It's so involved being me

Speaking as someone who recently wandered, phone-less, around a major metropolis looking for one, I can assure you that it's hard to find a working payphone when you need one these days.

Except on my route to and from work, where (oddly enough) there are several. That's unusual in itself, but weirder still is the fact that they're always in use. No matter how early I go by, there's always someone talking on, dialing, or otherwise sniffing around the phone. Often, this person is homeless.

And they're usually fully engrossed in conversation, too--not looking for change, not using the phone stand as a place to stop for a bit--actually talking about events in their lives, things that need to get done, what have you.

This leads me to one of two conclusions: either we need more payphones to address the needs of the cellularly under-served population, or whoever's talking to these dudes at 6 AM should just invite them in for breakfast, already.

Maybe both.

Say what you will about the context for this statement, but there is something slightly magical about looking out one's office window one day at a vista of brown, gnarled sticks, and the next at a row of gorgeous green trees, fully leaved.

It honestly happens overnight. It's a beautiful thing. I can't even complain about the office window part, because it's sure nice to have one of those, too.

(Warning: short, and slightly random.)

I am concerned that today may be Groundhog Day.

I just ate a full breakfast--like, a really full breakfast, with cereal and fruit and yogurt and coffee and water (!!), the kind that would disgust non-breakfast-eaters (and, to parentheticate inside a parenthetical, I have to digress for just a second to say that I do not now, nor will I ever, understand non-breakfast-eaters. I try to tolerate them because some of them are my friends, but their ways are strange and wrong. EVERYONE needs breakfast. It's how your body works. It makes you smarter and happier. You can eat anything you want at breakfast! Cereal! Bagels! Half a sandwich! Ice cream! Why wouldn't you eat breakfast? Plus, it almost always comes with COFFEE! Which really should not be taken on an empty stomach. So there. EAT BREAKFAST.)--and I feel completely empty, like I haven't even eaten at all. It's like the past twenty minutes didn't happen.

I don't have time for another breakfast, and I guess I don't really need one, but I honestly think that if time were no object I could sit right down and do it all again.

Weird. Maybe it's a sign I need ice cream.

Growing up, there were a lot of things I wasn't supposed to do, often for vaguely religious reasons. Read comic books. Play cards. Take the Lord's name in vain (duh). Use words like "darn," or "shoot." Watch soap operas. Watch Dirty Dancing. Read the Sweet Valley High series. Go to Catholic school (whoops). Practice yoga. Drive out of town.

(Oddly enough, there were no specific rules about boys, just a generalized mistrust, which, as icancounttog and I have agreed, basically put the whole operation out of bounds. (Then again, we both went to Catholic school, so I guess those rules would probably have been redundant.))

I don't remember asking anyone about tarot card readings, but I suspect they would have fallen into the same category. Hence, just as I first watched Dirty Dancing in my early twenties, I can now report that I have just had my tarot cards read. At the age of 33.

I asked two questions, one specific and one general. My specific answers were remarkably so, my general answers the same. Specifically, without revealing to you the secrets of the universe, I can report that I am supposed to hang in there. Remember that I know everything I need to know. Accept delay. Suspend the need to act. Reflect on the hits I have taken and get ready for more. Basically: give 'er. But not right now.

Confusing. And difficult. No wonder they tried to keep this from me! Well, I'll show them. Just as soon as this period of suspension is over, as soon as the delays have passed? I am driving ALL THE WAY OUT OF TOWN with a trunk full of Sweet Valley High, and there ain't nothing ANYONE can do to stop me.

You know, until you find yourself roused from deep sleep by a persistent, feathery tickle on your right cheekbone, the source of which sufficiently puzzles your groggy self that you finally pry one eye open to find your friends' cat standing next to your head, staring fixedly at your sleeping face, and forcefully exhaling onto your cheek through her nostrils, you don't know terror.

Then again, that was still marginally better than the time the sound of four terrified paws thumping down the basement stairs woke me mere seconds before my frenzied, twenty-pound cockapoo launched herself directly onto my stomach in a bid for protection from a thunderstorm. I suspect I was somewhat less effective than she'd hoped, what with the moaning and the writhing and all.

This morning, I continue to chip away at my months-long internet silence with an important announcement: the Academic Writer and I have finally diagnosed the problem with society.

Blogs are built upon the shifting and mostly repetitive sands that are the pet peeves of their writers. Take me, for instance: gym, grocery store, apartment, charlatans and cads, and my various problems therewith. We start with a description of the problem (hopefully comic), we provide an illustrative example, and we attempt to win the reader over to our (clearly right-thinking) view of the world.

More often than not, our problems stem with the others we meet in those spaces. People just don't get it! They don't know what they're supposed to do. They're not following the rules. This is NOT HOW THINGS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE.

And that is because, deep down, each one of them acknowledges what should be done, what is expected of them in any given situation, but is actually thinking, "Probably this doesn't apply to me."

When someone talks too long at a meeting, when someone dawdles in front of you on the sidewalk, when someone flaunts all known conventions of business attire (wandering around in skirts made of fishnet and denim scrunchies and other abominations), yup, they know that generally, people are expected to shut up, to pick up the pace, to wear office clothes that are not transparent, but probably that doesn't apply to them.

Think on that for awhile. It's both a helpful calming technique when you find yourself enraged by such behaviour, and an excellent slogan for a t-shirt.

it would probably be titled Me And A Bunch Of My Friends Talking All At The Same Time And Finding Each Other Amusing For Reasons Unknown To People Who Aren't Actually In The Room.

From what I can tell of my recent downloads, it seems to be a successful model. Podcasts: loosely organized shouting, available on demand!

And still better than the soundtrack at the gym.

(For the record, my podcast would probably be called "Okay, So Get This" or "Oh Hey, You Know What?", and until I could wrangle some guest stars, it would probably just be me finding myself amusing for reasons unknown to people who weren't actually in the room. Available on iTunes!)

You know it's a bad sign when you hit the lj icon and you have to log in.

It's a worse sign when you take the "Remember Me" option under your log in as a personal affront.

Well, do you, internet? Remember me?

Having received many a complaint (one) about the lack of posts and feeling a deep obligation to my readers (both of them), I thought it might be time to jump back up on this particular horse and give 'er. Or, more accurately, since I'm no longer sure that anyone reads this blog and I am deeply out of practice when it comes to thinking of stuff to write about (even worse: actually writing it), I guess I thought it was time for an awkward attempt at hoisting myself back into the saddle, goofy limbs and pointy bits and all.

So. Uh. ...come here often?

And that's where the conversation ends, I guess, because clearly, I do not.

But I'd sure like to.

You guys, this is a big day.

I have an athletic injury.

An athletic injury! ME! For real! I got it from training for a sporting event. Or, more accurately, from over-training, I suppose. But still! This is an unprecedented event in the life of a wonk, and therefore one worthy of note!

Not that it's pleasant, mind you. It hurts when I stand up, and when I sit down, and when I climb stairs, and especially when I try to run. And it hurts my brain to think about the miles I'm missing, marathon-training-wise, and it hurts my soul to worry about whether all this treadmilling may have been for naught. So I'm not going to do the latter, and I'm going to try to quiet the former.

Tomorrow's trip to Martin Picard's sugar shack might do the trick. Either that, or introduce a whole new set of worries related to the size of my pants.

(Nah. Who am I kidding? Have you seen this food? I mean, seriously. Who needs pants?)

In the meantime, I wait and I fret. And look suspiciously at my leg. And rub it (just a little bit) when I think no one's looking. And take a LOT of advil. And rewatch season 2 of The West Wing while drinking hot chocolate.

I hear all the athletes are doing it.

Indoor running is essentially an exercise in cognitive dissonance, what with all the running and the never getting anywhere, and (if you go to my particular gym) an endless stream of music videos that play not to their own sound, but to the tune of whatever you've got on your iPod. Nothing makes any sense and a lot of it is awful (here I refer mostly to the running, since I do like my iPod), so you tune a lot of it out to survive the experience.

No surprise, then, that I've been watching "Somebody That I Used To Know" over endless treadmilled miles these past few months, but yesterday was the first time I've actually paid attention to the lyrics.

Generally speaking, I feel that I have behaved in an okay fashion when I find that I am no longer involved with someone. If it is even remotely a mutual decision, I try to stay friendly (assuming that we run in the same circles). If it isn't, then I cut things off, with the absence of contact generally proportionate to the amount of hurt I am feeling. If I think hard about it, this is probably for two reasons. The first is rational: this is what he said he wanted. I'll assume he knows his mind, and it's not my business to argue it. The second is more honest: it's better for managing the hurt.

It's not an ideal system. It doesn't fix the way I feel, and it doesn't answer all of my questions, but it's a way of getting by. Yesterday, really listening to that song, was the first time I think I've felt the other side. It was tuneful, but equally dissonant.