A few of his favorite things

Remember when there was no such thing as a VCR or DVD player and you had to wait all year for movies to be shown on T.V.?

As a kid, if I’d been asked to make a calendar, the holidays on it would have been my birthday, Christmas, the last day of school, and the air-dates of  The Sound of Music, The Wizard of Oz, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, It’s Christmas Charlie Brown, and The Ten Commandments. (Perhaps some of my choices seem odd for a kid, but when spend your formative years with not one but two very religious grandmothers, Moses is the shit.)

Kevin’s personal favorite as a youth was The Sound of Music.

Anyone who has ever been in the same room with Kevin and a musical knows that I am being highly facetious. Let’s just say that if he’d ever been a POW in any of the wars of which he is a veteran, all the enemy would have had to do is give him a bunch of No Doze, tie him to a chair, and make him watch virtually anything with singing in it.¹ Waterboarding? Child’s play.

I’ve never seen anyone more uncomfortable than Kevin when someone sings. Like that time on Pushing Daisies when Olive Snook suddenly bursts into a heartfelt rendition of “Hopelessly Devoted To You.” Kevin closes his eyes and sighs, shakes his head, lets out an indignant “Awwww!”  As the song continues, he shifts in his seat, contorting with increasing intensity until he is nearly writhing. Finally when he can’t take it anymore (about fifteen seconds), he bursts into tears, jumps up and flees the room.

Actually it is obscenities rather than tears, but it is no less moving.

I blame his father for this particular pathology, who apparently inflicted Julie Andrews upon his two sons every year no matter how much they cried. Which is really weird because this is a man who is so bored by movies that he usually falls asleep during them, including for instance such art films as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Shaun of the Dead.

1. OK, except a Grateful Dead show marathon. Then he would probably defect. [↩]

Break

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m taking one. These days to be a proper internet goddess, I need to get a job that doesn’t require being on it all day.

Subtle

I like my job, except for all those other people and stuff.

How Twilight Ruined My Life

All right, that’s a bit of overstatement. I don’t actually have anything against Twilight, per se, though I have heard that it’s not the most feminist story in the world. But I’ve never read the books or seen the movies so I can’t pass judgment on that, and I have nothing against the paranormal or romance. Then why is it the bain of my existence?

Vampires. Everywhere. All bloodsuckers, all the time.

You might remember from previous Rib posts that I am writing a vampire story. I started it prior to the current mania that has everyone panting like Renfield.  All of a sudden there are vampire books, movies, t.v. shows out the ying yang, none of which I read or watch and yet cannot escape thanks to modern advertising. Consequently, I am getting a little tired of vampires.

Yes, Rib readers, I AM GETTING SICK OF MY OWN STORY. This is a crime against nature. It is not supposed to happen until one’s editor demands the 37th rewrite.

It doesn’t help that now when people find out what I’m writing, they immediately think Eddie-Bella-Sookie-Buffy-Anita-Lestat Rip Off. You get the knowing little smile, or the carefully blank expression, or even the eye roll. Those are the polite ones. The more forthright just say it: “Reading Twilight, are you?”

Derivative is a fightin’ word and makes my muse wanna get all up in their face. “Hey, I was writing my story before Edward was a sparkle in Stephanie Meyers’ eye! And my vampire isn’t an emo refugee from Teen Beat!”

But you know, what are you gonna do? Whatever’s going on out there, you have to “fill your paper with the breathings of your heart,” as Wordsworth said.  So I’ll write my story, and eventually when editors send rejection letters that say “Oh, honey, vampires are so 2010,” I will just wait another ten years to resubmit it. And maybe then I’ll get to ruin some other writer’s life.

Time

So the other day I was having coffee with my friend Mo and we got to talking about how you never seem to notice how those friends that you see all the time are aging. It’s only when you see pictures of them from back in the day that you go “Wow. You look a lot…more mature now.”

And then I started yammering about how the same goes for one’s self… except in my case I really don’t think I’ve changed all that much in the last oh, twenty years or so. Really, I haven’t changed hardly at all. Have I.

My friend Mo just sort of looked at me over the top of her coffee cup.

Fast forward to a few weeks later, as I am standing in the bathroom getting ready for work.

And I notice the grey hairs at the crown of my head, and the lines at the corners of my eyes, and the cheekbones jutting as the collagen drains away, and the skin beneath my eyes that is less elastic, and the tiny broken capillaries on my nose. And I remember how my knees and back and neck hurt more often, and how I have to work out a lot more and drink a lot less. And how I have to wear a hearing aid when I watch T.V..

In retrospect, I think giving me the “Poor girl, I don’t want to be there when the high wears off” look was probably the kindest thing my friend could have done.

New Year Cheer

Writer Kat Richardson has a “posted while drunk” category on her blog, an idea I have occasionally been inspired to steal… While I am not exactly drunk this morning, some sort of line has been crossed, I suppose.  I have insisted to Kevin that a tablespoon of orange juice in my champagne does make it count as a mimosa. But ANYWAY… Happy First Day of a New Decade to all. May it be better for you than 2009.

How did you spend your New Year’s Eve?  I went to a traditional American, Chinese, Mormon, Buddhist wedding. It was so eventful, I spent most of the time taking mental notes for a blog post which I should probably not attempt to write until I am sobered up. Stay tuned!

And the winner is….

Not me! [bows]

Ah, the joys of working in online retail during the holiday season. We are down two managers this year, so guess who’s doing double-duty? And when work makes me sit at a computer for 12 hours a day, at home I just can’t sit no more.

I gave up on this year’s NaNo when the 20th rolled around and I realized I would have to do 4000 words a day to make 50K and oh hahahaha, that was never going to happen. My thumbs and forefingers are already going numb from carpal tunnel and there are days when my ass actually hurts from sitting on it.

It was hard to give up at first, but then I figured hey, I have a pretty good reason this year.  Unlike the last two NaNos when I wanted to give up just because writing is haaaaarrrd - yes I’ll take cheese with my whine, thank you - but Kevin convinced me to nut up and finish, quality be damned.

There’s always next year. And by then the 2 new managers we hired yesterday won’t be making more work than they are doing (ideally) and I might have a life during the holidays.

But this December, ye old Rib might be a little quieter than usual, though I do love Christmas and may need a place to come and sing its praises since everybody else is sick of it already.  Just sayin’ if you don’t see a plethora of posts for a while, it’s because I am literally trying to save my ass.

Monday

I like my job, but I like my weekends more. Especially this last one - the weather was fabulous, and on Sunday, I was drunk by noon. ¹

1. Mimosas with breakfast, mmmmm. [↩]

oh hai, im ur hed, sry i esploded

I may have complained mentioned before that I’ve recently been diagnosed with otosclerosis, a disease in which the gradual overgrowth of bone in one’s middle ear results in loss of hearing. It is often accompanied by tinnitus as well as a speaking disorder called What?Huh?Eh?, both of which I also have.

It really sucked at first, mostly because of the tinnitus.  But it’s been several months and things are better.  I got through the initial Freaking the Fuck Out period with only one instance of pacing the street in my pajamas in the middle of the night, and managed to avoid getting addicted to Ambien. I’m getting acclimated to the decreased sounds in my environment and the increased racket in my head, whilst Kevin is getting acclimated to repeating everything he says at least twice.

Given how well things have been going, you can imagine my delight when a new syndrome reared its exploding head.  Yes, we lucky tinnitus sufferers are more likely than others to experience the joy of being startled out of the twilight stage of sleep by what looks and sounds like a bomb going off in our brains.  I would stop, drop and roll if I weren’t already horizontal.

To add insult to injury, apparently I am young to be experiencing this phenomenon. The average age at onset is 58.

So I have hearing loss, exploding head and gray hair.  Everything above the neck appears to be aging faster than the rest of me. It’s only a matter of time before I am sporting dentures and whimsical hats.  I am an old lady trapped in a (relatively) young woman’s (fabulous) body.

That’s not so bad, actually.

Art by Finnish painter Inge Löök via the marvelous Missive Maven.

Technorati Tags: tinnitus, exploding head syndrome, otosclerosis

Just so me today

all hail the chickens