I am asking myself a question lately: If the miracles aren’t true… If none of the supernatural is true… If the book is wrong… If it is all made up, is the philosophy of Christ still worth following? My answer is yes.
Lately, I have been shaking off some of the more illogical of my religion’s stories, and I have been taking a hard look at the bare bones of Jesus’ teachings. I can’t find any flaw with his edicts. I find plenty with the rest.
Just when I decided to be okay with my weight again, I discovered that in order to reap the benefits of paying the lowest premium for my health insurance, I’m going to have to lose weight. Crap. But, no, I’m not going back to fad diets or the like, I’m just doing the old faithful. I guess I’ll have to actually stick with it. Frankly, I would rather pay the extra money and get to eat what I want. I look good in my clothes, so who else cares?
I have been listening to the book, Under the Banner of Heaven (still haven’t figured out how to underline), and learning more about the origins of Mormon. As someone taught to believe in virgin births, resurrections, and other miracles, I have a really hard time knocking the unbelievable tenets of other people’s faiths. If you want to believe that Hermes carries your prayers up to Zeus, that’s fine by me. I’ve got no stones to throw when it comes to believing in things that seem ridiculous.
It is good and healthy to know about more than just your faith. As the old saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day. There is some truth in everything, and I believe there is some good in everything. You know, unless the idea of the religion is to abuse and hurt, then it’s just criminal.
Lobster introduced me to Esoteric Astrology recently, and that has been an eye opening hilarity of its own. While I don’t believe in horoscopes guiding your days, I do find some truth and interest in natal charts as indicators of personality, strengths and weaknesses. Esoteric Astrology has more to do with your spiritual disposition and purpose. Of course, because it is true any time I am MBTI’d, sorted, or typed, I appear to be an outlier of the norm, a sole dispositor. Lobster is, too. I am in good company.
A sole dispositor occurs in a horoscope when one – and only one – planet lies in its ruling sign; and all the other planets lie in signs which, by a series of removes in rulership (disposition), work back to that ruling planet. For example, in the horoscope of Charlie Chaplin, we have the following planetary positions: Sun/Aries; Moon/Scorpio; Mercury/Aries; Venus/Taurus; Mars/Taurus; Jupiter/Capricorn; Saturn/Leo; Uranus/Libra;
Neptune/Gemini; Pluto/Gemini.
I don’t know that I have achieved anything out of the norm of my upbringing, other than having made it into adulthood, and having made it here mostly sane, but I still have a lot of living before I am finished striving to achieve, so who knows where I’ll end up? The rest of the description at the link is embarrassingly on the nose.
I find myself, often, in a position of choosing either my way of doing things, or people. And most of the time, I choose my way of doing things. I’ve been told by enough people that I am narrow and bullheaded to have any delusions that I am anything else.
Eh. It’s something to consider, even if it isn’t very flattering.
Have you seen Debbie Harry lately? No? Google her. She looks fantastic. She and Cyndi Lauper look amazing. I chose well in my childhood female rock icons. Terri Nunn’s not looking too shabby either.
Growing up, I either wanted to be Terri or Debbie, but also had a great love for Cyndi. I think it was the wrestling thing that kept me from jumping fully on board that crazy train. I shy away from wrestling in the same way I do clowns. There’s something not quite right about roided up grown men, who have fake tans and look slicker than a newborn. I just…can’t. No.
There is a Blondie song playing on the office Muzak, and that reminded me.
But I came here to write about my recent opportunities to act like a complete brat. Not specifically, of course, but in general. I took one opportunity and ran with it all the way down the dirt road until my feet were filthy. Another, I did not take.
Some relationships are like bumper cars. They are amazing fun, but you can end up with a busted lip or whiplash. As much fun as it is to drive bumper cars, too, I am always just a little surprised when I am bumped. I mean, it’s bumper cars. I know the object of the game is to crash into other cars, so why would I be at all surprised to be rear-ended, or side-swiped? And, if you’re already bruised, just a tap can feel like a full body slam.
Still, it’s just bumper cars, and you know that once the juice shuts down, you’re going to hop off the ride and be perfectly fine. You’ll laugh, rub your neck, and run on to the next amusement.
I am learning that there is a fine line between telling myself, “You know, it’s not all about you,” and “Even if it isn’t about you, you’re still in it, so it’s okay to have XYZ feelings.” Especially when you get rear-ended at someone else’s 6 Flags birthday party.
I am currently immersed in three books. Escape*, by Carolyn Jessop became a minor obsession until last night, when I spent my sleeping hours arguing with Warren Jeffs about how he was mistreating his wives. Man, the last thing I need is to argue with wacko polygamists in my sleep.
I put Carolyn’s tale down and switched back to the Marine Corps, with Helmet for my Pillow*, Robert Leckie’s story of enlisting in 1941, and his subsequent tour of the Pacific during WWII. My father is a Marine, who enlisted some 20 years after Leckie. Makes the book more interesting to me.
I’ve always liked military history, but have generally been caught up in the more romantic wars like the American and French Revolutions, and the Civil War. WWII’s romance plays out in Europe, with the Allies rescuing the victims of Hitler’s death and work camps. The European theater has always been of much more interest to me, largely because my grandfather spent his wartime there.
I’ve never wanted to spend much time on the Pacific. D-Day makes me sad. Yes, I get the sads when I think about the Pacific. I am trying to expand my knowledge, though, and this seemed a decent starting place. I guess Tom Hanks thinks so, too, since he’s producing another HBO war project based on the book. Let’s hope I don’t start dreaming that I am arguing with Nakagawa over the way he treated his soldiers.
* I know I am supposed to underline these, but I can’t figure out how! Sheesh.
My husband and I were watching a re-run of How I Met Your Mother the other night. It was the episode where Marshall discovers that in every relationship, there is a Reacher (the part of the couple who went outside his/her league for a mate) and a Settler (the part of the couple who married down.) As we watched, my husband patted my leg and said, “I reached.”
=)
I have two types of work nightmare, and one always ends up involving a toilet.
The first comes from the time I spent working for a major, international religious organization. When I left there the first time (after my ex-fiancee and his wife came to work there), I was told that I was in sin, that I was running out of God’s will for my life, and I was running straight into certain destruction. After the ex was fired for sexual harassment, I returned to the organization. When I left the last time it was because I had seen corruption, abuse, and some of the most unchristian behavior I had ever witnessed. They were not as sorry to see me go that time.
I have nightmares that I am forced to go back to work there, and those usually entail me having to stand before the congregation, denouncing myself and prostrating myself to beg forgiveness. In the dreams, I know that I am not sincere, but it is the only way to make money to feed The Boy, so I am doing it.
Truthfully, I think I’d hook it before I went back there. At least then I would feel like I was doing honest work. I say who, I say when, I say how much.
The other nightmares come from having worked for the BiPolar Express, a manager whose moods swung so far from left to right, it was unreal. If you’ve seen The Devil Wears Prada, you’ve seen the caricature of that boss. My lungs constricted with panic the first time I sat watching that film. It was bad enough looking up that haughty nose, into those laconically lidded eyes and raised brows in person. Seeing it larger than life?
I was laid off from that job, and I slunk away as though I had been fired.
I have frequent nightmares reliving that. Or reliving the fear I used to feel every morning. But in these nightmares, I always have to use the restroom and when I go, realize that there are no walls and I am out in the open doing my business while people watch.
I’m sure it means something.
I am four days into my No-Buy zone and am already feeling it. Of course I would be confronted with catalog after catalog full of glorious dresses for Spring. Of course my coworker would come in wearing the most incredible saffron colored bolero jacket, modeled after 80s favorite Members Only, and then tell me it was on sale. Of course I would start seeing shoes that need to come home with me.
I’ve been good, though. I have been working through my wardrobe and prepping it for another paring down. The only thing I might do is replace the silk blouse my son ruined with the contents of his upset stomach. It is a work blouse, very unusual, and goes with four different suits, so I feel like that is a decent purchase to make.
I feel like I am finally hitting my stride as a human being. I’ve finally got this life thing under enough control, that I can navigate the bicycle of it out of the neighborhood and into the park to explore. The training wheels have been off for a while, but I’ve still been learning the balance and how to managed the differences in the sidewalk. I’m not careening blithely, and I am wearing a safety helmet, no matter how dorky I look. Just finally, really and truly enjoying things.
I was 17 years old when Heathers hit theaters. Because my parents were sticklers for ratings, I was not allowed to see it. It would be two more years before I could put the cinematic thrust behind my asking, “What’s your damage?” and my crush on Christian Slater had already started percolating with Name of the Rose (you can see his butt! Christian Slater’s was the first adult male butt I ever saw) .
My recollection is of watching this with a friend and of being first horrified, and then laughing because I was so horrified, then measuring my reactions against my friend’s and thinking I needed to suck it up and get with the program, and then running out to buy a red scrunchie. By the third viewing, I was snarking along with Heather Chandler, and working to hone my sensibilities into something less whitebread and more apple-with-hidden-razor sharpness.
Truth is, I was never entirely comfortable with the movie, but I could enjoy it, laugh at it, and quote it without compunction. I was a Veronica, haplessly following the crowd of Heathers lovers into the attempted murders of my conscience, linguistic creativity, and fashion. Not that I needed much coaxing, as I had a mean streak a mile wide, just waiting for proper venue. I may not have ever been as popular as a Heather, but I could have eaten all three of them for lunch out of just sheer meanness. (Fortunately, I had the whole religious conversion, and that pretty much made the evil-girl-as-entertainment a thing of the past.)
However many decades later, Mean Girls arrived. This was a post-Columbine Heathers I could get fully behind. All of the ugly nature of high school without the teen angst having a body count. Somewhere between the two, I saw Jawbreaker, a movie that so horrified me I couldn’t even look at Rose McGowan for years. (There was a scene with Rose and her then lover Marilyn Manson that made me want to bleach my brain.)
Last night I watched Jennifer’s Body. As I was watching, my heart sinking lower and lower against my stomach, I realized that somewhere between Heathers, Jawbreaker, and Mean Girls, I had become a parent. I wasn’t watching the film through the eyes of a woman who might have been a Heather, or a Veronica, or a Violet, or a Regina, or a Cady, or a Jennifer, or a Needy. I was watching the film through the eyes of a woman who might have been one of their mothers.
Suddenly, and I mean suddenly, it hit me. “I love my dead, gay son!” Wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny that a parent had lost a child in a senseless act of violence, that was entertainment for the murderer, or that the child had been framed into a position that would have been painful to him and his family, for his family to have to grapple with the untruth that their son had committed suicide because they hadn’t known or accepted their child for what he was in life. Do you have any idea how it would destroy me to think that my son had killed himself because I didn’t accept him? I could not live thinking I had contributed to my child’s death.
It wasn’t funny that Regina George broke hundreds of hearts with one massive photocopy distribution.
Nothing about Jennifer’s Body, but the sometime-zinging dialog, was funny. I didn’t laugh once. Maybe I would have five years ago, but last night, I just sat there with one eye on my son’s bedroom door. The movie wasn’t bad. It was decently acted, and well-written, but…
One scene in particular took away my breath for a moment. As mourners gather for Colin Gray’s funeral, one of Jennifer’s recent victims, a sweet seeming Goth boy, his friends act out dramatically and Colin’s mother reacts.* From the script:
GOTH BOY
Colin wouldn’t have liked this.
MRS. GRAY
(losing it)
Oh, you think so, Powder? Yeah,
you’re right! I’m pretty sure my
son wouldn’t have liked being
eaten by a fucking CANNIBAL and
buried before his eighteenth
birthday! Wow, you must have known
him so well!
MR. GRAY
Jill…
The goth boy looks terrified. But Mrs. Gray’s not done
ranting yet.
MRS. GRAY
By the time they found Colin in
that godforsaken house, he looked
like lasagna with teeth. I’d know–
I had to identify the remains. My
boy’s not in the realm of the
undead. He’s not flying around in
the firmament with magical wings
of flame. He’s in an overpriced
rosewood box that’s headed six
feet downtown.
She kicks the coffin to illustrate.
(CONTINUED)
82.
CONTINUED: (4)
MRS. GRAY (CONT’D)
So you can take your pain and
shove it up your asses, kids.
I got the monopoly on pain!
The kids stare at her in awe. Needy watches as Mrs. Gray
collapses into Mr. Gray’s arms.
Broke. My. Heart.
And when the demon possessing Jennifer’s Body meets its demise, the reaction of her unsuspecting mother, who only sees that she has narrowly missed the window of opportunity to save her daughter’s life, was harrowing to me. She just needed a few seconds of time back!
It was a horror movie in the truest sense of the word. One that dealt (although shortly) with repercussions rather than just the adrenaline rush of the scare and tear.
I give Diablo Cody credit for dealing with the parents’ reactions beyond making their grief comic relief. I do wish we’d seen more of the parents prior to all the destruction. I can’t help but think if Jennifer’s mother had been a little more involved, she never would have ended up in that kidnap van. Or if Needy’s mother were more concerned with her daughter, or if Chip’s mother had refused to let him walk alone at night, after two grisly murders, if those things had happened, there would be less heartache. There would also be less movie.
Thing is, Jennifer’s Body could have been any child’s body. Her victims, any children I know and love. As a mother, a godparent, and ceremonial auntie, I could not enjoy watching. Even imaginary people have imaginary parents, friends, and family, and I can’t stand having that Greek chorus wailing in the back of my mind. Don’t even get me started on slasher films, or torture porn.
It made me thank God for my restrictive parents, who wouldn’t even bend the rules to let me watch R-rated movies. I hope my son is so grateful when I win the fight with his father over whether or not he has a curfew on prom night.
* I have to admit to a monstrous thing I did as a teen. When we were Seniors, a boy I knew peripherally was killed in a very bad car accident. It was the sixth peer death I had experienced in my four years of high school. This boy was very popular, and his funeral drew a massive crowd. I did not know him well, did not particularly care for what I did know, and had turned him down for a date, so he wasn’t exactly fond of me. But it was a half day out of clases, and knowing the girls he had been close to, I figured it might be a good show. I went to the funeral out of morbid curiousity.
It was at this funeral, I should not even have attended, that I learned I had inappropriate laughter issues–it is a real thing, people. (Whenever I am really afraid, nervous, or angry, I laugh. Can’t help it.) I did manage to keep my volume down, but as the teenaged girls in the front of the church began to sob, scream, and wail as dramatically as only teenaged girls or hired keeners can do, I started to laugh.
I had the good sense to be ashamed of myself and to get out of there, and I did send the family a card afterward, sincerely expressing concern and apologizing, but I haven’t ever quite gotten over how incredibly rude and cruel that was. It still makes me sick.
Yesterday, as I was doing laundry, I became disgusted with myself over the sheer excess of my wardrobe. While I am a frugal shopper (I rarely pay over $20 for anything) I am a frequent shopper. I like to shop, and I like to spend, and I am realizing that where I have just considered it a part of my girly charm, I am a grown woman now, and it’s about time I started acting like it.
Shopping is almost a dysfunction for me. I say almost, because I can spend hours in a store without buying anything, but I do feel a near compulsive need to buy. Some people eat. I buy.
When I was growing up and my parents were having trouble, my mother would take me to the mall to avoid the house. And because I was the delight of her eyes, she loved dressing me up and accessorizing me, making sure I was fashionable looking (if on a dime, and with no labels.) Shopping was how we dealt with nerves, and how we dealt with depression, and how we dealt with being told not to spend more money. Shopping was a salve, and though I can’t speak for her, I certainly felt like I was entitled to spend as a means of balancing what I wasn’t getting emotionally. New shoes certainly got my father’s attention when nothing else would–got his attention so much, that he cancelled all the credit cards without telling my mother once. That got her attention. Then we went shopping with cash. It was a vicious cycle, that one. I still have the jewelry.
It’s a learned behavior. I learned that shopping feels good.
Somewhere along the line, my consumption became conspicuous. Who really needs five of the exact same tshirt? (You have no idea how panicked I feel asking that question. Because I do! I need those!) And somewhere along the line, my wardrobe started taking over the house.
I cannot even guess how much I have given away in the last two years. I would estimate that I have given away somewhere around four-hundred pounds of clothing. I would estimate that this was around 20% of my wardrobe. And doing laundry yesterday, I was disgusted.
I’m a cold turkey girl. When I think I have a problem, I take action. If I think I need to start a diet, I start it right then. Why wait? If I think I am drinking too much coffee, I quit. I wait until I feel good about it again, then resume. Headaches and all.
So yesterday, I quit shopping. I had one more purchase to make, for a home improvement project aimed at helping me contain my messes, but that was it. I am not shopping for anything new for 6 months.
No new clothes or shoes for me. No new accessories. No new home decor goodies. I will buy necessities, functional items that benefit the whole family, and hosiery, but otherwise? Man, I have enough to keep me looking fetch for two years.
I’m going to have to find a new hobby. Maybe I will take up counting the money I am saving, and swimming through it like Scrooge McDuck.
I spent four hours in my car today, driving to and then from a training seminar. I am nursing a broken tailbone, so the drive plus the eight hours in an anti-ergonomic chair was misery. My trainer was not aware of my busted backside, and I think was not impressed with the way I kept squirming. (Nor was she impressed when I got myself locked in the hallway during class, but I think I had already dug my grave.)
The Lobster and I were in a training class together once, based on the Who Moved My Cheese novels. Yes, I realize they aren’t novels. As part of our class, we were asked to select the character with which we identified. I hadn’t exactly read the book. I had skimmed the book. I had read a synopsis of the book. I was not familiar enough with the book to name, much less identify the characters, so I did what all goofballs do, and I just made something up when it got to me.
I said, “I identify with the cheese.” It was the only character I knew, right? “I am what everyone wants, and where everyone wants to be.” And I said something else about how if someone moves what I want, or puts it out of my reach, I just adapt and change what I want. That last bit was true.
To my credit, I said it with a straight face and great conviction.
Sadly, my comment derailed the training session. Apparently it is very difficult to convince people that you can teach them to get what they want once you introduce the idea that they might already have it. That trainer? Not impressed. I should have done my homework and read the book, but that still wouldn’t have kept me from getting in trouble for turning my sun visor project into a tiara project.
Eh, who am I kidding. I’d still have said I was the cheese.
Tonight I am exhausted. I dislike being forced to sit while people read to me. It makes me antsy, and antsy means cranky, and cranky means aggravating. I was fighting that all day, working hard to make a good impression for my office. You know, when I wasn’t rolling my chair over the belt of my raincoat and falling half out of it, or accidentally making my printer go off with nervous mouse clicking, or getting locked out of the classroom.
Hopefully tomorrow will be better. I’ll drink less caffeine.
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