Swing low, sweet chariot

On the plane home from Hawaii, Kevin and I had for a row-mate a hacking, sneezing, writhing mess of a man.

“Don’t worry,” he said to Kevin, just before take off. “I’m not contagious.”

Bull. Shit.

Kevin was sick all last week, and as usually happens, I developed the symptoms a week later. I am now a hacking, sneezing, writhing mess of a woman.

And I can’t stay home from work tomorrow because they are moving me to a new desk on Wednesday and I need to pack.

I think there should be a special section on the plane for sick people and crying babies. Or they should have to pay a fine. Why should those bastards get to torture the innocent with impunity?

Sorry, it’s the cough syrup talking.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

And I have come to the conclusion that that’s too long to not live the way I want to live.

I wouldn’t say I’ve had an epiphany, as there’s been no single moment of revelation. More like a few recent, seemingly-disparate events culminating in a subtle but life-altering shake-down.

In August I turned 39. Which means next August, I will turn 40. Yeah, forty might be the new thirty and all that stuff, but do the math - it still means that one’s life is roughly half over. Which means goodbye to the comforting delusion that one has all the time in the world.¹

I am not afraid of “aging.” What scares me is aging desperately. I’m not there yet, but it would only be a short trip.

If you read my NaNoWriMo rant in November, you know I’ve had a troubled relationship with my writing - oh hell - with my creativity in general. My studies in Armchair Psychology lead me to conclude I’ve been unconsciously waiting for Someone’s approval.  NaNoWriMo gave me “permission” to write crap and enjoy it. The experience was bittersweet: submerging myself in imagination and creation was wonderful, but getting out of the pool left me cold and goosepimply.

Once life had the Writer in me by the short hairs, it grabbed for the Artist. I got a new job - one that not only pays me to write, but also to play around with Photoshop and Dreamweaver. I am equal parts thrilled and chagrined. I’ve wanted to learn both programs for a long time but couldn’t justify buying the expensive software “just for me.” ²

Another dip in the water - it’s bracing this time of year.

Of course, just as my metaphorical heart begins to beat again, my flesh and blood one starts giving me trouble.

There’s a chance my congenital valve problem may be coming back to haunt me. Until I see a cardiologist on January 8th, I won’t know if it’s truly serious. But I can say right now that whatever havoc is being wreaked in my chest has brought a new appreciation for my health.

I’m not just talking about the 5ks and barbells. I mean the general physical well-being I’ve had for the majority of my relatively pain-free, fatigue-free life. Some days, pain and fatigue make aiming for the wastebasket seem impossible, let alone the stars.

Well, nothing lights a fire under an uppity Rib like the impossible.

Today is the first day of the first year of the rest of my forty or fifty-odd years.

I can spend them working for The Man and passively consuming other people’s creativity, then retire with my gold watch and second-hand memories.

Or I can get back in the pool.

Now for the important question: Bikini, one piece, or birthday suit?

I’ll try them all. I have time.

1. I heard a similar clock-ticking when I turned 35 and realized if I wanted kids, I needed to get on the stick, so to speak. But that crisis was resolved in one trip to the mall. [↩]
2. I don’t even want to talk about how lame that looks in print. [↩]

I’m going down to South Park, gonna have myself a time.

It’s a sign you’ve chosen the right job when your new employer encourages you to screw around on the internet on company time.

This is my new cubicle name plate: me singing at the top of my lungs with my iPod,¹ as is my habit. At home anyway. My employer is cool, but not THAT cool.

If you were a South Park character, what would YOU look like?

Technorati Tags: South Park

1. You can’t see him, but Kevin is behind me, laughing. [↩]

I am loved.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I got a new job recently. While I stayed within the same company, I left a team I’d been with since 2003.

It was a bittersweet parting. The new gig is awesome - it’s full-time technical writing, which I’ve been trying to break into forever.

You can’t make the best of omelets without breaking at least one egg, and this seemed to take a dozen.

I had to leave a team in which I feel quite invested, having helped build it into what it is today. But more than that, it’s leaving the team members that is hard, and not just because several of them are my personal friends. They have a tough and often thankless job that is all too easy for outsiders to criticize or undervalue, and I’ve been their champion behind the scenes many, many times. As dorky as it is, it’s been hard to trust that they won’t be flayed alive without Mother Uppity there to protect them.

Anyway, on my last day, my old friends gave me a warm send-off that included a ginormous cake, a righteous Wonder Woman Christmas tree ornament, and this fab t-shirt.¹

Besides singing praises to my writing skills, this shirt is also a wonderful motivator to become more physically fit.² It’s a medium-sized baby-doll, which means that its actual intended wearer is a 16-year-old hottie. While I have no desire to be 16 again, I have nothing against striving for hottie status.

Photo by Lachlan.

Technorati Tags: cool gifts, good friends

1. ”Blurbalicious” refers to the portion of my job that included doing all of the technical writing for our team, including the “blurbs” — those annoying canned messages you get when you write to the customer service department of any large company. [↩]
2. Please note that this observation is entirely my own and should in no way be attributed to the gift-givers. [↩]

Christmas, oh where can you be?

Dear Christmas,

I’ve been waiting since the end of November, but there’s no sign of your cheer yet. Was it something I said?

I have made no Christmas cards and written no yearly Christmas letter.

Kevin actually put up the lights on the house and garage on his own volition, without one nag from me.

Our tree didn’t even go up until way after the first of the month, and even then, it stood bare and dark in the corner for a few days until we took pity on it and decorated.

I adopted a family again this year, but had all the gifts bought, wrapped and delivered within three days. I was fast, efficient, and precise. A donation machine. It’s almost like it never happened.

For friends and family, I’ve bought a total of three gifts…and there’s only twelve shopping days left…

As for me, I want nothing.¹ I have no needs, and I already have enough fun stuff to keep me entertained all year.

Where you at, Christmas?

Maybe you’re around here somewhere and I just haven’t noticed. Come to think of it, a few other things have competed for my attention these past few weeks…

Been very busy at work wrapping up four years’ worth of work as an investigator before I move to a new job in an editorial group next Monday. Happy to be moving on to something new, but sad to leave old friends.²

My perpetual fatigue and increasing exercise intolerance has led my doctor to think I may have developed a leaky heart valve. So I’ll be seeing a cardiologist soon. In addition, looks like my scoliosis may be compressing my lung capacity, so I have to have an X-ray for my back before I suffocate.

Ray Bradbury once said, “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” My post-NaNo hang-over has not been fun, though not un-fun enough to prohibit me from doing it again next year.

Wrapped up as I’ve been in all this nonsense, it’s no wonder your spirit has eluded me. I’m sure you’ve been here all this time, Christmas, waiting patiently for me to stop ignoring you.

But you can’t keep a good holiday down. Sometime between Thanksgiving and today, a pile of empty tins appeared on my kitchen table. Now they are calling to me…things about homemade cookies and gourmet candy and distribution by December 24th.

Don’t give up on me, Christmas, and I won’t give up on you.

1. Except some new footies because mine are falling to pieces, and Kevin’s got that covered in one five-minute trip to J C Pennies. [↩]
2. I had a dream last night that I was defending actions taken by my old team during a conference call with my new team. Mother Hen is leaving the nest. [↩]

NaNo My WriMo

Contrary to what the past several content-less posts might indicate, I have not abandoned Ye Old Rib. I’ve just been a sinking deeper and deeper these past two weeks into the following sources of blog-stunting insanity:

1. The holiday season has unofficially begun and I work in e-commerce. Nuff said.

2.

No, it’s not an obscure ethnic holiday - it’s National Novel Writing Month, an exercise in literary insanity: an attempt at a 50,000-word novel in 30 days.

The rewards for making it to the finish line? A shitty first draft, a year’s worth of bragging rights and a one more check on the To-Do-Before-I’m-Dead list.

Truth be told, I don’t read a lot of fiction these days, let alone write it. But I used to devour it and by age twelve had already written a respectable-sized novel, a mystery starring a teenage sleuth named Deenie. (I guess the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree).

I can certainly still get lost in a good yarn, and I’ve dabbled in creative writing off and on (some of which I’ve even liked). But these days my efforts consist of Ribby rants and while this is worthwhile and creative, I am usually not just making shit up.

So I am a little rusty on the making-shit-up stuff and correspondingly insecure about it, which is exactly why NaNoWriMo is perfect.

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.¹

It is scientifically proven² that many writers never get past the would-be stage. This is because they are utter slaves to their sadistic Inner Editor. Everyone has an IE. Our IE loves to stop us at every third word or so and beat us about the head and shoulders as it cackles a litany of our inadequacies.

Eventually, even the most inspired of would-bes gets tired of the abuse and gives up. Surrender, Dorothy.

Enter NaNoWriMo, antidote.

To write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days requires the exiling of one’s IE. The writer simply does not have time to fuck around with hoity-toity revision when they have to crank out a down-n-dirty 1,666.66666 words per day.

The “low stress, high velocity” ethos of NaNoWriMo gives the writer the necessary motivation to put the IE in its place — which is to say a sound-proofed closet somewhere equipped with a stack of high school final papers, a juicy red pen, and a lot of bile. Happier than tornado in a trailer park!

Meanwhile, the would-be blossoms into writer through the transformative power of imagination, hard work, and lots of caffeine. So what if the finished product is a 50,000-word outline that needs six months of revision to be readable? Your bloodied three sentences are so much better?

Ok, now I’ll really sum up: NaNoWriMo is about not taking one’s self too seriously. And who couldn’t use a month-long exercise in that?

National Novel Writing Month does not officially start until November 1, but there’s plenty of planning and panicking to be done before that. I’ve been giving myself a crash-course how to write fiction - you know, little stuff like characters and plot development. ³ It’s been a while since I had homework every night, and it’s going to get exponentially worse before it gets better.

Which means Thanksgiving will entail horking down my meal, praying the tryptophan turkey bullet misses, and retreating from the warm circle of family to the solitude of my writing desk (best Thanksgiving ever!).

It also means that Rib posts are likely to remain a bit sporadic throughout November. However, I still plan to do my annual “Thanks Giving Month” theme, in which every post expresses my gratitude for the fabulous in life.

It also means when my revised novel hits the best-seller list, you can all say, “I read her when.” Pre-orders, anyone?

Technorati Tags: NaNoWriMo, writing

1. Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride. You killed my father. Prepare to die. [↩]
2. Ibid. [↩]
3. Shit I apparently already knew by the time I wrote my Deenie mystery. Yeah, sure, it sounded an awful lot like all those Trixie Belden books I read, but that just proves I ‘m a fast learner. [↩]

Femme d’un certain âge

It’s noon on a Wednesday and I am standing in a cafe, ordering an espresso. It has not been the easiest of days so far.

I am tired, sick from my sinus infection, fresh from the doctor’s office where I’d received a prescription for antibiotics and was told I have low thyroid, iron and vitamin D deficiencies, an overworked immune system, and various symptoms of perimenopause.

“Don’t let anyone tell you you’re just depressed,” my doctor warned.

As I wait for my dose of energy in a cup, I look around the cafe. I notice a dark haired older woman standing a few feet to my right. She is smartly dressed, smooth straight brown hair, refined in carriage yet relaxed. “A woman ‘of a certain age’,” I say to myself, remembering the delicate French euphemism. I wonder what she is doing today; how she fills her afternoons now that she is free of the nine-to-five hamster wheel; if she is happy.

The barista hands me my change and my receipt at the same time, and the receipt flutters to the floor. All at once, the woman beside me, a man behind me, and I bend down to pick it up.

The elegant woman gets to it first. As she hands it to me, she looks up into my eyes and smiles. No, truth be told, she grins. Her smile is so radiant and merry it startles me, draws me out of my cloudy gray world like a warm sun. It succeeds in provoking my own first genuine smile of the day.

La femme d’un certain âge, c’est moi… I hope.

Tagged, like the cow.

At least once a week, I scold Lachlan for her penchant for tear-assing down hallways and smashing into unsuspecting little me as I come around the corner.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” I say, rubbing my knees where they’ve collided with hers. “You need a cowbell.”

So methinks it’s her sweet revenge to tag me like a floppy-eared bovine.

First rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about… Oh wait, wrong rules.

The Rules:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them each a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

The Eight:

1. HABIT: Hmmm. Habits are hard to identify because…well, they’re habits. The defintion of a habit is “an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary” - in other words, things we do without thinking about them. So I’m thinking about the things I do that I do without thinking. I think I think too much.

2. FACT: I am secretly shy. Kevin says it’s not a secret but I can’t bring myself to confirm that.

3. FACT: I was born in Deadwood - yes, that Deadwood. The Deadwood I grew up in actually looked a lot more like the 19th century TV version than what it looks like now. Legalized gambling has turned that town into a gaudy nightmare.

4. FACT: I adore Mediterranean food, could eat it every day til I die. If it has tomatoes, or olives, or garlic, I’ll eat it. Good bread is manna from heaven; red wine is nectar of the gods. I’m a lactose intolerant paradox of a cheese whore.

5. FACT: I don’t like to cook, but I love to bake. As I write this, I nibble on banana bread I made a couple of days ago. I could never be a low-carb devotee, for what is life without sourdough? Cornbread muffins? Cake!? Kevin appreciates my single culinary interest, though he does wonder how I manage to get so much flour on my butt in the process.

6. HABIT: I feel fortunate that I don’t have many unhealthy habits. I don’t smoke, eat junk, drink to excess, or have unsafe sex with random partners of dubious integrity. I even wear my seatbelt. In the physical realm, I am quite the goody-two-shoes. My bad habits inhabit the intangible, such as the tendency to stew too much about things that piss me off. Fucking habits!

7. FACT: I almost always have a hard time falling asleep. My brains need to wind down, not stop short. And I’m not one of those people that can fall asleep anywhere. I have to be comfortable, lying down; have darkness, quiet, a blankie.

8. HABIT: For several years every Thanksgiving, I have given a hundred dollars to the Union Gospel Mission. It truly is a habit in the sense that the perks of doing it (the feeling of goodwill toward men and all that) are barely conscious to me now, yet I can’t imagine not doing it.

Well, since I’m on a roll, I have another confession to make: I don’t have enough blogger friends to comply with rules 4 and 5. The few bloggers I actually know either have already been tagged very recently or are on indefinite hiatus.

Thus I tag my remaining eligible victim, Amaya.

9. FACT: I’ve never been much of a joiner, anyway.

“Silent gratitude isn’t very much use to anyone.” — Gertrude Stein

On June 9, 2006, Uppity Rib was born, kicking off a year of pure unadulterated uppitude, bloggystyle.

Uppity Rib may be young, but she’s got as much snap in her garter as a feisty crone. She’s been the soap box for my rants on everything from human rights to intellectual midgets to the tyranny of fools. She’s chronicled a whirl-wind European Vacation, an action figure Christmas, could-be-better home and gardens, attempted first-degree buffitude, the ingeniousness of Fucket Buckets, and occasional pit stops in Kevinsylvania.

But most of all, Uppity Rib has been, and always will be, a my little drop of water in the many waves of: “Feminism — the radical notion that women are people.”

None of it woulda happened without my blogfather Adam and blogmother Lachlan. They encouraged my baby steps, supported me as I stretched my adolescent wings, and then like all good parents, set me free when they realized they’d created a monster. (We sits in the darks and we types, don’t we, my preciousssss…..)

Of course, all good things must eventually come to an end, and when Uppity Rib finally goes offline, she’ll need an obituary.

‘What will your obituary say?’ at QuizGalaxy.co

Technorati Tags: obituary, birthdays

You’re My Alternative Bridegroom

Today my workaday partner in crime, Lachlan, and I went to a book reading. We got there early, sat in the front row and chatted up the author while we waited for everyone else to show up.

We talked about all-night raves in the woods where people pooped in buckets. We asked ourselves sticky questions, such as “Do I want fingers in my pie?” We pondered thoughtfully the tenacity of sexist gender roles, the fluidity of outmoded traditions, and the subjectivity of tacky cake decorations.

In case you haven’t guessed yet, we went to a reading of Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides, by Ariel Meadow Stallings.

I guess I should back up a little.

If you have read my Uppity Me page, you know I’ve stated quite bluntly that I don’t think much of the institution of marriage. But like Oprah, I don’t mean that in a bad way. Some of my best friends are married.

It’s just that I think many people get married for goofy reasons. Oh, they rhapsodize about celebrating their love and commitment, but give them a few beers and it’s clear that it’s really about security, babies, familial or societal expectation, keeping up with the Joneses, or even just the desire to be King and/or Queen For A Day.

And until gay folk can marry, the benefits of legal union are also highly prejudiced.

So getting married has never been high on my priority list, even as a youngun dreaming of my future… even as a twenty-something, Always A Bridesmaid in countless weddings and Designated Shoulder for the tearful divorces… even when I fell ass-over-tea-kettle in love and moved to Kevinsylvania for ever and ever and ever.

I only seriously considered marriage when Kevin, as an Air Force reservist, was called to active duty shortly after 9/11. Granted, he was going to Thailand, not Clusterfuckistan. But still, he was supporting Marines that were doing anti-terrorist missions - not exactly saving kitties from treetops. It was heart-stopping to think that if something happened to him in Thailand, I would be denied access to him because we are not legally married. I don’t think so.

But this occurred to me after Kevin had already gone (Hello Stupid Syndrome, it’s common in times of war, you can google it for more info). Once he came back, I told him if he’s ever called up again, his ass and mine are at the courthouse within 24 hours. Or if we have more time, the Church of Elvis in Vegas.

Threats of bodily harm on foreign soil aside, Kevin and I have been happily living in sin for many years. As Joni Mitchell said, we don’t need no piece of paper from the city hall keeping us tight and true, no.

Occasionally, Kevin or I will say “You know, we should really get married. We need a new set of plates” or “It’s been ten years and my mother has never met your dad. Or your brother. Or anyone related to you. Yesterday she accused you of being a member of the Witness Protection Program. We need a wedding reception.”

Cut to Uppity, front row center at Indy Bride Live, with my lesbian friend as my date. Natch.

It was an awesome reading, Ariel being a warm, engaging, funny speaker and a PNW homey to boot. I got a free copy of the book, which is part DIY wedding planning tips and part memior. It promises to be a fab read. I mean, with chapters like “I Am Woman, Hear Me Order Monogrammed Napkins: Is ‘Feminist Wedding Planner’ An Oxymoron?” — how could it suck?

I was bummed not to win the raffle for the (truly inspired) “Fuck Taffeta” t-shirt, but the free copy of the book made up for it.

One slightly distressing event marred the otherwise happy hour: While standing in line to get my book signed, I found myself next to the gal who had announced during the post-reading Q & A that she was “never getting married, ever” and then of course ten minutes later won the raffle for the t-shirt.

“Well,” she proclaimed to all of us, “if I ever DO get married, I’m not wearing a white dress. I’m wearing jeans!” She giggled like this was the most subversive, rebellious thing imaginable.

I smiled. “Well, Gloria Steinem got married in jeans.”

She looked at me and said, “I have no idea who that is.”

“She’s the reason you get to wear jeans, sweetheart.”

I’ll tell her that as soon I as I finish removing the stake from my heart.

Technorati Tags: indy weddings, DIY, marriage, gay marriage, feminism