As If We Never Said Goodbye

Forgive me, Internet people, for I have sinned. It has been 420 days since my last confession.

There is literally no reason for this picture to be here ... and yet, here we are.

(No, wait: that’s not true. It’s been 17 days since my last confession -- yes, really! -- but it’s been 420 days since my last blog post, which is what I really mean. Or, at least, that’s all you care about, anyway. Which is fine, because nobody cares how often I go to confession. Except maybe that poor priest who had to hear my first actual confession in 15 years. But he’s not allowed to rat me out, so you’ll just have to sit there and stew in your own juices and wonder what I had to confess after all that time.)

[Okay, fine. Can’t have you all worrying about me since it’s been so darned long. I’ll give you the short version, which is basically what I gave that priest, anyway: you know those Commandment thingies? I broke just about all of them except the ones about murder and adultery. I’m also pretty sure that I committed all of the Cardinal Sins, too, especially gluttony. I mean, Meghan Trainor might be all about that bass, but my “good-butt” jeans are most decidedly not.]

{Oops, there I go busting out the Pride already. But trust me: I still fit into these pants right now, and I intend to keep it that way, and if that’s sinful pride (prideful sin?), so be it.}

Gaaah, that’s a lot of parenthetical-type markings at the beginning of a blog post. ANYWAY. The point of all of this is to say that one of my resolutions for 2015 is to post more often. You know: like, more than once every 1⅙ years.

INCIDENTALLY, if you happened to find yourself wondering what I did during my mostly unintentional (yes, really!) hiatus, allow me to direct you to my Instagram and Twitter feeds. If you don’t know what those are (hi, Mom!), then let’s just say I spent a lot of time having something vaguely resembling a “normal” life, reading everything I could get my hands on, and trying to figure out (1) what in the Dickens my kid means when the words come out of her mouth and (2) where in the Dickens she picks these things up, anyway.

Oh, and I stopped being a grad student and became an actual, real-life, certified teacher of 7th-12th grade English Language Arts in the state of Pennsylvania. I have all kinds of paperwork to prove it and everything (including the student loan bills). They’re somewhere in this house, anyway. I can tell you where my diploma is, at least. Which, if you know anything about my life, is definitely progress. Victory in our time!

Anyway, I fully intend to get back to business now, beginning with my New Year’s resolutions. Except: I don’t really “do” resolutions, really. I mean, I make them, just like everyone else, but I also break them pretty easily (see: my attempts to learn to make a flaming dessert, which have been ongoing for approximately eleventeen years at this point).

But now that I’m mumble-something years old, I’ve finally gotten around to realizing that broken resolutions aren’t really fractured promises so much as they are detours -- or maybe I mean “scenic routes.” Sometimes you have to break a resolution in order to find out if it was one worth making in the first place. So I guess what I am saying is that I plan to make these resolutions more like guidelines (not unlike recipes and speed limit signs).

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Blog more often. (See paragraph 5, above … the one after the {squiggle brackets}.) This one is self-explanatory and doesn’t require any clarification; yet here I am, writing at least one whole additional compound-complex sentence about it, including a properly-placed but entirely gratuitous semicolon.
2. Treat myself better. Not necessarily in a “splurge” sort of sense (although I do intend to at least try to get massages and pedicures more often), but more in the “give myself at least a small break once in a while” kind of way. Stop beating myself up for small mistakes and lapses in judgement. Wear my “good-butt” jeans just because. Have an extra pudding cup because I want to.
3. Take better care of myself. Again, not the usual “stop eating food that tastes good and work out 4 hours a day.” I’m 40 years old -- it’s okay, I’m fine with it, really -- and I’ve been on a diet for, like, 39½ of those years. That isn’t what I mean. (Although I do need to lose weight and exercise more.) Of course I’ll refocus my efforts on eating healthy food and not having Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs for dinner four nights a week. But I should also get a mammogram and a Pap smear and maybe some baseline blood work to make sure that my blood isn’t made up of 75% bacon grease. And I should definitely check in with a therapist for a tune-up.
4. Keep learning. One of the things that I learned (or that was reinforced) while I was in grad school was how much I love to learn new things. I completely changed careers and lines of intellectual inquiry, which was so revitalizing for me. I know I was annoying, and I appreciate everyone who tolerated (and continues to tolerate!) my insufferable excitement. But I know I’m not done learning, and I want to keep learning something new every day.
5. Try new things. This is, of course, related to “Keep learning” -- but the differences between those two resolutions are vast. It’s one thing to know who The Doctor is, but something altogether different to experience Doctor Who. I like to know what my students are reading, but it’s important to also read those things as well. Knowing and understanding are not the same, and unless I try to apply the things I have learned, my “personal education” will always be incomplete. (This might mean that I make more Pinterest recipes or try again to tackle Don Quixote; hard to say how this one will pan out. Hopefully this will give me plenty of things to blog about this year.)

So. I guess I’m back. And already it’s as if we never said goodbye. (Probably because we didn’t, but still.)

Wack-a-doodle-doo

So, I've hit the wall, and I might have mentioned that already, but we leave in a week -- less than a week, actually, if you want to get all technical about it, six days and fifteen hours almost to the minute -- and I have officially started with this thing that my brain does before I go on vacation, where it can't stop itself from running around in circles at twice the speed of light and it won't shut off or slow down and then my eye starts twitching and everything becomes one giant run-on sentence and stream of consciousness nightmare like a Kafka novel or something and every waking thought I have is taken up by excited utterances that don't make any damn sense like "Razors and granola bars!" and "Pretzels and mascara!" and "Benadryl and camera charger!" and subconsciously I can even see the exclamation points and if any English teachers are reading this they probably had a stroke a little ways back there and the sad part is that I KNOW WHAT ALL THESE THINGS MEAN and the REALLY sad part is that I don't think I'm ever going to get to the part where my brain yells "Cigarettes and alcohol!" and my mouth which has been waiting all this time for just the right moment to do something useful can finally say "HELL YES!" in agreement and I can finally get to the period at the end of this sentence because DAMN.

Cigarettes and alcohol! HELL YES! Period!

And would you believe me if I told you that I actually enjoy traveling? It's true, not that you'd be able to tell from the nervous breakdowns that I have around about this point before every single trip I've ever taken that I can remember. Even when we went to the shore last year, which is maybe the most ridiculous thing ever. I mean honestly, who freaks out about going to New Jersey?

We really don't have all that much to do still. I already have one bag packed with the bulk of Shae's clothes, and mine too. I'm pretty sure that my husband at least has a plan for what he needs to pack, even if he doesn't actually have anything actually in a suitcase yet. We basically just need to get our dress clothes for the wedding together, and our shoes, and we need to get our toiletries in a bag. So I really don't know what I am panicking about, but I always do this. Always. It's practically part of the vacation planning checklist: (1) Airline reservations (2) Hotel reservations (3) Rental car reservations (4) Miscellaneous (5) Profit (6) Panic attack.

(I think maybe I am starting to get a sense of why my husband claims to hate vacations.)

Another thing I always do is unpack and re-pack the already packed stuff at least once, to double check. Did I remember socks? Pajamas? Of course I did, and even if I didn't, it's not like we're going to the Third World or the South Pole or somewhere where there are no Targets or Wal-Marts. Anything we forget, we can always find somewhere. But I don't want to have to do that, especially this time, because if we're going to get lost trying to navigate the California freeway system, I want to it be because we are looking for something desperately urgent like an In-N-Out Burger, not something frivolous and unnecessary like underpants.

So, in short: I am the reason why every American should be allowed to buy Ativan in airports and interstate rest stops. The end.

Trashing the Place

Before we ended up with what eventually turned out to be the official Christmas card picture, I had to take some test shots. I really liked how last year's picture turned out, but I wanted to make it look like I learned something about how to work the damned camera in the last year. (SPOILER ALERT: I kind of didn't.)

In retrospect, these pictures might actually be better than the official one, somehow. Certainly they capture the essence of Christmas: the chaos, the noise, the color and light. Also, the kid-in-their-pajamas-first-thing-in-the-morning aspect. But when I look at these pictures, I also see something that made them not quite suitable for holiday cards.

Do you see it too?

The uncombed hair, the bags under her eyes, the fuzzy scarf that looks like it was made out of a skinned Muppet? The twinkle in her eye, the smirk, the sort of far-off-into-the-distance look on her face that suggests that maybe she was up to several kinds of no good the night before?

I couldn't use these pictures because -- well, look at them. She looks like the love child of Janis Joplin, Slash, and Mick Jagger, and she looks like she just came off a bender. That is not the sort of image I want to send out to my friends and family at Christmastime.

Even if that is kind of what our life looks like, these days.

Creature of the Night

Bless me, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, for I have not sinned: it has been 15 years since my last audience-participation screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I used to be huge into RHPS -- way back in the uncharted backwaters of time, when I was in college, I was part of an unofficial players' group in my dorm. My R.A. was, too, and some assorted people who lived in Brewster-Boland Hall, plus (of course) a couple of drama and film majors. Almost every Friday night, we would gather in someone's room, get some pizza and sodas and sometimes beer, cook up some toast and popcorn, and watch our favorite movie. Sometimes we would spend all night watching it over and over again, doing the Time Warp until 6:00 in the morning.

And it goes without saying that it was awesome.

I was a Rocky Virgin until my senior year in high school. I'd heard of it, and I had friends that were part of the cult that made the film a classic, but for whatever reason I never actually saw it in a theater until sometime during my senior year. Even to this day, I can't explain what took me so long to get hip to what the really cool kids were doing. Fear no doubt played a big part. I'd heard stories (we've all heard stories) about what happened at the Movies at Midnight, about the hazing rituals for first-timers, about the weirdness and chaos and awesome insanity that happens once the theater doors shut and the room goes dark and those lips appear on-screen.

It didn't help that there was always, for me, an unfortunate connection between Rocky and some degree of lameness; RHPS was advertised back then on the dork-ass "classic rock" station alongside one of the other fixtures of the Movies at Midnight, The Wall, a movie that I have not seen, never want to see, and that I will always and forever associate with potheads, dropouts, outcasts suffering a self-imposed exile from the "now."

(Blah blah blah some of my best friends yadda yadda gabba gabba hey. And it probably goes without saying that I have long since reconsidered my position on many of the other bands that they still play on that station, but you'll never get me to change my mind about Rush, no way, no how.)

(Of course, now Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Nirvana and The Pixies are considered "classic rock" by people who are literally decades younger than I am. Circle of life and all that.)

Anyway ... I can't remember who I was with the first time I saw Rocky, but I'm pretty sure I went with friends who were in the band, and who had already been seeing the show live for years. I do know that, not knowing what to expect, I dressed as "normally" as I could muster at the time. Ah, the era of grunge and teenage rebellion. They warned me, but I didn't listen. I stood out like a sore thumb, obviously, in my tattered jeans and flannel, while everyone else was in their lingerie, giant wigs, stilettos, 8-inch high patent leather platform go-go boots, glitter, sequins.

I never felt like more of a nerd in my entire life. And if I remember correctly, my rite of passage as a Virgin was to eat a piece of candy out of someone's crotch. (Don't worry, Mom, they were clothed.)

Me, in the "clean" version
of my Magenta costume -
Halloween 1993

After that, though ... hoo-boy. It's weird to say that learning how to do the Time Warp was a seminal moment in my character development, but it was. It really was. I never really looked at the world the same way again. And I mean that in the absolute best possible way.

Imagine being me in the twelfth grade: a giant brain trapped in the body of Tinkerbell, with no boyfriends but plenty of interest, not really fitting in anywhere socially, a budding writer with very little angst, friendly but not exactly popular, sarcastic and cranky, wanting to rebel but not really knowing why, all of this a defense against the world, because no matter what I did, I couldn't quite figure out my place in it.

And then I went to the movies one Friday at midnight, and there was all this stuff happening. People were yelling at the screen and throwing toast and dancing in the aisles and they were all dressed like freaks and lunatics and it was amazing because everybody was having, like, the best time ever. It was Halloween and a play and performance art and rock music and a drag show and a summer camp sing-along and all of the best stuff about being proto-emo and melodramatic and a little bit unhinged, all at the same time.

It was basically nirvana, for me. Almost a drug. I couldn't get enough. Every time I came home from college for the weekend, I would call my friends and tell them: "Rocky. Saturday. Be there." And by and large, they would.

In 1994 I started dating my husband and stopped going to see RHPS regularly, because he wasn't as into it as I was, and eventually I got too busy at college to keep my standing Friday appointment, until gradually it turned into 1995 and my audience-participation days ended. Sometimes I really miss them -- I still have occasional moments when nothing but doing the Time Warp in my cubicle can get me through the rest of the day -- so I am super-stoked about the upcoming Rocky Horror-themed episode of Glee (airing 10/26). I've been teaching Shae how to do the Time Warp, because there is no time like the present, right?

When I watch that episode, I know I'm going to have a moment or twelve where I am crying from laughter and also from the floods of memories I fully expect, from the time when I was a "Creature of the Night" myself. But I know I'll be doing the Time Warp until Christmas, and you better believe that if I see those lips on my television screen at any time from now until the day I die, I will stand up and scream, "SING IT, BITCH!"

Skinny Jeans

When I run the world, there are going to be rules, dammit: Hipsters will be sent to re-education camps until they learn the difference between sarcasm, irony, and general jerkishness. Phil Keoghan from "The Amazing Race" will be named Executive Emperor of Eyebrow Expressionism. And for the love of all that is good and holy, there will be stores that sell clothes in women's sizes 14-24 that (a) fit properly, (2) are made well, out of actual identifiable fabrics, and (iii) match each other.

You see, I had to go shopping this weekend, and I had a horrible terrible no-good very bad time, because NOTHING MATCHES, NOTHING FITS, and everything appears to be disposable.

I mean, look, I have a tragic case of unfashionability. I admit this. Most of my clothes are simple and basic and at least five years old, because while I love "Project Runway," I hate fashion. I hate shopping. I hate clothes. I need to wear them, of course, but if I had my druthers, I'd spend all my waking hours in plain turtlenecks, flannel lounge pants, and Christmas socks. You know, the kind with the cats and the glittery thread? You can hide all manner of figure flaws in granny jammies.

It doesn't help that I can't really put an outfit together. Honestly, I need Garanimals or something. My work clothes are more of a uniform -- black or tan pants, a couple of skirts if I am feeling inspired, turtlenecks in solid colors. If I wanted to do something kicky with my outfit, I would wear an interesting pair of socks or my saddle shoes. No ruffles, nothing too low-cut or clingy, straight legs, flats. I am boring. But because I've lost all this weight, none of my current supply of turtlenecks and pajama bottoms really fits any more, and neither do any of my "work pants," so I really needed to go shopping this weekend. And it was almost an absolute, unmitigated disaster.

True story: I spent more than an hour in a Lane Bryant Outlet this weekend, trying things on. I must have put on 25 pairs of pants and at least that many different tops. I pored through clearance racks, sale racks, and even (escandalo!) full-price racks looking for something, anything, to buy. I didn't want to buy much, just a few nice pieces that I would be able to work into what I already have that still fits, but I was willing to part with some hard-earned cash in exchange for some trousers that did not fall down as soon as I stood up and some blouses that did not make me look pregnant.

It did not end entirely well. I got two sweaters that are actually probably a little too big, but they are cute-ish and lightweight and I will be able to layer them with stuff I already have so at least I can make it to Christmas. I will keep looking for some more similar tops in different colors, because in my opinion the only thing better than a decent enough sweater is a decent enough sweater in five colors.

But I also got two pairs of "skinny jeans."

Now don't get me wrong -- these are not hipster-style skinny jeans, the ones that all the irony-impaired 20-somethings are wearing with their used bowling shoes and their $400 cashmere scarves and their trucker caps. But the jeans are skinny for me, tapered legs instead of being boot-cut clown pants, a full size smaller than I expected to need and three sizes smaller than the jeans I started with, and THEY MAKE MY LEGS LOOK FANTASTIC.

Yeah, I said it: I look FANTASTIC in my new jeans.

That's a big step for me, being able to say that I look fantastic in any way in anything. I definitely not Miss Mary Fashion Plate, and most of the time I am satisfied with not being a crumpled-up mess when I leave the house for work. Sometimes I will even settle for being a crumpled-up mess if I at least am not emitting visible smell rays.

But ... my God. I almost keeled over dead when I put those pants on, and I saw how good they looked. And I thought I was looking pretty good in the jeans I walked into the store with. It was my husband's idea to try on pants that were smaller than I thought I needed. To actually fit, really fit, into jeans that were a whole size smaller than I expected? That was an absolute revelation.

I still have a long way to go before I reach my goal weight, and I have a metric assload of self-esteem and self-image issues that I am going to need to work on along the way, but I am going to take this small victory. I finally feel like I am making noticeable progress, which is hard to see when you're losing two pound at a time. These are most definitely not "fat pants," or even really "transitional-sized." I bought a pair of jeans in a size that starts with "1" for the first time in at least 10 years. I'm not 100% sure, but I think weigh less now than I did when I got married -- and if I don't, I am pretty damned close. And I feel so, so good about it.

Never underestimate the power of a great pair of "skinny jeans."

I Swear To God, I Used To Have A Life

It's getting to be that time again where I show you my fall TV schedule and My Anonymous Mother looks at it and basically goes, "Ugh, for this I paid all that money for college?" because apparently in my head M.A.M. is Yiddish. Would you like to see this year's pretty little chart? (If not, too bad, because here it comes anyway.)

(Incidentally, guess who just got a new color computer at work? THIS GAL, that's who.) (Well, it's the department's color printer, but STILL.)

The changes in shows and/or timeslots are highlighted. It looks kind of similar to last year's version, doesn't it? That's because THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN, people. I am basically watching the same shows as last year. There are only a couple of differences which I will discuss below:

• You will notice a marked lack of purple on this bad boy; that is because I never know when Top Chef, Project Runway, Burn Notice, White Collar, Psych, In Plain Sight -- basically, all my shows on cable -- actually stop and start. I will keep watching them as long as they are on (especially Burn Notice and White Collar because Jeffrey Donovan, Bruce Campbell, and Matthew Bomer are yummy) but I have no idea what time any of these shows actually air because I have a TiVo.
• Yes, I just said the Bruce Campbell is "yummy." I can't help myself. He is funny and charming and devilish and I have absolutely no defense against that demographic. I don't care if he is old enough to be my (sugar) daddy. Don't you judge me.
• Outside the cable shows, which were intentionally omitted, four shows are completely gone from the list -- Ugly Betty (finished), FlashForward (cancelled), NUMB3RS (finished), and Gossip Girl (too stupid to keep watching). Lost never appeared last year because it didn't have its season premiere until February, and it is the only show that I will actively miss. Thank God for the complete series on Blu-Ray, which of course we will be getting.
• Every year I say I am "done" with Survivor, and every time a new season starts I still get sucked back in. This time I am watching for two reasons: one, to see how long before Jimmy Johnson (yes, THAT Jimmy Johnson) sticks around -- hopefully not very -- and two, to see how badly the changes they keep making are wrecking my show.
• For the record, not that you asked, but I still stand by my assertion that Ethan Zohn is the best Survivor winner in history. He has a foundation. Go check it out. This is a public service announcement. Also, he is very, very funny and charming and have I mentioned that I have no defense against that demographic?
• Yes, I'm going to at least check out the "reboot" of Hawaii Five-O, because I am an asshole, and also because Daniel Dae Kim is lovely and charming and I am glad he has work so soon after Lost. Not entirely sure how I feel about Scott Caan, and I don't understand why CBS is so completely in love with Alex O'Laughlin, but come on -- Hawaii! Cops! "Book 'im, Danno!" You know you're going to watch, too, at least once.
• I would personally like to thank the television executives who made the decisions to move Survivor to Wednesdays and move Glee to Survivor's old timeslot on Thursdays Tuesdays (Ed.: fixed), because that resolved one of my most major scheduling conflicts. Now I only have one left, on Mondays at 8:00, and I am going to have a hard time deciding whether House or How I Met Your Mother gets bumped to repeats. Chuck stays put, always and forever, amen (because of the cute and charming and no defense and hello have you even been listening?).
• No, I don't know why The Defenders looks interesting, but it does.
• Big jeers to both ABC and NBC, who only have two shows each on this chart. Why can't you guys make good television, ABC and NBC? Modern Family and Community are fantastic. Chuck and Castle are great. MOAR PLZ.
• Dear CBS: When can I expect the next mortgage payment on my soul? Get that check in the mail STAT or I will stop watching CSI: NY, which kind of sucks any more anyway.
• I'm giving The Big Bang Theory another chance, even though I kind of didn't like it early in the show's run. If you must blame someone, blame Linda Holmes at NPR's Monkey See blog, who has been making quite a case for it. You can also give an assist to Wil Wheaton, who also loves the show and has been a guest more than once. I trust that Ensign Wesley Crusher will not steer me wrong.
• Gaaah, I still can't believe that I am going to voluntarily watch Jimmy Johnson on television. WTF is WRONG with me? Damn you, Mark Burnett! Damn you straight to hell!
• Oh hell yes I'll be watching Conan's new show when it airs. I will NOT be making that mistake again. Team Coco Forever!

Any other recommendations? Last year someone (my sister?) said something about Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice, but I can't get into them -- not a big soap fan, really (which is a large part of why I gave up on Gossip Girl -- that, and the unrelenting stupidity). I find Mad Men to be intolerably slow, and the entire concept of Breaking Bad scares me, but I am giving Rubicon (also on AMC) a shot. I missed out on BSG and I think I am a little late to the party for Eureka but if someone thinks they're worth trying to find on-demand I will see what I can do.

And for the love of all that is Good and Holy, let's hope that Jimmy Johnson does not win Survivor or my head will explode.

March Madness

I couldn't possibly care less about college basketball, seriously -- I can tell you more about the Syracuse University lacrosse program than its basketball team, and that is truly sad (10 time and reigning champs, woot woot!) -- but yet I still put in my $5 for the pool at work. Because I am a joiner, you know?

And ALREADY my brackets are borked because of the frakkin' Big East. *shakes fist at Georgetown and Marquette and Notre Dame* Damn you! Damn all of you to hell! Although that's what I get for picking Notre Dame, I suppose. We get what we deserve.

(True fact: Every time I typed "Notre Dame" in this post so far, I actually typed "Notre DAMN" and had to go back and fix it. From now on, typo stays.)

ANYWAY.

Here are some pictures from St. Pat's that make me happy and temporarily stop me from thinking about who I need to bribe to change my picks and basically disown most of the Big East. Please to enjoy.

Go 'Cuse! And if not them, then go Pitt and Louisville and West Virginia. And if not them ... well, go everybody except Kansas and Kentucky and Duke, basically. (Sorry if you're a fan, but if you can't have loyalties during March Madness, then when can you have loyalties?)

(And I'm sorry, but to me, a Penn State wife, "Notre Damn" is pretty darned funny. My seat on the bus to Hell is pretty much reserved, no?)