Category Archives: Linkups & Memes

Probably

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It was one of those mornings* where I was feeling so miserable that I should have walked on past my roommate, said goodnight and curled up in bed. However, I held on to a feeble hope that he might come up with some antidote to make everything better, so I sat down in my chair with my self-pity and lit my cigarette.

It was that chest crushing anxiety that afflicted me, and one that just would not let go… even after a candlelight bath that I’d hoped would wash all my troubles away, it remained and flared with a burning intensity as I looked at the shoes of a man who’s admiration and approval I so intensely desired.

As the one sided conversation began, it was clear that my mood would stubbornly refuse to improve. I missed every joke. I got lost on every reference.

He chided me for my indulgence in the fantasy of the angst-ridden artist my impulse was to get up and smack him in the mouth for crossing the line, but instead I took another drag off my cigarette, and looked to the floor as I attempted to hold back my tears and replied tersely, “Probably.”

He even tried the old standard of poking fun at himself, to which I looked at him sadly and shook my head no and said, “I’ve got nothing.”

“I call bullshit,” he insisted.

I sighed once again, “Probably.”

Because as usual, he was probably right.

*Note: It occurred to me after I hit submit and got a few comments that less regular readers among these parts might not know that our home partly runs on a night shift schedule, so morning is bedtime for the majority in our household, this was how I ended my day… not began.

The Story of How I Left The Church

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At the time I left my church, it was going through some growing pains. We had an interning assistant pastor who I had grown somewhat fond of who was doing the internship to require a denomination requirement to start a new church. When his internship ended was when the trouble started.

I didn’t know which church I should go to. The one with the pastor that I connected with but was 45 minutes away or the one that was 15 minutes away that I could get on time.

Frustrated with my feelings, I took it to the Internet and wrote a blog post about it to crowdsource opinions because… well… when I was young and growing up as the first generation of the digital age, that’s how I learned to deal with my feelings for better or for worse.

The head pastor saw it and didn’t take it kindly.

I don’t remember what the email he sent me said exactly anymore. It’s long lost in the ether…

I remember isolated snippets that context will forever be lost.

Mentally unstable. Unbecoming of a young Christian woman. You should delete blog posts where you talk about X. Don’t be a gossip. Don’t write about people online, talk to them first.

I’ll never forget how it made me feel.

Attacked. Hurt. Powerless. Less than. Scum.

Whether or not he intended it as harshly or as angrily as it translated in my brain, I’ll never know.

I didn’t even respond because the only thing I could think of to say was, “Fuck you,” and that didn’t seem like something that was becoming of a young Christian woman.

I just walked away and didn’t look back, it felt like the only dignified thing I could do at the time.

It was one of those incidents where everything changed in an instant.

I was wounded.

Suddenly, I was unsure of my own voice. Self-conscious of who might be reading from my “real life” and would might be the next to turn against me. People were not to be trusted. Ever.

I went from prolific blogger to the blogger who posted once a month because she was afraid to show weakness, lest she be seen as emotionally unstable for being candid about the dealings of her life.

Even now, the submit button gets pressed less for fear of being hasty and out of line… I hesitate to even write about the good things in my life that my loved ones are party to for fear that they’ll resent it.

As the years have gone by, I’ve realized that he wasn’t necessarily wrong in all of the things he said…

It was true that it’s better to talk to someone privately if you’re having an issue than to post it on the Internet for strangers to provide commentary for, and the fact that I gravitated toward that practice was very likely a result of a fear of intimacy.

It was true that I wasn’t exactly the most emotionally stable person in those days, and likely needed a therapist… and I found one a few years later.

His presentation of this information just sucked.

And who could blame him? I can’t imagine it was comfortable to watch your congregation split in two, even under healthy circumstances. No wonder he snapped.

I wasn’t capable of that level of empathy at 21… but at 29 I can say I forgive him.

And these itchy wounds? Might be a sign that something is healing.

Five Things About Me (with Bonus Kittens!)

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It seems like ages ago now (but probably only a couple of weeks) but Rachele from Nearsighted Owl tagged me in a “tell us five facts about yourself” meme, and then I started writing an answer to it and then life happened and I got distracted when it was halfway written but I just remembered about it now so I figured that this was a surefire way to sneak in some more kitten photos without boring everyone to death with the fact that the only thing that seems to be going on in my life these days is furry and four legged.

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1. I’m really bad at lighting matches because I’m afraid I’m going to set my fingers on fire. I went to light some candles tonight and all I had was matches because apparently the boys can’t leave me a lighter and it took four different match sticks before I got one lit, and then it took three more sticks to actually get a candle lit and then at that point I said “fuck it” and opened a package of spaghetti to find something I could light the other two with. Clearly, I’m special and took the “Don’t play with fire!” rule a little too far into adulthood.

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2. I don’t sleep at night. Or rather, I rarely sleep at night anymore. I’ve always been something of a night owl and I fair so much better getting actual quality sleep if I crawl into bed around 5 or 6 AM and then wake up around 1 or 2 PM. I love how quiet and peaceful it is in the middle of the night when everyone’s asleep.

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3. I’ve been sharing my life online since I was 13 years old. To give you a little perspective on that… I’m now 29. I’ve been at this whole online journaling and blogging thing for a really long time and I’ve seen technology evolve from writing posts in Notepad and uploading them with FTP onto your server into robust blogging services and platforms and witnessed the rise of social media… It’s been a wild crazy ride.

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4. I’m spiritual but not religious. Though, I tend to prefer Rachelle Mee-Chapman‘s term for this… Relig-ish. I don’t consider myself to belong to any particular faith tradition, but I’m very interested in faith and studying the wisdom contained in many traditions, and I create meaningful spiritual practices for myself to keep myself in touch with that aspect of myself. It’s not something that I tend to talk a whole lot about publicly because I tend to get overwhelmed when I try to describe what I believe… but I’m more than willing to field any questions if you have them.

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5. I’m addicted to independently published self-help e-books and e-courses. Maybe it’s because my life is in a serious amount of flux right now, but the type of blogger that I’ve been gravitating towards reading these days tends to be the life coach blogger, and many of these lovely ladies (and men, I’m not trying to be sexist here… it’s just that there are more ladies that I see) have created their own light a fire under your ass and inspire you to do better with your life course. I think I counted that I’ve bought 43 of them…. I might have a teeny tiny little problem with buying courses to help change my life. But rest assured, I bought most of them when they were on sale as a package deal or there was a name your own price special…. I was frugal about it!

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Bonus Kitten Update: The girls are adjusting to life here quite well. Sally is laid back and chill about just about everything, and Izzy tends to be a little bit more vocal. Izzy seems to lag slightly developmentally behind Sally… She still needs a little extra help with things like cleaning herself and hasn’t quite figured out that it’s not really necessary to stick her whole body in the food dish.

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Because Sometimes You Have to Look at the Search Terms

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One of my favorite things about having a blog is getting to see the ridiculous search strings that people use and then end up landing on my blog. When I stumbled upon a linkup about it, I couldn’t resist but to share some of my favorites with you…

My search terms tend to indicate that I’m an expert in two things… Kale and urinalsl… Largely because I once wrote a post about how much I hate kale chips (which was performed live by Blogolouges and once told a story where I got drunk and peed in a urinal at a gay bar.

The Kale Search Terms:

what do kale chips taste like
do kale chips taste good
how to make kale chips taste good
do kale chips taste like real chips
do kale chips taste like seaweed
kale chips are gross
will kale make me poop

The Urinal Search Terms:

gay urinal
peeing in a urinal
experience peeing in the urinal
gay at urinal
gay living urinal
gay urinal pissing
girl pee urinal

Of course, these aren’t the only amusing ones… A few of the other isolated ones I’ve gotten:

yoga themed wine
why do you hate cleaning the bathroom
what to put on my entryway table
what does the american girl series teach children?
thoughts on producing
sex pinterest sexblogspot
pictures of dudes sitting on crates in front of the bodega
leaning into the discomfort
high heels on the subway
how do i spent my valentines day
hanging sound barrier walls
emage 34hh after reduction
corset confessions
boyfriend’s butt
autentik sleep fuck

I swear, my blog seems so much more interesting when I list out the search terms.

Venus Trapped in Mars

Weekly Faves: Music Style

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Since I don’t really do the whole favorite shit that I’d love to buy but can’t because I have a New York City rent to cover thing, I thought it would be fun to just give you some recent household and personal favorites on the music front to brighten your Thursday. Or make you hate me. One or of the two.

1. Bruno Mars – Locked out of Heaven

I hate to admit it… but if you like The Police, you’ll probably like this song and oddly enough, it’s become one of the household go-to songs.

2. The Lonely Island – Great Day

It makes me laugh. Every time.

3. Metric – Gold Guns Girls

Somehow, running through SoHo seemed really appropriate for this song. Seriously.

4. Ariel Abshire – Jolene

Warning: If you were listening to anything at any volume… Turn it down before you hit play on this one or else you’re going to hurt your ears. But it’s worth it because this girly does a killer version of this tune. I’m pretty close to liking it better than Dolly Parton’s version and probably would if it hadn’t been a live recording.

5. Focus – Hocus Pocus

So, we have this thing in our house about watching YouTube clips of music appearances on old TV shows and this is one of those… Watching the singer just fuckin’ cracks me up every time.

The Weekly Faves Link Up

What are you loving this week?

A Lost Voice Found #scintilla13

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The Scintilla Project

Talk about a time when you were driving and you sang in the car, all alone. Why do you remember this song and that stretch of road?

Somewhere along the way, I lost my voice.

Not literally, but you know that feeling when you go to open your mouth and it feels like whatever sound you’re trying to make gets stuck in the back of your throat and won’t come out.

When I was a child, I was always singing. My best friend was my tape player and I’d sing along for hours to the things my mom taped off of records and CDs for me, and then I’d go to school and sing my heart out in music class, and in chorus, and I’d get picked for solos and everything.

Sometime in my adolescence, I stopped being able to do that. I couldn’t just sing whenever I wanted. I’d get choked by self-consciousness. Singing became my little secret that I became afraid to share with the world because I was afraid I’d be told to shut up, that I was ruining the song.

My slight reprieve came when I got my license at age 19.

I could hop into the car by myself and crank up my radio and just sing along at top volume without having to worry about a soul hearing me or judging me. I was never much of a driver for pleasure, I was far too nervous for that, but those moments alone in the car were pure bliss that I could never achieve at home with my parents or in the apartments I lived in with my ex.

It was a frequent enough occurrence that I can’t recall what I sang, though I assume it was probably early 2000s pop and 1960s tunes, and often I would choose to drive the New Hampshire back roads instead of taking the numbered routes.

All I knew was that for the length of a car ride, my voice was free.

How to Wind Up Peeing in a Urinal in a Gay Bar #scintilla13

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The Scintilla Project

Tell the story about something interesting (anything!) that happened to you, but tell it in the form of an instruction manual (Step 1, Step 2, Step 3….)

Step 1: Attend a sizable tech related conference where the culture is to go out partying to the wee hours every night because you obviously didn’t get enough of doing this in college because you were too nerdy for such festivities.

Step 2: Open up your laptop and get IMed by someone from your workplace letting you know some detail of a project that wasn’t time critical and could wait until you get back.

Step 3: Slam laptop shut in seething anger because you had to take vacation days for this conference that your employer should have paid for and thus every time you open up your laptop you are NOT on their clock and you’re tired of your coworkers back home disrespecting that.

Step 4: Pack up laptop into your backpack and go outside with the smokers. (Smoking completely optional.)

Step 5: Wonder aloud to smokers if 3pm is too early to go to the bar and start drinking. Smokers will enthusiastically agree that it’s time to start drinking and at least three of them will agree to go to the bar.

Step 6: Drink four martinis.

Step 7: Return to conference site several hours later, drunk and ready for more action.

Step 8: Approach the first person you see that you know. Bonus points if it’s a former boss that you didn’t part ways with on the best of terms. Triple points for getting him to admit that he’d rehire you.

Step 9: Find your best friend in the crowd and join a group of people going to dinner.

Step 10: Carbo-load with lots of pasta and order an absinthe martini drink with dinner.

Step 11: Go with group to the bar where the official party is at and redeem ticket for your free beer.

Step 12: Gather cool people from the official party to go to a much cooler party in a different part of town.

Step 13: Get confused by the local transit system resulting in half of the group going by one transit system and the other by another.

Step 14: Arrive at cooler party. Order a Vodka Blueberry and Tonic. Drink it.

Step 15: Someone offers you a tequila shot. Say hell yes!

Step 16: Blackout.

Step 17: While blacked out, leave party to go barhopping with all of the lesbians.

Step 18: While blacked out, take photos of the sidewalk art that gets drawn on the way.

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Step 19: Start to come to when inside of a narrow crowded bar and realize that you need to pee your pants.

Step 20: Make your way to the back of the bar and enter the first bathroom you come to.

Step 21: Notice urinals lining the wall to your left. Notice sinks lining the wall to your right. Fail to notice that if you walk straight ahead through another doorway, there are stalls.

Step 22: Decide that your only option is to pee in a urinal.

Step 23: Remove pants.

Step 24: Brace right foot on wall next to urinal and pee in the general direction of urinal. Ignore the fact that most of it’s getting on your legs.

Step 25: Get interrupted when man walks into bathroom. He will look at you curiously, then over where the stalls are and say, “Don’t worry, honey. I’m gay.”

Step 26: Wonder why man is telling you he’s gay while you finish peeing.

Step 27: Put pants back on and wash hands. Realize this situation is odd.

Step 28: Go back out into crowded bar and start to panic. You don’t know where you are.

Step 29: Or who you’re with.

Step 30: Find friends smoking outside of bar and burst into tears because you just peed in a urinal.

#scintilla13 Drunk for the First Time on Cranberry Juice & Wine

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The Scintilla Project

tell a story about a time you got drunk before you were legally old enough to do so.

You know how the teenage stereotype is that you go out there in high school and sneak out to parties and push boundaries and smoke pot and drink beer in some liberal minded parent’s basement?

Yeah… I didn’t do none of that shit.

I was the kid that the DARE propaganda actually sort of stuck for.

The threat of arrest was pretty much the worst thing I could ever think of and from the way my parents alluded to things, I got the impression that making a misstep in this department was probably going to result in them handing me over to the cops.

Drinking wasn’t exactly a taboo thing in our family. It didn’t happen often… But when I was hitting my late teens, my parents occasionally would make me a small White Russian or Piña Colada, so it was never a huge deal to me that I didn’t drink because on the occasions my family did, I was allowed.

The first time I got drunk, I was at a friend’s family cabin in Maine… I was seventeen and my friend’s boyfriend was 21, so we sent him to go through the checkout line alone with a couple of bottles of wine with labels we thought were cute so we wouldn’t be carded.

The wine was awful.

Or maybe our appreciation of wine was lacking.

We mixed it with cranberry juice to make it taste better while we listened to Dave Matthews Band and they sat on the back porch smoking cigarettes.

We hid the wine bottles underneath the sofa because we were worried her parents might show up unannounced, but they never came.

I went to bed on the couch I’d been sleeping on for a month and a half prior, while I spent the summer with her brother on his last hurrah before going to basic training.

I listened to them fuck in the next room.

I’d been lying on that couch for a month wondering if her brother wanted to make a move on me and now I was laying there fantasizing about eating her cream pie.

And the shame washed over me.

Sunday Confessions #35: Yoga, Wine, The Angry Birds Theme, My Portfolio and Writing

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Alyx might have baby brain and forgot all about Sunday Confessions this week, but I haven’t and I’m doing it anyway.

1. My local yoga studio just moved to a new location and offered free yoga on Saturday to commemorate the occasion. I took full advantage. Well, maybe not full advantage but I was feeling ambitious and took two out of four classes yesterday.

I did a Vinyasa/Hatha class which pretty much kicked my ass and confirmed that I really do need to keep taking some of these more intense classes to work on my upper body strength. After what seemed like about a billion times of doing downward facing dog and plank pose my arms and shoulders were screaming, “Nooooo! Not again!”

I followed it up with a Iyengar class, which pretty much convinced me that I need to take more of this type of class. Iyengar is a slow paced method of yoga that’s all about learning how to properly position your body to be able to get deeper into poses. I have some posture issues, namely with the fact that my shoulders like to slump forward and it’s painful to hold them in the position where they’re typically supposed to be and yesterday, I walked out of the class with my shoulders dropped back and standing up straighter than I’ve probably done in years. Unfortunately, my studio only offers Iyengar at 9 AM, but I’m going to try and figure out a way that I can make it to those classes.

2. All of the “good girl” points I got for doing two yoga classes probably should be revoked due to how much wine I drank last night. It started with going out for dinner and drinks post yoga with a few of the ladies that I’ve met through my classes. After that, I bopped into a wine shop and bought some wine, then ran home and took a five minute shower and changed clothes, and hopped on the train to Queens for a housewarming party where I drank lots more wine and got scolded by the host’s sister-in-law for eating brisket with my fingers (I am so bad at being a lady!) and at the end of the night crashed out on their couch because going home at 3AM just seemed like a bad idea.

3. I am obsessing over the Angry Birds Theme Song as performed by Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà. I am picturing a ballet inspired burlesque dance to this… Seriously considering workshopping it and returning to burlesque.

4. I’m currently working on a long overdue new rebrand, refocus and redesign of my portfolio site. To be honest, I had meant to do this back in back in May but then just as I started to work on it I got offered a gig that I couldn’t turn down because I needed the money badly despite the fact that it wasn’t really what I wanted to do at the time. This time around, I’m committed to finishing and launching. If it’s not up in two weeks from now, someone come give me a tongue lashing. Okay?

5. I’m way behind on the writing courses I’m signed up for. I don’t know what it was this past week, but every time I sat down to write on a specific prompt, I started writing about something else entirely. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but there’s this part of me that’s all, “You just spent money on these courses and now you’re not doing your homework? WTF!” I have a feeling I won’t even start trying to catch up until Tuesday because tomorrow’s James’ day off and I just don’t get writing done when he’s home.

Sunday Confessions #34: Digital Cleanup, Nothing To Write About, Casey Desmond, Mission Cleanup, and Ordering Stuff from Amazon

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1. I did a massive clean up of the blogs that I’m subbed to recently. One of the things that I was noticing about my life was that I was spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to get through all the blogs in my feed reader and I only gave a shit about a small fraction of them… and since I was subbed to so many, I was missing out on the blogs that I actually enjoy reading. I didn’t keep track of how many I was actually subbed to and how many I gave the axe to, but it was a lot. I can now actually make it through my daily reads in under an hour. Which is great! Except for now I have nothing to read when I want to procrastinate…

2. I’m still in a massive phase of nothing I can think of to blog about is actually good enough to blog about. I’m also still trying to figure out what this phase is actually about because that’s kinda bullshit… People blog about everything stupid all of the time, so I don’t know what my issue is. It’s like I’ve got it in my head that every blog post I write needs to be the cure for cancer or something.

3. I am mildly obsessed with Casey Desmond at the moment. It wouldn’t be surprised if James and Jed are ready to kill me over how much I’ve listened to her lately, but it’s great music for spontaneous dance parties breaking out in your living room.

(P.S. You can get her album on Bandcamp.)

4. Mission clean up the house is… stagnant. I mean, it’s not standstill or anything, but I totally lost momentum and the only thing that I semi keep up with is the dishes and it’s kinda lame to just take pictures of my sink all the time to show you that I did the dishes.

However, Room A… the one that had all of the crap piled on the floor is… different than it was. I’m not going to bother with pictures because it’s just all of that stuff packed up and piled into a corner that still sorta takes up most of the room, and all of the idealistic plans that I had for it have been put on hold because we’re gaining a new roommate for an undetermined amount of time. I might have lost my potential yoga room for now, but I’m gaining a yoga buddy so I think that’s a win.

5. I should just order things off of Amazon when I need them because I never actually end up going on the errand to get them that day. Like… vacuum cleaner belts. Ours broke on our vacuum cleaner and we need a new one. James and I started discussing where we’d have to go to buy one, because you know… we’d like it sooner rather than later. Several days later, there has been no movement on my part to get off my ass and trudge to the subway to go downtown to go to Home Depot… had I ordered it off of Amazon when I was thinking about it the first time, it would probably already be here.