You Go Girl

Go, Danica. It was a hell of a race down to the last caution flag.

Plucked From The Lint Trap

I discovered iTunes. My mate and I have spent a few entertaining evening drilling down into the catalogue and surfacing with such nuggets as "Lawyers In Love" and "All The Young Dudes." The mate, he was much, much cooler than I was in high school.

I know this, because left to my own devices I dredge up "Forever Your Girl" and "A Whole New World." I'm not ENTIRELY without coolness - of my own free will, after seeing them on SNL, I bought the System of a Down single. Of course, my inherent dorkhood kicked in and I accidently bought the "clean" version. I had to spend another dollar just to get the version with all the fucks unfettered.

But where my mate finds obscure metal bands of his childhood, I look for Metallica and wander away disappointed because SOME PEOPLE think they are too cool to be on iTunes. He claps his hands with glee and calls for the buy button when obscure German bands appear beneath his wandering mouse, and I shell out for the remastered "Kickstart My Heart." We both agree that if we want a whole album, we should buy the physical thing, but where he goes out and buys the complete works of David Bowie, I make a note to order Bat Out of Hell 2. He rocks to Rasputina, I'm dancing to Def Leppard. Hysteria, baby!

He is sticking his Tron hands into a torrent of smart and hip, and I pluck discarded radio singles from the lint trap of the eighties and nineties.

As MC Skat Kat once said, opposites attract.

The Other Side

At a big exposition, I spent a week shaking hands, hugging people, and in general keeping what passes for charm with me on the uppermost side. This trade show is an annual event, and one I look forward to very much throughout the year. I'm always working hard at a job that I love, but this trade show is basically the week where everything comes together - the work, the connections I've made, everything clicks into place and I feel like I'm on top of the world.

When it ends, the participants all feel a little drained and a little hungover, so a few days of vacation are called for. Thus far, I've spent those days in total retro mode. I've cooked dinner, set up the sewing machine to hem my husband's pants, done laundry, waited for plumbers, fetched groceries, and so on. It's been about as intellectually challenging as the ant bait I put behind the trashcan. And it hasn't been so bad, playing the part of the little wifey. Actually, I've pretty much enjoyed myself.

Oh, I'm not worried that I secretly long to be a homemaker. This is only day two and I'm already slightly bored. I keep wanting to check my email, call a reporter, work on an article. I'm trying to stay on vacation, so I'm writing articles for my neighborhood newsletter and cleaning the bathroom to keep my mind off work. If cleaning the bathroom was my actual work, I'd go insane. Since it's not the focus of my identity, hemming my husband's pants makes me feel good, as if I've contributed to our partnership in a loving way.

I'd be on some kind of prescription-only Mother's Little Helper before I could sneeze if I had to fill my days with laundry. I'd learn to cook elaborate meals and make wedding gowns by hand and clean behind the fridge just to say that I excelled at something. I'd call my husband five times a day just to hear another adult's voice. No wonder there are so many stereotypes that hail from the days when women would quit their jobs when they got married.

But instead of a trip to Deeply Neurotic Land, I'm listening to the soothing hum of the sewing machine and admitting that I do have this side to my personality that enjoys arranging cheese slices into patterns on serving trays. Maybe the things that make me a closet scrapbooker and a secret hemmer of pants are the things that make me good at my professional job.

I wonder what my grandmother could have been if she hadn't gotten married.

Advertising, Part 1

There’s a commercial out about coal mining and how it’s not actually destructive to the environment around the mine, hazardous to the health of the miners, and so forth. And mining is done entirely underground as opposed to blasting off entire mountaintops. Well, those things are implied. The only thing actually spelled out is that America has lots of coal, enough to last for a couple hundred years while we develop alternate technologies that might not require us to go to war with various desert nations every decade. Or something. The tag line is “Coal is attractive,” and the “miners” are all supermodels, both male and female.

The trouble is, the song accompanying the commercial is “Sixteen Tons.”

Yes. The Merle Travis song that refers to the exploitation of actual coal miners. You know, the one that says the miners can never make enough money to get away from coal, because they have to buy their groceries and supplies on credit from a store belonging to the mining company. Also, the miner singing the song is such a badass that no “high toned” women makes him walk any lines. Oh, and he wins all his fistfights.

The sad thing is, most people know the song, but they don’t think about the lyrics. The idiots that thought this one up would have made a perfectly good commercial if they’d just used the tune. Then all of us sheeple in front of the TV would have nodded, and thought, “I know this one, it’s the coal song, how apt.” Instead, we hear this doleful male voice singing about how he can’t die because he owes his soul to the company store.

Nice going, GE!

Requiem For a Dream

I found her on the internet.

She was a 1999 silver Miata with all the trimmings - alloy wheels, Bose speakers, leather wrapped steering wheel, and a reconditioned ragtop. She had an automatic transmission. She only had 50K miles on her. And the dealer only wanted ten thousand dollars.

I wanted her. My own car, a charming 1994 MX-6, is sporty and fun and infinitely more practical than a two seater convertible. My car is fully paid for with no mysterious problems, and also has only 50K miles. But I still wanted the sparkling little Miata with the leather bucket seats and the CD player.

(I could keep going, but pretty much everyone authorized to read this blog already knows about my love affair with this little Miata, since I got all of you to help me rationalize the purchase.)

Friday night, as my mate watched movies in the living room, I sat down to do serious research. I researched the values, insurance, retail ranges, reliability, and everything else besides. I ran the numbers on my MX-6 to figure out what a fair trade-in value would be (though I was secretly hoping they'd refuse to take her, so I could give her to someone in need the way she was all but given to me). I even pulled a Carfax search on the Miata's VIN number. I went to sleep on Friday night, knowing I would be her third owner.

On Saturday I woke up and called the dealership, located in BFE Maryland. (That's "bum fuck Egypt" for those of you who were never fifteen.) I asked, with my heart pounding, if the silver Miata was still there. The dealer was advertising a black one, a red one, and a silver one, and I wasn't making the drive for any but the silver girl, sail on by. And the man said she WAS.

My mate and I hopped into the MX-6 after cleaning out all my stuff. The only thing in the map pocket was a folder with all my research, and the title to the MX-6. As we zipped down the highway, we planned our attack. We would not mention the tradein until a price was set. We would take turns test driving her. We would check the weatherstripping, the latches, the brakes. And we would take her home, and buy a little car cover for her to protect her from sparrow shit.

When we got to the dealer, there she was. She was a gleaming gem, her paint polished to such a degree that the blue spring sky shimmered in the gloss. Her black top was up, so I peered in the window before looking for the salesman. That was when I saw that she had the default steering wheel and a manual transmission. I looked again, and compared my printouts with her sticker. Wrong VIN. This was not my car.

I laughed, and stepped away. Sheesh, getting all starry eyed over the wrong car just because she was silver. When the salesman approached, I asked where the silver Miata with the automatic transmission was, because I was here to take a look. He did a quick walk around the lot and failed to see her. He vanished inside the dealership as my heart sank.

He returned, and said she was gone. Sold that morning. I said in shock and disbelief, "But I called!" Much later, I realized that I had called... but not specified WHICH silver Miata. But I didn't think about that as I stared at the poor salesman. I even used my angry death glare, which I'm told either freezes your blood or reminds you of an angry cockatoo.

His manager materialized, rubbing his hands together. The manager had greasy hair and a vaguely European accent. Not only had they sold MY new car, but they were assaulting me with cliches! "What can I do to make a deeeeeeeeeel for you today?"

Nothing, I told him. I'd made the drive for the silver Miata with an automatic transmission and shiny wheels. "But this black one is in much better condition!" he said in a happy voice. I glanced over at it. Three grand more, the wrong color, the wrong wheels, the wrong year, manual transmission, and no cute little spoiler. I did not want this car.

"But I liked the price on the other one," I replied, planting my feet, and settling into haggle mode.

My mate grabbed my hand. "Didn't you have your heart set on the silver one? Come on, honey, thanks for your time, no, we're not interested," he called out over his shoulder as he raced towards my car. He knows I can't resist a bargain, even if it means settling for something I don't want.

I wonder how low I could have gotten the price down on the black one.

I hope the silver girl's new parents buy her a car cover.

Cackle

Thanks to the extremely funny Andrew Sullivan, I found this brilliant link skewering the metrosexual trends of the last few years: http://www.501uncomplicate.com/index.php

I admit I'm naturally on the side of people who keep the frou frou to a minimum. And I hate to rub it in that the metro rountine is about a TENTH of what most women endure if they have "real jobs" where makeup and the like is considered part of the uniform.

Still, let's make a deal here. Gentlemen, we ladies vow to embrace and adore your hairy chests and unstyled hair as soon as you embrace our faces without makeup and the size of our post-pubescent ass. Can't we find some kind of reasonable middle ground between the genders that doesn't make either side suffer? Can't we all stand united AGAINST waxing?

Though it wouldn't be so bad if we all came down in favor of underarm shaving. Some people look like they've got those little troll dolls trapped in a headlock.

Cooler Words

I have held many jobs in my time, mostly bad ones, as befits a liberal arts major with a lousy attitude and no understanding of proper accessorizing. When you're overeducated, broke, and bitter, you're certain to wind up working for an hourly wage for and with complete morons. Thus, I've got a million stories, but this one definitely ranks in the top ten.

Sales for a certain conference were low, despite relentless cheerleading and snappy copywriting on my part. (Bear in mind that my bitterness here stems from not actually being one of the people paid to plan and execute conferences. I was just the hack who was responsible for hawking the event.) The actual reasons for the slow sales could mostly be laid at the feet of one incredibly dim bulb, who did not understand what customers would want in a conference, and didn't care anyway. More and more of the actual conference planning had fallen to me and a buddy of mine, until at long last she had no actual work to do. However, the pressure to improve sales was still on her delicate shoulders, and so she did the only thing she knew how to do - she tried to blame me.

"Couldn't you write something on the website?" she inquired breathlessly a few minutes into the conversation. I looked up from my desk, covered from stem to stern with paper, event plans, contest props, and checklists, all in an attempt to salvage something from this conference scheduled to occur in less than three weeks. My instinctive urge to kill was overridden by the assurances from my boss that he would NOT, in fact, bail me out of jail if I committed a felony. So I controlled myself, and responded along the lines of, "There are already a number of announcements on the website. I think more might be considered excessive. Maybe even desperate."

She flapped her hands vaguely. "Well, maybe you could use... cooler words."

COOLER. WORDS.

Cooler words? This complete waste of precious oxygen, who once criticized me and another friend for using big words (such as "panacea," mind you), who could not write her way out of a wet paper bag, whose every written phrase contained at least two misspellings and an egregious example of exclamation point abuse, who once posted her salary (considerably higher than the typical employee) to a public message board, WHO BORE THE BLAME FOR THE LOUSY SALES IN THE FIRST PLACE, was offering me advice? And her advice was that I should use "cooler words"? I'd been on edge all week, and this was the last straw. So furious that I was near tears, I repeated this insanity to my friends.

They did the only thing they could do, really. They took the punchline, embraced it, and started whacking me with it. It's practically a mantra.

I love them. I haven't had friends like that since college.

The Pet Peeves Of the Frustrated Author, Part 6

One does not wait with baited breath. If your breath was baited, it would feature a wriggling worm or perhaps an elaborately tied fly.

It's BATED breath. God.

Me Versus the Sparrows, Round Two

Yeah... so... last week, I watched the sparrows fly into the stove exhaust vent. Those sparrows are completely safe, since I have no intention of turning on the stove to such an extent as to REQUIRE exhausting anything. I waxed lyrical about the tiny lives of sparrows.

Tonight, I saw a sparrow fly happily into the dryer vent.

Grumbling, I fetched out my stepladder, stuck my arm in the vent, and pulled out three twigs and a wad of my own hair I'd clearly pulled off the brush and thrown away.

I was so proud of myself for yet again foiling the sparrow before eggs could be laid that I sat outside enjoying the evening. And so I happened to be sitting there while the sparrow... flew back into the dryer vent.

I put the ladder back, banged on the siding to scare her out of the vent, and stuck my hand back in there. This time, my fingers brushed the tips of some straw, but I couldn't quite get to it.

This had become a Man Task. Man Tasks are things done by the man of the house at the request of the woman of the house. Duties include but are not limited to spider removal, anything to do with the yucky crawlspace under the house, and lifting things. I was not put on this earth to carry heavy things or touch things with more than four legs. I realize this is dreadfully retro of me, but I hold up my retro end of the bargain by doing laundry. Man Tasks are sporadic, but laundry is forever.

Anyway, my mate (aka Guy 1) came outside. He pulled out a few wispy bits of grass, and he too could not quite reach the last pieces. We trooped inside, and he unfastened the dryer vent tube. The silver snake was lowered into my waiting hands, and laid across the washer and dryer.

I reached in... and I pulled out a grass plug that was two feet long. TWO FEET. TWENTY FOUR INCHES. And the worst part was the bit at the top. Feathers from cardinals, from finches, from chickadees, from sparrows. Bits of newspaper, and more of my hair. Man, I gotta stop cleaning my brushes outside. A bit of embroidery thread, and some dried morning glory vine. And cuddled into all this softness and glory were five speckled eggs. I looked at my mate.

"Are these endangered birds?" he said sternly.

Well, no. We've been together for a few years now, so I could tell that the answer to my silent plea to put the nest back was not no, but hell no. I went outside with that ridiculously huge wad of grass and feathers, and I looked at the little cluster of eggs that would not hatch.

I learned a lot this evening, of course. One, the damn birds don't give up. Two, that was not a one season nest, that was several springs of effort. Every time I knocked loose a nest in progress I must have shoved straw into the tube, and eventually enough stuck in the ridged pipe to form a platform. So much for my vigilant nest patrol. Three, I can cancel that dryer repair appointment, because the dryer seems to work JUST FINE NOW. Four, turning the dryer on high (and running it for a straight hour, cursing at its poor performance) apparently doesn't actually hurt anything living in the freaking vent. This entire incident is funny on a level that I will no doubt recognize eventually.

But they were so small and perfect, and helpless. I felt like a heel, a schmuck, and guilty of a tremendous unfairness. I killed them. I didn't want to, I didn't mean to, I wouldn't have even turned on the dryer if I'd known they were there. They're just stupid sparrows, which made it worse, because there wasn't anyone to understand my mute apology as I stood outside in the cool spring evening.

A Window Into My Home

Someone out there met me and Guy 1, and the fusion of our personalities inspired them to create Craft Corner DEATHMATCH, wherein you use nothing but your wits and a glue gun to defeat THE CRAFT LADY OF STEEL. I am TOTALLY the Craft Lady of Steel. I'm putting that on a flattened pie tin and fastening it to my sewing basket with baling wire.