dining hall, which is tacky at first glance, but appeals to my frugal side.) 

Naturally, I asked him how he was okay with his proposed rendezvous, and yet my suggestion that we study together made him sweat. The next text he sent was something to the extent of "well, you've already turned me down for lunch twice, (sidenote: apparently saying goodbye after someone announces they're going to get lunch = rejected invitation) so I thought you might be more open to going out for ice cream." 

I wasn't exactly sure how to reply, so I sat on my thoughts and tried to shrink them down into 160 characters or less. However, before I could respond, I noticed that he was calling me. "That's funny," I thought. "Why would he be calling when we seem to have this texting thing down pat?" 

Turns out, he rang with somewhat urgent news. Evidently, he had accidentally sent that last message to his girlfriend, whose name also started with M (still, didn't he have a 'reply' option?) and so he was just "warning" me and was "sorry" if I "get some weird phone calls tomorrow," but not to worry because it was "just my girlfriend." Huh. 

Also, this means that when crazyGirlfriend called up Jordan, instead of being like, "woah crazy girl, calm down, it was just a friend...a guy friend...using my phone...to text another guy" Jordan was like, "oh, hey baby. Yeah, about that, here's her name and phone number. Okayloveyoubyyyye!!"

The first call came around four o'clock the next day (I guess that's the time when all the High School bars open) and the calls continued to come all through the night (like a Boyz II Men ballad, only terrifying.) Jordan's girlfriend and her band of cronies filled my voice mailbox with menacing messages that, if nothing else, deserve to be lauded for their creativity. 

A bouquet of some of my favorites, if you will: 

Set my face on fire, brain tumor, big vagina. That's a big pill to swallow, even on a Saturday.

Ah, young love. So passionate.

Although I tried, I couldn't save those messages. My friends and I talked about how hilaaarious they were, but listening to them still made me want to enter the witness protection program. Although those girls really could've used a thesaurus, I've got to hand it to them, their arguments were still persuasive enough to convince me to avoid Jordan for the rest of the year.

I hardly ever saw Jordan after freshman year. However, at graduation this past spring, I spotted him posing for a picture with his (I assume not crazy) Penn girlfriend. She looked friendly and warm as she smiled for the camera. I watched them, my mind blasting back to 3 years earlier, and marveled at how happy the two young adults seemed. 

As the picture-taking continued, Jordan moved his face closer to hers, which was tanned but free of burn wounds. Her mortarboard rested on her blonde head, which showed no signs of tumors or recent surgery, and her gown was average size, no longer or wider than those of her normal-vagina-sized peers. "Good for them," I thought, snapping back to the present. 

And if those two "f*cking get married someday," I can honestly say, good for them.